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Jan. 8, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:50:12

2071 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show, 8 January 2012

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	First we have Hunter. Hunter, I'm Gatherer.
	How are you? Let's go and get some food.
	Alright, I'm good, Steph.
	How are you? I'm great, thanks.
	Very good. So, man, I am excited to be here, and I spent about two weeks finding the right question to ask you, and I am ready to ask it.
	Are you ready? Um, let me stretch a little light stretching.
	Yes, go. Alright, for sure.
	Here it is. So, Elizabeth...
	Man, I just really want your eloquent response on this.
	Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, recently created a media flap when she said, There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own.
	Nobody. You built a factory out there.
	Good for you. I want to be clear.
	But I want to be clear.
	You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for.
	You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate.
	You were safe in your factory because of the police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.
	You didn't have to worry that marauding vans would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did.
	Now look, you built a factory and turned it into something terrific or great ideas.
	God bless. Keep a big hunk of it.
	But the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
	And that is the end of the quote.
	I would like your response. Yeah, I've heard that.
	And boy, talk about a smarmy mom thing that is full of about as many lies as you can stuff into syllables.
	It's like putting a cherry bomb in a falafel.
	So I think that's very interesting.
	First of all, let's start this.
	Okay, so there's nobody in this country who got rich on his own.
	Nobody. You built a factory out there, good for you.
	Well, the fucking problem with American economics, as I just talked about in the intro, is that there aren't factories being built.
	Right? Factories are closing down to the rate of 15 every single day.
	Completely. So that's all nonsense to begin with.
	And now, nobody in this country got rich on his own.
	Yeah, that's true. And I did not invent the English language.
	Does that mean I need to pay everyone who speaks English or everyone who came before?
	No. Of course not.
	I didn't invent the whole language on my own.
	I'd like to change parts of it, for sure.
	But he got rich on his own.
	Yeah, of course. There's trade involved in getting rich.
	Yeah, I understand that. But I want to be clear.
	You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for.
	Well, first of all, that's not true.
	Because a significant percentage of Americans and people in most of the world don't pay taxes for roads.
	They're net consumers of government benefits.
	Otherwise, there wouldn't be such a thing as a national debt.
	So that's not true.
	Most people don't pay for the roads.
	And the second thing is, of course, if people did pay for roads, then why is there a debt?
	Why is there a national debt?
	Why is there a deficit? If everyone pays for everything, no.
	And the other thing, too, is that it's hard to say.
	It's an equivocation of the word paid.
	When you're forced to pay for something, are you really paying for it?
	Are you really paying for it?
	I mean, I guess you could say, in a way, if a guy's sticking a knife at my ribs and I pay him to take my wallet and go away, that I'm paying to not get stabbed.
	But I don't think we would really put that in the same category as paying to go and see a movie, which is sort of a voluntary thing.
	And said, so you hired workers, the rest of us paid to educate.
	Oh, sweet mother of God.
	Sweet mother of God.
	Is she really going to be defending American education?
	Where in many places, less than 50% of Americans graduate from high school and those that do have to go to remedial education to fill out a goddamn job application.
	So you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces the rest of us paid for.
	Safe in your factory!
	Is that right? Safe in your factory!
	So that means that there's not a huge amount of ugly rules and regulations and overhead and property taxes and all of that.
	You're safe in your factory because nobody's going to come and steal things from – oh, wait, no, except for the government, of course, who's going to come and rip you off for 35 percent corporate taxes and millions and millions of dollars in property taxes and all other kinds of taxes.
	So you're not safe in your factory while the government is around because if you don't obey their rules, they're going to kidnap you and throw you in a cage.
	You don't have to worry that the marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory.
	That's true.
	It's not bands unless you count the multiple layers of government as different bands.
	It is one band called the government.
	So let's see.
	Now, look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea.
	God bless.
	Keep a big hunk of it.
	Well, isn't that nice?
	She's allowing you to keep a big hunk of that which you've earned through voluntary trade.
	Isn't that nice?
	But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay it forward to the next kid who comes along.
	Oh my goodness.
	Is she literally in the government talking about the government's concern for children?
	I mean, is she?
	I mean, you have to be...
	So full of shit your eyes are brown, to be able to stand and say that with a straight face.
	So you see, the government is not badly educating the children and forcing their parents to pay for this indoctrination.
	The government is not setting up a system that has destroyed the two-parent household, thus causing untold economic and psychological devastation to children.
	The government is not paying for psychiatrists to drug children who are not satisfied with being locked in indoctrination cages and made to stare at a slowly squeaking chalkboard six hours a day.
	No, no. Nothing to do with that.
	And of course the government cares so much about children that it would never laden them with debt.
	It would never belabor them with debt.
	Bury them under debt. No, see the government cares so much about children.
	And let's, you know, just to sort of put the nail in the coffin of this rebuttal, let's just pretend she's talking about children.
	Let's pretend she's talking about babies.
	Let's rephrase this. There's nobody in this country who had a baby on his own.
	Nobody. You banged some broad and you made a baby.
	Good for you! But I want to be clear.
	You banged that broad on a bed that somebody else made.
	That somebody else made.
	You went to a hospital where people were trained by other people.
	And other people built that.
	You didn't build that whole hospital yourself, did you?
	Other people built that hospital.
	And you were safe in that hospital because there were security guards.
	And so you made a baby.
	And the baby is healthy and happy.
	Good for you. Good for you.
	I think that you should be able to spend a decent amount of time with that baby.
	But the underlying social contract is the people who made that bed you banked abroad on, well, they own a good chunk of that baby.
	And they are going to go and take that baby's kidney should they ever get sick.
	And they are going to get that baby to work in their fields without pay should they ever need that.
	And they will. And the people who built the hospital, even though you paid them, well, they built the hospital so they own part of that baby.
	See, this is a social contract.
	They own part of that baby and that child and that adult as you go along.
	The people who put the wires up to bring the electricity to make the little machines that go bing in the hospital, they also own part of your baby.
	So don't imagine that that baby is yours just because you had voluntary lovemaking with a willing partner or a turkey baster and...
	You paid voluntarily for the services to deliver that baby and you're educating that child yourself.
	No, no, no. The child is owned by us.
	But don't worry. We will let you have visitation rights with your children and your money should we see fit.
	Wow. You just demolished every part of that statement.
	And I couldn't even read it Naturally, because it was so just full of – it was full of it.
	I couldn't – that was like extremely difficult for me to actually read that statement and I greatly appreciate your response.
	And you – oh man, that was – I was actually laughing in the background like half the time.
	And yeah, I mean I have people approach me with statements like that and it's just – I don't even know how to respond to it, but you just did it beautifully.
	Let me do another 30 seconds on it, if you don't mind.
	Sure, yeah, here you go. Let's dig up the corpse and shoot it again.
	The corpse of the argument, of course.
	Let's see it. So, Quinta Kinte.
	If you're under 40, you won't get that reference.
	It's from Roots, the Alex Haley story about, right?
	So, Quinta Kinte. Quinta Kinte.
	Yes, we put you in a slave ship and took you from Africa.
	Did you build that slave ship yourself?
	Hell no! We locked you in a typhus-infested underground in that ship, and we fed you saltine crackers and water that was half full of salt.
	Did you make those crackers yourself?
	No! So we own you.
	And we built you a little hut right down there in the back 40 where you could sleep.
	In between picking cotton for 14 hours a day in 110 degrees heat, did you build all of that yourself?
	Did you invent the cotton plant?
	No! Jesus did! And when you were sick, I went in there with a set of pliers and I pulled your tooth out.
	Did you invent those pliers?
	No! Did you invent the roads that we used to get the cotton you picked out to market?
	No. This is why you're our slave.
	You didn't invent any of these things.
	We gave them to you.
	You didn't invent them, and that's why you are ours.
	Oh. Yeah, that really makes me question.
	Because I live in Portland, Oregon of the USA currently, I'm here right now, and it actually just makes me think, like, how the heck did we get into this system based on not just that response, but on the response before that, which was pretty extensive and well done, I would like to add.
	I mean, it seems like politics would have taken it the whole way to where we got right now.
	I mean, I... The whole language is voluntarism, right?
	The whole language is voluntarism.
	It was paid for.
	You owe us back because we – and you know what it is.
	The reason anybody would believe this shit is because, again, it's guilty mom shit, right?
	I sacrificed everything.
	It's guilty mom shit. I sacrificed everything for you.
	I stayed home for you.
	I stayed up with you when you were sick.
	You owe me visits in the old age home because I sacrificed so much for you.
	That's the social contract.
	I give up for you. I sacrifice for you.
	I do things for you and now you have to do things back for me.
	That's what it seems like.
	How would you explain that or how would you break that down into virtue?
	How would you explain that?
	Where would you go with that? It seems like a guilt trip.
	Oh, it's a total guilt trip because what it says is that you are – this is the whole lie behind the social contract is people say you are refusing to repay a legitimate debt.
	I shipped you that iPad.
	You better ship me the $400.
	And if you don't, you're ripping me off.
	And most people actually assume that just because they're being handed debt, that it's real and that it's genuine.
	And a lot of people don't even know what they're doing in some of the first stages of their life, so they just simply accept it based on preconceptions of conformity, which I really consider to be cowardice to an extent.
	Right. And, of course, she talks about – and nobody in this country got rich on his own.
	Nobody. First of all, why not his or her own?
	Well, I guess she's not that much of a feminist, right?
	But – and also it's social contract.
	It's a pay. It's legitimate.
	It's sharing. We protect you like your parents protected you.
	We kept you safe. We built the roads.
	We put a roof over your head when we put food in your mouth, and this is the thanks I get?
	Right. I mean, she gets the Honor C. George Costanza, Jewish Mom of the Year Award.
	And it's, you know, it's still early in the year, but I feel confident about that.
	Yeah, it's just, man, more and more, I really like your kind of psychological take on politics where they blend to an extent.
	And are you still there?
	Yeah. Sure am. Okay.
	Yeah, I just got another call.
	So, like, you know, it's really kind of interesting to see that home-based psychology is really extended all the way to political perspective and how the state is the mother and father.
	And, you know, I just saw that video that you made, and it just blew my mind.
	Yeah. I've got to thank you for that perspective.
	It kind of changes everything.
	It flips it around.
	Steph, while I'm here and I have the chance, I would like to ask you one more question which you kind of caused me to get in my mind, which is very important to me.
	Go ahead. This is actually an issue in my life to an extent.
	Maybe you could elucidate or illuminate it with a little something.
	So anyway, here we go. I live with a family that seems to exhibit at times certain kind of coercive type of...
	I don't know. It's kind of like that control freak.
	Kind of like a fascism.
	And a lot of it seems to be guilt trip based.
	And like you owe me that because I say you do.
	And some of it's just kind of like passive aggressive.
	But it seems to all stem from willful ignorance is what it all comes from.
	Or at least it relates to a lot of willful ignorance.
	It's just really interesting navigating this psychological minefield.
	I was curious as to what your take is on how I can achieve personal freedom even though I live in this family system.
	This family system that is tough to navigate and it's not always based in a deep connection or loving one another or virtue all the time.
	Virtue seems to be pretty low on the scale, although it's very high for me on the list.
	I mean if I had to value one thing, it would probably be virtue and love and happiness and stuff like that.
	But how do I navigate this willful ignorance and this closed-mindedness in my family?
	Well, you can't.
	There's an old quote that says, attempting to reason with people who've abandoned rationality is like attempting to give medicine to the dead.
	You can't make people rational.
	You can't make people good.
	You can be honest about your reservations and your problems you have with the relationship.
	I've always argued that there are no unchosen positive obligations, and that includes family, whether people like it or not.
	The fact that you are born into a family does not mean that they own you or have any kind of automatic allegiance from you for the rest of your natural-born life.
	I believe that any healthy and decent family is going to run on the principle of voluntarism, just as any healthy or decent society It's going to run on the principle of voluntarism.
	I heard this argument from a libertarian.
	I can't even remember his name.
	This would probably be about 30 years ago or so.
	He says, what do we owe our parents?
	We owe them justice.
	We owe them honesty. We certainly don't owe them obedience, and we didn't choose to be there.
	And that doesn't mean that it can't be a great, wonderful, and loving relationship, but you need to search within your heart.
	Yeah, what does he mean by justice and honesty?
	Well, justice and honesty are pretty much the same thing.
	And justice is if people treat you well, then you treat them well.
	I mean, that is just, right?
	Because that's a UPB thing.
	And if they treat you badly, I don't believe that it's an eye for an eye.
	I don't think that you should circle back and try and treat people badly who've treated you badly, because that's the joy of volunteerism, right?
	You don't have to go back and piss in the soup of a restaurant that served you a bad meal.
	You just don't have to go back.
	And that's what voluntarism is.
	And voluntarism is quality, and voluntarism is...
	Is love. There cannot be love where there are unchosen positive obligations.
	You know, if you're staying with your wife because of the kids, even though you hate her, that can't generate love.
	And if you're staying with your parents because they guilt you when you don't call or whatever, if you don't like them, that can't generate love.
	Love has got to be based on voluntarism in the same way that value in the free market can only be determined in voluntarism.
	That's a praxeological thing in Austrian economics.
	There is no such thing as value that can be measured in any way where there is not voluntarism.
	So if somebody's forced to buy something, the price is pretty meaningless.
	So there's no value in public education.
	The word value in public education is absolutely meaningless because people are forced to pay for it.
	And the word value in familial relationships or any relationships that isn't based on voluntarism, honesty, openness, and virtue, at least the striving towards virtue, and nobody's perfect in that regard, of course.
	But there's no such thing as quality or value or love in relationships that aren't voluntarily chosen and pursued.
	And that's my fundamental argument.
	And it's a universal argument. It works all the way from economics to romance to families to parent children and so on.
	Now, of course, the recognition being that when kids are young, the parent-child relationship is not voluntary.
	For the child. I mean, I guess the parent can choose to give up custodianship of the child to someone else, but the child's relationship to the parent is not voluntary, and that's why you need the greatest virtue and the most peace in the parent-child relationship, because that's the only way to fill in the hole left by the lack of voluntarism in the relationship is to be super sensitive and to act as if it were voluntary.
	I sort of act as if my daughter could just say to me tomorrow morning, I could wake up and say, hey, you know what?
	Not really working for me as a dad.
	You know, you appreciate it, you know, and obviously you're putting a lot of effort in, you know, and you put a lot of thought into it, but it's, you know, it's just not working for me.
	So I'm going to call 1-800-SWITCH-DADS and I'm going to take a test drive.
	And take another dad for a test drive.
	Just see. You know, variety.
	It's the spice of life. I want to shake it up.
	I want to see what it's like on the other side of the fence.
	And yeah, maybe you are the best dad.
	I don't know. But I'm not really satisfied with our relationship.
	So I'm going to, you know, hit the speed dial.
	And, you know, they're going to helicopter a new dad in with a bungee.
	He's going to grab me and my teddy bear, whisk me off in a massive skyhook to the Disney Palace where he lives.
	That's how I parent.
	And of course, I believe that's the case with all my relationships.
	It's the case with all my listeners.
	Anybody can stop listening to me at any time.
	It's the case with all my donators, subscribers.
	They cannot donate. They can cancel their donation.
	It is the case with my marriage.
	And my wife could say, you're not working for me.
	I think that, you know, you sitting there picking your nose, watching porn all day, not working for me as a wife.
	And so, you know, I'm going to switch something else out.
	That's the only way that I know to bring any kind of quality into the relationship of any kind.
	And so, that's what I would focus on if that makes any sense.
	Okay, so you're talking about the...
	I mean, if I could address one thing with my family, such as...
	My brother and my sisters, which I live with right now, would you think a good...
	Because right now, it seems like it would be best for me to be in this environment.
	It seems in my best interest, yet at the same time, there are some parts on a smaller scale which are not in my best interest.
	And so maybe...
	Would it be good for me to address the issue of volunteerism with my siblings?
	I think that's a pretty abstract way of talking about things, and you might want to just ease stuff in.
	Just sit down and say, listen, I'd like to have a conversation.
	Just have a conversation about a relationship.
	I mean... How do you rank me as a brother?
	Do you think of me as a brother or do you think of me as a friend?
	If I were to sort of move to the other side of the country, how would that affect you?
	What were the things that you liked about having me as a brother?
	What were the things that you disliked about having me as a brother in the past and in the present?
	And what would make me the very best brother in the world to you in the future?
	I mean, just basic ass quality checks in relationships are so important.
	Are so important.
	I regularly have these conversations with my wife.
	I mean, I'm incredibly honored to have my wife choose to share her life with me.
	And that's generally, you know, she's, you know, smart and gorgeous to me and I think gorgeous in general and wonderful and loving and just an amazing, fantastic, mind-bendingly wonderful superhero of a wife in every way, shape and form.
	So, you know, she's got her pick.
	She doesn't have to sit with a, you know, a balding guy rapidly developing a spare tire and an extra set of chin.
	And so, you know, thank you so much.
	I appreciate so much that you have chosen to spend your life with me.
	It really is an honor, and I view it as an absolute honor.
	It's a medal called Married every single day, and it's a medal called Dad every single day.
	What's working for you? What's not working for you?
	Is there anything I could do more? Is there anything I could do differently?
	What is going to make your experience of this marriage even better?
	I mean, I do that at least once a week and more if I remember.
	It's just basic quality checking in relationships.
	That's called not taking things for granted.
	Not taking things for granted.
	And not assuming that you have value because you all happen to be born in the same litter together.
	That is a shitty way to assume that you have value.
	That's like a nationalism of the family.
	My team is the best because it's around the corner from where I live.
	And across town, some other guy's team is the best because they're around the corner from where he lives.
	The nationalism of biological proximity is not healthy.
	The relationships need to be based on value, on voluntarism.
	And now, I think families have a huge advantage on all other relationships in that you just do get to spend so much time together.
	But given that you do get to spend so much time together, Let's make that time that you spend together as a family as great and as wonderful and as positive as possible.
	And wherever people are not checking into their relationships and saying, how could it be better?
	And this is what these Sunday shows are for too, so people can say to me, Steph, this was great.
	Steph, that sucked. I like this.
	I don't like that. And of course, I get that all the time.
	Which is great. And...
	I like the fact that it's a hard scrabble sell to keep a voluntary donation philosophy show afloat.
	I like that. I like that.
	It means that I've got to continually try to add value, to come up with great ideas, to satisfy you, the listening audience.
	That is quality.
	There's no other way to measure it.
	So just sit down and say, what's it like being my brother?
	Do you like it? What do you not like? What was your favorite thing I did as a brother?
	What's the thing that you like the least?
	How can I improve? What can I do better?
	And then see if that comes back to you.
	I mean, that is so important.
	Thank you very much, Steph.
	That was very good.
	You're very welcome. I'm glad that you called in.
	Thank you very much. I appreciate the call.
	You truly do have a show based on quality, and I appreciate it a whole lot.
	It's done a lot for the people in my life and the people around me.
	Anyway, I hope you have a great day.
	I'm going to go shopping. I think you definitely got the essence of what I was talking about.
	So go shopping. All right. Thanks, man.
	I think we've got our fan up next.
	How about I get another 10-second response from you, actually?
	All right. I'm going to make it quick. Okay, yeah.
	Let's say that the government that I live with doesn't accept the handouts that I give them, like the critique handouts, like the comments and questions, or the, you know, like, hey, how can I be a better brother?
	Sorry, I can give you a quick response on that.
	The government, by definition, doesn't, because there's not a voluntary relationship.
	Okay, well, you have done a lot for me.
	Thanks, Steph. Have a great day, and I'll talk to you later.
	Thanks, man. Next.
	Next up, we have Roger. Hi.
	Roger, Roger. My name is Ryan actually.
	I'm calling because I just like to hear maybe any advice that you have.
	I'm in grade 11 and I really, really, really, really hate school.
	It's coming tomorrow, and I just hate being in the environment where I'm treated like some kind of slave, you know?
	Maybe I could just hear your advice on how to deal with being forced into that environment.
	Yeah, I really sympathize.
	I was actually just saying to a friend of mine the other day that one thing I love about doing what I'm doing now, and there's so much to love about it, is that Sunday night, I always used to feel kind of crappy.
	When I was in school, I used to remember, it's like Wednesday morning.
	Monday and Tuesday, forget it.
	You can't even see the end of the week.
	But sort of Wednesday morning, I sit there and say, okay, so I make it through today.
	This is what I call a hump day.
	Make it through today. Then it's going to be Thursday.
	Now, Thursday, Friday is like right around the corner.
	And then Friday, I'd just be watching the clock.
	I actually, when I was in high school, I worked at a daycare center and I used to get out of school 15 minutes early because I had to make it to that job by 3.30 and school got out of 3.15.
	I needed to take a couple of buses to get to this daycare job.
	And yeah, so I sort of negotiated that with my...
	With my teachers and with the principal, and that was fine.
	And that also helped, because I would add that up.
	It's so sad. That's an hour and a quarter less of school every week.
	Hallelujah! It's like a math class and a half less that I have to take.
	So I'm not trying to make you feel worse.
	I'm trying to say, I get it, brother.
	I really do. It is just counting the minutes.
	And for you, of course, you've got another year after this to go, right?
	You're a year and a half. Yeah, and the other thing too is that next year, well, Marty, this time next year I would have to pick a university and things like that, which is kind of a career path.
	When I really feel like I've been...
	There's nothing in school that I haven't interested, you know?
	I'm getting worse at these subjects, and even subjects that I pick, they just...
	The relationship with the teacher can be enough to make it suck, you know?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And... Yeah, I'm sorry.
	Not to make it about me, but just sort of share what I remember.
	And I've mentioned this on the show before, but one of the things that stuck out of my head was, I think it was in grade 11 when a teacher gave me a report that said, if effort matched ability, you'd be an A+. As if this was some deficiency on my part.
	I mean, I shouldn't laugh because it's pretty tragic.
	You know? You know, it's like if I was running a restaurant and my food was shitty, and I gave reviews to my customers who didn't come back, And I said, well, if you really liked my restaurant, you'd eat more food here?
	As if that was some deficiency on their part?
	No. It's my damn job to make food that people want to eat, right?
	There's something... What is wrong with you?
	I'm going to fail you as a customer, because you didn't come back after I served you a nice, juicy shit-and-steak sandwich.
	You are a bad customer.
	You know what, customer?
	This is going to go on your permanent record.
	I'm going to make you sit...
	At the restaurant association's waiting room for an hour.
	And then you're going to have to write out a hundred times on a hundred lines, I promise to like the food in this restaurant more.
	I promise to listen to the manager of the restaurant when he tells me this is really good food.
	And I promise to ignore my tongue that says steak and shit do not make a good sandwich.
	To be punished.
	To be punished for not being enthralled...
	With your education for not being interested in being taught to be punished for that is so insane that in the future they will wonder how we managed to get through doors without a push-pull sign because we were so retarded in how we tried to educate children.
	Yeah. It's gone to a point where I need to debate whether my education should get in the way of my learning.
	I could do this useless project or I could read economics in one lesson.
	Well, I'll tell you what I did.
	And, you know, I hate to sound like some cheesy MBA star.
	Stay in school. Don't do drugs.
	But I'll tell you what I did.
	First of all, I racked up some extra credits so I could get out a semester early.
	I don't know if that's possible where you are, but you might want to look into that.
	Do a little summer school.
	Do a little whatever you can. Take some extra courses.
	I got out five months or four months before everyone else.
	And that was great because it also gives you the jump on the job market for youth, which is kind of important.
	You don't want to be with everyone else getting out in June, swarming everyone who's trying to get a job.
	So, yeah, if you could do that, that would be great.
	If you can get together, you know, it doesn't take a lot of people.
	It can even just be one person.
	One person who you can rub some brain cells together and get some sparks out of can make all the difference in the world.
	Because, you know, you've got some time to socialize at lunch.
	Maybe you've got a couple of recesses.
	They're probably not called recesses.
	They're probably called smoke breaks now.
	I don't know. If you've got someone in school that you can talk to, that can make all the difference in the world.
	Educate yourself outside of school.
	And the way I sort of looked at it was it was just like being an extra in an absurdist play.
	It wasn't serious.
	It wasn't real. There were certain hoops I had to jump through that I needed to do that in order to get the piece of paper that said to everyone who was prejudicial that, you know, this guy's not an idiot.
	So, you know, you're stuck in this absurdist Pirandello Beckett play.
	And it's weird, and it's bizarre, and it's completely counterintuitive.
	And it's like if you walk out of a film, the director and the stars don't get to chase after you and force you to come back in and watch the film and then write a good review on it.
	Otherwise, they're going to keep you in that theater indefinitely, right?
	Because it's being held back great.
	I mean, but that's just – if a woman doesn't like going on a second date with you, you don't get to kidnap her.
	But this is the way it works in school.
	It's completely Prussian and insane and evil.
	And, of course, read John Taylor Gatto and there's lots of other people who are...
	I have some reservations about him, though, because he's all into, let's get a national youth program to teach the youth how to be responsible and the government should run it and, yay, let's go back to the Hitler Youth because that worked so well last time.
	So I have some reservations about him.
	Yeah, I think you interviewed Peter Gray, right?
	Yeah, I like Peter.
	Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I... About a year ago, I read his article, School is a Prison.
	I really like that.
	And that's what actually got me into libertarianism.
	I got a link from a video on that topic to the story of your enslavement.
	So it's just kind of been a wake-up for me.
	But it seems like everybody else in the school really, they don't...
	I want to admit that the reality behind school and they kind of get annoyed if I say anything and it's hard because I feel like I need to show that like not just conform with what I'm being put through you know it's like Yeah, but look, I mean, this is the privilege of evolution, right?
	Sorry to interrupt you. That's totally good.
	But let me just make this point, and then I'll listen.
	That's the point of evolution. Look, the first fish to crawl out of the water had no other fish with him, right?
	Yeah. All the other fish are down, and they're this lungfish or whatever, trying to develop some sort of ability to breathe in air.
	Some sort of half-frog, half-fish, freakazoid.
	Yeah. I mean, he's the only one who's on land.
	First animal to go on land was the only animal on land.
	He goes back to all the other people and say, Holy crap!
	I saw this rainbow!
	I don't even have the word for it!
	I'm just going to make up a word for this bow of color in the sky called the rainbow.
	Which means God's sorry for drowning everyone, and he's not going to do it again, although he's morally perfect.
	But I just saw this rainbow! Do you know what else I saw?
	You know that squiggly thing that we saw dancing back and forth from the bottom of the ocean?
	That's like a crescent pie...
	Made of silver cheese!
	I'm going to call it the moon. In fact, I mooned it.
	Because I have a butt.
	I'm the first person to have a butt.
	I'm excited about that. And I saw foam and waves.
	And I saw land.
	And there were green things on the land.
	Growing. There were flowers.
	Okay, it's not bees. I saw all of these amazing things, right?
	You go back to the fish.
	And the fish say...
	I like it in the water.
	I like pooing in my bath time.
	I like swimming around and spraying my semen on a billion eggs.
	Right? I mean, that's what they do.
	Evolution is a frightening privilege.
	And it is the only way that anything advances.
	And 99.999% of people, of animals, of organisms, do not evolve.
	In fact, steadfastly resist evolution.
	Evolution, right? Because evolution is a competitive advantage.
	And so, to evolve is to be lonely.
	Because you are stepping into a world that is not there yet.
	But it's only in stepping into that world that you can begin to populate it, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah, that's kind of some of the feelings I have, right?
	I was going to say...
	So yeah, with the, kind of, a couple times, I just got really fed up and just started talking back to teachers, something too serious, even.
	At my school, it's a Catholic school, but like a public Catholic school, you know, like a government-funded We have to stop during prayer that they read for what seems like an hour every morning.
	But that makes you even more late in the morning.
	So just me just walking, trying to get to my locker, like all this chaos started happening.
	They started calling my parents and something happened before where I was in class questioning.
	She said that Something about the government being great or something.
	And then it just causes all these other problems, but if you don't resist, you kind of feel like a traitor, a hypocrite, you know?
	Oh, I wouldn't go there.
	I mean, I really understand that feeling.
	And let me just make sure I understand.
	So you're sort of saying, well, if somebody says something that's not true, I need to say something, otherwise I'm betraying the cause, right?
	That and even if they're treating me like shit, I should stand up for myself, you know?
	And how's that been working out?
	Well, I pretty much abandoned it, but...
	Good. You are a smart, smart young man.
	Good. Good. Abandoned resistance.
	How does that sound like an anarchist?
	I know. Abandoned, give up all hope.
	No, but you see, if you have, and I'm not saying you do, but if you did have the belief that That you can reform a coercive system, right?
	Resistance in school is like voting in politics.
	It's the fantasy that you can reform a system based on exploitation, dominance and coercion through some sort of resistance within the system.
	I don't believe that that's the case.
	And see, people who are in abusive relationships, you know, like some wife who's in a marriage with a guy who beats her up, well, she believes that he can be reformed.
	She believes that he can get better.
	She believes that he's going to improve, right?
	She just finds the right words or gets it across to him or whatever, right?
	And that's only predicated on the idea or the argument that he doesn't like it.
	And... I don't think that it's wise to show discontent, vulnerability, and a desire for better treatment in an environment where you don't have a choice to be there.
	If I'm in prison, I'm not going to say to some prison guard, I really hate it when the TV is on the Oprah Winfrey channel.
	Right? Because he's either not going to care, or if he does care, he's going to want to turn it to the Oprah Winfrey channel, because that's going to make him feel like a tough guy and a big guy, right?
	Because he might be a sadist, right?
	Now, if the prison guard comes to me and says, hey, listen, man, what channel do you want the TV on?
	I'd be like, hmm, I don't know if I should answer this, right?
	Right? And what I would do is I'd say, I want it on the Oprah Winfrey channel.
	Right? And then if he goes and switches it to the Oprah Winfrey channel, then I'll wait a day and say, actually, you know what?
	I've watched enough Oprah.
	I want to switch to something totally different.
	Let's go to Dr. Phil Land.
	And then if he switches it, he'd be like, okay, so this guy's actually listening to what it is that I want.
	But if the guy comes up to me and says, hey, what channel do you want to be on?
	And I say, well, man, I want it to be on the Oprah Winfrey channel.
	And then he immediately turns it to Dr.
	Phil. I'm like, okay, so I get where this guy's coming from.
	He's asking me what I want so he can deliver to me the opposite because I'm not in a voluntary relationship.
	I'm in prison. So instead of resistance, you need to probe and see where people are coming from.
	Do they actually want to serve something valuable in you?
	Or not? Yeah.
	Well, it's funny.
	They put everyone through this, and they have the balls to say, that's to our benefit, you know?
	It's a funny thing.
	Yeah, I mean, of course.
	Sorry, go ahead. Yeah.
	I get this kind of complacent feeling because I'm just whining about how much I hate schools, but then I'm not even trying to do anything about it.
	You know what I mean? No, no, but that's an acceptance of reality.
	You know, I hate gravity, but I get that it's not optional.
	I'd love to fly, wouldn't you?
	That'd be fantastic! You know, I hate aging, but it beats the alternative, right?
	Which is being six feet down, taking a mouthful of dirt nap.
	So, I get that there's, you know, there's things that I don't like, but they're not optional.
	And school, I would argue, for you, is not optional.
	I mean, look, I mean, you can quit and try and get a GED later, but I would suggest, you know, if you can work it out that it's another year or whatever, it's worth doing.
	You know, and obviously there's no way into college, or it's hard to get into college, harder to get into college without it.
	And look, I'm talking entirely out of my armpit, because I don't even know where you are, what the rules are, the laws are, whatever.
	But, there is no point, I think, Trying to resist an involuntary situation, an acceptance of reality.
	And look, also important to be precise in your language.
	It is not school that you hate.
	It is not school that you hate.
	I mean, if the school was great, you'd love it, right?
	It's not school that you hate.
	I mean, if it was a voluntary school or a private school or an unschool or a Sudbury school or whatever, you'd love it.
	It's not school that you hate.
	It's coercion. That your parents are forced to pay for this crap, that you're forced to be there, that the system is set up, that if you bail from it, it's really, really hard to get ahead.
	In life, you're throwing up a lot of obstacles, or society throws up a lot of obstacles in your way.
	And so it's really the involuntarism or the coercion of the environment that you hate.
	It's not school, it's not education, it's not teachers, it's the involuntarism, if that makes any sense.
	That's true. If I could opt out...
	It would be fine, you know?
	But if you could opt out, if you could opt out, it would be an entirely different school.
	Do you get that? Because if you could opt out, if you could say, or if your parents could say, this is terrible.
	I mean, this is terrible.
	My son doesn't want to be there.
	The teachers are teaching him things that are demonstrably false, you know, with 30 seconds of philosophical rigor.
	It's boring. And my son loves to learn.
	I mean, you can't pry him off a library book.
	You know, he's got Mises.org tattooed on the back of his neck.
	And you can't stop him from learning, and yet he hates going to school, right?
	And so if it was voluntary, if your parents had the right to say, oh man, we're pulling this, we're pulling this.
	Then the school would have to adapt to the preferences of the children and the preferences of the parents.
	Because the preference of the parents is that the children want to learn.
	Education should be that which instills in you a desire for lifelong learning.
	Right? It should not be the content of what is taught.
	It should be the direction that it's pointing you.
	Because how many people stop reading books when they get out of school?
	Well, it's the majority of people stop reading books when they get out of school.
	The purpose of education is to make people love knowledge.
	But in order to love something, it has to have value for you.
	There has to be a purpose. It has to make a difference in your life.
	And it has to hopefully, in the long run at least, make your life better.
	That's the purpose of philosophy.
	It's certainly the goal that drives me in this show.
	And so if it was voluntary, if you could leave, you wouldn't want to.
	Right.
	much fun.
	That is the only fundamental difference, the only fundamental difference in any relationship, and I use the word relationship here rather loosely on one side of this black coin, but there's only one difference: voluntary or violent.
	We get that sex is like it's love-making, if it's voluntary and it's rape, it's violent, and those two are complete and total opposites.
	A gift is a positive experience for both people.
	Theft is a negative experience for at least one.
	It is the complete opposite.
	A gift is praised.
	It is morally good.
	Theft is punished.
	It is morally evil. They are polar opposites, and the only difference, the only ultimate Grand Canyon bloody line in the sand, It's whether it's voluntary or whether it's violent.
	And if you change something from violent to voluntary, it is unrecognizable.
	It goes across such a wide pendulum spectrum that it is unrecognizable.
	School would be entirely different if you just took the bullets out of the gun, pointed at everyone in the system.
	And that's why I think the Sudbury schools, right?
	I think The schools need to be changed.
	If the schools were changed, there wouldn't be a government, really.
	Well, yes, certainly. If children grew up in voluntary education, the government would be absolutely unsustainable because you would have an entire...
	I mean, if children grew up in voluntary families, in voluntary virtuous families, in peaceful families, and they had voluntary virtuous and peaceful education, society would be the polar opposite of what it is now.
	And it would be going in the exact opposite direction of where it is now.
	Because violence and voluntarism, there's no greater distance between two interactions than that.
	And everything is unrecognizable when you go to voluntarism.
	You know, because people sort of...
	Write to me and they say, you know, Steph, I like your economics.
	I like your policy. I even like some of your philosophy.
	But dude, what's it with this personal relationship stuff?
	I mean, come on. What's that got to do with anything?
	And what they don't understand is, I'm listening to the audience.
	I'm listening to what matters to you.
	Because it doesn't matter what matters to me.
	Because I already got philosophy in my life.
	It's already working for me really well.
	But if people listen to the Sunday shows, 90%, I would estimate just off the top of my head, 90% of the calls are about how do I deal with this situation in my life, not how people are going to supply roads in the year 2300.
	I mean, there's some of that for sure, and I love the UPB discussions, and I love the discussions of more formal philosophy.
	But But this is what the audience wants.
	And I agree with the audience.
	Because that is the only way to figure out if there's anything called quality in the interaction.
	And so, yeah, it's completely opposite.
	And this is why what I do here is kind of the opposite of academic libertarianism.
	Academic libertarians are not in a situation where they have to directly mold and respond to the deepest concerns of their audience.
	And, you know, this is no particular thing against the academic libertarians.
	It's just a fact. They are not market-driven.
	Or the market that they're driven by is the PhD market, which is quite different from this, right?
	I really have to listen to what's important to my listeners.
	I mean, I don't have to. I could choose to keep blabbing on about stuff that nobody cares about and, I don't know, go back to having a real job for a living.
	But... If you look at the difference between what I'm doing versus what a lot of other people are doing even in the libertarian movement I'm the one who's directly pointed at the audience.
	I don't have advertisers. I don't have sponsors.
	I don't have grants.
	I don't have charitable status.
	I am money from listeners for hitting concerns with a bullseye as best I can, which is why I am a trained philosophical dancing monkey.
	Guy comes in with an Elizabeth Warren quote, I'll do the Elizabeth Warren dancing monkey thing.
	I will do what you want, and that's The important thing.
	And I'm pointing that out just to point out how different your educational experience is, I hope, with this show versus what you're getting at school because this is what it looks like to actually be responsive to the people who are learning or trying to.
	Sorry for that long thing and I'll shut up now.
	No, no, that was great.
	Yeah. Just maybe one more last question before I go.
	Sure. I actually live just outside Toronto as well.
	Yeah. And they're opening one of those Sudbury schools in Toronto.
	What do you think about that whole system?
	Is that something you've put your own kid into?
	I would certainly be interested.
	I'm certainly no expert, but I like the idea.
	I like the idea. Now, it seems to be a little bit collectivist, and everyone's got to be on a committee, and all this, that, and the other, and that's not, I think, exactly...
	I always look at things about...
	How does a restaurant work?
	How does a software company work?
	And not everyone has to be on a committee to make collective decisions and those things.
	So it may be a little bit on the hippy-dippy side for me, but I really do like the self-directed thing.
	And I also do like having children have authority.
	I think children need to be introduced to authority in the same way they need to be introduced to walking and the woods and so on.
	And so I like it.
	I think it's very interesting and I appreciate the information.
	I may look into that more. Alright, thank you very much.
	Thanks, man. Hang in there.
	I know it's tough. I know it's tough.
	You've got lungs, not fins, and you've got lungs, not gills, and that can be hard, but you're not the only person out here in the woods, you know, so hopefully that will be of some comfort.
	So hopefully I just got to get through it, you know, just have that kind of mentality, right?
	Yeah, you know, and it's going to be stuff that's interesting that you can learn, and even the stuff that you reject in your mind is very important.
	We are also defined by that which we reject as well as that which we accept.
	And but you don't need to martyr yourself for some kind of course, because I think that for the most part, if you know that the teacher is wrong, then you know that you don't need to prove it to anyone else.
	And if you get known as the guy who just is annoying, who irritates the teacher, who interferes with the lesson and so on, then people, I think, will in the long run have a negative view of thinking for yourself rather than a positive one.
	You know, if people are interested, they'll they'll find you.
	But I certainly wouldn't get into combat with with teachers because that's not a voluntary situation.
	yeah You're always going to be on losing end.
	Oh yeah, yeah. I'm just going to basically say that resistance is futile and you're annoying.
	Oh yeah, yeah, for sure.
	Okay, thank you very much.
	I really appreciate it. Great job.
	Great job. Alright. Do we have another caller?
	Who can program the philosophy monkey with a new speech?
	Come on. Push the button.
	We have a few more callers today.
	Justin is up next.
	Justin. All right, man.
	First of all, I'd just like to say thanks for taking the time to really keep the message of liberty and the message of this is my life.
	You know, you have no right to impede on my life if I do nothing to you.
	So, you know, just that whole mentality.
	Just thank you for keeping it alive.
	Thanks, man. I must say, you have a very soothing voice.
	You know, I'm thinking I'm going to tape this and I'm going to use it as my alarm, except I'm afraid I'd never get up.
	Because your voice would be like, come on, another five minutes.
	What's it going to hurt? Have yourself a little dose.
	What does it matter? Come on.
	The world will still be there when you get up.
	No rush. Sorry, go on.
	No. The reason why I called in is basically I want to talk about something I think is pretty important.
	You know, like Alex Jones...
	If you think about Alex Jones with any kind of logic and just think about the way things have been moving this whole time and how long that this plan that we are faced with has been in the works.
	If you look at that man and you listen to what he says and you judge his character, he's not the kind of person that The truth movement really needs holding the red button.
	You know what I'm saying?
	You mean Alex Jones is not the kind of person?
	Yeah. What I'm afraid of, and if you listen to what he's been saying here lately, I mean, he is getting radical.
	I mean, he has been talking about everybody grinding up the guns and, you know, just stuff like that.
	And at any time...
	What's to say that he can't present some situation that would rouse about 500,000 people up at once to grab a gun and go somewhere?
	See, this is very scary because this is what will get the government the ability to inflict martial law.
	Because on top of having the plug on the market...
	When they can just completely crash it at any time and send 50 million families that are dependent on checks every single week that have absolutely nothing of subsequent value.
	Sorry, when you say, who's controlling the truth movement?
	I just want to make sure I understand. Well, I'm not saying that he is controlling it.
	In no way is he controlling it.
	I'm not saying that. But the overwhelming fact is there's over 500,000 people just down here in the south of the US that listen to him.
	And, you know, how far they will go with him is yet to be determined.
	But I have... A suspicion that he sometime soon is going to be doing something.
	He's going to start some kind of movement.
	You mean calling for some sort of insurrection or resistance or something like that?
	Yes, absolutely. I've been on his show, and I like him in a way.
	I really do. I mean, he's got a lot of passion, a lot of energy, and I can't...
	You know, like the Bilderberger stuff, the Foreign Council on Foreign Relations.
	I don't know. I mean, the Bohemian Grove stuff, I can't verify that.
	And as a philosopher, that stuff doesn't particularly interest me.
	What interests me is sort of first principles and how to apply them in our lives.
	I don't think that he's going to call for any kind of insurrection.
	I mean, I just don't think... Because, I mean, that's just going to land him in jail.
	I mean, you cannot legally, as far as I understand it, I'm no lawyer, but I think you cannot call for arms against the government.
	I mean, no country will allow that.
	And I've certainly never done that.
	I think that he is a very entertaining and passionate guy.
	He puts a lot of work into his show, and he puts a lot of work into his documentaries.
	I don't think he's going to do that, though, because we all get that you're outnumbered, you're outweaponed, you're outclassed, and that that is not how we build freedom.
	We build freedom through our relationships.
	We build freedom through our relationships with our children.
	We build freedom through reason, through the inescapability of...
	Syllogistic logic and evidence, that's my foundation for it.
	I don't think you build freedom by taking up weapons.
	Because as you say, I mean, that's just going to be used as an excuse to expand whatever is going on.
	I mean, they're expanding anywhere.
	Like up here in Canada, there's a law now passed where they can go and check your internet activity without even getting any kind of warrant.
	And that's just designed to chill people to, oh, what are we doing here?
	You know?
	So you can't fight fire with fire.
	I mean, self-defense to me is perfectly valid if a guy is running at you with a gun and you've got a bigger gun.
	Great.
	You know, shoot him in the foot or get him to stop by holding up your gun or whatever, right?
	But when you have a water pistol and other people have Patriot missiles, there's not much point squirting your water into the sky hoping you're going to stop anything.
	And that's why you...
	So, you know, reason is your backup self-defense in a multi-generational standpoint.
	So... But again, I mean, I certainly haven't listened to him in Donkey's years, not out of any aversion.
	I just don't have time to listen to other people's shows.
	But obviously there is a great deal of fear, and there is a great deal that he's right about.
	I mean, there is an expansion of power that...
	People should be shocked at, you know, indefinite detention for U.S. citizens on the whim of the president.
	And a president who believes that it's a legitimate argument to say, well, I'll pass the law, but I don't really ever intend to use it.
	I mean, that is the most astoundingly ridiculous argument that it's like, oh, is he going to be in office forever?
	Is his word as binding as the law itself?
	No, of course not. I mean, George H.W. Bush, no new taxes.
	Read my lips. Hey, have some new taxes.
	Bend over. I mean, the promise of a man in power is about as helpful as a drug from a date rapist in a bar.
	It just means nothing.
	And it's a way of calming your fears so that you won't resist the authority that is being extended and expanded.
	So, I mean, a lot of the stuff that's coming true that would have been unimaginable 10 years ago.
	Well, maybe 11 years ago before 9-11.
	But, I mean, the loss of freedoms and the expansion of arbitrary state power, you know, he's been right.
	And let's give him credit at least for that, that he said it was going to get bigger and nastier.
	And he's been right about that.
	But, no, I don't think he's going to call for any of that stuff because, I mean, that would just be a way of getting him and his listeners locked up.
	There's no way to resist it.
	Because the majority of people is still sucking from the teat of government-sponsored media propaganda, everybody gets that that would simply be reshaped into a narrative about, you know, crazy right-wing domestic terrorist extremists, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	And would further describe it.
	see, this is where these ideas lead, to this Waco style, blah, blah, blah, and it would just discredit everything, and that's not, you know, the way that we expand philosophy is through living noble lives ourselves, not through creating violence that can be spun into craziness.
	Yeah. Hold on.
	Think about this, though.
	And yes, I do believe that pretty much most of everything that he says is true.
	And I think, really, if you think about when he started off and when he really got his first...
	Very big push, you know, as far as getting into the eye of the public was around 9-11.
	And, you know, if you think about it like this, like, think about it like this.
	Say you're the, you know, you're the government.
	Say that you're the one that's, you know, gonna change the course of human events to get an outcome that you desire.
	You know, with the internet and the way the spread of, you know, technology, finding out something has become so much easier over the past, you know, couple decades.
	And so...
	If you know that you can't keep everything secret, you can't keep absolutely everything secret, but you can manipulate the information to get a desired outcome from people's judgment, then it would be in your best interest to have somebody off to the side with a clean record, nothing to cause any suspicion.
	To be the one that everybody starts to turn to the more and more they see these things implemented.
	And the potential for that is astronomical.
	I mean...
	Well, yeah, but look, people aren't going to en masse rise up against any kind of government predation.
	I mean, history shows that over and over again.
	Violence works to keep people in line.
	When you think about when the Bolsheviks took over from the Mensheviks in Russia, In 1917, I mean, they took away everybody's rights.
	Property rights, civil liberties, freedom of the press, freedom of religion.
	There was no massive resistance.
	People just adapt. They just adapt.
	And that's why we survive as a species.
	That's why we survived all these crazy hierarchies rather than dying off in flaming civil wars 100,000 years ago.
	We adapt. If you look at what Chairman Mao did, I mean, 10 million people starving to death in his agricultural great leap forward and then In the 70s, the Cultural Revolution let a thousand flowers bloom so we can see them and nuke them.
	People just submitted to that.
	And the blacks submitted to apartheid for the most part.
	And people just submit.
	So the idea that there's going to be some government law that's going to pass that's going to be a powder keg for resistance is not true.
	People are designed to survive in the environment they're in.
	They're designed to reproduce. They're designed to keep their children safe.
	And there's not going to be anything like that.
	It has to come from thought.
	It cannot come from resistance.
	Because that's never going to be enough people to do that.
	Well, I mean, but if you...
	The thought of us bombing Iran and the implications of what's going to come from that...
	I mean, it's going to completely change everything.
	And once we go down that path, there's no turning back because China and Russia have already said that if you come over here, we're going to have problems.
	And regardless of who's pulling the strings over in China and Russia as compared to here or whether it's the same, which I believe it is, You know, they're just starting the war.
	And these people, the US and China and Russia, imagine how many nuclear missiles that these people are holding on to.
	The nuclear weapons are not going to be used.
	They're not because the leaders are vulnerable to nuclear weapons and leaders want to be in power.
	They want to be alive. They don't want to be dead.
	And so there's not going to be...
	Look, I'll tell you what I think.
	I'll tell you what I think.
	And then I've got to get on to the next caller.
	And I appreciate these points that you're bringing up.
	Look, if I was in power, I'm going to put on my evil satanic Darth Vader hat and say, okay, if I was in power and I was given the reins of power, I would look upon the Mordor landscape of modern statism and say, okay, look... We're way too big.
	We get that we are killing the goose of the free market that is laying the golden egg.
	I mean, just the statistics I quoted at the beginning of the show about the death of the middle class, the government's fully aware of that, more aware of that, because they have access to far more information than anybody else does.
	So I'd say, well, this sucks.
	You know, this is definitely going to go the way of the Roman Empire.
	But we've got a problem.
	We cannot cut the government without enraging certain sections of the population.
	And so what we're going to have to do is we're going to have to rate for a really great excuse to cut the government.
	And it's going to be an excuse that is so inescapable that people are going to look at anyone who whines about a reduction of benefits as unpatriotic and selfish.
	And that can come any number of ways.
	I don't think it's going to come through war because that's just not that credible anymore.
	But what is going to happen is the government is going to hit its fiscal crunch, and I believe it's going to be this year.
	The government is going to hit a significant fiscal crunch, and there's going to be a reshaping of the narrative.
	And there is going to be that dependents are no longer needy, helpless people who desperately need the charity of society as a whole.
	But we're all going to have to pull together.
	We're all going to have to double up.
	We're all going to have to start sacrificing, sacrificing, sacrificing.
	And there is going to be a war on the deficit.
	There's going to be a way of reshaping this narrative.
	And so that taking government benefits is going to be considered a negative.
	And that's how they're going to hose the dependent classes.
	Look, freedom happens when the government runs out of money.
	Freedom happens when the government runs out of money.
	Apartheid ended because de Klerk's white supremacist government ran out of money.
	The Soviet system collapsed because the government ran out of money.
	And that's what happens.
	So when the government runs out of money, they will shaft the dependent classes, they will liberalize the productive classes, and will start all over again.
	And I'm going to And hopefully this time we can start to make the arguments without as much of a sense of doomsday extremism, last days, apocalypse revelations timeframe.
	We can make a more argument without having our feet in the fire about a free society.
	But, I mean, these people in power are not dumb.
	They are not going to go down with the ship.
	There are way too many stowaways they can toss overboard first.
	So anyway, I hope that helps. And thanks so much for your comments.
	If we can move on to the next caller, I appreciate that.
	Well, we do have someone who has something for you.
	All right, so let's have another question, brother.
	Yeah, hey, Steph. I called you last Sunday about my exam and Kalpapa and all of that.
	And I saw that there was no one calling.
	Well, I got a grade for an oral presentation and for the essay.
	So, I aced both of them, so that was good.
	Well, congratulations. What I want to talk about...
	Yeah, thanks. What I want to talk about today is I had some thoughts about Ron Paul.
	And as much as I hate to admit it, it's going to be a disaster if he gets in and everything falls apart whilst he's in office.
	Like, he starts cutting post office teachers and they all process and all that.
	But then... Then a few things occurred to me.
	What if between now and the 20th of January 2013, the system has already collapsed?
	Are you there? Yeah, go ahead.
	Hello? Yes, hello, I can hear you.
	Can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you now.
	Oh, did you get everything I said about Ron Paul right there?
	Yeah, what if the system collapses?
	Go ahead. Yeah, my thought was, what if between now and the time the new president, whomever it may be, takes office, what if the system has already collapsed?
	Right? Then, well, Ron Paul, if elected, would not stand with the mess.
	And on the other hand, a more likely opportunity is, or the situation is, that...
	Something happens to Mitt Romney or something, and Ron Paul becomes the Republican candidate, right?
	Then they're going to have debates on liberty this, liberty that, and Obama's going to have to take the opposite approach.
	So if Obama wins and everything falls apart, it's going to be that more difficult to blame the problems on freedom.
	So I don't think it's altogether bad that Ron Paul is running.
	Because I do think it's a long shot for him to win.
	I don't think there's any sort of real possibility of that happening.
	So my thought was that it might still be all-in-all results and a good thing.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah. I mean, I think that's...
	So, is your argument...
	Sorry, let me just make sure I understand the argument.
	So, if something happens to Romney, and...
	So, if something would have to happen to Romney, I would assume, and...
	Something gay related.
	You know what the Republicans are like, you know.
	I mean, look, the only thing that has to happen to Romney is people look into Mormonism.
	That's the only thing that has to happen to Romney, but people won't do that because he's got a nice haircut and he's going to promise people stuff.
	So, yeah, something happens to Romney, something happens to Gingrich.
	I don't know if...
	You know, grinning idiot Perry is going to do anything or not.
	Bachman's out, of course. I can hear you now.
	Are you there? Oh, can you hear me at all?
	Yeah. Hello? Sorry, you can hear me?
	Yeah, yeah. Oh, good.
	Okay. I can hear you now. Okay, so you're saying that if Ron Paul is the nomination, becomes the Republican nominator?
	Yeah. And then he goes up against Obama, is that right?
	Yeah, and then he talks very highly about liberty, and Obama will have to say the opposite, right?
	He's going to say, oh, capitalism this, capitalism bad, all of that.
	Obama is not going to say capitalism is bad.
	Obama is not going to say voluntarism is bad.
	What Obama is going to say is that he is going to say, look, Ron Paul and I present two different views of society and how society should work.
	In Ron Paul's view, you get to keep everything that you make and we're isolated, we're atomized, and we're not part of a social fabric.
	That what we are is nothing more than a marketplace where people have to fend for themselves and if people fall through the cracks, that's just too bad.
	That's the way that dog-eat-dog free market works.
	That is not the vision that I have.
	I have a vision of society where trade and prosperity are important, but they're not the only things.
	We are not only motivated by material concerns.
	We are also motivated by compassion.
	We are also motivated by charity.
	We are also motivated by weaving a fabric within society that catches people who are falling through the cracks so that they're not lost to the streets, to poverty, so we don't end up with a permanent underclass.
	I want to build a society that rises people up, Maybe you'll make a little bit more.
	But I don't believe that human beings are motivated solely by money and the desire for property and material things.
	I believe that human beings are motivated by the desire to care for each other and to build a society that protects the most vulnerable, that protects the sick who can't.
	So people don't die because they don't have enough money to pay for an operation, where people don't starve to death because they don't have enough money for their retirement, where people don't end up being unable to educate their children because they don't have enough.
	They don't have $10,000 or $20,000 a year to send their children to private school.
	I don't believe that we want a society where everyone ends up atomized and alone and seeking only after the almighty dollar and not coming together as a community in compassion to help the most vulnerable, which I believe makes us not only wealthier spiritually but a better and more virtuous society in the long run.
	That's going to be something like I've set up the top of my head.
	But that's, I mean, he's not going to frame it like he's against capitalism.
	He's going to frame it that he's compassionate and wants to help people.
	But, yeah, of course, yeah, he's going to say something.
	So something that will sort of be smooth talking, sort of this...
	But if Ron Paul is up there and he says, I am the guy who is for freedom, and Ron Paul loses, and then everything turns to crap, the fact that Ron Paul was up there, will that not, my argument is that that will make it a little more difficult later on to blame the problems on capitalism and freedom.
	Well, I mean, that depends on who frames the narrative, right?
	I don't believe that we have a free enough society that we can get the media to tell any truth about anyone.
	Okay, so I've had some sort of questions about why I did a speech about Ron Paul and voting for Ron Paul recently.
	I guess a question or comment or two came up about that.
	And I sort of do have a long-term goal with that speech, which I'm not going to talk about now.
	But one of the things that is important about that is, and most people, you know, in the speech, I sort of say, you've got to go to people who are in your life, people you've been friends with for 20 years, you get them to come out and vote and do all of this kind of stuff.
	So people that you've been in relationship with for 20 years and who don't have a direct financial stake in the size of the state and who hopefully you have some credibility with because you have been their friend for 20 years, you should be able to have some sway on how those people act.
	You should be able to have some effect on the choices they make.
	And if you can change people's minds, that's the easiest relationship in which you can change people's minds.
	Whereas if there's some guy receiving a welfare check or some executive of Boeing which gets, what, 90% of its money from government military contracts, you're not going to be able to change their minds at all.
	If you can't change the minds of people you have an in-depth relationship with, that will give you some humility about your capacity to change people's minds who are more profitably invested in the system, who you don't have any relationship with and who could give a...
	a flying fuck off a short pier whether you succeed in your goal of getting Ron Paul elected or not.
	And so really it's just designed to help people understand how hard it is to change people's minds about any fundamental morality, right?
	Because the world runs on morality, relationships run on morality, and if you're changing morality, you're changing everyone's relationships.
	That's why people don't... Well, they get it, which is why they avoid these conversations with people.
	So, if things go to hell, I mean, things are already going to hell.
	And what is the narrative? The narrative is, we've had too much freedom.
	We've had too much deregulation.
	The government needs to be bigger.
	The government needs to take on more power.
	Things went to hell in 2001.
	When you got assholes flying planes into the trade centers.
	And what was the narrative?
	Was the narrative, well, we shouldn't be going around poking hornets' nests in foreign countries?
	No. The argument was we don't have enough government power.
	We need the TSA. We need the Department of Homeland Security.
	We need a Patriot Act.
	We need to go and wage two wars overseas.
	We need more spending, more military, more might, more power, more debt.
	more blood should run in the streets to keep us safe and happy and free.
	And then you have a disaster in 2007, 2008, when the housing prices collapse.
	And what is the result?
	More debt, more government control, more government oversight, greater control in the Federal Reserve currency and greater control over banking and more financial regulations.
	So if you just look at the trends, disasters are opportunities for evil, not for truth.
	Yeah, that's probably the most accurate estimate.
	Anyway, the sort of thing I was thinking about was that I was sort of imagining that they would tell the truth at the presidential elections, like being, all right, I'm pro-liberty, what Ron Paul would say.
	The other guy would be like, oh no, we need more government instead of more freedom.
	But of course the narrative is not going to be that.
	Yeah, they just look, all you do is you take the words of virtue and you redefine them however you want.
	So, you know, people will say, well, what's freedom if you're starving?
	You know, what's freedom if you've got cancer and you can't afford treatment?
	That's not free. So they simply redefine freedom to mean freedom from want, freedom from fear, right?
	So I read this thing the other day where, you know, Noam Chomsky was sort of not praising but sort of validating Ron Paul's arguments about foreign policy.
	And then he said, but the Ron Paul presidency would be a complete disaster because he would undo all the protections for workers that have been put in through the democratic process over the past century, century and a half, blah, blah, blah.
	And he said, so what's the freedom for a man?
	What is the freedom for a man who wants to get a job and someone says, I'm only going to pay you $2 an hour and he has to take it because if he doesn't take it, his children will starve.
	Where's the freedom in that?
	And it's just all you do then is you redefine the word freedom.
	So that now, if you don't get the money that you want, then you're not free.
	And of course, that's nonsense. I mean, and it's embarrassing nonsense.
	It's so embarrassing to even point it out because he's such a smart guy, right?
	But, you know, if you can't earn more than $2 an hour, then how were you educated so that you ended up so economically useless?
	Well, the government educated you, right?
	So the government is partly responsible for this guy only being worth $2 an hour.
	And if it's really easy to start factories and hire people, then they'll all be in competition for the workers, and nobody will be able to get away with offering somebody $2 an hour.
	So why aren't there more capitalists or business owners wanting to hire people?
	Well, because there's too many restrictions, the jobs have all gone overseas, all the manufacturing plants are closing down as the result of government action.
	And last but not least...
	What the fuck are you doing having two children if you can only earn $2 an hour?
	Keep it in your pants.
	You know, put a clown's balloon on your dick before you squirt and don't make children.
	Because it's really not very responsible to have children if you don't have any money to pay for them.
	And that's, of course, what used to happen is if people got pregnant.
	Sorry, if women got pregnant, they would either give their kid up for adoption or the guy would be forced to marry her.
	But of course, that doesn't happen anymore because the government stepped in with the welfare state, Medicare, Medicaid and all that.
	Well, I guess not the one for the old people.
	But yeah, the question is, you know, why is this guy having kids if he can't make any money?
	I mean, that's crazy.
	He shouldn't be a parent. And if he goes and has kids when he doesn't have any money, does that mean that I have to have a gun pointed at my head?
	Maybe I'll give the guy some money if, you know, I think it's a deserving, worthy case and, you know, whatever, the condom broke and twice, I don't know, statistically, who knows, right?
	Yeah. But, so why do I have to have a gun pointed at my head?
	Because some guy had kids that he can't afford.
	He needs to give them up for adoption.
	He needs to do, I mean, if he can't afford them, he shouldn't be having them.
	We all understand that, you know, if you don't have three bucks a month to rub together, then don't buy four dogs, because they're going to starve.
	And then if you do that, then don't say to people, well, you've got to give me a job at 20 bucks an hour, otherwise my dogs will starve.
	Don't fucking hold people hostage or animals hostage for the sake of extracting money out of other people by force.
	But, I mean, Chomsky, I mean, you know, smart guy, brilliant guy.
	I mean, how's he going to see that?
	I mean, that's just not where he's coming from, ideologically.
	Well, yeah.
	Well, yeah, I just got sort of ahead of myself, sort of started fantasizing about, well, what if, and with the truth, and the truth is...
	Well anyway, I'll tell you what I'm doing today.
	Right now I'm preparing for math test on the 12th.
	Math is truth.
	And the only way you can succeed is if you are capable of seeing what is true and what is not true and using reasonable arguments and reasonable sort of logical steps.
	And since I'm starting an engineering school, everything we do is truth.
	Right? Right. Love the math, love the engineering, love the science, yeah.
	Yeah. That is all truth.
	So, I guess for me, it's sort of, now that I've been here for so long and since I never bought a television after I left my parents, best decision ever, not buying the television.
	And, yeah. And so, for me, I don't hear all that bullshit every day, you know?
	I'm not used to hear lies.
	I'm not used to hearing nothing.
	I hear only truth. And on YouTube, which is kind of my television, my tube now, I only listen to what's true.
	If I hear some channel who continuously say things that are not true, I'm like, no, unsubscribe.
	Yeah, no, look, working with the media, you've got to look at the media like it's a pathogen, right?
	So, I mean, I have to look at the media because I consider myself sort of a medical researcher aiming to give people immunization.
	So I have to work with these pathogens, but I'm like Homer Simpson.
	Well, I guess more careful, but I'm like Homer Simpson in one of those.
	You know, the suits that come out from the wall that lets you handle radioactive material.
	I mean, I look at the media with gloves on, with, like, lead underwear on, you know, like some sort of plum-based Mormon.
	I work with the media like it is a highly dangerous, radioactive, demonic substance that wants to, you know, invade my eyeballs and explode my brain.
	And so, yeah, if you're going to deal with the media, you know, put your hazmat suit on because, I mean, that shit will stain.
	Listen, I'll leave the media to you.
	Thank you. So...
	You seem to have the right grasp on it.
	I'm hanging in there. Listen, I've got to get on to another caller.
	Do you mind if we get to another caller?
	Absolutely. I just called because I was like a voice.
	Congratulations on your jam and call in anytime.
	Yeah, later, dude. We have a caller from the 905 area code.
	Yeah, I guess that would be me.
	Okay, something I was wondering was...
	Obama got more or less blocked by the Congress and Senate at everything he tried to do that was really revolutionary.
	Ooh, free healthcare! No, we can't have that.
	We don't want that. We don't want healthy people.
	Well, how do we know that anything that's not status quo that Ron Paul tries is not going to get blocked the same way?
	Right. Right.
	He's not in Congress. That's a great point.
	So he'll just be stymied in another figurehead that can't get anything accomplished.
	Look, let's be honest about the barriers that are in the way of change.
	It doesn't... Look, Ron Paul, I think, he's an honorable guy, smart guy, he's a very nice guy, obviously very accomplished, and, you know, politician, you know, a good amateur economist, and a doctor who's delivered, you know, more babies than Noah on an ark, and so good for him.
	I mean, that's... Yeah, an impressive guy.
	An impressive guy. But I'm Canadian, so it's like, well...
	I've got to watch from the timeline.
	Look, first of all, he's got to win the nomination.
	And then he's got to beat Obama.
	And then he's got to get enough of Congress over to his side that he can get these cuts through.
	And then the cuts are going to actually have to go through.
	And then the cuts are actually going to have to stick.
	And he can't have the economy shut down by people who will, you know, farmers who will park their trucks in major highways and bring everything to a grinding halt and so on.
	And this is just the ones off the top of my head, and I'm no expert in the U.S. political system, so I'm sure it's even worse than that.
	But if you look at the number of barriers, and he has to do all of this within the time frame of things not collapsing.
	He's getting an absolutely huge mess handed to him, and Yeah, and he's going to have to do this with a population that has been told for about 100 years that they deserve the benefits that they're getting from the government, that it's their right, that they've paid into it, right?
	How many times have you heard this from Social Security people?
	I paid into that system!
	You know, the money was taken from me.
	I paid into that system. I'm owed it back.
	It's like, no, you're really not.
	You throw your money down on a casino and the government is a nasty, nasty casino.
	You throw your money down on the casino and you lose it, then it's fucking lost.
	It's lost. It's gone.
	Now you come and ask people for a day.
	Bail me out. I lost my money on the roulette table called the state.
	Well, maybe we can help them, but don't come and...
	I identified it as a nasty casino and I said that it was a bad thing and it was a wrong thing and it was going to end badly.
	And if other people did the same, I mean, I have sympathy for people who had all their money ripped off for Social Security and the government blew it all on bribing other people.
	That sucks. And that is really bad.
	And the question, of course, then is, well, did you oppose the system?
	Did you identify the system as evil?
	In which case, great.
	I'd be happy to support you in your old age.
	But if you didn't, if you thought it was a good thing, then, you know, you rolled your dice, you came up snake eyes, that's really tough.
	So there's so much that stands between the actual achievement, but the biggest thing that stands between us and the achievement of freedom...
	It's the mindset of people.
	It's the mindset of people.
	Blood-soaked money violence pit of fiat currency and financial control and contracts and all that.
	I mean, the stakes are unbelievably high.
	And we're not even talking about Wall Street and the profits that they get.
	And the fact that congressmen are immune from insider trading laws, of course.
	And why would they ever be subjected to the laws?
	They're there to pass laws, not to be subjected to them.
	Good heavens. I mean, people don't make up moral rules to bind themselves, only to bind others.
	And so there's so much that stands.
	To promote other lawyers. Absolutely, absolutely.
	So if you look at all of the barriers that stand, that doesn't mean it's impossible.
	You can jump out of a plane and have some Roger Rabbit bounce off a haystack, land in a snowbank.
	I just don't think that that means a lot of people want to jump out of a plane without a parachute.
	I mean, it could happen that you land okay, but it's not.
	And so that is...
	Yeah, that has to go through a whole lot of really narrow, narrow.
	You have to roll this ball through a lot of really narrow hoops to get to the end goal.
	Whereas when I say, you know, you support property rights, self-ownership, and the non-aggression principle in your own life, boom, you can do it now, tomorrow.
	You don't have to wait for the Republican Party, and you don't have to wait to convince other voters, and you don't have to wait and hope and pray that people are going to give up the right and power to type whatever they want into their own bank accounts.
	You don't have to wait for all of that.
	You can do that now. You can do that now.
	And so I'm very much for, you know, think globally, act locally.
	I'm very much one for philosophy is stuff which allows you to get shit done in your own life right now.
	It is not to hope and pray that someone's going to come riding over the hill in a year or two from now and set you free when the odds against it are so astronomical that it's, you know, it's like saying, I don't have to pay my bills.
	I don't have to pay my mortgage because I'm sure that an asteroid is going to hit the central bank computer and wipe out all the records.
	I mean, maybe it'll happen.
	But I don't think it's a very good financial plan.
	And so what I talk about in terms of...
	Yeah, so, you know, you do it in your own life, and that's how you spread it, and that's how it works.
	But, of course, that's much more difficult emotionally than it is to get behind a political candidate, and that's the barrier.
	Sorry for the long speech. I hope that makes some sense.
	Well, it made a whole lot of sense.
	It's just from where I sit here in St.
	Catharines, Ontario, I don't know how I'm going to affect anything down in the States, but that's another story entirely.
	Something else I wanted to get your opinion on are the new $100 bills.
	Have you seen one of those yet?
	You may think that I move in a different economic circle than I do, but no, I haven't seen any of those yet.
	You haven't seen one of the new $100 bills yet?
	Well, it's just the next step in doing something the Canadian government has been working on since the 60s.
	And I'm trying to get a spin from just about everybody on this.
	We all know that they're trying to make us a cashless society because this way no dollar could escape untaxed.
	And one of the first steps was the TD bank machines that the Toronto Dominion Bank at one point actually would give you $5, but you had to immediately deposit that via their green machine.
	And now everybody has a bank card that makes banking so convenient, oh my god, you don't even have to carry money most of the time, so that if you get robbed, like I did in the beginning of December, you won't have anything on you to take.
	But that just means that every single dollar gets tracked.
	Every single dollar gets taxed.
	It'll do away with any grey economy.
	Will it be a good thing to be a cashless society?
	Well, no. Sorry, it won't.
	Absolutely not. I'm sorry.
	It won't do away with the gray economy because, as you know, the gray economy is huge.
	Gray and black markets are, like, some estimates between a quarter and a third of economic activity.
	So if they try to clamp down on dollars, then they will simply make the dollars in circulation that much more valuable because they'll be more rare.
	It's like when they try, you know, in Canada, they try every now and then to raise the taxes on cigarettes, and all that happens is people smuggle them in through the reservations and sell them in hockey bags.
	Yeah, I mean, so they have to keep ratcheting back the tax on that.
	So, no, there's no possibility that the government will be able to establish a cashless society, because cash is just so valuable.
	The more they restrict it, the more valuable it will become.
	And if they restrict it all, then people will start trading using gold or copper or something like that, or bitcoins or PayPal or whatever it is, right?
	I'm sorry? You'll most likely start using cigarettes like you do in prison.
	Yeah, could be any number of things.
	But, you know, cash is one of these things that you can't eliminate.
	I mean, you can.
	I mean, governments may try, but they just create a market within a market to supply alternative currencies.
	Well, I'm just glad that when I was in a motorcycle crash a number of years ago, I took the structured settlement option I was handed because it's 100% tax-free.
	So I'm not funding these guys, with the exception to say something stupid like sales tax, which I wish I could avoid that one.
	Right, right. Well, thanks.
	I really appreciate your thoughts.
	James, do we have one more caller before the show winds to a gruesomely delayed halt?
	Sorry about everyone at the beginning.
	I'm experimenting. I'm experimenting with new ways of doing the show.
	And badly, I might add.
	Actually, I have someone that I can call up, so let's see if he's available.
	Hi, you've reached 1-900-CANDYAPPLE, James.
	This is your private account which you set up with us.
	What are you wearing? Hello.
	I'm not an account with Candy Apple, I have an account with Candy Cherry.
	Hi. Well, it's a mixed fruit salad of us today.
	I'm muting now. Get the butter!
	Sorry. We had a caller?
	All right, I'm trying to quit. Can you guys hear me all right?
	I sure can. All right, excellent.
	Recently I've been having thoughts, well, my own experiences, at least in Scotland where I live, is that a lot of people seem to be incredibly apathetic towards politics in general, and this often manifests in a downright hatred of the government.
	But why doesn't this turn into anything useful?
	The things I've noticed, this apathy, it either turns into a misinterpretation of what's happening to these people.
	So they either end up going for other ideologies where they think they can fix the problems the government caused by making the government try to fix them.
	Or they just don't care and they sit about all day.
	Do you have any thoughts on this at all?
	What's wrong with apathy about the government?
	Can you help me understand that? I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with apathy towards the government, because I'm incredibly apathetic towards it, but it's the fact that the people don't look into their apathy.
	So what you're saying is that there's a general lack of self-knowledge, not specific to apathy about the government, is that right?
	Yeah, in general, in general.
	So is your question, why do people avoid self-knowledge?
	Yeah, I suppose that's right.
	Why do people avoid self-knowledge about their apathy?
	Well, again, I wouldn't say about apathy.
	Would you say that in general people avoid self-knowledge?
	Yeah. Well, let's expand to that.
	I think I'm closing in a bit too much.
	Right. So, I mean, there's an easy way to find out.
	So, if you go up to someone you know and you say, I'm not even going to try and do a Scottish accent because I'll just sound like somebody trying to imitate trainspotting and doing it badly.
	But if you go up to someone and you say, so, listen, how do you think that your experiences as a child have affected your life as an adult?
	I mean, that's self-knowledge 101, right?
	It's not the only place, but that's pretty important thing to understand.
	If you want to have any sort of choice or control over your adult life, it's important to understand what happened in your childhood and how it may have affected, right?
	So that's sort of self-knowledge 101.
	So if you think of the people that you know in your life, how many of them could you go up to and ask that question and have them be interested in the response?
	Well, I'm lucky enough to...
	I'm a student of psychology, so within my immediate circle I'm lucky enough to have enough people who respond to that.
	But outside of that immediate circle, I think very few would be interested in answering that question.
	And why? I just don't think they play much importance to it.
	Well, that's not true, because I would imagine, sorry to be annoying, I would argue that that's not true, because what you would experience is resistance, not neutrality, right?
	So, if I go up and say to somebody, oh, I just, I don't know, I bought this Android tablet, and it does this, this, and they may not be that interested, but they're not going to be resistant to the conversation, right?
	But when you bring this issue up, people kind of tense up, right?
	They get resistant. That's a very personal question.
	Yeah, that's true. So it's not a lack of interest.
	It's not that they don't think it's important.
	It's something else, right?
	That's right. And it's easy in some things, right?
	So in nutrition, it's pretty easy.
	Why do people eat badly?
	Well, because it tastes good.
	And eating well doesn't taste as good.
	That's just the basic fact, right?
	And, you know, why do smokers keep smoking?
	Because smoking is pleasurable and quitting is difficult.
	So for a lot of things, it's easy to sort of understand the addictive behaviors, at least in the immediate reward.
	So what is the cost-benefit analysis that goes through people's minds when you ask them Self-Knowledge 101?
	Well, maybe they just don't want to invest all the time and effort into getting to that goal of getting a better understanding.
	Well, that may be true, but that's testable, right?
	So you would look into their lives and say, well, did they go to university?
	Well, if they did, then obviously they're okay to invest a lot of time and effort into something.
	You know, do they learn a particular sport?
	Did they learn piano? Well, that takes a lot of time and effort and has beneficial rewards.
	So that's testable, right?
	And I would guess most people have invested time and effort to achieve something positive, even though it's difficult at the beginning.
	So I'm not sure that would be enough of an answer, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, very true. People want to invest time into something because they enjoy it, but they may not necessarily enjoy looking for self-knowledge.
	Yes, okay. Well, certainly, most things that you try to master are not enjoyable at the beginning, right?
	I remember learning how to play tennis, and it was really, really tough for a long time before I got any good.
	Skiing was a little easier, but volleyball and all the other...
	I played, I don't know, dozens of sports.
	And they're all tough to learn at the beginning, and then it gets easier as you go forward.
	So I don't know that that's necessarily...
	But the question then, which I think is, given that this may be a profession, it's good to know...
	So the question is, why is it so difficult in the beginning to pursue self-knowledge?
	Perhaps it's because they can't access the correct materials or the people's knowledge in order to gain their self-knowledge.
	Sorry, could you explain that a bit more?
	It's just that maybe they're not aware of certain avenues that you go down to further the request of worse self-knowledge.
	It's that maybe they don't know the books to read, where to get them, or who to speak to, or what to listen to.
	Well, but self-knowledge is not physics, right?
	It's self-knowledge.
	So what you fundamentally need is honesty, right?
	And so it's not, you know, my daughter didn't learn how to talk by looking at books.
	She learned how to talk by talking.
	And self-knowledge is kind of like that.
	It's not an expert field of study.
	It is simply honesty about your own history.
	And so I don't think it requires a lot of study to pursue self-knowledge, right?
	Sorry, I think I got a bit distracted there.
	Please go on. Well, so an example would be, if you have a friend who's gotten divorced, you can say, do you think that your parents getting divorced has had any effect on your relationships, right?
	Right. And if he says no, then he's full of shite, right?
	Because of course it does, right?
	Of course it does. That's like saying, do you think that being born white and in the West is exactly the same as being born a pygmy in the Amazon in terms of your career possibilities?
	And if somebody says, well, it's identical, then it's like, well, you're mad and I can't talk to you, right?
	And if somebody says, well, yes, I think it does, it must have had some effect, then you say, well, what kind of effect do you think it has had?
	You don't need to go to college for four years to begin answering those questions, right?
	Mm-hmm. Otherwise, there would be no such thing as a psychologist, because everyone would have to be a psychologist in order to be a client, right?
	And I wouldn't have any job prospects, so that's not good for me.
	Oh, hello.
	Yeah, go ahead. All right, okay.
	So, sorry, we're still circling the question of why do people resist self-knowledge?
	All right. Well, obviously, self-knowledge is...
	they just don't want to admit to themselves what's happened to them they don't want to accept it they'd rather believe something else well sorry that's a bit of a tautology Why do people not want to do it?
	Well, because they don't want to do it.
	I don't think we've actually solved anything there.
	So, the question is, what are the negative consequences, to be more specific or more precise, what are the negative consequences of pursuing self-knowledge?
	Personally, I can't really think of any.
	Really? Sorry.
	So you've experienced no negative consequences from pursuing self-knowledge?
	Perhaps. I'm trying to think here.
	Let me ask you then, how many questions or how many times have you posed to your friends outside the psychology world this question about the effects of childhood on adulthood?
	A few times, really.
	And how's it gone? Not really too well.
	They don't really want to talk about it.
	And when they do, it's just...
	It's not very nice, really.
	Sorry, but it's not very nice.
	Some of the things that they've experienced with Aldrin.
	But yeah, maybe if you did re-examine this, the No, look, it's worth re-examining.
	I mean, it's a very important question, right?
	I mean, if you're going into the business of having people take a certain pill and nobody wants to take that pill, the first thing you need to ask is, well, why don't people want to take the pill?
	I mean, that's my suggestion, if you don't mind me saying so.
	And so you have experienced negative consequences in that you have attempted to share Your interest in self-knowledge and to be curious about other people's experience and to ask them basic questions of self-knowledge and they have reacted somewhat negatively or badly?
	Mm-hmm. So there's a negative consequence, right?
	That's true, yeah. The perception of me has changed.
	I was maybe asking questions they prefer wouldn't be asked.
	And have you ever gone back and tried to ask those questions again after you've had that experience?
	I have, but I usually do that after I've gotten to know the person better.
	Or, regrettably, these sort of discussions usually come up after we've had a few to drink.
	I've usually went back to these subjects and talking to these people when I know them better, and I think one of the reasons why they're more willing to do that is A, they know me better, and B, maybe we've had a few to drink and their inhibitions are not as high as they were before.
	Yeah, which is not quite the same as self-knowledge, right?
	It's really not quite the same.
	It's like saying, I can be a professional wrestler because I've had PCP. Anyway, I can take on 10 cops!
	Right. Right.
	Right. Well, look, I mean, my opinion, I think there's good reasons behind it, is that self-knowledge...
	Leads to honesty. I mean, the first honesty is always honesty with the self, right?
	As Polonius says, the least likely person in the play Hamlet to say this, but as Polonius says, above all else to thine own self be true, for then it shall follow as night follows day, there canst not be false to any man.
	And if you're honest with yourself, then that is going to start to lead you to be honest with other people, right?
	Right. And if you're honest with other people, how welcome is that usually in relationships?
	Very welcome. People like honesty.
	I know, I certainly do. Perhaps Scotland is the promised land of the future, and perhaps that is the case, but do you find that when people begin to examine themselves and things which have been positively and negatively affected them from when they're children, that, say, their parents welcome them bringing up these topics about issues that they had about how they were raised?
	I should hope so, but that takes a great deal of courage as you're...
	Well, look, I mean, I think the thing is, I mean, this is all testable, right?
	I mean, no one should ever take anything I say, any kind of faith or impression.
	This is all testable.
	So if, yeah, my suggestion would be to talk to people and say, you know, I'm interested in self-knowledge.
	This is what I believe to be self-knowledge.
	The first thing is to ask effects of childhood on adult decisions.
	You know, what do you think?
	And you know, what's your experience?
	And if you have, you know, if you're willing to pursue this, I'm certainly interested in it.
	I mean, it's an incredibly powerful and important conversation to have with people that you consider yourself to be close to, right?
	To talk about your life, to talk about your history, to talk about how you came to be who you are, you know, the fire and ice that forged the steel and sword of your soul.
	I mean, that's important stuff to talk about.
	It's certainly more important than, you know, what do you think of the game on TV? I mean, that shit is completely who cares, right?
	Yeah. So, yeah, just stop being honest and say to people, well, tell me what you think and all that and see how they react and how they respond.
	And maybe you have a sugar tongue, the likes of which I can only dream of having, and you will find ways to...
	Please tell me if you do, if there's a magic set of words that opens up this key.
	But I find that people are enormously resistant to self-knowledge because if their relationships have not been founded upon truth, have not been founded upon honesty, have not been founded upon virtue and curiosity and intimacy, then they are very brittle bridges that nobody wants to jump up and down on.
	Indeed.
	Because if your relationships have been founded on falsehoods, then the pursuit of self-knowledge is a direct challenge to those relationships.
	And that means that people are either going to have to start becoming honest with you or they're going to turn against you.
	And the number of people who are willing to start becoming honest with you seems to be quite few, to put it as generously as I can.
	And people get instinctively that if they pursue the road of self-knowledge, it is going to challenge all of their personal relationships.
	Because everyone says, right, somebody in...
	Let's just say it's a brother of yours, right?
	A brother says, I love you.
	He says, I love you. Hopefully, or, you know, would say if cornered, right?
	Or drunk, whatever, right?
	Would say, I love you. Well, um...
	There's a lot that's embedded in the statement, I love you.
	I have an identity. I know what love is.
	And I understand enough about you to say that I love you.
	So it's a perfectly fair question to go up to your brother and say, tell me what it is that you love about me.
	I would really like to know. And tell me what it is that you don't like about me.
	And how do you think our relationship with each other and with our parents has affected how we are as adults?
	That's a basic question of intimacy.
	And if people aren't willing to talk about that, then to me it's rather hard to understand how they can say that they love you.
	Because if you're interested in these topics and they love you, then they should love these topics too, right?
	That's right. So...
	Yeah, I would... I definitely agree with what you're raising here.
	Oh, the thing you said earlier, if I do find this magic word to unlock everything, I think it'd be incredibly useful because I want to be a counsellor.
	So if I do ever find that, I'll be more than happy to share it.
	But I would say that most of my relationships in the school have a fairly wide circle of friends and I like to get to know each and every one of them better so our friendship can advance.
	I like to tell them things about myself and we talk about them.
	We talk about our relationship together and why we're friends, how we met, things like that.
	So yeah, I think it's very important that relationships are built upon that sort of foundation and maybe the reason why these people I've asked a certain question why they don't want to look for self-knowledge.
	Maybe they're not going to answer me because I haven't built up this relationship with them.
	At least at that point anyway.
	Yeah, it's a chicken and egg thing, right?
	I mean, how can you get close to people without talking about what's real if you can't talk about what's real until you're close to them, right?
	So yeah, I agree.
	You don't sort of walk up to a stranger on the street and call, well, I do, but that's my job.
	So yeah, but I think explore it.
	it and I'd love it if you would come back and talk about your experience of exploring that question with friends and family because obviously that's my goal as well, get people interested in self-knowledge because you can't be philosophical until you know the truth and you can't know the truth about the world until you know the truth about yourself.
	The self-knowledge is like the vagina we all have to push through to get to the world of truth.
	Getting out of Plato's cave Or Socrates' cave, or Plato's cave.
	Getting out of Plato's cave is the birth of self-knowledge, and really people can't talk about the world until they talk about themselves and know themselves first.
	And if people would only talk about what they're really talking about, then the world would be free in about two days.
	Maybe not even two days.
	Less than a day. Two Venus days, maybe.
	Right, so if people who were talking about politics were actually talking about their family, they could speak intelligently about their families, and then they could speak truthfully about politics.
	And if people, you know, if they got that they were using marijuana as a substitute for mother love, then they could talk about the loss of mother love and not how wonderful marijuana is.
	You know, this kind of, like, if people were actually talking about what they were really talking about, We would be free very quickly.
	So I wish you the best of luck in this life.
	And of course, congratulations on choosing, I think, a very, very important occupation.
	Well, thanks very much.
	I really appreciate this. It's something I strive for every day, and I will continue with it.
	And if I find anything interesting, I'll be sure to call in again.
	Well, thanks very much. Thanks.
	You're welcome anytime. I really appreciate that.
	All right. Well, enjoy your meal.
	Alright, so for those of you who didn't hear the previous goodbye, you could rewind about 20 minutes.

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