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July 3, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:07:30

1942 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show, 3 July 2011

Greg and Charlotte getting married - philosophy on a first date, libertarianism and mafia burgers, the ethics of late DVD returns, and the economics of blamelessness.

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	Hi, everybody. It's Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio.
	It is July the 3rd, 2011.
	I just did that in my head. I hope you're all doing very well.
	I'm sorry for the last two weekends, which I know were a Nazgulian, Stygian abyss of philosophical bereftedness because there was no Sunday show, except for James, who I believe did a great job.
	And I'm going to give a chance to review those, heckle him appropriately, and we'll probably put those out.
	So thanks, James, for taking over and rendering me entirely redundant.
	Thank you. To Sarfan Curtis, to Chris Lawless, to Adam Kokesh, and to Carla, the Queen, for the invitation.
	And thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyable.
	It was a great time at the Porcupine Freedom Festival.
	Strongly, strongly recommend that everyone come down to that.
	It was incredibly family-friendly this year.
	Fortunately, the Kids Interactive Fireworks display was not put out this year.
	that they had a bouncy castle, which I believe thoroughly a step in the right direction.
	So really, really strongly recommend it.
	It's just great.
	I mean, I particularly loved seeing the children there.
	These were the nicest kids that I've ever met.
	I mean, to the point where my daughter is playing in the playground and there are, you know, six-year-old boys helping to, spontaneously helping to organize the swing rotation among the younger children in the very past, helping them on and off the swings There was no pushing.
	There was no grabbing. Every kid that I met was alert and smart and wise and kind, and I just really, really wanted to thank the parents, which is a ridiculous thing for me to do, of course, but I'll do it anyway, to thank the parents for For the wonderful work that they're doing to have these amazing kids come into the world.
	And so kudos to the parents and just a wonderful time.
	Thank you so much for the organizers for having me down.
	If you want to check out my attempt at a come-to-Jesus speech, which I think came up fairly well, you can go to fdrurl.com.
	And check out my speech, which I did after the roast.
	Thank you also to the roasters who made some wonderful jokes.
	Surprisingly, at my expense, I wasn't aware that was going to happen.
	But I struggled through.
	No, it was really, really enjoyable.
	I had a real blast.
	And thank you everybody who put the time in to come up with some seriously funny material.
	And thank you everybody who worked on that.
	That was quite a lot of fun.
	And I hope to be on the giving rather than the receiving end next year to just about everyone.
	So I hope that you will come to Porkfest next year.
	And for those who, I guess the more than 1,000 people who came, thank you so much.
	It was really, really great to meet everyone and really, really appreciated the conversations I had and some truly fantastic food.
	Minor news update.
	The case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn seems to have hit a bit of a hurdle.
	And since I had talked about him briefly before on the show, I thought I'd give you an update.
	His accuser's credibility appears to be taking a bit of a whack in that she said to her boyfriend in jail, a convicted drug dealer, which, of course, doesn't mean much to an anarchist, but means a little bit more to the general population, that don't worry, he's got lots of money.
	I know what I'm doing. And there seems to have been some hits taken to her credibility.
	He's now free without bail, which compared to the, what was it, six million or something that he had before, five million that he had before, and ankle bracelets and ferrets attached to his jugular, should he ever move outside of a small radius, that was a pretty considerable change.
	I don't know what conspiracy theories are floating out there.
	I'm sure there's quite a few.
	But there's been no contradiction of some of the physical evidence that they found semen in the hotel room and so on.
	So maybe he did have sex with this woman.
	Maybe it was consensual. Who knows?
	If it does turn out that he had sex consensually with this woman who then turned out to be...
	I guess a bit of a troll. You could put it that way.
	I think it just falls into the Julian Assange school of, you know, it's not usually a good idea to bang people you don't know.
	It's just you can get some socially transmitted diseases like...
	Massive cave-ins from the U.S. legal department or massive cave-ins from other legal departments in England and so on.
	So it's usually just a good idea.
	You know, word to the wise, don't go around being a man-whore and banging people you don't know.
	Now, of course, there's times where people's identity should remain a mystery.
	I mean, obviously, if you're role-playing with your wife or your fiancé or your girlfriend, you know, you're up in the roof.
	One of you's in a Sasquatch costume.
	Nobody knows really who's under the Minnie Mouse mask.
	So there's times where I think it's highly appropriate, but I think strangers in hotel rooms, not usually the best approach for maintaining your liberty and credibility.
	So just a word to the wise, I wanted to sort of pass that out.
	A wee reminder that the barbecue is happening end of the month?
	End of this month is July.
	So July, the weekend of the end of the month.
	You can go to amiando.com forward slash barbecue.
	FDR2011 for more information.
	We're actually going to hold it at the hotel because there's too many people, I think, for the house.
	And we also want to make sure that darling Izzy has some space to have her naps and isn't overwhelmed by the mass influx of great listenership.
	So we're going to have it actually at the hotel.
	So make sure that you check there.
	So again, it's amiando.com forward slash.
	FDR 2011 for more information about the barbecue.
	Please, please sign up over the next few days because otherwise, I mean, you're welcome to drop by.
	You just may not get much food because we have to start ordering and preparing everything for that.
	So just a listener appreciation.
	You know, there's no charge for entrance, no charge for food.
	We just want to meet and greet everyone to say thank you for all of your support.
	And have great conversations.
	So I hope that you'll be able to come by.
	The hotel's on a beautiful location.
	There's, you know, rolling plains outside.
	There's a river nearby.
	It's a really nice place.
	And so, and rain or shine, we're set for the location.
	So I hope that you will join that.
	Last mention for Liberty Fest 2011, I will be speaking with my betters.
	September the 10th, 2011, I hope that you will come by.
	And I guess the Liberty Cruise is now sold out, so that won't be occurring.
	But you can, of course, check me out and, of course, others at Libertopia.org, which is in October in San Diego.
	So I hope that you'll be able to join us there.
	I think that's it for news and news.
	I wanted to actually just...
	We've got some friends visiting.
	You may know them if you have listened to Free Domain Radio for some time.
	They have shown up in a wide variety of podcasts, notably because they seem to have hacked the password to the website.
	And I don't know.
	They've just done some freaky stuff.
	But they've done some great work in the conversation philosophically and in the pursuit of self-knowledge.
	It is Greg and Charlotte.
	And... They are going to get married in September and we're going to be thrilled to be there and they have very kindly agreed to move their marriage date to September 11th, the day after my family is in New York, because they found that...
	They wanted to have that anniversary for reasons I can't quite understand every single year.
	And also they found that marriage halls were substantially cheaper, I think, on September 11th, particularly if in high towers.
	So, yeah, I mean, I think it's enormously thrilling.
	I think they're going to talk a little bit about...
	How philosophy has affected their relationship and their journey because you could really count Freedom in Radio as about the toughest dating site in the known universe.
	And I think it's just perfectly thrilling.
	And we've had a couple of other marriages.
	Rod Zilla, who you may remember from podcast past, has also been married.
	We have another listener who's on the tech team who's getting married in September as well.
	In New York. And we're all perfectly thrilled about all of that.
	So it's just great to see all of this.
	Love is in the...
	Anyway. It's all just great to see all of this sort of stuff.
	And so since they're visiting, I thought they'd be...
	Ask them if they'd be kind enough to share a few thoughts.
	And so I'll turn the video off and we'll go on with the show.
	But if you're watching the video, you can of course listen to the podcast.
	This is the Sunday show for July 3rd, 2011.
	And I guess we'll turn it over to Greg and Charlotte now.
	So... Go!
	Yeah, so I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how philosophy got you here, if it's had much influence on your relationship, if it's been mostly an impediment you'd have to get over, and all that kind of stuff.
	Sure. Do you want to go first?
	So, I guess a little bit of history first.
	Please. Yeah. I mean, I knew Charlotte from the boards.
	This goes back to 2007, 2008.
	We weren't really friends, but we interacted a few times.
	And... Sure.
	And... So...
	Yes.
	So I... I don't know what to say.
	I'll let you go. Sure.
	So we knew each other, but it wasn't with any kind of degree of friendship.
	We'd had kind of a mixed experience of each other, I think, where we were both in a place where we just weren't ready to...
	To have any kind of a relationship, whether really friendship or anything else with anyone.
	And that, I think, is what philosophy has really helped with.
	I mean, I was in this kind of, I don't know, I'd found objectivism when I was 11.
	I was kind of in this John Galtian, you know, man in the woods type.
	I don't need nobody.
	type of modality for several years.
	And through FDR and interacting with so many great people on the boards, I just found that actually I think that it's much, much better to be in any kind of a relationship with people.
	It just helps you kind of see yourself, and philosophy helps you see yourself in a way that you're not able to without the introspection that needs to go on throughout this process.
	So I can safely say I think that without philosophy, I would not be probably marrying anyone, much less Greg.
	And even more of a journey for Greg, right?
	Yeah. Just make sure I'm holding that right bit.
	Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, for me...
	Monastic! Monastic!
	Oh, absolutely. Like, seriously monastic.
	Philosophy for me was...
	It was a way of sort of hiding from people.
	You can choose your philosophers based on your temperament, and there are a number...
	Who will help enable the sort of isolated lifestyle.
	And for me, that was Nietzsche and I think Bertrand Russell a little bit.
	Oh, sorry.
	That's just...
	Anyway, so...
	Part of this...
	The biggest benefit from philosophy for me, at least genuine philosophy, has been the focus on honesty as a virtue, but...
	Primarily as a tool for understanding yourself, right?
	Telling the truth to other people isn't what honesty really is.
	It's telling the truth to yourself.
	And for a long time, I wasn't really doing that.
	I desperately wanted friends and Desperately wanted a relationship, but I kept telling myself that that's not what I wanted.
	It's not what I wanted. It's something to be afraid of, something to be wary of.
	People are dangerous, people are scary, but those are all projections of...
	What I grew up with, which was dangerous and scary people, right?
	And so for me...
	The arm of philosophy that had the biggest, the most significant impact is the self-knowledge arm, the psychology, the introspection, the slowly learning to be honest with myself and not imposing sort of Um,
	uh, an identity or, um, a set of preferences on who I am, but trying to detect what those were in, like, in, in, in sort of like the discovery sense,
	right? And, and acknowledge them and, and treat them with, um, um, respect and, um, And it's kind of hard to describe sort of in broad strokes,
	but sort of through this process, I had corresponded a couple times with Charlotte when I was living in Raleigh,
	and I desperately needed a job, and she had It was originally a tough decision for me to make the move because it was pretty scary.
	But having done so, she was just amazingly generous and helpful and just a really great friend.
	An amazing friend to me.
	And so...
	Through that introduction and through my time in New York and getting acclimated and the time we spent together, I just, I got to know her more and more and understood who she was more and more and just really, I kind of liked it.
	Just my sense of, like, just admiration and respect for her just kept expanding and expanding to the point where it wasn't, it was not enough for me to tell myself, well, we're just Really good friends, right? Like, we go to restaurants and talk.
	That's all it is, right?
	There was a bag of ferrets one night.
	But I kept just trying to tell myself that, and the tension kept escalating around that, and it was like, I kind of semi-consciously realized it was more than that,
	much more than that, but it was so terrifying to me to think that it could be more than that, because it's such a...
	It's such a defenseless position to be in, you know, to say to somebody, you know, wow, I really think I love you, you know.
	And actually, Charlotte kind of greased the track a little bit for that.
	Yeah. Yeah, I think that that kind of generosity and that kind of vulnerability is something that I had never experienced before, you know, either in myself or in others.
	And, you know, kind of philosophy and working through this process, which is, was what made the kind of You know what?
	I'd just like to hold your hand right now a lot easier than not doing that, if that makes sense.
	Greg was talking about how the tension increased until it became something where you just can't not say something.
	And having that to where you're just not able to be dishonest with yourself for very long anymore.
	It's an incredible inconvenience, but it also gets you to some great places, I think.
	So that's kind of where it was for us.
	Yeah, so just one night, we were out at a restaurant, and this was the night before my birthday, I think.
	The night before my birthday, we were out at a restaurant, and you just kind of blurted it out.
	Yep. And I was like, you know what?
	So do I. Awesome!
	And I think if memory serves me right, the phrase that Charlotte used was, you're probably wondering why I'm here with no top on.
	Something like that. Charlotte, why are you naked?
	It's your birthday! But she's like, I just wanted to say that I love you.
	And kind of her face went like...
	Sort of expecting me to bolt out of the restaurant, but there was just sort of like a moment where I was like, yeah, you know what?
	I love you too. And it was like, it just felt so natural, you know?
	But after that, there was like this wave of terror that came over me like, oh shit, you know, like, what happens now?
	Like, Oh my god.
	Did we just say that to each other?
	Yeah. I should also say that let it be known that this was three years after we first met, so I have to agree with Steph.
	FDR, worst, slowest dating site ever.
	You know, if you're not looking for something long-term, please look elsewhere.
	Not a good guy, please. And also, this is something that couples don't know who meet through FDR, that if you do ever have kids, you can choose any combination of F, D, and R, so it can be Ferd, Durf, as your kid's name.
	I think you may have noticed that in the fine print of your membership agreement when you signed up for the board.
	So I believe most of them are taken, but you can probably come up with Durf, or something like that.
	Well, we'll have to go through a Swedish baby name book, and I'm sure that we can find, you know, something...
	And so after that, it's just been a continuous process of sort of, like, just sort of doing things together and checking in with each other and seeing how we feel, and it's like a...
	You know, when you buy a house or you buy a car or something like that, there's like an intense period of negotiation with the salesman, and then all the forms are signed, and then you have the house, right?
	But what I've noticed with our relationship is like, there's a continuous process of negotiation going on with us.
	It's just continuous ebb and flow between us, like...
	Do you want to do this? Do you want to do that?
	How do you feel now? How do you feel now?
	And sort of...
	That...
	When that gets slack, we notice it.
	And when things are really, like, firing on all cylinders, it just feels fantastic, you know?
	We... We're not quite to the point where we Answer each other's, complete each other's sentences and that sort of thing.
	But it's like, there are a lot of times when we're both sort of already kind of thinking the same things, but expressing it in different ways.
	And just for myself, just learning how a relationship is really just a continuous process of negotiation and renegotiation, both with the self and with your other.
	It's been a real learning experience for me.
	And that's even possible.
	There hasn't been one time, even once, when I've just had to completely give in on a preference.
	There have been times when there's been tensions around differing preferences, when we're still learning to navigate each other.
	But It always sort of comes out where continuous dialogue sort of brings your sense of what you want into union with the other person.
	Um, and I know I'm talking in a lot of, like, sort of abstract and fuzzy language, but, like, a good example that would have been, like, the last apartment we picked, you know, um, where, um...
	Every apartment we went to, there would be some things she liked, and some things I didn't like, and some things I didn't, and some things she did.
	And we would just be constantly talking about those things, and talking about those things, and sort of backtracking over.
	The list of things in our own head that we wanted out of a place to live and what it would be for and how long we would be there and how we felt in the places we were in and the differences between those things until we finally found the one place where Most of the things we were talking about,
	we were agreeing on, and it didn't feel like there was, like, I'm giving this up, so you have to give that up, or I'm getting this benefit, so you have to get that benefit.
	It wasn't like a commercial transaction.
	It was more like a sort of an organic sort of...
	I don't know how to describe it.
	Did you want to add anything else?
	No. Well, that's great.
	And I'm just perfectly thrilled.
	I think love is wonderful.
	And for those who haven't seen Greg and Charlotte, and particularly knowing your history, Greg, about romance, sexuality, and the prickliness that you had around that, the tension that you had around that, seeing the physical affection, the cuddliness, the kissing, I mean, it's just, it's absolutely wonderful.
	And Izzy's quite thrilled to see it as well.
	Look, they're doing Micah. Micah is Greek for kiss.
	So she mentioned that when you guys were kissing in the parking lot.
	Yeah, it's interesting because when we have people to come up to visit, it's really fascinating to see, we were talking about this last night, Isabella wants everyone to do stuff together, right?
	So if we went after dinner, we went skipping down the street yesterday, and she kept circling back to make sure that we were all skipping in a pretty fascistic, I think fascistic is probably the right way of putting it.
	It was very much a lockstep.
	Very much a lockstep, yeah.
	A little commandant. A little commandant, you know, you must skip!
	It's amazing how she does that with that little voice.
	She never even heard German.
	That was the Thai one. Now is the time when we skip.
	And yeah, so she's really interested in making sure that everyone is including in all of that.
	And people are asking for photos.
	So if you can post them on the board of you guys as a couple, I think that would be great.
	And yeah, we just came back from the mall today and had a great deal of fun.
	So it's wonderful.
	If you are a listener and you're coming through Toronto, please give us a ping.
	We always love... To meet and greet and to say hi to the listeners, so I just wanted to mention that.
	Now, we've had people waiting, oh so patiently, on the telephone or on Skype.
	James, is that right? We have a few people who have a question or two?
	Yes, we have somebody on the line.
	Brian. I'm all with the buffalo ears.
	Go for it. Hi, can you hear me?
	Sure can. Alright, I ironically had a question with regards to relationships.
	So my question revolves around a date I went on recently.
	It was a first date, and I was enjoying my conversation with this girl a lot.
	Hey, listen, I'm sorry to interrupt you.
	Is there a phone we could call you on?
	Your Skype sounds like it's coming from the dark side of the moon.
	I can try to find my phone.
	Where is it? Just make sure you've got nothing else, uploading or downloading.
	Hey, Steph, how is my audio coming through?
	Because he's coming through fine on my end.
	Oh, is he right? Okay, sorry.
	Keep going. We'll struggle through if that's the best.
	Yeah, James, you're coming through fine for me.
	But sorry, go ahead. Oh, that's weird.
	Sure thing. So, I had a date recently...
	Where generally it was going pretty well.
	I found the girl enthusiastic, you know, somewhat intelligent at first and so forth.
	But then we got into a conversation about careers and goals and so forth.
	She expressed some ambivalence about her own career, and I just tried to explore that with her.
	But then it kind of came out towards the end of the date that she was kind of on the philosophical end, very much an existentialist, which for me felt at the time I started to feel a little bit of both sadness and frustration because I was enjoying the date prior to...
	Finding, to kind of discovering that about her.
	Anyhow, afterwards I had talked with another friend of mine who's very much into FDR. And we just kind of talked about, you know, what would be the value and if I potentially wanted to meet with this girl again.
	And we kind of thought about, you know, what is the best case scenario, particularly with somebody who might be kind of wrong, have some wrong ideas philosophically.
	And I mean, my perspective was if this is an individual who may not have been exposed to good arguments, but may have a capacity for critical thinking, that might, you know, that might be worth – there might be some value that might be worth – there might be some value in trying to get to know this person more and exploring things like that.
	Yeah, I think I understand the question.
	Let me put a few thoughts out there and then you can tell me if they're at all useful.
	Look, I fully recognize the delicacy of this situation because there is – for anybody who's got knowledge of philosophy or self-knowledge, there is – The problem of what is my relationship with people who believe things that are false?
	That's a very, very fundamental question.
	And I would argue this from this standpoint.
	I don't believe that if what we're doing here is quite new, and I think that it is.
	It's really just an extension or an expansion of consistency for stuff that was before.
	But if what we're doing here is quite new, then there is no...
	Empirical profit, value, or truth in condemning people for not knowing it already.
	Of course, right? There's a story about, and I'm going to murder the story because it's half remembered, but there's a physicist, the first physicist to figure out Why the sun burned.
	I think this was at some point in the 1930s.
	And he was sitting with his girlfriend.
	I think he later married her. He was sitting with his girlfriend and looking at the sunset.
	No, they were looking at the stars.
	They were looking at stars in a park, I think, at night.
	And she was like, oh, these stars are so pretty.
	And this is before he'd even published his paper, just after he'd figured it out.
	She said, oh, the stars are so pretty.
	And he said, yes, yes, they are.
	And I'm the only man alive who knows why they burn.
	And I thought that was just a wonderful thing, that moment where you've just realized something very powerful before the news gets out.
	And I think if we look at the world as a whole, the news of philosophy, as the Christians used to call it, the good news, the good news of philosophy is yet to spread to the world as a whole.
	And so there's no reason why people would know what we know.
	And there's no reason why they would be condemned.
	In fact, it would be unjust to condemn someone.
	If you're the first guy to invent penicillin, you don't sue doctors for not knowing about penicillin before they know about it, right?
	So I think that you really have to be gentle and patient and careful and respectful when it comes to talking about philosophy with people.
	To a point. Right?
	So it's to a point.
	So people get stuck in condemning, right?
	So libertarians will call people sheeple and so on, and they get mad at the people who don't get it, and this happens with a lot of groups.
	So you get stuck in the sort of condemnation standpoint.
	That's one, I think that's a problem.
	I look for the Aristotelian mean, right?
	So you don't want to get stuck condemning people for just not knowing that taxation is forced and blah, blah, blah.
	But at the same time, you don't also want to be, you know, gentle Gandhi...
	Patient communicator for 10 years with the same person that is you I think you want to find a balance between those two and that balance is complex Knowing the volatility of what we talk about from an ethical standpoint both in terms of what happens to people's perceptions of their political Society what happens to their perceptions of their educational society their professional society and most importantly their family and friendship relationships romantic relationships it is It is a detonating philosophy that we bring to bear on the world.
	It shatters. It sends the stars flying.
	It tears the moon from its orbit and hurls it into Jupiter's pimple.
	It does some really powerful things.
	So I think, you know, wield that flamethrower with caution.
	Use it to light candles, not hair.
	Actually, as you can see from my picture, that's...
	Anyway, so I think be patient.
	And I think there are two kinds of people, in my experience, after talking about all these gradations, I'll say that there are two kinds of people.
	The first kind of person...
	It's the person who has just inherited a bunch of ideas that they kind of go for, but they have never really thought them through and they don't really know much about where they came from or what the arguments are behind them.
	They just kind of, well, you know, this is what my friends and family all believe.
	So I'm a Democrat or I'm a Republican or whatever it is that they, I'm an environmentalist or whatever.
	And those people who have not Really thought through the ideas or researched the ideas but have kind of inherited them and there's nothing wrong with that.
	I mean, Lord knows I haven't done any primary research on evolution but I still accept it, right?
	So there's nothing wrong with that but those people when presented with new and better arguments, more true arguments, are often more able to change their ideas and approaches and opinions and I think that's good.
	On the other hand, there are other people who are ideologically committed to nonsense.
	And they've done the quote research and they've, you know, dug in and they've rejected and they may be promoting these viewpoints and so on.
	So somebody who's like a real socialist, you know, they vote socialist, they speak at socialist places, they read socialist books, they're really in there committed.
	They didn't just inherit it.
	But they're actually committed to it.
	Those people are very hard, very hard to change their minds.
	And so, you know, so if this woman is a committed existentialist, like she studied the great French existentialists, I guess all the way back to Dostoevsky, if you want to stretch it to a literary standpoint, they've studied the Sartre and all of that.
	Well, then that's going to be a tough thing to dislodge.
	But if it's just, you know, I read a little bit of existentialism in school and I thought it was pretty cool and there's some stuff that's kind of neat.
	Existence precedes essence. Why not?
	But those kinds of people can be easier to change.
	So it really comes down to how open is the person to...
	To arguments. And funnily enough, the best way, I think, to be open to arguments, to have somebody else be open to arguments, is to be open to arguments yourself.
	Right? So why not just ask the woman?
	It's like, well, I don't know much about existentialism, or I don't agree with existentialism, but I'd love for you to make the case.
	You know, make the case for me.
	Help me to understand it. You know, let's spend some time.
	So rather than sort of pushing your views on her, and that's an inflammatory way of putting it, so I apologize for that, but But, um, uh, listen, you know, listen.
	And she may find limitations in her philosophy simply through trying to explain it to someone else.
	She might find areas where she doesn't understand stuff that she thought she did.
	You may be able to ask a bunch of Socratic questions that can undo some of her beliefs.
	And that's, I mean, when Cristina, when I first met my wife, she was a deist, and I didn't, you know, ah, deist, you know, it's like, oh, well, tell me more, you know, how does this work for you?
	And, you know, where do the beliefs come from?
	Because if you're going to have a relationship, you know, and of course the goal is, I think, people are generally happier in functional relationships than elsewhere.
	if you're going to have a relationship, then the relationship can't be based on conclusions.
	It has to be based on a conversation.
	It has to be based on inquiry.
	It has to be based on curiosity.
	And that I think is a very, very powerful thing to bring to the table.
	And so that would be my approach.
	If you like the woman, if you're attracted to the woman, then I would stay in the conversation, just ask questions and...
	And it's always interesting to watch.
	So when people come to the edge of their knowledge, and in philosophy, that doesn't take long for most people.
	When they come to the edge of their knowledge...
	The really, really key thing is to focus on what happens in that moment for the person, right?
	They come to the edge of their knowledge.
	You know, why is murder wrong?
	Why is theft wrong? Why is it that you believe this approach?
	Tell me why you believe that the state should do X, Y, and Z. When they come to the edge of their knowledge, you want to see where they are emotionally in that moment.
	And this is an important thing to know with yourself as well.
	Where are you emotionally at the moment that you come to the edge of your knowledge?
	Are you an intrepid explorer who's going to don the tilly wear and the beekeeper's hat and plow on with the...
	What was his name that you said earlier?
	Tenzing. Oh, Tenzing.
	The Sherpa. Yeah, Tenzing.
	Are you going to keep going?
	Or do you turn around and get mad at the person who pushed you on the edge of the cliff?
	Hey, don't try and push me over into ignorance.
	I know everything. So I would say just watch where the person is.
	And it's not like, you know, condemn or praise, but just see where the person is and how they handle that discomfort or ambivalence of coming to the edge of their knowledge.
	I think that's really, really important.
	If you want to be an explorer, you have to take somebody out of the multiplex and see how they handle it, right?
	You have to take somebody out of the mall.
	If you want to climb a mountain, you know, give them a set of stairs and see how they do.
	And I think that would be my approach.
	And tell me if this is useful to you at all.
	Yeah, that is useful.
	I think the subsequent question I'd want to ask is, and this is kind of what I discussed with my other friend, was let's say that this girl has a great genuine capacity for critical thinking and when she hears the right arguments then she gets it and this is something that we can grow with or something.
	The thought that I have, or the question I kind of have at that point is, if you're familiar with certain things, and, like, I mean, I guess, like, things like, I mean, RTR, and some of these arguments, just with regards to UPB, I mean, as you mentioned, I mean, they're new, and it's kind of like speaking a different, a new language to someone, and if...
	If you're with somebody who's not familiar with it, and you've done your own exploration with it for some time, is the discrepancy in how much experience you have with it versus the other person, can that be an issue? Yeah, I think that's entirely correct, that a lack of experience, a lack of knowledge is nothing to condemn people for.
	In fact, it is something that if you're interested in teaching people philosophy, and I think this occurs in every relationship, if you're interested in teaching, and it should be mutual, if you're interested in teaching, a lack of knowledge is an opportunity.
	You know, like an entrepreneur is looking to find a market need that people want to have filled.
	And then, you know, it's like, if you're an entrepreneur, if you're selling balloons, you want somebody who wants a balloon.
	I mean, so a lack of balloonness is something that you want as a balloon seller.
	And so somebody's lack of knowledge of philosophy is a great opportunity.
	To bring them into the realm of reason and evidence and all those kinds of good things.
	So I think that's great.
	It is a challenge because it is volatile and it is a little bit like hot wiring the space shuttle while it's re-entering the atmosphere.
	So it can be a bit challenging but I think it's a great opportunity.
	Now, I will say where I think the make or break is for me.
	I'm not going to say this is any kind of absolute, but this is where it would be for me.
	And I can speak from experience.
	I was attracted to two women when I was younger.
	One turned out to be a Christian and one turned out to be a pretty hardcore socialist.
	And I did not pursue the relationship after conversations with them about their ideology because of that.
	Even though I was very attracted and there was, I think, some mutual attraction.
	I knew that there was some mutual attraction and so on.
	And that is, if you are a committed anti-racist, you can't date a racist.
	I mean, you just can't.
	You just, I mean, if you are, you know, reasonable about Judaism, then you can't date an anti-Semite.
	If you are into equality, you can't date a Nazi.
	I mean, there is a moral line that you simply...
	We can't productively cross.
	Otherwise, love and virtue and values are meaningless.
	They don't mean anything. Then it's just like, you know, that old song, the parting on the left is now the parting on the right.
	Then you're just saying, well, it's a matter of personal aesthetics.
	There's no meaning to do with anything.
	And there's nothing evil or wrong about racism or narcissism or sexism or whatever, right?
	So if you have values around, say, honesty in a relationship and you have attempted to communicate those values to somebody you're in a relationship or interested in being in a relationship with...
	And the person continues to be lying, false, manipulative, and so on.
	Well, then, that relationship isn't going to work.
	The only way that relationship is going to work is if you give up your values or give up the relationship.
	I guess not work in the second part.
	Fundamentally, and I've made this case before a number of times, don't be in a relationship with someone whose values matter.
	I mean, you just can't.
	You just can't be in a relationship with someone whose values you define as immoral.
	And that's to me a very fundamental thing.
	Now, that does make it tough if you're into a consistent application of the non-aggression principle.
	So I think that is really, really fundamental.
	Don't compromise your values at that point.
	I mean, we all understand that if you're Against racism dating a member of the KKK would be ridiculous.
	It would mean that your values don't mean anything.
	And if your values don't mean anything, that's fine.
	I don't have a big problem with people whose values don't mean anything.
	Then just drop your values and date whoever you find hot.
	You know, that's fine.
	But don't pretend to have the values and then not have them affect your relationships.
	That would be my suggestion.
	All right. Yeah, I find kind of what you're saying pretty useful.
	I think it really...
	I have to... Explore these kind of things with her more to really figure out.
	I mean, it was just one date. To really figure out who she is and how she approaches new ideas, whether it's with honesty or whether there's a sense of denial.
	I think that's something I need to think about.
	But yeah, thank you very much for answering my question.
	It was useful and I'll be thinking about this.
	Yeah, and I would, as Greg has mentioned, you know, the important thing is to ask yourself first, not the other person.
	What was your experience of the conversation?
	What was your experience for openness?
	Did you feel tension or defensiveness in the other person?
	Now, introspection is not an absolute science.
	This is not like, well, now I know for sure, blah, blah, blah, right?
	because we don't want to turn our feelings into our cognitive and epistemological masters.
	But it is the first place to start, because trusting your instincts is very, very important.
	And, you know, with my own instincts, I like what Gorbachev and Reagan used to talk about in terms of the non-proliferation treaty.
	Trust, but verify.
	Right.
	So trust your instincts, but verify them.
	And you will find over time that your verification needs less and less, right?
	If you've been right in your instincts a hundred times, there's no need to go back to the methodology you had for number one at number 101.
	So, yeah, I would trust your feelings and verify at this point and then get used to trusting them more and more and needing to verify less and less, if that makes any sense.
	But clearly, there is a great deal to this date.
	I mean, you're talking about this.
	It's very important to you. I would certainly trust your instincts.
	Of attractiveness and give the woman as much of a chance as possible and be as positive as possible about what you want to bring to the relationship philosophically and I really, really hope that it works out.
	Yes. Like you said, I do need to watch myself and see how my feelings and instincts are.
	And so far, they're still more curious about her.
	So yeah, I will certainly think about this more and explore more.
	So thank you, Steph. You're very welcome.
	And if you get a chance, always curious to know how it goes.
	So let me know if you can.
	All right.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	So let's go to the next caller.
	caller?
	Whoever if they're on the call want to go ahead and speak up.
	You may want to speak up a little more.
	Okay.
	Make sure you're not muted.
	While we're waiting, people came up with names for your children, which would probably be helpful.
	Fanny Dolores Rearson.
	Frank Daniel Richardson.
	Philip Downey Race.
	Philip, of course, with an F. Phoebe Danny Rand.
	Forney Dainroy.
	Festive Dylan Rafferty.
	Fiona Devon Royal.
	Forrest Digger Rack. Franz Dillinger Radcliffe.
	And Fox Doyle Remington.
	Fox Doyle Remington.
	That sounds like a minor character in Wuthering Heights, I would say.
	So that's wonderful.
	And to the person who posted that, I thoroughly applaud the amount of time and creativity you have lying around your keyboard.
	It's impressive. It really, really is.
	Alright, while we wait for the other caller, we have said somebody's typed into the chat room.
	Let's see here. My girlfriend is very sort of middle of the road when it comes to politics, although she's not interested in it intellectually as I am.
	However, she has this very competitive sort of personality, which causes her to view any political discussion as some sort of contest.
	And though I try to pursue my arguments in as gentle and non-combative a way as I can, she inevitably ends up getting offended and thrashing about verbally because she feels like she's, quote, losing.
	Basically, she'll follow my line of reasoning until it pushes her into a corner, at which point she just switches to saying something like, why do you have to make me feel dumb like that?
	Anyway, so that's sort of my question, if you guys have time.
	As I've...
	He said, okay, so my argument would be to stop talking about politics and stop talking about family history.
	Nobody ever saw that coming, right?
	Yes. This is not about politics.
	This is not about your arguments that you're having in the moment about X, Y, and Z. And so it's provoking a particular form of defense mechanism.
	And so what I would do is stop talking about politics and start talking about family.
	And this is general advice.
	You know, people like to start with the stuff that is actually the effect of everything else.
	People like to start with politics and philosophy and morality and society.
	And that shit is all the effect of, from 99.9% of us, that is all the effect of early family history and early family interactions, both positive, negative, and neutral.
	And so if somebody was raised religious, there's really not much point talking about UPB until you get how they were raised religious.
	Because if they were raised religiously, like man is born evil and needs the God to make him good, UPB is going to run into all of this resistance that has nothing to do with rational arguments.
	It has everything to do with that bomb-in-the-brain stuff that goes on early in life.
	Remember, remember, remember, remember the 5th of November.
	And remember that it is fairly well established scientifically at the moment, That just about everybody's belief system is an ex post facto justification that they have the emotional experiences first and they come up with the rational arguments later.
	So if you stay at the surface level of rationality, you will continue to go round and round these defensive little non-progressive circles until you literally die in your own head.
	So... Just remember, go to early experiences, go to family, go to history, go to emotions, go to the true self, go deep.
	And then, if you connect at that level, everything else flows from there.
	But if you try and do this sword fencing at the surface level, which is merely an effect of our early experiences, you will just keep doing the same thing until you either give up in frustration and your relationship takes perhaps an irretrievable blow...
	Or your relationship just blows up because you get so sick and tired of that level of conflict.
	But do not engage at that level until you've learned more about the person as an individual.
	So that would be my... Yeah, you can't reason someone out of a belief they haven't reasoned into.
	So find out where the beliefs come from before you go to this.
	So yeah, ask about, you know, how was conflict handled in your family?
	My God, I mean, it sounds ridiculous to even say it because it's so obvious.
	But it certainly wasn't obvious to me until after, I don't know, a year or 30.
	But if you're in a relationship with someone, ask them, hey, or if you're interested, you know, how was conflict handled in your family?
	Well, we had a talking stick, we sat down, we reasoned about it, and we tried to work for a win-win situation.
	Hey! How you doing?
	Right? I mean, that's what you want.
	If it's like, well, I was screamed and locked in the basement and thrown old bones, well, then you're going to have some challenge because the person doesn't speak the language of negotiation, and that's going to be a problem.
	They're either going to have to learn that language, and you can't learn it, I think that's why therapy is so important, they're either going to have to learn that language, or the relationship isn't going to work because it's going to be win-lose.
	Is that what you wanted to add to that?
	Yeah, I was just going to say that's why I kept repeating that word so often in the discussion we had earlier, is that for me, relationships were all about...
	Battles of attrition where ground was gained and lost and through FDR and years of therapy, just, you know, the idea of a relationship being a process of negotiation where...
	Both parties could actually get something of benefit, a positive reward out of just, I mean, was kind of a mind-exploding concept for me.
	It was always someone wins, someone loses, someone dominates, someone submits, you know?
	Yeah. And almost always it's the least rational and most aggressive person who wins.
	The person who makes the most noise, who releases the most emotional stink bombs, who's willing to go to the dirty fighting brinksmanship as soon as possible.
	That's the person who gets their way.
	And this is how virtue gets screwed and lack of virtue tends to dominate.
	And so, yeah, I think that's one of the things.
	I've certainly tried to butch up philosophy and virtue consistently over the past few years.
	You know, give it a A bit of protein powder, have it run up and down the Philly steps a few times and to some Rocky music, you know, it's time to de-noodle that arm as far as philosophy goes.
	So I hope that helps. James, do we have another caller?
	I've got some more questions in the chat room if we don't.
	Hi, Steph. Hi.
	Hey, you can hear me. All right.
	Yeah, I thought I might just kind of ramble on a little bit and then see if you wanted to give me a response.
	I'm intrigued. Go on.
	Okay. I've just been through a few little flips in my head over the last three months maybe or so.
	I started listening to Noam Chomsky podcasts and I'm the one who sent you that Chris Hedges book and everything.
	I didn't really realize, oh yeah, these guys are socialists.
	That's how ignorant I am.
	But I was interested to see how there's this kind of conflict afoot that I'm not very aware of.
	I heard Noam Chomsky saying, All these people, you know, sort of dissing Hayek and that sort of thing, you know.
	And I've heard you say, you know, oh, socialists, you know, in a very dismissive way.
	And I realized, you know, like I realized a couple of things.
	One is that I started really doubting if I am able to I'm just deluding myself that I'm sort of able to think.
	Because I think that, for me, I do like the ideas so much on either side, actually, of the socialist free market camps, I guess, if you want to do that.
	I don't like joining a camp, but I like to stay on, you know, ideally, I'd like to just stay on, keep an open mind and not kind of be confirmed.
	And yet, the people I look up to, like Noam Chomsky for one and you for another, are in different camps, and yet you seem to be encamped, you know?
	Like, you don't seem to just think, oh, well, they have some good points and...
	I thought, well, maybe I'm just painting people that way.
	And I stopped posting on the boards because I just thought, well, gee, what is this all about?
	You know, and you just go through the kind of like I hit some kind of wall.
	And I started thinking, well, am I just responding emotionally?
	Like, I really like you and I really like other people who have completely different ideas than you do.
	And I think that is the case.
	I don't know.
	I just think I would maybe hope to grow into a person who has really thought things through for themselves and is not deluding themselves that they have thought things through when maybe they're just kind of siding with somebody on more of an emotional rather than an intellectual basis.
	And yet, on the other hand, there's the instinct.
	If you instinctively like someone, even though you may not have reasoned everything they say through, I think there is something valid in that.
	There's that kind of instinct to...
	Support somebody you just like, even though you don't really know every reason why and so on.
	So I've just kind of gone through this whole thing and I thought I should phone in and I'd like to get your answer to it and just any reactions you had to it.
	No, that's a great, great thoughts.
	Very, very interesting thoughts.
	Just a clarification. I don't...
	I mean, I've certainly had...
	I mean, not that he's living for this, but I certainly have had enormously high praise for Noam Chomsky in the shows that I've done.
	I have some...
	Significant disagreements with him.
	But Noam Chomsky is an anarchist, fundamentally.
	And he comes from the Jewish left tradition of anarchism, which, you know, if anybody really wants to get the passport off them, I can go into in more detail.
	But he comes from the left communalistic form of anarchism.
	But I've always praised, I believe, I don't believe I've ever gone otherwise, I've always praised his incredibly incisive and powerful moral vitriol against U.S. foreign policy, against imperialism, against the dominant power of corporate interests in this mixed economy hellhole that we all struggle to survive in.
	And so I have a huge amount of respect for Noam Chomsky's, He is a piercing intellect.
	He is a strangely compelling Stephen Wright-style understated speaker.
	It's almost like he doesn't quite have vocal cords, but he I think that's very, very powerful.
	The work that he's done, I think, has been enormously beneficial to a lot of what goes on.
	And I think he's notable in his absence.
	He's not going to get invited on CNN to discuss foreign policy, even though he is considered the most influential intellectual alive today.
	And so...
	His analysis of culture, his analysis of foreign policy, his analysis of political corruption, of a growing power of corporate interests is fantastic.
	I think his analysis of Adam Smith is great.
	His analysis of academia is very powerful and absolutely fascinating, the degree to which academia...
	I think he's a passionate and powerful moralist, and I have lots of good stuff to say about him, and I would say that the majority of conclusions would be held in kind.
	I'm sure that he would agree with the non-aggression principle, as any sane human being does.
	He may not agree with its consistent application, or it may take him a while, which I know is a ridiculous thing for me.
	He's going to come along, old gnome.
	But I think that he does incredible work, and I think he makes...
	He makes my job easier because he takes people outside the matrix of nationalism and gives them that pill to have a look at their country as it is viewed from the outside.
	Harry Brown did the same thing.
	Noam Chomsky and Harry Brown and a few other intellectuals got absolutely hammered after 9-11 for their statement about blowback.
	And so he was in good company with some very powerful libertarian thinkers.
	And if... If Murray Rothbard had been alive, they would have been throwing straw, gasoline, and matches under his pyre as well.
	So yeah, I think he's got a lot of great stuff.
	I agree with you that someone you like as a person or someone you like as a thinker can sweep you along too far.
	I certainly know this as being a fan of Ayn Rand's for many years.
	And there is a tendency to want to ascribe omniscience and omnipotence to a particular thinker whose values...
	We really like and whose arguments we really like because it's just easier.
	It's like, whew, this guy's been right 99% of the time.
	I'll give him the other percent because Lord knows if I have to evaluate everything he says, that's going to just take forever.
	Now, I both agree with and don't agree with that.
	I think that you do.
	I think that there has to be some credibility that is justly earned by a thinker who is consistent.
	I think that's fair.
	And that doesn't mean that you then become that person's slave and everything that person says is automatically right.
	But if a thinker has been reasonable in his assumptions, has corrected his or her mistakes, provides evidence and support for what he's arguing for, and all this kinds of good stuff, then I think you can, in the long run, trust that person.
	Right? Does that mean the next thing they say might not be incorrect?
	Well, no, of course, the next thing they say might be incorrect.
	I've certainly said incorrect things on this show, and I've worked as hard as I can to correct things that I've made.
	I've done entire shows where I've read out people detailing the stuff that I've gotten wrong.
	So I think if you trust the person's integrity to correct mistakes, then in the long run, what is accumulated, if they're open to and receiving criticism from the general public...
	Then I think you can trust that it's going to smooth out in the long run.
	And I think that's fair.
	And I don't think that that was the case with people like Ayn Rand.
	So I agree with you that it can be tricky in the short run to accept everything from a thinker who you really respect and like.
	But I think in the long run, if that person is self-critical and willing to own up to admit and correct mistakes, then in the long run, it is going to be something that is trustworthy.
	So I hope that makes some kind of sense.
	But let me know what you think. Yeah, sure.
	That sounds great, Steph.
	The one thing that Chomsky and I think Hedges also say that I'd like to get your reaction on, just because it is a kind of status thing, is that the state, they look at the state anyway, apparently, as a kind of...
	A control, a kind of a shepherd of the average person who might theoretically protect the average person from the interests of the very powerful corporations and so on.
	And in fact, they're not doing any kind of job.
	And of course, they would admit that this is not happening.
	But potentially, they say, the state could be, at least it allows for people to vote.
	Even if the vote is a farce, it's still better, they say, than corporations where it's all tyranny.
	It's like if there's the boss and he tells you how it's going to be.
	And if you don't like it, you're out of there.
	And they were defending government in that way, you know, like, well, at least in theory you get a vote, in theory you get some little bit of influence and so on.
	And I just wondered if you had any comments about one of their main ideas there.
	Well, I... I think this is the great tragedy of people who get over-focused on politics.
	And if you've read Noam Chomsky's books, and I've probably read about, I don't know, three or four of his books, he is a political junkie.
	I think there's just no way to avoid that.
	And this is true of the Ron Paul people and the libertarian movement, and it's true of the Democrats and Republicans.
	Pick up the newspaper. I did this exercise a couple of years ago on a podcast.
	Pick up the newspaper, look through the stories, and see how many of the stories are about what the government does or what the government is about to do or who's going to be in control of the government or what the government didn't do or what's coming up for the government or what was passed in the government or what government is influencing this, that, or the other.
	And if you look at, you know, outside of entertainment and classifieds, it's all government all the time.
	Everything is about the government.
	And we as a culture, we as an entire civilization, The Western civilization is addicted to the chicken entrails, tea leaf reading analysis of the power of violent thugs.
	We are obsessed with it.
	We can't let it go.
	We can't stop examining it.
	And that, in many ways, is the source of the power that they have, is our fascination with them.
	And what I would say to people in that situation is, because Noam Chomsky says, look, why are we spending this money on wars and not on health care?
	I mean, that's a typical leftist perspective, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way.
	I mean, yeah, ideally it'd be great if they spent the money on healthcare rather than wars, but we don't have any fucking say about that as individuals.
	We don't. It would be great if they didn't spend the next generation into financial slavery.
	We don't have any say about that.
	It would be great if they stopped the war on drugs.
	We don't have any say about that. It would be great if in the US every school didn't allow teachers to hit the students.
	But we don't have any say about all of that.
	And so the idea that, you know, it's the ring of power argument.
	Oh, Boromir says if we just get the ring and use it for good and blah, blah, blah.
	But that's how they keep you infested and involved and focused and obsessed and stalking.
	This clusterfrag called state power.
	Oh, if only we could get the state to do this rather than that.
	Oh, it would be so much better.
	Oh, it would be so much better.
	And so you give the power to the state or you accept the power of the state in the hopes that you're going to sit in the driver's seat and steer that damn thing the way that you want it to go.
	And it is a delusion.
	It is a complete delusion.
	The state is never going to do what Noam Chomsky wants it to do.
	The state is never going to do what the majority want it to do.
	Because the will of the majority is a delusion in a society where the majority is trained for 15 goddamn years, or 12 years, or 13 years by the state itself.
	And the state is never going to do what I want it to do, and the state is never going to do what you want it to do.
	The state is going to follow the logic of violence.
	Always. The state is going to steal and bribe and pillage and control and rape and make war on its own citizens first and only then on foreigners or immigrants or drug dealers or drug users or people who don't pay taxes or people who don't get particular pieces of paper when they're putting an extension on their fucking garden shed.
	Or people who fish at the wrong time of year.
	Or people who climb fences that they're not supposed to climb.
	Or, or, or, or, right?
	This infinite hydra of snapdragon, human heart-eating monstrosity is never going to do anything other than follow the logic of violence.
	And the logic of violence is always the same.
	It is... Eat until death.
	Eat until death. That is the cycle of civilizations.
	That is the cycle of all self-abusive behavior.
	That is the cycle of all alcoholism, of all drug addiction or sex addiction.
	That is the cycle of overeating.
	Eat until death.
	Because it's trying to fill a hole that can't be filled, and that hole then expands to fill the entire world and takes the entire world down with it.
	You know, the state, it's like you paint a picture of the planet on the surface of the water and then you pull a plug out from underneath and it just swirls down.
	That is the logic of violence.
	It is always the same.
	It always will be the same.
	Eat until death.
	And the idea that we can get control of this violent beast and turn it towards virtue or turn it towards the service of the good or the service of the people is the great delusion.
	The state ends when we get fucking bored a bit.
	The state ends not with a bang, but a yawn.
	Not with an eruption, but a whimper.
	With a, I just don't care anymore.
	I don't care. I'm not interested.
	I don't care. I'm not interested.
	And I still fight that battle sometimes because you get pulled back in.
	Can't help it sometimes.
	But I mean, I read very little to do with politics.
	It doesn't matter.
	So, people want to solve things in the short run by saying, let's get the state to do this rather than to do that.
	And that's a lot of what Chomsky argues.
	Let's get the money out of the military-industrial complex and put it back into the failing public schools and into healthcare and into infrastructure and high-speed fucking rails.
	You know, that just means we're all in the train that goes faster into the cliff edge, cliff wall.
	So that's what I would say to people.
	It's like, give up your desire to solve in the short run.
	You know, the fundamental definition of addiction in many ways is the attempt to solve problems only in the short run.
	Right? So the guy who's a cigarette smoker is solving his problem called addiction in the short run by having another cigarette.
	Feels better. Tension goes away.
	Nicotine is provided.
	The guy who's an overeater, you know, has another bag of Doritos and feels better.
	The alcoholic has a drink.
	He's solving his problems in the short run and not in the long run.
	We have to stand up and look over the horizon and stop trying to solve things in the short run.
	And political action is fundamentally about attempting to solve problems in the short run.
	And that is the fundamental issue.
	Definition, for me at least, of addiction and it's something we just need to give up but it is very, very hard to give that up.
	I hope that makes some kind of sense.
	Yeah, it's quite of a...
	It's kind of an act of faith you need, I guess, because, you know, you have all these seeming solutions, and yet you have to just let them go by.
	And it is so true about everything is government.
	I mean, I can see that for myself, you know, like on the news and the TV lately, it's all been about in Canada, you know, Princess William and The visit of the royal couple.
	It's like so unreal to me.
	I was kind of happy when they went to Quebec and the crowd was yelling at them, you are parasites and stuff.
	Good old French Canada.
	They've got their own attitude.
	I kind of enjoyed that one.
	Yeah, and then of course they want to increase pay to public sector unions, right?
	Oh, the who?
	The French? Oh, yeah.
	I mean, the Quebecers, I mean, they're only parasites because they're British.
	Our guys are great. I mean, there's not a principled thing about people who take through force through the state.
	Yeah, it's like, you know, my team versus your team.
	My team is good and your team is bad.
	They may wear similar uniforms.
	So the British royalty are parasites, but we must stand up for the embattled French public sector, Quebec public sector worker.
	Anyway, it's the same sort of deal.
	Yeah. Well...
	Anyway, do you mind if we move on?
	Is that a reasonable enough and cuss-heavy enough response to your question?
	Well, thank you. Thank you very much.
	Thank you. All right.
	We got else. All right.
	What's your question, my friend? This is your show, too.
	Hi, Steph. It's me, David.
	I've called before. How have you been?
	I've been very well. How have you been?
	I've been great just here in Los Angeles attending some events.
	I wanted to ask you a question that's been on my mind for a while now.
	I typed out the question, so I'm just going to say it.
	Steph, I think you probably answered this in the podcast, but I wanted to ask your take On accepting money through the government, through college, I ask this because of course I feel it's wrong to accept money that is taken from people by force, but on the other hand, if it's already stolen and it can go towards someone that can help lessen the power of the state rather than someone who can just swell it, or does it enforce the status quo slash is hypocritical?
	I don't... I don't think it matters.
	The money's in a state of nature.
	There's no ownership anymore.
	The money is stolen.
	It can't be returned to its original property.
	Because it's, you know, it's like somebody took five coins of yours and threw it into a big pile of 12 million other coins and you should get your five coins back.
	Well, you can't get your five coins back.
	So the tax money that's taken from you is put into one big account or ten big accounts or whatever, but it's completely mixed up with everyone else's.
	So there is no, you know, there is no issue.
	And, you know, to be honest with you, I don't think that libertarians care much about this.
	I think what they care about is accusations of hypocrisy.
	Right? So, you know, there's this thing that was floating around about Ayn Rand took Medicare when she got lung cancer.
	And therefore, the non-aggression principle is false, you know?
	And therefore, and that's so crazy.
	I mean, it's insane. Of course, she'd had money stolen from her for many years through taxation and through her Social Security payments and blah, blah, blah.
	So, yeah, I don't know. I'm sure she took Social Security and I'm sure she took Medicare and who gives a shit?
	It doesn't matter. Yeah.
	It doesn't matter.
	The actual moral issue in the room.
	The gun in the room. And then they want to start fussing about how you tweak crap on the other side of it.
	Just vault right over that!
	Right? So you've got a libertarian having money taken from him at gunpoint.
	And then as a moralist, someone comes riding in on his big shiny white steed and says, Ha!
	Alright! Well, as a moralist, I really feel that it's important to focus on how much money the libertarian is getting from the government.
	Well, what a load of pontificating crap.
	Let's focus on the theft first.
	Right? Let's focus on the theft.
	Forget about what happens after the theft, because otherwise it's the tail wagging the dog.
	Because if you get rid of the theft, then the libertarian's problem vanishes completely.
	And if you change the libertarian's behavior to take or not take government money, the theft doesn't change at all.
	Doesn't change a damn thing.
	If the libertarian cashes in his check for $100 for child support or whatever, or doesn't cash that check in, it doesn't change a damn thing.
	But if you get rid of the gun in the room and you stop the initiation of force on the part of the state, then every problem that you're criticizing is solved.
	So I think it's nonsense.
	Well, what about from the...
	I mean, I'm pretty young and, you know, I think about this all the time and I think like...
	I think maybe it's like compensation for like the public schooling I was forced to go to.
	But I don't know. I keep thinking that.
	No, no, no, no, no. Listen, listen.
	What you say, you know, if you can, you know, forgive me for putting words in your mouth, right?
	So someone, I mean, I get this question all the time, right?
	I mean, you, you, you, the government picks up your garbage.
	And therefore, the non-aggression principle is invalid.
	The government delivers your water and you drink.
	And therefore, your property rights are invalid, blah, blah, blah.
	And, you know, my answer is always the same.
	By what conceivable moral standard are you focusing on my response to violence rather than the violence itself?
	By what conceivable standard is somebody focusing on my response to violence rather than the violence itself?
	It's so completely irrational and demented that it has nothing to do with a moral question.
	I refuse to be judged by people prior to their judgment of state force.
	I refuse. If somebody is so damn interested in the morality of right and wrong, then why don't they go talk about the people who are starting wars and incarcerating millions of innocent people and torturing the brains of children in these ridiculous indoctrination camps called public schools?
	And why aren't they talking about the people selling kids off into debt slavery for the next generation or two?
	And why aren't they talking about people who are stealing billions if not trillions of dollars from the public?
	Because to vault over that moral-festering, maggot-rigging corruption called the modern state and then focus on whether I'm cashing or you're cashing a $100 check is such a fundamental bucket of moral insanity that I can't even look at it without gagging.
	You do have a point there.
	A great point. Forget that question.
	It doesn't matter. It's a way of paralyzing you.
	It's a way of making sure you don't speak up clearly and powerfully about true violations of the non-aggression principle.
	You know, imagine there's some neighborhood where the mafia is violently threatening everyone, indoctrinating the children, locking people up randomly, shooting people randomly.
	But every summer, they throw on a barbecue where you get cut-rate burgers.
	And as a moralist, you view this tyrannical predation, indoctrination, violence, imprisonment, incarceration, kidnapping, kneecap breaking.
	You view these mafiosos choking the life out of an entire community.
	And as a moralist, you ignore all of that, and you slither like a snake up to the guy eating a cut-rate burger paid for with money stolen from him, for which he's getting back far less than he paid, and you say, the only moral issue that I think can think of to deal with is whether you're eating that goddamn burger or not.
	Well, that's morally insane.
	Why not look at the mafia goons out there, breaking the knees of adults and the minds of children?
	Yeah, no. Screw that.
	Screw it. Push those people away from you.
	They are very dangerous.
	And when those thoughts come into your head, you can't push away the thoughts in your head, but say, okay, so we look at the evils around the world, whether I cash this government check, which is largely, if not completely composed of money that was stolen from me originally, how is it that this is the most important moral issue that I need to focus on?
	By what rational standard is the guy eating the mafia burger the most important, if not the only thing that the moralist is focusing on?
	And if somebody can give me that argument, I would be fascinated to hear it, but I don't think it can be done.
	Right. Yeah, I shouldn't be taking that kind of bullshit at all.
	No, no, no. It's a way of having you stick your head up your own ass rather than speak your clear and true words into the public space, right?
	What people want to do to the true moralist is to inject self-doubt and self-criticism into the mind of the true moralist so that he ends up chasing his own tail rather than bringing down the true beasts of the world.
	Don't fall into that trap.
	Do not fall into that trap.
	If you are a good man, and of course I believe as a listener you are very interested in virtue and a very good man, if you are a good man, then stand up and be a good man.
	And all of the wriggling, if you've ever seen The Matrix, they put these little metallic centipedes into people.
	Don't let people put those worms into your brain.
	To quote Roger Waters.
	Don't let people put those worms into your brain because it's just a way of steering you clear of the mafia and having you focus on the stupid ass burger that doesn't matter.
	Well, I was also thinking about...
	It's not really about what other people think.
	It's just me.
	This is coming from me. And it probably came from other people probably making me think this.
	But like you're saying that through taxation that the money was taken from them...
	But what about if you don't produce something for society?
	I was thinking about the way that I can't get a job right now, and I want to produce something.
	I want to do something, but I can't.
	I think that it's part of the government, the dependent underclass that's created.
	Well, no, but that's like, okay, so let's adjust the mafia metaphor to say that the mafia controls all the jobs and only gives it to people who support the mafia and like the mafia.
	And then you're so goddamn hungry, you've got to go have that mafia burger with cheese because you're hungry.
	Well, you can't get a job because of the mafia.
	Why are you unemployed? Because of the state.
	Yeah. Right?
	So you can't blame people for not producing when they're not allowed to produce, when it's illegal for them to produce.
	Why don't you go start a small business?
	Because you need 12,000 different forms to do so.
	Why don't you go and offer to mow people's lawns?
	Because there's problems with this, that, and the other, I'm sure, about this sort of stuff.
	Or you can't live on that because government is driving prices so high through inflation.
	So don't blame the slaves.
	Don't blame the slaves.
	That's fundamental. Now, you can blame the slaves who keep telling you that you're not a slave, and you can blame the slaves who lick the boots of the masters, and you can blame the slaves who earn the pay of the masters, but that is something that requires proving, and that is certainly not the case with you.
	But, no, if somebody's locked in the basement, don't blame them for not having a tan.
	Yeah. Alright, well, thanks a lot, Steph, for this.
	I really needed to hear that, and just thank you very much.
	You've helped me out a lot.
	Yeah, well, I appreciate that.
	And, you know, hey, if you eat the Mafia burger and that gives you strength to put up a poster against the Mafia, I think that burger's gone to a good and happy resting place.
	Of course, assuming it is a veggie burger.
	No animals were harmed in the making of this metaphor.
	Some cheese. Yeah, that's for sure.
	All right, well, thank you very much, Steph, and I hope you have a very, very great day.
	Oh, I appreciate it. Well, I've certainly missed all the call-ups.
	I really missed you guys over the last two weeks, so it's really great to talk to everyone again.
	Yeah, I'm looking forward to going to, I'm probably going to go to Lovertopia.
	I've been wanting to meet you in person, you know, at least one time, you know, before I die.
	Because you've inspired me.
	You're not ill or anything, are you?
	So we're going to... Yeah, let's do lunch.
	No, no, no, no. I mean, I meant like, you know, dying of age, hopefully.
	Right, right. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think, given that you sound younger than me, so I think that I'll probably be shuffling off this mortal coil sooner than you.
	But, yeah, listen, if you're in Libitopia, let me know where you're going to be.
	Let's sit down and do some lunch. All right.
	I'll... Like, should I message you on the board or just over there?
	Yeah, message me on the board, ping me on Skype.
	There's six different ways to get your proboscis into my orifice.
	Alright, and I'll do that.
	But thanks again.
	And, yeah, I loved hearing, just to comment on the other listeners, I loved hearing about the topic on, you know, dealing with people that are, you know, not just, you know, Because I kind of felt I was that way as well, not that I kind of judged people too quickly, but that I shouldn't just accept their beliefs once I've tried to reason with them.
	Yeah, love and morality are two different sides of this.
	Just two different ways of talking about the same thing.
	So, yeah, I hope that...
	Yeah, look, people, you know, we have an open house.
	Come by. Come to the barbecue.
	Come to New York. Come to Libertopia.
	You know, come to Porkfest when you can.
	I mean, I must have chatted with over 100 people at Porkfest at one time or another, and I think the pictures are all on Facebook to prove it.
	So, yes, it is a real, real pleasure.
	So, yeah, stay in touch, and let's meet up when you're out there.
	All right. Thank you very much.
	We'll see you later. All right.
	While we wait for the next caller, I guess, Izzy updates.
	I guess we'll turn to the third-party documentarian crew, who've now spent three days?
	With Izzy and the Delicio Christina and me.
	Izzy is just past two and a half years old and people I'm sure are a bit bored about hearing me talk about her.
	So if you'd like to share some of your thoughts, strengths and weaknesses, pluses and minuses that you've seen.
	Yeah, I've found her to be really lovely.
	She is very, very energetic.
	More energetic than just about any other child I can remember seeing.
	But unlike those children...
	Her energy seems to be very focused.
	So, you know, she wants to do something different every five minutes.
	But for the five minutes that she is doing something, she's intensely focused on it.
	It's not like the kind of the dissociation and mania that you get with children.
	The way that I've seen Steph and Christina interacting with her, you know, they kind of...
	Take it as their job, I think.
	I don't want to speak for them, but I've seen them take it as kind of their job to facilitate her knowledge and facilitate her learning and facilitate her pleasure rather than, you know, denying that pleasure.
	You know, I don't hear a lot of, no, you can't do that, you know, don't do this, don't do that.
	And when there is, you know, please don't do this.
	Oh, yeah, we're back. Yay, we're back.
	Alright, you were talking about Izzy's focus.
	Yeah, so Izzy is at the point where you can...
	It's not quite a two-way conversation, but she's certainly very verbal and she's telling you just about exactly what's going on for her.
	She'll say things like, I'm angry, I'm frustrated, I'm happy.
	And it's one of those things, yeah.
	Yeah. It's one of those things that I've never actually heard a child verbalize what was going on for them, like how they were feeling.
	You hear, I want, but not I feel.
	And that's kind of inverted with Isabella, which is just wonderful.
	I couldn't imagine her childhood going better.
	I couldn't imagine a better outcome for her, and I've never seen better parents in my life.
	Yeah, for me, the thing that strikes me the most interesting is how deliberative she is at two and a half.
	Something will happen to her.
	And periodically throughout the day, she'll run through that memory, she'll run through that experience in her mind, and she'll say things that were said at the time that that experience happened, and you can see the gears turning in her head trying to understand it.
	Like, she sees a car go fast and she'll stop periodically throughout the day and she'll say, that car was going really fast.
	Remember that car that was going really fast?
	And she'll say, I felt scared or I felt...
	Happy or whatever it was that she felt at the time.
	So sort of this kind of continuous process of integration of emotion and sensual experience and intellectual understanding of it that's going on.
	That's the thing that's really struck me the most.
	Interesting, because I don't know much about children, but At two and a half, I didn't expect to see that in a child.
	But I guess it sort of makes sense that you would.
	The other thing that I think is interesting is that, and we talked about this last night, that she takes her cues from you and Christina, but in a different sort of way than I've seen other kids take.
	Like, Like you were saying, she's really inclusive and wants to include people in what she's doing, but she has a sense of confidence about who we are through...
	Not just her own experience of us, but also of you two.
	And she trusts your instincts about us as much as she trusts her own because she respects your authority, but she respects your authority because...
	She's never seen it misused.
	She understands...
	She's, at least from what I've seen...
	It's a natural sort of organic respect for that authority because She doesn't follow orders, right?
	You've never given her an order and she wouldn't follow it if you did give it to her.
	Again, it's always this sort of negotiative process where you're expressing what your preferences are and she's expressing what her preferences are and eventually the two of you come to some sort of understanding of And even though she's still early in her ability to verbalize her desires,
	her preferences, and to verbalize her negotiation, there's still a negotiation going on.
	And it just struck me as interesting how...
	How strangely equal the relationship is.
	Even though you're in a position of authority and she recognizes that and she sort of desires that from you.
	It helps buoy her own sense of confidence in herself.
	There's still a kind of equality between the two of you in that she also expects to be heard and respected.
	And have reasons for what's going on.
	Right, exactly. Yeah, exactly.
	Thank you. Well, offering her endless candy if she's nice to visitors clearly has worked.
	So that's great.
	Alright, do we have the other caller in or questions in the chatroom?
	I don't know yet. I didn't see anyone say they wanted to call me.
	Look around. I don't appreciate the force the government used to get that money.
	Which they give me later on.
	No, I don't think it's immoral.
	Again, you may have missed the part I was talking about earlier, but no, you can listen to that again.
	No, listen, if you can go and work in an orphanage and you respect kids, hell, I'll subsidize you too.
	If you need any cash, let me know.
	I think that's a wonderful thing to be able to do.
	So, yeah, do it with a great and clear conscience.
	The world is solved by the just, fair, and equal treatment of children.
	And... If you're part of that solution, there's no amount of government resources and money that I would object to.
	Ah, yes, the ethical gray area.
	So, this is interesting.
	Yeah, so this fellow wrote, basically, I like how people start...
	Send this with the word basically.
	I prefer Fortran LE. But basically, last October, I ordered a DVD box set online.
	When it arrived, it didn't work.
	At the time, for various reasons, I was unable to return it.
	Then after a while, it kind of slipped my mind when past the period that I'm allowed to return items.
	Recently, I brought another one from the same vendor, which works fine.
	the gray area I mentioned was that I was thinking of returning the older broken one and pretending it is the new one on the one hand it seems okay because the original item was faulty and I was entitled to return it for a refund but on the other if I returned it now it would be using fraudulent premises not really sure how to resolve this one that is a very very interesting question because I kind of know what you mean It's like... No harm, no foul.
	I'm just returning a box set that's slightly different, but it's exactly what I would have done with the other one and so on.
	But I think I'm going to have to come down on not great.
	For the simple reason that the business that you are working with has reporting quarters.
	And so when they say you have 30 days to return an item, or 60 or whatever, that's partly because they have to close their books at some point.
	And if they said you have two years to return an item, then they wouldn't be able to close their books for two years because you might return it.
	And this, I think, would be true in a free society as well.
	So from an accounting standpoint, that's one of the reasons they put limitations on these things.
	And I assume that I agree to these terms and conditions when you buy the item, I assume.
	And you were aware of the time frame that you had to return the item and so you had accepted that as a contract.
	The contract doesn't say, but you can substitute other things for what you're not returning.
	And so I think that when you click on that, I accept this contract, that that is kind of your word.
	Now, if you didn't return the item, then you got benefits from that because you got to postpone returning the item, which is a dull and onerous process.
	I've had to do it a couple of times and pack it up and take it to the post office and get the insurance.
	And, you know, there's an hour of your time to return something.
	So you kind of got that hour back.
	By not doing it.
	So I think that it's not a huge moral issue.
	I don't think anyone's going to say you're a bad guy for returning this other thing.
	But it is definitely not sticking with the contract that you agreed to, which is a pretty voluntary free market contract as far as online ordering or whatever.
	So I think that my concern would be Not just the minor ethics of the situation, but if you allow yourself this latitude, then what does it mean for you to have a contract in the future at any minor level?
	I'm talking about not just legal or business contracts, but even like the social contracts that we all sort of implicitly have.
	So is it going to make you, in a sense, lazier in the future by giving yourself this backdoor way of...
	Resolving contracts. Is it going to make you lazier in the future about fulfilling contracts?
	It's an interesting question.
	I don't know. The other thing, too, also comes to, you know, and this sounds very heavy-handed, and I apologize for that.
	I don't consider this to be a major moral issue, but let's say that your DVD box set was $40.
	Well, what price is your word?
	I'd go for more than $40.
	Okay, if it's like Lord of the Rings on Blu-ray, well, yeah, obviously it would be worth that.
	But this is a word that you kind of gave to people you were buying stuff from, and if you kind of dodge it, then your word is worth a little bit less.
	Again, please understand, I'm not trying to say this is some big significant moral issue, and I'm sort of not trying to wave this sort of stuff, but I would say that...
	I would hold out for a bigger price for keeping your word myself.
	And I would just look and say, okay, well, this is what happens when I don't return stuff.
	And I go outside the bounds of the contract.
	Well, I'm sort of stuck with it.
	At least a rental car.
	Yeah, take off of the rental car.
	That's totally different. Because they get money from the government.
	Oh! Aha! You can justify everything with anarchism.
	So... So anyway, I hope that, again, look, if you send it back or not, it's not a big moral issue, I think.
	I mean, I think there's a minor matter of integrity here that would be...
	No, it says, I just kind of felt like I was losing out by being ethical, financial at least.
	No, because you didn't return it in the time frame, right?
	Yeah, the agreement is you've got 60 days to return it or whatever.
	If you don't return it in the 60 days, that's something you knew ahead of time, Going in, you postponed it.
	And I tell you, the reason that you postponed it was because, I guarantee you, subconsciously or consciously, the reason you postponed it was because you were going to give yourself an out like this.
	And if you weren't going to give yourself an out like this, then you would have...
	Returned it on time. That's really my sort of issue.
	It's not so much the past as the future that really matters.
	So I would say, just say to yourself, look, I'm going to stick by my online contracts.
	I'll stick by my contracts. And that way I know the next time I get something that's broken, that if I don't return it on time, I'm simply going to lose that money.
	And that's going to make you return it on time.
	And not give yourself that out of, well, I'll return something else and get a refund and blah, blah, blah.
	Anyway, I hope that...
	And obviously... You trust the vendor because you ordered from them again.
	So it's not like you think the vendor is out to cheat yourself.
	So you're not in a state of nature with the vendor.
	So that would be my approach.
	Yeah, if we give ourselves out, it's a challenge.
	It does tend to erode things in the future.
	And look, I mean, again, I don't want to be Mr.
	Finger-wagging moralist or anything like that, because this is not a big deal, but these little details are important, I think, in the big picture of other more important moral decisions you may have to make.
	I found your podcast on pretension to be very interesting and relevant to my own life.
	I was wondering if you ever feel that other people are pretentious and how you deal with it.
	Oh, he's really lifting the lid of the volcano on this one.
	As a philosophical moralist, do I ever feel that other people are pretentious about morality, say, or about virtue?
	Do I ever feel that people have moral attitudes that can't be sustained logically that they pretend are?
	And fortunately, we have people here just scrape bits of my brain off the ceiling and attempt to reassemble them in some sort of coherent fashion.
	Yeah.
	Look, pretension as well is a false self flair to find other false selves, right?
	So, you know, obvious pretentious stuff.
	So, some, I don't know, to take a cliche, so some black kid in his gangbanger rapper outfit.
	Well, he's not out there to meet other black computer programmers or white computer programmers.
	He's out there to, frankly, take their lunch money.
	No, he's out there to send out this false self thing, right?
	And, you know, not to pick on blacks, a Hasidic Jew with his corkscrew hairdo coming down the side and his wife in a burlap sack.
	Well, he's also putting out false self flares to find other people.
	That's what turbans are for.
	That's what soldiers' uniforms are for.
	And that's what sports teams are for.
	You understand, these are all big false self flares that you shoot up to find other false selves.
	And so pretension, so some emo kid, right?
	You know, some goth kid.
	They're sending out their false self flares to find other false selves.
	To make sure that they don't actually bump into somebody who's got a real identity that makes them feel as empty as they actually are.
	Because that is truly terrifying for people.
	And I'm going to not...
	I don't think I'll sing it. I don't think I'll sing it.
	Because it's a really hard song to sing.
	But let me get...
	Uh...
	A very good song.
	It's an old song called How Soon Is Now.
	Let me get the lyrics here.
	It's always struck me as a very, very important song in terms of this false self thing.
	So he says, there's a club.
	If you'd like to go, you could meet someone who really loves you.
	So you go and you stand on your own and you leave on your own and you go home and you cry and you want to die.
	And that kind of desperation and loneliness, this is a very...
	It's a very emo song, or it's a very gothy kind of song.
	And it's a very good song, in my opinion.
	It's very... Its melody is very, very interesting and very different.
	It's almost Eastern in some ways.
	This is from The Smiths, and highly, highly recommended.
	I don't know much about The Smiths, but this song is, I think, very good.
	And... What I like about that is this desperation, and there is a pretentiousness about most people that I've known who are Smith fans.
	Oh, my God, Smith fans writing in.
	That's fair. I mean, this is unfortunately what I've seen.
	It's called How Soon Is Now.
	You may know it. How can you say I go about things the wrong way?
	I am human and I need to be loved just like anybody else does.
	It's a really good song.
	He's got a nice mournful cryptkeeper voice and well worth it.
	Yeah, the Smiths is the band.
	Did I call him someone else?
	Morrison? What did I call him?
	Oh, I didn't realize he was...
	Yeah, he's a solo artist now, but he was in a band called the Smiths before.
	And... Yeah, so this is a kind of pretension.
	And so you got mohawks, you got nose rings, you got tattoos, you've got, you know, bikers with a beard full of bees, you've got pirates, you've got, I mean, you got just about everyone has this costume by which they're attempting to filter out people you got just about everyone has this costume by which they're attempting to filter out people who have any kind of real identity and fit like jigsaw puzzle Because the most terrifying thing for an empty soul to encounter is a rich and deep soul.
	That is sunlight to vampires, literally.
	And so a pretension is just another way of doing that verbally, right?
	So that's what's so chilling about these kinds of people.
	So, yeah.
	Oh yeah, I also wanted to mention, for those who have Netflix, yeah, it's interesting, right?
	So I was thinking that it might be kind of cool.
	I don't get to go out these days, the last two and a half years.
	And I would like to do, like every couple of weeks, maybe we can see a film that's on Netflix and available to at least a North American audience.
	And we could watch a movie and then we could get together and talk about it.
	Because I like doing movie reviews, but I also want to get other people's views on it.
	And I would strongly, strongly suggest Rachel Gets Married with Anne Hathaway.
	I thought it was just her doing aerobics in a catsuit, but apparently it was not the case.
	So it wasn't as much fun in slow motion.
	As I was hoping. But I would strongly suggest Rachel Get Married.
	Rachel Gets Married. So if you want to watch it, maybe we can get together this week.
	I'll post something on the board. Rachel Getting Married.
	Sorry, Rachel Getting Married. Really, really interesting film if you can bypass some of the more self-indulgent musical interludes.
	It's an interesting film. Acting-wise, I think, is good.
	Script-wise, script is a bit skimpy, but well worth it.
	Sidney Lumet's Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Oh, yeah, I like the music, but it just went on a bit long.
	But the soundtrack is actually all the music that's played in the movie.
	They don't have a separate soundtrack that they layer in, which I thought was interesting.
	But, yeah, Rachel Getting Married, I think, is a really fascinating family film, a film about family and dysfunction.
	So I would like to have some talk.
	I'd like to talk about it, but I don't want to just do a solo on it.
	I'd like to do a sort of conversation on it.
	So check out Rachel Getting Married.
	It's available on Netflix, and we'll set up a time later this week to have a talk about it after you've seen it.
	I think it's really an interesting film and I'd like to do that a little bit more often.
	I'm not watching a lot of films these days because by the end of the night I'm just too wiped but I'd certainly like to set aside time and maybe we can set up a thread on the board but people can suggest films to watch because I think that would be great.
	They also have a lot of really great foreign films as well like films from the United States with subtitles for a lot of the southern films which is pretty cool.
	The Bicycle Thief would be an interesting film to see and talk about.
	I Am Love? And you guys really liked the one with Brad Pitt, right?
	Tree of Life.
	Yeah, Tree of Life. So maybe we can do that one as well.
	Alright, I just want to see if we had...
	James, do we have anybody else?
	We're rounding up the hour, but if anybody was waiting, I'd hate to miss...
	Nobody on the call right now.
	I mean, I did a last shout-out for questions, so if anyone's got any questions, last-minute questions in the chat, this is the time.
	Oh, yeah. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is a very powerful film.
	And interestingly enough, as one of my professors pointed out when I was pursuing my English degree, the lead characters in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee, who recently had a play on Broadway called The Goat about a man having an affair with...
	Oh, Goat.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, he pointed out that the lead characters' names are George and Martha, just like George and Martha Washington, that he's saying this is where the American dream has come to.
	And that horror is... that vitriol is only matched, I think, in American literature or American theater by the terrifying dissociation of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, which is truly, truly the collapse of the false self film.
	Long Day's Journey Into Night is also terrifying, so terrifying that he wouldn't actually allow it to be produced until 10 years after his death.
	And when he came out of writing it, his wife said he was just a complete wreck.
	And I can understand why.
	And then a week after, maybe we can do a Super Why, Jack of the Beanstalk, which is one of my daughter's favorite films, and we can talk about the implications of that and why there's not enough swearing in George Carlin's rendition of Thomas the Tank Engine.
	These are things that we could maybe review.
	Thomas the Tank Engine. What sort of activism do you support, Steph?
	I was thinking of going to a 4th of July celebrations and pointing out the futility of celebrating replacing one tyrannical government with another.
	Well, let's see.
	The other day I was chatting with a parent who mentioned that he spanked his kid.
	So the kind of activism that I would recommend is to say, hey, that's really not a very good idea.
	And that's not just my opinion.
	The scientific studies show that spanking increases aggression and reduces IQ points significantly.
	And there are far, far, not even better, but less destructive ways and positive ways to interact with your kids.
	And at times where they need to be restrained, there's ways to do it that are not violent in any way, shape or form.
	And have a conversation and I sent him to nospank.net and you can do that kind of stuff.
	So I think that you don't have to wait for the 4th of July and for drunken patriotic crowds who aren't going to listen to what you have to say, but you can see wherever there's aggression occurring against children and try and have...
	A positive conversation, as positive as you can manage with the parents and see if you can open them up to non-aggressive ways of parenting.
	I think that is my favorite form of activism.
	Other times, what you can do is, I was at a cafe the other day with Izzy, and there was, you know, because she likes her...
	I think it's, not chai latte, soy latte she's a big fan of, for obvious reasons.
	But we were next to a table with six, they were all women, it doesn't have to be I guess, but, and these women were, this was I think, it was a couple of days ago, and these women were all sighing extremely loudly about what an absolute Freaking, and I use the word freaking as a synonym, freaking relief it was that someone was here and they got away from the bratty kids in their classrooms.
	And this conversation went on for quite some time.
	And they're all teachers, all public school teachers, talking about...
	Oh, my God.
	I'm finally away from these bratty kids with their problems and their disobedience and their this and their that.
	You know, because, you know, when you incarcerate children in public schools and bore them to tears and trap them on sunny days in classrooms with boring people who don't like them, somehow they seem not to react positively to the experience.
	It is a complete mystery, but at least these teachers were entirely sure about whose fault it was and how that they absolutely deserved this time away from these terrible kids.
	And I decided not to be an activist in that moment because my daughter was there.
	And I don't want to expose her to that kind of language just yet.
	So, yeah, that's, you know, and look, y'all have your friends and family and my parenting can be improved.
	Everybody's parenting can be improved.
	And So whatever you can do to help parents be better, give them books on parental effectiveness training or other, you know, send them to nospank.net so that they're aware of what aggression does, verbal aggression and spanking, physical aggression, what it does to the kid's development.
	You know, as Dr.
	Phil says, appeal to their selfishness, right?
	Say, well, look, if you impose your power on your child when your child is four, what is your child going to do when they're 14 and bigger than you?
	Well, they're just going to impose their power right back because that's what you've taught them to do.
	So the more peace you invest early on, the more peace you reap later on.
	And so I would suggest that kind of stuff.
	I mean, I think it is a very ugly time in parenting if you've been aggressive when the kids become teenagers.
	There's a latency period, sort of 6 to 11 or whatever, or puberty.
	Which for some kids apparently seems to be about six these days.
	But there's a latency period where things seem to be going okay.
	But when those hormones and muscles kick in, it's a whole different story.
	So hopefully parents will work in the present with that future in mind.
	So... Yeah, look, it's tough.
	I was watching a Dr. Phil the other day called Violent Kids.
	It was called Violent Kids. And in it, there was a kid who had put a kitten into a bag and stomped on the bag until he broke its neck and done other violent things.
	And there were significant hints of abuse on the part of the mother who herself had been raised, I think, in an abusive situation.
	And what did Dr.
	Phil said? He said, well, I've got to tell you, parents, you're not doing anything to cause this, but there's things that you can do to make it better.
	We don't know where this level of aggression comes from in children.
	Well, I don't believe that is the latest science, at least that I have read and talked about.
	So... It is, look, it's tough.
	Like, I can understand where he's coming from.
	I mean, if you tell the kids, if you tell the parents the truth, at least as I see it, which of course is not with Dr.
	Phil's expertise, but if you tell the parents the truth as I see it, which is you have broken your child and it's going to take a hell of a long time to repair him.
	And you're going to have to change because you have caused a situation.
	The likelihood is that they simply won't listen, will just leave, and you can't get any help their way.
	Whereas if you put the burden on the kid or on some mysterious genetic, who knows what, then the parents may stay around enough to modify their behavior.
	So I can understand kind of where they're coming from, but I don't particularly agree.
	But, you know, what do I know? I'm just a podcaster.
	But that is...
	And the other thing too, like this guy from Harvard, this guy, I think he was a...
	He's like the foremost...
	He was the head of psychological association in the US, foremost expert on child rearing.
	And he said, well, you need to have pretend tantrums with your kid to cure them of tantrums.
	You know, like you say, have a tantrum now and you praise them for having a tantrum so that...
	Then it's less serious when they have a tantrum.
	I don't know. It just seems kind of crazy.
	And he's got a book called How to Raise the Defiant Child.
	How to Raise the Defiant Child.
	See, the child who's defiant is not the parent who's dysfunctional.
	It's the child. You've always got to put the burden on the child because the children don't buy the books so they can be sacrificed, right?
	I'm not saying he's mercenary in terms of money.
	I'm just saying that this is the reality of how people approach it.
	And, you know, imagine if I wrote a marriage manual called How to Manage the Defiant Wife.
	That you're yelling at and hitting.
	Right? I mean, how to manage the defiant wife?
	Well, people would be as offended by that and with far greater reason as they are by the taming of the true by Shakespeare.
	So, again, it's just ways to see where the society is in terms of putting responsibility on the parents for parenting rather than the kids for being difficult or defiant.
	But, of course, we know this from, what is it now, the statistics?
	one in ten Americans are on antidepressants of some kind because it's got nothing to do with self-knowledge or philosophy or integrity or virtue or abuse or immorality.
	None of those things, which traditionally were the answers to at least non-biologically based unhappiness.
	Now it's brain chemistry.
	Now it's you need more of this and less of that, none of which is valid according to any kind of science there.
	There is no brain chemistry problem that is addressed by these drugs, these...
	These drugs, and there have actually been some studies recently because they found that placebos are about 80% as effective as these drugs.
	So there's been some question about the 20%.
	But what they found when they do these antidepressant studies or these psychoactive drug studies is that the drugs come with side effects and so people know that they're getting the drugs.
	And the people who are just getting the sugar pills, there are no side effects.
	And when they substitute drugs that give you mimic side effects like dry mouth, It almost completely vanishes, the difference between placebos and these drugs.
	And of course, these drugs are being hit harder and harder towards kids, and they're almost all being prescribed off-label, which means they haven't been tested on children.
	In other words, they've been tested to some degree on adults, and they do produce things like suicidality, murderous rages, and brain shrinkage.
	But, you know, that's okay.
	But we'll prescribe them to children, Without testing them on children, on developing brains and developing minds and developing bodies without any long-term studies because children are not people in our society.
	Children still are not people.
	And until they are people, the world will just continue to get worse and worse and worse.
	So... Anyway.
	Oh, sorry. Sorry, go ahead.
	I was going to say, whenever I saw those commercials, it always came to mind that whenever I saw those side effects like suicidality or aggression, you know, to sort of help someone with their depression, I just think you're basically, with those kinds of people, just loosening the depression enough so they can come from inert to, like, that dangerous active stage, you know?
	That's, like, the theory I run with.
	Anyways. That makes sense?
	Sean, you had something you wanted to add?
	Yeah, I was going to say, like, people seem to have more compunction about testing medicines and foodstuffs and things on animals than they do on, you know...
	foodstuffs and pills and things like that to, you know, actual children who we know are sentient, you know, and we know that, you know, they have an enhanced capacity or they would have an enhanced capacity for reasoning and things like that, that they might never have compared they have an enhanced capacity or they would have an enhanced capacity for Yeah, I mean, this is, of course, is a huge topic.
	So, yeah, last year available was 2005.
	27 million Americans, 10% were taking antidepressants.
	10% of the population taking antidepressants.
	And that is really, really quite astounding.
	Among the users of antidepressants, the percentage receiving psychotherapy fell from 31.5% to less than 20%.
	Because, you know, listening to somebody for 15 minutes and writing them a pill prescription is a lot...
	Makes you a lot richer than listening to somebody for an hour talk about their actual life issues.
	And this, I think, has doubled over the last 10 years or something.
	Anyway, it's just all too ridiculous, horrifying, and depressing for words.
	I think I need a pill. But, yeah, it is truly wretched.
	And, I mean, I could go on and on about this.
	And so I will. Just do one little, I know we're over, but we'll do one short little speech about something I've been thinking about lately.
	Yeah. There is a segment of the economy that is very, very powerful.
	I was sort of thinking about it over the last couple of weeks for a variety of reasons.
	A segment of the economy that is very, very powerful.
	And that segment of the economy is no one is to blame.
	No one is to blame.
	And people will pay a lot for that stamp on their forehead called no one is to blame.
	So... If you're messed up, nobody wants to know that it may be your parents who have some significant cause or your teachers or your priests.
	No one is to blame.
	Who's to blame for the national debt?
	No one's to blame. You can't find anybody who's responsible.
	No one's to blame. So the stimulus didn't work really, but it did add trillions of dollars of debt.
	So who's to blame? Who's to blame for making that multi-trillion dollar mistake?
	Well, nobody.
	If you're depressed, is it because of your life choices?
	Is it because of your virtue?
	Is it because of your integrity or lack thereof?
	Is it because you have done bad things in your life?
	Is it because you're an abusive jerk at work or you scream at your kids or you hit your girlfriend?
	Is that why you're depressed? No!
	It's brain chemistry, you see.
	You're not to blame. You're not to blame.
	These parents of children who...
	Murder, helpless kittens.
	No, they're not to blame.
	It's just some mysterious X factor.
	No one's to blame.
	No one's to blame. And the reason why, I mean, other than the obvious economic reasons, but the reasons why these antidepressants have taken the place of psychotherapy is...
	Because, I would argue, that the science is becoming pretty conclusive that there are some people to blame for messed up kids.
	And it's their caregivers.
	That's where the science leads.
	Don't blame me. Blame the science.
	And, yeah, no one is to blame.
	No one is to blame. Why, oh why, did Arabs attack New York on September the 11th?
	Because they're evil. Because they hate us for our freedoms.
	No one is to blame. It's not because the American government has been murdering them by the hundreds of thousands for decades or overturning their legitimately elected governments.
	No, see, no one is to blame.
	No one is to blame.
	Why are children bored in school?
	Is it because the schools are wretched, terrible?
	The teachers are distracted and dying for their summers off?
	Don't like their charges?
	Because the divorce rate went up by 300% in the 1970s?
	That children are growing up with the horrifying view of their emotionally stunted parents who got divorced?
	No! It's because the children have some brain chemical problem no one's to blame!
	That's why we have to drug the kid. We're just fixing a problem.
	I mean, if you get an infection, if you get a cold, it's not like you're to blame.
	And if the kids have bad brain chemistry, it's not like anyone's to blame.
	Nobody's responsible for anything.
	Nobody's responsible for everything.
	And people will pay a lot of money, a desperate, hideous, vile, revolting amount of money, to escape the weight of moral responsibility.
	But that moral responsibility does exist.
	Still exists. So where are we going to put it?
	Well, we're always going to put it on the helpless.
	Right? Always going to put it.
	How to parent the defiant child.
	The child is defiant.
	The child has oppositional defiant disorder.
	Which means he don't lack authority.
	Well... If the teachers I was listening to were in dedication, authority doesn't really like them.
	And I think that came first.
	But people will sell their own freaking kidneys to get that stamp called, no one is to blame.
	No one is to blame.
	And until moral ownership is accepted...
	Things will continue to get worse and worse because we'll keep shoveling the blame onto children.
	Now, we may not shovel that blame onto children like they're bad, but we may shovel that blame onto their physiology where we imagine there are these ailments that they suffer from.
	ADHD, ADD, ODD. Bad humorous, yeah, that's right.
	I mean, it is the modern equivalent of demonic possession, right?
	The demons didn't exist and neither does bad brain chemistry.
	What does exist is genes that are triggered by violence, as we know scientifically.
	What does exist is children being herded into these brain and soul-sucking public schools from so often broken homes where they're taught nonsense and trivia, where they are so often bullied and frightened, which we would never accept for adults.
	We would never accept That for legions of adults, millions of adults, they get assigned their retarded occupations some manual labor.
	They're herded into these camps and they have to work there and they can't leave.
	That would be shocking. That would be appalling.
	But we can do it to kids, you see, because kids aren't people.
	You know, we can put them into these, you know...
	The choice is that we would never relinquish as adults.
	We'll strip from children and feel like we're doing good, of all things.
	We will strip them of their choices about how they want to be educated, whether they want to be educated in this kind of system.
	We will strip them of those choices.
	We will strip them of the choices of what subjects they want to be educated in.
	We will strip them of their choice of who they want to be educated by.
	And just herd them into these rooms, herd them into these rows, lock them in these rooms, half of whom are designed by experts in prison construction and prison architecture.
	You try applying those same rules to adults, and you have shock, horror.
	Every columnist in the world's pen would be flaming up the page in moral outrage.
	But you try not doing that to children, and you get shock and moral horror.
	Unschooling? Homeschooling?
	Homeschooling? Children want to learn themselves and only need facilitation from adults.
	Oh my god, we're losing control of the crops!
	We must gain control of the crops again!
	We must gain control of the livestock because if we don't indoctrinate the livestock, we can't sit on our fat pimply asses as farmers and sell them off for money.
	So yeah, we've got...
	We've got some places to get to as a culture and as a society.
	So yeah, when it comes to activism...
	It's a three-word phrase.
	Children are people. Children are people.
	And it's not even children are people too.
	It's children are people first.
	Children are people first.
	we can grant no right to an adult that we don't first examine in its applicability to children.
	And if we don't do that, if we continue to treat children as somewhere between pets and the homeless, then we continue to build on these shaky foundations.
	And Of predatory childhoods.
	The world will continue to get worse because our technical knowledge has often been talked about.
	Our technical knowledge, our knowledge of destruction and control and manipulation couldn't have the modern fed without computers.
	Our technological knowledge is far in excess of our moral consistency.
	And we better damn well start catching up to our technology with our morality or there will literally be hell to pay.
	And thank you everybody for your support.
	Thank you for your generosity.
	Donate is the place to go.
	We take Bitcoin. We take PayPal.
	And I think somebody emailed me something that I'm afraid to open that smells like a kidney.
	But we'll probably return that by pretending it's a DVD set.
	So thank you everybody so much.
	Have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful week.
	I really, really want to make sure that I leave you just with the positive message of change.
	We are going to win. Consistency is always going to win.
	Reason is always going to win.
	It doesn't seem so often at the times, and it may not seem so in the immediate future, and I don't think it is in the immediate future, but we are going to win.
	We may not live to see it, but the world that we're building, the world that is to come, is going to be here, and the greater is the heroism that is required and is the courage that is required, the further off it is.
	So have...
	Great heart and great hope at what we are doing, because there is no turning back when you step up the next ladder of morality, and the personhood of children, like the personhood of slaves, like the personhood of women that came before, like the personhood of every underappreciated and underrespected minority, the personhood of children is the last step, the greatest step, And the irreversible step in the moral progress of mankind.

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