Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

March 27, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:40:18

1880 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show March 27 2011

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Beautiful. All right.
	Well, thanks, everybody. It is Stefan Molyneux.
	A little bit after 2 p.m., at some point in the realm of March, after the Ides of March, but before April Fool's.
	That would appear to be our general vicinity in time, 27th of March, 2011.
	And I was wondering if I could just pass along again my thanks to George Donnelly from Agora.io Festival, which I think is still running today.
	For the opportunity to speak with his, ah, I love rubbing brain cells with libertarians because y'all are just so smart.
	He got great, great questions in my presentation yesterday at the conference, and it was a great deal of fun, so thank you so much for the opportunity.
	You also might want to check out PatriotPulse.com.
	They were slumming it after talking to, I think, Ron Paul and Tom Woods.
	They decided to dip down to minor league podcasters, and we had a Q&A session there that I may read out as a podcast.
	That was a lot of fun. I have also popped out of my brain rectum the Introduction to Virtue Part 4, which I was very, very pleased with, and it came out just right, you know, every now and then.
	You throw your paint up in the air and it comes down as a portrait, and that was one that I was very pleased with, so if you'd like to check that one out, That would be, I think, worth your time.
	Relatively short, and I think one of the best metaphors or analogies that I've come up with in a while.
	So that was good.
	I hope you will enjoy it and find it useful, and we will continue that conversation as you find it helpful and useful to do so.
	So that's it for my little bit of intro.
	I'm happy to chat with the listeners, the brains, the generous deep pockets and big red pumping hearts of the entire conversation.
	If you'd like to chat, if you're on the line, I am all ears.
	And I think you may have to do a star six to unmute them.
	I guess while we're here, while we're here, just to point out that we are using a slightly different system now for Skype calls.
	It's a Turbo Bridge, which you might want to add into your contacts, and you can check on the message board.
	For the Turbo Bridge, I know it well.
	Hi, Steph. Hi, how's it going?
	Hi, I'm very good.
	How are you? Oh, I'm just great.
	Thank you. Excellent, excellent.
	Um... Okay, I'm feeling a lot of anxiety about this call.
	This is my first call. I can't tell you how long I've been listening to you.
	Longer than it's probably legally acceptable.
	Okay, I've got some notes.
	I'm going to try to get right into this.
	I've done everything that I could possibly do to try and make this easy for me.
	I'm wearing my most comfortable pants, which is for most people I'm sure is no pants.
	Well, I'll not share with you the details of my decor, but I'm fairly comfortable too.
	Hang in like a second. Castanets in the breeze, but sorry, go ahead.
	Great. So I've heard you speak in the past, not extensively, but definitely in passing.
	You definitely had a few points about social ostracism.
	I mean in terms of definitely the FDR and the philosophical community that we're involved in, but I guess also in relation to the critical and sensitive nature of the philosophy, That is good, that we practice.
	And I guess also the cultural criticisms that we have towards the current social paradigm, so that all of those things can be quite volatile, I expect.
	And for myself, despite this call, I feel like I'm a confident and a charismatic In my regular social life, my old social life, and my social life before FDR, and as I was sort of moving through self-knowledge alongside your show and growing as a person, I can speak to people.
	So I felt I made a conscious and comfortable effort in initiating and accepting my own social ostracism.
	I feel so hyper-aware of the consequences of I bring up sensitive topics with people that are initiated to these sorts of ideas.
	Really, I can empathize with these people and their knee-jerk reactions to the volatility of the topics.
	It's just really logical to me.
	If something can really, really fuck up and dismantle your relationships, dismantle Your memories as a child.
	And really sort of put them back together into something that's completely different, new, and just never seen before.
	Like the anti-status culture.
	I guess a large part of the democratic West.
	And the family-centric social axiom that everyone's really used to.
	I can really empathize with people when I imagine someone coming to me and telling me that up is down, left is right, and everything is backwards.
	I'm writing some notes and I feel that the farther and farther I go down the road of my own self-knowledge where I can better and easier and faster see the effects of some of my past traumas which have led me to particular kinds of my own behavior, The farther of my own self-knowledge, the better I am at easily seeing the effects of trauma in other people.
	I have friends who work in bars and nightclubs or just old friends from school who are really caught up in alcoholism and that really popular culture of partying and drugs and alcohol.
	Just for one example.
	I can put myself in these situations and ask myself, when have I really wanted to do these things?
	Or how the path would have led for each one of these individuals to come to where they are?
	And also just role-playing, subconsciously role-playing the conversation where I'm just...
	If I was to bring up any kind of questions about their family life or their parents, It would just end in a bloodbath.
	But I can see these things all around.
	Sorry, I just want to make sure I understand what you mean when you say bloodbath.
	What do you mean? Sort of like a conversational and intellectual bloodbath.
	Sometimes I can...
	And a lot of the time, if that scenario comes up, I feel like I'm the duck in the water, so to speak.
	The common conceptions are that I'm wrong and that I'm bringing ideas that aren't just wrong, but also dangerous, and that I'm someone and something to fear and to loathe.
	But not so viciously as my imagery suggests, but I definitely see that sense of fear in their eyes.
	Right. And that's just in myself role-playing the scenario.
	If I'm even walking past the bar, I can feel that.
	Because that's not just completely based on nothing, but some of my past experiences with having these conversations with these people.
	I mean, I don't want to say I have any conclusions on their lives or about their experiences, but I think these are just theories that I can really feel in the moment, and when I write notes about it, it sort of reflects correctly on my life.
	I wanted to mention just that I really enjoyed and appreciated your interview with Doug Casey, not just through his economic His economic insight about the fiat currency and all that.
	But his perspective on not being invited...
	He had this little thing where he was saying he was not being invited to as many of the parties after accepting anarchist arguments.
	And he talked about the two things you just can't talk about.
	You can't talk about religion, you can't talk about politics as a dinner party.
	And these are the only things he's interested in.
	And I definitely share that.
	I mean, not just those two, but I mean, they're things that I'm interested in.
	And I don't want to feel like I can't talk about these things.
	And as an empiricist, I feel like I'm really validated in listening to the experiences of someone, Doug Casey, who had gone down an unconventional route in their social landscape.
	And then they've had successes, they've experienced in all of their endeavors, and they've come out the other side feeling, they're not just okay, but they feel fulfilled rather than they feel despair.
	And I kind of felt that that was validating my experience by listening to this.
	And my experiences Just to wrap up.
	God, I'm just rambling.
	No, no, this is good stuff.
	I appreciate it. Okay, cool.
	Thank you. So my experience is certainly in the last six to 12 months, I've made some clear and comfortable choices to spend a lot of time with a couple of people and really, really unwinding, really opening up.
	But Whether or not these relationships last for my whole life, and hopefully they will, but if they don't, I'm definitely projecting and imagining, I guess, I don't want to say a lonely life because I don't feel a huge sense of loneliness when I really dive deep into these thoughts, but certainly just a quieter life.
	And I don't think that this...
	I feel like yourself, or I feel somewhat like Doug Casey, just in terms of your charisma, your confidence, your wit, and your wanting to speak to people.
	I love speaking to people. So I don't feel like that shift of my own social ostracism was a consequence, but rather a decision.
	However, I do acknowledge the feeling I have that even if I wanted to, I don't feel like I could go back to normal life anymore.
	My question to you is, what has been your greater life experience of social ostracism and what advice could you maybe give to me with someone staring down the barrel of social ostracism?
	Right, right, right.
	Yeah, that's a great question.
	And I certainly have experienced my share and perhaps more than my share of social attack and ostracism for speaking what appear to me and what logically and empirically seem to be undeniable truths.
	And, you know, we're not the first people to suffer from this.
	We're certainly not going to be the last people to suffer from it.
	And if all we face is social ostracism, then we actually suffer.
	We have to suffer far less than most people throughout history have had to suffer for speaking the truth.
	I read a quote by Winston Churchill the other day.
	He wrote somewhere, you have enemies.
	Good. That means you have stood up for something, somewhere, sometime.
	And that is true.
	The moment you stand up for anything, you will get enemies.
	I also remember many years ago reading a letter from George Bernard Shaw, an Irish playwright from the turn of the last century.
	He wrote Arms and the Man and Pygmalion and other pretty much standard classics of the English-speaking stage.
	And he was invited, I guess he was in his, he lived forever, I think the 90 or something like that, and he was invited in his 60s or 70s to some dinner party by some woman, and he wrote back and said, well, I guess you don't know much about my history of socializing, but...
	I don't recommend it.
	I don't recommend me as a dinner guest because I'm going to sit next to somebody who will start talking about the war and I will tell them my decided opinions about the war and everybody will have a very unpleasant time of it.
	I think he was also a vegetarian, so he would say, well, I'm going to sit next to somebody who's eating meat and I will tell them my decided opinions about eating meat and we will have a very unpleasant time of it.
	Or I'm going to sit next to somebody who has made a fortune by exploiting the workers.
	And I'm going to tell them my beliefs about exploitation of the workers.
	He was a socialist. And we will have a very unpleasant time of it.
	So many, many years ago, I gave up on accepting dinner party invitations because one of us has to stay silent and it inevitably is never me.
	And I'm really paraphrasing.
	I don't know exactly how it went, but that's the substance that I remember.
	And it was a very genial, cordial letter, which is basically to say that people will be spitting out their prejudices and their unthought opinions, and I will tell them the truth as I see it, and we won't be able to enter into a debate.
	See, this is the problem. Having different ideas, having opposing ideas from others is not a problem at all.
	I mean, scientists have it all the time.
	Mathematicians have it all the time.
	And they can socialize together.
	The problem is not having different opinions.
	The problem is having reason versus prejudice, right?
	That is the problem. Because people will tell you their opinions as if they're facts and you will bring counter-evidence and it will immediately become apparent to them that they have no reason to believe what they believe.
	They have no evidence, they have no rationality, they have no first causes, they have no...
	Reason to believe what they believe.
	And that is a terrifying thing for someone.
	You know, it's like, you know, they say, don't suddenly wake a sleepwalker.
	It's sort of like that.
	It's like people think that they're standing in a skyscraper on the, you know, hundredth floor.
	And then, you know, with a single finger snap, you can make that skyscraper vanish.
	And they feel like they're going to fall to their death.
	They feel that they're on some engineered structure of stability and depth and strength.
	And then you're going to say something and it literally can be a word or two or even a facial gesture and they immediately feel that their bridge is collapsing, that their skyscraper has vanished and they're going to fall and plummet to their demise.
	It's a very terrifying feeling.
	So I empathize with you.
	I understand your empathy towards people.
	The great challenge is that there is no way for society to progress without some people suffering.
	Unfortunately, that is the case.
	It is the case with every social evolution or revolution, right?
	So when they ended slavery, the people who transported and bought and sold and caught slaves suffered.
	Their livelihood was taken away.
	And when women gained the right to divorce, to leave their marriages, abusive husbands suffered because they had, of course, acted as they had acted on the belief that the women with their wives would never really be allowed to leave them.
	And then when that changed, they went through great suffering, as, of course, we understand.
	And these are just tiny examples, but you can imagine.
	I mean, if the war on drugs ends, then a lot of corrupt and not-so-corrupt cops will suffer a great deal.
	And if the US stops engaging, or England or wherever, in sort of highly aggressive or imperialistic-based foreign policy, large amounts of soldiers who've committed their lives, their career, their education, their skill set development to killing, they will be furloughed.
	And they will experience great suffering.
	So I think you get the point, that there is no progress in society without great suffering.
	And the great suffering vastly outweighs the positivity, the good things that come out of it.
	Yeah, and so this is why society is so hard to move forward, because the benefits are far down the road, but the pain, the significant blinding pain, is right in the present.
	And the people who are going to benefit from, say, an end to the war on drugs are going to be taxpayers in 10 or 20 years who won't even be able to trace back their benefits to what actually happened.
	Whereas the people who will suffer in the moment at the end of the war on drugs, not counting the criminals who would hopefully, non-criminals, who would hopefully get released from these jail cells, the people who are going to suffer, suffer right now and suffer extremely badly.
	And the people who are going to benefit, benefit in a very diffuse way in relatively the far future.
	So yeah, this is why society is so hard to move forward.
	And there's no magic sauce for that.
	Unfortunately, there's just...
	No magic sauce to that, to sort of make that medicine go down.
	So that's sort of one thing that I would say, is that it is a long and difficult process.
	And the burden falls to the people who do not argue from effect.
	That's why I'm so much against the argument from effect.
	The argument from effect would always say, That society should never change.
	Because change, particularly progress, always brings suffering to a fairly significant number of people and does not bring benefits to many people in the moment.
	Which is why the sort of greatest good for the greatest number tends to be incredibly, incredibly, incredibly conservative.
	Because the people who suffer will yell the loudest and the people who will benefit may not even be born yet.
	And so if you go with the argument from a fact or utilitarianism or pragmatism, it's incredibly, incredibly conservative.
	It tends to build incredibly high walls around the existing prejudices of society so as not to disturb and upset and change people.
	I mean, look at what's going on in Wisconsin.
	Where some collective bargaining rights are being taken away.
	Well, the pain of that is enormous for people.
	I look at, what was it? Was it 250,000 or 500,000 people marched in London recently over the government's, quote, austerity cuts?
	Austerity cuts! So they're bringing the spending back to what it was about 10 years ago.
	I mean, that's what's called austerity these days.
	I mean, I grew up dirt poor.
	I have an understanding of austerity that may be somewhat different from other people's.
	My definition of austerity includes hanging around friends' places in the hopes that you can get a meal because there's nothing to eat at home.
	So my definition of austerity is probably a little bit different than what other people's is.
	But those people will suffer now when the government spending gets cut, when government shrinks.
	People in the future, 5, 10, 20 years from now, may benefit in some way that they can't trace back to the original decision.
	And so, of course, there is great pain and there is great suffering in the moment when society progresses, and those who suffer make the most noise, and those who will benefit aren't even around and may never say thank you because they won't trace it back.
	So I just sort of wanted to point out that understanding that, I think, is important.
	The second thing that I would say about social ostracism is who gives a shit?
	Frankly, who gives a flying fuck at a rolling donut about social ostracism?
	Oh, God. Thank God for that.
	No, no, look. I'll tell you why.
	I mean, I'm not just saying that, you know, out of a sense of false providence.
	I mean, I genuinely mean that.
	Look, you are going to...
	You sound like a young man, so let's assume that you're not married yet, right?
	Is that fair to say? That's fair to say.
	Okay, so you're not married yet, but I'll tell you, I mean, I've been married for quite an old married middle-aged guy now.
	So I will tell you that even if you socialize when you're young, like when you're young and single, you're socializing, but basically you're socializing to meet girls, right?
	I mean, that's what it really comes down to.
	You have dinner parties to meet a girl.
	You go to a bar to meet a girl.
	You go to the movies to talk to girls.
	I mean, you're online to find women.
	I mean, a lot of it has to do with that.
	It's not all, but a lot of it has to do with that.
	And in that case, yeah, social ostracism can be a challenge.
	But what it also is is a filter, right?
	I view social ostracism not as people rejecting me, but as people acting as a great filter against people getting to me who shouldn't, right?
	In the same way that you put a filter to clean a sludge out of your water before you drink it, I view social ostracism as a filter.
	In other words, people who listen to slander and rumor and all of that, well, I don't want to have them in my life anyway, so I'm very glad, you know, that they may hear bad things and then stay away.
	Yay! Good! You know, that saves me from the difficulties of those kinds of conversations.
	And that works. It's a great filter.
	So that works well. But I'll tell you what happens, at least in my experience, and I think it's pretty universal, why I say to hell with social ostracism, is that when you get married, and particularly when you have children, you will be spending 99% of your time with two or three people.
	And when you get married, you'll be spending 95% of your time with one person.
	And it's that one person whose opinion you really, really care about.
	Not some guy from, you know, high school who you haven't seen in five years, who you're going to have drinks with, who's going to look at you funny because you're into philosophy, self-knowledge, and a stateless society.
	You know, that's maybe an hour or two.
	Maybe that's a little odd at times or whatever.
	But it is the opinion and evaluation, judgment, and hopefully love of your life partner, your husband, your wife, your life partner.
	That's what really counts.
	You know, I could care less about social ostracism.
	I care how my wife views me, and I care how my daughter views me.
	That is important to me.
	The rest of it, I could really care less about.
	And it's not like, I mean, yeah, there are occasionally times, you know, particularly when I go to conferences, and I meet lots of listeners, and we all go out for dinner or whatever, and it's great.
	You know, it's great. It is my little portable gulch from Atlas Shrugged, and it's wonderful.
	And I would like to have a little bit more of that around, but...
	The reality is when you get married and when you have kids, socializing, at least for quite some time, pretty much falls by the wayside.
	And the only thing that matters is the people who live in your house.
	Their respect for, their love for, their evaluation of you and your virtue and your integrity and your goodness.
	That's the only thing that really counts.
	Not the opinions of people you haven't seen in a while that you may see once or twice a year.
	Ah, who cares? They're not the people that you go to bed with.
	They're not the people that you wake up with.
	They're not the people that you go and change diapers with at 3 o'clock in the morning.
	That's just not the way it works.
	So when it comes to your relationships, quality is the only thing that matters.
	Quality is the only thing that matters.
	Quantity is a sucker's game.
	Yeah, I could not agree with you more.
	I mean, I feel like I've played a quantity game in the past, and God, the fulfillment that I get out of these two or three tensely close relationships far outweigh...
	The whole is greater than the sum of its parts in that equation.
	I was curious...
	Out of defooing and the ostracism of my choosing to ostracize myself and my family of origin...
	I find it hard enough to fully explain, just from an emotional point of view, the details.
	I don't feel like I knew reasons.
	My girlfriend, for example, and my best friend.
	They're curious and they generally want to help and they want to be supportive and there for me.
	I feel a sense of...
	I feel held back to how much I feel comfortable in saying just all at once.
	But I was wondering how...
	Down the line, if I had to have children and...
	And I'd love to have children.
	God, children.
	You know, right? But, you know, if they come to the point where they go, you know, they understand what grandparents are and they want to know.
	And they want to know where are our grandparents and if they were good people.
	The child's grandparents and if they're good people and what was my relationship with them.
	I can just imagine it breaking someone's little heart if someone that I looked up to was sad to have a sad childhood.
	Does that make any sense at all?
	No, I'm not sure I quite understand what the question is, but just give it another shot.
	Yeah, definitely.
	How do you feel that you would approach the topic of grandparents with Izzy, for example?
	I mean, if that makes any sense.
	Well, I mean, with honesty, that would be, I mean, the only thing that I could, I mean, age-appropriate honesty is really the only thing that I can put forward that way.
	I mean, certainly, you know, with my own mom, I just, well, I mean, you know, my job as a parent is to keep you safe.
	And my mom is not a safe person to be around children.
	And it's very sad.
	And look, it's hard raising parents.
	It's hard raising kids without grandparents.
	It is. You know, grandparents, if they're around, they can take a lot of Well, not a lot of, but they can take some of the endlessness out of parenting, right?
	Because parenting is everything you do is about your kids during the day.
	I mean, everything. Everything that you do is about your kids.
	And so, yeah, without grandparents, it's tough.
	Without extended family, it's tough.
	But, you know, I don't have the right to put my child in danger.
	I don't have the right to traumatize my daughter.
	And so I don't have the right to put her in situations where she could be frightened or hurt or aggressed against.
	I just don't. And so, you know, it is with great sadness.
	Look, there's things that I'm very tentative about.
	And there are things that I don't know a lot about that I put lots of caveats out.
	You know, like I'm always saying I'm just an amateur idiot on the internet or whatever.
	But when it comes to my mom or my dad, I am an expert.
	You know, like you can't get more expertise than I've had.
	You can't have spent three decades with people and not know them about as well as a human being could know another human being.
	So... There may be babysitters who I later find out weren't as nice as they should have been and then will apologize and deal with that.
	But I know everything there is to know about my mom, say.
	And I don't have the right to put Izzy in harm's way.
	And also the other thing is that I don't have the right to put myself in situations that will Hurt and upset me and therefore interfere with my parenting, if that makes any sense.
	I wouldn't go to the most terrifying horror movie right before I was about to throw Isabella a birthday party.
	Because going to a horror movie would have an effect on how I was at the birthday party, right?
	And again, I don't know the story of your family, and I'm certainly sorry to hear that separation is in the cards or has occurred.
	And again, I always, always strongly suggest, you know, don't do it alone.
	Do it with a therapist, all that kind of stuff.
	And certainly, you know, try and talk as much as possible.
	Be as honest and open about your needs as possible.
	All the stuff that I've said a million times before, it always bears repeating.
	But certainly with regards to my own family, I don't have the right to do things that are going to traumatize me and interfere with my parenting.
	I don't have the right to put my daughter in harm's way.
	Now, I mean, my mom is pretty old by now, and I'm not saying that she would beat up my daughter.
	I'm certainly not saying anything like that.
	But there is a known history that was not positive towards kids, and I just have to make my judgment.
	I mean, I certainly wouldn't hire a babysitter who had a history like my mom's.
	And so that's sort of pretty significant.
	If that was her resume, I'd say, well, I think not, right?
	So I just have to tell her the truth when time comes along.
	And of course she's going to ask me about my childhood at some point, and I will have to tell her in an age-appropriate way.
	I certainly don't want to lie to her, but I also, of course, have to put it in a way that is appropriate to where she's at.
	Or simply say, I'd like to talk about this when you get older.
	I don't want to talk about it just now.
	I'd like to talk about this when you get a little older.
	And that may be the way to go.
	I mean, I've thought about it, and it's going to be, you know, it's not the most fun conversation in the world to have, but certainly as far as my responsibility goes as a parent, I don't have that choice, unfortunately. I feel the same.
	Certainly. I think about this with children more and more lately because my sister is weeks, I think two weeks now, due for her baby and I have two sisters and one of my sisters and myself are both independently of each other and at different times made decisions up until now to not communicate with my parents anymore.
	My other sister still keeps contact with my parents and she's...
	Sorry, I'm right in assuming that your sister is not a philosophy podcast listener or anything.
	This is something she just came to... No, no, no.
	Yeah, neither of them are.
	Oh, right, right. Okay. And so I found that just a really interesting decision for her to make that just independently of philosophy and this sort of helps that she makes the same decisions that I did.
	And before me, it's going to be your other sister though, right?
	Because there is a certain, you know, the last one there, again, you sound young or whatever, but the last one there may be sort of picked out to take care of the parents as they age, and that can be a pretty heavy burden if she's the last one left there.
	Anyway, it's just something to mull over.
	I'm the youngest.
	My sister pregnant is 10 years older than me, my other one is 7 years older than me.
	I feel for this child so much.
	She's deciding to have our parents be involved in the child's life.
	So far she can see it.
	My screaming heart just goes out to this child.
	I can't imagine bringing a child into that at all.
	I just don't know what Because my contact with either of them has been limited, but it's still there.
	It's still something for some years now.
	But this baby just has everything to do with it and nothing to do with it.
	Our parents should not have any effect on what this baby will experience.
	Is there any good advice to think about with that scenario?
	Yeah, there's no good advice that I can give you in that area.
	I mean, the nephews and nieces and so on is, I mean, that's such an individual decision that, I mean, it's heartbreaking.
	If you can't help, it's extremely challenging if you want to try.
	And it may have good effects, may have bad effects.
	You know, again, that's, I think, something for a therapist to go over because there's a lot of detail, I think, that needs to be combed over with those kinds of decisions.
	No, there's no easy answers to that.
	I mean, there's no easy answers in philosophy as a whole in general, but that one in particular is very hard.
	And I've talked about it a few times before on the shows.
	But yeah, that's very much sort of an individual decision.
	I don't think there's any UPB involved, other than if you can help without hurting, that's usually a better thing.
	But if you've got a traumatic history with parents, then it's hard to help without hurting yourself, which diminishes your ability to help others and so on.
	I mean, would you say that it's better to try and fail than never to try to help?
	No, I don't believe that it's better to try and fail.
	I mean, to take an example, you could try and jump across the Grand Canyon, right?
	It's better to try where there's a reasonable chance of succeeding if it's not a great harm to yourself, right?
	Like if you can't swim, you don't jump into the river to save someone who's drowning, right?
	Because then just two people drown for the price of one, right?
	Yeah, of course. And so that's why it's such a difficult decision.
	I mean, if there was a magic wand away that you knew was going to make the outcome positive, then we would all do that.
	But it's much more complicated than that.
	So again, that's something I would definitely go over with a therapist in pretty great detail and maybe talk about it with your girlfriend.
	It's a very, very tough place to be and a tough decision to go through.
	Yeah. And with the added cloud of relationship experiences, it's just hard to think rationally all of the time.
	Look, I've got to thank you so much for your words and advice, and I hope I haven't bled things around in circles at times, but hopefully I've been somewhat of an able You brought up some fantastic, fantastic issues. And the last thing I'll sort of say in this area is that I think that we all know that society does have some significant steps forward to take.
	I mean, it just has to be better than it was when I was growing up.
	You know, when I was growing up, There were just massive and huge problems in the ethics of society.
	People let their children be emotionally abused by organized religion.
	Parents let their children, not only without complaint, but with praise, sit in these brain-crushing institutions called public schools.
	People didn't intervene in situations of pretty significant and extreme child abuse, as I was experiencing.
	The ethics of society, for me, it's like, hey, the government's had its chance, man.
	The government has had... More resources than anybody who ever planned governments or even thought of governments could ever have imagined.
	The government has had its chance for 6,000 years.
	Organized religion has had its chance for 6 or more thousand years, certainly in Judeo- and Christian side for over 2,000 years.
	You know, religion has had its chance, and governments has had its chance in terms of making the world a better and more moral place.
	And guess what?
	We still have the intergenerational predation of deficit spending.
	We still have rampant bribery as the essence of our political system in terms of campaign donations and bribes to the voters in terms of government spending.
	We still have war.
	We still have militaries.
	We have ever-escalating and increasing sizes of government.
	We still have massive crypto-fascistic predations on the public purse by banks and government banks that have strangleholds on the loyalties and allegiances of politicians.
	We still have legal, organized...
	We've praised counterfeit plunder, particularly of the lower classes.
	We still have countries.
	We have passports now, which we didn't have 100 years ago.
	Moving from one country to another is getting harder and harder.
	Trying to find some way that you can grab a breath or two of freedom before you shuffle off this mortal coil is getting harder and harder.
	And so, to me, it's like, that shit's been tried and found wanting in the extreme.
	And so, yeah, we need a new dialogue.
	We need a new conversation.
	We need a new approach to solving the problems of this world.
	Because the shit we've got in place is generally getting worse and worse.
	A hundred years ago, no passports, no war on drugs, no welfare state, very little military, no, the First World War hadn't even started yet.
	Government education was still relatively good because it was being driven by the leftovers of the private school system.
	And, you know, 100 years later, our money is worth 5% what it used to be worth.
	Deficits are going to cause massive and cataclysmic changes in our society.
	The only thing that I can say is that religion seems to be within a century of dying out demographically, but that doesn't help me too much as a rationalist if all that happens is we switch our allegiance from gods to governments, which seems to be the growing trend of the late 20th century.
	So although it's difficult, although it's hard, I mean, this shit has to be rewritten.
	We have to start with a blank page.
	We have to crumple up the shitty solutions of the past couple of thousand years, and we need to start designing this stuff from scratch.
	We need to start actually believing the ethics that we've been talking about all these thousands of years.
	Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not kill.
	Well, God's magic finger-poke has not been enough to change society to actually believe and act on this stuff, and so philosophy has got to rise up.
	You know, like a hell-peckin' phoenix, philosophy has got to rise up and spread its fiery wings across this world, and if some people get burned in the process, well, that is terrible.
	That is terrible. But I did not design this world.
	The world that I inherited was designed or inherited by others or they went along with it.
	And so if we've got to go back to first principles and we have to scrap the bridge and start again, and if that causes people dizziness and upset, well, I'm sorry.
	But the fact is that people should have done this a long time ago.
	And the fact that they didn't has made our burdens that much harder and our fight that much more difficult.
	but too bad.
	It still has to happen.
	Thanks for your call.
	I hope that helps.
	And if we have another caller on the line, I would be more than happy to listen up.
	Thanks very much, Steph. Thanks.
	You're very welcome. Mr.
	Bruce would like to know more about how boredom is related to anger.
	Ah. Yeah, okay.
	This is an old... I remember...
	This was a line that I stole for revolutions, which I wrote in my early 20s.
	I remember hearing this as a teenager.
	I think, believe it or not, I think it was a caption that came on before the news.
	I don't know who put it in there or why.
	I even know where it comes from. But the caption was, I remember it vividly so many years later, the caption was, Boredom is rage spread thin.
	And I think there's some real truth in that.
	So... What I think, the mechanism that I think is at work here, and this is all, you know, none of this is just my opinion, none of this is proven, of course, empirically, but I think it's a good approach or a useful approach.
	Well, rage is a kind of chronic anger, and it generally occurs when the fight-and-flight mechanism has been so stimulated that it doesn't de-stimulate, but remains at a perpetually active state.
	Not, of course, at full throttle, but of course the fight-or-flight mechanism is originally designed to be very intermittent and very spiking, right?
	So you're not supposed to get chased by a tiger eight hours a day.
	You're supposed to be out there hunting.
	You get chased by a tiger.
	You run like hell.
	Hopefully you make it away.
	And then you slowly calm down.
	And that's not supposed to happen every day or every week.
	But when it's necessary, it happens.
	And the history of the modern West in particular has been a history of consistently increasing fight-or-flight response efficiency.
	And this is not to say that there weren't perpetual anxieties and terrors in the Middle Ages and all of that, but chronic stress, I think, because we live so much longer and because we have fewer physical outlets in terms of exercise or activity, it has become more stressful in many ways to live a modern life.
	And so if you are raised in a family, let's say, where you are exposed to, you know, consistent attacks or emotional or verbal or physical or sexual abuse, then what happens is your fight-or-flight mechanism gets elevated and it stays elevated.
	And your cortisol, which is the stress hormone in the body, stays high, which is actually very bad for your health in the long run.
	And you have all of these symptoms, problems.
	Your immune system tends to decrease in the presence of stress, and so if you end up with perpetual stress, then it can turn into a sort of chronic rage.
	If you're in a situation where you can't de-stress, Then I think it does turn pretty rancid.
	And so if you're in a relationship with somebody who's abusive and you don't even remotely imagine that you can leave, then you really are hosed because you can't change an abuser.
	Certainly the victim can't change an abuser, in my opinion.
	You can't change the abuser.
	You can't leave the abuser.
	So you're just setting yourself in for chronic stress.
	Now, the problem with chronic stress is In my opinion, it leads you to find other things less stimulating.
	What's that great line from Nemo?
	I say this because my primary metaphorical reference points now are, of course, children's movies.
	Crush says to Marlon, the dad, after he bounces out of the jellyfish with Dory, the bluefish, he says, You have serious thrill issues, dude.
	We've all known those people who do those really extreme, wild things.
	And I think that has to do with the fact that their fight-or-flight mechanism has been so elevated that they end up being bored by everyday life.
	In the same way that, like, your normal person, if you just ask them to sit and stare at a blank wall for four hours, it's going to get kind of restless and itchy-brained.
	I think that the chronic anger that arises from intractable and unchangeable abusive situations leads people to find normal or healthy or...
	Even-keeled relationships are boring.
	And what happens, of course, is they become addicted to the stress hormones.
	They become addicted to the fight-or-flight mechanism.
	And so it's a stereotype, but I think it's sort of true, that people who have been in unhealthy relationships may get into a relationship that's more healthy, but then will start picking fights or causing problems because they're bored by that which is not dysfunctional.
	So I think that the rage of being constantly abused and unable to change it then leads normality to be sort of boring.
	And that is a real challenge.
	It took me a while to learn to love normality.
	It took me a while to learn to love normality.
	Health and positivity and laughter and even keels and all of that in my relationships.
	It takes a while.
	And to learn to love it in yourself.
	There is sometimes, at least in my history, there's been sort of an itchy trigger finger for excitement, which I guess I now can find to the occasional game on my computer.
	So that would be my answer to that, and if there are any other questions about that, I'd be happy to answer, you know, from my, again, to use the tired phrase, idiot amateur opinion on the internet, but that would be my approach to the relationship between boredom and anger.
	All right, well, thank you very much.
	Oh, he says, ask him.
	Could you ask him, and I'll ask you now, how it relates specifically to another person boring you and not seeing you are bored?
	Another person boring you.
	Oh, I know this.
	Yeah, oh my god, that's a great question.
	And just ask the person to confirm this if he's listening in or she's listening in.
	So somebody is telling you about...
	The trials and tribulations of completing their mid-20th century Ohio stamp collection.
	It's like mind-numbingly dull.
	And they don't notice that you're bored, but will take great offense if you point out that what they're doing is really not very inclusive and kind of boring.
	Is that sort of what the person's talking about, if you can just ask them?
	Exactly. Exactly, he says.
	Wait, is it actually, did I get the Ohio stamp reference right?
	Because if that's true, I'm definitely going to take Randy's Million Dollar Challenge, the Amazing Randy's Million Dollar Psychic Challenge.
	But probably it wasn't that true. Anyway.
	I have lots, lots, lots of experience in this.
	And I hope that people understand that it's not because I'm terribly boring to other people.
	I'm sure I am to some.
	But because I have been on the receiving end of...
	Very, very boring situations.
	Well, the one thing that I find is very true about people who bore me is that I always feel a sense of danger in that situation.
	Because somebody who's boring is kind of dangerous.
	And the reason that they're kind of dangerous is that they're very unsocialized.
	Very unsocialized.
	They lack empathy I mean, look, I mean, I don't really worry about being boring, but I certainly don't want to be boring.
	I mean, my career as a podcaster sort of rests on me not being overly boring, since I don't think I'd get a lot of donations to drone on and on about X, Y, and Z that was of little interest to people.
	So... When I'm sitting across the table from somebody who's boring, I get a whole, you know, like when you're going to die, they say your whole life flashes before you, and hopefully you won't yawn and say, come on, fast forward.
	I'd rather get to the other side than watch any of this stuff again.
	But when somebody's boring to me, and this happens a lot to me with people, is that I get a very deep, spinal-level flash backwards of their lives, or flash forward of their lives.
	So it's like I lean up against a tree, and I feel it quiver, because I feel it growing from a seed to a mighty oak of boredom.
	The mighty oaks of boredom.
	Worst band name ever. But...
	So when somebody is boring, what I see is that no one in their lives has ever confronted them on being boring.
	That's terrifying to me.
	It's terrifying to me on many levels, right?
	That someone doesn't have someone in their lives who is going to say, hey, look, you know, I hate to tell this to you, but you're pretty boring.
	You know, what's up with that? What do you experience or what do you feel when you're telling these stories?
	Because I find it really hard To pay attention because I feel like, you know, like I'm just, my mind wanders and so on.
	So tell me what your experience was and so on.
	So they haven't had people in their lives to do that.
	And the question is why? Why not?
	Why haven't they had people in their lives who are going to tell them the truth to give them honest and direct feedback about their experience of that person?
	Let's say Bob, Bob the Boring Guy.
	Well, it's either because Bob is surrounded by people who don't really care about him, or because Bob is surrounded by people who are frightened of him, in that if they sit down and say, well, listen, Bob, I hate to tell this to you, but for quite some time I've been, you know, I've had the slow oozing living crap bored out of my armpits by your stories about Ohio stamps.
	Or however nicely they're going to put it.
	Well, because they're afraid that he's going to get really angry, in which case the boring others and aggression, right, is it's almost like a dare, you know, like I'll bore you and I dare you to tell me that you're bored, because if you do, I'm going to uncork my rage against you or something like that.
	And so, yeah, I see a very lonely human being who's been unsocialized, who's not surrounded by people who love him enough to help him to stand up to his rather foggy and dull demons.
	And so I feel quite alarmed when people are boring and I feel that I'm put in an impossible situation because I don't want to confront somebody I don't really know about being boring, because that's a pretty long, convoluted, and complicated interaction.
	I mean, I'll do it on a show. If somebody calls in and says, help me with being boring, sure.
	But, you know, dentists don't drill your teeth at a restaurant just because they're sitting next to you, and I don't necessarily bring the laser power of my philosophical mindset to people who are boring me on the bus.
	And so I feel like, okay, if I'm honest, I'm going to get in trouble.
	Like, there's going to be a big set of problems here.
	And I'm going to get attacked.
	And so I don't want to do that.
	And yet at the same time, I don't want to sit here and be bored.
	And also, the other person, if you don't say something, the power then passes to the other person.
	Because the other person... Can say, hey, are you even listening?
	And then you're like, uh-huh?
	What? I remember that from boarding school.
	We had one preacher who was just so boring, boring, boring.
	And so I was in the choir, right?
	And I would be sort of sitting at the front of the choir and vacation.
	I just doze off, you know?
	I wasn't a big sleeper in boarding school.
	Well, not doze off, but I sort of would close my eyes or whatever, and then he would suddenly interrupt with the most ferocious, Mr.
	Molyneux! You know, because it's important to be on a formal last name basis with a six-year-old kid.
	And that was a dangerous place to be bored.
	And I think I described in our truth a teacher who was really boring.
	And also got really angry at me for showing signs of being bored.
	And all of that is just so twisted and dysfunctional that I think those people are very dangerous and toxic to be around.
	They lack empathy. They seem to me kind of narcissistic, you know, just to use that in an amateur sense.
	You know, like, it's pretty rude to not notice that people are bored by you.
	It's pretty rude. It's pretty insensitive, you know, and, you know, if I'm irritated enough, then I will be honest about it and say, dude, I mean, have I shown, have I asked you any questions?
	Have I shown you any interest in what you're saying?
	Like, so why? Why do you keep talking about this?
	I don't understand. I mean, do you think I'm interested in what you're saying?
	And, you know, I don't mind going to town if that's where I am and if I'm sort of stuck on a plane or whatever and pretending to be sleepy hasn't helped, then yeah.
	Do you think that I'm interested?
	What science do you have that I'm interested in what you're saying?
	I do remember saying that to a woman when I was flying to Hawaii for business.
	This woman was talking to me about Jesus, and I wasn't giving any responses in my life for 20 minutes.
	I'm like, have I shown any interest in this topic at all?
	Like, where's your sensitivity to me as a fellow passenger?
	This is not polite.
	This is rude. It's supposed to be mutual, and I'm not showing any interest, so I'd really appreciate it if you would stop talking to me about this.
	And of course, she got offended, right?
	I mean, that's the natural response of people who are rude, is when the rudeness is pointed out, they get offended and try to make you feel like you're rude.
	But, you know, too bad.
	That's just the way it is. So I hope that that helps to some degree.
	But yeah, it's a very deep and alarming situation to be sitting across from the table from someone who's boring you half to death.
	This will be the boring Sunday show.
	Sorry, I was just looking for my unmute button.
	We have a question from a guest, a person who's new to the question of anarcho-capitalism.
	Yes. And his understanding, his or her, I'm saying, I believe.
	Go to him for now.
	Just to clarify the question he had earlier, around anarchism and DROs.
	The DROs are vital for a stateless society, but it's easy for anyone to step off the grid by not signing up with a DRO. Without a DRO, I can do whatever I want, right?
	But the idea is that my reputation will be negatively affected and that society will thus, quote, punish me by making things complicated.
	But how would everyone know that I don't have a DRO? Seems to me that the rating company should take care of this problem, but then we need a strong centralized rating system.
	Would that even work without the Internet?
	Well, first of all, we have the internet.
	It's not going away. So the fact that the internet came out of defense funding is sort of like nuclear power or nuclear weapons.
	They're not going to go away. They came from the government.
	So, yeah, I mean, one of the things that has made a stateless society so much more possible is the ubiquitous access to information that, you know, cell phones and the internet and all these kinds of things...
	So, a scenario, and this is a great question.
	I get this a lot, and it is a great question because it shows people are starting to think in terms of the paradigms of how voluntarism can solve these challenging problems.
	So, I first of all want to acknowledge it as a truly great question.
	But when you say that it's easy to go off the grid, I would not agree with that at all.
	Now, of course, you could go buy a plot of land or barter for it or whatever and go live there, and that would be fine.
	But there are very few people in this world who want to do that.
	And of course, if they are off, you know, it's the, you know, if a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?
	If somebody is living completely off the grid, in other words, having almost no economic interactions with anyone else, does it matter?
	Well, no. I would argue that it doesn't matter at all.
	Someone's living in a cave and eating berries and hunting rabbits.
	Their existence or non-existence It has no tangible effect on the rest of society.
	It is as if they don't live there.
	It is as if they don't exist.
	There's no fundamental difference to them existing or not existing as far as a stateless society goes.
	I mean, as far as any society goes, right?
	And so I don't think it matters if somebody's living in the woods.
	If somebody really genuinely and totally goes off the grid, so what?
	Who cares, right? But if you don't want to do that, and I would argue that very, very few people Would want to do that.
	I mean, I think the people who do want to do that now, you know, my usual bang, my usual drum, I would assume that they'd simply been abused as children to the point where society had become unbearable to them.
	So in the future, of course, you know, we're not going to have a free society while children are mistreated, which is the sort of arguments I've gone into before.
	And so very, very few people will want to do that.
	And, of course, we would hope that their families, their friends would, if they wanted to go move there, would try and get them some help and, you know, try and get them to live a little bit more in the bosom of society, which is actually a pretty nice place to be.
	So if you're not going to go off the grid, it's really hard to function without a good reputation.
	See, DROs are fundamentally about reputations.
	And it is my belief, my very strong belief, that as your reputation grows, the need for DRO will become less and less.
	And to the point where you may not need a DRO.
	So if you have never, like you've lived, let's say you've lived for 60 or 50 years as an adult, and you have never failed to repay a debt, and you want to go and borrow $1,000 from the bank, Will the bank even need a DRO for you?
	I would argue that they wouldn't.
	Because your reputation is such that a DRO would become unnecessary.
	So that, you know, I think that DROs would be temporary institutions for people in the process of building up their reputations.
	But once you have a perfect credit rating, I mean, nobody's going to be perfectly honest for 50 years for the sake of screwing a bank.
	Oops, sorry folks. Looks like he got dropped.
	But I really appreciate your questions.
	I mean, so far all the questions that you've been submitting today have been great.
	We'll see what we can get in right before the end of the hour.
	Well, you know, just sort of my take on the question.
	You know, everyone spend hours a day?
	I mean, yes and no.
	I mean, it's not everybody.
	It's not everybody spends hours every day.
	I mean, you can choose to spend hours every day looking up reputation of people.
	You can choose to trust a certification company or a reputation company who tracks these sorts of things.
	This is not a question of, does everybody have to verify everybody's reputation all the time?
	You know, it's up to you.
	Your level of comfort with the reputation.
	Now, it's just my opinion on the matter.
	It's not like, you know, it's not like I have to say, you know, this is how it's going to be, but it's just one possibility.
	Does that make sense? Right, and one person's review can be seen by thousands.
	And there will be people who, for better or for worse, will go ahead and spend all kinds of time All kinds of time, you know, verifying and backtracking and figuring out if someone does have a good reputation.
	So there are going to be those kinds of people for sure.
	Yeah, and there are people who have worked it out, as Eric is pointing out.
	Cory Doctorow. Well...
	Okay, we don't know that question, but people are mentioning Amazon, eBay.
	They have reputations.
	I mean, there's Yelp out there.
	The CitySearch, you want to think of the reputation of restaurants.
	Google has reputations for restaurants.
	I mean, we already have all kinds of sites all out there.
	It's crazy how much information there is out there if you're just willing to look for it.
	The only reason, I think, to believe in Canada, it's illegal to have reputation sites for doctors.
	But in the United States, you have that.
	So you have all these reputation sites out there everywhere.
	It's crazy how many reputations there are.
	You can find all the kinds of reviews, and you judge whether someone writes a review out, and you judge for yourself.
	Do you trust this review?
	And, I mean, look, we're not going to answer the questions like...
	The question is, how much for you do you believe would you trust a site?
	What would it take for you to trust a site?
	If you were designing a site, say, you know, what would it take for you to convince other people that your site has good ratings, that your site has a good track of somebody's reputation?
	And you just sort of think about that because, you know, I'm I can sort of answer all these questions.
	And all these questions that you're bringing up, these are questions that you would have to answer to somebody who is visiting your site.
	So just as a possibility, what are some of the things that you would do to say, okay, how is this a good review?
	How can I verify that this is a good person?
	I can think of questions like, how would I know that this person's reputation is Would be good.
	How do I know that this person submitting a review, a reputation report, is a valid person?
	How do I verify someone's identity?
	Or can it just be all anonymous?
	There's all these factors, all these crazy things that come into See, I'm not as good of a host because I get distracted.
	I lose my train of thought. Hopefully it's enjoyable.
	Hopefully it's enjoyable. So let's see.
	Steph is in the chat. Oh, I'm great.
	I'm glad that it is a helpful response.
	Very glad that's a helpful response.
	Yeah, so I think that DROs are a temporary phenomenon that are required because people need to build up their reputations.
	But once you have a reputation that's good enough, I think the DRO would become pretty much unnecessary.
	DROs are overhead. Insurance is an overhead.
	And, like, if everybody was a perfect driver, you'd never need any car insurance.
	Or, I guess, mechanical failure or whatever.
	But you'd need much less.
	So, the economic incentive for being good in a free society is that you pay much less in overhead than you would otherwise.
	New businesses would face that barrier to entry.
	Older and more established businesses would have that advantage.
	But, of course, they would have other inefficiencies, such as the market keeps changing, which would make them less efficient over time.
	So, So I think that DROs are insurance for newer entrants into the marketplace who have little proven experience or worth.
	And there would be DROs available for people who had bad histories, the same way you can still get credit.
	If you have a bad history, it just tends to cost you more and maybe you have to put up more collateral.
	So I don't think that DROs are the sort of overarching permanent institutions or fixtures in people's lives.
	I think they're just temporary stepladders up to the plateau of the most economic efficiency possible, which is where you don't have to have people ensure your behavior because your reputation is good enough that people can take your handshake and your word at face value.
	I hope that helps. And sorry, I've lost track of the question, but please feel free to ask more.
	It's a fascinating question.
	And remember, of course, that DROs are just my idea about how it might work.
	I mean, they may never come into existence.
	I think they will, because historically they always have come into existence.
	People have almost always gathered together in a free society or in free areas of the society.
	They've almost always gathered together.
	To minimize risk.
	And in a free society, the transaction costs of trustworthy people are far lower than the transaction costs of less trustworthy people.
	Just think of eBay, right?
	If you have a perfect rating and you've been in business for a number of years, then people will not hesitate to buy from you.
	But if you have a poor rating or no ratings at all, people will be a little bit more hesitant.
	It's not to say that it can happen, but it's a bit of a challenge.
	And so that's my suggestion about how it might work.
	All right. Yeah, and actually, when you dropped, I tried my best to pick up the standard and run with it.
	So hopefully, that seems to really help them figure out some of the questions he was having.
	Oh, fantastic. Well, let's leave that in then.
	Good stuff. Yeah, I hope it measures up to the quality.
	Oh, I'm sure it does.
	Alright, so we have another question on the docket.
	From Herb.
	Stefan, I was watching YouTube videos of Dawkins, Krauss, and de Grasse Tyson, and they all mentioned how philosophy is useless.
	I find these responses disconcerting.
	Where do you think these men of science have failed to grasp the merit of philosophy?
	able to grasp the merit of philosophy at all.
	I think that they're damn accurate.
	They're completely and totally accurate.
	And this has been, I mean, obviously, I would say with the exception of what we talk about here, right?
	So there was somebody, I thought about this this week, I think in the last Sunday show, someone was in the chat room who was saying, you know, people seem to come in here and all they want to talk about is their personal problems.
	And I think that's a valid observation.
	It's not entirely true. I mean, I would say that a lot of people do want to talk about their personal problems.
	And I think that's exactly what philosophy should be working with.
	Philosophy has every right.
	In fact, I would say it has the most right to step up and help people with personal challenges in relationships and in career and maybe even in health and other sorts of issues.
	And I think that philosophy is fantastic at those things.
	And I think it's the very best at many of those things.
	And what this person is basically saying is, I don't like the degree to which philosophy can be applied in our lives, right?
	I would assume that's what the person is saying.
	Like, I feel uncomfortable with the fact that this philosophy is not purely theoretical, that we're not talking about how a society might work 200 years from now, that we're not talking about an abstract proof of secular ethics, or we're not talking about whether nouns exist or the relationship between language and objects,
	sort of these sorts of things. And I use a metaphor, I mentioned this at the beginning of the show, the introduction to virtue, part four, that UPB is like physics, and ethics is like engineering.
	Engineering is applied physics, and engineering should never discount physics, but engineering is applied physics.
	And philosophy...
	Philosophy is a word that unfortunately has two meanings, one of which has sort of fallen, there's more than two, but these are the two major ones.
	Philosophy has two meanings.
	The first is the abstract discipline of logical analysis, and the second is the application of Of philosophy to life.
	And philosophy, and this is something I remember reading about, and again, you know, I'm always paraphrasing with a somewhat spotty memory, but Ayn Rand was writing about this in the 60s, that during the time of an immense expansion of state power in LBJ's Great Society, during a time of an ever-escalating increase in military aggression during the Vietnam War,
	in a time of mass social unrest and protests and so on, That the American Philosophical Society got together and debated something like whether nouns actually exist or not.
	And I mean, I think that's actually quite criminal.
	I mean, it's not illegal, but it's quite criminal.
	It to me is like a bunch of surgeons or doctors in the middle of a mass epidemic that is killing people, getting together and discussing whether you could ever use a butter knife to perform a tracheotomy effectively.
	To me, there's a criminal abandonment of responsibility on the part of philosophers.
	Philosophers should work from application to theory, which is not to say discount or discard theory.
	I think theory is very important.
	But in terms of application, I mean, when was the last time?
	When was the last time that you ever saw a philosopher On a major media show talking about how to solve a moral problem.
	And of course, most of what the media discusses has moral elements or aspects to it for sure.
	Is it moral to invade?
	Iraq. Is it moral to invade Libya?
	Is the war on drugs moral or immoral?
	Is it right or is it wrong?
	What about abortion, right?
	I mean, all of these things. Now, you'll get religious people up there talking about it.
	You'll get policy wonks.
	You'll get analysts. You'll get political pundits.
	But you'll never see so-and-so has a PhD in philosophy and teaches philosophy, and he is the guy...
	Who's going to give us the answer?
	He's the expert because he's been studying it for 20 years, so let's listen to him, right?
	I mean, if you're going to have a show on cancer and you have some expert oncologist who teaches at Johns Hopkins Medical whatever and has been doing this for 20 or 30 years, you would have him on and he would have the last word because he's the expert.
	Or, you know, he would reasonably have the last word.
	But this is not the case.
	With philosophers. There are thousands of philosophers, professional, full-time, paid six figures philosophers in the United States.
	And where are they?
	Where are they? Well, and there are a few of them.
	I think Sam Harris has studied philosophy, and so he's out making his arguments.
	And I certainly would disagree with some of his arguments and agree with others.
	Not that that's particularly important, but, you know, I certainly applaud him for being out there and engaging The public in philosophical debates.
	Paul Bloom is doing it, though.
	I think he's more on the psychological side.
	But there are a few people out there writing about philosophy.
	And Sam Harris has come up with, I think, a pretty argument from effect-y kind of moral philosophy.
	And, you know, good, good.
	I think that's great. At least he's engaging the public in a debate about philosophy.
	When people say philosophy is useless, what they're talking about is people getting together and arguing about, you know, do we exist at all?
	And there's a fine question to start with, but you've got to come up with a damn answer and you've got to move on from there.
	Metaphysics, as somebody said, is not a problem to be solved, but a disease to be cured.
	So I think that when you think that we have thousands of people who've studied for decades to become experts in the field of philosophy, I question the degree to which they're actually able to contribute value and clarity to a society that is currently wallowing in relativistic, postmodernistic, anti-philosophical muck and mire.
	Well, I think we need these experts, we need these heroes, we need these knights of reason, truth and evidence to come riding over the damn horizon and save us from the savages of prehistory who are currently manipulating the body politic for the sake of lies, exploitation and destruction.
	But they prefer to stay in their ivory towers for the most part and debate about inconsequentialities.
	And that's because of course, philosophy is just another government program for the most part.
	Philosophy is paid for by tenure.
	It's paid for by the state in many ways.
	And so why on earth would they want to come down from their ivory tower if they get paid either way?
	I mean, if you pay a doctor for playing golf, how many patients is he going to want to see?
	You know, those patients can be kind of icky.
	You will get a few, but not the majority.
	So philosophy has been taken over by the government.
	And of course, philosophy is one of the things that the government tries to take over first.
	And there is a tradition, of which I count myself a minor member, of people engaging in philosophy who do not come out of the academy, right?
	I mean, I've certainly done some graduate work in sort of history and the history of philosophy and so on, but I'm no PhD in philosophy dude.
	Socrates, of course, did not come out of the academy.
	And, of course, a lot of people who studied philosophy would never be able to get a job.
	Sorry, a lot of people who are the most major philosophers in history have never been able, would never in the current system be able to get any kind of professorship because they don't have the necessary paperwork, certainly.
	It's always struck me as ironic that people who study Socrates would, A, probably fail Socrates for challenging their authority.
	And B, would never allow him to teach them or to teach students because he didn't have all the right pieces of paper.
	They will teach his thought, but they would never allow him to teach his thought.
	It's just kind of ironic.
	But this is what happens when philosophy or any human discipline gets enmeshed in the blood money of statist programs.
	You get propaganda and you get inconsequentiality.
	And as somebody said about academics...
	The battles are so fierce because the stakes are so small.
	I think that's actually quite true and something to ponder and mull over.
	So I do agree that philosophy is tragic.
	And I mean, just look, I mean, Ayn Rand.
	Ayn Rand. You know, I mean, I catch flack for this every time I say it, but I don't care.
	It's still true. The woman was a stone-cold genius.
	She was a stone cold genius.
	How many people have written one of the most influential works in English without ever having been brought up speaking English?
	I mean, that's just astounding.
	It's just an astounding achievement.
	And all you ever hear from academics, and I heard a lot of this when I was in school, when I would bring her up when I was in college...
	You know, you bring up Ayn Rand, but, oh, you know, she's...
	What did Alan...
	Sorry, what did Harold Bloom say about her sub-Nichean assertiveness?
	What the fuck does that mean?
	Sub-Nichean assertiveness?
	I mean, it just sounds like he's farting loudly.
	And, you know, but no...
	And you see this with the Atlas Shrugged movie coming out.
	How many people...
	Are talking about the content of her ideas.
	It's cowardly and reprehensible to the nth degree to not talk about the content of Ayn Rand's arguments, but to say, well, you know, her dialogue is kind of stilted, and it reads like a B-movie script, and, oh, that John Gall speech was so long, I don't think I just couldn't get through.
	Like, who gives a shit? That's like saying Einstein's wrong because I don't like his font.
	I mean, it's embarrassing.
	It's ridiculous. The fact that academics haven't taken on the most influential popular philosopher Of the 20th century and say, hey, if she's wrong, I'd like an academic to point out where and how and why.
	I would really, really like that.
	But they don't. They just make snarky comments about her because she doesn't come from inside their little club.
	And they don't ever take her on in terms of content.
	And that to me is tragic, it's embarrassing, and given the nature of the institutions, inevitable.
	So yeah, I agree with those people enormously.
	All right. So we have a question from Jay Brown.
	What do you think the current relationship is between the main...
	Jay Brown? Jay Brown. Yes.
	And the answer is, you do feel good.
	Sorry. Anyway, go on. Close.
	Close. I think you may want to reconsider that, Brandy Price.
	What do you think the current relationship is between the mainstream media and the state And what do you think the effect of stateless society would have on the media?
	Ah, great, great question.
	Are there any easier ones?
	Okay. Well, I mean, in my opinion, the mainstream media is like a comfortable couch that you can put your non-exercising brain on so that it can put its feet up, sit beer, get fat, and expire early.
	And that is a very sad thing.
	And it's inevitable. The media is the verbal abuser equivalent to the physical abuser we call the cops and the military and the prison guards and so on, right?
	And they are very much there to find people who step out of the box and, you know, slander and abuse them with the hopes of silencing them and so on.
	And I'm sure it works with a lot of people and it doesn't work with some other people.
	I do have some sympathy for the mainstream media because there is no such thing as the media.
	The media is an arm of the government.
	No more and no less.
	And that's not anything theoretical.
	That's just a basic fact, which is that there are two ways in which the government fundamentally controls the media.
	The first is licensing. So the government yanks your license, you can't broadcast.
	And you're toast. You're just done like dinner.
	Your whole investment of decades or generations goes completely up in smoke.
	So you simply can't piss off the government too much or they will yank your livelihood away completely.
	That's the whole point of licensing. The second aspect of the mainstream media that makes it a mere arm of the government is access.
	In order to report news, you need to have access to the government because the government is the major source of news.
	And if you piss off your sources, if you piss off the government too much, and I don't mean like if you're a left-wing reporter and you talk to your left-wing sources, you can piss off your right-wing sources because you don't care about those, or Fox News with, I don't know, Ralph Nader or something, they don't care.
	But if you question the entire institution, then you will simply lose your access.
	You will not get your press passes, people will not return your phone calls, and Because journalism has, over the past 15-20 years, almost entirely given up on investigative reporting, they don't do that stuff anymore because it's expensive and it's time-consuming and it's risky and there are legal issues with doing investigative reporting.
	You're never going to get sued for paraphrasing a government news release.
	You're just never going to... The government says, we're doing X, and you say, hey, government seems to be doing X. But if you go after some government official for corruption or something like that, it's expensive, it's time-consuming, it may or may not pay off.
	It requires extreme skill and a network of contacts that takes decades to build up, so it's very expensive reporting.
	And you have to have 12 lawyers go over it with a fine-tooth comb in order to make sure that you don't end up getting sued, and you may end up getting sued anyway.
	So, the mainstream media has largely abandoned investigative reporting to read.
	They retype government news releases into the teleprompters and read those.
	And it's pretty much free, and you're never going to get sued, and you just need some stand-up mannequin with nice hair to read that stuff.
	And that's about it.
	So, yeah, it very much is about keeping people in a particular comfort zone, never asking any fundamental questions, right?
	I mean... As Noam Chomsky has said, I mean, he's never going to get asked on the mainstream media.
	I mean, they just invaded Iraq.
	He's one of the premier foreign policy analysts in American culture.
	I mean, he's written dozens of books investigating and explaining and understanding U.S. foreign policy.
	So a foreign policy, a massive foreign policy commitment is made to invade or to attack.
	I mean, it's war.
	They call it whatever they want.
	And to attack a country that has no strategic or military interest to the United States without consulting Congress, without consulting the American people.
	I mean, even George Bush got a declaration of intent from Congress before going into Iraq.
	I mean, Barack Obama just pushed a button and, you know, half of Libya blew up.
	So you would think that the person who's written the largest selling books on U.S. foreign policy might find a home somewhere in the mainstream media about a major U.S. foreign policy decision.
	But you can go up and down the channels till your thumb falls off and you will never see Noam Chomsky interviewed on any station whatsoever.
	Because his simple formula of do the research and speak the truth is completely unacceptable, right?
	The mainstream media is a massive witch doctor doing a shaky, revolting dance to keep reality at bay at all times from the sensitive and trembling psyches of its fragile listeners.
	And it is an old...
	And dishonorable tradition.
	And it is not going to change, I think, in particular anytime soon.
	But, yeah, it's pandering and shielding people from reality and attacking people who step out of line.
	And it's, you know, it's the mean kids from high school given, you know, big typewriters and lots of newsprint.
	And economically, it's dying to a large degree as well because it's not able to make the transition.
	It's far, far better investigative reporting going on, even by amateurs on the web.
	And remember this story that was broken about Acorn, that they were helping a pimp with his taxes without questioning anything to do with what he was doing legally?
	That was all broken by amateurs.
	Nobody in the mainstream media would ever do anything like that.
	So the most interesting and exciting reporting is coming out of people with cell phone cameras and people with recorders tucked into the lapels who are just going out and doing this kind of stuff.
	I mean, the mainstream media is, to me, just a completely ridiculous funhouse distortion of reality just aimed to reflect back the prejudices of its listeners so that they feel comfortable and aren't shaken by the slightest hint of empirical reality.
	And I know this isn't exactly on point with the mainstream media, but I mean, we've talked about sort of the exposes or exposing stuff.
	Granted, it didn't happen until Bank of America, but you take a look at what happened with Assange and WikiLeaks.
	I think that's at least close.
	Yeah, and now the mainstream media did broadcast some of the WikiLeaks stuff, but of course they're not, you know, why aren't they setting up websites that people can submit stuff?
	That would be pretty cheap. That would be pretty free.
	Well, because if they set up a website like that, their access will get cut off, their licensing will be threatened.
	And of course, the government, like the US government, has 40,000 laws which threaten people, right?
	We're going to audit you, we're going to audit you personally, we're going to just make your life very difficult and unpleasant if you do stuff that they don't want.
	And so, yeah, it's natural.
	You know, people, you know, when vague threats are in the air, most people will simply get in line, like salmon swimming in a strong current.
	current, they all just end up pointing the same way.
	All right.
	Well, we have a couple of questions here.
	We only have about 15-odd minutes before the 4 o'clock, but see if you want to take this one.
	All right. Now, this one, yeah, trying to make it as difficult as possible.
	This one, I'll just read it and let me know if you want to address it now or not.
	So, hey, Steph. My aunt, who is very boring, Constantly verbally abuses my uncle and their four-year-old son.
	They live a few states away and my aunt keeps my uncle on a short leash.
	Keeps him from visiting. Makes him call people to demand to apologize to her for various things.
	It's been pretty crazy sometimes.
	I have no idea what I can do, but I want to do something.
	So far I just try to be there for the people in my family who've had to deal with this woman.
	I'm usually pretty shy when it comes to facing people who are verbally abusive.
	Is there any advice you can give?
	Yeah, that's a tough situation.
	I will tell you my thoughts.
	I won't even classify this as advice, because nobody can tell anybody else what to do in these kinds of situations.
	These are situations of personal integrity, and I don't know where the integrity line falls, but I will tell you what I think.
	And it's not even an opinion.
	It's just some thoughts.
	Certainly no suggestions of actions.
	I think that by the time people have gotten to verbally or to abusing children, I think that the odds of them recovering are very, very low.
	They say that the personality is largely formed by the age of three.
	By the age of three.
	And 90% of it comes from environment and about 10% comes from genes and epigenetics.
	So, if the aunt is verbally abusing a four-year-old, it seems to me highly unlikely, highly, highly, highly unlikely, that she will listen to reason.
	Now, again, I don't know the woman, I don't know the situation, I don't know the listener, so I'm just telling you my completely ridiculous first impressions.
	You know, that having been said, it sometimes can be worth talking to the silent partner in an abusive relationship.
	So if the uncle is, you know, sort of beaten down by the aunt, then it may be worth talking to the uncle to see if you can help.
	But I think it's important to recognize.
	I think it's very, very important to recognize.
	It's extremely painful to recognize, but it's very important to recognize that there's very little that can be done.
	There's very little.
	I mean, obviously, if the child is in danger and the child is right, then you can call Child Protective Services or something like that.
	I don't know. Like, whatever is possible or available.
	But if it's something like verbal abuse and so on, I mean, there's very little that can be done.
	If the parent is not willing to listen to reason, if the parent is not willing to explore options about a more effective and better and, I would say, virtuous ways of parenting, then there's very little.
	There's very little that can be done.
	There's very little that can be done.
	I'll sort of give you an example.
	I think I mentioned this before.
	This Dr. Phil family has been on Dr.
	Phil off and on for like eight years.
	And they have had, I don't know, thousands of therapy hours, I would assume, pumped into the family.
	And the resources of, you know, all of Dr.
	Phil's staff and crew and Dr.
	Phil himself for eight years.
	He has been striving to make this family more functional.
	And the girl has gone from being 15 to, I guess, 23 or 24.
	She was pregnant at 15. And she's now kind of homeless.
	And there was some concern about her being addicted to drugs again or still.
	She's had three different kids by three different men.
	And so even Dr.
	Phil, with his immense resources and his immense personal education and obvious charisma and communication skills and abilities, Has been fundamentally unable to shift the tragic direction of this family.
	And that's a lesson, I think, to those of us who wish to attempt to step in and reform families.
	It is a very, very challenging task.
	So I would, you know, we want to hold out the belief that through words and through our examples and so on, that we can affect change in society.
	And I think we can. I really think that we can.
	But people have to want that change.
	You can't stop your aunt from doing what she's doing.
	You can't. If you can find a way to change her mind about the value and virtue of what she's doing, then if she's willing to put the work in, and it will probably take years, if she's willing to put the work in, then she can work to turn things around.
	And I think that anybody who tries...
	I don't care how unflexible you are, yoga is going to make you more flexible, right?
	If you can do it. And so I think that even people who've been unpleasant in this kind of way to children can turn things around, can make things better, can recover.
	It's just that...
	Getting them to want to do it, getting them to commit to do it, getting them to wish to experience pain.
	I mean, it's my genuine belief that abusers have a very, very low threshold of pain tolerance, which is why when they feel pain, they lash out, because it restores their sense of power they cannot handle.
	Pain. They cannot handle insecurity.
	They cannot handle rejection.
	And so they're constantly lashing out whenever they feel these things to smother up and to cover up their own feelings of inferiority and helplessness and worthlessness.
	And you can't change that in someone.
	If they're willing to do the work to get therapy, to get the resources they need to learn to manage their own discomfort and vulnerabilities and helplessness and negative, quote, negative emotions, then over a number of years they can work to become better.
	But you cannot affect that change in someone else.
	You can suggest it, you can model it, but you cannot make that change in somebody else.
	So I would strongly, strongly suggest, you know, if you feel there's an opening, and trust your instincts, in my opinion, right?
	If you feel there's an opening, have a conversation.
	See if there's anything you can do.
	You know, read some good parenting books.
	I think that's important.
	I think Parental Effectiveness Training is good.
	There are a number of other ones out there that are very good.
	Or that are good, I would say.
	And so that you can begin to model better behavior if you're around this child.
	And you can talk about it with your uncle.
	You certainly can talk about it.
	Obviously, you can talk about it with your aunt if you feel it's going to help or to work.
	But it is, you know, changing people is like standing on the shore And blowing with your mouth at a sailboat that is a mile away.
	The effect that you can have on others is so slight.
	If they're not motivated, there won't be any effect.
	In fact, it would probably be a negative effect.
	If they are motivated and the timing is right, I think that you can have a hugely positive impact.
	But just be aware of the limitations that you have in this kind of situation.
	I think that will help. Just following up with this person who asked a question.
	And he says it was helpful, and he expresses his thanks.
	I don't really have any other questions at the moment, so just last call for questions.
	Just while we're waiting for that, I wanted to mention that as a follow-up to the recent podcast, 1873 or something like that, on infidelity, a letter, I did get a follow-up letter from the listener, and just about everything that I said was true.
	So I just wanted to sort of point that out, that my psychic abilities run rampant like wildfire.
	Can you tell what I'm thinking now?
	I was, you know, many, many years ago, oh lord, I must have been, I don't know, six or seven, maybe eight, we found in the apartment building that I lived in, we found down in the garbage big stacks of reader's digests.
	And I used to, we took them upstairs and I would sort of read through them over the years.
	I liked drama in real life and I liked Laughter is the Best Medicine and some of the other stories that they had.
	I thought were pretty fun and pretty cool.
	And I remembered one just the other day that I thought of off and on.
	And it's always interesting to me to sort of try and remember, why do I remember this?
	Or try and figure out, why do I remember this one thing?
	Why do I remember this one joke out of the thousands of jokes I probably read in the Reader's Digest in the 70s?
	And it wasn't a joke exactly.
	I think it was life's like that.
	It was sort of, you know, cute little homilies or whatever.
	And the joke was something like this.
	Or the story was something like this. This old woman is looking for a street.
	And she walks, you know, she's in town.
	She walks down, you know, maybe a quarter mile.
	And she sees a sign for a street.
	It says, Orange Blossom. And she doesn't know where the street is.
	She's not looking for Orange Blossom.
	She looks for some other street. And she's kind of stuck.
	And so she decides to walk back to the town.
	And she sees a man standing on the street corner.
	She says, listen, I'm looking for, you know, Shady Lane Avenue.
	And he's like, oh, yeah, okay.
	So just go down the street.
	You see that tiny little orange sign there just way off in the distance?
	And she says, oh, the one that says orange blossom?
	And he's like, oh, my God, how good are your eyes?
	Yeah. Because it's a tiny, tiny little speck.
	But because she's already walked there, she knows what it says.
	And I think the reason that I was thinking about this yesterday, I think the reason I remembered that, is I think that's kind of a good or apt metaphor for self-knowledge, right?
	So I sometimes get praised for my...
	There's perceptiveness in calls, particularly, of course, in Sunday shows and listener calls, and I appreciate that.
	And it may appear somewhat magical to people at times.
	But it's only because they haven't walked down and seen the sign that says Orange Blossom up close.
	Once you've gone down and you've seen that sign and someone points to it and says, oh, the one that says Orange Blossom, they think it's weird and it's magical because they can't see it from where they are, but you've already been there and back.
	So you can see it.
	You know what it looks like up close.
	So you can see it from a distance.
	It just looks kind of strange to other people.
	So it's interesting that, you know, when I'm seven years old, I read this and remember it.
	And then at the age of 44, I realized why I remember it.
	Because it was a...
	Something that stuck with me because there was a very important truth in it that would help me, perhaps at the age of 44.
	So anyway, just very, very interesting the way...
	If you have things that you remember that are like needles in a haystack, I've always found it very helpful to try and puzzle out why I remember that versus everything else, right?
	So I watched a whole bunch of MASH episodes, and in one of them, BJ Honeycutt is talking to Hawkeye and...
	They're looking at a gun, and they're making jokes about it.
	And I think BJ says, it's humor of the highest caliber.
	And I remember that because when I was a teenager, a lot of my friends were very funny, but a lot of them were very angry.
	And the degree to which, as Tom Hanks says in a movie, I'm a comedian because I think nothing is funny.
	The degree to which people mask anger in comedy was something that I kind of got and remembered that one line, which I didn't figure out for years until years afterwards.
	So anyway, I think it's a useful exercise if you want to explore self-knowledge, figure out why you remember particular snippets, why they stuck with you.
	I find there's always something really valuable in there.
	All right, do we have any more questions?
	Should we shut her down for the day?
	Well, we have one question.
	Do you want to cap the show with that or just, you know, leave it as is?
	You know, if we were in the hood, that would sound like I'm thinking about that.
	Speaking of violent humor, angry humor...
	Just put a cap in that show.
	We're going to get medieval on it.
	Anyway, okay. So, any thoughts?
	Any tips on how to identify one's creative thunder?
	One's creative thunder?
	Hmm, one's creative thunder.
	Well, I think what jumps to my mind is Hitler.
	I'm currently reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, because, you know, nothing like a little light Jane Austen-style story to get you through the evening.
	But I remember reading a biography of Hitler that I read years ago when I was writing my World War II novel.
	That when he was a young man, of course he was homeless in, I think it was Vienna, Austria.
	He was pretty much a homeless bum when he was younger, after he was discharged from the military at the end of the First World War.
	And he went to a movie theater, and he was sitting there, and he was watching someone give a speech.
	And he jumped up and down, and he said, Oh my God, I know that I can do that!
	I know that I can do that!
	And tragically, of course, he was one of the, if not the, very best orator of the 20th century.
	You know, used for evil, and little but evil, but that's sort of basically a fact.
	And that always struck me, that you can see something that stirs you, that motivates you, that moves you, And that may be something that you're really good at.
	That may be something that you're really, really good at.
	So look at what you respond to in others, and that may be a bit of a key.
	You know, take the Hitler example.
	I mean, I know it's not the best metaphor, but it's the one that popped into my mind.
	Look at what you respond to.
	Look at what motivates and powers you.
	And I've always been fascinated by public speaking, by people who are really good at public speaking.
	I've always been fascinated by it.
	And I listened to...
	I remember when I was a kid, and I wish I could...
	I don't even know the name of the speaker.
	I think he was a black guy.
	He sounded black. And he was doing speeches about nursery rhymes.
	He did a whole bunch of stuff on JFK. I just remember him...
	Passionately declaiming, you know, we've got all these nursery rhymes where the children get injured.
	Why do the children always have to get hurt in nursery rhymes?
	They've got to fall out of trees. They've got to do this.
	I remember that being, playing, and my mom played that a whole bunch of times, and I remember listening to that, being quite fascinated by the power and passion of what he was saying.
	And I wasn't really sure that the content was too valuable or important, but I would have to listen to it again.
	And if anybody ever knows who the hell I'm talking about, he was some speaker in the 70s.
	It was in England. I think he was black, because I think we had, I think it was an album.
	I think he had a I think he was black on the album cover.
	But anyway, if anybody knows, I'd sure love to hear it again.
	But I've always been fascinated by people who are good public speakers.
	And so, you know, it wasn't too shocking to me when that turned out to be something that I could do a fair spin at.
	So, yeah, you can look at what moves you or motivates you or excites you with what other people are doing.
	You know, if you find yourself completely thrilled by a musical performance, then maybe that should be your thing, right?
	If you love karaoke, then try writing some songs and singing at a cafe or whatever you want to do, right?
	So if you read novels and you're incredibly passionate about novels and you really care, then maybe you should write a novel.
	So I think that's one way that I think can be very helpful or very powerful to find out what you're good at is to see what moves you that other people are doing and see if it moves you because you think you can do it or you can do it.
	I think that can be very, very helpful.
	So that's it for the last question, I believe.
	And as always, as always, I know I say this a lot.
	I mean it even more than I say it.
	I really, really want to thank everyone.
	Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for enabling this opportunity through your listening, through your support, through your donations, through your sending people to the website, through sending the videos around, whatever it is that you're doing, if you're doing anything, and if you're not, and just living...
	A better life because of philosophy?
	Thank you, thank you, thank you for that as well, because the conversation means nothing without your participation and commitment to virtue and truth and philosophy and reason and empiricism and all of those yummy for us and bitter for many others tasty goodies that we talk about in this show.
	It is, I really, genuinely, honestly can tell you that every single day I feel an immense and enormous privilege to be doing what I'm doing.
	I wouldn't trade it for the world.
	I wouldn't trade the effect that it's had in the world for the world.
	And it is an enormous, enormous privilege and honor to be doing what I'm doing.
	And it's all to do with your support, interest and enthusiasm.
	So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so much.
	I'd like to say the future thanks you, but that's maybe a bit grandiose.
	I'll just tell you that I, I, I thank you so much.
	And it has made my life a much, much better place to be, to be involved in this conversation.
	And I hope, despite the trials and tribulations, that becomes, or is true for you already.
	So thank you again so much, everyone.

▲