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May 13, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:11:43
2145 Happy Mother's Day! The Freedomain Radio Sunday Philosophy Call In Show May 13 2012

The Freedomain Radio Sunday Show, 13th of May 2012. Dealing with death, dealing with a boring job, dealing with parents who lie to you.

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Hello, hello everybody.
I hope you're doing well.
May.
May.
Gosh, what is it?
May 13th?
May 13th.
Mother's Day!
It's the day of rampant panic for dads around the world and burnt breakfast in bed and flowers that hopefully will arrive today since they sure as heck didn't come yesterday.
I hope you're doing well.
Happy Mother's Day to everyone.
Happy Mother's Day to all the wonderful, magnificent, beautiful, perfect, monstrously fantabulous moms out there who strive every day to make the world a better place.
I had a great Mother's Day weekend.
I took Chrissy out for high tea yesterday.
We had a very nice meal in a cafe, and it was very pleasant, had a nice walk, went to play, and had a wonderful time all around.
I hope that you had a great Mother's Day as well.
And other than that, nice breakfast today, and just waiting for some flowers to be delivered, and doing the Sunday show.
So I hope that you are having a wonderful Mother's Day if you're a mother, I hope that you are having a wonderful time of parenting, if you are a parent.
And I hope that we can kind of get things to be a little bit better for mothers in the long run and overall.
I was thinking today just about how one quarter of American women were on antidepressants last year.
And I'm sure a good proportion of those are moms.
And I hope that there's ways to find more fun in parenting.
You know, for me, a lot of the fun in parenting is unstructured.
It's the spontaneous stuff.
It's the games that just erupt out of nowhere, the stories that just descend from the skies like rain.
It is all the fun stuff that goes on that is unplanned.
I mean, we have fun stuff when we do the planned stuff and all of that, but a lot of the parenting stuff simply seems to rely On having copious amounts of time with your child.
And I know for a lot of moms, a lot of parents, but I mean, it's Mother's Day, let's talk about the moms.
I know for a lot of moms, if you're working full-time, I mean, it's hard to find that kind of time for your kids.
I mean, that day, oh, you know, you get up at 5.30 or 6 o'clock, you got to do your hair, do your makeup.
And I'm just talking about me getting ready for the Sunday show.
For women, it's even worse.
And you've got to rush out the door and maybe you've got time for breakfast and maybe you don't.
You've got to hurry the kids out of the door, drop them in daycare, go to work, pick them up from daycare, bring them home.
They may be cranky.
They may be tired.
They may have had a bad time at daycare.
You may have had a bad time at work.
And you're stuck in traffic and you've got to get home.
You've got to make food.
You've got to bathe your kids.
You've got to maybe do some homework with them or whatever it is that's going on.
It's a very rushed situation.
Kind of life.
There's an innate kind of always short of time, a day late and a dollar short, as the saying goes, when it comes to parenting as a whole.
Parenting is sometimes, it really feels like, I mean, this is true of my life as a whole.
It sort of feels like I'm a pinball.
And for those who don't know what that means, you can look up retro games on your iPad.
And pinball's that game with the flippers where the ball just goes ba-doink ba-doink ba-doink and bounces off all of these different bumpers.
It does sort of feel that way about parenting sometimes.
You're just bouncing off various things going from here to there and your free will is somewhat reactive to say the least.
And I of course have the listener granted luxury of being a stay-at-home dad and working as hard as I can to extract hopefully valuable principles about parenting.
From that situation and pass them along.
I just published a great conversation I had with a listener about kids' death and regret.
Ooh!
There's a Nickelodeon show that will never come into being.
But, yeah, I think...
I mean, I've also made the case, work less, have less stuff, and spend more time with your kids when they're young.
Particularly when they're young.
Particularly in the first five or six years.
You know, you've got...
You get the rest of your life to work.
And you get the rest of your life to do all of that kind of stuff.
And, you know, five years is my strong, strong urging.
I'm in year three and a half of being a mostly full-time dad.
I mean, it's just been fantastic.
It's just...
It's been everything.
Everything that I imagined and hoped.
And if I were a religious kind of fellow, I would have prayed for in parenting.
It is an unbelievable joy, a privilege.
It's the most important thing, of course, I'm ever going to do.
And so...
Really, if you, you know, this is one of the things that the return on investment is staggeringly high.
It is staggeringly high.
And that is something that you just, you can't put a price on.
There's no amount of material goods that will fill that space in your heart where a child's hugging hands should be.
And so I strongly urge people...
Do what you can in your life situation.
Move if you gotta.
Downsize if you gotta.
Go down to one car if you gotta.
Just for a couple of years.
It is the most important thing you can do for your life, for the future, for the world, for your children.
Take that time.
If you've done that, fantastic.
If you haven't, I hope, I urge you to strongly, strongly think about and consider whether that's something that you could do.
It is statistically incredibly good for your children.
It's good for your marriage, I think, as a whole.
I mean, it's so easy when you are parents to disconnect from the lover aspect of the marriage, the romantic aspect of the marriage, and that's even more so, of course, if two people are working.
So, you may lose some money, of course, if you quit and stay home with your kids, you know, and I urge this as strongly to dads as to moms, but it's Mother's Day, so let's focus on that.
You will lose some money, but good heavens!
What if your kids turn out to have real problems?
What if you end up getting divorced because you've got no time for your spouse?
I mean, if you think that being a full-time parent is expensive, see how much it costs if you get divorced or something goes wrong with your kids and so on.
I mean, this is an extreme situation.
I'm certainly not putting any listeners in this category, but I remember reading a very sad story about a guy who was a psychiatrist for Some pretty heavy-duty criminals.
And their parents, the criminals' parents, would come sort of trudging up to the prison, you know, every week and spend time with their kids and so on, with their adult kids who are now in prison for life for horrendous crimes.
And, of course, the psychiatrist couldn't help but wonder, you know, you have all this time now.
Why didn't you have this time when your kids were younger?
And you could have avoided this.
And again, I'm not sort of saying this is where FDR listener kids are heading, but if you've got the time to pick up the pieces and solve the problems later, why not have the time now when you can prevent these problems from coming into being?
So that's it for my naggy Mother's Day Jewish guilt intro.
Do we have any callers who are still able to pick themselves up off the keyboard after my rant?
No one just yet.
Do we have any questions from the chatroom, or is everyone out there singing the praises of their maternal units?
Not me today, that's for sure.
But...
No.
Well, we do have somebody who asked a question.
I am trying to get him on the chat.
Or on the Skype call, so...
Sorry for that.
Sort of really elephant on the chest comment there.
I apologize.
No problem.
Somebody had two questions above.
Let's just see if you could put him back in.
Yeah.
Well, I'm seeing if he's going to cooperate.
Oh, you can just read him if he's not ready to come on.
He doesn't have Skype.
He has two questions.
So one question is, what are your thoughts on having one's children perform chores?
Well, I think they should.
I mean, a household takes energy and time and focus to run.
And frankly, a lot of the stuff that it takes to run a household is not a whole lot of fun.
So I do think that children should do chores.
But there's lots of ways of getting kids to do it.
And look, I'm in there.
I mean, Isabella helps me.
One of my jobs around the house is to keep the bathrooms clean.
And I do that by taking, of course, dumps on the roof.
Because gutters are fine, obviously.
But how do I get Isabella to help with the bathrooms?
Well, it's fun.
I mean, I hate to make it so reductionist, but if your children enjoy, if they really, really like your company, if they really like you as people, if they, dare I say it, love you, then it's a whole lot easier to get them to do stuff with you.
So Isabella, of course, loves to know Everything about everything.
This morning I was reading an article about the Greek austerity crisis and Isabella wanted to know what we were talking about.
And so I did my level best to explain deficit financing to her.
And to her credit, I think she got it fairly quickly.
She's now formed a lobby group and a political action committee to explore increases in her allowance.
And so I think that she's pretty much got it down pat.
So, if you explain, you say, well, here's, you know, they're little germs, and they can breed, and if they get in their bodies, they can make us sick, so we clean to, you know, get all that away, and so on.
You can explain to her as you're going along, and you can have talks about it, you can tell stories, you can, you know, one thing I find that she's fascinated by is my stories about when I was a boy.
And, you know, I told her that, you know, when I was a boy, I found a A bird with an owied wing and I fed it with milk and bread.
Now this has become a game, right?
So she's a bird with an owied wing and I have to pick her up and give her hugs and give her bread and milk so she gets better and she goes cheep cheep the most heartbreakingly effective way.
So if you can make it enjoyable, then make it enjoyable.
Do stuff together, tell stories, entertain the kids so that they get the idea that it doesn't have to be a terrible thing to do chores.
Chores are dull.
I mean, I get by by doing podcasts or listening to audiobooks or music or something like that.
And that's okay.
And even to the point where, you know, I don't particularly like working out, but I do it.
And, you know, if you can find a video game that you can play on a little tablet or something or a smartphone while you're working out, that can help a lot.
I have a stationary bike.
Galaxy on Fire 2 is pretty damn good, particularly on the Tegra 2 processor on Android.
I have an AS100, which I really, really like, especially since it went to...
Well, I reset it with Android 4.
Wait, stay on target!
Being pulled down by all the geek hands of technical minutiae.
But so yeah, so make it fun, make it enjoyable.
And of course, if you want your kids to do something, you have to do it, right?
So if you like, oh, God, we got to go do chores, then that's going to be a negative thing transferred right away.
If it's like, hey, let's go, you know, let's clean the bathrooms, you know, make it fun or whatever.
Now, when they get older, of course, you know, that's not going to last forever.
It's not like tales of you rescuing animals when you were a kid are going to do much for your 14 year old son.
But what you want to do, of course, is...
What you really want to do as a parent, everything is...
It's not about the chores.
Everything is about preparing your children for the big wide world, which means giving them a philosophy, a reason, and evidence that is going to alienate them from just about everyone they meet throughout society.
Oh, wait.
Let me go and review my action plan again.
But it is about preparing them for the outside world.
Now, if you're a free thinker, then the best place for you to end up with is as an entrepreneur.
And so how can you help your kids develop entrepreneurial skills through chores?
Well, it's pretty simple, right?
You give them a market rate.
They bid on the jobs that have to be done and that's how they get their allowance and they could subcontract out if they want and pay others, pay siblings, pay friends.
They can do whatever they want to get things done.
And that way they can learn the value of estimating how long something's going to take.
You know, so if you've got a fence to paint, In some Huck Finn scenario, then, of course, what you want to do is tell them, okay, I need the fence painted.
What's your bid?
And they can do research and figure out how much the paint costs, how much they're going to need.
That's going to teach them some math.
They can go down and buy the stuff and estimate how long it's going to take.
It will work out an hourly rate.
And if they do it faster, good for them.
They've made a profit.
If they do it slower, then they've got to figure out what they calculated wrong.
And that obviously, that's much more complicated than you'd need to just get a fence painted.
You just pay some guy to go paint your fence.
But it does help prepare them for life, for the kinds of things particularly that are going to occur in the business world.
And I think it's the best way to inoculate them against even being tempted by government employment is to give them entrepreneurial experience when they're kids.
And so those would be my suggestions.
The other thing, too, you know, if your kids really like you, then you can sort of help explain to them, look, if you don't do the chores, then I have to do them, and that's less time we could spend together, and I would like to spend more time together.
So, you know, if we get it all done together, then we can have chats while we're doing it.
You could make some money, and then we can go off and do X, Y, and Z afterwards.
And I think that's, you know, I'm very much an all-carat-and-no-stick kind of parent.
So, you know, punishment is not...
It's not the way to go.
I think over the last month or two, we've just gotten rid of the last vestiges of punishment from any of her parenting approaches.
And now there are no negative consequences.
There are only positive consequences.
And it's working fantastically.
So I hope that helps.
I mean, let's put it this way.
Let's put it this way.
If you don't want your girlfriend to cheat on you, be a really good boyfriend.
And choose a really good girlfriend.
Be really good in bed.
And then that's not going to happen.
So again, don't just say, I'm going to kill you if you cheat on me.
It's not going to lead you very far, right?
Sorry, you were going to say?
I was just going to say, he had another question.
But I also have a caller to add, so I'll add the caller.
All right.
He's good.
to call her.
Sprechen Sie mich.
Hello?
Hello, hello.
How are you doing?
Hey, Steph.
How's it going?
Fine.
How are you doing?
Good, good.
I have sort of a little mental exercise that I've been struggling with, and I'm hoping to get your input.
You're an atheist, hard atheist, I believe, and from that perspective, would you agree that our existence itself and the fact that we're going to die someday is the number one problem we face as humans, period?
Obstacle in life, a problem that we must solve as a society?
I don't know.
I don't know.
That's a good question.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know.
That's an interesting question.
You know, I myself, I mean, obviously I'd like to keep living, but I'm probably a little bit more at peace with the concept of death than perhaps some people are.
Because, of course, if we didn't die, we wouldn't need children.
There would not be that same renewal in the thought processes, that same challenging of existing stereotypes and ways of thinking.
So that sort of renewal at the biological and intellectual level, I think, is pretty important for the progress of society.
But let's say that it is.
I'm certainly happy to grant that it's a pretty big problem.
I would certainly love to see it solved.
Yeah, that's an interesting point.
I never actually thought of that renewal process as being essential.
You probably heard this old thing that says that the adherents of an old scientific theory never change their minds, they just die off, and they're replaced by people...
Look at the gay marriage thing, right?
One of the reasons that Obama claims to have changed what's left of his mind on the gay marriage thing is obviously because it's a way of talking about Ethics, for want of a better word.
It's a way of talking about ethics without actually having to talk about the gun in the room or the debt or the terrible economy or the future or whatever, right?
Half of America being owned by China and Japan and all that.
But one of the reasons he said was he said, well, look, to my daughters, it's incomprehensible that this is even an issue.
And Whereas to a lot of older people, it's incomprehensible that it's not an issue.
And for people who've had long-term prejudices, in a sense, you know, a lot of them don't change their minds.
They just have to kind of, you just kind of get the green shoots coming up that push out the old trees.
And, you know, the mammals of new thought displace the dinosaurs that won't change.
And so my concern would be that the progress of human thoughts is pretty damn slow as it is if you look at philosophy 2,500 years ago.
And now, 2,500 years ago, to still come up with, I think, outside of UP, a coherent definition of ethics is pretty damn slow progress.
If we took out the renewal of new thinkers, oh, man, I don't know what would happen.
It would seem like even slower.
Anyway, let's just say it's a big problem, and it would be great to have it optionally be able to be solved.
Right, exactly.
Okay, so you have hypothetical society A, which, you know, you may contest this, but let's say that there exists a form of society which would provide us indefinite life extension the quickest.
And it may not be a free society.
Now we have Society B, which would be your ideal free society, anarcho-capitalist perfection.
Which society should we advocate for if, you know, given that Our death is the greatest problem that we face as humans and tyranny may not be a bigger problem than that that needs to be addressed.
Then we should address existence itself first before we address the problem that we face in society itself.
Yeah, I mean, the way that I would sort of look at life extension, I mean, it would be great in a way, How many old people do you know?
A decent amount.
Do you find them to be rational and curious and emotionally mature and open-minded and philosophical and willing to change their minds based on new evidence?
Like you said, the turnover of new minds and new The good and bad mental habits that people have, they only harden with age.
If you have not developed self-knowledge, introspection and maturity and wisdom and tolerance and courage and all the other sort of emotional virtues or character virtues, if you're narrow-minded and petty and reactionary and primitive and immature and so on, I mean, if you live forever, that's only going to get worse.
There's no breakthrough point.
There's no King Lear storm that opens people's minds.
If you want to be an athlete of the mind, you've got to train for many years.
If you sit on the couch eating Cheetos and smoking, you're not going to suddenly be able to run a marathon.
So my concern would be that if this society was still statist and yet managed to live forever, I think that the arteries of the mind would harden to the point where I don't think any innovation would come, or not much innovation would come out of that society.
And I think that it would kind of rot.
Yeah, I can see that.
I'm just thinking from a standpoint of, you know, that the state of existence is always preferable to the state of non-existence.
And, you know, even if that society may not be, they may have the issues of, you know, the hardening of the arteries of the mind, as you say, It would still be preferable on an individual basis than to a society where everyone dies off.
We're talking about two different things here.
We're talking about that which is good for an individual and that which is good for society.
Let's take an example.
If you are an individual Antelope on the African plains, would you prefer to be eaten by a lion or not?
Not eaten by a lion.
Not to be eaten by a lion, exactly right.
And yet, what happens if lions eat no antelope?
Lions cannot exist.
Yeah, and so the antelope, that's no negative.
But what happens to the antelopes if none of them get eaten?
Well, they're more prevalent.
And then what happens?
We have a lot of antelope.
I understand.
You can say they're more prevalent in a third way if you want.
But what happens to their food supply?
Wait, so the lions eat the antelope?
No, let's say that all the antelopes get their individual wish to not be eaten by lions.
Okay.
What happens to the antelopes and their food supply?
Because the antelopes eat the grass, right?
Okay, yeah.
It diminishes.
Well, yeah, they strip off their food supply, and then they all starve to death, right?
True.
That's true.
That's true.
Yeah, we had an overpopulation issue.
It would definitely be in a big hurdle.
But that's still on the level of thinking of what's best for society as a whole versus what's best for the individual.
No, but what I'm saying is that when we're talking about a community as a whole, we're talking about something that is quite different, right?
So, look, every human being would want to win the lottery.
I mean, pretty much.
I mean, there's a few Zen annoying idiots who wouldn't, right?
But most people, if you had them a winning lottery ticket, they're not going to play taps and hang their heads in horror, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Okay, so everybody wants to win the lottery, but what happens if everybody wins the lottery?
The guy had money depreciated.
Yeah, there's no money.
It all becomes toilet paper.
There's no money there.
Yeah, so society collapses.
Everybody starves to death and we end up eating our toenails and, I don't know, we're back to hunting antelope.
I don't know.
So if everyone gets their individual wish, everybody wants something for nothing, right?
Everybody wants to be paid a million dollars a minute, right?
But if everybody gets paid a million dollars a minute, society collapses, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I see that.
I'm sorry to be laboring the point, but every individual wants to live forever, but that doesn't mean that every individual living forever is good for society.
And of course, this is another reason why we can't have a state and things like that, because each individual wants to win a government contract, but if everyone wins a government contract, nobody's paying taxes and everything collapses.
Right, right.
I mean, this goes back to Kant's categorical imperative, which is to act.
The way we should judge our moral actions is to act in such a way that our individual decisions become a universal rule that everybody has to follow.
And if we can sustain that, then great.
But if we can't sustain that, then it's not a good moral action.
I mean, I don't think it's a perfect moral rule, but it's a very interesting thought exercise.
So, the good of society and the good of the individual is not the same thing at all.
No, absolutely not.
Yeah, I can agree with that.
And yeah, it's interesting to look at it from that perspective.
But, you know, I'd still contest that.
You know, when talking about existence rather than a government contract, I think the dynamics of that argument change a little bit.
Because I don't think that you can put our, you know, inevitable death on the same, you know, intellectual pedestal as, you know, Well, I'm sorry, but of course, if everyone did get government contracts, there would be a lot of deaths, right?
There would be a lot of deaths, you said?
Of course, yeah, because the economic system would collapse, the food supply would be interrupted, lots of people in cities would stop, right?
Yeah, that's the effect.
I do think obviously people are going to continue to work to live as long as possible.
I think that a free society will work toward that.
I'm just confused as to whether or not I would advocate for a free society or a society where there is a state that you told me definitively that this society would produce longevity.
Quicker than the free society.
I don't know.
Oh yeah, but come on.
You're talking about such absurd theoreticals that it's never going to happen.
Nobody can conceivably tell you which kind of society is going to develop longevity the quickest.
Oh no, right.
Yeah, it's purely hypothetical.
But I don't know.
But why is it important?
Sorry, sorry.
If something's purely hypothetical, my question is always why is it important?
Well, I guess it's important...
Do you mind if I go fishing?
I don't know.
Well, I don't know.
A lot of what we do is kind of almost purely hypothetical.
I mean, you could say that it's not a hypothetical question.
That somebody might be faced with that, you know.
There might be some objective evidence that says that, well, this society will definitively produce a longer life in the shortest amount of time for everybody.
And I guess, you know, it's very...
It's not very...
It's likely that we'll be able to quantify that someday, but I don't think it's true.
A lot of what we do in talking about anarcho-capital, a lot of it is hypothetical.
When I say hypothetical, in your case, I mean impossible.
Hypothetical is, who's going to build the roads in a free society?
But which free society is going to develop a piece of technology, or which kind of society is going to develop longevity first?
I mean, I think we can go with some evidence and say that the government-run society isn't, because the government's ridiculously inefficient, right?
I agree with that, yes.
And remember, of course, a lot of people choose to kill themselves for pleasure.
That's a very, very common phenomenon.
So people aren't that interested in longevity overall.
I mean, just look at the rise of obesity, right?
Well, yeah, not a lot of people really are atheists or think in that way.
They think they're going to go float in the sky when they die.
Well, maybe.
I don't know if there's a correlation between religiosity and obesity, although I think the South is more religious and heavier.
But remember, a lot of people aren't that interested.
You know, they want the next slice of pizza.
They don't want another 10 years of life, right?
Yeah, that's true.
They want to keep smoking rather than get another 15 years of life, right?
True, true.
Yeah, so not many people hold life itself in high regard to begin with.
Yeah.
Can I ask you something, though?
Let me ask you a couple of questions, if you don't mind, and you certainly don't have to answer anything, but I'm always curious about, you know, there's 12 million impossible theoretical hypothetical situations that people could come up with, and I'm always curious as to what draws, because you said this was going round and round in your mind, which indicates that it's a bit more than merely abstract.
So, what has your historical experience been with death?
Well, because when I'm talking with somebody, and I'm trying to advocate for a free society, I'm Thinking with myself, you know, why am I saying that a free society is definitively, in every case, in every scenario, the best society?
And when I try to make that argument, I think of this hypothetical.
I'm sorry, why would a free society be best in every situation?
I'm not sure I understand that.
Oh, yeah, I guess that's not the argument that we're trying to make.
How would Barack Obama feel, or Joe Biden feel, I guess we're talking about society as a whole.
We're talking about what's best for the longevity of society.
I guess it's not the best in every conceivable situation.
Oh, look, if it was the best for everyone, it would have happened a long time ago.
There's a parasite class, there's a ruling class, there's a brutal class, there's a military-industrial class, there's a welfare class, there's a dependent class, there's public school teachers who like a couple of months off in the summer class, there's all of this nonsense.
And for these people, it would be catastrophic for there to be a free society, and that's the only reason we don't have a free society.
Right, so we argue for a free society on moral grounds.
Right.
People are wed to their virtues even more than they're wed to their flesh and blood.
This is what is chilling, right?
And this is when people go to family and friends and use the gun in the room argument, use the against me argument.
You get to see just how strong these supposed familial bonds really are, right?
Because people will choose their ideology over their own flesh and blood.
They will choose to continue to praise the gun rather than throw it away in horror when they realize it's pointed at a loved one.
So for these people, the actual dissemination of virtue in society would be worse than death.
I mean, people choose death over moral change all the time.
I mean, people volunteer for the military.
People don't run away from the draft.
People will choose death over challenging morality all the time.
And so, to change morality within a society provokes worse-than-death anxiety in the vast majority of people.
And that's why society doesn't change, is that people will fight tooth and nail, they'll kick you in the nuts, they'll roll you in the ditch, they'll stab you from behind, they'll drop a Looney Tunes piano on your head, rather than question some basic moral premises.
And so, that is, I mean, that's the reality.
It's just the empirical reality, at least, that I've experienced for 30 years, and countless listeners have told me exactly the same thing.
So, it's not an absolute, but it's a pretty damn strong trend.
And so, no, society would be catastrophic.
If the morals of society change, it is catastrophic.
For the majority, the vast majority of individuals within that society.
And that's why society is so hard to change.
And that's why I'm saying if people live forever, I think that would only get worse and worse over time.
Right, yeah, because people will just perpetuate their own biases, you know, for eternity.
And it won't do any help to the society as a whole, that's for sure.
But what's your personal experience of death been, just out of curiosity?
Have you had people close to you die at any time?
Well, no one in my immediate family has died.
My parents are still alive, only grandparents I've lost.
But I consider it rather frequently, the fact that I think that it's healthy to always live with that perspective that someday I'm not I couldn't be here and I should keep that in mind whenever I'm making decisions in everyday life.
So I think that's something I consider often, but not something I've really experienced on a deep level with someone very, very close to me passing away.
I think that's wise.
For many years now, as I've mentioned before on the show, whenever an ambulance goes screaming past me, I can't help but think, One day, that's going to be my ride, and I ain't coming back.
One day, I will be inside that screaming ambulance, and the spots will be spreading across my vision, and with any luck, the relatives will not be beckoning from the light, and I will be going on the LSD exit acid trip to nowhere.
I will be opening my eyes to the eternal night of nothingness.
And that's something that I think of.
I think of that at least once a day.
And I think it's an important thing to think of.
So I think you're wise to do that.
I mean, you don't want the storm clouds of death to take all the sunshine out of your life, of course, and it doesn't sound like you're in the danger of doing that.
But yeah, I think that's a wise thing to do because we are raindrops going down the window and we splash off to nothingness all too soon.
And that really can help us prioritize what it is we're doing.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, I want to thank you for your time.
I just want to say I read Real Time Relationships very good.
So thank you for that.
I just wanted to mention, too, it's a funny thing that you mentioned this topic just as you're heading off.
I just found out almost by accident that a guy I was in business with for many years died last year.
I haven't spoken to him, of course, in forever, but he died.
He was quite young.
And he's dead.
It just struck me.
It happens.
We kind of live in a random sky full of occasional arrows.
We're all just walking across the field and these arrows just get raining down from the sky and they go through people, sometimes half, sometimes all the way.
Sometimes it renders them mute or blind or deaf or dead.
There's this continual drip.
Of mortality arrows raining down from the sky as we march across this landscape.
And it is just something to remember that you never know.
You know, I could get hit by a meteor or a spent bullet halfway through the show.
And so that's why I'm in full body armor.
Other people may take a different approach.
Yeah.
And the thing is, people walking through, no one's ever experienced death.
You've never really, you don't know what it's like.
Imagine if everyone knew what they were We can only assume, even those of us who think we know, we can only assume what we're in for.
I see that as another problem that no one really has that perspective where you and I may consider it on a daily basis and use that to make our decisions and how we live our life, try to live in a certain way more fully and we know that this is all we're going to get.
But, you know, you have other people who may not, we don't experience death.
You know, we can only assume one flight.
So I think that if people actually experience, you know, were to know what they were, you know, going to get into when flights off, I think, you know, we'd have a different side.
I don't know if I'd say a better side, but people would definitely live a lot differently, I think, under those conditions.
No, I think you're right.
I wrote a poem many, many years ago.
I think I was 19 or 20, which I still remember it, word for word.
It's pretty short.
It said, I'm not afraid of death.
Where I am, death is not.
Where death is, I am not.
We shall never meet.
Right.
And that's true.
You can't experience death.
You can't meet death.
I am no more afraid of life after death than I am afraid of the 17th century when I wasn't born yet.
I just simply won't be experiencing any of it.
I will not be.
I will not be.
And not being is, you know, I mean, Socrates made an argument.
He said, well, think of the very best night of sleep you ever had.
Well, if death is the end of everything, then you're basically going in for the best and most eternal night of sleep.
Because the best night of sleep that you ever had is the one where you don't remember anything.
You close your eyes at 11, you wake up at 7, you're like, oh man, I didn't have to pee, I didn't have any dreams, and that's the best night of sleep.
So he said that's now.
Of course, if there's an afterlife, then we get to chat with all of these great people from history and all of that, and we get to Jam with Hendrix and Mercury and all these great things.
So it's either going to be a party or it's going to be the best night to sleep forever.
Either way, it's not that big a deal.
But of course, that's a life well lived when you're 70.
Anyway, so I think the last thing I'll sort of mention is that Galileo said that You know, the only reason that we are fundamentally hostile to death is because we don't recognize that we're only alive because of death.
You and I are only alive because people die and because the species needs to be renewed and that's why we're alive.
So we all want to be the exception to the rule, right?
Everybody wants to win the lottery.
Everybody wants stuff without earning it or trading it or begging for it in my case.
Everyone wants to be the exception.
We're only alive because of death and yet we don't want death to be part of our lives.
Well, that's not the deal.
That's not the way it works.
I'm only here because countless people, I think it's 30 to 1, dead to alive.
Countless people have died before me in human history and that's the only reason I'm here.
So for me to beg for an exception when death is the only reason I'm here is a bit fatuous.
I mean, that doesn't mean that I'm not going to try and live as long and as well as I can, but it definitely is something that is the deal.
Keep in mind.
We are corporeal because we will turn to dust and because others have turned to dust before us, and the coalescing of dust to person only happens because we have to go back to dust at the end.
Right, exactly.
I'm not sure if you've ever heard the quote by Richard Dawkins, but it's a good one.
It says, How dare we scoff at that return to the inevitable state from which the vast majority have never stirred?
Meaning that you think of the set of potential life that could have even been here in our place, the possible combinations of egg and sperm.
You can't even imagine the number of possible humans.
And against those odds, it was us that are here.
So that's another something along those lines to consider.
Oh, yeah.
I think I populated just about an entire continent when I was a teenager just in my bed.
Of those billions and billions of people who never came to be but expired among the low-thread count cotton of my teenage years, it is good to know that one got through and made me.
I'm obviously enormously happy about that.
Exactly.
We owe it to that and we owe it to the deaths of 30 other people, I guess.
30 to 1.
I've never heard of that ratio.
It's interesting.
Oh, yeah.
No, we stand on bodies, for sure.
And that's the only reason we've got any height at all, and people will stand on us.
That's the deal.
Well, listen, thanks.
Great call.
I feel that the sunny day got remarkably dark, but that's good to know.
It's good to remember.
So, yeah, great thoughts.
And I think ruminating on death is a great way to get yourself some elbow room at a dinner party.
So, thanks for your time.
Thanks a lot.
Bye-bye.
Oh, James.
Just a reminder, it's 12 p.m.
Eastern Standard Time.
No, I lie, 12 a.m.
Midnight, Monday night.
I'm going to be hosting the Colbert, not the Colbert Report, as a few people excitedly emailed to say congratulations about.
That would be quite another matter.
But I will be hosting the Colbert Report, which you can find at colbertreport.com.
And next weekend we have a super exciting extra special Super snazzy with sauce on the side.
Guest host for the Sunday show.
We will be co-hosting.
So I hope that you will come by to check that out.
And questions callers.
Did we drive everyone off a ditch with our happy thoughts of imminent expiration?
That's the Corbett Report.
Corbett Report.
Sorry, Corbett Report.
C-O-R-B-E-T-T Report dot com.
Corbett.
Let's see.
Well, I don't see anyone jumping up to be added just yet.
We did have another question.
Hang on just a second.
Let me cue it up.
I really don't mind if we have a short show today, so if we don't have a lot of questions this weekend and it sounds like you could use an app to use, it's alright.
Sorry about that.
Oh, no sweat.
Well...
Somebody has another question.
He has a question about participating in creating...
Okay.
I'll just read it.
I'd like to hear Stefan's opinions on participating in creating a planned private community from the ground up, roads, infrastructure, rules, etc., even though it will still exist within the confines of the greater state.
It might be the closest thing to a society that he envisions.
I guess your thoughts about that.
Yeah, I'm not sure why the person thinks I'm not doing that.
Yeah, maybe I'm missing something.
I'm doing that in my house.
I mean, in my house, we respect property rights and the non-aggression principle.
In my friendships, my relationships, we respect property rights and the non-aggression principle.
In my professional career, such as it is, we respect property rights and the non-aggression principle.
In the FDR community, we respect property rights and the non-aggression principle.
No abuse on the board and, you know, the board is paid for by donators and myself and your time as well, James, and Bill's time and Greg's time and all that.
So I'm not sure, maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not sure why that isn't already occurring.
And that's what I encourage other people to do, is have relationships where you respect the non-aggression principle and property rights.
So, yeah, I think we're doing that.
Maybe I'm missing something.
We'll see if he has a response to that.
While we're waiting for that, I wanted to just let you know, this is pretty cool stuff.
So, early next year, that would be early 2013, a listener has very kindly donated You're going to believe this.
It's very, very cool.
We are going to have a free domain radio gathering offshore the Florida Keys.
Florida, of course.
On a private island.
I'm telling you.
It's the coolest thing.
He's got these beautiful houses, white sandy beaches, private snorkeling.
He's got a karaoke.
He's got the whole thing.
This man is...
It's loaded like a shotgun.
And he would love to have a free domain radio gathering off the coast of Florida on a private island.
These are the kinds of bullets that, just like Socrates, I'm willing to take for philosophy.
You know, he had to drink Hemlot.
I need SPF 9 million.
It's really, really very similar when you think about it in ways that aren't similar at all.
So I will post more details.
We're just finalizing stuff to do with that.
There will be some other libertarian luminaries, if I may put myself in that category there as well.
But yeah, it's very cool.
He sent me some pictures of the island, and I'm like, I'm in!
I'm sorry, what was the plan again?
Because he sent them to me when it was actually quite cold up here in Canada, so I just asked if we could do it later in the day, and I would hitchhike down.
But my wife tackled me as my sobbing, frozen Canadian body was heading out the door at high velocity.
So, you have a child?
Yes, but there's sunshine there!
So, anyway, I'll keep you posted as details emerge, but that's going to be, that's just seriously going to be too much fun for us.
I was just wondering when that was going to be, again?
It's early, we're still working on the final day, but it'll be early next year.
Okay.
That will be a nice break for, well, especially you, but for most of the people in the US, I'm sure.
This guy's got like a 10,000 square foot guest house.
I'm not even going to tell you how many more thousand square foot it is from my guest house.
Actually, it would be about 10,000 square foot more than my guest house.
It really is a most impressive ring of happy, sunny, private glory.
So I hope that people will be able to come and I'll keep you posted as we find out more.
I wonder if the weather that time you're in the area permits throwing up a tent on the beach or something.
No, it should be pretty nice.
I think that's after hurricane season, so I think that should be good.
I also wanted to mention, if you ever get a chance to see a show called The Middle, I've watched a couple episodes.
It's pretty cute.
Anyway, I just got an email from one of the cast members who's a big fan.
I'm going to put a plug in for this show.
It stars the janitor from Scrubs.
That's the only person I know.
I think the teenage actors are also very, very good.
It's a pretty sweet comedy.
I hope that people will check out The Middle.
It's a good sitcom.
Alright.
Questions?
I do have something.
And it's sort of circling back a bit to conversations that we've had in the past.
Work.
My job has not been very fun lately.
And I feel like I'm a bit in the same situation where I've been before, where it's like, well, I'm not really enjoying my job, and I'm looking to do something else, but the default path of just get another job in my field seems but the default path of just get another job in my field seems to It's like I'm basically changing out one thing for the other.
I know you've done a lot of these sort of work employment podcasts.
I know that we've had conversations about that.
Look, I mean, if people are long-term listeners still struggling with the same stuff, I get it.
Look, I mean, I struggle with the same stuff every day.
You know, you still got to deal with the hand that's plagia.
You can shuffle the cards, but that's still the hand that's plagia.
So I hope that people don't feel like, oh my God, we're going back here again.
If this is what's going on for you, this is what's important to talk about.
So I, you know, I welcome that.
I think it's great.
Lord knows you're not alone.
And so I'm, you know, absolutely happy to talk about this stuff.
All right.
All right, well, for some reason, I don't know why, it's starting to feel real like I want to cry.
I don't know why.
Because I'm happy to talk about it.
I don't think, oh my god, are you still having these same problems?
Pull your socks up, man.
That's part of it.
That's part of it.
I mean, it's always a little like, oh man, do I really want to talk about this again?
But I really appreciate that.
Well, I know that you're okay.
So a bit of a background for some of the newer listeners.
We've had some challenges about work issues in the past with you.
And you took a sweet stab at Cucumberite Alien extra work and film work last year, I think it was.
But because you've moved around a bit, it's been hard to sustain that and you've got a job back in your career.
The last issue that I remember was you had a bit of an ill-tempered boss.
Just put it as nicely as we can.
And then you recently moved again and it started a new gig, right?
Well, the bad-tempered boss was the job I got fired from.
The one I'm at now, my boss is pretty alright.
I've got my criticisms, but he's like the best boss I've ever had, professionally at least.
He's not counting me working for myself, which I'm not saying I'm not my own great boss, but there are clients, so it's all internal work.
So there are internal clients that we work with.
Because of the way the company is structured.
One of my biggest complaints is the current company is just there's no concept of Project management or change control.
I mean, I know that changes are going to come, but there's no scope.
We don't limit the scope.
We don't say, hey, this is going to take another three weeks.
If you've got a launch date in four, then we're not going to meet it.
But that's never done.
Am I right in thinking it's a smaller company or a smaller division?
It is...
It's actually a fairly sizable company.
I think it's certainly over a hundred.
I think it's about 300 or so employees overall.
Several different properties competing for a team of about five or six developers.
That's a challenge and having the work is great, but having the constant tedium, it gets tedious when it's Yeah, when you no longer panic about scope creep, it actually just gets really boring.
Yeah.
Oh, here's another one that's gonna, you know, cause more stress and pressure and blah blah blah, right?
Yeah, and then of course, this is something that happens in a lot of companies where the priorities are one way and then they shift immediately to the other way and it's like, hey, I'm working on this and they come back to you three days later, hey, where's that number one thing?
It's like, we only have one person working on this and you told me that this other thing was most important.
Everything's a priority.
That's what I call management.
Sad, sad, sad.
Everything's a priority.
So you've got Dilberted, right?
That's basically the...
I kind of got Dilberted.
This is the same team I was working with, where I was working on a contract basis, and then I went to a salary.
I don't know if we talked about that at all.
I don't think we talked about it.
No, no.
That's sort of been on my mind.
That move didn't change right away, but it did change.
Sorry, it didn't change right away?
Sorry, sorry, my experience of working with these people didn't change right away when I went from contract to salary, but over time, sort of...
Well, of course, the challenge with salary is you don't get overtime, and so scope creep isn't as big a problem, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, if you can get free work from people, why not, you know, why would you put project management in place?
That's like conserving seawater when you're in the ocean.
Right.
The more where that came from, right?
Yeah, yeah.
No, no, that's fair.
So, I mean, that's...
I've been thinking about that.
I mean, it's not the reason that I'm unhappy, but it's certainly contributing.
Because it's like, hey, you know...
Okay, so how long have you been doing the same job now for?
I've been in this...
With this team, or just the same...
No, no, no.
Just, I mean, coding.
Coding with, you know, coding where you are.
I mean, programmer, senior programmer, but not...
Direct managerial.
I mean, I've been doing this sort of thing since I was a teenager, so we're talking at least 15 years.
Is it closer to 20?
It's closer to 20 years.
Is it closer to 20 than 15?
It is closer to 20 than 15.
Yeah, I thought it might be.
So 20 years.
So 20 years doing the same job.
I'm bored.
I mean, the fact that you made it to 20 years, you know?
I'm so bored and I've been bored for a long time.
Right.
Man, I'm bored.
Yeah, I got a friend who, oh boy, this is going back.
So he used to have a mainframe job programming in a language called Mantis.
And the most exciting thing about Mantis is dating a Mantis programmer was really tough because after sex they would chew your head off.
I may be conflating two knowledge spheres there in unusual ways.
But yeah, he would say, you know, I'm supposed to be finding a bug in this 5,000 or 10,000 line mantis program.
I'd be staring at the CRT. It was before LCD. Stare at the screen.
I'd be paging down and I'd realize I'd gotten to the bottom of the program and I don't even remember what I was looking for anymore.
And that's when he knew that it was maybe time for a change.
So, yeah, look, 20 years.
Yeah.
To me, boredom is not about the past.
I'm not sure what parsed is.
I guess it's the computer term, meaning break things into smaller components.
I don't believe that boredom is about the past.
I believe that boredom is about the future.
So we get scared.
Let's say that we almost drive through a red light in the car.
We get scared not because of the past, but so we won't do it again in the future.
The feelings that we have We're all about the future.
People kind of get confused.
They think their feelings are all about the past.
No!
Our brains are not dumb.
Our brains know that we can't time travel.
Our unconscious knows that we are not H.G. Wells' characters.
We can't time travel.
The past is dead, can't be changed.
And so our feelings, I believe, are primarily about the future.
And I actually think that's actually quite scientifically...
It's fairly well demonstrated.
So if the boredom is not about the past, I would argue that you've got another 30 years to work, right?
Oh, geez, at least.
Right, so how does one and a half times what you've already been doing sound to you?
No, two and a half.
No, well, what was it?
20 years?
Yeah, one and a half times.
Yeah, one and a half times, yeah.
Yeah, so going back to where you were as a teenager, but you're already...
Sorry, at least when you were a teenager, you weren't already bored.
Right?
So, because it was exciting and cool.
Wow!
Somebody's paying me to code, right?
So, starting from where you are, I'm already bored for another 30 years of this.
Oh, well, it's...
I don't know.
It's...
Yeah.
It wasn't really...
If you're not trying to open a vein with your mouse during this conversation, that would be quite awkward for the show as a whole.
But that's pretty gruesome to look at, right?
No, no, no.
It is, and of course, it didn't start off all exciting and wonderful and all this.
No, but more.
I mean, it was more exciting than now, right?
Hello?
No, I'm here.
I'm here.
I'm just...
No, what I mean, look, I'm not saying it was necessarily Sky Rockets and Christy Turlington-induced orgasms when you first started, but what I am saying is that You didn't have a decade, well, almost two decades of the same thing over and over when you first started.
So what I'm saying is that looking forward, you're already starting in a ditch of boredom and you're going to keep digging for another 30 years?
Well, the word I'm having trouble with, even to a mild degree, is excitement or at least a lack of boredom.
So you're so bored you can't ever remember not being bored.
What compounds it is that I was working for my father for the first time, for the first several years.
The whole start of me working as a programmer is very much intermingled with this abusive asshole.
That took me a long time to get away from.
I was actually working for him when I first came across Freedom Main Radio.
There had been breaks of other employers in between, but I kept coming back to him in some way.
Let me give you a tiny rant.
Sorry, you've been a long-time listener.
Let me give you a rant.
And you can tell me if it makes any sense.
Look, I think that one of the things that it's really hard to understand or to remember is that we're all mostly bred to be worker drones.
We are not bred or trained or raised or educated or Or illuminated or enlightened to compete with the ruling classes, to compete with the managerial classes.
We might as well be a bunch of fucking bees in a hive.
The degree to which our roles tend to be rigidly restricted.
And there's a reason that you've never made the leap into management.
And that's because your emotional training is to be subjugated, right?
Yeah.
It's because the idea of management and fundamentally management is about conflict and conflict resolution.
To me, that's the essence of management, resolving conflicts with clients.
I mean, there's wooing and all that if you're in sales and all that, but if you're a manager, it's resolving conflicts with clients because clients always want more for less, whereas the billing department always wants less for more and the programmers always want The most stable ones are the ones that are already existing and the programmers want more money.
Everybody has competing interests and it is the synthesis of that competing interest, the successful synthesis of those competing interests to create a win-win situation where in many ways it's a win-lose situation.
If the client gets more, the programmers and everyone else gets less.
If the client gets less, the programmers get more fun or time off or less overtime.
Other people will promise the client more.
And, you know, one of the fundamental problems in business is that we as people, and the political class is very invested in this, we are not taught how to see a liar, right?
And so because we're not taught how to see liars, obviously the political class doesn't want to teach us how to see a liar because then there'd be no damn political class, right?
If you were really good at seeing a liar, you wouldn't believe a damn thing a politician spoke.
Mm-hmm.
And so, because we're not trained to see liars, this creates, as a byproduct of enabling the political class, it creates an incredibly difficult situation in business.
Because business then profits off the political class generation of, we can't see liars.
Because then someone's going to come along and promise you the moon, and the sun, and the stars for three pennies and a handjob, and you're going to say, okay.
Because you can't tell a liar.
And so there's a race to the bottom.
In many cases, I think this is particularly true in business, there's a race to the bottom.
Who can lie the most convincingly?
And of course, the people who suffer for those lies are the workers.
But to me, it's not the fault of the capitalists.
I mean, this is the fault of the educators of the children who don't teach them how to damn well spot a liar.
So this is why there's always scope creep, because people fundamentally can't see liars.
They can't process liars.
They don't have this suspicion.
They don't have the, it's too good to be true.
I mean, you understand, democracy as a whole couldn't work if people really understood what it means to say, it's too good to be true.
Right?
Right?
Like, think of that Julia, that, you know, blowing fiat currency kisses in Julia Zia campaign that brought up.
You know, hey, we got all this free shit and it's all great.
I mean, if people had actually been trained to understand the it's too good to be true thing and to know how to spot liars, they would never believe half, 99% of the bullshit that's stuffed down their throats in the guise of rank bribery.
It's understanding that the government has all these laws against bribery, but the political campaigns are all about bribery.
You just can't bribe other governments.
You can't even bribe your own government.
But the government can bribe you with what's left of your own money after they piss most of it away on their own junkets.
In the business world as a whole, not taught how to see liars, Because political class doesn't want that.
We're not taught to understand it's too good to be true.
What's the downside?
Where does the cancer come from the smoke that you're blowing up my ass?
And so because of that, in business, salespeople, there's a race to the bottom.
There's a race to, I can promise you, even more dazzling shit in even less time than the next guy.
And because people aren't trained to see liars and they aren't trained to understand the it's too good to be true paradigm, they end up taking whoever lies the most and wanting stuff from whoever lies the best.
And of course, what does that produce?
Well, it produces burnout among programmers.
And the only way to escape that...
Well, I don't know.
I mean, you can get it to management, and then you face the problem that because people can't see liars and don't understand these two good-to-be-true scenarios, how well are you going to do in management if you really tell clients the truth compared to the next guy who's going to lie to them?
Tell me where I'm at.
Am I getting anywhere close?
Well, I certainly see what you're saying.
I don't know that it gives me too many options, but I know what you mean.
You're a very intelligent guy.
I mean, you're a very intelligent guy.
If there was an obvious option and you hadn't seen it, it would be ridiculous, right?
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
No, but I hear you.
and yeah so things things that you things that you can do Options that you could take.
Well, do you want to work in tech anymore?
Is there stuff in tech that is interesting to you?
Lately I've found that stuff in tech is interesting for about a week.
And then it's like, okay, I'm really tired of this.
Because you get this really short honeymoon period of, hey, look, this is cool, this is cool.
And then you kind of get used to it.
Wow, there's a different way to open a record set.
How do I type this way?
Because the shit you're doing is all the same, right?
Yeah.
What is it?
80% of computer work is database to GUI to back again?
It's a little bit shifted now, but it's still the same proportions.
We're still talking about, I'd say, 30-40% of work is done on the front end, at least in our company.
About 40-50% is backend work.
The database stuff is actually You know, not done much anymore, but it's all very much the same stuff.
It's like you do list comprehension, or you pull stuff from the database, or you try to cache this, or you try to do that.
I mean, there's a lot of details, but...
Yeah, and there's a lot of performance enhancements, which I used to get a huge hard-on for performance enhancements when I was a coder.
You know, back in the day where, ooh, if I take this entire database, turn it into an array, index it, and then I can manipulate it in the memory rather than going to the server.
I mean, that used to be just massive performance improvements.
I used to love that stuff.
I think there's a little bit less of that now than there used to be because resources are just so available to programmers.
You don't have to worry about memory, usually not even about data transmission speeds and so on.
Although I did have an experience late last year, I think it was, with a similar kind of thing where a junior programmer had produced something that performed horribly in production.
So I spent about a week or so on it and made it work really well.
But yeah, that was...
I mean, that was fun in the moment.
But now it's like, okay, now we solved that problem.
There's nothing more to solve.
This is the way you do it so that it works properly.
It's okay.
Now I'm like...
Oh, let me tell you one.
Let me tell you one.
Oh, I had to do one.
So we had a client who wanted every time they made a change to the database for the change to be mirrored And this is way back in the day.
You couldn't get this automatic stuff in the databases.
They wanted it mirrored and they wanted a comment to be entered into every change to the database so that they would have a permanent archive of all changes to it all.
And, of course, the database was a bunch of tables and then, of course, a near infinite amount of queries and join tables and all this kind of crap.
And so I ended up doing a...
I would select all the tables.
I created tables that were actually just mirrors of the aggregation of tables.
So if there were 10 tables put together with 50 fields, I'd just make a table with those 50 fields and that was it.
And then push the changes through to those fields since they all had the same name.
It was no problem.
I had to add one.
You know, because if you've got 10 tables, where do you put the comment for changes?
Because it could be, you know, the tables could all be joined in many other ways.
So yeah, I did a make table with the select statement and then just pushed all the data in there with a comment for each one of those screens.
Anyway, it was really cool and very effective and could be mostly automated.
But anyway, so yeah, that kind of stuff can be fun and it's a real challenge.
How am I going to make this work?
How am I going to have this be efficient?
But of course, if you're talking about almost six months ago being able to do this for a week, If your job was a woman, how often would you say you're having sex?
About as much as I was having sex with my last girlfriend.
Right.
Which, you know, until she developed that puncture was probably a little bit too often to be healthy.
Anyway, so are there areas in tech that would be of interest to you?
Nothing spring into mind.
There might be something that I haven't heard of that would be interesting, but again...
Well, but what about a real change, like 3D games coding or something?
Hmm.
I mean, that's not database to GUI and back again.
That's rocket launcher to neck of alien and then giblets.
Right, right.
Hmm.
I'm really not sure.
I mean, are you thinking, like, well, it might be interesting, but I've got to do that Chandler Bing advertising from the ground up kind of thing, start all over again?
I mean, there's an element of that, but I kind of know that I've been doing programming for long enough that if I were to do that as a programmer, then, you know, that wouldn't be a huge step back.
But.
So no typing.
That's really what you're saying.
One of the things I remember thinking about years and years ago now, it's been a while since I've been thinking about this.
I don't necessarily need to get away from technology, but the coding aspect is something that I just can't see where I'm going to get more enjoyment out of my job or more anything out of my job.
Even if I change industries...
Sorry, what about management?
You know, like, so let's say you were to go to your company, you could document for a And you could say, look, here are all the problems that I see arising out of a lack of change management, lack of project management.
I would like to put myself forward as a project manager.
And according to my analysis, you know, I'm going to take 20k a year more in salary, but I'm going to reduce costs by 50k a year.
That's sort of my commitment.
And I'll measure that and make sure that you guys are getting your money's worth.
If you show that kind of entrepreneurial spirit where you've gathered the data, you've crunched the numbers, you've made a business case or a business plan internally, most companies will at least seriously consider something like that.
If you just say, well, I want to get into management, that doesn't, you know, okay, I'd like to know how to fly.
But if you sort of say, look, here's what I've noticed, and you can talk to a couple of coders, you know, how much time is spent on change management per week, and you figure out their hourly conditions.
You can find a way to make a case to put yourself forward as a project manager and say, I'll need a couple of months of training, get a PMP course or whatever, and here's how much it's going to cost you, but here's what the return on investment should be, and I would really like to take this on.
There are a, yeah, most companies would at least consider something like that.
I mean, I think people underestimate the degree to which people can be entrepreneurial within their own company, which is a good, I think it's a good practice sphere.
But if you would think of something like that, and let's say you could make that work, how would that appeal to you?
Oh, sounds like you dropped a bit there.
Oh, sorry, yeah.
If you could make that work, how might that appeal to you?
I don't think I want to do it where I am.
Do you think the culture is too dysfunctional?
Sorry, culture is always dysfunctional.
Culture is always dysfunctional.
Well, the boss and I, I was really...
I've been close to burnout, actually been burned out a couple of times already with this job.
But there was one point where my boss and I had a phone conversation.
And granted, it wasn't the full package where I sat down, and it may have been helpful for you and me to have a call at this point, but what happened was I was like, we have this project that has this due date, and I'm really concerned about the success of the project because we don't have a project manager We don't have good estimates.
We don't have all these other things.
And it wasn't a pleasant conversation.
And I said something.
I didn't exactly put myself forward enthusiastically as, hey, I'll be a project manager.
But my boss said that he can't afford to lose me as a coder to be a manager of the project.
I'm too valuable as a coder.
That's the problem.
Yeah, because the better you are as a coder, I mean, the less you're going to want to Yeah, people aren't going to want to move you out of a position that you're really good at.
And that's the trap, of course, of being 20 years at something, is you're about as fast as it can be, and about as efficient as it could be, and you can see problems coming a mile away, and so on.
And so, yeah, I mean, that's definitely...
You know, it's like, we've got George Clooney for the movie.
He's not going to act in it.
He's only going to direct.
It's like, I'd actually really rather he just be in the movie and hopefully topless because, you know, that's where he's become good.
Other people can do that, like Clint Eastwood or whatever, right?
And I'm sure George Clooney could too if he wanted, but...
Everybody's first thought is, you know, if Giselle or whoever the supermodel of the day is shows up for a photoshoot and says, no, I just want to work the camera, people are like, actually, honey, that's not really what you're here for, right?
What I'm saying is you're the supermodel of coders, and you should be proud of that.
Yep, I'm a real sexy coder.
Okay, let me ask you another question, though.
Sorry, let me ask you another question.
What if there was a field that was really meaningful to you that you could bring your skills to?
Because, I mean, programmers care about programming, but of course they also care about the products, right?
And so what if there was, I don't know, a job at some You dropped when
you said you were going to hire me for twice my salary.
Absolutely, but the topless clause still maintains.
If you could find some area where you were really interested in the content, would that overcome your technical attitude?
I think it would.
I really think it would.
It would actually really be kind of like a dream come true because I get to use these skills which have had definitely some mixed feelings over the years but then I get to do for something that's really, really important and I feel like essential.
Why don't you give me a business plan?
Now I feel really anxious.
Why?
It's just a possibility.
Wouldn't it be cool to bring your technical skills to bear on the dissemination of, I think, the best philosophy around?
No, it would be.
It would be for sure.
I got to admit that the thing that makes me anxious about it, not so much that I don't know exactly what I'm doing with the business plan, but is like, how do I eat?
Well, no, no, the business plan is, you know, Steph, you know, how much time are you spending doing X, Y, and Z? You know, what can I do to take that over?
And, you know, here's what I would like to do with the website, or here's what I would like to do with, I don't know, your books or the podcast or whatever, and here's how I think it'll pay off, and so on.
Hmm.
It's definitely really exciting to think about that.
It's something to mull over.
I'm kind of swamped.
Stuff just gets dropped and I don't get things done because I'm just too busy.
It's just something to mull about.
I have a ton of ideas for the website.
You've seen some of the stuff I've posted.
Maybe you've seen some of it.
I know you're really busy.
I've got ideas I want to do for the podcast.
I want to make sure I have ideas for how you can make that an easier thing, how you can have the metadata all in one place, how you're rating for podcasts.
I've got tons of ideas for- Fantastic.
We've talked about having a content management system before, maybe incorporating the blog that's right at the moment on Blogspot, that kind of stuff.
I sent a bunch of ideas off to you and Phil about the website.
I think that the show is growing to the point where it's not reasonable for me to say to everyone, do stuff for free.
Or to ask or whatever.
So maybe we can find a way for you to make some money at this.
I'd love to hire everybody who wanted to work on philosophy.
But we've just got to grow the show to the point where that becomes...
And we can do that.
You know, there's a limit to what, you know, one person who's a full-time parent can do.
So, you know, that's a possibility.
I mean, if even working for FDR, if that was dull as hell for you, then it would be like, okay, well, there's nothing left for you to do technically, right?
Yeah, that would be my definitive answer.
Yeah, look, I mean, I really like the look of the new website, but There's been stuff I've been wanting to do for months.
And I just, I never get around to it.
You know, there's lots of fun new toys and tools out there on snowcover.com for the platform, but I just don't get around to it.
I mean, here's something that's so ridiculous, right?
So, I've had the, I've been selling these five books.
Now, I've since written three or four more, but I've never bundled them together as a new package.
I've never even said, okay, if you're overseas, I need an extra 12 bucks for postage.
I have to email people and ask them to donate it.
I mean, it's ridiculous.
I know that that's not technically very exciting, but maybe there would be other stuff that would be more exciting, but there's six million things that I would like to do to improve things, which I used to have time to do, but I don't have time to do at the moment.
If there's ways that we could work together on that, I think that would be a blast.
I have ideas.
I certainly have ideas that I would love to implement.
And not just do myself.
Granted, it might have to be just me at first, but I'd love to be able to coordinate with other people.
Yeah, absolutely.
Not one person can do everything, but to subcontract out would be great.
What's the business plan, for instance, for going to the new servers that have 20 terabytes of data built in per month?
As opposed to right now where I've got one and have to pay for extras, right?
What's the ROI on that?
I bet you it's pretty significant because I'm paying quite a bit for extra bandwidth.
Whereas the new servers, if we migrate them over, you know, just that kind of stuff.
Again, I want to bore people with the ins and outs of the under the hood stuff.
You know, I really liked the old wizard, you know?
So, yeah, is this the first Sunday show job interview?
Hey, James does not have to interview with me.
But yeah, so...
I just got to show a little leg.
Yeah, so that's...
I mean, that's an option.
And then, look, so the process, maybe we can work something out, maybe we can't, but at least it then helps you figure out if you want to do something, you have to be careful about who you're going to work with or work for.
And maybe...
You know, I mean, I'm sure Laissez-faire books could use some help.
Mises.ca could use some help.
Maybe you could become the go-to libertarian coding guy or tech guy.
I mean, there's lots of different ways that you could try and build something there where you could be working, where the end would make the means worthwhile.
Because right now, if you're bored with the means and the end you're indifferent to, that's a really bad situation.
If the end, like, you know, about 80% of what I do is not Coming up with some useful nuggets while podcasting.
About 80% of what I do is writing thank you notes for donations.
It's ordering books.
It's cleaning up podcasts.
It's putting videos together.
It's getting the technical stuff endlessly sorted out because every damn thing changes for no reason.
Like, oh, my cameras are now out of focus.
Why the fuck is that happening?
I don't know.
There's always something that needs to try and fix.
I would love to get a wireless headset that didn't have clicks when you tried to record it when you had a wireless network running, because every time I do a show, I've got to turn off the wireless network, which is kind of a drag, and occasionally I forget.
I ordered this headset that was supposed to have dual-band So it was supposed to switch to out of the wireless network thing to reduce interference.
Turns out it only works with the Xbox wirelessly, but you can find weird ways to wire it to a PC. And it's like, what is the point of that?
I mean, so basically it's a wired headset.
So why am I paying extra for wireless, which I can't use?
So it's just stupid shit like that that goes on all the time.
So yeah, I mean, there's lots of stuff that needs to be done.
I would love to find a Bluetooth headset that didn't sound like I was shouting through a beach radio from 1947.
But do I have time to go and figure that stuff out?
No.
So anyway, there's lots of stuff that needs to be done and we can find maybe some way.
And then if you could branch out and work with other people, I'd certainly, you know, recommend you like crazy.
I mean, there's other things that you could do.
I mean, there's, I think, a great need for technical expertise in the libertarian communities and just something like that.
Sure, sure.
Well, this is definitely something for me to mull over, although, I mean, it's definitely very exciting chewing, mental chewing.
And I've basically decided to resolve all listener conversation problems with bribery.
I'm just going to pay people to be happier and call that a philosophical success.
Does that seem like a reasonable approach to you?
I'm having money problems.
I'm not going to help anybody philosophically anymore.
I'm just going to write them checks.
I think you need to give me a little more for me to agree with that.
Okay, tell me what more you need, and we'll call this a successful resolution of any and all philosophical problems.
If anybody's having problems with parenting, I'm just going to hire Nanny McPhee.
Actually, Emma Thompson and Super Nanny are going to come over to your house and solve all your problems, and we'll call this a coup de philosophy from Freedom Aid Radio.
Nothing so complicated as that stuff.
Just a few more bucks.
A few more bucks?
Okay, fantastic.
I'll agree with you all the way.
I'm just going to become the firehose PayPal Bitcoin spray going over the community as a whole.
And of course, the interesting thing is, obviously, James, I will need you to up your donation level considerably in order to be able to pay you.
That's the only thing that I wish I hadn't talked so much about economics in this show.
That's the only thing that is, you know, obviously, I will need my overhead.
Basically, I'm talking about a philosophical welfare state.
That's That's the plan.
I will need massive increases in donations.
I will pay about 10% out of those increases as charity to listeners and keep 90% of it for myself.
And then everyone will defend me as the ultimate philanthropist.
I'm really looking forward to that.
I think that's just going to be wonderful.
That sounds like a business plan.
Let's bring that one to the local bank.
The reason that we're talking about this at some length is this is true to everyone in the community as a whole.
If you can find out ways to up donations, let's spread the goodies.
Let's spread the goodness.
Let's have an institute.
Let's hire.
Let's make money from this.
I think that would be great.
I'm not the only person who needs to be able to eat from philosophy in the long run.
The less hemlock, the better.
I feel that by this time next year, you should be the project manager for the next round of competitive Astro mining.
And we can do asteroids and mine them.
I've already got lots of experience, as I mentioned, mining asteroids in Galaxy on Fire 2, and so I feel I'm pretty much ready to roll.
Just be sure to keep up those skills.
Keep them up to date.
Oh, I try.
Because I don't think you're going to be allowed near the code anymore.
Just so you know.
Oh, no, I shouldn't.
I shouldn't.
If it can't be written in Visual Basic 5, I don't really think that I should be allowed to do it at all.
Nothing should be written in Visual Basic 5.
Alright.
Well, thank you.
Thanks for talking with me about this.
It was definitely very helpful.
But why not?
Why not be an entrepreneur within a community that you know and respect?
This community, other communities out there that you know and respect.
Why not try and build something that way, which is combining what you do with what you love?
And, you know, there's this bullshit thing where they say, do what you love and the money will follow.
Well, I don't remember being paid to masturbate as a teen.
I certainly did love it.
But, I mean, there is a little bit of truth in that, in that if it's even remotely viable economically, then passion and commitment should be able to make it work.
Right.
And the only reason for that was there were no webcams back then.
I was on the swim team.
I was pretty buff.
I could have done a bump and grind for cash.
I think the show ended, should have ended, probably.
I believe we've had, you know, as far as creepy sexual references per minute go, we've pretty much hit one of the highest ratios of the shows to date.
And I'm just getting it all out of the system before the wonderful guest shows next week.
Well, you know, please have some Kleenex handy before you do that, please.
Absolutely.
Get out of your system.
Good idea.
Alright, do we have any other callers or questions?
Well, let's see.
I'm not even going to go into all of the Dungeons& Dragons references that are currently going on.
Did I shave my legs when on the swim team?
I did not.
I mean, I'm not too bad when it comes to body hair.
I'm not, say, your average New Jersey boy, semi-sasquatch.
My body hair, I've got a little bit on my chest, a little bit on my legs.
I'm certainly no Ken doll, but I'm also, you know, I have to shave the back of my fingers so that I can put gloves on.
So it was never a huge issue for me.
How can someone who is quite young Hang on, sorry.
I got something from the Quest.
Stop the scroll.
Stop that scroll.
Oh, scroll.
Come on, people.
I stopped scrolling.
There's got to be some more Dungeons& Dragons references there.
I found an E8 scroll for Firestorm.
All right, I have a question for Steph.
How can someone who is quite young train themselves to be better prepared to be an entrepreneur later in life?
What sort of things can you do to make yourself emotionally stronger or more emotionally ready for that sort of job?
Do you have a framework to work on such a thing?
You know, I mean, I did a little bit of quasi-entrepreneurial stuff.
I got, I mean, I had a paper route where I would sort of subcontract or subcontract out.
And there was some, you know, marketing aspects where, since I had to go down the street anyway, I would try and get as many people to buy the paper or to sign up for the paper as possible.
So I did some of that.
I was 12 or 13.
I did get a job in a bookstore when I was 11 putting newspapers together and stocking shelves and all that, which I loved because I could get books by having the covers ripped off and get some books for free.
I don't think I did any particularly entrepreneurial stuff until...
I think until I was in my mid to late 20s when I started the entrepreneurial stuff.
So I don't have a huge amount of advice I mean, the entrepreneurial abilities, sorry, the entrepreneurial opportunities that are available to young people of limited skill sets are kind of, you know, am waste slash lazy.
But I think, you know, I think one of the things that helped me with entrepreneurial stuff, I mean, I did put on plays and shows sometimes and had to deal with management and advertising and all of that.
But the service industry can be pretty good.
I worked as a waiter for many years as a teenager, and that's really customer-focused.
I mean, you live on tips for the most part, and that really does help in terms of customer focus.
One of the people who was interviewing me a while back was asking me why I think the show is doing so well, why this show is doing so well.
I think the major reason is I'm just relentlessly customer-driven.
I mean, you guys are the customers.
I am the service provider.
And I am relentlessly customer-driven.
You know, I read almost every email.
I try and check in on the board at least a couple of times a day, see what people are talking about, what is the most interesting stuff for people.
People say, well, Steph, why do you talk about The personal aspects of philosophy, because that's what people want to talk about, is the personal aspects of philosophy.
80% of the Sunday show, 70% of the Sunday show convos, 80 to 90% of the listener convos are about personal philosophical challenges.
How do I apply philosophy in my own life?
And you're not going to get that if you're an academic, you're not going to get that if you're a think tank, you're not going to get that if you're relying on funding from anyone other than your direct listenership.
And So it's funny.
Some economists have asked me why I think the show is so successful and of course they're mostly free market economists.
They should know.
It's because I'm relentlessly customer driven, customer focused.
That was my entire training from being a waiter and having a paper route onwards.
I've just been relentlessly focused on customers, being an entrepreneur.
The customer rules.
The customer is king.
The direction of the show, it's a yin and a yang.
I mean, there's stuff I want to talk about, and there's stuff that y'all want to talk about.
And it's, you know, the listeners, you, the listeners, lead me into new areas that I think are fascinating, and I hopefully will lead you into some areas that you find are interesting.
But it is a dance.
You know, we can improv a little bit, but, you know, we've still got to keep to the beat of the music.
So I think that that's really why the show works so well.
I'm Just never going to overrule, say, we're not going to talk about this because it's not abstract.
We're never going to talk about this because it's not epistemology or metaphysics or whatever.
But no, we're going to talk about how philosophy can work you where you live.
And I mean, this is, of course, why politics works in terms of its funding model, because politics...
It tells you that it's going to change your life where you live, right?
You get Ron Paul elected, it's going to set you free from X, Y, and Z, and if you get so-and-so elected, it's going to, you know...
So that's going to change your life where you live, and I don't think that happens with politics.
I think it's an illusion, but that's really the focus, is...
To really provide a philosophy show that gives value to you, that helps you to make better decisions and wiser decisions in your own life.
I mean, I get these emails where people say, like, I'm in the best relationship I've ever had because I can now tell this woman I love her more than just by saying I love you, but I can actually say why.
I mean, that's sort of out of real-time relationships.
And so that is, to me, that's freedom.
That's philosophy.
That is where things work the best, so.
um yeah so i just wanted to mention that's why um i i think it works so well all right yeah Yes, come on on.
Somebody wants to join in?
I will see.
I'm looking to get him.
Let me hear this question.
What do you think about forgiving formerly, physically, and emotionally abusive parents who want me to forgive and forget because they want to be good grandparents but they won't take responsibility For what they did, and instead judge me and my issues.
Well, if somebody has abused you, they don't take responsibility for that abuse, and they're judging you negatively, and they're manipulating you, then I don't think you can accurately describe them as formally, physically, and emotionally abusive.
You could say formally, physically abusive, but I don't think that you could say formally, emotionally abusive.
Look, forgive and forget is a great Temptation.
It's a great temptation.
People love to trumpet the virtues of forgiving and forgetting.
That's all in the past.
Let's focus on the future.
I did the best I could.
Forgive, forget, move on, be the bigger person, take the high road.
Well, if your parents want you to forgive and forget and to move on to not hold grudges, All you have to do is ask yourself, did they follow that philosophy when you were a child?
When you did something wrong?
Did they forgive?
Did they forget?
Did they move on?
Did they not circle back?
Did they let you off the hook?
And if they were abusive, then of course they didn't.
They didn't.
Beware people who come up with Morality in the here and now that they completely violated in the past with no reference to any change.
Oh, are we still on?
Oh yeah, yeah.
So be very, very careful.
Be very careful of people like that.
It's very manipulative to say forgiving and forgetting is a virtue.
Now that I'm in a dependent position upon you, now that, say, you have kids that I want access to as a grandparent, now that I need something from you, forgiveness, and now that you're in a position of power, and your parents are in less of a position of power now that you're an adult, when the balance of power shifts, and suddenly it's all talk of forgiveness and forgetting and moving on and taking the high road and so on, How do you know that's not just the result of the power shift?
Is that a genuine philosophical position?
Or is that simply the result of the power shift?
I mean, to take a graphic example, if a guy comes up to you with a gun in an alley and says, give me your wallet, and then you pull some ninja move and grab the gun away from him, and then he's all about don't harm others, well, that's only because you've got the gun, right?
Nothing's changed in his morality, it's just that you've got the gun now, and therefore his moral story is now changing.
And so, if you really want to know what people's true values are, you look at how they act when they have power over you, when you are dependent upon them.
When someone has power over you, that's where their true values show up.
And if someone abused their power over you, They harmed you, manipulated you, bullied you, hit you, raped you, God knows what.
And then, when you have power over them, when you have something they want and they have no ability to inflict their desires on you anymore because you're an adult, and their philosophy suddenly changes, well, all that's happened is the gun has changed hands.
And now they're all about, don't do harm.
And so if you want to know what your parents' real values are, you ask yourself, how did they treat you when they had power over you?
Those are their real values.
And whatever they come up with now that the power value has changed, well, that's just because the power has changed hands.
It's not because of any fundamental change in anybody's moral position.
When you fundamentally change a moral position, you have to be very clear about it.
If you try and sneak it in, you're just being manipulative again.
So I hope that helps.
Yeah, forgiveness is something that's earned.
It's like love.
Nobody can tell me to forgive them.
I mean, they can, but that's just bullshit manipulation.
It means nothing to me.
In fact, I hold it in rank contempt.
It is a pitiful and ridiculous thing to go up to someone and say, you owe me forgiveness.
You must forgive me.
Forgiveness is a virtue.
If you don't forgive me, you're denying me something that is justly mine.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
If you want me to forgive you, make fucking restitution.
Make restitution.
Because restitution means that you own that you've harmed me.
And restitution means that you accept the debt that you owe me to earn my forgiveness.
Someone comes up and saying, you must love me.
You owe me love.
If you want to give me love, you're taking from me what is rightfully mine.
It's like, you psycho.
Back the fuck away.
Get lost.
I mean, you've got to be kidding me.
I don't owe you love.
You don't owe me love.
I don't owe anybody forgiveness.
Now, if somebody justly earns my forgiveness through restitution and then I deny to give it to them because I want them to keep giving me stuff, then I think that's an unjust position.
But, I mean, that's not exactly a situation that I find myself in on any kind of regular basis.
But, yeah, somebody says forgive me, I'm like, make restitution.
Make restitution until I'm emotionally satisfied and then we'll see what happens.
But what people will do is they will, I mean, what many people will do, particularly if they've been manipulative or abusive in the past, is they'll come back to you.
And they won't talk about any of the harm they've done to you.
They won't talk about anything they've done run.
They won't make any but the most cursory apologies.
And the apology is for them, not for you.
And the reason you know the apology is for them and not for you is they won't apologize until you're satisfied.
They won't make restitution until you're satisfied.
They'll apologize so that you can't bring it up anymore because they've already apologized.
No.
Bullshit.
Bullshit again.
If I want someone to forgive me, I must continue to make restitution until they accept that I'm genuinely sorry.
See, restitution is a way of saying it's not going to happen again.
The whole point of forgiveness is it's not going to happen again.
I mean if I punch you and then you forgive me and I punch you again then you've just been an idiot.
Or to be more accurate and more slightly kinder you've been trained into giving false forgiveness by people who've demanded it from you because they're bad people in your past.
But the whole point of forgiveness and restitution and earning back someone's respect is so that it doesn't happen again.
And if somebody's not willing To admit their faults, to go through all of the negative emotional consequences of admitting that you're wrong, then they have no, quote, punishment for doing it again.
They have no negative consequences for doing it again.
So, saying that you're wrong, saying that you're sorry, groveling, making restitution, all of that is unpleasant.
It's difficult.
And that's how you know that somebody's really committed to not doing it again.
Because the next time it's going to be even worse.
So they've got some investment.
If they just say, well, I'm sorry, and let's move on, then what they're saying is, I don't want to have any negative consequences for doing wrong to you.
I don't want to experience anything negative from doing you wrong.
And what is that?
It is an exact setup for them doing you wrong again.
What they're really saying is, I want to do wrong to you again, and so I'm not going to accept any negative consequences because my plan is to do wrong to you again.
So why would I? Right?
Nobody's going to take a chemical which makes them throw up when they smoke if they're planning on smoking again.
And that's exactly right.
If they're not going to accept negative consequences, it's because they want to do it again.
So, I hope that helps.
And we did have someone, I think, who wanted to come in.
Yes, you're on.
Go on.
Can you hear me?
Yeah.
Okay.
G'day, Steph.
How are you today?
G'day.
Good.
Okay, a pretty serious question.
I was raised in a household where I had a mother that was very physically abusive.
She loved to slap, and she loved to switch almost every chance she got.
Switch means stick, right?
Yeah, I'd go out and pick my own sticks and peel off all the leaves, and that'd be what she whacked me with.
And if that wasn't big enough, she would go get a bigger one.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
My God, that's horrible.
Well, I appreciate it.
But, you know, I've been away from them for a long time.
I'm 40 years old now, and I don't talk to them much since listening to your show and being able to come out of the guilt of all the things that go along with religion since I was able to drop that, too.
I was a very religious person growing up.
I've been able to basically distance myself from my parents, and as the years go on, It gets farther and farther and farther.
And so I had a conversation.
Sorry, what gets farther?
I'm sorry.
I get farther and farther away from them in terms of contact, in terms of talking to them, seeing them, visiting with them, calling them.
We just move.
We're getting further and further away from each other.
Right.
So early December, I get a call from I get a call from my mother telling me about Christmas is going to be over at my aunt's house and so on and so on.
And I was like, well, I probably won't be there.
I really don't have much in common with them.
And she wants to go into this.
Why don't you ever talk to us anymore?
Why don't you call us anymore?
Why don't we ever see you anymore?
And I said, we don't have to talk about this.
I really don't want to get into it.
And she says, no, tell me.
I want to know.
You can tell me whatever.
I'm like, is it because I'm a Christian?
And I was like, uh...
Well, hang on a sec.
Sorry, just before we move on with that.
How did you, I mean, what did you think about everything that's implied in that whole approach from your mom?
Because there's a lot that's implied.
Well, there's a lot that's implied.
If somebody who's done you wrong says, I have no idea why you're not seeing me, what are they really saying?
Well...
Like, what's implicit in that?
I guess that's why I'm on the call, because her reaction when I answered the question was pretty stunning to me.
It was not expected.
And I thought we were going to get into a conversation about my childhood that totally went a different direction.
And I wasn't going to have the conversation, so I hung up the phone when I got her answer.
Look, all...
Illegitimate incomprehension is a claim of innocence.
Correct.
Right?
I mean, that's really, really important.
I have no idea what I did.
I have no idea whatsoever why you wouldn't want to talk to me.
This is a claim of innocence, a claim that you are at fault, a claim that you are unjust, a claim that you are selfish, a claim that you are mean.
Right?
Sure.
Maybe you understand that clearly, but I just wanted to point that out.
All illegitimate incomprehension is a claim of innocence and a condemnation of the other party.
I got fired?
Let's say I embezzled from some company and I got fired, and then I said to everyone, I have no idea why I got fired.
I was doing a great job, I got great performance reviews, I just walked in one day, and I was just fired for no reason whatsoever.
Well, I guess what I'm primarily struggling with, and I understand all that, that she's trying to escape from the harm and the damage that she did to me.
But her reaction was when I basically answered her question, I said, well, listen, I just – all of my memories of you are of you slapping me in the face and – And wanting to switch me every time I didn't come in the house fast enough or I said I wanted to watch 10 more minutes of TV. And then she just – she flew off the handle as she always does, and she immediately started screaming, I never did that.
I never did that.
That never happened.
That never happened.
And so – which was clearly that I was hitting some sort of a nerve.
And I said while we were talking, if you can't continue to have – And she's Christian, right?
Yeah.
She is, yes.
Right, so thou shalt not bear false witness is not one of the Ten Commandments that she's particularly into.
No, her favorite is spare the rods, spoil the child.
That's always been her favorite.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I'm just kind of wondering where this whole ability...
because my father is a very...
I've always had my anger towards my mother And I've said that my father has never really struck me.
He's never yelled at me.
He's never been the one to discipline me.
They've almost been like two totally different people.
And my anger has been mainly directed towards her our entire life.
But then, after listening to a lot of your shows and a lot of your talks through the years, he has got to know who she is.
He's got to know.
Wait, did he not know that she was hitting you with these branches?
It's kind of my question because I'm very shocked.
That I have not heard from my father since that day.
He hasn't called.
He hasn't done anything.
And it leads me to believe that maybe he was never around when she was doing it.
I just don't remember.
What do you mean he was never around?
Like he had no idea that she was doing it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know that he was ever in the room or he was ever at home or Wait, so it didn't leave any marks?
You weren't trying any time?
I'm sorry, I'm just trying to understand that.
Yes, well, that's exactly what I'm going to.
How could he not know?
How could he not know?
Well, also, when you have children, I mean, don't you talk about how you're going to discipline them?
Isn't that kind of an important thing to do?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Well, let me know.
It is.
It is.
I mean, it is an important thing to do, right?
Of course it is.
I don't think they thought that far ahead.
They were married young.
I know that my mother came from an abusive household.
I mean, every one of my aunts and uncles would say, oh, our father's theory was when he came home from a long drive or from out in the field working, whatever, was to hit first, ask questions later.
And I didn't have that kind of experience with my grandfather.
I'm guessing maybe he got a little tamer as he got older, but...
My mother left a voicemail message after I hung up on her when I told her I wasn't going to continue to have this conversation if she couldn't admit to these things.
She left a message saying, why did you hang up on me?
And then she said, the only person that has ever hit you or ever slapped you was my father.
And then she hangs up the phone.
And I'm just, you know, what the fuck?
I have no memory of that.
Do you think that she's telling the truth?
I mean, as far as, do you think she genuinely has no memory of hitting you?
I don't know how you forget at least a decade.
No, no, look, I understand that.
Sorry, I'm just...
I don't think so, no.
I believe that she is living a lie, and she wants me to try to live the lie, but I'm just not sure what she's trying to protect, and the only thing that I can think of is that she...
I'm kind of wondering if she had a lot of anger towards my father early on in their marriage because I believe he was a womanizing, adultering kind of fella.
And the stories that I hear from aunts and uncles is that they're really surprised that my mother stayed with him early on in their marriage.
And it might have even been as early as when I was in the womb.
And maybe she's harboring a lot of anger towards him and she stuck it out with him all these years.
But every time she sees me, she sees him and maybe she had to take her anger out on me.
I don't know.
Oh, you mean so she was angry at your dad so she hit you?
I'm wondering.
Yeah, I mean, so...
He was a screamer and a yeller for years and years.
Yeah, I mean, you know obviously that your mom's emotional problems were not created by your dad's philandering, but were rather a result of them, right?
Sure.
I'm sure it started early on in her childhood, as you've covered a million times.
Yeah, she was beaten as a child, and that creates a particular kind of brain structure, which if you don't intervene, if you don't make the commitment, if you don't grow up and take responsibility, will lead you, likely as not, to beat your own children, right?
And this has been common knowledge for over a hundred years.
For somebody to claim that they have no idea of the relationship between their own history of abuse and how they treat their own children, it's like somebody in the year 2012 saying, what?
Smoking is linked to cancer?
What?
I mean, this is just common knowledge.
I mean, this is...
I mean, it's on the most popular talk show in the world, or at least in America, is the Dr.
Phil Show, and this is continually reinforced in that show.
It's all over.
The self-help books sell by the tens of billions of dollars every year.
It is...
The sins of the parents of the fathers shall be visited on the children.
I mean, this is even in the Bible.
I mean, it is...
It is absolutely common knowledge.
Nobody can claim to not know anything about this.
The only way that they could not know anything about this is if they had never read a single book on how to raise children.
And then they're responsible for that.
Then they're responsible for taking on the most awesome responsibility any human being can take on, which is the raising of a child while having done no research on how to do it.
And that's fine too.
Let's say a parent does that.
But then when you are unprepared for something as a kid, are they upset with you about it?
Like if you go to your mom when you were a kid and you say, listen, I got a call in sick today because I have a math test and I forgot to study for it.
What would she say?
If I had said that when I was a child?
Yeah. - I honestly don't know.
She seems so unpredictable to me.
My mother was very jealous of how easy school came for me.
She was always upset if I got anything less than an A or a B. Matter of fact, I got paid for A's and B's, and then I got grounded for C's.
I don't know.
Well, what if you were unprepared for other things in your life?
When you were a kid, was lack of preparation ever something that you were punished for?
No.
No, I was always punished, so I really can't say, maybe.
I stayed grounded, stayed being told no, but yet then again, my parents used to love to spend tons of money on me at Christmas time and birthdays, and I was never lacking for Toys, clothes.
But I was never – but the things I did were never good enough.
I was in martial arts a lot when I was young, so I would have a test.
They would go to watch me do the test, and at the end I would pass, go on to the next level.
And I would get, yeah, you did really good, congratulations, but you really, you know, you kind of missed this, and when you were doing this, you should have done that.
I got that a lot.
Oh, okay, okay.
So, when you were a child, if you didn't do things perfectly, then it was legitimate to criticize you.
And that was good, right?
Well, it was legitimate to criticize me for not being perfect.
Right, right.
So would your parents claim that their parenting was perfect?
Well, I don't know what she would claim now because...
That she never made a single mistake in 20 years of parenting.
Never made a single mistake.
That is the stance that she takes.
My mother has never apologized to me for anything, ever.
And I have never heard her say I'm sorry to anyone, as a matter of fact.
Look, I think I'm a damn good parent.
I still apologize to my daughter at least once a day.
I apologize to my wife probably a hundred times a day.
Well, maybe a hundred you might step up the game a little bit.
No, no.
It's pretty bad.
I'm this asshole that these parents have sort of created.
And I'm working out of it, you know.
You know, slowly making changes, positive changes.
And I have a wonderful, beautiful wife who is the sun and the moon to me.
And very lucky.
Look, I mean, I think you and I both know that if your mom knew that you broke a window and you lied to her face and said that you didn't, you know what her punishment would have been, right?
Yeah, it's slapped, switched.
I mean, it's all that.
Yeah, it would have been all that, right?
So if your mom, if you're right about your instincts and she's lying to your face and claims that she never hit you, then it is much more important than a broken window, right?
infinitely more important than a broken window.
And so it simply means that she never had a moral judgment of you as a child.
I think this is a really, really important thing to recognize.
And I know it sounds obvious, but it's really worth getting at a very deep emotional level.
See, abusive parents Will claim that their quote discipline of you was caused by your bad actions because they're just such morally good people who want to do right and to raise a responsible child and to not spoil you and to do all of these good and virtuous things.
And it was your bad behavior that caused them regretfully and reluctantly to hit you, right?
Yeah, I just don't get that conversation now.
I don't even think.
No, but that's the way it would have been communicated to you as a child, right?
I guess.
I guess.
Why do you always make me say that?
Sorry to interrupt.
I've never heard anybody say about their childhood, well, my dad came home and he said, son, I'm real sorry.
I didn't get that promotion that I wanted, so I'm going to have to hit you.
Yeah.
Right?
I've never heard anyone say that their mom sat them down and said, you know, I think I really messed up.
I think I married the wrong man.
He's sleeping around on me.
So lower your pants.
I'm gonna have to spank you till my hands hurt.
It's never that way, right?
It's always a moral argument.
It's always a moral judgment.
You are bad.
I must punish you.
It's not because of any failing of mine, or any dissatisfaction of mine, or any problem of mine, or any immaturity of mine, or any unprocessed emotional garbage of mine.
It's objective, it's moral, it's clear, it's responsible, and it's good parenting.
Spare the rod, spoil the child.
But the reality is that if you were punished for hurting something or breaking something or harming something and then lying about it, but then when your mother is in that position where she broke and harmed something infinitely more important than a window and she lies to it to your face and is perfectly comfortable with that, I tell you, the great gift that she has given you is complete release, utter release from moral judgments as a child.
Because it means the morality was bullshit.
It was an excuse.
I mean, it's a great gift.
It's not a nice gift, it's not a conscious gift, but it's an incredibly great gift.
Because it means that none of the harm she ever inflicted on you as a child had anything to do with any moral evaluation of your actions.
That she never hit you because you were bad.
She never hit you because you did anything wrong.
She never hit you because you were naughty or disobedient or ungrateful or irresponsible or any of the other bullshit emotional logs that people toss on the tiny minds of children.
The great gift she's given you is she just made up whatever moral nonsense she could to justify the harm she wanted to inflict and you know that because when the situation is reversed She does not hold herself as an adult anywhere close to the same moral standards she inflicted upon you when you were 5 or 8 or 10 or 15.
Do you see what I'm saying?
Sure.
And that's a great release.
Because you said just now, you said, you know, I've been raised into this asshole or whatever, you use some negative term towards yourself, right?
Sure.
But the negative terms that were heaped upon you as a child, this is why the moral confrontation of the parents is so important.
Because if they do the right thing, I think that's great.
It's horrible that they have to turn around and admit faults and it's horrible that you're the one who has to bring it up and they don't do it of their own accord.
But that is a great and powerful step forward because they say, look, I hit you because I was messed up.
It wasn't your fault.
That's a very hard thing for a parent to say.
I harmed my children because I was messed up.
I was not doing the right thing.
I was irresponsible.
I was immature.
I didn't process the garbage I went through as a child and I reinflicted On you, that which harmed me the most as a child, and I'm ashamed of that, and I will never be able to make that go away, but let's see what we can do to find restitution in the here and now.
What an incredible statement, what an amazing amount of relief that is to get as a child.
I mean, I remember having this conversation with my father when I was about 21, and we were on a seven-hour bus ride, and we talked all night, or he talked all night, And he explained to me that when I came out to visit him as a child, as a teenager in Africa, that he was struggling with incredible depression and that's why he was not able to talk to me.
I mean, it was a huge relief to me to hear that it wasn't a deficiency on my part.
Because as kids, that's what we always do, is we internalize those deficiencies, right?
I was bad and I was hip.
But...
With the moral confrontation of the parents, you either get an acknowledgement of error and fault, which is a great relief, or you get a complete rejection of error and fault, which is also, if you listen carefully and closely, is even more of a relief.
Because it means that it was never a moral standard they were holding you to.
If they can just do the opposite and not even notice it, then they invent morality to fit the circumstances.
They will punish you for lying about harm you've done to something inconsequential like a window, and then they will switch around immediately and make themselves the innocent party when you bring up harm they did to you.
It is an incredible gift of release, of relief from moral condemnation, from self-attack, because it had nothing to do with you.
There was no winning.
There was no badness.
There was no naughtiness.
There was no arsehole.
Sorry, go ahead.
I said, no, there wasn't an asshole then.
I mean, as a child, I never took her punishments, her abuse, and internalized it and said, I must be bad.
I never ever did that.
That didn't actually happen until I became a Christian.
Yes, but there would be a reason you would be susceptible to that.
Right.
Sure.
Oh, and I grew into an adult that was just like her.
Sure.
But I also knew at an early age that I did not want to have children because I was struggling with this anger, and I was fearful that I would do that, and I knew that I didn't want to do that.
And it just so happened that I married a woman who was in no hurry as well.
and we are the ages that we are and have decided not to have children.
Right.
Still too many children.
Yeah, and look, I would also, I mean, I would also, I know this is not particularly what you were calling about, but I would also recommend having a conversation with your father because I think there's still some blank about that.
Some incomprehension about that.
I mean, if he didn't know that...
Like, a lack of knowledge is no defense as a parent.
A lack of knowledge is zero defense as a parent.
Because you're damn well supposed to know as a parent.
The welfare of your child, you are supposed to know all the factors that affect the welfare of your child.
if he claims to not know that his wife was hitting his children on such a basis, then he is responsible for that lack of knowledge.
I've thought about that.
Thank you.
There is no excuse for not knowing as a parent.
I mean, I don't get to call up the tax agency and say, oh, I didn't know my taxes were due in April.
What is it we were always told as kids?
Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
And that's when the law is hundreds of thousands of pages long.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
If you didn't know there was a test today, I'm not letting you off.
I mean, this is the standards we apply to six-year-olds or eight-year-olds.
If you forgot that there was a test or you didn't know that there was a test, too bad, you still have to take the test.
The thing called, I didn't know, or I forgot, or I wasn't aware of, was not something that I was ever allowed to get away with when I was six or seven.
And, you know, all I generally say is, let's just think about, as a society, having the same standards for adult 30-year-olds that we do for seven-year-olds.
Let's just think about maybe, maybe, maybe we could think about that as a society, which is to cast the moral net, not just to include Helpless, independent seven-year-olds struggling to survive in whatever situation they're in.
But let's also include 30-year-olds in their parents.
All we're doing is subjecting parents to the same moral standards that they're inflicting on their children.
Now, if we could at least get them to be equal, that would be an unbelievable step forward in society.
The truth of the matter, of course, is that we should have infinitely higher moral standards for adults than we do for children.
Because the adults are in a situation of incredible liberty and independence relative to children.
They can earn their own money.
They can associate with whoever they want.
They can get divorced.
They can date whoever they want.
They can move wherever they want.
They don't have to live with anyone they don't want to.
These are things that are not available to children at all.
So of course we should have infinitely higher moral standards for parents than we do for children.
But if we could at least stop having infinitely higher moral standards for children than we do for parents, that would be a huge step forward.
And then we could get to a rational mix.
Down the road.
But let's at least start to think about that possibility.
That would be about the biggest leap forward that could occur.
If we got that leap forward, if we got parents to accept the same moral standards that they inflict upon their children, we would have no state, no war, almost no criminality, no abuse.
I mean, it would just be fantastic.
And so that's what I keep pushing for and I'm going to keep pushing for it until it happens or the time sands scrub me away from the human beach.
Anyway, I'm sorry if that was not too helpful, but I really wanted to mention that.
And I guess we've gone a little bit over, so I will end up the show by saying thank you, of course, to everyone so, so much.
Please come out and see me!
Come and feel me!
See me!
I hope that you will come out.
And check me out in my various incarnations around the globe this summer.
This will be starting with June the 9th.
This will be June the 9th in Dallas, Texas.
Let me just...
I should get this...
Let me just go through the quick list for anybody who wants to come and check me out.
The Steffapalooza.
So, Libertarian Party of Texas, June 9th, Dallas, Texas.
Lptexas.com Libertarian Conference, Moving Ideas, June 11th.
Oh, that's going to be a fun trip.
Straight from Dallas to Sao Paulo, Brazil.
You can do a search for that.
The Porcupine Freedom Festival.
Oh, I have got the most amazing.
It's not even a speech.
It's a listener interactive extravaganza that I will be doing with musicians to the Porcupine Freedom Festival, June 21st to 24th, Lancaster, New Hampshire, Porkfest, with a C.com.
Freedom Fest, July 11th to 14th, Las Vegas, Nevada.
Ka-ching!
Freedomfest.com, Capitalism and Morality.
July 28th, Vancouver, BC. I'm going to be doing a couple of hours on UPB. Oh, I'm telling you, you want to be there.
It's going to be just fantastic.
I've got great speeches planned for that.
I am going to be omnipresent at Libertopia as the Master of Ceremonies, October 11th to 14th.
San Diego, California, Libertopia.org.
Second annual Liberty Cruise.
Please check that out.
We need some more bookings for that.
FDRURL.com forward slash cruise2012.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
Toronto Liberty Festival, Toronto, Ontario, November 3rd, 2012.
No website for that as yet.
And more speaking stuff is going to be coming in soon.
And I hope that I will get a chance to see you.
The Freedom Aid Radio BBQ, of course, is going to be held this Saturday at Porkfest.
So come on by.
Tell me that you know who I am and I will buy you some lunch because I'm all about bribing everyone.
So, thank you everybody so much.
Have yourselves a perfectly wonderful and charming week.
I really appreciate your support.
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