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March 6, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:43:24

1863 Freedomain Radio Sunday Call In Show March 6 2011

Overcoming a tiger mom, religious morality, dealing with going bald, birth certificates as a social contract, spider dreams, and dealing with pain, pleasure and motivation.

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	Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
	Hope you're doing very well. It is, oh my goodness, what is it?
	March the 6th, 2010, just after 2 p.m.
	Eastern Standard Time for the regular Sunday show.
	A couple of intro notes and bitsy bobs.
	Please... Think of signing up for the Porcupine Freedom Festival, June 20th to 26th, Rogers Camp Random Motel in beautiful Lancaster, New Hampshire.
	I was there last year.
	I did some emceeing and I gave a speech.
	You can go to freestateproject.org forward slash festival.
	It is a truly beautiful and wonderful place to go.
	And I will be there. Christina and Isabella will be there.
	And we really look forward to meeting everyone.
	If you're signing up, you can use the promo code STEFAN, all caps, to get yourself a juicy, tasty discount.
	I also wanted to mention that as of this time last year, there were only a few people signed up for the Porcupine Freedom Festival.
	So far at the moment this year, we've had over 250 people sign up and it's only going to go upwards from here.
	So please go to freestateproject.org forward slash festival.
	You owe it to yourself. It's a little slice of Galt's Gulch with fabulous Thai food and a great, great company until the wee hours.
	So I hope you will look into that. The Liberty Cruise with myself and Wes Bertrand and Mark Edge from Free Talk Live.
	The first phase is sold out.
	They're booking more. You can go to fdrurl.com forward slash cruise to sign up for that.
	It's a cruise from, I believe it is from New Jersey.
	I think the Bahamas or Barbados or something like that.
	Sorry, it just slipped my mind because I'm over 40.
	Anyway, so I hope that you will check that out.
	That should be a lot of fun as well.
	And of course, I will be emceeing and speaking at the Libertopia Festival, which I also did last year.
	You can find that at libertopia.org.
	Highly, highly recommended. A very, very intelligent group of people there and me.
	So... Anyway, I had a letter.
	I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to do emails of the week and more podcasts at the moment.
	I am working on a new book.
	There are some excitements about the new website and all of that kind of stuff, but we will get back to it.
	So, hello, and I've asked permission the listener has said I can do this, but I have to do it in an outrageous Greek accent.
	Which I won't.
	So he says, first of all, I wanted to share a tiger mother experience with you.
	My wife is Asian, though not Chinese, and an immigrant.
	Long before I discovered you, we had a child.
	I convinced her that public schools were inadequate and that it's important for us to teach him ourselves and that we can start before he even starts school.
	Basically, my wife's methods were like the tiger mother.
	This is Amy Chouard's thing, which is how she was raised and taught at home as a child.
	Lots of screaming, no hitting, but some emotional terrorism for sure.
	Unlike the guy in the tiger mother story, I put my foot down right away and put an end to it.
	I know that's tough, but good for you.
	Where screaming failed, encouraging worked in spades.
	Our son was reading books, adding and subtracting before he stepped foot into kindergarten.
	He's just finishing kindergarten now and already at what Americans would call a third grade level.
	The only reason he even goes to school is from my wife's concerns about social development, which I haven't found an answer to.
	I just can't say enough about non-violence with kids.
	Amen, brother!
	Not only is it the ethical way to raise your child, it works.
	There's literally no loss from what I've seen.
	Our son was floundering under a system of spanking, shouting, and force.
	He is now simply just amazing.
	He's overseas right now visiting family and was messaging me over Yahoo!
	I know he was doing it by himself because he was on webcam.
	If left to the state or to the tiger mother he might be able to read and write his first and last name and maybe play a few keys on piano.
	Well that is just fantastic and I couldn't agree with you more.
	Isabella continues to blow my gourd across the stratosphere this morning.
	She wanted to play on the bed and she likes to pretend to sort of go to sleep and cuddle.
	And so we went into the bedroom.
	She said, turn off the light. So I turned off the light.
	And then she closed all of the doors and the curtains and she said, I want it to be a little bit darker.
	25 and a half months.
	Just amazing. So she is just an absolute, complete and total delight.
	And yeah, so it works.
	I can absolutely tell you it works.
	And, you know, if you're a parent who's missed the boat or never heard the information or didn't pick up the way that parenting is generally portrayed in the mainstream media, which is very peaceful and very positive, it's never, ever, ever too late to make amends.
	It's never, ever, ever too late to begin the healing process and to apologize for inflicting harm upon your kids.
	I hope that people will always take that opportunity to mend fences wherever humanly possible.
	It is amazing what apologies and restitution and concessions can do in any relationship.
	Now, I want to read this last little bit, just because I finally have been asked about something I actually have some expertise in.
	You know, I always say, I'm an amateur at this and I'm an amateur at that, and that's all very true.
	But here, I am a professional.
	So he said, I wanted to say, as someone that is going bald at an early age, how do you cope?
	What was the transition like?
	I've decided that rather than try and comb over, I'm just going to shave it all.
	Any input and moral support in this area is vastly appreciated.
	I beseech thee, O forehead of wisdom.
	You know, if wisdom was the size of your forehead, I would be one of the wiser people in the known universe.
	So, yeah, look, this is complete non-philosophical nonsense, but let's sort of mention it anyway.
	Thank you. If I could get back the time in my life that I've worried about things that don't matter, I really believe that I would live pretty much like Methuselah probably about a thousand years.
	I have wasted a huge amount of time in my life worrying about things that don't matter, fearing for things that never happen.
	And so it's just something that I have to wrestle with.
	This is the story of the brutalized childhood that you get elevated fight or flight and sort of de-elevated suppressing mechanisms in the neofrontal cortex.
	You just have to deal, I have to deal with these eruptions from time to time.
	Bald. You know, it sucks.
	I started going bald. I think I was about 16 or 17 when I first noticed that my father's hair had fallen not on me so much as past me.
	And yeah, of course, I stressed and I worried.
	And I was like, I tried that little comb thing where you comb over the widow's peak.
	Like, that's going to fool anyone.
	And I was obsessed with people who had more hair.
	And why? I remember reading some article in Esquire many years ago, which was something like, Well, Warren Beatty, has he cured cancer?
	Why does he get a great head of hair?
	And Winston Churchill, who saved Western civilization, was bald as an egg.
	I mean, you know, this is silly things that you think about.
	I like it now.
	And I don't think there was a pill that would get me back in my hair.
	I don't think I would take it now. I really like the speed of, you know, wash and go.
	And I will say a couple of positive things about going bald because the negative things are just clear.
	You know, you're worried about your physical attractiveness and there is a sort of grim handprint of mortality on your head because it's not supposed to happen.
	That's pretty common. I think 40% of guys start losing hair before the age of 30 or 40.
	So, the negatives are clear, but let me give you some of the positives.
	The first is that it's going to weed the really shallow people out of your life, like in terms of dating.
	Now, you're married, so it's not so bad.
	But it is going to weed some really show.
	People who won't go out with you because you're bald, you don't want to go out with them anyway.
	A complete ridiculous approach, but I have a vague theory that something like hair is boobs, right?
	So there are, in general, I've heard that men tend to like larger boobs on women.
	And women, I would sure, in general, like that sort of Proto-thick thatch of Patrick Dempsey hair, rather than bald.
	Now, some women who have no boobs are fantastically attractive, and some women who have, you know, boobs for days, not so much.
	So, it's not a singular criteria, but if, of course, you are going bald, in other words, if you have small male boobs, so to speak, Then there are things that I would suggest you do.
	First of all, for heaven's sake, don't gain any weight.
	I mean, don't gain any weight just in general.
	And I say this as a guy who just recently lost, well, recently, I guess a year or two ago, lost about 25 pounds.
	So yeah, try not to gain any weight because, you know, bald works if you can go with that, I'm a Charlie Brown wisdom head from the future, you know, that bobble head from the future.
	But that only works if you can keep your face somewhat angular.
	Which doesn't work so much if you work into the twinkle-dumb phase of pudginess.
	So I think, I mean, it's generally good to stay relatively at a good weight, but it's particularly so important when you're balding or bald, because I think you can get away with it then.
	So, I would suggest that.
	I think bald works well with exercise.
	You know, so exercise and stay fit and maybe a little bit muscular, I think that works really well.
	Because then again, you're that unitard jumpsuit guy from the future who's come back to pump up the Western world.
	So, I think that can be helpful and positive.
	And other than that, You know, I mean, there are bigger things in life than whether you have a couple of follicles on your head.
	It does get to be a bit tiring wearing hats in the summer, but, you know, it's just something you kind of got to get down with because you don't want to end up with two blue eyes and a tomato as your look, at least for me.
	So those are my just sort of brief suggestions.
	It is one of these things that you you worry and fret about quite a bit when it first starts and then it peaks and then you just like that you get on you get on with your life and you know stay attractive stay lean work out a little bit and I think it's a look that can work for a lot of people but it's one of these looks that if you're bald being out of shape and overweight and bald that's really not a good combination you know if you look at Oliver Platt you know the guy's a teddy bear puginus of overly intimate sexual charisma But,
	you know, big head of hair, he's got a lot of character to his face and so on.
	But he could work around it. If he was bald, I think it would be a whole different kind of thing.
	So those are just my two cents worth, probably not even that, about the question or approach of baldness.
	My wife doesn't want me to have hair back and she actually much prefers me Me this way.
	So anyway, just wanted to mention that.
	Now let's get on with the shoe and talk to the listeners.
	Thank you everybody so patiently who has been waiting for the conversation.
	And oh, sorry.
	One last note. Traffic to FDR year over year, up 100%.
	100%.
	And I do believe that we're closing in on 30 million downloads and views.
	That is incredible. Amazing, astounding, and positive.
	Thank you so much to everyone who's supporting.
	Thank you so much to the technical team who is moving us all over to the new server.
	Thank you so much to the donators and supporters.
	It's been a bit of a light month so far, so if you could dig in a little bit, I would appreciate that.
	It is a little bit costly to move to this new server.
	It's got four times the memory, it's got six times the hard drive space, it's got four extra processors, just because the old one was trembling just a little bit.
	So, if you could, freedomainradio.com forward slash donate.
	Hugely appreciated.
	Remember, no ads.
	I don't take money for any conversations that I have with people.
	I don't get speaking fees.
	It is really something that is funded entirely by the generosity of everybody involved in the conversation.
	So, if you can step up and support what it is that we're up to, Whether it's time or money or publicizing or sharing, that's all hugely, massively and totally appreciated.
	And thank you everybody so much for the journey that we've been on so far.
	If that hasn't been said, let's get to the listeners and thank you so much for your patience.
	Hello, Steph. Hi, go ahead.
	Basically, is everyone hearing that?
	Yeah, you sound like you're dialing up from 1982, I think.
	My apologies. I think that was the wrong number.
	Please go on. Basically, I had this really, really weird dream the other night.
	I was wondering if you had any thoughts about it.
	Not yet. Sorry.
	But I think I might.
	Basically, I'll give you some context.
	A few weeks ago, I went on a trip for cleanup for some flood damage that had happened in our state.
	And while we were there, I was just getting involved in some really overgrown gardens, clearing out all this stuff that I would normally never touch just because I'm terrified of spiders and creepy crawlies and all that stuff.
	And so anyway, so the other night I had this dream where...
	I basically was in this overgrown garden in between two modern apartments and it was really dilapidated.
	There were lots of rusty things lying around and people were cleaning things up.
	But in the middle of it, there was a well, which I'd never seen a well before.
	And while I was looking at the well, suddenly everything changed and we were inside a giant, giant warehouse.
	With a concrete floor and I was aware that the warehouse was somehow at a dock.
	Then there were some guys sitting around on some fold-ups.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	If I don't have it written down, I lose a little bit of the shape of the dream.
	Oh, I'm sorry. No problem at all.
	I've just been making notes, and I want to make sure that I've got things correct.
	So you were, in fact, helping with some flood damage.
	Good for you. Very nice.
	And you saw between two apartment buildings a sort of overgrown lot.
	Is that right? That's right.
	And there was a well in it.
	That's right. Now, was it like a sort of one of these fairy tale wells with the little thatched roof and the bucket and the chain?
	I'm sorry? It was like the one from the movie The Ring.
	The Ring. Okay, right, right.
	And yeah, so just like big stones, old style stones.
	Okay, and then sorry, how did you get to the dock?
	Um, it, we didn't go there.
	It just, everything changed.
	Oh, it changed. Okay. So then you're at a dock, right?
	Um, well, inside a giant concrete warehouse, but I was aware somehow that outside was a dock.
	Right. Um, now the well was still inside the warehouse with a little patch of grass around it.
	So the well had, sorry, the well had come from the broken gummied up lot into the warehouse, right?
	Exactly. Okay.
	Okay. And a couple of guys were inside the warehouse.
	The cleanup was still going on.
	There was piles of vegetation, recycling stuff being moved around.
	Things that didn't make sense at all.
	But they're all doing stuff.
	I was one of the people doing stuff.
	And there was a guy sitting in a fold-up chair next to the well who was joking with whoever was running this cleanup.
	And it was some kind of guy who was basically running this cleanup.
	But I never saw him.
	All I knew was that he was hovering above the well.
	You mean like floating in the air?
	Well, I was just aware that he was there as some presence, but I didn't see him.
	I saw the guy on the fold-up chair next to him.
	I was looking at him. I'm sorry, I don't understand this.
	So, how's the guy floating above the well?
	Well, put it this way.
	The guy who's on the fold-up chair was talking with someone, but I couldn't see...
	I wasn't looking at whoever he was talking to.
	All I knew was that that was the location of the well.
	Okay. When I looked over to the well, whatever was there shape-shifted into a little spider, like a really, really little one.
	Right, okay. And the spider then jumped playfully onto the guy sitting down, then back into its levitating spot above the well.
	It gave him a fright, but then he laughed.
	It sort of had the character of like a kitten pouncing on someone.
	And I mean, I'm terrified of spiders.
	I don't think of them in this sort of playful, funny, cutesy way.
	But everyone was laughing.
	It was all good natured.
	The spider was laughing.
	Were you experiencing fear of the spider at the time?
	No, I was laughing, but I was also like, what the hell is going on?
	Were you faking the laughter, or was it something that you were genuinely experiencing?
	That sounds accusatory.
	Like, ah, were you faking?
	I'm just trying to understand what your emotional state was in this.
	Well, I was genuinely laughing at the humor of it as if, but I was also at the same time thinking that something just doesn't add up here.
	This doesn't make sense. And at that point, the cleanup continued.
	The spider was moved to...
	To a position on a fold-up chair on an elevated platform in this warehouse.
	How was the spider moved? I just looked and some time had passed and the spider had been moved onto a chair.
	And it was basically like everyone was Moving stuff, cleaning stuff away, and preparing because someone was coming to the warehouse, and they had to move everything out, and they had to move the spider out as well.
	The spider was kind of like the leader that was just sitting there while everyone was doing all this stuff for it.
	It was also completely...
	It seemed to be helpless to do anything for itself, but it was there.
	And then? At a later point...
	We're moving more stuff away and then suddenly there was I became aware that there was an office like a small office as like a separate sort of compound within this giant warehouse right in the middle of it near the near the well and whoever was coming had arrived and everyone had cleared away but the spider was still there it was inside the office And there was some girl inside the office who wasn't supposed to be there.
	Whoever was coming, it was never made clear.
	Sorry, I'm getting a clicking noise.
	Actually, it sounds like giant mandibles.
	Quick, turn around! Just if you can see if there's any background noise.
	Okay, so there's a girl in the office, the spider is still there, and the person who's coming has come, and then what?
	The spider is trying to get away from the girl because she might pose some hazard to it.
	Basically, the big danger that everyone's afraid of is that the spider will fall and touch the concrete.
	And it does. It falls and it falls through the office floor onto the concrete slab below.
	And now I'm outside this office, and I can see that underneath the office, it's not touching the ground at all.
	There's a gap under it. There's no supporting structure for a long way.
	But then I tell myself, that doesn't make sense.
	And so then there is a supporting structure right at the very back, far away.
	So under the office ground, there's no supporting structure.
	Is that right? Yeah, it's like a levitating office cubicle inside.
	An old wooden, but levitating office cubicle.
	But it is supported by some implausible structure at the back.
	The spider is on the concrete, and now I get the understanding that the spider is threatened because it has nowhere to run up.
	It's just a giant concrete surface with no place for it to go.
	Right. And finally, right towards the end, I'm going to rescue the spider.
	It's found a way up on some little area.
	And I'm going to pick it up.
	But at this point, it's a lot bigger.
	And it looks basically like it's all legs, no body.
	But like really big, claw-like legs.
	And I'm about to reach for it and rescue it when I think, hang on, how do I know this is a spider and not some other spider that might bite me?
	And that's when I start to feel proper fear.
	And at that point, I woke up.
	But, yeah. Interesting, interesting.
	And do you have this fear of spiders as a kid?
	Yeah, since I was around six.
	Do you remember a time before you were frightened of spiders?
	No. Sorry, do you remember any specific incident that caused the fear of spiders?
	Yeah. When I was six, I was at my violin teacher's house and I was exploring her garden and there was this grove of bamboo.
	And I remember just walking into it and seeing the ground just completely covered with spiders.
	Now, I don't know if it actually was, but in my head it was.
	Were they small spiders? Medium-sized, sort of like a couple of centimeters.
	I don't know if it was actually true or if this is just something I created in my head from having seen some of it, but I remember that mental image so clearly in my head.
	Right, right. Yeah.
	Are you dating at the moment?
	No, but I was sleeping over at a guy's place that night.
	I'm sorry, that sounds like a causal thing.
	Are you dating? No, but I was sleeping over at a guy's place that night.
	I don't know what that means. Oh, sorry, I'm gay.
	Oh, gay, okay, sorry. I was going to go there next.
	Now, were you sort of in a sexual relationship that night?
	Again, I hate to sort of ask, but I'm just sort of curious.
	Okay, so it was like a one-night stand.
	Yes, I knew the guy from before, but not emotionally connected.
	And how's your mom with your gayness?
	Sorry, gayness. I don't know how, with being gay or whatever.
	I mean, there's no easy way to put it.
	She doesn't know, but I think she probably suspects.
	Right, right.
	Right. Now, you know that this is all nonsense, right?
	This is just ridiculous theories over the internet, but I have some thoughts about it that I think might be of interest to you.
	What's your relationship with your mama like?
	Kind of mixed, not so good.
	Wait, are you saying that you're a gay man with a complicated relationship to his mother?
	Hang on. Hey, there's a first for everything.
	Let me just make a note of this. On this day of our Lord.
	Anyway, sorry, go on. Pretty much...
	Yeah, I basically haven't been able to really get her to...
	Like she would acknowledge some of the things that happened when I was...
	Or most of the things that would happen when I was younger.
	But then just say, yeah, but you need to move on with your life.
	Don't hold on to this.
	You need to just... It's stopping you from being happy.
	Holding on to all this stuff.
	Oh, so when you bring up stuff from the past, she views it as sort of grudge holding.
	And if you would just let go of it and forgive and forget and move on, everything would be fine?
	Kind of, yeah.
	She said things like, look, if you need me to accept this, then fine, but you need to move on from this.
	And I can kind of see what she's saying there.
	I am, how can I put it, I have made things bigger than they are in my head, but I feel like they do have some size and they should be acknowledged, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, I mean, look, my opinion is that the people who've done us harm have no right to tell us to move on.
	There are other people who have the right to tell us to move on, but not the people who've actually harmed us.
	Thank you for saying that.
	Okay, so I'll tell you why I'm talking about your mom.
	It's not just some sort of cliched couch stuff, right?
	The reason I'm talking about your mom is that I think that spiders are moms in dreams.
	And I could sort of go into all of the reasons why.
	I certainly know that for myself, I remember I have the same fear of spiders.
	It's not as bad anymore, but it was bad.
	And of course, when I went to Africa when I was six, there were these spiders that looked like you could throw a saddle on them and ride them up a mountain.
	They were just horrendous.
	The size of the bugs, particularly when you're six, the size of the bugs in Africa left quite an impression on my unconscious for quite many years.
	But yeah, I think that it's useful to approach Spiders as the unconscious view of mom.
	For myself, I remember I was in a garden when I was about four or five.
	I had just started kindergarten.
	I don't know what had happened.
	I was living with my aunt for a year.
	I don't know where my mom was.
	Maybe she'd had another breakdown.
	I don't know. And in their backyard, I remember going out and seeing a bunch of, I think they were thistles, and there was a spiderweb, you know, those really, really fine and dense, they looked like gauze almost, like those really thin curtains.
	It was a spiderweb, really tightly bound.
	And there was a spider writhing and like pumping out baby spider after baby spider after baby spider.
	And they were just sort of flowing out, you know, this river of yeekiness, to get overly technical.
	And so certainly for me, spiders have had some relationship to, I mean, that was my first witnessing of birth, was seeing a spider.
	So for me, spiders have always had something to do with moms.
	I don't think that I'm alone in that.
	If you think of the metaphors to do with spiders, they're usually tubes.
	You've got wells. There's the famous – I think the most popular nursery rhyme in the world is itsy-bitsy spider went up the water spout.
	Down came the rain and washed the spider out.
	I mean this is kind of like birth, right?
	The birth canal. I mean there seems to be – it's one way of processing siblings for babies.
	Yeah. Spiders coming at the water spout.
	There seems to be some sort of birth thing.
	And here you have a well as well, so to speak.
	And you have this spider.
	And spiders – see, spiders are weird too because they can seem to float.
	Right? I mean, so sometimes – like I've come home sometimes and you just see this spider floating in front of the doorway because it's got a little – Spider web that it's hanging from that you can't see.
	So they appear like they can levitate, which is kind of freaky, right?
	At least they don't have wings.
	At least they don't have wings, that's right.
	At least they don't have wings. But that also makes them a bit nastier, right, in a way, because things that fly around really are going to land on you, but spiders crawling over, that's, you know...
	I remember reading this just ghastly tale about how – this isn't spiders – but cockroaches, the people in New York would have cockroaches crawl into their ears and then the antennae would wave over the eardrums and cause this absolutely brain-splitting noise that they have to go to the doctor and stagger along the street like their heads are exploding and just imagine.
	Anyway. I think we've all had those sort of – and spiders, they have this – they lay their eggs in things that come out of John Hurt's chest in Alien.
	They just have this – and of course there's damn good reasons to be nervous around spiders because they can bite and some of them can kill.
	And they are dangerous, right?
	I mean what are people scared of?
	Snakes, heights and spiders? Well, very few people are scared of a – A tightly knit cumulus cloud.
	It can't really do anything harmful.
	So I was interested that everybody was comfortable with the spider except the woman was a threat to the spider.
	Is that right? Yeah.
	So the guys were all pretty comfortable with the spider and were joking about it, although you were, I think, faking a little bit of that because you weren't able to talk about your concern.
	But the woman was perceived to be a threat to the spider, right?
	Yeah. Almost because she might freak out at the fact that there was a spider there rather than – and when it was not going to hurt her.
	That's pretty much the thought I had.
	Oh, so it wasn't that there was – it was just that you thought that the woman might do that sort of eek a mouse thing with the spider, right?
	Exactly. That was it.
	Right, right. Okay. I think that the interesting thing is that there's so much in the dream that is suspended – With no rationality, right?
	The spider is suspended in midair.
	And then the office itself is suspended in midair with no particular architectural reasoning behind it, no engineering behind it, right?
	Yeah. So I think that's interesting.
	Is your mom tall?
	No, she's a bit shorter than me.
	Is your mom thin?
	Her weight's fluctuated.
	I'd say she's thin, but not average.
	She's average. Right.
	Because when you said that the spider turned into a spider that was all legs and no body, where my mind jumps to, and again, we're just playing around with the imagery.
	Go ahead. I think your mind may have jumped there, too.
	My mom has, like, her body is quite slim, but her legs are sort of chunky.
	Yeah.
	Well, so, you know, when you are a little kid and you're looking up at your mom, she is all legs and no body because all you can see is like shins and knees and hips and maybe, I don't know, little boobs or something because they're sticking out.
	Who knows, right?
	But when you look up as a little kid, particularly before you can walk, but even when you can walk, I mean I'm really conscious of this.
	I mean Isabella is actually quite tall for her age but I'm very conscious that I don't want her to spend her whole life looking up because I think that's not actually healthy.
	I think that gives you a sense of being small.
	So I always – when I remember it, I don't always remember but I always try and either lift it to my level or go down to her level so that we can have even eye contact.
	So anyway, that just sort of popped into my mind that all legs and no body.
	It seems to me, I mean, if there is anything to this maternal thing that you might be sort of, this is an image of sort of looking up and that there is a sense of danger.
	The suspended in midair thing is interesting because it does remind me of the homosexuality, right?
	Okay, so I haven't said anything about it to her?
	Right. I mean, obviously, who the hell am I to tell you whether you should or shouldn't?
	I'm a nobody, right? But it is something which is that there is a very important non-truth avoidance, right?
	So things are kind of hanging, right?
	Yeah, I can see that.
	I haven't actually been thinking about this aspect of things for a while, but I had been thinking recently about just what I'm going to say to my mom.
	In a number of areas.
	I mean, I don't know if this is relevant, but yeah, around a week ago, actually no, it was a few weeks ago, I did the Landmark Forum.
	Oh, you posted about that on the board, right?
	Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I did that too, yeah.
	Oh yeah, what was your experience of that?
	I thought some of it was great.
	And I really admired the passion, if not the downright endurance of the speaker, of the woman who was leading it.
	I think it's worth looking into for people.
	I found it to be quite useful in some ways.
	I think that, you know, I have a pretty philosophical mind and I got into some pretty good, I thought, good debates with the leader.
	And people were very interested in the debates.
	But the leader kept shutting it down, saying that I was running a racket called Being Smart.
	And I don't think that that was true.
	I mean, I genuinely am passionate about philosophical truth.
	And I do reserve the right to question my teachers, just as, of course, everybody should question everyone if questions are arising.
	So I did two rounds.
	And I found it useful and I found it interesting and I found it challenging and I didn't have any particular desire to continue after that.
	But it certainly is an interesting experience and very different for – and the other thing that I thought was interesting as well is that it is fascinating to see – What lies beneath the surface of people's lives, right? Because, you know, you come into the room and there's like all these people and they're milling around and, you know, in any other social situation, you'd get to know almost nothing about them.
	But in this environment, you do see a lot of what goes on behind the scenes for people, you know, behind the social masks, underneath the calm exteriors.
	And that was very interesting.
	So I just wanted to sort of mention that.
	But go ahead. Well, yeah, basically, I mean, I had this experience at the end of it where I finally – I realized that I see the world through an intellectual filter that isn't – it really doesn't feel very nice.
	It's just interesting.
	It's not – It's rare for me to have a simple discussion where I'm just happy and in the moment.
	At the end of my experience there, basically, I had this thing where I let go of I don't know how I did it.
	It just happened where I felt three waves of just releasing something really heavy.
	One was false interpretations I had about myself in terms of negative self-image things.
	I saw it from a way that wasn't intellectual for the first time.
	It was like it had gone around that defense and shown me that a lot of stuff I had been holding onto about myself wasn't based on empirical evidence.
	It was just me interpreting a few facts and stringing the rest together myself.
	A few months ago we spoke about I was like, what do I have to do to earn or rebuild my self-worth?
	And you said it's just a weight that you have to take off it.
	I could hear what you're saying, but I didn't really get what you meant.
	I let it go, but I mean, I don't know how I did it.
	I don't know what will stop it.
	I felt it coming back again and again.
	But at the end of that, I felt so free for the first time.
	I just broke down in tears and I was happy.
	I felt like whatever was wrapped around me for all these years was gone.
	And I could just act and not worry, not care at all what anyone thought or anything like that.
	And I think that's fantastic.
	And I certainly can understand that experience from the forum.
	And again, I'm no expert on landmark.
	I would only – for me, I got much more out of one-on-one therapy over the long run.
	Yeah. I mean that's sort of my recommendation based on – I mean some empirical evidence, some scientific evidence.
	But I felt that there was a certain euphoria and release that came out of the forum.
	I did not find that I was able to maintain it.
	But I was able to through therapy.
	Now, again, that may be my experience.
	It may be completely different for you.
	That was just sort of my approach.
	I felt that to be sort of uncorked from inhibition without more coaching, one-on-one coaching, actually led me to make some decisions that in hindsight would probably be a tad premature.
	And, you know, I'm free!
	I can fly!
	Yeah! So I just wanted to mention that that was sort of my – I guess somewhat known for my enthusiasms.
	So I felt that the sort of more patient one-on-one coaching that went on through therapy to me was a little less giddy and euphoric and more sustainable.
	But again, that was just my particular experience.
	Anyway, look, we could go more into the dream, but I would suggest that – That it may have something to do with the elephant in the room with your mom?
	Well, yeah. I mean, I recently had a conversation with her that was basically me telling her some of the things that, although I recognized that there were some things, a lot of what was going on in my relationship with her was me holding a grudge for the fact that Basically for the fact that I wasn't popular at school,
	for the fact that my social skills hadn't been taught enough to really...
	Yeah, so I've been holding this grudge and building on it and building on it and building on it.
	And I remember so clearly a couple of times making a conscious decision to stubbornly hold on to it, like, because...
	I felt like it would be treason to something to not.
	And it just sucked holding on to that.
	And I feel like I'm holding on to it now, which is why the other day when I was speaking to my mom about it, it was completely intellectual.
	I was not connecting at all in that sense.
	Well, I'll tell you again. I want to move on to other callers, and I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I just wanted to mention something that I think is important around the question of grudge.
	Grudge is a difficult word.
	There are words that are just so innately adhominy, like they're just so innately insulting in a sense that I'm always suspicious of them.
	And that doesn't mean – so if you say to somebody you're holding a grudge, then what you're saying is that the other person is being unjust, that the other person is refusing to forgive legitimately, that restitution has been made or reasonable accommodations have been made, that the provocation is something that should be forgiven because I think it's fair to say that there are some provocations that are being unjust.
	we should not encourage other people to forgive.
	Like a wife getting beaten up by her husband shouldn't go back and forgive and not hold grudges, right?
	I mean that should be something that should be damn well processed, right?
	So, I have a problem with language that claims a vast amount of moral wisdom, philosophical knowledge, psychological insight, without demonstration of that, right? So, for instance, if I thought you were holding a grudge, and I thought it was useful for us to have a conversation about you holding a grudge...
	The last thing that I would say is you're holding a grudge.
	Because for me to say that is giving you the entire conclusion.
	Sure. But the important thing is that you, like, first of all, I have to know that I'm right, which means I need to have very deep knowledge about the provocation and the interactions and the responses and how the relationship has gone and all that kind of stuff, right?
	So I have to have a deep knowledge.
	If I'm going to label something a grudge, I need to have really deep knowledge about what has been going on in the relationship and what was the provocation, what was the response, and what the conversation has been.
	And so to me, grudge is a conclusion or in a sense a judgment.
	That the person holding the grudge needs to come to, and they really can't be told that.
	Because if they're told that, then, like without going through the reasoning, then it's just kind of insulting and diminishing to the person.
	Does that sort of make any sense?
	Yeah, it's saying, like, it's just a shortcut without actually having gone through the steps.
	Right, right. And the reason that most people do shortcuts, right?
	Whenever somebody has a moral stand in a relationship, it makes people acutely uncomfortable.
	Not everyone, but most people in my experience become acutely uncomfortable when you take a moral stand in a relationship.
	Because most people are trained to get along, to go along, to appease, to turn the other cheek, to whatever.
	If your enemy asks you to walk a mile with him, walk two.
	There's that whole thing. And so when someone takes a stand and says, no, I don't accept insults in a relationship.
	I don't accept a lack of love, a lack of respect in a relationship.
	I don't accept a lack of trust in a relationship.
	I don't accept a lack of open-mindedness and curiosity in a relationship.
	I don't accept a lack of communication.
	I don't accept significant lies.
	I don't accept emotional avoidance.
	I don't accept put-downs.
	I don't accept trivia!
	boring, empty sports team and weather trivia in my relationships, or at least not anywhere near the center of my relationship.
	So when anybody in this world, I believe, genuinely believe, puts up a standard to do with personal relationships, it makes other people acutely uncomfortable.
	And in my experience, what people do with that discomfort is they attempt to reframe it as moral superiority.
	That's what people do when they're emotionally uncomfortable, is they attempt to reframe their emotional discomfort as moral superiority.
	So if… You made me feel this.
	Sorry, go ahead. So it's like you made me feel this because you did something to me rather than just, oh, maybe I feel this because I'm wrong.
	Yeah. Sorry, I don't follow what you're saying.
	Oh, people who, when they feel uncomfortable because it's something that they've done, they'll just say, oh no, you're making me feel this because you are manipulating me or something.
	I would be a little bit more precise, right?
	So I think the interaction would be something like this.
	So you take a moral stand which says, I've got some stuff to clean up with my past with my mom.
	And it needs to be – I need to be listened to.
	Obviously, nobody has to accept as gospel everything that I say, but I really feel that I need to be listened to and not dismissed and that I need to know that the other person gets what I feel.
	See, getting what someone else feels doesn't mean that you agree with them.
	It just means that you really understand.
	And there's a huge amount of sweet relief in relationships when you feel visible.
	And people mistake feeling visible for being agreed with.
	Like, oh, if I empathize, I have to agree.
	No, you can empathize and disagree.
	But there's a huge, sweet, beautiful relief when somebody gets where you're coming from and you can actually have a conversation without defensiveness, without manipulation, without avoidance, without people jockeying for the moral superior position.
	And so if you say, look, I've got some standards in there.
	I'm going to have honesty in my relationships.
	Now, if I have relationships that are not honest, I'm going to feel anxious about that because I'm going to feel not only is your commitment to honesty in relationships going to have an effect on your relationships and therefore unconsciously on my own relationships with people, but it's also going to have an effect on your relationship with me.
	In other words, if you're going to start really demanding honesty, Demanding sounds tough, but you know what I mean.
	If you're going to raise the standard of honesty in our relationship, then that may threaten some of my other relationships where I feel, and maybe with good reason, that honesty is not possible or honesty will be attacked or honesty will be rejected or honesty will be scorned.
	I think that most people are just kind of – I shouldn't say.
	I think a lot of people are just kind of crawling through life with a big, giant medieval shield on their backs just trying to get to the grave without being speared, without being bored, without having some hail of arrows fall down on their naked ass or something, right?
	Because to be honest, it's to run into a lot of problems in this world sometimes, right?
	So I think that people – when you raise your standards in your relationships, people feel that that is threatening.
	People feel that that is destabilizing.
	People feel that as anxiety-provoking.
	And whenever people feel that they're put down by something that you're doing, even though what you're doing is not trying to put them down, then what they do is they feel pushed down.
	It's like a helium balloon.
	You push it down into the water and it gets a whole load of potential energy, right?
	And then it shoots up out of the water.
	And it doesn't just go to the top of the water.
	It shoots up into the air. And up into the air is where people need to go to when they feel put down.
	And up into the air is moral superiority.
	So if you say, I'm going to talk to my mom about X, Y, and Z that I have a problem with her about...
	Everybody has problems with their parents.
	Everybody has problems with their spouses.
	Everybody has problems with their friends.
	I think that's natural.
	I think it would be kind of weird if they didn't.
	I have problems with things I did four days ago.
	I'm sure I'll have problems with things I'm doing six months from now.
	I think that's part of the natural growth and we're all sort of feeling our way to some sort of more rational and more honest and more open.
	Kind of communication, kind of relationship and there's lots of stumbles and falls along the way.
	Every athlete has problems with the way he performed two months ago, maybe even yesterday and will have problems with how he performs, you know, with maybe one exception or two exceptions in his whole career.
	And that just sort of popped into my mind.
	Marlon Brando, one of the greatest acting performances in film is on the waterfront.
	And when he watched the film for which he got an Oscar, he just turned to Ilya Kazan, who was the director, and he said, Jesus, I can't believe how big my ass looks.
	His response to one of the most beautiful acting jobs that have ever been done on motion pictures.
	One of the most incredible, sensitive, and embodied and beautiful acting performances.
	My ass, it's so huge. I can't believe it.
	So, yeah, so when you say, look, I'm raising the standards of my relationship, other people feel anxious, and they feel that they're being devalued, that they're being put down implicitly, and so what they do is they then respond with, well, it's important not to hold grudges, it's important to forgive.
	So they start to lecture you from a position of moral superiority, not empathy, not curiosity, not openness, not asking questions, but immediately react or recoil to sniping at you from the high ivory tower.
	Suspended in midair, like the spider, like the office, right?
	From the well, right?
	So they went down in the well and then they go, boom, up into the sky to moral superiority.
	And then they're looking down at you from a great height of moral superiority.
	You shouldn't hold grudges. And when people are looking down at you from a great height, my friend, what do they look like?
	They look like all legs and nobody.
	And I'm doing all the work.
	Well, then you have to justify yourself, right?
	You have to then justify yourself as, no, I'm not holding a grudge and blah, blah, blah, right?
	Yeah. So, anyway, I just wanted to mention that.
	Thanks for that, Steph. You're very welcome, and I hope that you can at some point have this convo with your mom, but it may be worth, again, I don't know if you're in therapy or not, but my usual blah, blah, blah.
	Okay, good.
	Thanks, Steph. Thanks, man.
	Take care. All right, bye.
	All right. Great call, great question.
	Challenging dream. Hope we got something useful out of it for people.
	And next...
	Oh, economics junkie.
	We should totally have a conference call.
	Maybe with Mr.
	AC from the boards. I think that was mentioned.
	And we should think about it.
	I've always really enjoyed your posts and conversation.
	So, I think we had somebody else, James?
	Hello? Hello.
	Hello. Hello?
	Hi, how's it going? Pretty good, Steph.
	How are you doing today? I'm just great, thank you.
	Okay, first time caller and I just wanted to bring up a few points that I kind of feel are contrary to what you put out in some of your work.
	And if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to just lift off six and feel free to grab onto one or all and maybe we can discuss.
	Let's do them one at a time, if that's alright?
	One at a time.
	Okay, how about private property is a myth?
	Private property is a myth?
	A myth, yes.
	I don't believe that private property is a myth.
	Okay. Have you pulled a registration on your title for the property that you own in Mississauga?
	I'm not sure what you mean by that.
	Well, have you ever pulled or registered the title on your property that you own in Mississauga?
	I'm assuming, okay, I'm making an assumption that you actually own property in Mississauga.
	Are you a renter? Well, I'd rather not talk about my particular financial situation, if that's alright, but I'm certainly happy to talk about it.
	I'm not asking for any details, I'm just saying, are you a property owner or are you a renter?
	That's a pretty benign question.
	Well, tell me what it is that you mean about in terms of pulling – I mean I accept that I don't actually own any property in a statist system.
	There's no actual property rights that I have.
	What happens is that I get title to rent property from the government.
	Even if I end up, quote, owning it, I still have to pay rental in the forms of property taxes and other forms of taxes from the government.
	Okay, so you recognize that there is no private property and that it is a myth and for someone to say that private ownership is a viable solution to our problems.
	Well, I accept that there is no absolute right to private property in a status system, and I completely accept that.
	I think that's incontrovertible because the government can initiate force at women at will on anybody who holds a property right.
	And, I mean, it can do this just in terms of property taxes, which is more universal.
	But there's also really crazy search and seizures and eminent domain things, particularly in the United States.
	That allow the government to seize your property pretty much at will, based upon its desire to get higher taxes from other people.
	Well, it's not really your property.
	If you're saying that the government is seizing your property, then you're accepting that you actually do own it.
	If they're taking it by eminent domain, it's not because you own it and they're taking it from you.
	It's that they're taking claim to the property that they have.
	They're removing your care and control of the property.
	It's all that they're really doing by a process of law.
	Yeah, it's like a repossession, I would say, yeah.
	Okay, so how about tax is not theft, but rather payment for benefits provided?
	Well, I certainly agree with some of that.
	So people think that – I guess people sometimes think it's like, oh, you know, if I didn't pay my taxes or if there was no – sorry, I mean, I always recommend people do pay their taxes.
	But if I didn't have to pay all these taxes, I'd have twice my income.
	Well, of course, that's not true because there would be a necessity for services to be provided, garbage collection, road maintenance, snow removal up here in the frozen armpit of the north.
	So yeah, for sure, there are services that are provided through the government that you would have to pay for in the free market.
	But that, to me, doesn't have anything to do with anything.
	So for instance, if I were a slave-owning southerner in the early 1800s in the United States, I would probably provide housing...
	For my slaves.
	Would it be then fair for me to say that they owed me their labor in return for the housing?
	No, because they're not free to choose.
	And where there's no freedom of choice, then there can't be considered a binding contract.
	So it certainly is true.
	Look, the government does stuff that I like.
	The government does stuff that is useful.
	The government does stuff that is good, right?
	I mean, when I cut my thumb, I went and got some stitches at the hospital, right?
	And I'm glad that I got stitches at the hospital.
	And if I didn't live in a socialized medical system, then I would either have insurance or I would pay for it out of pocket.
	So I was glad to have that.
	But still, the initiation of force does not mean that there's a binding contract.
	So just because you do get stuff in return for your taxes doesn't mean...
	I'm so glad you got to that.
	Finally, I was waiting for you to use the initiation of force.
	There is actually a binding contract...
	And you have actually created one with your daughter.
	And one was created for you and one was created for your wife.
	And it has the signature of the guardian on that document.
	And that contract is known as the birth registration.
	Do you know what a registration is?
	I've heard, I think I remember seeing a YouTube video about, but I didn't really say that I was doing something else at the time and I didn't quite follow it.
	But please tell me, tell me what it is.
	Okay, well let's start, let's get away from registration first because there's about five different definitions for registration.
	And the fifth one, which I believe is the most accurate, is one that I'll get to later.
	But I'd like to start with what is known as the registrant.
	One who registers.
	One who registers something for the purpose of securing a right or privilege granted by law upon registration.
	So once you have registered something, you have asked for a right or a privilege, so everything was done by your consent.
	So your illusion that we are some kind of slave that has to pay taxes is not true in that you have actually consented to this by the birth registration.
	Good heavens, what nonsense.
	I mean, I'm sorry, I hate to be so blunt, but that's not how it works here at all.
	It's absolutely how it works.
	Absolutely not. Absolutely not how it works, and I'll tell you why.
	I registered my daughter because without it...
	No, that's not true, Steph. You didn't register her.
	Your name's not on the document.
	You didn't do it. The mother registered the document.
	Okay, okay, so fine.
	My daughter was registered, but my daughter was registered because without registration, for instance, she can't get health care.
	She can't go to school. She didn't get benefits.
	Sorry? You couldn't get the benefits.
	Right. And I can't get them any other way.
	Right? I can't say, look, I don't want to be part of the socialized medical system.
	I want to go into the free market in terms of the medical system.
	I don't have that choice. You can't legally purchase health care in Canada outside the socialist system.
	So I can't get healthcare for my daughter if I don't get the paperwork.
	I'm sorry? It was provided for you on your behalf by your mother's signature on your registration shortly after you were born.
	And there's another signature on that document, not your father's, but it would be a witness that could attest to the state of your mother when she signed that document and that she wasn't coerced.
	She did it of her own free will.
	I don't think that you're processing what I'm saying.
	In fact, I'm quite sure that you're not.
	I'm stating a fact.
	Okay, your name is on your daughter's birth registration, but your signature is not.
	Why is that? I still think that you're not processing what I'm saying.
	There's no way for me to get health care or education without that, right?
	Birth registration. Do you have a reasonable answer for that?
	I'm sorry, can you say again? Because it's not required.
	Why is your signature not on your daughter's birth registration?
	I've got to tell you, as far as pressing moral issues in my life, I just can't see why that one's important, but if you want to make the case, I'm happy to hear you.
	Leave the moral argument aside, because that's your sort of cross to bear.
	I'm really just talking about what is and what isn't, okay?
	What isn't is your signature on your daughter's registration and it isn't there because it's not required.
	What is required is the mother's signature and a signature of a witness that attests to the fact that she did so willingly and without coercion.
	That's where the contract exists.
	The fact that when your daughter gets to be 18 or 19 or 20, that contract is still in effect.
	It was done for her because your daughter can't sign as a minor.
	It has to be done by the guardian.
	And that is why this contract is in existence for everyone.
	So you have an obligation to pay taxes.
	And if you don't pay taxes, you are actually the thief.
	Because this is the part you always leave out about your men with guns argument.
	Oh, fantastic.
	So, okay, so this is a universal human right, because we can't say that only some people have the right to create these contracts, right?
	So then I have the right to go to my neighbors and say, you can't get health care for your children unless you pay me $10,000 a year.
	So then everybody has the right to impose this contract on everyone else, right?
	It's not imposed on anyone.
	It was signed by their own free will.
	It wasn't imposed on anyone.
	Okay, I'm so sorry.
	I'm going to have to move on to another caller because I've made the argument several different ways that it is not a free choice because you can't get access to essential life-necessary services without signing for it.
	So it's like if I throw someone in my basement and refuse to feed them until they sign a contract, nobody would accept that that contract is valid.
	If you don't sign the contract, you can still get life-saving services from another source.
	You're just limiting yourself to the fact that… No, sorry, I can't.
	I can't.
	It is actually illegal to privately pay a doctor here in Canada for services rendered.
	So, I'm sorry, but I can't.
	Well, you could go outside the country, so you're not restricted.
	Oh, come on, man. Come on.
	Okay, we've got to get to the next caller.
	That's ridiculous. I can leave the country if I need to go get some antibiotics, and that's not the same as any kind of compulsion or coercion.
	Okay. Sorry. Sorry.
	I just can't take that too seriously.
	I appreciate the feedback, and I certainly find the argument about contracts sort of interesting, but the idea that I have to leave the country every time I need to see a doctor, and that's somehow a good involuntary situation.
	I'm sorry. I just can't go with it.
	But thank you so much for your call.
	Let's move on to the next one.
	This is Mark.
	Is it my turn?
	Yeah. Hi, Mark. How are you doing?
	I'm doing terrific. I would just like to talk about a couple things.
	And I'm doing a lot of reading on the board.
	And just kind of just to tell you a little bit of where I came from and how I've come to free thinking.
	I'm just kind of a typical mixed bag family, a lot of abuse.
	Things like that. Catholicism, to drugs, to Alcoholics Anonymous, to Evangelical Christianity, to fundamentalism, to libertarianism, and now here.
	You are a traveler on the intellectual road, my friend.
	That's very interesting. Absolutely.
	We are fellow travelers.
	And the thing that has always driven me, and I'm sure you're familiar with Myers-Briggs.
	Yes. Yes, and it tells me that my particular, and I forget what the letters are, it's been so long, but this is the main thing that motivates me, according to at least at the time I took the test, would be freedom.
	So it was always others' hypocrisy, and as I moved along that traveling, it was always towards freedom and towards a, you know, again, the Bible is a mixed bag, as is religion, and there's just a lot of, anyways, we can talk about that all day, but it was always a progression from One place to another towards freedom from a lesser, or maybe towards a better truth, I would consider to express it that way.
	But one thing I do observe and, you know, it's always appealed to me as, you know, similar, and the thing that I kind of relate to you is that what Zooey's drivenly is wanting to do, I'm driven by morality, I would have to say.
	I've read all kinds of stuff.
	I've read, you know, I've read your critics' websites.
	I've read all this stuff. And the people that reject you have a tendency to either be parents that have been defood because they don't want, they're looking down on everyone else, and they, of course, they don't want to do anything to help themselves, you know, all the criticism of defood.
	And my experience with my own family is that the more, you know, we live a thousand miles away from them, but the contact is proved over and over again.
	They're proving to me, without me having to do anything, that family in itself without ethics and morality is not virtuous.
	I see it over and over again.
	But getting back to religion and Christianity, I'm going kind of fast.
	I think I've got some input on how they might be able to use the actual things, you know, from the Bible, some principles that might actually open somebody up to at least listen, to pay attention.
	Coming from that perspective, I think a lot of Christian people, they have a certain element of fear, but there's some principles within the Bible itself, I think.
	I'm not saying that you necessarily have to believe it to put people at ease, but the point is that they do.
	And there's simple things in the Bible where God says, you know, come let us reason together.
	Another truth that anyone's going to agree with is, you know, the truth will make you free.
	Another thing about faith, you know, like some people, you know, when I have discussions with Christians, they often think that, you know, I've lost faith.
	Well, you know, and I just point out, there's another verse in the Bible that talks about the amount of faith that takes to move.
	The amount is actually under the size of a mustard seed, which is about the size of a speck of dust.
	So, when a person thinks about those things, then they're free to reason.
	You don't necessarily have to talk them in or out of Believing anything, but if they can come to grasp with some of those principles in those things I just stated, maybe they can come to reason.
	And that's what I came to, ultimately.
	But I just kept on getting shocked by authority figures that were abusing power over and over again, and that's why I moved along each stage in my progression and in my journey.
	Right, right. No, I think you've brought up a lot of interesting points.
	I sympathize and respect, in many ways, religion's focus on morality.
	I think morality, I mean, as a moral philosopher, that's my scene, that's my bag, that's my brain rave, baby.
	So I hugely respect the focus on virtue.
	The problem, of course, from a philosophical standpoint, Is that mixing magic into commandments does not make them philosophical, right?
	So if I say, well, thou shalt not kill, well, that's a rousing statement to make.
	And so you say, well, why should people believe that?
	Well, philosophy, or at least the way that I've approached it, says, okay, well, you've got to work really rigorously from first principles using evidence and as much logic as you can stuff into a syllable every step of the way.
	And then you can come up with a compelling argument that can't be refuted or rejected.
	And that's how I think that commandments should be elevated to truth, to universally preferable behavior, as I call it.
	Now, the problem with religion is it takes this shortcut.
	You know, it's like, I want to be happy.
	I'll take some heroin. Yes, it will work in the short run, but in the long run, not so good.
	So the problem is you've got a commandment, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill.
	And those commandments, why do we believe them?
	Well, if you don't take the road of philosophy, which, Lord knows, is a hell of a road.
	Then what you have to say is, okay, well, how am I going to elevate these commandments to universals?
	And what people do is they reach up into the sky with a big scoop of faith, like an ice cream scoop of faith, and they scoop out of the clouds a magic ball called God.
	And then they spread it all over these commandments, like sprinkling this pixie dust on something to bring it to life.
	And they sprinkle God on commandments.
	They sprinkle superstition and magic onto moral commandments to make them into universals.
	And that is really tempting, but it's very dangerous.
	It's like a ring of power, Lord of the Rings, right?
	Because everyone can then do that.
	Right. And if everyone can take their own commandments or particular aspects of biblical commandments and can then, because the magic god dust has been sprinkled on them, which brings them to life and turns them into these big phoenix-like universals, everyone can do that, which means that you get warring, superstitious-based absolutes that can't really compel anyone except those who already believe in it.
	And I do genuinely believe that morality's greatest challenge is to find ways to...
	I should say, to cause people to accept morality even if they don't want to.
	To cause people to accept universals even if they don't want to.
	And the magic pixie dust...
	The sort of magic icing on the cake called commandments that turns them into universal absolutes doesn't work because everyone can do it and you end up with these huge contradictions and problems.
	So I hugely respect the drive and desire of anyone, whether they're religious or secular, the drive and desire of anyone to try and find a way to turn commandments into universal morality.
	But the shortcut of the ice cream scoop of God's brain, spread it all over into the Sunday.
	See, Sunday, it's Sunday and you go to church on Sunday.
	See how this metaphor works so beautifully?
	Into the Sunday of morality.
	I just think that is a dangerous shortcut that causes more problems in the long run than it solves.
	Absolutely.
	And I'd just like to add this.
	This was about a year ago.
	They were going through it.
	I haven't been going to church too much lately.
	I haven't really – I can't really do it.
	But we were having discussion groups, and we did a series of different heroes in the Bible, and some of them were about people who disperse things.
	And then we came to the last one with Samson.
	At the time, it had been—and through a history of abuse, I'd been doing a lot of reading on personality disorders and sociopathy.
	Now, I can't really— You know, I can't really always define what personality disorder somebody has, but, like, a lot of times, man, I know when I see them, you know?
	So I was reading the story, and I was talking about all this kind of great stuff.
	I thought, this isn't a description of a hero.
	This is a description of a maniac, you know, a mass murderer, and there's, like, really, there's nowhere...
	Excuse me. No hero in the story, except for maybe God, but even that doesn't even make any sense, really, the more you think about it.
	But nobody in that, you know, in it blew everybody's mind to say, yeah, this guy's not a hero.
	He's a sociopath. He's a mass murderer.
	And anyway, that's where the whole, you know, the whole thing comes apart.
	You know, the Bible's a mixed bag of all kinds of stuff for those kinds of reasons.
	And, you know, People who are religious want to believe that they've got a universal set of morality that everyone should follow, but it doesn't apply universally within all the stories in the same book that they're getting them from.
	So anyways, I'm with you, man, and I just want to—this is great stuff.
	It's really liberating, and I'm really enjoying it.
	So I don't know if there's— Well, thank you so much.
	I wanted to mention, too, a little bit about...
	I've been sort of mulling over this DFU question or this DFU issue that occasionally pops up.
	I mean, it's been a pretty small part of the show as a whole.
	I think it's in, like, less than 1% of the podcast, but obviously it's a volatile and challenging issue.
	And I was sort of thinking to myself, okay, well, when I was a kid...
	I'm sorry, if you could just mute.
	I'm just getting a bit of a background history.
	Oh, sure. So when I was a kid, I was always told, and it was a very common refrain, that family is everything, and respect your elders, and blood is thicker than water, and so on.
	And I've always been, I don't know, blessed, cursed, whatever you can say.
	I've always been I've always had this unconscious drive for empiricism.
	In other words, I can listen to all of the words in the world, but there's a part of my brain, and I sometimes thought, you know, when I'm dead, I think they've got Einstein's brain sliced up in a Petri dish somewhere, and they found that his mathematical center was like three times the normal, right?
	And I've sort of wondered, you know, what part of my brain, and this is probably true for just about anyone who's philosophical or strives for this kind of consistency, but What part of our brains are different from people who find it more easy to accept general social cliches and bromides and so on, or religion.
	But when I was a kid, everybody said, you know, well, family is everything and this and that.
	But when I looked around, when I looked around in the place that I lived, where I lived, it wasn't true.
	Do you know, most of my friends didn't have dads.
	And not only did they not have dads like their parents had divorced, but they didn't have dads like they barely, if ever, saw them.
	One of my friends, his dad left when he was two or so.
	And I think he saw him once after that, though they lived in the same city.
	Lived in the same city. Another one of my friends, his dad had just gone and nobody knew where he was and so on.
	And of course my dad left and went to To Africa.
	And to his credit, I mean, he did try and keep up to some degree.
	I would see him sort of once a year for a while when I was in England, and then I saw him once or twice more, maybe three times more after about the age of 12 or 13.
	And so he did more than some for sure, but most of my friends were the children of divorce, right?
	And there were, of course, friends that I had.
	It wasn't entirely a self-selecting group.
	There were friends that I had who were not the children of divorce but rather had intact families.
	But a lot of those families just weren't happy.
	I mean, you used to kind of tell that.
	There's a kind of grim, dusty, tense kind of unhappiness in the household in some of these places.
	And it partly had to do with when you grow up poor, there's a lot of broken homes around because broken homes puts you down the staircase into the spiral gutter of poverty in so many situations or so many circumstances.
	But even the kids, when I went to a boarding school that was pretty hoity-toity...
	Look at me, I sound like a Tennessee Williams character.
	But when I went to a boarding school and I stayed with some of the friends that I made there, a lot of their families were split up and busted up and all that kind of stuff.
	And so, I think, you know, if I sort of think back to where my curiosity about voluntary relationships as adults came from, I think it had something to do with so many examples that were in my environment, that the majority of the kids in my environment came from single households.
	And I do, I mean, there was one...
	I thought, great family.
	And I think, still, a very good to great family.
	But one. One that I remember.
	My whole childhood.
	And a really, really special group of people.
	And, you know, gave me.
	It only takes one to give you that signpost to the future that you can hopefully recreate.
	But I think I saw so many people who had chosen to be in relationships, choosing to not be in those relationships through divorce, through separation.
	And friends I had whose parents had been married for 20 years, they sometimes split up.
	I remember one friend of mine whose parents split up when he was 14 or 15.
	And that was a big problem because I used to go to his place after school to play.
	And there was a lot of heartbreak and a lot of adults...
	Really not saying that family is everything, but rather that there is a level of conflict at which point families can be broken.
	There is a level of disagreement.
	There is a level of aggression.
	There is a level of alienation.
	There is a level of disaffection that can cause people who've chosen voluntarily to be in relationships, to break up those relationships.
	And I mean, it's catastrophic for families as we've talked about before.
	Sorry, let me just finish up and I'll get your feedback.
	This is just sort of thoughts that I've had in sort of mulling over where some of these ideas may have come from for me.
	And so, of course, people who've chosen to be in marriages and, you know, 50, 60, 70 percent of the people that I knew who'd chosen to be in marriages had chosen to not be in those marriages and some significant portion of those had chosen not to be in their children's lives at all.
	Well, that's kind of instructive.
	That tells me a lot more about people's values than their protestations that family is everything.
	And I thought, well, geez, I guess I probably thought at some level, well, if adults who've chosen to be in relationships can choose to not be in those relationships, even with their own kids, then why would this not be something that would be possible?
	For adult children, right?
	I mean, why is it that the majority of parents seem to have this capacity to walk out on things that are unsatisfying or not enriching or whatever?
	I mean, I don't know why people got divorced in my neighborhood when I was a kid, right?
	I just knew that they were. And I think there is just that extension of that, you know, and I think that the extension is in many ways more rational For people who didn't choose to be in those relationships, right? So, I mean, husbands who leave their wives, they're leaving relationships that they voluntarily chose to be in, but of course, the kids didn't choose to be born there, so shouldn't we extend that same courtesy to them?
	And that, of course, is...
	I was just sort of thinking about why I didn't fall, in a sense, for this social statement that...
	That family is everything.
	I think because I really didn't see it demonstrated very much in my environment.
	And I guess I try to work as empirically as possible and to not believe what people say, but rather look at what they do.
	So I just sort of wanted to mention that.
	I was just sort of mulling that over this week.
	I wholeheartedly agree.
	And growing up, my family, four boys, It was a mixed bag, but I mean, our relatives, so they always came over the holidays.
	My parents would have us call our relatives, and that's something that I still do, also call them on those, because I enjoy talking to them, so it's not just an obligatory thing, but like, I'll call my aunt and things on holidays and things like that, which is something I enjoy talking to them.
	However, on the other side of the coin, if I look at other illustrations for my family, I've got brothers, you know, from both of four, and I've not had a conversation on the level of what we're having right now, With them that I can recall in probably a decade.
	So, and then I got an email from my wife, who's listening now, and she's terrific, and she's growing along with me, and that's, you know, in our relationship is progressing.
	A lot of things I'm learning here are going to be helpful with that, which is worth, you know, worth everything to me.
	But getting back to the family thing is, you know, we get an email saying, well, we live in Texas, they live in Ohio, it's considerable distance, It's very difficult for us to get there very often at all.
	And they say, well, you know, we're going to be, we would like to, their 50th wedding anniversary, have all the boys together, all this type of stuff.
	It's the best gift that we give us, yada, yada.
	My parents love that. Terrific.
	Great. But the same person that's implying that we should feel obligated to do this, or, you know, families, everything is the very same person, just like cold and I can't have a, you know, they don't respond.
	Anyway, this You know, they're basically saying, you know, they won't come out and say it, but once my parents are gone, they probably likely have almost zero to do with my wife and I, you know?
	So, family is everything?
	Yeah, now maybe I've done some things, I know I'm certain I've done some things in the past that, you know, that have put up some barriers, but, you know, you'll hear the old saying, bygones, family is everything, blood is thicker than water, it's all BS, and it's clearly illustrated.
	And that's my thing with the whole de-fooing thing.
	If your family really knew you, if they really knew me, and they don't, they know some of what I think, and I keep on getting rejected because I've always thought, I've been a voluntarist and a libertarian for some time, and I've been playing with these ideas for a long time, a lot of presenting new ideas to them, they're different to their way of thinking, are part of that barrier.
	So in other words, what they're really telling me is, we can't stand who you really are.
	So I know on your podcast or somewhere I've read that you said that really your family defoos you.
	You really don't defoo them.
	I definitely get that.
	So anyway, this has been refreshing and liberating and I'm enjoying listening and thank you.
	I appreciate that and thanks of course for calling in.
	Great comments and hi to your wife as well.
	All right, I think we have time for another caller.
	Hi, can you hear me? I sure can.
	Great. Hey Steph, my name is Marco and I'm from Europe and I tried to already ask you this question a few weeks ago in the chat room but you had callers so you didn't take it.
	You read it but you didn't answer it.
	I was wondering what your opinion was On the theory of the principle, I mean on the pain and pleasure principle which basically says that we human beings make every decision either conscious or unconscious based on or first and foremost to avoid doing something that we learned through our lives will cause us pain And second,
	to do something that we learn through our lives will cause us pleasure.
	Sorry, could you just rephrase that?
	I want to make sure I understand it.
	Well, basically it's a theory, right, of a pain and pleasure principle, which says that we people, every decision that we ever make, It's either made because we, through our lives, have learned that that thing will prevent us from experiencing pain or, second, will cause us pleasure.
	Yeah, I mean, I think that's to say that human beings have some motivation for what it is that they do.
	And I can certainly accept that that's somewhat helpful.
	I'm not sure what is added to any particular understanding by saying that people have motivations for what it is that they're doing.
	I think that's true of animals, of people, maybe even of single-celled organisms.
	Yeah, sure, but it's not just about the motivation, it's actually the core guidance, how we think.
	Basically, it's a little bit conflicting with your opinion on free will, and I know you hate this topic because you apparently had a lot of conversations about it already, but...
	Yeah, so if I understand it rightly, what you're saying is that if we're driven by pain and pleasure...
	Then free will becomes much more questionable, right?
	Yes. Well, okay, but let me sort of give you an example, right?
	So, I don't know, have you ever been a smoker or a drinker?
	I drank, I mean, when we partied with my friends, I did have a few drinks, but I'm not a drinker.
	Okay. Well, let's say that you were, I don't know, let's say you were a smoker, right?
	So the pleasure and pain principle is that if you're a smoker, particularly if you're a heavy smoker, it is more pleasurable to continue smoking in the moment and it is more painful to stop smoking, right?
	Right. But people do stop smoking, right?
	Yeah. And why do they stop smoking?
	Right. Because they realize or relearn what will cause them more pain eventually or immediately.
	I don't think that's true.
	Because I don't think there's a smoker, at least in the West, I don't think there's a smoker alive who thinks that it's good for you.
	So simply knowledge of the long-term negative consequences doesn't explain why people smoke because everybody's aware of the long-term negative consequences, right?
	No, no, no. They smoke because of the short-term pleasure.
	No, I understand that. But I asked you, I'm not trying to corny you, but I asked you why people quit, and you said because of the long-term consequences, negative consequences of smoking.
	But lots of people continue to smoke even though they know the negative long-term consequences, right?
	Yes. That's because in that moment, they make a conscious decision, or perhaps it's subconscious, To have a smoke because in that moment, they feel the pleasure that they'll get in that moment outweighs the pain they'll experience down the road.
	But eventually, if that changes, if they think that the pain outweighs the pleasure, the short-term pleasure, they quit smoking.
	Right. So some people, you know, like, so for instance, before the show today, I put my daughter to sleep in one of the ways that, that sounds so sinister like I'm a vet.
	I put my daughter down to bed and one of the ways that I do that is I lie down with her and sort of we cuddle and chat about her day and then she drifts off.
	And one of the things that happens is that I get kind of nappy too.
	And so I was, I think this was around maybe quarter past one, she fell asleep.
	So I put her into her bed and I was kind of, you know, I was like, oh man, I could really close my eyes for 20 minutes or whatever, right?
	And just have a short nap.
	And I thought, you know, but I didn't exercise yesterday, so I should really do some cardio at least and exercise, do a bit of stretching so that I'm sort of alert for the show.
	And, you know, it's not a huge life decision or anything like that.
	But in terms of the pleasure pain principle, it would have been nicer to have a nap.
	But I feel better that I worked out.
	And so I'm not sure in particular what it explains to say that – because you can't really predict.
	It really has to do with what I'm going to focus on and what decision I'm going to make.
	So I agree with you that people have motivations for what they're doing.
	But whether people focus on the short-term gain, which for me would have been a nap in the moment, or the long-term gain, which was, you know, be more alert for the show, plus to have exercise and to feel sort of better about that.
	So if... The pleasure principle can justify both decisions, to have a nap or to work out.
	I'm just not sure what it explains except after the fact, right?
	So after I work out and instead of napping, people can say, well, so he took more pleasure out of working out than he took out of napping.
	But if I had chosen to nap rather than to work out, then people would say, well, his behavior is explained by the fact that he took more pleasure out of napping than out of working out.
	So I'm just not sure what it does other than provide an ex post facto quote explanation for something without any predictive power, if that makes any sense.
	Sure, but I can explain why we sometimes focus on the long-term things and sometimes short-term things.
	And it has to do with our ability to sense the world around us, because our senses do not allow us to fully recognize, let's say, the reality around us, but we have filters.
	For instance, I can give you a quick example if you do this demonstration with me.
	Look around your room, the one you're in right now, and by the way, you aren't in that red room that you record your videos normally.
	You say I'm not, or you're asking me if I am?
	Yeah, I'm asking if you are.
	I am. Maybe this example won't really work.
	I was going to ask you if you could look around the room and spot anything you could that was, let's say, brown.
	All right, I could do that.
	Okay, have you done it?
	I have. Now please close your eyes and tell me from your memory What in your room is the color beige?
	Or silver, let's say.
	Silver? Well, I have a computer, a DVD, a silver pen, a paperclip, a pin...
	I don't think...
	Oh, you know, one of those, it's got, it's like a black paper, big black paper clip with those little sort of hoopy silver things.
	That's silver. The base of my light bulbs, I assume, is silver.
	I haven't changed them in a while, but that's silver.
	The light that I use when I'm being interviewed at night, my landing lights of Gestapo interrogation, those are silver.
	That's enough. I guess I didn't ask my question correctly because I wanted to actually ask you what you saw that was silver, of the color silver.
	You went from memory.
	I phrased the question wrong, so the example didn't really work out to make my case.
	Okay, let's say it did work out.
	What would that establish?
	Well, it would establish that our senses aren't able to at any moment...
	We sense everything around us that we're only able to focus on certain things and sometimes we switch that focus.
	We either focus on, I don't know, for example, if you're in a bad mood, You can consciously make the decision to focus on everything that gives you joy in your life or that makes you feel proud and you can instantly change the way you feel about it.
	Or instead, if you feel bad and you focus on all the things that are bad, you feel even worse and you can experience depression.
	So that kind of explains why sometimes We focus on the short term and what the pain-pleasure principle tells us for the short term or sometimes for the long term.
	Right, and I would agree with all of that.
	But you still don't think that it's the core I accept the proposition that people have motives for what they do.
	I just can't figure out what it adds to say that.
	Anyway, listen, I think we've talked about this as much as we can.
	It's a quick one. I was wondering, I heard that you already heard about bitcoins, but I was wondering if you could really quickly mention, I mean, tell me what your opinion about it is.
	I don't know enough about it to have an opinion, I'm afraid.
	I have looked into it, but I haven't looked into it enough to come to any particular conclusion.
	Okay. Thank you very much.
	Thank you very much. I appreciate your comments, and thank you for coming back.
	Bye. All right.
	I think we have time for one more shorty short one.
	I'm going to try and keep the show roughly on schedule today.
	Can you hear me now, Steph?
	I can. Yes.
	Let me talk to you about my Verizon contract.
	All right. So...
	My first question was that I'm making some videos soon.
	I plan to use YouTube and Facebook and I was curious if you had any ideas for what sort of editing programs I should use and if you had any advice on pacing of the videos.
	And then my second question was your thoughts on ways to make self-knowledge and energy more marketable.
	Similar to how, if you are familiar with this, The idea of memes and what makes memes stick and spread on the internet.
	I hate to mention it, but places like 4chan and stuff like that.
	That's pretty much my question.
	See what you and anyone else's thoughts were on that.
	Well, I mean, technically, I've used a variety of programs right now.
	I'm on PowerDirector 9.0.
	Which I think is a very good program, in particular because it uses a lot of hardware acceleration, which I think is very valuable.
	And it also uploads to YouTube, except it doesn't upload videos longer than 15 minutes, which is kind of a drag.
	But, you know, not the end of the world.
	There's no program I know that does that.
	But so I think that's a good one for editing.
	It can be a little bit unstable.
	And the 64-bit version is well worth it because of the very efficient use of memory and, of course, lots of multitasking, multiprocessing kind of stuff.
	So I think that's good.
	Pacing is interesting.
	You know, my sort of biggest – I was just talking about this the other day with someone that my sort of biggest videos are like 350,000 views, which is like, I don't know, 50 to 100 times what my average sort of true news video is.
	So I've been sort of meaning to get back into producing more of those.
	I think that when you're introducing new ideas, sort of slower and calmer and more patient is important.
	I try and stay away from some of that ominous dum-dum-dum music that is sometimes used in this kind of stuff.
	So I think that's sort of important to stay away from.
	And so I think that trying to go sort of slower and more patiently...
	And more calmly, I think, is a good way to get new ideas across.
	I think passion is helpful and important once you're speaking to people who already sort of get the basics.
	But it can be just a bit alarming to people who don't, you know, sort of think about it.
	Like, if you're some guy railing for social change...
	And there's 10,000 people with you, then you're a movement.
	And if you're one guy, then you're like a crazy street preacher.
	And no one's going to take you seriously.
	So I think it's important to sort of know where you are in the general arc of social growth and social progress.
	I think that's important.
	And I think it's pretty early on in terms of voluntarism.
	I mean, it's not as bad as it was, obviously, a generation or two ago.
	But if you think of someone like, I was thinking about Lysander Spooner, the constitution of no authority.
	I mean, this guy wrote about The invalidity of the Constitution, the American Constitution, about 150 years ago or something like that, and His ideas have not penetrated anywhere close to anywhere within, you know, missile's distance of the mainstream.
	And I think that is something that is important to understand and to accept.
	He made, you know, great arguments.
	And you can actually get this, I think it's markstevens.net, M-A-R-C, stevens.net, where he's got, I think, a free audiobook reading of it, which is well worth listening to.
	And so I think that recognizing that we are water wearing a waystone at the moment and it's still very early in any kind of progress towards a truly free and rational society.
	I think it's to recognize that effects are going to be limited, that penetration is going to be very slow.
	That you're going to receive a lot more resistance than acceptance.
	And I think that accrues more honor to those who are pushing forward.
	But that would be my suggestion.
	I think a lot of people go in thinking that there's some magic argument, some magic video, some magic wand that is going to part the red seas of indifference and superstition and irrationality.
	And we're going to be able to stride forward to the future.
	And there's going to be some big groundswell and so on.
	I don't think that is the case, and I think there's lots of reasons why, which doesn't really matter, but I think to recognize that slow and steady is the way that things work.
	Slow and steady, patience, and in a sense resigning yourself to a dogged slogging in the trenches for the sake of a future world that is free, just as people before us slogged in solitude often in the trenches to give us some semblances of freedom, but... I think that don't go in with too much enthusiasm, which then causes you to despair.
	That would sort of be my suggestion. Aim low and you won't be disappointed.
	And there's nothing wrong with being pleasantly surprised.
	But that would be my suggestion.
	I mean, just to give you one other brief example, right?
	So it's been over...
	300 years, is it?
	No. It's been over 250 years since some of the basic arguments have been put forward by Smith and Ricardo and other economists.
	And even arguments like free trade is beneficial to most parties.
	Or if the supply of money increases relative to the value of goods and services you get...
	Or if the two people who engage in free trade are both doing so with the anticipation of gaining more than they lose.
	Or if coercion is used in any voluntary interaction, it is always at the expense of someone and to the gain of somebody else.
	These are sort of basic axioms, I guess what Mises would call praxeological axioms of...
	Of economics, and they've been talked about for many years, and they've been pretty rigorously put forward for at least 100 and talked about for hundreds of years before that.
	And if you go to 100 people in the world, you would be very lucky to find one who would even understand or accept one of those.
	And this has been hundreds of years.
	So I think that it's important to pace yourself and to base your expectations on...
	The history of the progress of human thought, and that you had very powerful arguments against the existence of gods floating around the pre-Socratics over 2,500 years ago, and still we have gods.
	So I think that to recognize that the change and progress in human society is very low, which is why I've always talked about it as a Multi-generational project.
	And I say that so that we don't feel despair and lose our way and feel more frustration than is empirically necessary, so to speak, if that makes any sense.
	Oh dear, did I put him to sleep?
	No, yeah, it sounds good, man.
	And what did you think about, like, I guess he kind of did answer the marketability thing too with that when you talk about Looking at the history of it, but do you have any ideas about how to, I guess, memify some of this stuff and make it more transmutable?
	Boy, if I did, I think I'd share it with you.
	No, I certainly would, but I don't.
	I think that the only really important thing is the quality of the content.
	It's the quality of the content.
	I think that's really all that matters.
	And... It doesn't matter the form as much.
	I mean, the form is not unimportant, for sure.
	I'm not going to sort of pretend that it's completely unimportant.
	But the first thing to aim for is the quality of the content.
	And then you can polish it up as you like, but it doesn't matter what's on the album cover.
	What matters is what's in the album.
	And so that would be my suggestion.
	Just keep focusing on as much quality as possible and try and share it as much as possible.
	All right. Thank you, Steph.
	Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.
	James, do you have anyone who was dying, yearning, burning?
	Who's been hanging on for way too long?
	We did have a couple of questions.
	But if you wanted to just end up the show, we can do that too.
	Were they tough questions?
	They might more be questions that are...
	There's one UPP question. And one that may require a little more information?
	Let's do the UPB one because UPB is my crack and I can never say no to that slinky witch.
	Alrighty. The question is, is it a violation of UPB for not keeping an implicit contract?
	And the example he gives is not helping your family financially when, quote, assigned the responsibility.
	Oh, that's interesting. So what you're saying is if you have kids and you – let's say, just take a cliche.
	So if you have kids and you're the dad and you take off and you don't pay, is that a violation of UPB? Yeah, I think that would be the question.
	and I'll just see if we can get the guy in the chat to verify. - All right, well, I think that's a great question and I think that it's not something I wanna try and answer off the top of my head because my head is a world with possible ways So I think that's a great question.
	Let me mull it over and maybe I can article it at some point this week because I think that's a really, really great question.
	And thank you so much.
	He's out of the chat now.
	Yeah, thanks.
	I guess this is one of the biggest chat rooms we've ever had.
	And also, if you want to go to PatriotPulse.com on Thursday evening, I think they had the biggest turnout they've had for a type chat set of questionnaires that I did with them.
	And you can find it at PatriotPulse.com.
	They were totally slamming it.
	They've had people in there before.
	They've done Cindy Sheehan, Tom Woods, Jack Hunter, John Dennis...
	And then they were like, okay, well, let's stop with all that quality and go with the StephBot.
	So that was a lot of fun.
	And I wanted to just sort of share that with people so it's worth going in to check it out.
	And you can also, if you want, vote for Free Domain Radio in terms of preferred website.
	So thanks everybody so much.
	Have yourselves an absolutely wonderful week.

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