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June 5, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:55:10

1924 Freedomain Radio Sunday Call in Show, 5 June 2011

Adam vs the Man, is God the fool's way to gain self-love?, the entrepreneurship of starting a magazine, and why doesn't the free market work in immigration?

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	Hello everybody! It is June the 5th, 2011.
	I hope you're doing very well. It's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	This is the opening salvo of the Sunday call-in show, which you can join at www.fdurl.com forward slash chat.
	Pretty much any time around or after 2 to 4 p.m.
	Eastern Standard Time on Sundays. Just a few notes before we begin.
	There's an old joke about projects that when a project fails, the guilty go hunting for the innocent and blame them.
	And as far as the current financial crisis goes, I kind of noticed that there is an attempt to now pin all of these disasters on the objectivists and the libertarians.
	So somebody sent me a link to a British documentary called Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.
	Which, of course, is supposed to talk about how it was all of the objectivist and libertarian focus on getting smaller government and cutting taxes that has caused us this big problem.
	And that is something that is really quite fascinating.
	Even if you accept the link between Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve, and the economic crisis of the past few years, the reality is that both Ayn Rand and Alan Greenspan were very big fans of the Gold standard, which is non-fiat currency, and so the degree to which Alan Greenspan did not pursue that as a policy is the degree to which he had diverted or deviated from the Austrian slash objectivist approach to sound money in sound practices.
	So to blame objectivism and libertarianism for the current crisis is quite astounding.
	They talk about how Rand Paul was inspired by libertarianism and Ayn Rand and how Ryan, the budget guy, the Republican who's focusing on cutting some of the budget, that he's being driven by an Ayn Rand.
	In other words, that all of these austerity measures are now being driven by objectivists and libertarians, and that, you see, is the big problem.
	The other lie that you will hear about the current financial crisis is that it's tax cuts, primarily, that have caused the current financial crisis.
	It's tax cuts that have caused The deficit and the debt and this sort of mess.
	Which is really quite astounding because normally if you have a drop in your income, what you do, you see, is you drop your spending.
	So if you don't get some bonus that you were expecting at work and then you continue to spend like a drunken sailor, then to say that it was the fault of not getting the bonus, that there's the reason why you're more in debt, It's completely insane and lunatic.
	We never accept this from any individual, but somehow when it is spoken by the state or by the state-sucking-toady intellectuals and media pundits, it seems sort of believable.
	And so that, to me, is quite funny.
	The other thing, too, is that people say, if we repeal the Bush tax cuts, And look, I mean, I'm not saying whether they should or shouldn't be repealed.
	I mean, I think that you should just repeal all taxes, and certainly some of the Bush tax cuts do seem to favor the rich quite a bit.
	But let's say, if people say, well, if we repeal the Bush tax cuts, then we can get rid of the deficit by, you know, 20-whatever.
	How mad is that?
	I mean, how insane is that?
	People have to be so willfully self-blinded to imagine that if the government gets more money, That it's going to start paying down the debt.
	No, it's going to use that additional money as collateral to borrow even more money, to bribe even more voters, to go into even more debt.
	If you give the government more money, then it's going to go more into debt.
	If you look at how much the government income has risen since the post-war period, then if additional government income was a way to pay down national debt, then we should have A huge surplus and no deficit, let alone a debt.
	Because the government has many, many times more income than it did in the post-war period.
	And so giving the government more money is simply a way of giving a collateral to borrow more money.
	So the idea that if you repeal these tax cuts, you're going to get rid of the deficit.
	I mean, it's so insane.
	It's just random madness.
	It's the only word that I can coin.
	For it, and you've got to keep your eyes peeled for that.
	Now the other thing that you'll read, which I've been reading a little bit lately as well, is people say, well, what you don't understand, you see, is that taxes are the lowest they've been in years or decades and so on, right?
	And so they say that taxes are, you know, a few percentage points lower than in the 1950s, and therefore taxes are the lowest they've ever been, with of course the implication that taxes need to be raised.
	Oh, my goodness. Again, it takes a truly ideological, brain-warped, anti-intelligent stem of a mind to say this with any kind of seriousness.
	You see, deficits and debt are taxes.
	They're just deferred taxes.
	So when people say that taxes are lower than they've ever been before, without counting the deficit, That's completely insane.
	It's exactly the same as saying, well, I've cut my cash spending by two or three percentage points, but my visa spending has gone up five times.
	So basically, my spending is lower.
	I mean, try saying that to your financial advisor.
	And he's like, no, no, no, I've cut my, you know, my cash spending is down a couple of points, so I'm spending the least I've ever spent.
	And he's like, well, what about your visa bills?
	Oh, I don't know. Five, ten thousand dollars a month and I can't possibly pay them off.
	But don't worry, my spending is down.
	It's like, oh my god, how do you even talk to people who would say any of this kind of stuff with a straight face?
	Well, I would argue that the answer is, yeah, just plain can't.
	So anyway, I just wanted to mention that.
	Don't forget to go to Porkfest, P-O-R-C-Fest.com to check out.
	I think you can get some last minute tickets with my promo code.
	And I hope to see you there.
	It's going to be a lot of fun. I'm involved in some sketches.
	There's going to be a roast. I'm doing a Q&A session.
	I'm going to do a barn burner of a Morpheus style speech, which I've been working on and I'm really looking forward to.
	Don't forget to check out also freedomsphoenix.com for the new e-zine that they have produced.
	It's really, really very impressive.
	Tom Woods, Ron Paul, my little old self has an essay in there, which I'm very proud of, about the history of American education.
	I hope that you will check it out.
	It's available on your iPad.
	Your iPod and your little fingernail if it's sufficiently digitized.
	So I hope that you will check that out.
	And as always, don't forget, please, to drop by freedomainradio.com to check out podcasts, videos, articles, a great and flourishing board.
	We're almost at 10,000 members, 10,000 members, which is pretty cool.
	And you can, of course, also donate.
	For this ad-free, listener-supported, philosophical conversation.
	We just passed, last week, 6 million video views.
	We are closing in on 30 million podcast downloads.
	That is a hot, fat brain injection of concentrated philosophy into the frontal lobes of the world.
	And if you've been a part of helping drive that success, thank you, thank you, thank you.
	I like to think that the world thanks you.
	I particularly and especially like to think that the world in the future The future will thank you.
	So, I really appreciate your support.
	That having been said, let's move on with the show.
	Jamesy James, do we have listeners for the Steph Bot?
	We have listeners. I actually have something, if that's okay.
	Please. So, this whole dancing in front of the Jefferson Memorial thing, I certainly felt some ambivalence.
	When I say some ambivalence, quite a bit of ambivalence.
	I don't want to say exactly your praise, but certainly your support of him last week.
	And I spent some time thinking about it, and I also saw some people, some of my friends, talking about how they had some problems with it as well.
	Sure, and I can completely understand that.
	I think that's a very fair point to bring up, so please go ahead.
	Right, and so there's a question of effectiveness and all this business.
	The thing that got me the most was when people started using, like, morally smelling language to characterize what he was doing as wrong.
	Does that make sense? Sorry, what Adam was doing?
	What Adam was doing is wrong, yeah.
	That's wrong? Okay, go on.
	Uh-huh, yeah. Does morally smelling language make sense though?
	Yeah, I think I understand what you mean.
	It's not like outright moral, but it's definitely not explicitly I'm not stating an opinion or I'm stating that I disagree, is what I mean.
	There's a moral component to it that's sort of there.
	And so what I sort of was thinking about it was...
	Now, I'm still not completely resolved on it, but there is the whole part where...
	There is a reactivity to it.
	There's sort of an escalation to it that I'm not comfortable with.
	But in terms of the moral... Sorry, just to be as precise as possible.
	When you talk about an escalation to it, you mean to what Adam is doing?
	So, yeah. So, to be really precise in what...
	Or try to be really precise in what I'm talking about.
	When he...
	Goes to the memorial after someone else has already been arrested and dances and gets arrested himself.
	I mean, to me, that's an escalation of, in the moment, you know, he's not being escalated against him and he's going there knowing that that's going to happen.
	Yes. Does that make sense?
	Well, I don't think he knew for sure that it was going to happen, but there certainly was indications.
	I mean, just yesterday, I was talking to Adam last night, just yesterday, a whole bunch of them went back and nobody got arrested.
	Right, right. No, that's a fair point.
	So, I mean, I did think about it some, and of course, for me, the morality of it is clear.
	He's not the one doing anything wrong in that situation, of course.
	The moral context is the cops, you know, and the government, and this insane, you know, having a lot to do with this, this insane sacred nonsense, people crowing about that.
	And that's the moral context of the situation.
	It's a decision of your own whether to go there or not.
	Would you say that that's an accurate estimation?
	That it's, yeah, but let's, you know, don't pull any punches.
	Let's get to the core. I think you're dancing around a little bit.
	Let's get to the core of criticisms, right?
	So I've said in the past that I don't believe that civil disobedience is going to solve the problem of the state, right?
	Right, right.
	And a lot of people, and I guess myself as well, although I have a hard time sort of saying it, Seems like one hell of a contradiction there.
	Absolutely. Yeah, no, look, I can understand that.
	And look, I could be wrong. And I'll certainly tell you what my thinking is about it.
	Is that what Adam did has gotten him a huge amount of exposure.
	Like I saw him on the Huffington Post.
	He showed up on the Psychohistory.
	A channel that I'm involved with and he showed up.
	I mean, he showed up everywhere and he got, you know, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of hits on his video, which had the name of his show on it.
	And on his show, he's talking a lot about things that I... What he did was to publicize his show.
	I'm not saying that's why he did it.
	I'm certainly not cynical in that way.
	But what he did was he got a huge number of people to get interested in his show.
	And in his show, he talks about a lot of things that I think are very good and very true.
	And I occasionally will pop up like a gopher on his show to talk about things which I also hope are useful and true.
	And so, as far as getting eyeballs to get to a set of powerful and positive ideas, I think that it was very effective.
	Now, again, I'm certainly not saying that he did it as a publicity stunt.
	Of course not. But if it was just...
	Like, if he did it and didn't film it and didn't publicize it and so on and didn't draw more people to the show that he's doing, which I'm tangentially involved in, then I would think it would just be a kind of masochism and so on.
	But... But the fact is that he did, the mere act of getting arrested for dancing was in front of a memorial of a guy who used to skinny dip outside the White House and probably enjoyed shaking his boogie.
	Fist as well is so painfully ridiculous.
	It did show the gun in the room, right?
	I mean, I talk about showing the gun in the room and Adam went out and showed the gun in the room.
	So I don't think that it's a huge contradiction.
	I don't believe that civil disobedience is the way to solve the problem of the state in the long run, for sure.
	But I also believe that getting people exposed to the gun in the room and getting people exposed to Adam's show and to a smaller degree what I'm doing is a positive thing.
	And so, yeah, that's my approach.
	You know, again, it may be wrong.
	I may have miscalculated.
	I may be, you know, a brazen, hussy media whore.
	I don't know. But that's sort of the approach that I'm taking.
	Right, right. That makes sense.
	That makes sense. And to be fair, I did sort of think of a lot of that.
	Although I phrased it more in, if you'll excuse the expression, you don't shit where you eat.
	I think this is very consistent with what I talked about many years ago with the Ron Paul supporters, which is I have arguments that say there's another approach around self-knowledge and personal relationships that is going to free us in the long run.
	But I've also strongly encouraged people to pursue what they think is best in the freedom movement 150%.
	And, you know, say what you like.
	He definitely pursued what he believes in in the freedom movement 150%.
	And I've always said to people, you know, if you don't accept my arguments, that's fine.
	You know, my only encouragement is go full tilt boogie in the direction that you believe is best and find out if it works or not.
	So that's always been my position with people who are taking a different approach.
	I also, of course, I cannot claim to have a certain knowledge that the approach that I suggest is the best or the only way.
	I could be wrong. I could be wrong.
	And so I thought that what he did was a very powerful way of showing the initiation of force that the state has, that the state represents, because he was obviously doing something entirely peaceful, and he was aggressed against.
	That's pretty much the gun in the room, right there.
	And it got him a lot of exposure, which I think is good for his show and for his message.
	Yeah, so that's my approach.
	Again, you know, maybe it's a complete, you know, slutty-dom or whatever, but that's sort of what I was thinking of.
	Sure, sure. I feel like there's something else, but I don't know what it is.
	So, I don't know if I just want to sort of move on for now and just sort of let me think about it.
	Yeah, look, meld it over. If anybody else has criticisms or questions or comments.
	The other thing, you know, the other thing that I would suggest is...
	And you mentioned this at the beginning, so it's not really for you.
	But, I mean, this is big picture stuff, right?
	I mean, disagreements that I may have with people about civil disobedience and its efficacy in the long run and so on are like sunspots on the sun of the initiation of force that the state has.
	Right? So I think it's really important to focus on the reality there that neither Adam nor I were initiating the use of force.
	And the state representative was.
	And I think let's really, really focus on that.
	That, I think, is the important thing.
	Right, right. And the other thing I wanted to mention was on Wednesday night I was drawing a comparison between, you know, between the person who sort of does the masochistic thing versus someone who did what Adam did.
	So that's separation.
	When someone stands up to a parent who's not treating their child well or abusing their child or neglecting their child and whatnot, as I did once this past week, that's on the same side to me as what Adams is doing in terms of bringing the heat on yourself.
	And I think a lot of people have a problem with that.
	Yeah, look, there's no question that action that is takeable by an individual raises the stakes for being A freedom advocate, for being an anti-violence advocate.
	That's... I think that's what it is.
	I think that's what it was, that little...
	Yeah, and people will...
	I mean, people... And look, I mean...
	People will look to find ways to avoid personal action because it is so provocative and volatile, and they'll look for, oh, well, there's an inconsistency here, and I'm going to focus on that, or maybe there's a contradiction there, I'm going to focus on that.
	And it's not that that's not a fair thing to do, but I think we also need to be in the big picture.
	I agree with, I don't know, 90% of what Adam talks about, and he probably agrees with 90% of what I talk about.
	And that's a heck of a lot higher than the average person in the world.
	And so there are differences between what Adam and I believe, and I don't think that they're fundamental moral differences at all.
	I think that they are differences of strategy, so to speak.
	And I don't believe that differences of strategy should be divisive among groups.
	If we're all looking for the non-initiation of force as a general principle, fantastic.
	I don't believe that differences in strategy It should be that which divides us.
	I think differences in ethics, oppositions in ethics should be, I think, reasonably divisive.
	But I think the differences in strategy are not grounds for divisiveness.
	Right, right.
	I just want to sort of sit on that point.
	Just, you know, the point that really, you know, sort of landed on, landed for me, which I just said, which is the, I'll use the word avoidance, although, you know, what do I know if that's actually what's going on, but the avoidance of The actionable in your own life.
	Being able to do something in your own life raises that anxiety within you.
	I know that we've talked about that before.
	Oh yeah, it's terrifying. Our experience of it for ourselves and also our experience of other people doing that and what sort of lands, what sort of happens as that goes out.
	I'm pretty sure that was a little bit.
	I still need to process it, but that makes a lot of sense to me.
	And people who say, do X, They, like, do X to live your values.
	People will, I think, naturally, and I don't think it's a bad thing, I mean, they will automatically say, is this person living his or her values, right?
	So, I mean, one example that atheists are probably quite familiar is, you know, Jesus says, live poor and give your money to the needy.
	And so when the Pope preaches that little mantra...
	From his gold-plated popemobile while sitting on $30 billion worth of Vatican gold, there is a way, I think, of saying, hmm, you know, why should I follow an ethic that you yourself don't appear to believe?
	I mean, this is the argument I've made many times, which is that, you know, don't buy a diet book with the fat guy on the cover.
	Maybe he's got the best diet in the world, but he's certainly not working for him.
	And so, yeah, if somebody says, do X, then...
	I think it's good to be skeptical of that person's integrity in his or her own life.
	So if I said virtue is more important than relationships, and yet I surrounded myself with people who were, I don't know, statists and this and that and the other, then yeah, I think it would be reasonable to say, why are you preaching something that you're not living?
	So I think that skepticism towards The pronouncements of a moralist, for want of a better word, is valuable.
	But I think you can go too far in that.
	In that you start to look for things to nitpick at in order not to act.
	And I'm not saying you, I'm just saying people as a whole.
	And yeah, so that's my sort of argument about that.
	I encourage the Ron Paul people to pursue their political ambitions.
	I've encouraged the Free Talk Live guys to pursue their civil disobedience.
	And so I encourage Adam to...
	I don't know that it's a change in direction from what I've done historically.
	I just always, you know, because I think you have to just be committed to whatever it is you believe.
	I certainly, I don't think I've ever claimed that there's no possibility that anything else other than the approach that I take around, you know, therapy, self-knowledge, integrity, and personal relationships, I don't think I've ever claimed that it's impossible any other way.
	I've made lots of arguments as to why I think my approach is the best, but I don't think I've ever claimed that it's completely impossible any other way, and mine is the only way, and anyone who does it, who doesn't do it my way, is just bad, working for the enemy, wrong, immoral, evil, or anything like that.
	I've said these are my arguments, but you should pursue with the greatest vigor that which you believe to be the best, and time will tell which one of us is right.
	Right, right.
	Amen.
	Yeah, and I would just sort of like to extend, vicariously I guess, an invitation to people who maybe have this issue.
	Just come on, have a conversation.
	I mean... Yeah, listen, I could be wrong.
	I mean I may be motivated by You know, I'm happy.
	I enjoy the time that I spend with Adam on television.
	Max Keiser and I have differences of opinions about a large number of things, I'm sure.
	But we agree on a lot.
	And I've given him a venue through my show, which is, of course, less valuable, I think, than him giving me a half an hour almost on his show to talk about voluntarism.
	So, yeah, I mean, if I can't interact with people who don't agree with me 100%, I'm never going to meet any new people.
	I mean, clearly, right?
	Because new people are simply not...
	You can't download my podcast unless you've listened to them all.
	It's like, well, wait a minute. And agree with them all.
	I mean, that wouldn't make any sense, right?
	So, yeah, I believe that an overlap of shared values is very important.
	And I think that a shared goal is important.
	But I think that a divergence in strategies is not a reason for a split between friends.
	Yeah, I don't really have anything to argue.
	The only thing is, just the devil's advocate objection came to mind.
	Yeah. Where people don't, at least I haven't seen anybody literally say this, and maybe that's what they're saying in effect, but I haven't seen anyone literally say that you have to agree with them 100%.
	That who has to agree with who 100%?
	Sorry, that... That in order for you to have someone on the show and retain your credibility and consistency, that they have to agree with you 100%.
	I don't see that people are saying that.
	Right. What they're saying is Steph is not a fan, does not believe that civil disobedience is the effective way to change the world, and here he is saying to somebody, good job on your civil disobedience.
	Yeah, I mean, look, I completely understand that.
	I completely understand that. But to me, it's a more nuanced argument than...
	I've never said don't do civil disobedience, right?
	I've never said don't vote for Ron Paul.
	I've said here are the arguments against it, but if you don't accept my arguments, which, of course, everyone's free to accept or reject them or find them not compelling, then go vote for Ron Paul.
	Go do your thing. Adam is well aware...
	of my position on this, and he's choosing the civil disobedience route, so my argument is go for it.
	You know, go for it. Because, look, if I'm wrong, and the civil disobedience people are right, that's bad.
	Not that anyone would, but if people listened to me and said, okay, no civil disobedience, and it turns out that they're right, I don't believe that's true, but that's not a syllogistical proof.
	This is a question of strategy.
	So there's no syllogistical proof to say, I can prove 150% that this is the case, right?
	That the civil disobedience won't work and my approach will work.
	I think there are good arguments for my approach, but yeah, I mean, hey, if people want to do the civil disobedience route, then they should go 150%.
	And if they do a good job with the civil disobedience, and I think this was a very good job, then yay, you know?
	It's not a sport I think is fun, but I can certainly admire somebody who plays it well.
	Well, thanks. Thanks.
	Oh, you're welcome. And if people disagree, please let me know.
	I wouldn't want to be doing something that is inconsistent with best practices or good standards.
	So please let me know if you feel that I'm doing something that is hypocritical or inconsistent or whatever, and I will try to work it out.
	Did we have somebody on a question in the chat room?
	But there's also, I think, people waiting in line.
	We have several people on the call.
	Sounds like someone unmuted.
	Hello, can you hear me?
	Hi, I can. Hey Steph, it's Boris, or I guess Paris from the boards, and I just wanted to ask you, or I wanted to talk to you about God.
	Did you know that God loves you with all his...
	Sorry, I can't even keep a straight face.
	Listen, I was listening to This American Life with Ira Glass, and he had this new show, or he had this podcast about atheists in America, and in a really interesting section where the actress Julia Sweeney talks about her conversion from Catholicism to atheism.
	And in it, it was really interesting because she has a really honest and really visceral approach to explaining what happened to her.
	And it was really striking.
	Sorry to interrupt, but for those who don't know, you can get this on audible.com, which is a great website for audiobooks, in my opinion.
	I've listened to her audiobook called Letting Go of God, which is, I think, quite good.
	So, sorry, go on. Yeah, it's really interesting.
	She's very honest and she's very sweet and you really, really concide with her.
	And it's interesting because she comes from a Catholic background and it's kind of hard for most atheists to really empathize with what it's like to be really embedded in a religious group.
	And it got me thinking a little bit about the emotional and psychological dynamics that go on inside of a church group.
	And it led me to a conclusion that I found rather interesting and I wanted to get your take on it.
	The conclusion is God is just the fool's attempt to find self-love in a cold and hostile world.
	So if you look at the nature of God, He's all-loving, He's all-kind, He watches over you.
	I mean, this is the nice people's God, not the Old Testament God, right?
	The nice people's God, He looks over you, He cares about you, He wants you to succeed, He wants you to be happy.
	And in a world where, especially in a family where you're probably I think that's interesting.
	So, God is a fool's way to attempt to gain self-love.
	First of all, I have trouble referring to religious people generically as fools.
	Just because there's so much indoctrination in religiosity, it's sort of like saying that Soviet citizens in 1960 were really bad Austrian economists.
	Well, they hadn't had exposure to Austrian economics and they would suffer significant punishment or ostracism should they question the Marxist orthodoxy of the economics that they would study under the Stalinist Russian tyranny.
	So, I have a tough time calling people fools who have suffered from an enormous amount of indoctrination.
	So, people who are statists, they have suffered from an enormous amount of indoctrination.
	So, I wouldn't say that it's a fool's attempt.
	Now, I also believe though that as, I mean, with the internet, information is so quickly and easily available.
	That you really have to work, in a sense, to avoid information that is contrary to your worldview.
	I was thinking the other day, what's one of the reasons why free domain radio listeners are so intelligent?
	Well, I think it's partly because we have been exposed to endless amounts of information that contradict what we accept as the truth.
	And this is not the case if you are born into a religious community and stay mostly in that.
	Religious community and mostly reference the Bible and mostly read stuff that is friendly to your religious community and mostly watch preachers who are friendly to your religious community.
	You don't run into opposing worldviews in any substantive way.
	But if you're a philosopher, you know, we all start as programmed, you know, state and God bots, right?
	State bots and God bots.
	And so to reject those two delusions means that you have to really fight, fight, fight!
	Your way free of these ensnaring and enveloping folds of airless dogma.
	And that very process, that very activity, that very fighting for your freedom and for your independence produces a stronger and smarter people.
	To be exposed to an opposing worldview and to integrate it and to find the flaws in it, I mean, it just is going to make you smarter.
	And so, I think that people aren't fools for being religious, but if they do not pursue any information that contradicts their education or their indoctrination or whatever, then I think that they become progressively more foolish and avoidant.
	I mean, we can't help but avoid hearing or being exposed to endless arguments that are opposed to what we know is the truth.
	That is very different for other people who are more in the mainstream.
	So I wouldn't call them dumb, first of all.
	As far as self-love goes, there seems to be pretty significant psychological evidence that a person's idea of God is strongly related to his own personality.
	So people who are raised in more aggressive environments tend to favor the Old Testament eye-for-an-eye, punitive Jehovah, Thunderbolt, Zeus-style God, whereas people who are raised in more peaceful or perhaps even manipulative environments tend to focus on the gentle Lamb Jesus and so on.
	And of course the Bible, as an evolved instrument of social control, has room for everyone.
	Everyone can go on the ark and find what it is that they want.
	So I'm not sure that it's someone's desire to find self-love.
	because some people use religion as a form of self-flagellation.
	I mean, think of Martin Luther whipping himself in the 16th century, and you get a sense of what's going on with that.
	But I think what happens is that God is a projection of the unconscious, and I talk about this more in my free book, Against the Gods.
	And so I hope that you'll have a look at that.
	But it seems to me very clear that People project their own unconscious onto the clouds and onto the sky and onto the cross and call it a deity.
	And the unconscious has so much in common with God that it's, to me, a pretty open and shut case as to where concepts of God come from.
	But I certainly think that there is a reflection of the individual in the projection of God, but I'm not sure it's always about self-love.
	Yeah, I'd agree and I think you're right about the fool thing.
	I mean, I would probably call them fools if they're in their 30s or 40s and they really haven't looked at the opposition because at that point it's probably self-medication, but definitely younger people, yeah.
	One interesting thing that I noticed from the podcast, which, by the way, I really recommend everyone listen to, because it really gets you into the mindset of what it's like to come from the other side, and it's kind of heartbreaking, actually, just the things that she went through.
	But I just noticed that if you approach it from, especially with the kind Christians, if you approach it from an emotional standpoint, that it's...
	That, you know, they're always referencing God as a source of love and to be able to say that, you know, from psychological self-evaluation and from therapy, you can start developing a stronger connection with yourself.
	And, you know, God is not needed, just like Copernicus said when introducing the, I think it was the heliocentric solar system, you know, God is not needed.
	And same thing psychologically.
	Right, right. No, I think that's very true.
	But I also think that, of course, there's a lot of money in religion, and that's not something that people who are specialized in that field are going to want to give up without a fight.
	So you have a false belief that is highly profitable, much like statism.
	So I think there's an economic incentive as well.
	And, of course, one of the reasons I think that religion is still so necessary for so many people is because philosophers haven't done a good enough job of explaining religion.
	And focusing on secular ethics.
	And, of course, I've taken my best crack at that.
	Well, I guess my best at the time.
	There may be another better one down the road.
	But, you know, why should children do what their parents say?
	Well, that's a very important question.
	And we just went to the local Bread and Honey Festival with some friends we have here who we've met.
	Through Free Domain Radio, and they have two absolutely delightful daughters, and I think they're just a great family.
	And yeah, we had that conversation, I think, the first or second time we sort of sat down together, which is, you know, why should my kids listen to me and obey me?
	That's a big question. And I think that UPB helps a lot with that sort of stuff.
	And so I think that if thinkers can work more to give parents better tools to communicate with their children about virtue, Then you'll need less Santa and God, right?
	You'll need less Santa will bring you presents and God will put you in hell in order to get children to obey.
	Cool. Well, thank you very much.
	And I'll post the link to the Ira Glass interview in the chat.
	Oh, please do. Yeah, I appreciate that.
	Awesome.
	All right.
	And don't forget to unmute while you ask your question.
	And if you could mute when I answer, that would be excellent.
	Hello.
	Steph, yeah, basically I have a question about guilt.
	Two years ago I moved in with some friends and then I fell into a deep depression.
	And I just lost all motivation and I dropped the ball.
	And at that stage I just started freelancing and I pretty much made barely enough money to survive that year.
	And yeah, I was just late with rent and just a problem guy to be living with.
	And so I ended up leaving the situation because it was just getting too, you know, it wasn't good.
	It wasn't a good situation.
	And so for the past year, I felt really bad about it.
	Sorry, bad about what in particular?
	Oh, just... I felt like I'd let them down and that I felt like I should offer some kind of compensation for the fact that I was late with rent and that kind of thing.
	And just making all kinds of promises that I didn't end up living up to.
	And sorry, there's a bit of crinkling or rustling if you could hold a little still.
	Did you know at the time that you were not going to be able to live up to those commitments?
	Or was it a matter of I was expecting to get paid and I didn't so I couldn't pay my rent kind of thing?
	It was the latter. I basically...
	Yeah, because I was freelancing...
	I expected to get paid, but I didn't.
	Now, there were a couple of times where I would say, okay, I'm going to get paid at this point in time.
	And it was more like, if the work gets done, I'll get paid.
	But then I just wouldn't be motivated or something like that.
	And it just wouldn't get done as a result.
	And yeah, at those points in time, I started realizing that this is just getting worse and worse and obviously they lost faith in me and accepted the consequences of that.
	But it basically got to the point where So I just chose to leave at a certain point.
	I realized that it wasn't going to get any better.
	And in the last year, things have been better.
	Significantly, I moved in with a different housemate.
	He was a good guy and helped me be a little bit more Understanding of myself and get over the depression side of things.
	But I still haven't made enough money that I feel that I could pay some kind of reparation to my old friends.
	Sorry, are you still in touch with these people?
	No, I haven't spoken with them for around a year.
	And I've noticed that I feel guilty for any time that I take out for myself in the gym or visiting friends because I think that...
	Oh, like you could be working to get money to pay restitution kind of thing?
	That's it. And it's the same with...
	It's the same with any other times that I've pissed people off in the past, typically with completing something late.
	And I feel like I want to do something, but I don't have the resources to do anything about it.
	And I wonder, is it a good thing that I carry with me this sort of debt on my shoulder, rather than letting it go?
	Should I treat it more like paying off a bank debt rather than declaring bankruptcy, where it's something that I should carry with me until I can get it dealt with?
	Yeah, I don't know about the bank debt thing, but there's people in Ireland who just got their Children and children.
	Children sold into serfdom by the government and the banks.
	So we'll talk about that perhaps another time.
	But I think the one thing that strikes me...
	And look, first of all, I admire your integrity about this.
	I think that's really important.
	I know it's tough, but I think it's going to serve you well in your life.
	So I admire your integrity around this issue.
	And I think most people listening to this would say that there's a very good aspect to have.
	But I think you're missing something.
	Okay. And...
	I only think that. I'm not sure, but I'll tell you what I think and see if it makes any sense.
	Restitution or apologies is a relationship.
	Okay. And my concern is that you're carrying guilt for something without being in contact or asking the people who you feel that you've wronged their perspective or opinion on what you did.
	Oh, sure. So if you were to call these people up and say, listen, you know, I'm carrying this heavy burden because blah, blah, blah, I didn't pay my rent, and I was inconsistent, and so on.
	And I know it was inconvenient, and so on.
	You know, tell me what you think.
	They may say, oh, man, we haven't thought about that in forever.
	Like, let it go. It doesn't matter.
	Life, move on, right? They probably would say something like that, but I remember when I was living with them, there was one time where I basically said, you know what, I'm going to do something about this.
	I feel like I owe you something.
	And the girl was like, no, no, no, I don't really feel like I could take anything from you because you don't have any money.
	Right. Yeah, look, it is tough to give restitution to people.
	It really is, because we do have, in general, a tendency to minimize that which is owed to us.
	I mean, we just do, right?
	So let's say you, I don't know, they were big sports fans or something, and you showed up with a 60-inch flat screen TV and said, I'm going to put this on your wall as my way of saying sorry for last year, right?
	Let's say. I mean, I can almost guarantee you that what they'd be like is, dude, are you crazy?
	Like, no! No!
	Don't! Don't!
	I can, um...
	Okay, so...
	So you need to talk to these people about what happened and how you feel and what your experience is and what you want to do and what you hope to do.
	Because... Oh, I've done that before.
	Reciprocity... I'm sorry? I've spoken to them before a couple of times, but I felt kind of like...
	I wanted to... I felt like they didn't really care about words at that point because, well...
	No, but I mean now. I'm talking about now.
	No, I'm talking about now, assuming you have some capacity, to just say, look, I, you know, hopefully face-to-face, but sit down and say, look, I feel guilty.
	I feel like I want to make stuff up to you guys.
	Look, it may be something as simple as we'd like to be friends with you again and maybe you can take us all out for a night on the town, you know, which will cost you maybe two, three hundred bucks, right?
	Sure. Maybe that would be, you know, maybe they miss you more than they miss your restitution.
	I think it's during the course of this year I also, I realized I didn't particularly have that much in common with them either, but it was more my failure as a housemate than as a friend that was an issue to me.
	So it's not that you want to be friends with them or anything?
	No, I don't particularly want to be friends with them.
	Right. But I feel like it's the right thing to do, just to clean up behind me so that I don't have this feeling of...
	I want to look back at my life and say, you know what, I handled these situations well.
	Yeah, with honor and all that.
	I appreciate that.
	I think that's going to serve you well.
	Something just popped into my mind around this that I think it was last year.
	I'll try to keep this story brief, God help me.
	But when I first came to Canada, I lived in Whitby, and I was in grade 8, and then I went to Toronto, and they put me back in grade 6 for two really dull, dull years.
	And I was in grade 6, and there was a woman, a girl, of course, at the time, who was a year younger than I was.
	And we were friends, and we played Monopoly together, and we went to the playgrounds together, and we walked around together.
	She's really, really nice. Nice girl.
	And at one point, I remember this so vividly, I was leaning up against a chain link fence.
	That sounds like the beginning of a very young blues song.
	There I was, leaning up against the fence.
	And that landlady comes and says, you've got your rent money yet, sucker?
	And this girl came up and said, I want to go steady with you.
	Now, I didn't know what she was talking about.
	I honestly didn't. I honestly didn't.
	I had no idea. Go steady.
	Is that a town? Is that a ride?
	Is that a game? I don't know what that is, right?
	And I was too shy to cross-examine her about her colonial meaning of the word.
	So I just sort of fumbled and whatever.
	And we stayed friends for some time.
	I think she then moved away. Anyway, so this woman, now woman, she contacted me last year.
	Oh, wow. Yeah, she contacted me.
	And I said to her, I said, listen, name, I owe you an apology.
	Because yeah, I've thought about that.
	Okay, like months later, after she'd moved away, and I don't think she moved away because I didn't go, I'm just kidding.
	But months later, I was like, I found out what it meant.
	And I was like, oh, man, she must have felt terrible.
	I mean, how tough is that to go and ask some boy to go steady with you?
	And for him to not say yes and not say no, but just seem...
	Like he doesn't understand, right?
	Do you have a more intelligent friend I could ask about this?
	She may have thought, right? But anyway, so I did.
	I said, look, I owe you an apology because, you know, when you were this age and I was this age, you asked me this and I didn't know what you meant and, you know, and all that.
	And she, you know, oh, you know, I barely remember.
	It doesn't matter and so on, right?
	You know, things that I've thought about over the years, you know, I don't know if she was telling the truth.
	Maybe it mattered, maybe it didn't, but I was certainly happy to say it.
	But having the conversation with people is really important when it comes to restitution.
	Now, maybe they don't want stuff, right?
	Maybe there's no stuff that they want, and that's fine.
	Then you can say, listen, do you have a favorite charity I could donate X amount of money to?
	Do you have a course that I could do something for?
	Is there anything like that or something like that?
	I think that can be really helpful so that they get the benefit of your desire for reciprocity or desire for restitution and they don't feel then, every time they look at it, that it's a guilt-ridden offering from someone they don't really know anymore.
	So something like that. My thought is with that is, well, the girl's Jewish, so it would be money.
	But I would also make very...
	You mean money like a donation somewhere or just cash money?
	Probably just cash, but I'd make a focus on breaking it down.
	I'm sorry, I just wanted to pause on the she's Jewish and therefore it's about money.
	That may not be the most objective association that you might want to have.
	Well, no, no, no. Jewish communities can be extremely charitable, so she may have a favorite charity that she wants, that she would like you to donate something to, or something like that.
	So I just sort of wanted to point out that that may not be the most objective association to have.
	Well, she's a Jew, so it must be money.
	No, no, no, no. I meant in the context of like, just, yeah, sorry, out of the blue, that would have been, but yeah, basically she, yeah, I think she'd be responsive if I were to actually just do a clear breakdown of, you know what, in fact, there is some money owed to you, even if you just do some basic math, if you look at the number of times when bank fees might have been taken out of your account or whatever, just overall there is some amount of money there.
	Yeah, but just to remind you, Don't tell her that because you're Jewish, I'm sure it's about money.
	Otherwise, more restitution to do down the road.
	I'm sorry I stereotyped you according to very primitive Jewish stereotypes.
	But anyway, I just thought I wanted to mention that.
	She was used to that, but yeah, I wouldn't say that.
	Okay, that's fair enough.
	Thanks for that. When you mentioned that sticking to that honor approach and integrity will...
	That's a good thing. I felt really good about that, so I'll just stick to that.
	Yeah, because, I mean, restitution has a number of very valuable things, but one of the things that it has that is valuable is it discourages future repetition of the behavior, right?
	So if you have guilt and feel the need for restitution, then it discourages future repetition, which is usually a very good thing.
	Obviously, you wouldn't want to put other people out the same way.
	Anyway, listen, do you mind if we move on?
	I hope that that was... Great.
	Thanks, Seth. Alright, I appreciate that, and I hope it works that well.
	Alright, we have a question in the chat room, or we have perhaps a question online on Skype.
	Hello, Seth. Hi.
	Okay. I've got something that I could ask you for feedback.
	Basically, I wrote something this week about an event that happened in the past that I have some regret.
	Yes, I read that.
	Okay, you read it.
	I did. Writing that, I tried really hard not to be You know, self-attacky or guilting myself.
	So maybe I could just post it in the chat for people who haven't read it.
	Yeah, if I remember rightly, correct me where I'm wrong, that you were a summer camp counselor and there were Was it two girls who were fighting or a girl and a boy?
	Yeah, two sisters were fighting.
	They were fist fighting, like punching each other.
	And you pulled them apart and you felt that you may have held the one girl's wrist too tightly.
	Is that right? Yeah, well, it was like...
	That was voluntary.
	I did want...
	At the moment, I wanted to squeeze.
	And I regretted it the moment I did it.
	But still.
	Writing the post, I was asking myself, like, I tried really hard not to be self-attacking.
	And I still got a few messages, a few feedback saying, you know, go easy on yourself, man.
	So, I just wanted to ask you, basically.
	Am I being too harsh on myself?
	Am I being fair or too soft?
	Well, I think that that's an attempt to frame an emotional self-exploration that is I think a way of avoiding the actual feelings.
	Because if you're going to try and say, like, when I say framing, what I mean is, so let's say you feel sad, and then you sort of say, okay, well, is this too sad?
	Is this appropriate? Is this inappropriate?
	You're judging your emotion rather than experiencing your emotion.
	You're sort of jumping out of it and taking a photograph of it rather than sitting with it, so to speak.
	Yeah. So when you think of the incident that occurred, what are the feelings that come up for you?
	Not the judgment or...
	I know you talked about some of those, but what are the feelings that come up for you when you think of this incident?
	Yeah, I mean, I feel guilt and regret.
	I would categorize those more as judgments than feelings.
	Okay. So try it again.
	You mean... When I think about the incident or at the moment of the incident?
	When you think about it. I don't have anything else than regret and trying to justify it.
	Not just by it, but trying to put into the circumstances.
	Right, which is, again, a way of jumping out of it and trying to justify it.
	And usually what that means is that the emotion is very difficult for us, right?
	So when we judge it morally, or we try to frame it, it's usually because, in my amateur opinion, it's usually because we find the emotion itself unbearable.
	Really?
	Well, I don't feel it as unbearable.
	Okay, so what's the emotion then?
	There's... Well...
	It's tough, right?
	No, and I appreciate that.
	I mean, you don't have to do this now, but my suggestion would be that self-knowledge has to be judgment-free in order for you to get to the truth.
	I mean, I'm fine for moral judgments about certain things, right?
	External things, right? You know, some guy strangles a puppy.
	That's a bad thing to do, right?
	I've got no problem with that.
	But when it comes to self-knowledge, moralizing is usually the opposite of helpful.
	Particularly when our first impulse is to moralize.
	I did bad. I did good.
	That was great. That was, you know, that was immoral.
	That was right. Because that is going to...
	It's a way of jumping over the feelings to come to a conclusion.
	Rather than exploring the feelings, which I think is...
	Right? So, I mean, to take a silly example, right?
	So, some guy smokes marijuana every day.
	And he's like, duh, I'm a stupid loser for smoking marijuana every day.
	It's a stupid thing to do, he says to himself, or whatever, right?
	I just gotta stop.
	You know, it's killing my motivation.
	It's, you know, changing my friendships.
	It's costing me money. It's pathetic.
	It's immature. It's, you know, ridiculous or whatever.
	Well... That doesn't help him with why he's smoking marijuana, right?
	Right.
	That's just a finger-wagging put-down about what he's doing.
	And it doesn't, you know, moral judgments don't gain you any knowledge about motives.
	And that's fine, I think, in certain situations, but when it comes to oneself, knowing the real motives is the key to freedom.
	Otherwise you're just lecturing and nagging yourself and not truly understanding yourself.
	Right. And I'll tell you another potential insight that may be of value if that's okay.
	Sure. And we'll just talk about parents here.
	It could be any number of authority figures, but the shorthand will just, you know, authority figures, we'll just call them parents.
	I have found in myself, this may not be universally true or whatever, but I'll just tell you and you can tell me if it makes any sense to you.
	When I have a strong urge to morally judge myself, particularly in a negative way, when I unpack it and I really understand it, It's usually because self-empathy leads to substantial criticism of my own authority figures in history.
	And so, in a way, I'm damning myself so that I don't experience the emotions which damn others.
	And it's their, in a sense, implanted alter egos that are heading me off from genuine self-empathy so that they don't end up feeling criticized.
	And I think that's to some degree embedded in what you posted where you said, you know, if I felt this bad for two seconds of being harsh with a child, how must people who really hurt children over a long period of time, how must they feel?
	Yeah.
	Right?
	And so if you don't judge yourself, but rather experience the emotions, then I think you can experience how different you are then I think you can experience how different you are from people that you've known who've hurt children in the past.
	I mean, when I accidentally bump Isabella, you know, she has this ninja, cat-like ability to, you know, be right behind you.
	She was like, literally, in two seconds, she teleports in a silent way from one side of the room to the other.
	And suddenly turn around, and it's like when you're carrying groceries, the cat is always trying to curl up against your feet.
	So, you know, it hasn't happened a lot, but, you know, a couple of times I've sort of turned around and bumped her, like I've taken a step and bumped her with my knee or something, and it's like, not enough to hurt her, but, you know, she's obviously startled and she's upset.
	And I'm like, oh, I feel so sorry.
	that's purely accidental and it's very rare, but it's like, oh my god, I'm so sorry that I did something that caused you some harm.
	If I'm changing her diaper, right, and seeing her naked body or whatever, thinking of people who put children, sometimes even as young as this, over their knee and spank them, I mean, it's completely unthinkable.
	And it helps me to sort of get a sense of the gulf between myself and people who've, you know, hurt children in that kind of way.
	And not sort of done it and felt like, oh my god, that was a bad thing.
	I've really got to not do that again and got the help that they need and so on.
	But have, you know, hardened their self-justifications and decided to continue this as a self-righteous course of virtuous action.
	I mean, it's a different planet in my opinion, right?
	So it could be that the reason that you would judge it is so that you don't experience the horror of what it is to hurt or frighten a child, even in a situation where there's fistfights and going on, which, you know, I mean, it's not like you just sort of walked up to a kid and whacked them in the head, right?
	I mean, this is a situation of extreme stress and extreme duress.
	And, of course, you were not historically prepared for this kind of stuff in any way, shape, or form.
	So I think to try and not do that and to say, okay, let's pretend that there's nothing wrong with what I did.
	How do I feel about what I did?
	Because I also believe that the stored-up regret of people who hurt children shows up in a family somewhere, and it often shows up in the most sensitive person.
	So you may be experiencing an avoidance of stored regret from others that they have not themselves experienced, right?
	I remember reading somewhere that nothing has a greater impact on a person than the unlived life of his or her parents, in particular his or her mother.
	And if the unlived life is a life of virtue and improvement, then that I think can be a great challenge emotionally.
	Yeah, and someone in the chat talked about sadness, And someone in the chat talked about sadness, and there is definitely some sadness when I think about that incident.
	And yeah, it's probably like the sadness that I was never taught the right way to deal with that kind of incident.
	Right. And even, of course, that that incident is occurring, right?
	I mean, the sisters are having fistfights, I think, speaks, you know, speaks a fair amount of volumes about what they probably experienced at home, or at least witnessed.
	Yeah, yeah, totally.
	So yeah, I would try and stay clear of the judgment and really work on just experiencing the emotions as simple as they are and see where they lead.
	I think that's the most...
	I mean, that's my suggestion.
	I mean, obviously, it's just my amateur hour opinion, but that's what I have found most productive in my life is to say, I'm going to put these judgments aside and just see where these feelings lead.
	And I have found that when I put the judgments aside and see where the feelings lead, the feelings lead To a place with an implicit criticism of a person in power, a person in authority.
	Yeah. Well, thanks for the tip.
	I will certainly look into that.
	Yeah, look, I hope it helps, of course.
	And if it doesn't, then just give me a ping or a post on the board and I can try something else.
	But I would give that a shot.
	Thanks. You're very welcome.
	And again, I want to applaud you for your sensitivity about these kinds of issues.
	I think it's extremely noble and a good and virtuous thing to do to view these kinds of regrets.
	Well, thanks. You're very welcome.
	Right. I'm sorry to the is philosophy a science questioner.
	I just want to make sure I get to the people who've been hanging on the line, but I will get to that before the end of the show, I promise.
	Unless we have nobody hanging on the line.
	Going once. Alright, so this person has written, is philosophy a science?
	A good rule that all science is connected into one big web.
	If philosophy can join that web, it will be good proof.
	Physics uses math.
	It's implicated in biology.
	The inner ear, for example.
	It pretty much is the only driver of astronomy.
	It competes with chemistry. We don't know how sugar behaves like a gas because its molecules collapse under heat.
	It's also used in geography.
	I was in the process of getting an answer.
	That is a great question.
	I would not characterize philosophy as a science itself because I would not equate it to physics exactly.
	I would place philosophy as an umbrella over the sciences and all other rational discipline, including things like economics and so on, you know, with its praxeological assumptions or axioms, you know, like two people who voluntarily with its praxeological assumptions or axioms, you know, like two people who voluntarily trade must both expect to benefit more than they lose I mean, so, or, you know, in any fixed system, an increase in the money supply, all other things being equal will drive inflation.
	Those are sort of praxeological essences to at least the Austrian school of economics.
	So I would not characterize it as a science because that would be to say that philosophy is somehow equivalent to physics, and I don't think that is the case.
	So physics, physics I say, physics has been a number of different approaches to physics have been tried throughout history of course.
	Physics is the mind of God.
	Physics is the rotation of God's perfect spheres.
	Physics is whatever is said in the Bible.
	Physics is, right, so it took a long time You know, Francis Bacon's 16th century and onwards, it took a long time for science to evolve into the scientific method as we more or less know it today.
	So, I don't believe that it's fair to say that philosophy is like physics, because I believe that it's a rational philosophy that says That argues and I think proves that the scientific method is the only valid way to understand reality.
	So if for a religious person, reality is the mind of God, then theology is a kind of physics.
	Because you're trying to understand the mind of God and the mind of God is reality, so struggling to understand reality is theological.
	Now, I think a rational philosophy says, no thank you, not so much.
	And that is a problem.
	Whereas a rational philosophy says that, I mean, physics is not striving to understand the mind of God.
	Physics is striving to understand the behavior and properties of matter and energy and the effects thereof.
	And philosophy is the one that says that.
	And philosophy is the one that says that if you want to understand the world, you have to use a scientific method.
	You have to compare your theories to reality, and reality trumps theories every time.
	So if there's a contradiction between theory and measurable or testable reality, Then it is the theory which must give way and you do not abandon the data for the sake of the theory and so on.
	These are all philosophical arguments or perspectives or you could even say axioms.
	So I would not say that these human disciplines in the physical sciences are equivalent to philosophy.
	I think it is philosophy that says that the scientific method is the way to go if you want to understand reality.
	It's not the mind of God.
	It's not tea leaves in the teacup.
	It's not chicken entrails in the hot Caribbean sun.
	It is the scientific method, reproducibility and logical consistency and so on.
	I think this is what philosophy does.
	So I think philosophy for me is the all discipline that organizes the other disciplines into What is true or false or valid or invalid in those disciplines?
	So rational philosophy says that the scientific method is the way that you find out whether a scientific theory is valid or invalid, is true or false.
	And so I think that would be my approach to that.
	that I hope that that helps and we have we have somebody else Yes.
	Hello. Hello.
	Hi Steph. How are you doing?
	I'm very well. How are you? I'm great.
	So my friends and I are thinking of starting a magazine revolving around well-being, personal growth and relationships.
	And I was just wondering, do you have any advice about how to go about this?
	Like how to make it as successful as possible?
	I probably have some ideas.
	If you think they would be helpful, I can shoot a few past you.
	Yes, I'd be glad to hear your opinion.
	Well, first of all, congratulations.
	I think that's very cool.
	It's very entrepreneurial. It's very helpful.
	Obviously, you know, good mental health, good physical health, all things that contribute to the virtue and happiness and benevolence of the world.
	So I first of all wanted to just say that's thrilling and exciting.
	And congratulations. You sent me an email about this too, right?
	And I think I suggested that we call in.
	So good for you and good for your friends.
	I think that's very exciting.
	And you can't lose with that kind of project.
	I just wanted to say that up front.
	Yay! Good for you. Thank you very much.
	Anyway, don't ever use that phrase in the magazine because it will sound too dated.
	Well, I guess the first question is that I would ask for any sort of media thing is who's your audience?
	Mainly university students.
	We're trying to start on campus because that's the best way to get funding for now.
	And university students is a pretty generic term, right?
	There are millions of them throughout North America, so what more specifically would you be focusing on?
	We haven't really thought about that, actually.
	Basically, we've been just asking random people what they think about if we started a magazine like this, would they read it?
	And we've had positive feedback from that.
	Right, okay. So, you know, my suggestion would be, look, I say this as a guy who started podcasting with very little idea of his audience.
	So, you know, please, this is a hard one.
	Knowledge, but when you start a venture like this, I think the great challenge is that you're going to have to produce something, and only then are you going to get feedback on it.
	Okay. So it's like a TV show, right?
	You shoot the pilots and then you, I guess with TVs they have test audiences or whatever, right?
	But eventually you just, you push it out onto the TV and then you start getting feedback.
	Or like a movie, I guess, right?
	So a movie, you finish the movie and then you go and get criticism of it and by then it's too late to usually to change the movie, right?
	Right. And so my suggestion would be to, you know, get just a few sample articles together or even outlines or drafts of articles or a bunch of different articles.
	You know, get people, you know, buy them lunch or whatever and say, you know, have a quick look at these.
	Which are the stories that interest you the most?
	Are there any categories of stories that you'd like to see that aren't in what it is that we're looking to do?
	You know, just that kind of stuff so that you get a sense of what people...
	What kind of stories do people want to read?
	I think that could be really helpful. Another thing that could be helpful, of course, is to get some free market research by going to other wellness magazines or publications and seeing one of their top stories, because they've done this kind of work for sure, right?
	I mean, if you go to these sorts of shape magazines or health magazines or parenting magazines, they've done their research.
	I mean, they don't put stories that nobody cares about on the front page.
	So you'll get some sense of what people are interested in from that standpoint.
	And the other thing that I would suggest is to try and figure out, you know, the great challenge of entrepreneurial activity is differentiation, right?
	So if I wanted to say, I want to launch a magazine about working out, then, you know, investors would say to me, well, there are already 20 magazines for working out in your business.
	Local area. And so what is the difference between 20 and 21?
	Why should we invest in you rather than take your money and invest in these existing magazines to expand or something like that?
	And so you have to have an answer, which is, you know, why us?
	Why our publication as opposed to something else or somebody else?
	And I think if you can come up with a differentiation, I think that Will really help.
	Like, with my show, it's been first principles, first principles, first principles.
	Always first principles.
	Or at least as often as I can remember it and stomach it, right?
	It's first principles, first principles.
	And that is, that's sort of been my mantra.
	And I think that differentiates this show from, you know, other kinds of shows that are out there.
	So I go to first principles, you know, no matter whether it's comfortable or uncomfortable, whether it feels good or bad, whether this is just first principles.
	And so I think it's important if you're the only free wellness magazine on campus, that's a little easier.
	But even then, you're still competing with every other magazine or publication that people can pick up.
	But there's lots of free stuff, of course.
	People get free subscriptions to magazines on campuses.
	There are free newspapers everywhere.
	Websites on their iPods or iPads.
	So you've got a lot of competition when it comes to getting eyeballs.
	And I think the challenge would be to come up with some sort of mission statement or some sort of...
	It seems sort of cheesy, but I really think it can be helpful in making decisions.
	To have a plan.
	You know, why are we doing this?
	What are we hoping to achieve? How will we know if it's successful?
	And why should people read us rather than, you know, go online and read Shape Magazine for free?
	Or I don't know, whatever. I'm sorry if I'm miscategorizing what you're doing.
	But, you know, why us rather than anybody else?
	What's different about us?
	And I think that kind of stuff can be really helpful.
	And it doesn't mean you can never change it.
	It just means that you have some...
	Goal in mind that is adjustable as time goes forward, if necessary.
	But that would be those those sort of my suggestions if that helps at all.
	Okay, well, our idea is basically to start conversation.
	It's not really for anything, for any reason, really, other than that.
	Tell me what you mean by start a conversation?
	I don't know, just to get people talking, really.
	About what? About, like, Personal growth, things like that.
	I just think that conversations revolving around that are really productive.
	I agree. Now, sorry, again, this is putting on my investor hat.
	I would say, well, are you looking, like, is your audience people who are already in the process of personal growth and want to get more information about it?
	Or is it for people who have no experience with personal growth to entice them to To pursue personal growth, right?
	So if you were putting out a magazine about dieting, then I'd say, okay, is this a diet book for athletes who want to optimize their performance and already know a lot about nutrition?
	Or is this for your average chunky monkey who wants to take 20 pounds off their middle or something like that and knows little up to nothing about nutrition?
	Because the content of the magazines would be very different.
	The level of expertise would be very different.
	The approach would be very different.
	So in the first instance, you kind of have to sell people on why they need to lose weight, whereas in the second one, you don't, because athletes already understand that you need to not be fat to be an athlete.
	You need something else. So would you think it would be focusing more on people who are interested in this topic already, or would it be focusing on getting people interested who aren't yet?
	We haven't really thought about that, actually.
	Would it be wrong to try to do both, or would it be better to focus on just one?
	Well... That's a good question.
	I think... Yeah, I mean, it depends on how much space you have.
	I mean, if you've got a two-sided pamphlet, then doing both might be a bit tricky.
	You certainly can try both, but it might be better to try one and see if it works and then switch to the other if it doesn't, if that makes any sense.
	Which one do you think would be best to start off with?
	Well, it definitely is easier to sell information, and I know you're not selling it, but it's easier to get people interested in information if they already know something about it beforehand and already have an interest in it.
	Right, so you take your model railroad magazine to a model railroad store because you don't take it to the disco because the two demographics are not likely to overlap.
	Right. So yeah, if you have, and so if you'd say, well, I want to talk to people who are already interested in self-help, Well, great.
	Then, you know, you take it to the counseling centers, you take it to the, you know, student psychology union or whatever is going on, or you hand it out in psych classes or whatever.
	So people, you know, they're getting information that is already in alignment with what it is that they're doing.
	And that, I think, can be very effective in terms of where you publicize it.
	Now, if you're not publicizing it, if you're not aiming it at people who already have knowledge and pursuit of this kind of stuff, then you'd have different content, of course.
	And you might have something like, I remember interviewing Chris Boyce about the benefits of therapy.
	You can look at the interview if you want.
	It's on YouTube. And that's more like, why should you even bother about self-knowledge?
	Well, there are these and these and these benefits, right?
	Whereas people who were, say, already in therapy or already pursuing self-knowledge probably already accept that there are significant benefits.
	And of course, if you're going to say, well, I want to focus on people who don't know much about self-knowledge or its value yet, then You will be putting it in different places, so to speak, around campus to try and get people's interest.
	And you may have different graphics or different lead article and so on.
	So, again, I don't know what the answer is.
	But these are questions that are helpful to ask, even if you end up just dismissing them and saying, well, this isn't important.
	We're going to do both. At least you've thought about it.
	And I think that's very helpful. Because, look, the great temptation with entrepreneurship is just go do stuff.
	You know, like, let's just write some stuff.
	Let's put it out and see how it goes.
	And I think that it's worth sitting down and asking these kinds of questions because if it works and you don't have a plan, it's very tough to reproduce it.
	It's like saying, well, I'm going to just go to the golf ball.
	I'm going to go to the golf course and I'm going to hit a hole in one.
	Well, you know, once every 50 years, you're going to do that.
	And you're like, yay, right? But you can't reproduce it.
	And so if you have a failure and if you don't really have a plan and you have a failure, you won't really know why.
	And you won't really know what to adjust.
	If you have a plan and you have a success, then it's very hard to reproduce it because you don't know exactly what worked, so to speak.
	So I think it's worth asking these questions.
	They will give the publication some more definitive shape.
	And if it's not as successful as you hope, then you can adjust and redo.
	And if it is as successful, you can figure out what worked the most and focus on that.
	You know, just that kind of stuff.
	All right. And would we be able to come to you for a short article once we get started?
	Well, yeah. I mean, if you tell me once, again, if you want something from me, I would be very happy to write something.
	If you can just give me, if you come up with any sort of plans, you just give me a brief synopsis so I know sort of who I'm talking to, then I would be happy to.
	Awesome. Yeah, we have bi-weekly meetings, so, and we have like meeting minutes online and stuff, so.
	Yep. Well, yeah, if you could just do me a quick favor to just summarize what kind of audience you're talking to and so on, I would be certainly happy to contribute something.
	Okay. Thank you very much.
	You're very welcome. And best of luck.
	Best of luck. I say these things not because I want you to have less fun doing it, but because I want the fun you have to be more sustainable.
	So I hope that they're helpful.
	Yeah, it was. Thank you very much.
	You're very welcome. Good luck with it.
	Thanks. Hi, Steph.
	I spoke just before.
	Is it right for me to speak again, or is there someone else who'd like to speak?
	I don't know. Do we have somebody else, James?
	Oh, I think James may have drifted off.
	Go for it. Yeah, my question's about empathy.
	Basically, I was reading up about it on Wikipedia the other day, because I always figured that I had it.
	By looking at the definitions of it, they are all different and they were all kind of vague as well.
	Some of them were as simple as stepping into another person's shoes, and some of them were empathies intellectual, so you have to take on someone else's worldview and understand how they're thinking, and that's fine, I can do that.
	Sometimes they say you can pick up other people's feelings in a conversation, and yeah, I've had that too.
	But I was kind of left with the impression that only true empathy is when you actually imagine yourself physically inhabiting the body of the other person, Seeing things as they do and genuinely feeling things as they do, which seems like some kind of brain-stealing superpower or something.
	If that's possible, is that something that should be aimed for or is that not it?
	What is it? What's the boundary of what empathy is and what it isn't?
	It's a great question. I love it when I get the Vaseline-soaked curveballs.
	That's a great question. Alright, if you could just mute because we're getting your...
	It sounds like a mouse is attacking your inner ear, but it's...
	I mean, I've talked about this before, so I'll just touch on it briefly.
	Empathy to me is differentiated from sympathy.
	So there's a belief...
	That some people have the belief that if you understand the causes of somebody's behavior, you will always sympathize with that behavior.
	To a ridiculous extreme, it's like if you could see Hitler being beaten every day for his childhood and molested and God knows whatever else happened to that monster, then you will have more sympathy for him and you will give him the love that he needs or the sympathy that he needs and he will be a better person and so on.
	And I'm not of that.
	I'm not of that particular opinion.
	And I think there's lots of good evidence as to why that is sentimental rather than a scientific or accurate or wise perspective to have.
	So I differentiate empathy from sympathy in that you can empathize with someone while still being afraid of them.
	So if some crazy guy is trying to pick a fight with you in the bar, you will feel Afraid and angry and you'll fight in flight makers and we'll kick in.
	But you're not happy. You don't sympathize with this desire to pick a fight with you.
	You empathize with that desire.
	And I think that's an important differentiator.
	Because a lot of times when people mean empathy, they mean sympathy.
	And I think that's really, really important to differentiate.
	So many years ago I was involved in a film promoting the desire for women to feel safe walking around at night.
	And women who are walking in the dark at night and some mouth-breathing guy is slinking up behind them, then they're going to feel nervous because they feel that there may be some ill intent behind what he's doing.
	And that is empathy without sympathy.
	So I sort of differentiate these two.
	I don't believe that it's possible To get into somebody else's head and feel what they feel.
	I don't think that that's, you say it's mind melded, you know, maybe that's some sort of fusion, I don't know.
	But I don't think it's possible to get into somebody else's head and feel what they feel.
	I think that's not quite the same as empathy.
	I think that's something quite different.
	And that seems to me a dissolution of the rational boundaries of the personality to too significant or too much a degree.
	And I think it's a kind of fantasy. I think people who genuinely believe, well, I feel what other people feel, They may be a bit grandiose about their capacity for empathy.
	And they may be projecting, right?
	That they feel something, and therefore the other people feel something.
	So, no, I don't think that's the definition of empathy.
	I think that empathy, to me, would be something like an accurate emotional comprehension of somebody else's emotional state or intentions.
	Something like that. So if somebody wants to do you harm and you think that they want to help you, then that's not being empathetic.
	And if somebody wants to do you good and you perceive that they want to do you harm, that is not being empathetic.
	That is being locked in your own history or emotional baggage or whatever.
	So I think if you accurately understand or you accurately experience in a second-hand way somebody else's emotional Experience or intention.
	I think that's a good sense of empathy.
	So empathy is sort of like language, right?
	So if I speak Mandarin, and someone comes up and says, I want to strangle you, then I'm going to experience negative emotions, let's say.
	And if somebody comes up and says, I want to donate to your show, I'm going to feel probably something a little more More positive.
	Because I've accurately understood their language, their words.
	And so if you've accurately understood somebody's emotional experience or intentions, I think that's a very good application of empathy.
	I don't think that you have to necessarily feel what the other person feels.
	Because I don't think that that's necessarily good or healthy.
	So if somebody feels a great and irrational anger towards you, I don't think that you want to feel a great and irrational anger towards yourself, or a great and irrational anger towards somebody else.
	You want to feel that their anger is great and irrational.
	You want to sort of understand that or process that, but you don't think you necessarily want to feel it in the same way that they're feeling it.
	If somebody really has a great deal of affection for you and you don't feel the same way towards them, then you don't necessarily want to experience what they feel because what you experience is different.
	They feel a great affection for you, you don't feel a great affection for them.
	So, I don't think you want to inhabit the other person's skin to that degree, because that is to say that all our emotions should be the same.
	But I think you at least want to understand that they have a great affection for you.
	But I don't think you want to replicate other people's emotions, because that is to put your own emotional experience...
	To one side and to experience the other person's emotions directly, even if that were possible.
	I don't think that would be particularly healthy and that doesn't leave a lot of room for contradictory emotions.
	Like someone wants to hurt you and you don't want to be hurt.
	You want to have both of those understandings, I think, in your mind so that you can adequately protect yourself.
	I hope that makes some kind of sense.
	Yeah, that was really helpful.
	Thanks for that. Because it reminds me of a lot of your podcasts where empathy is memory.
	Because I noticed that if I felt, when I'm empathizing with someone, I tend to refer back to a situation where I felt the same way in the past, or where something happened to me similar in the past.
	Is that, I mean, but I've never really had...
	Yeah, and you've heard me do that, right?
	You've heard me doing that.
	I was talking today about a time when I felt regret and a desire for an apology and a restitution with someone.
	And I've talked about that before.
	So to make sure that I'm I don't think you ever really want to assume that you've got what the other person is saying until they've confirmed it.
	And so I think that there's just a constant check back.
	I think the people who assume that they know what I'm thinking and feeling, I find kind of dangerous.
	I find them to be kind of unhealthy.
	I think that's not really, really useful at all.
	Sure. Because then they kind of don't have to talk to me because they already, quote, get what I'm all about.
	And it's like, well, I don't think you do, and I'd rather you just talk to me, blah, blah, blah.
	Anyway, so I just want to mention it. Someone's done that to me before.
	It was very frustrating. But yeah.
	All right. Thanks. Oh, yeah. People who say, well, I know your real motives, even if you don't.
	Really kind of annoying. Yeah.
	All right. Well, I'm glad that it was helpful.
	Yeah, it was. Thank you. Bye.
	All right. All right.
	What is it about sports, someone says, that make people act with such fervor and turn out en masse in support?
	Why don't people do this with things that matter?
	Oh! Amen for that as a question.
	You could take 1% of the emotional energy frittered away and waste it in sports, and you could cure the ill health of the planet as a whole.
	Well, sports is propaganda.
	All right, sports is... It's tribal programming, right?
	Sports is the reinforcement that...
	And sports is a form of warfare, right?
	It's a ritualized form of warfare.
	I mean, you have this... You have geographical proximity equals virtue, right?
	So my sports team is the best or should be the best or is the one I must cheer for because I happen to be born close.
	Well, that's a direct analogy to my country is best because I happen to be born here.
	You have opposing costumes just as you do in war.
	You have zero-sum game winners and losers just as you have in war.
	There are even injuries, though, of course, not as bad as those in war.
	And so the government subsidizes sports because it entertains people with stupid shit that doesn't matter.
	It creates false dichotomies, right?
	And what I mean by that is I remember thinking this as a kid.
	My brother and I used to go to these picture shows down the road.
	I think they were 10 pence, 10 pennies.
	I guess it'd be about 20 cents or a quarter.
	And we'd watch a couple of cartoons.
	There'd be a little short movie. And I remember one of the short movies was a sports team, typical story, you know, down and out.
	They get a down and out coach and they turn around and it's a whole league of their own and they get better and there's no crying in baseball and that sort of stuff.
	And I remember walking out and saying, well, that was sort of stirring, but if the camera had been at the other side of the field, it would just be the opposite story.
	That's the team you then want to win and so on and blah, blah, blah, and this and that.
	And so, yeah, sports is kind of stupid.
	I love sports. I love playing sports.
	I'm quite sporty myself in the philosophy circle.
	I am Sporty Spice.
	And so sports is subsidized by the state because historically it has given people a chance to practice local, tribal, geographical allegiances, and it has given people the desire to cheer their own team and make sacrifices for their own team.
	Which translates into supporting your army against everyone else.
	And so, yeah. And it keeps people enmeshed in stupid, inconsequential shit their whole lives.
	I really dislike sports fervor because it just means that people aren't doing stuff that may actually do some good in their lives.
	And of course, sports is pretty parasitical in the way that it is now.
	Stadiums are subsidized. Sports teams are subsidized.
	It's pretty wretched.
	I mean, that having been said, I mean...
	I don't mind watching a good tennis game.
	I mean, I like tennis.
	I'm not too bad at tennis.
	And so I like, I mean, watching human excellence is pretty cool.
	And so I don't mind watching sports.
	But the idea that, you know, we should beat the Romanians, I mean, it's a kind of cheap artificial drama.
	You know, it's like movies set in the boxing world.
	You know, it's just, it's a chill. The cop shows.
	It's just, it's cheap artificial drama.
	And I think that people would be better off talking to each other about Truth and virtue and things that really matter rather than, you know, spending all afternoon not talking to each other in front of a TV set.
	And it's addictive. There's no question it's addictive.
	So it follows the same pattern of addiction.
	The highs and the lows, it's a gambling addiction.
	Because sports is a form of gambling where you don't even get to put your cards down, right?
	Because whether people win or lose has a lot to do with accident and circumstance and this and that.
	And it's outside of your control, and so you...
	It's like the...
	I guess you put your chit on the roulette wheel, on the table.
	I don't even know how roulette works.
	The thing goes round and round, and you hope that you're going to win, and it's out of your control once it starts going, and so you're hoping for something that's outside of your control, and you get a high, then you get a low, and if you get a high, you want to pursue it more, and if you get a low, you want to pursue it more, and so it's very addictive, and this is, I think, one of the problems that happens with sports...
	Let's see here. How will free speech be guaranteed in any system?
	Any property, common or private, is controlled by someone so that someone can censor anybody who he wants.
	Could you censor someone showing holes in your theories?
	The same goes for commonly held media.
	This is a general secretary.
	There is a general secretary, a chairman, a leader of the party that runs a show and gets rid of just trolls or if he gets corrupted, everyone who disagrees with him.
	Well, look, I mean, you've got to be very precise, I think, about what censorship means. About what censorship means. The censorship is not refusing to provide a platform for people to insult you, right?
	I mean, that's not what censorship is.
	If I bring a megaphone to a rally and some guy who hates me says, give me your megaphone so I can call...
	You an asshole to everyone, and I don't give him my megaphone, am I censoring him?
	No, of course not. He could bring his own damn megaphone, but I'm not going to pay for a megaphone that then somebody's going to use to insult me.
	No, of course not. So censorship to me is a status thing.
	In other words, in the absence of the state, there is no such thing as censorship.
	In the absence of the state, there is no such thing as censorship.
	Censorship is the initiation of force against someone for voicing opinions.
	I mean, probably more complicated than that, but it's sort of a very brief way of looking at it.
	And so, without the state, who's going to initiate force against someone for voicing their opinions?
	Well, I guess someone could punch someone on a street corner For saying that the world is round, but that would really be the actions of a crazy person, not really any kind of organized censorship.
	So censorship is, you know, like Solzhenitsyn ended up with 10 years in the gulag because he wrote critically of the army to a friend of his.
	That is censorship.
	And that is immensely evil.
	It is the initiation of force for the expression of an opinion.
	And of course the punishments that Solzhenitsyn received were just savage beyond imagination.
	And although if you want to get them, he does talk about them extensively in the Gulag Apicalago.
	So the initiation of force against somebody for the expression of an opinion is a status thing, almost exclusively.
	And I don't think you want to equate that with I don't like, like I don't want to work hard to create a forum or a chat room where people come in and say stupid insulting stuff, right?
	I mean, that's not the same as censorship at all.
	That is an exercise of property, right?
	So if I invite a friend over for dinner and he brings a friend who starts yelling insults at me and I say, listen, you're going to leave my house now because you're just like a rude, nasty person.
	Am I censoring him?
	No, of course not. I'm not initiating force against him.
	I'm exercising my property rights.
	And so I think that's perfectly fine.
	Now, of course, if I start censoring people who, and I think this is more interesting in terms of what you're saying, if I start censoring people who are poking legitimate holes in my theories.
	Well, I can do that.
	And what's wrong with that? I'm not initiating force against anyone whatsoever.
	I'm not going to say that that's actually with the greatest integrity.
	Of course it isn't. But if somebody finds, you know, some massive hole in one of my arguments and I then just ban that person, then I'm still not initiating force against them because it's my server.
	I'm paying for it through the kindness of donators.
	And I'm still not initiating force against them.
	I'm just removing them from my property.
	And that would be the equivalent of somebody who comes to my house for dinner, brings a friend, and that friend then pokes a hole in one of my theories, and I say, well, that's it.
	You're going to have to leave. Well, I'm still not initiating force against him.
	I'm simply exercising my property rights.
	So that would not be censorship.
	That would not be censorship. And unfortunately, people use this term just way too widely.
	And it's a very, very volatile and frankly, I'm not saying in this context, but quite insulting term to use.
	So if somebody gets kicked off a message board, ah, there's censorship.
	No, it's not censorship. There's no initiation of force whatsoever.
	There is merely the exercise of property rights.
	Now, what prevents that from occurring?
	Well, Hopefully, it's the integrity of the admins, right?
	So if somebody comes up with a big hole in one of my theories, right?
	So let's say that somebody comes up with a study that is valid, that proves that child abuse makes people better and happier.
	Well, that would be a pretty important finding.
	And there would have to be a way to square that with the circle of all the other studies that show quite the opposite.
	But... I think that if I banned someone and removed that post, if I banned someone for coming up with a study or something that contradicted the arguments that I've put forward, that still would not be censorship, no initiation of force, but I think there would be a price to be paid for that in terms of my credibility with the community, right?
	So just as I believe when I say you should not associate with abusive people, or I don't think it's a good idea to associate with With abusive people, I would lose credibility if I did not remove abusive people from the environment that people have come to discuss philosophy in.
	I mean, that would not be living with integrity.
	If I was just like, oh yeah, you can just say whatever abusive crap you want and I'm not going to do anything about it and so on, that would be to not hold true to the values that I believe in and have advocated.
	So if I act without integrity, When I have talked a lot about the need for integrity, well, I'm free to do that, of course.
	And people are then free to say, hey, Steph, you know, as James did, I think quite legitimately earlier on in the conversation, say, I'm not sure that you're acting with integrity.
	It's like, great, you know, let's have that conversation because my goal is to be true, not to be right, so to speak.
	And so those are great.
	They're great comments, great questions.
	If I'd have said, oh, James, you break it up and cut him off or whatever, then yeah, I think people would legitimately say, well, Steph is not responding to a legitimate criticism and a fair criticism in a reasonable and rational way.
	There would be a price to be paid for that.
	And I think that price would be very fair and very just.
	So I hope that helps.
	Oh yeah, since James is controlling the call, I would be the one who would be banned.
	And then I would be censored.
	Censored! I tell you.
	It's all part of my plan.
	It is all part of my plan.
	Hey, I see what you did there.
	It's not your plan, it's mine. That's right.
	I empathize with your evil.
	Just a comment I had earlier, just a throwaway comment, sort of, but I think empathy is really confused, especially in popular society.
	I'm just reminded of, like, on Star Trek, they have the Beta Zs, which are empaths, and every time, they're all feeling the other people's emotions, and even, like, Bill Clinton's thing, I feel your pain, that sort of thing.
	So it gets really confused.
	With something else entirely not having to do with empathy, but that people call it empathy.
	And what's that two things? Can you expand on that?
	I don't know if I have a word for it.
	It may be more than one.
	It may be more than one. Bullshit.
	That's a word. I'd have to think about that.
	I mean, they call it empathy, but at least in the case of Star Trek, it was overacting.
	Right. I mean, when it came to the political thing, I mean, it's just empty words, because you don't actually feel the pain.
	Yeah, I don't have anything.
	Maybe someone in the chat has a suggestion.
	Yeah, I mean, the Bill Clinton's I Feel Your Pain kind of thing, his dewy-eyed bubba magic, as I think Dennis Miller put it, it's, you know, it's very powerful.
	You know, people really do want to feel visible emotionally.
	They do want to feel understood emotionally.
	And so it's a very powerful thing.
	And who was he up against?
	Bob Dole? I mean, I think, again, I'll quote everyone else, like...
	Yeah, Kate Fillion said Bob Dole could no more emote than he could fly.
	And I think that's sort of a great way of putting it.
	It is very powerful, but because it is very powerful, it is very dangerous, right?
	I mean, you can get a lot of manipulation out of that, right?
	So people who want to control you will, you know, give the love bomb or that we get it, we, you know, we really understand, we know, we blah, blah, blah, right?
	Like, I remember, this is going to sound kind of stupid, of course, right?
	But I remember standing with Izzy in a mall, watching that kind of ferret-faced guy who does those slap-chop commercials, you know, with that little microphone off to one side.
	I can't remember his name, anyway.
	I think, yeah, anyway. Vince.
	And he was... Is his name Vince?
	Okay, Vince. That's perfect. Vince it is.
	And he was just doing his patter, you know, and he's got a good patter.
	He, you know, he gives a good sales patter.
	And... He was saying something like, and it really struck me, he was saying something like, you know, you can chop salad, you can have your chopped nuts, you can have your chopped fruits, there's no need for any pain, you've had enough pain in your life already, and then he went on and on and on, right?
	And it's just like, what?
	You've had enough pain in your life already?
	From rotating knives, from like, what is that?
	But it's kind of powerful, right?
	Because... If people feel like they've suffered a lot and then somebody just throws that thing in, you know, they're automatically going to feel more positive towards the speaker.
	It's probably why he got the gig on TV. It may be conscious, it may be not.
	But if you feel like you have suffered a lot in your life and then this guy says, you know, no pain, no fuss, no mess, you've suffered enough in your life already.
	It's like, oh, I have.
	I need one of these to take away my pain and perhaps one of my fingers.
	Anyway, so I just wanted to mention that.
	I'm sorry, I don't quite understand the question that somebody just posted in about completion.
	Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm still here.
	I'm just waiting for another question or whatever.
	Or is it time to read the YouTube comment of the week?
	I think it is. I haven't had one of those in a while.
	Yeah, no kidding. And, you know, Izzy Stories.
	Yeah, I'm sorry, I haven't touched on.
	Izzy Stories. Oh my god.
	Okay, I'll do a YouTube.
	No, I want YouTube. Okay, it's a cool, easy story.
	This just, to me, is amazing.
	So, she's going through this phase of just amazing, creative, imaginative play.
	And we were at the park the other day, and I was lifting up a bucket full of heavy sand, and the handle fell off.
	It came off the bucket.
	It's just a little plastic handle, like half a ring with these two little, I guess, roundy things at the end.
	Anyway, so we're playing around for a while and, you know, doing stuff.
	And anyway, so then she picks this up and looks at it for a moment, this handle of the bucket lying on the ground.
	And then she puts it around her waist and she says, I'm flying like Buzz!
	And she started racing around the...
	This is the playground, with one arm out and one arm holding it.
	And it took me a moment to realize that, I think it's in Toy Story 2, Buzz gets a utility belt.
	The dinosaur says, the pig says, hey, where'd you get the cool belt, Buzz?
	And he says, well, slaughtered pig, they're a standard issue.
	And so I realized that she was putting the belt on so that she could be Buzz Lightyear.
	And so I repeated the lines back to her from the movie, and she just fell down laughing because she felt visible.
	I got it. I got that she was being buzzed because of the utility belt that she'd seen in the movie.
	And then she was climbing up.
	There's a series of, I guess, levels.
	I sound like Kramer. Levels in the play center, and they have these holes drilled in them, I guess, so that the water drains away from them.
	And so she took this...
	She took this bucket handle, she was climbing up these levels, and then she put the one end of the bucket handle into the hole, and she pulled it out and she says, I caught a fish for data!
	It's like, fantastic!
	I'll take some fish. I like a fish.
	And I thought that was really cool.
	And then after we did the fishing for a while, because we saw people fishing recently, so after we did the fishing for a while, she stood up and she She started raking it along the bars at the top of the playground.
	And she says, Dada, I'm playing xylophone!
	Although she didn't quite, xylophone is still a bit of a tough word.
	And so she was now, it was a musical instrument, and she was playing.
	And I just thought, like, this was all in the space of a few minutes.
	These three, to me, very imaginative ways of playing with a broken bucket handle.
	So it sort of makes you wonder why you buy toys at all.
	When you could just find bits of garbage and they would just, you know, be all kind of excited by all of that sort of stuff.
	So, anyway, that's the Izzy story of the day, which I thought was just, I mean, she's just too delightful for words.
	I guess we have another few minutes if anybody else has any thoughts.
	Well, we actually also started on time today, which is early for our track record.
	So, you know, we're actually at the length of a show, you know, average show lately.
	So the only thing I would guess mention is anything that's coming up, you know, barbecue appearances, anything like that, the crews?
	Yes. As far as the barbecue goes, we're going to actually hold it on the Saturday afternoon at the hotel.
	We've got barbecue stuff set up there.
	It's roomier because I think it's just going to be too many people for the house.
	And also it's going to give Izzy a chance to have her nap, which is sort of around the barbecue time.
	It is 7897 McLaughlin Road, M-C-L-A-U-G-H-L-A-N Road.
	So you should go there.
	I believe it's officially starting at 3.
	It goes from 3 p.m.
	to 11 p.m. James, are you doing a Wednesday night show?
	Yes. It's been something I've been thinking about for a while, so I'm doing a Wednesday night free-for-all kind of show.
	If people want to come by and call in, feel free.
	I will be at Libertopia.com.
	San Diego, California, October 21st to 23rd.
	I'm the MC, so it's going to be all staff all the time.
	I think it's going to be entertaining.
	I'm also, of course, going to be speaking.
	And you also should check out LFNYC.com because on the 10th of September 2011, I will be speaking in New York City.
	And I believe I'll be headlining with Bruce Springsteen at Massey Hall.
	No, something similar to that.
	So you can go to there and please, please sign up.
	And come and see.
	There's going to be lots and lots of great speakers.
	Tom Woods, Mike Church, Jack Hunter, Adam Kokesh, Gary Franchi, and other people who I'm vaguely familiar with.
	And a guy named Maine South, which is an odd name.
	No, sorry, that's where it's at.
	So I hope that you will come and check that out.
	Do a lot to support.
	Listen, I mean, people are having a tough time with some of the libertarian gatherings this year because the economy is tough and so on.
	So obviously, you know, you need to eat.
	You need to have a food roof over your head.
	But if you can help out people like that, I think that would be great.
	Oh, yeah. I have Kindle books.
	So you can go to fdrurl.com forward slash Kindle.
	FDRURL.com forward slash Kindle, and you can get the books for your reader.
	I'm afraid I couldn't make them free.
	That's not allowed, but I did put them as the cheapest human possible price, which is 99 cents.
	So I hope that you will pick those up, and I hope that you will enjoy them.
	And of course, if your device has the ability to read PDFs, you can get them for free from the Free Domain Radio website.
	And yeah, sorry, the new website is taking a while to get going, but we are...
	We're going to get back on the case.
	I do believe. I do believe.
	If competition is such a reliable matter, how could the US government grow?
	Instead, we should have seen a global shrinking of government to US size because people free from authoritarian countries, they try to start to mimic more successful policies.
	Well, that is a good question.
	That I would sort of answer by saying, okay, so let's say that the lions get the best food in the zoo.
	It's like saying, well, why don't all the animals go to the lion's cage to get the zoo, to get the food?
	Well, because they're in a cage, right?
	It's really, really hard to leave a country.
	It's really, really hard to get to another country.
	Some of it is statism. Some of it is culture.
	So there are language barriers.
	If you want to go to another country, there are immigration issues.
	There are There's transferring money issues.
	There's continuing to have to pay tax in your old country issues.
	There are significant barriers to moving to another country.
	This is less true in the EU. And of course, I mean, this is not to mention the fact that, you know, friends and family and schools and all of this sort of stuff, the communities are all local.
	So it's a big deal.
	Things have to be pretty bad for people to leave the country.
	There is some of that happening. A significant number of people have left Ireland recently.
	Because particularly the young, they see which way the wind is blowing, that they've just been sold into serfdom for the next generation or two.
	There's democracy for you.
	That was a midnight thing, no vote, right?
	But when the government decided to guarantee all the bank losses.
	A number of them have come to Canada or other places, so I believe that it is occurring.
	It's significantly less than it used to be because of the barriers that have been raised against people moving from country to country, so...
	Yeah, and unfortunately, there's really not a place where you can go to.
	I mean, in the past, it was pretty clear.
	I mean, you lived in Eastern Europe in the 19th century, and you went to America, you were getting some significant chunk of freedom.
	There is no new America, unfortunately.
	It's harder. It's harder, harder, harder to find these sorts of things, and that's why it's occurring less than it used to.
	How will the Mafia be countered so the Don doesn't become a dictator or king?
	It's hard to ostracize and enforce it with a gun to your head.
	Well, you want to make sure that you don't mistake the effects of statism for a cause in a free society.
	The Mafia exists because of the state.
	The Mafia is the shadow cast By the state.
	And I think that's really, really important.
	The mafia exists because prostitution is illegal, because gambling is illegal, because drugs are illegal, and other forms of human vices are illegal, and that's why we have the mafia.
	There was no mafia to speak of in America prior to prohibition, and the organized crime would virtually vanish, would go to more restrictive locations, or would turn an honest living if These things were ever legalized, and I would not at all underestimate the degree to which organized crime is promoting the war on drugs.
	I mean, they're not dumb people. I realize I didn't say the time of my show.
	It's 9 p.m.
	Eastern, standard time.
	Eastern time. And how do people join?
	Just pop into the chat, and I put it on the streamer, and I've been using the BlogTalk Radio account, but I don't think we're going to be using that, so I'll just be basically a Skype call.
	Fantastic. Yep.
	Fantastic. All right.
	Well, thanks, everyone, and thank you to the fellow who just sent in a nice donation.
	I really, really appreciate that.
	It makes my day, and it gives me great strength, courage, and fortitude in some of the challenges.
	So I really appreciate everybody's support.
	I can't tell you how much I look forward.
	It sounds completely geeky, but I absolutely, completely and totally look forward to...
	Speaking with you people, I start looking forward to it about Friday.
	And I count the hours because it is so much fun to chat with you brilliant, brilliant people.
	And it is a real honor to be part of such a community.
	It's a real honor to get people's trust and to remember that just about everything that I say is an opinion.
	So take it all for what it's worth.
	But I really do appreciate people's trust and support.
	And, you know, things are cooking.
	I was on TV, what, three times?
	Over the last week or 10 days.
	So that's pretty cool.
	And that's all because, you know, I've done some good stuff, but mostly because you all have been very supportive in what it is that I'm doing.
	And that means everything in the world to me.
	And I hope that you're pleased and proud of what's coming out of your support.
	So thank you, everybody, so, so much.

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