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Sept. 2, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:04:39

2206 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show Sep 2 2012

An exploration of an essential question about martial arts.

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Time	Text
	Hello, everybody!
	How are you doing?
	It's September the 2nd.
	Ooh!
	It's my birthday month.
	I'm going to be 46 this year.
	I'm excited.
	So strange, but very cool.
	You know, it's what they say about aging.
	It sucks a little bit, but it sure beats the alternative.
	So I hope you're doing well this Sunday show at the new time, 10 a.m.
	Eastern Standard Time, because we have a couple of night owls in Malaysia who really want to be able to chat.
	So thank you for letting me switch I hope it'll work out for you.
	And so, without any further ado, let's get going with the callers.
	Who do we have this morning?
	First up, we have a basket case.
	Hit me, brother.
	Hello?
	Hi, how's it going?
	I just want to say thank you so much for all the work you do and all the videos you make and it's just absolutely changed the way I look at the world and I can't thank you enough for it all.
	So my main question was about focus and concentration both in work and talking with people.
	What ideas do you have to sort of improve that?
	Because I've had serious problems with You know, keeping my mind on track and with daydreaming and things like that ever since I was young.
	And I feel like it's one of the main obstacles I have to achieving happiness in life.
	I mean, both in my work and in my relationships with other people.
	So, do you have any ideas on how to improve that?
	Well, first and foremost, giving you a sense of my own powers of concentration.
	Do you mind if I call you Sleepy Jean and tell you to cheer up?
	No, that means nothing to you, does it?
	You're too young.
	Cheer up, Sleepy Jean.
	Oh, what can it mean to a daydream believer and a homecoming?
	Hey, that would make me the homecoming queen.
	Anyway, I can do that.
	All right, so powers of concentration.
	Can you give me examples of where this is a big issue?
	Yeah, I mean, when I'm reading a book or something, and then I notice, you know, I'm reading a topic that sort of relates to something earlier in the day, or if I'm reading something that I need to read, and it gets really boring, and so I start wandering off to, okay, I'm going to be eating lunch in a few hours, where should I go?
	And then I think, oh, I went to that place last week, and it was pretty good food, and I was there with another friend of mine, and oh, what did I do with my friend the week before that?
	You know, things like that.
	Just, it's...
	It just goes from one place to another and then by the time I realize that I'm doing it, I've just wasted 20 minutes thinking about nothing constructive.
	Okay, and what does it mean about thinking about something constructive?
	You know, staying on task because I feel like that's the best way to get things done efficiently.
	So, I mean, you know, like I said, working on something, reading a book that I want to get, you know, that I want to finish and understand, or, you know, having a good conversation with somebody, like my mind will start wandering if, you know, the conversation is something that I'm just not finding particularly interesting or something like that.
	So in the line of that, it's something that I want to get done, but my mind keeps wandering off.
	Right, okay.
	Is it something you want to get done?
	Yes.
	Okay, let me give you an example.
	Let's start with the basic biology of life.
	So have you ever been out sort of roaming around and suddenly it's like, oh my god, I have to take a monster crab.
	Yeah, I guess.
	Yeah, I think everyone's been in that situation, right?
	Now, have you ever had it where you get distracted and end up crapping your pants?
	That was a long time ago, I think.
	No, when you were a little, little kid.
	But I mean, as a sort of teenager, as an adult.
	Oh, no, no.
	Okay, so you do have the capacity to take a plan called Get Me to a Washroom and...
	You don't get distracted.
	So if the stimulus, so to speak, is strong enough, then the distraction doesn't really occur.
	Is that fair to say?
	I know it's not a perfect example, but I'm just sort of trying to give some boundaries to the chat.
	Yeah, sure.
	That makes sense.
	And what about video games?
	What about them?
	You mean my experience with them?
	Well, do you play them?
	I used to when I was young.
	I played them a lot, but I don't really have the time for it anymore.
	And when you played them, were you able to stay concentrated or did you get distracted from video games?
	I was usually able to stay concentrated.
	Okay, okay.
	And what about if you're reading a really great book?
	Yeah, that's another thing.
	I mean, you know, sometimes even if I'm reading a book and I feel like it's the best book I've ever read, my mind can still wander off.
	So...
	Okay.
	Now, this is the most important question, and here, of course, is where I may completely turn on you.
	What about when you're listening to a Free Domain radio podcast?
	Oh, I'm 100% focused the entire time.
	No, no, really.
	Does it happen?
	Does it happen?
	Yeah, it does, because sometimes something interesting is mentioned, and then I start thinking, okay, well, what if I'm in a conversation with somebody else about this particular topic, and they bring up You know, some sort of counterpoint to this.
	And then I start just having this imaginary conversation in my head with this other person about that particular instance.
	And that just sort of goes on for a bit.
	And then I realize that three minutes or four minutes has passed and you're on to something different.
	What you're saying is that only sometimes is there something interesting said in a freedom radio podcast.
	No, we'll get to my paranoia.
	Okay.
	And so, would you say this is a very constant problem or some constant or occasional?
	I guess it's more than occasional if you're calling it, right?
	Yeah, it's very constant, actually.
	It happens with most everything I do, whether it's something that I generally don't care about, which obviously I think most people would be daydreaming in a situation where they're doing something they don't want to do, but even in things that I really enjoy doing, even in topics that I really enjoy learning about or books that I really enjoy reading, even movies that I enjoy watching, it just happens so often that I start You know, passing time in my head and it just doesn't really feel like I'm absorbing what I should be absorbing because it's something I'm so interested in.
	And I'm not really sure how it originated, but it just seems to be inbuilt into my personality and I'm trying to find ways to control it.
	And do you remember a time when you were younger where this was less the case or not the case or has this been a constant thing for your life?
	It's mostly been constant.
	I think I just haven't noticed it when I was young because I didn't have as many, you know, Difficult, constructive tasks when I was younger.
	You know, I mostly would just play and do homework and go to school and things like that or read books.
	But they weren't Atlas Shrugged or War and Peace or anything.
	They were just, you know, 10-page books or something like that.
	So it wasn't as difficult of a problem.
	But I noticed it a lot more when I got into high school and now that I'm in college.
	You know, it seems to be a lot more apparent when you get older.
	Right, right, no.
	And suddenly, the demands on concentration in college go up.
	Now, in this competition, do you find that you're just wondering, or no?
	Obviously, I don't mind if it is.
	I'm just curious.
	Yeah, a little bit, actually.
	I mean, you know, when I mention great books that I've read, I'm trying to think of instances in which that's happened, and then that starts coming to mind, and then I start getting a little frustrated about that.
	So, yeah, I mean, even here, my mind can just start wandering off a little bit.
	Right, okay.
	Now, you're probably aware that there's something called ADHD. Okay.
	You're completely aware that, of course, I have no capacity whatsoever to tell you anything useful about that.
	I have some significant skepticism about it, but I just want to put that out there.
	Obviously, I'm sure you've done your research and all that.
	I just want to mention that, and I'm not going to talk about that at all.
	I have no confidence in the biological basis of things.
	Philosophy doesn't help that, but you can look into that if you want.
	But I will tell you my thoughts about the issues of concentration and where I think they come from.
	Okay.
	I think that issues of concentration come from solitude.
	And you can confirm this theory or you can deny this theory if your experience was not that.
	So when you were a kid, what was your experience of socializing?
	And by solitude, I don't just mean you're on your own, you're an isolation tank or something.
	I mean, by solitude, I mean that there's not an opportunity...
	Or an environment wherein you can share what is important to you, what your real thoughts are, and where other people can do the same thing.
	So when you were growing up, what were your conversations like with peers, with family, with teachers, with priests, whoever?
	Yeah, I don't know.
	They weren't really that deep, I guess.
	I was generally...
	I mean, I liked being alone, though, when I was a kid.
	It was something that I preferred.
	I haven't really thought about that.
	I guess my answer is I was solitary for the most part, but I was comfortable with that.
	When I was younger, I felt more comfortable on my own or with a small group of friends than with a larger base of friends.
	Well, you just sort of rewrote the question a little bit, which I can understand, right?
	But with a large group of friends, it's very difficult to have any kind of intimate conversation.
	And so if you were saying that you were comfortable on your own with a small group of friends, the small group of friends would have intimate conversations.
	Intimate conversations, sort of be clear what I mean about that.
	It means that...
	How do you have an intimate conversation when you're a young child?
	Is that possible?
	I'm...
	Oh, absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	I mean, look...
	When I was a kid, most conversations were about Pokemon and chocolate milk and stuff.
	Well, sure, but that's because of the relentless tininess and shallowness of our dead skin culture.
	I mean, that's not because children aren't deep.
	Children are incredibly deep.
	Look, my daughter...
	I always talk about my daughter, but, you know, she's the closest experiment that I have going on.
	I mean, I've been teaching her from very early on her feeling words, right?
	Because you either say it or you act it out.
	And so when she's frustrated, she will say, Daddy, I'm very frustrated.
	I'm very upset.
	I'm not happy.
	And we'll talk about that.
	We're starting to get into conversations about where the world came from.
	She's starting to explore the concepts of death.
	And she's three and a half.
	To me, she's incredibly deep.
	And that's where we start.
	We start caring about important things.
	We start as children caring about universalization, right?
	Because if you don't universalize, we don't survive, right?
	I mean, if we think that...
	You know, if we're told that red berries are bad for you, and we think that our...
	If our parent is pointing at one red berry, but the other ones are great, then we're going to die.
	If we think that this height was dangerous for us to jump from last time, but this next height, which is even bigger, is going to be different because gravity is not universal, then we die.
	I mean, we can go on and on, but universalization is life for children.
	If we don't universalize, we die, which is why we have been selected through evolution to be as exquisitely universalization machines as humanly possible, at least until we run into religion, the state, culture, and all of the other lives that we're told.
	But we are universalization machines.
	And that applies to objects, it applies to concepts, it applies to philosophy.
	We are universalization machines.
	The best philosophers are children.
	My daughter is integrating concepts at a rate that I can only dream of, and I'm fairly good at integrating concepts.
	And so, yes, depth is certainly possible.
	To absolutely delight for kids over for a sleepover.
	Hi children!
	It's great having you.
	And yeah, we had a great conversation at dinner about what it means to have a temper and all that.
	I mean it was really enjoyable.
	And so, yeah, it is absolutely, completely and totally possible.
	It's just that we are relentlessly pounded down and shallowed and turned into two-dimensional, status-seeking, look, I can do my goddamn Rubik's Cube faster than you, nonsensical, tiny, mosquito-brained, competitive, empty-headed nothings.
	That is the essence of culture.
	We're told to be small.
	We're forced to be inconsequential.
	You bring up any deep topic as a child for the most part and adults look at you.
	They give you that funny look.
	You know that funny, honey, I shrunk the kids.
	It reminds your brain look.
	Yeah.
	You know that one?
	Yeah, I do.
	Tell me.
	I think I remember it mainly from my teachers growing up.
	I think there might have been this one instance where I really wanted to...
	Do an extra part.
	It was like a school report and I wanted to research it a bit more and I asked my teacher if I could and she looked at me like I was kind of crazy or something for wanting to research the topic more because we were moving on to another subject.
	And I think it was somewhere along those lines that you're talking about.
	Yeah.
	Actually, even in college, I was taking a course in Aristotle.
	I was really trying to understand universals, as Aristotle put it forward.
	I did a voluntary paper and I sat down with my professor and we worked through it and she was like, why are you doing this?
	This is not the bare minimum.
	But of course this comes out in schools that are trained to reduce competition for the ruling classes, right?
	We're taught to be small and other people are taught to be big and this is natural.
	You see, the natural turnover of a free society is that the ruling classes who have developed very expensive tastes and have become quite conservative and frankly quite lazy They face competition from ambitious, hardworking, living on eight bucks a day, poor people who want to grab the gold and who have far less addiction history.
	They have far less embedded social circles.
	They have far lower spending requirements.
	And so naturally, the ruling classes get turned over by the poor.
	And that's exactly how it should be.
	And in a free society, there would be a constant turnover.
	This is how everybody gets wealthier.
	If the ruling classes don't get turned over by the poor, thriving entrepreneurial classes, everybody gets poorer because everything calcifies, it fossilizes, it ossifies.
	The whole point of society is we all get rich, but the rich getting less rich and the poor getting richer.
	But of course, once you get into the ruling class, once you become wealthy and have all your contacts and this and that and the other...
	You don't want to be turned over.
	You don't want to face competition from the striving entrepreneurial poor classes.
	You don't want that.
	You want people like you and that slows down progress.
	It slows down efficiency.
	In other words, in economic terms, the ruling classes become rent seekers.
	In other words, they're seeking to maintain their income above what market forces would dictate and to do that, they require the government, which is why You have no political party on the left.
	You have a bunch of telegenic sociopaths who represent the predatory public sector classes and on the right you have the predatory telegenic sociopaths who represent the economic ruling classes.
	The rent seekers on the rich and the rent seekers on the middle class.
	Neither of them represent anything to do with the general population.
	And so the reason that I'm talking about all of this is you have to stay small So the wages of the rich and the income of the rich can remain officially high.
	And so you are told to worry about your status and your looks and whether you can perform some stupid ass skateboard trick better than your friends.
	You're told to stay small and to judge each other by clothing, to judge each other by prettiness, to judge each other by inconsequential physical skills.
	Just to stay small.
	Because if you stay small, then you don't teach anything to children about how to regrow and how to compete and how to be big and brilliant and bold.
	In other words, how to overturn the ruling classes.
	I mean, I'm just talking economically.
	I'm just economic.
	And this is unfortunate.
	This is the curse of childhood.
	So you stay small.
	I mean, look at children's TV. Children's TV is all about being nice and sharing.
	There's not a damn thing about competition.
	There's not a damn thing about ambition.
	There's not a damn thing about living large, living big, having dreams.
	And there's certainly nothing about economics.
	There's nothing about entrepreneurship and nothing like that.
	Nothing like that.
	It's all this dewy-eyed, CGI fruity crap about sharing and little adventures that always require a big leader to save you and about how bad things happen when you don't obey your adults.
	And I mean this is all just training you to be a foot soldier in the economic army of the overlords, sadly.
	So sorry for the long rant but I just really want to point out this relentless smallness is inevitable.
	Okay.
	Are you saying that I was conditioned to be somebody whose mind would wander easily?
	Is that sort of what you're getting at?
	No, what I'm saying is that you have a mind that wants something bigger, I would argue.
	You have a mind that wants something bigger, something deeper, something more real, something richer, and you weren't allowed to put that into practice.
	Okay.
	You don't agree?
	Which is fine.
	It is your life.
	I'm just putting out some candy-ass theories, but tell me what...
	Right, so, I mean, look, the reason I'm saying this, and let me put a tiny bit of evidence, and then you can tell me if I've got my head completely out my armpit, but you really like philosophy, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, you listen to my mad rambles, so you really like...
	Well, let's just call, for the sake of argument, what I'm doing, something like philosophy.
	So you really have a desire for death.
	You want to call in.
	You want to talk about these issues.
	And this is not part of the culture that we live in, right?
	This wasn't even part of the culture of a philosophy class when I was in college.
	This wasn't even part of big-ass views of history at the master's level at an Ivy League college in Canada.
	So the idea that it would be part of your four-year-old life is kind of incomprehensible.
	I mean, the number of times where I put forward a great argument in college and everybody just looked at me like I'd grown a third penis out of my arm, well, it was too many to count.
	That's why I decided not to go on.
	I couldn't stand being among surgeons who had no interest in healing.
	I'd only had interest in income.
	I couldn't stand being among people who We're supposed to be the saviors of society, the expert thinkers who were going to rescue mankind from its inevitable short-term catastrophes, who had no interest in big-term issues or ethics or anything like that.
	I mean, all they were trying to do was grab a brass ring and get an ear and blaze away their eggs.
	So how did you survive college then?
	Well, I survived college by focusing on developing my own mind, right?
	Just because I'm in a gym where everybody wants to sit around and watch Desperate Housewives rather than work out.
	Doesn't mean that I can't go over to the Dusty Weights and work out, right?
	Okay.
	And through that energy, a few people did end up, I did end up discussing.
	I was very lucky.
	I had a great roommate in college.
	I was so broke, I lived in one room with another guy.
	I mean, that's because I just had no money.
	And we actually ended up, we're still in contact.
	He was a great roommate, and we had great discussions.
	So because I was going and working out, some people were like, hey, I guess we could use those weights, that kind of thing, right?
	So you can do it, right?
	You just have to have a commitment and integrity to the development of your own mind and a refusal to stay small, which is a scary thing, right?
	As the old Japanese proverb goes, It is the tall poppy that gets cut down.
	It is the hammer that sticks up that gets pounded down.
	As soon as you try to live large, you expose yourself to various slings and arrows of outrageous, minuscule attack robots.
	What is the alternative?
	To live small and to lose out on the deep whine of life?
	I mean, no.
	No.
	Sorry.
	Not going to do it.
	One shot at this life.
	One shot at this life.
	I am not going to just wriggle around like a mouse at the feet of ancient jewel-encrusted dinosaurs and give them the right of way and refuse the natural evolution of the intellect of the species.
	I'm not going to do it.
	I refuse to do it.
	Now, living large means allowing for the universalization that is innate to childhood to continue and to expand and to let it stop nowhere.
	However uncomfortable it makes people.
	Sorry.
	Sorry it makes you uncomfortable.
	But you all had 5,000 years or 10,000 years, if you can, of deep thought to sort this shit out.
	You didn't get to it.
	So, sorry.
	We've got to get busy now.
	Okay.
	So if you had the experience of shallowness, but you have a desire for depth, then...
	Is that what leads to my lack of concentration?
	Is that what you're saying?
	I certainly think it's a real possibility.
	So imagine that you are...
	What's your favorite sport?
	I like sports like snowboarding, if that counts.
	Okay, so what's that redheaded snowboard guard?
	Sean White.
	Sean what?
	Sean White.
	Sean White, okay.
	So imagine that...
	And how good are you at snowboarding?
	Not that great.
	Okay, so imagine that Sean White is competing with you in a snowboarding race.
	How hard is he going to have to work?
	Not as hard as I am.
	Well, he's not really going to have to lift a finger, right?
	I mean, this guy has a private helicopter, private mountains, and he goes and practices, you know, eight hours a day, all that kind of crap, right?
	Right.
	And do you imagine that he would be fiercely concentrated on winning, or do you think he'd just be going down, going through the motions, knowing he's going to win, and thinking of other things?
	I think he'd be fiercely concentrated on trying to win.
	With you?
	Uh...
	Well, wouldn't he be applying that in every time he's competing with somebody?
	No, I don't think so.
	I think that competition raises our game.
	And if he simply knows that he's going to win.
	I mean, he just knows he's going to win.
	I mean, unless he's hit by an asteroid, which I'm sure he would not anticipate he's going to win.
	Or imagine that you and I, how good are you at playing tennis?
	No, I haven't played tennis in years.
	Okay, so I'm fairly good at tennis.
	So let's say that you and I were playing tennis.
	And you missed the ball, you swung hard and your racket went flying and you fell over and so on, right?
	Would it be more likely in that situation that I would lose my concentration?
	No, it would be more likely...
	Oh, yeah, I would in that situation because I'm not as good.
	I'm glad you backed that one out because otherwise I'm like, what else are you thinking of if you can answer this question correctly?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so I would be, my mind would be wondering because I'd be waiting for you to go pick up the ball.
	I'd know that it wasn't going to come back and if it did come back, it would be easy to hit and whatever, keep going into the net.
	So it's inevitable that I would lose that concentration.
	Now, if I'm playing someone who is as good at or slightly better than I am or a lot better than I am, then I'm really concentrating.
	Okay.
	Right?
	Because it's a real challenge.
	Right.
	Now, if I was playing Roger Federer, or, you know, someone who's got one of these howitzer serves that would probably just put a whack hole through my chest, I'm actually only concentrating on not getting hit too hard by the ball.
	I'm not really concentrating on trying to win the game, right?
	Right.
	And so, concentration has something to do with a balance, right?
	So, if you were sitting in a kindergarten class learning the days of the week, how much would your concentration be affected badly, or would it be affected negatively?
	You mean if I was sitting in a kindergarten class at my current age?
	Yeah, you're now, and you're sitting in a class learning the days of the week.
	I would be trying my hardest to think of something else.
	Yeah, I mean, you might wonder, right?
	Now, imagine that you were put into a class of advanced Japanese translation.
	Yeah, I don't speak Japanese.
	How would your concentration go?
	I'd have to focus really hard to know what's going on.
	Well, no, you wouldn't know what was going on as you don't speak Japanese, right?
	Oh, right, yeah.
	Yeah, you would have no clue.
	I mean, you couldn't follow what was going on.
	I mean, try sitting down and watching a Korean film with no subtitles and see how long your concentration lasts.
	Okay, I get what you mean, yeah.
	Right, so where things are too easy or where things are impossible, our concentration wanders because we can't do anything in those situations.
	I already know the days of the week and I don't speak Korean.
	Okay.
	Does that make sense?
	Sorry, I hope I'm not sounding impatient.
	I think you're doing fantastic.
	But I'm just trying to give you some circumstances or environments where concentration tends to Right.
	So it's dependent upon your ability on the current subject that you're tackling?
	Well, actually, that's partly true.
	But in the game of tennis, which we were talking about, it depends on two things.
	It depends on your ability and it depends on your tennis partner's ability.
	Okay.
	Did you see what I mean?
	What if you're playing singles, though?
	My tennis partner, do you mean opponent?
	No, I meant opponent.
	Yeah, you're a tennis opponent.
	Okay, yeah.
	Yeah.
	So, yeah.
	So, I mean, if there's a big disparity in skill sets with whoever you're playing with, your concentration is going to wander.
	Okay.
	And so the reason I'm saying this is if you have a desire for depth and truth and connection, intimacy, ethics, deep thought, real thought, big picture stuff, all the good use of life, My concentration is going to be wandering in daily life, essentially.
	Well, it's going to be wandering in daily life if you're surrounded by people who are not only different, but opposed to this train of thought, as if there's any other.
	Right?
	Do you understand?
	Yeah, no, I totally understand.
	And so, certainly, you know, concentration has something to do with willpower, you know, shake your head, and we've all got your taxes, and it's boring or whatever, right?
	And so that's That's all fine.
	But there's a lot that you can do in terms of concentration in choosing your friends.
	If you're in college, obviously there's a lot.
	There's a big pool of friends to choose from and I would really work in college to choose great friends because it really gets hard to make new friends.
	After you graduate from college, unless you happen to go to a place in a work environment where you meet people or whatever.
	But then they leave the job, you leave the job, they might move.
	I think college is a great place to get friends.
	I'd really, really focus.
	If the challenges that you have in terms of concentration have something to do with not having people who are at the appropriate level of challenge, and I assume that it's almost always the case if you're really into philosophy, particularly if you listen to this show, it's almost always going to be the case that people are way behind you.
	So you need to find people who are really interested in philosophy.
	It doesn't mean this show or anything, but really interested in thinking.
	They're eager to.
	And that's hard to find because we're all so relentlessly ground into this fine water goo paste useful for building the bricks of vanity for the upper classes.
	So it's hard to find people who've survived that with anything intact or even the desire intact to pursue these goals.
	But that would be my focus.
	Okay.
	And look, technical challenges, I believe, technical challenges won't do it.
	So let's say that you did want to learn Japanese.
	It's a very difficult thing to do.
	It's a very cool thing to do, I think, but it's very difficult.
	But a high level of difficulty doesn't seem to be enough, in my experience and opinion.
	Finding people you can really connect with will give you, I think, a real rush, a real ability.
	So I think that we learn to train our brains in conversation, not just in isolation, not just in podcast listening or reading books, but in conversation is where we really learn how to train our brains.
	In the same way, if you want to learn how to play tennis, playing against a wall isn't going to do you much.
	It's not going to harm you, and maybe it'll help a little, but it's really not going to do much, right?
	Shadow boxing doesn't do anything about being in the ring with someone, really.
	It just, you know, trains your muscles a little bit.
	If you want to learn how to win judo competition, You know, playing with the cardboard cutout of the Michelin Man is not going to get you very far.
	So I think that we learn to train our brains in conversation with people, not in isolation.
	And isolation and listening to podcasts or reading books is all great.
	It really is.
	But I think the real rubber hit road in conversation.
	Does that make any sense?
	That totally makes sense, Stefan.
	Thank you.
	And how's your concentration been for the chat?
	It's been pretty good, because it is a subject that I've been meaning to ask you this for a long time now.
	I just never got around to getting a headset mic and all that other stuff.
	So in that sense, it's something that I've been anticipating for a while, and so it's something that's easier to concentrate on, because I've been really interested to see what you would say on this subject.
	Right.
	I've been following everything, and it's really interesting.
	Yeah, and you've been doing a great job.
	Let me just give you a real summation, just to make sure we get the major points home.
	So, boredom, isolation, and a desire for bigness when there's only smallness around, I think has a lot to do with needing to self-stimulate when there's not enough external stimulation.
	I think that's important.
	It happens the other way, too.
	So, if you have some friend who's relentlessly shallow, and you get together with a bunch of philosophy geeks, and you all start talking about deep issues, her mind's going to wander, or his mind is going to wander, right?
	Right.
	So it's finding an appropriate level of challenge and insight into your conversations that I think really helps train your brain to concentrate more.
	It's hard to learn how to concentrate in isolation because you're trying to use, in a sense, your brain to fix your brain.
	Trying to use a broken hammer to put a nail on it doesn't work that well, right?
	But in conversation, in conversation with the right people.
	So I just really focus on trying to find people who are interested in any kind of depth.
	They don't have to be that experienced.
	They don't have to listen to whatever or read a whole bunch of books or whatever, but just be interested in it.
	You have to keep shooting out these flares of thought to see who's going to come.
	Because our temptation is to shut down and to go internal with philosophy, right?
	To keep it to ourselves.
	For philosophy to be our brain porn, our slutty mistress we keep tucked away in a Super 8 somewhere, right?
	But we have to.
	Basically, I'm saying, have porn as your screensaver.
	Go to the library.
	No, but I mean, to continue to talk about ideas, to continue to talk about big picture stuff, And you will find people who are interested.
	There are lots of people who are interested.
	I mean, I say this as a guy who, you know, runs his show and blah, blah, blah.
	But keep talking about it.
	Because if they get you to shut down, then they neuter you.
	They win.
	And the future and the children and the world loses.
	Everybody wants you.
	Shut the fuck up and stay small.
	Shut the fuck up.
	We've got snookies on TV. Go watch that Oompa Loompa gift book.
	Stay small.
	Worry about what Mitt Romney said in a goddamn speech.
	Or even worry about the Federal Reserve.
	I mean, it happens in libertarian circles, too.
	Worry about the corruption.
	What's Bernanke going to say this time?
	How much of our money is he going to say this time?
	How come my friends aren't listening to me about the gold standard and so on?
	To me, politics is small.
	Politics is tiny.
	Yeah.
	Philosophy, virtue, right?
	Because people have, like, if you bring, oh, let's talk about the gold standard, and I like talking about the gold standard.
	I think the stuff's very interesting.
	But...
	What you're saying to people is, let's have long conversations that are going to get very heated about something which we simply cannot change.
	And people do a rational calculation, saying, well, no.
	Let's get back to Snooki.
	At least that's not going to be conventional.
	Whereas if you talk to people about virtue, honesty, courage, integrity, living the good life, in their own lives, things that they can actually change in effect, well, you'll get some hatred, you'll get some love, but you'll certainly get interest.
	And so keep talking about it.
	Everybody wants to stuff up the mouths of philosophers with a hemlock of inconsequentiality.
	Don't let them do it.
	Don't let them take your soul.
	Don't let them crush you into nothing.
	Don't let them turn the mighty redwood of your intact into a little bonsai of sheep-based compliance.
	Just don't do it.
	Understood, Stefan.
	So that's my thoughts, and I hope that they're helpful.
	Oh, that was very helpful.
	Thank you so much.
	You're very welcome.
	Have a good day.
	All right.
	Thank you.
	And yeah, drop me a line if you get a chance and let me know how it goes.
	Okay, I will.
	This won't be my last time I'm calling you.
	Oh, yeah.
	Listen, you'll welcome any time.
	Great questions and great thoughts.
	Thanks, Stefan.
	All right.
	All right.
	Next up, Steph meets Steph.
	Well, good morning, Steph.
	It's truly a pleasure.
	You are, in fact, F with an F, like a truly authentic, fresh-minted, fruity, Poland-based name.
	Two Fs as opposed to one, I suppose.
	Two Fs?
	Oh, my God.
	I feel I have F envy.
	F envy, yes, yes.
	Assuming I can keep my mind from wandering, a couple of things that I'd like to talk about.
	One of those is the institution of marriage.
	And if you happen to hear a loud thud and the line goes quiet, it's probably because my wife hit me in the back of the head of a rolling pin or something of that nature.
	I've been married for 16 years and we have two kids and I can remember prior to getting married wondering to myself, and this was before I had rather More extreme anarchist thoughts, I suppose, or anti-statist thoughts.
	What business was it of either the church or the government to bless our relationship and somehow make it official?
	That never particularly sat well with me.
	That being said, I certainly understand how incredibly important it is that there are two parents Involved in raising children and the tremendous value associated with that, but was always uncomfortable with, you know, the state or the church having control over your relationship.
	And so I guess...
	I'm wondering, what are your thoughts on that in terms of the value there and what the state does in terms of making it incredibly difficult for people to divorce and what might a hypothetical free society look like in terms of establishing long-term relationships maybe with a DRO or something of that nature?
	Great questions.
	Well, I agree with you that the church gets heavily involved, or religion gets heavily involved in marriages.
	But I don't know that the state does.
	I mean, they'll give you a piece of paper, but they don't check up on you, really.
	I mean, so I don't think the state does particularly get involved in marriage, but certainly the church does.
	Now, the state gets involved in your children's lives far more egregiously than the church does.
	I mean, the church, you know, Sunday school, once a week maybe, but the state gets them for...
	You know, six hours a day plus an hour of homework, plus, plus, plus, right?
	So, the church does not interfere with your children nearly as much as the state does, but the state doesn't interfere with your marriage nearly as much as the church does.
	So, I'll point that out.
	Now, the reason for this is simple, and I'm sure everyone knows it.
	I'll just mention it briefly.
	But, you see, children are crops.
	Children are, you know, like, why does a cattle farmer want his cows to breed?
	Well, so he will have more cows, which give him more meat, more milk, things he can sell, and all that kind of stuff.
	Why does a farmer want to water his corn?
	Because he wants more corn so that he can sell it to the government for ethanol rather than feeding hungry people.
	And so the children are, to these institutions, they are crops.
	They're crops.
	I mean, it's very clear.
	If you look at, I mean, it's not even propaganda.
	It's just the way that, you know, children are talked about.
	I mean, they are, it's very clear.
	The governments talk about it very openly.
	You know, we need to increase the birth rate because we have an aging population.
	They're very clear about it.
	They're just crops.
	And it's not because they care about the aging population.
	It's because they need money to give to the aging population to buy their votes.
	And if there aren't new children coming along, then the farmer is running out of cows.
	Is it because he cares about the cows?
	No, it's because he wants his income.
	He wants his money.
	He wants to keep his...
	And so...
	And this is why you have this horrifying paradox, really, of...
	A lot of Christians and other religious groups being very much against abortion, but not being against war.
	Well, surely an actual human life is at least as important, if not more important, than a blastocyst.
	But the difference, of course, is that war creates unity on the home front.
	That kind of loss and panic and fear has people running to gods.
	And more importantly, of course, the blastocyst is Christian, whereas the victim of the war is often foreign.
	You're planting a whole bunch of human beings in rows.
	And you're growing them up to serve the state, to provide money for the state, to serve religion, to provide money for the priests.
	I mean, they're just crops.
	They're not individuals.
	I mean, that's very clear because nobody ever asks children what they want.
	They just, you know, stuff them in church, stuff them in school and fill them with all kinds of propaganda.
	I have to wonder if part of the reason behind the state getting involved in marriage isn't perhaps that there is a financial incentive there to try to ensure that there's two parents around because if there's just one, the chances are much more likely that you're going to end up with somebody that's going to be on more entitlements.
	Well, that's not bad.
	I mean, the government has no interest in two-parent families.
	In fact, I would argue that the government has every interest in at least some significant cohort of one-parent families.
	The reason for that is, remember, governments don't care about what happens to the kid in 20 years.
	They don't.
	Obviously, if governments care long-term, there'd be no such thing as a national debt.
	But what governments want is they want kind of two things, right?
	So what they want is they want more people in the workforce and fewer people at home.
	Because when they're in the workforce, they're taxable, and when they're taking care of their children, they're not taxable.
	That's true.
	They're lying fallow, so to speak.
	And you could say, well, yes, but this is sort of Phyllis Schlafly's argument, is to say, well, yeah, but the parents who stay home, they raise children, and those children become more productive citizens.
	You know, on average, than the kids of single moms.
	But, you know, politicians don't care about that.
	Oh, in 15 years, you'll have slightly, you know, better children.
	They don't care.
	So they want, for two reasons, they want the women to go into the workforce because that's taxable, and they also want the people who now take care of the children to be taxable.
	You get two for one.
	You get two workers taxable for every woman who leaves the home to go to work, right?
	So whoever's taking care of her kids, now sometimes it's grandparents or whatever, but for the most part.
	I think two-thirds of toddlers are in preschool in the US. For the most part, it's paid people.
	The unions are happy because the government gets their hands on them sooner and so on.
	The state has almost no interest in sustaining or maintaining families.
	And we have really for the last 40 years been engaged in a radical experiment.
	A communist experiment, basically.
	The Communist Manifesto was very clear on State education of children and a substitute of the state for the family.
	And that has, to a large degree, been accomplished.
	Certainly in Europe, it's almost completely been accomplished.
	And in America, with the admirable holdouts of Christians and some secularists, it has been affected.
	And in particular communities, it's almost complete.
	Three quarters of black kids growing up without a dad and so on.
	Instead of a dad, they have the state.
	And so that's sort of the one benefit that you get everyone taxable, which gives media benefits.
	They get to hand out all of this money, they get to control kids.
	The secondary benefit is that when those kids grow up, they're more likely to become criminals, and therefore people need the state to protect them from the criminals that state policies have produced.
	So, that would be a correction that I would put forward, but I'm certainly happy to hear arguments from the contrary.
	No, no, I agree.
	Sorry, there was one other thing you mentioned, I'll just touch on briefly.
	Why is it so difficult for people to get divorced?
	Well, the reason it's so difficult for people to get divorced is that lawyers run laws.
	I think it was Neil, I can't remember his last name, the science guy, who was basically saying, everyone in Congress is a lawyer.
	Where are The scientists, where are the entrepreneurs?
	Where are they all got legal training?
	Well, yeah, of course.
	I mean, this is a horrible monopoly on law.
	Legal bills in Canada are crazy.
	400 bucks an hour.
	I mean, because they have a monopoly and they limit the entrance and they're all rent seekers.
	And so the reason why divorce is so hard is because lawyers write the laws and lawyers like to write laws that make a lot of lawyers.
	And then they like to restrict entrances.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	What do you think about the argument that that is a significant deterrent for divorce?
	What do you think about the argument that that is a significant deterrent to divorce?
	The cost associated with it and that sort of thing.
	Well, it obviously is some kind of deterrent, but it's clearly not enough of a deterrent because 50% of marriages end in divorce.
	It's not enough of a deterrent.
	I would just imagine that In an argument that people might make against a free society, they might say that, you know, well, if there's no state to bless the relationship and bind two people together, that, you know, the likelihood of two parents actually sticking around would be significantly less.
	Well, I mean, but to me, it's a big-picture question.
	It's a great question.
	And I'll just share my thoughts so you can tell me where you think they're landing close, Mark, or not.
	But the only way to lower divorce, the only way to lower the breakup of families, is for people to be less insane.
	See, incentives only work on people who are sane.
	And when people are crazy, incentives don't really work.
	That's sort of the definition of crazy, is you don't rationally process incentives.
	And so, for instance...
	Yeah.
	Gun laws don't stop criminals, that sort of thing.
	Yeah.
	If I... Well, and the death penalty does not lower the incidence of...
	Of murder, so the states which have a death penalty have the same, if not higher, murder rates than the states which don't.
	Because once you're contemplating killing someone, you're kind of crazy.
	And so crazy people don't process consequences, which is why it's all about prevention, not cure, which is why we need a free society, not a state.
	So state of societies are all about punishment, and free societies are all about prevention.
	But how do you lower the rate of divorce?
	Well, it's very simple.
	So imagine I was running a school for surgeons.
	A school for surgeons.
	And...
	I trained surgeons for 8 hours a day, 7 hours a day, for 12 years.
	And then when they came out, half of their patients died.
	Would you consider that a good school?
	No.
	No.
	That would be a terrible school.
	That would be an absolutely terrible school.
	And so the entire personalities, thought processes, ethics, community, communication skills, all of these are being trained by the state.
	For 12 years, for 7 to 8 or more hours a day.
	And so we sort of, not we, but society as a whole, they just take government school out of the equation all the time.
	So all the people, almost all the people who are getting divorced went through government schools.
	So why are they getting divorced?
	Well...
	They're getting divorced because they've not learned how to communicate.
	Why have they not learned how to communicate?
	Because government schools are all about shut up, sit down, take notes.
	There's no negotiation.
	There's no back and forth.
	There's none of that, right?
	And the same thing is to some degree true of religious institutions as well, right?
	Sit down, shut up, take notes.
	Plus, you go to hell, right?
	So there's not a lot of negotiation in school.
	I mean, I don't remember any negotiation in school to speak of.
	And so, you know, they're not taught how to negotiate.
	And so then when they get into marriages, they're also not taught values.
	Public schools have to be pro-state, relentlessly neutral on philosophical values because you teach any philosophical value, you're just going to piss off some portion of parents who are going to storm and make your life difficult and so on, right?
	So they're relentlessly value neutral, but they teach obedience to authority.
	But the problem in marriage is that there is no authority.
	There's no state.
	There's no priest.
	There's no god.
	You have to adjudicate your own disputes.
	You have to learn how to negotiate horizontally by hierarchical institutions, just train kids to stare out the window, to make indifferent notes, to cram their brains full of knowledge, spit it out, and move on.
	Teach you how to negotiate horizontally.
	So basically, in summary, if I understand what you're saying, if we didn't have the state to forcibly indoctrinate and propagandize to people and make their behavior rather dysfunctional, if that wasn't there, then they'd be much more equipped to establish healthy relationships and actually maintain them irrespective of the institution of marriage.
	Well, yeah, and then that would work in their businesses about negotiation and so on.
	So, I mean, for instance, what is more important to the average person's happiness in life?
	A successful marriage or a knowledge of vector calculus?
	Yeah, relationships, I think, are always more important.
	Of course, relationships, yeah, absolutely.
	But you will spend a lot of time in school Learning all the lines of history, learning geometry, learning calculus, functions and relations, algebra, and so on.
	And these things are fine.
	You know, this is not a haydon for math or whatever, or science.
	But the majority of people...
	Don't become mathematicians.
	They don't become scientists.
	They don't become historians.
	And yet, we are pumped for thousands of hours of instruction in these things.
	And frankly, if you've got any brains whatsoever, 90% of the math you need to do in life, you can kind of figure out on the fly.
	If you have a calculator or a smartphone, or even if you don't, you can figure it out on the fly.
	And so you don't need all that.
	But what would help is there are very well-established ways to ensure that your marriage has the greatest chance possible.
	You know, and I've done a whole show on this, so I don't sort of get, you know, shared values and knowing how to negotiate and all that kind of stuff.
	And so you could teach people, you know, what I'd say is shave off 10% of math studies, right?
	Or geometry, or history studies.
	History, for God's sake, throw all that shit out, because that's worse than, at least math is, you know, some logic in history.
	It's all nonsense, right?
	So just shave 10% off that.
	You know, just toss 500 hours at how to have a good marriage, how to have a good relationship.
	But, of course, there's a reason why they don't do that, right?
	Yeah.
	What's that reason?
	I mean, In the moment, not, well, because the government needs bad marriages and so forth.
	Well, I don't know that there's necessarily a motivation from the government perspective.
	They just want indoctrinated cheap.
	Well, yes, but I would say, imagine this, right?
	So imagine that I'm a public school teacher.
	Imagine that I'm a public school teacher, and I go and talk about A good marriage is one where you don't yell at each other.
	A good marriage is one where you don't call each other names.
	A good marriage is where you enjoy spending time with each other.
	A good marriage, a good marriage, a good marriage, right?
	Well, that's not the nature of the relationship between the citizen and the state, though.
	Well, no, but forget that.
	What happens when the 10-year-old kid goes home and sees his parents yelling at each other?
	Oh, yeah.
	What's he going to say?
	Well, he's going to say that that's not right.
	That obviously is not a good relationship when my parents are screaming at each other.
	Yeah.
	So my teacher's staff says that you guys have a terrible marriage.
	Then what happens?
	Well, then the parents march into school and start yelling at the teacher.
	Yeah, of course.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	That's why you can't have any standards or any balance.
	So until we raise people to be even remotely rational about relationships, until we expose children to the language called negotiations.
	Everyone thinks that language is like words.
	Language is only partly words, and it's a very small part of language that is words.
	There's a language called peace, there's a language called negotiation, there's a language called honesty.
	All of these things are the form of words or the process of words, not just words in a row.
	And the grammar of peaceful interactions is something that is not taught among children of forced school.
	They're simply punished.
	They're not taught how to negotiate, and negotiation is actually...
	Of course, because they can't negotiate, their peer relationships become based upon aggression and status and all that kind of primitribal chimpanzee crap.
	Anyway, I just want to point that out.
	In a free society, you'd be taught all this stuff, and people would be sane to begin with, and people would have rational values to begin with, and so the incidents of divorce would go away now.
	And if I may kind of use that as a segue into something else I wanted to talk about with regard to language.
	We have a bunch of other callers, so let's keep this quick if you can.
	Well, yeah, I do want to make this really quick, and it's really – I've been kind of experiencing a bit of frustration with regard to examining the different types of isms in anarchism.
	We're still there?
	Oh, yep, there.
	Sorry.
	My sound seemed like it went away there for a second.
	We've got voluntarists, mutualists, anarcho-capitalists, agorists, left and right libertarianism.
	And whenever I start trying to have an interaction with somebody who claims to be of a particular proclivity as far as an anarchist is concerned… I get the impression that a very small percentage of those actually have kind of a unified definition of what it means to be a particular label.
	And the same also seems to be true of capitalism.
	There's different groups that will define capitalism in completely different ways.
	And I have to start wondering, is there any value in even trying to create these labels?
	And, you know, even the words anarchism and capitalism, both for a lot of people have really bad connotations.
	I mean, here locally in Tampa with the local convention...
	Oh, you were at the Belly of the Beast, were you?
	Well, I live in Tampa.
	Yeah, I tried to stay away from that area, but if you watch the – How many practicing lesbians were there that Pat Robertson identified in the Republican caucus?
	Because I'd pay to see that movie.
	Anyway.
	I have no idea, but watching the local news, it was like they were absolutely terrified of the anarchists showing up and demonstrating because they were going to be incredibly violent and damaging all kinds of personal property.
	And I'm scratching my head thinking, where do they get this from?
	I suppose maybe the anarcho-communists of the early part of the last century were pretty involved in violence.
	But there seems to be so many different flavors of anti-statism, which seems to be the broader categorization of anarchism.
	But then you've got people saying, well, capitalism is good, and others are saying, well, capitalism is bad.
	And they make the distinction between that and entrepreneurs.
	What are your thoughts on kind of all that labeling?
	I mean look, I get told all the time that I'm not a real anarchist, which I would agree with.
	I'm actually a human being.
	Anarchy is – there's no such thing as being a real anarchist.
	That's like a concept walking around.
	It doesn't happen.
	But the reason we care about what other people believe is because we have a state.
	And I would love to live in a world where I don't particularly care what my neighbors think.
	And let's say that my neighbors are involved in a charitable organization that I think is not particularly great.
	You know, maybe it's France behavior that is changing people's cost-benefit calculations to have more kids or whatever.
	I don't know, right?
	If they're trying to impose this on me using the state, then I care.
	If they're just doing their thing, I may talk to them about it, I may not, but it doesn't have the same level of urgency to me.
	Because they are, right?
	So we have this state which allows us to violently impose our beliefs on other people.
	And because of that, we really care about what other people think.
	And it becomes incredibly important for us to convince other people.
	But if you don't have a state and you can't violently and universally impose your beliefs on people, I think there's a whole lot more of live and let live.
	And also because of the state, people escape the consequences of their own actions and their own beliefs.
	So I believe, you know, there's this philosophy of parenting, a non-interventionist philosophy of parenting, which I'm sort of exploring, which is to say...
	If your kid hits another kid, you don't sort of run over and negotiate, but basically you just let the other kid not want to play with your kid and they experience the consequences, and then they're like, okay, well, if I hit a kid, he won't want to play with me, and therefore, right?
	Personally, I think that's still too far, but it's a very interesting idea.
	What are the consequences of behavior?
	Now, of course, if you have the state, then you have the capacity to escape the consequences of your own behavior.
	If I want to go start a war and a free society, I'm going to be ostracized.
	I'm not going to have access to weaponry.
	I'm going to be like a crazy guy.
	No one's going to want to have anything to do with me, so I'm going to experience negative consequences.
	In a state of society, you get statues and you get to have your grinning idiot head on a stamp.
	So you don't – you escape the consequences of your actions.
	If I want to spend all my money now and not stay for my old age, I'm going to have a pretty impoverished old age.
	But in the state, you can get the consequences of these actions.
	So because the state is there, we're all scared of what everyone else believes because they're going to impose it on us.
	And also, we are – the natural consequences of bad decisions and irrational thoughts do not accrue to the individuals.
	Right?
	As Brian Kaplan says in The Myth of the Rational Voter, what are the negative consequences of holding irrational political beliefs?
	Well, probably FDR, virtually not.
	So anyway, I just want to point that out.
	We only have these labels because there is a state.
	If there was no state, you know, things will get more rational over time because the rational stuff that isn't subsidized tends to change fairly quickly.
	And to some extent, they kind of seem like a useful tool to be able to find other people in the general community that have similar sets of principles.
	What do you mean?
	Well, like if I want to find other people that have the same moral basis that I do, and I could establish that, okay, the closest thing to what I believe is anarcho-capitalism… Then just the label itself,
	finding other people that make the claim that they're anarcho-capitalists, could be helpful and kind of establishing up front that, hey, we have very similar sets of beliefs and moral basis, so there's a good chance we'll get along really well.
	Yeah, and that certainly is helpful for sure.
	But I want to point out that the state has completely retarded the natural evolution.
	I mean, ethics and philosophy should be advancing faster than science, physics, medicine, biology, and so on.
	But instead, it has been stuck.
	And the reason it's stuck is because the state shields people from consequences.
	You know, it's like the same way that the state supports zombie companies, just keeps them alive with endless bailouts and subsidies and so on.
	The state supports bad ideologies by continually subsidizing it and preventing all of the alternatives from coming into being.
	And this is why we have this weird paradox that, you know, technology, science, medicine, they shoot forward like rocket sleds and ethics just are completely stuck because ethics remains.
	A government program.
	All right.
	Well, thank you very much.
	Let's move on to the next caller.
	I really appreciate it.
	Great questions.
	Next up, we have Matthew.
	Hello, Matthew.
	Hello.
	Can you hear me?
	Yes, go ahead.
	Okay.
	Yeah, my question today is...
	I remember in a podcast a while back, or I think it might have been a talk you gave, like you...
	We talked about fucking up evil people in a polite way, I guess.
	But I was curious if you had any...
	I can go into more details, but I'm curious if you made any advancements in that realm.
	So did you say fucking up evil people?
	Yes.
	I'm not sure.
	You may need to flesh that quote out a little bit.
	I think it might have been...
	I remember it was from the against me argument, but just a desire at some point to find a way to fuck up evil people and not a fucking up way.
	I guess I could explain more.
	I have someone in my family that I've sexually abused someone, and I'm trying to figure out how to deal with that.
	I've contacted police, and maybe this is way too much to be talking about on an internet show, but I'm just curious on the thoughts.
	Working with law enforcement seems difficult at times.
	I imagine that it is.
	I think that may be a little bit more than I want to sort of bite off on a Sunday morning.
	Maybe we could have another chat about it privately.
	And that probably wasn't exactly what I was talking about with the against me argument.
	I mean, the against me argument, which I still fully stand by and deploy, is, for those who don't know, it's basically saying that people who support the state support the use of violence against youths agreeing with them on issues where they feel the state is involved.
	I don't know exactly how that would work in this kind of egregious and immoral situation, so I think I'll have to maybe postpone this.
	Maybe I'll think on it some more.
	Maybe we can talk again.
	You can shoot me an email, but I think I'll have to skip that one for today, if that's all right.
	I really do.
	I'm very sorry that this has come into your life.
	I mean, what a desperately terrible, terrible situation.
	And what a desperately common situation.
	It really is just astounding how often this happens.
	And, you know, I was reading statistics as the average pedophile goes through hundreds and hundreds of victims before he, usually he or she, is caught.
	And you look at the Sandusky trial and the amount of sexual predation in public schools from teachers and the amount of sexual predation, which is far less, in the church from a particular percent of the degree to which it's covered up.
	Yeah, sometimes I succumb to the rather dark thought that society is all organized around the rape of children and everything else is just kind of a detail.
	And I just wonder about that sometimes.
	Yeah, I'm sorry for bringing up something that might be too much for this.
	No, no, don't apologize.
	Look, I mean, I appreciate you talking about it.
	It's a very big...
	It's a powerful topic.
	I'm always concerned because I just would not want you to go into public with a level of detail that you may be uncomfortable with at some point or other people may.
	Maybe we can talk about it privately.
	You can shoot an email if you have more thoughts.
	I think I'll move on now if that's alright with you.
	That's great.
	Up next we have Antony.
	Who works in a grocery store.
	He's saving his pennies.
	I always think of that song as well.
	Well, because I was working in a grocery store when I first heard it.
	Oh, were you really?
	Oh, that's funny.
	Yeah.
	At the bottom of my street.
	It was kind of really ironic in a way.
	And I was actually saving to move out of my parents' house as well.
	Oh, he's saving his buddies for some day.
	Yeah, it's so weird.
	I'm quite a big fan of Billy Joel.
	He's white bread, but he's good white bread.
	And what a fantastic singer.
	He's one of the few guys whose voice, I believe, has actually improved with age.
	I heard him the other day on YouTube, from a concert from a year or two ago, doing his song Honesty, and it's like, oh my god, he had a great voice when he was younger, but holy crap, did he have an incredible voice now, which is unusual.
	Freddie Mercury, towards the end of his career, just pushed himself more and more in the vocals.
	He got really kind of rough and changed his style.
	Oh, yeah.
	Well, he took a spray paint to his Mona Lisa by being a very heavy smoker, which, obviously, I have no big fan of state power, but in terms of making it illegal for Freddie Mercury to have smoked, because I like his voice so much, that is with one exception.
	You know, everybody has one exception that they would make, and that would be my exception.
	Did you not like the vocals in the late stuff?
	Well, it wasn't so much I didn't like the vocals in the late stuff.
	I just thought that the songwriting had lost some of its imagination.
	One of the things I love about Queen is their virtuosity in a wide variety of musical forms.
	They did rockabilly, they did jazz, they did folk ballad, they did epic rock, they did ballads.
	That you could name.
	They did Ragtime.
	I mean, it's crazy, crazy variety when they were younger.
	And I just sort of felt that when the songs...
	One of the challenges, you know, I try to learn as much as I can from Queen, and I think one of the challenges is the degree to which you're willing to push yourself to remain creative and to not rest on your laurels.
	And I think that they could have...
	Definitely.
	We're facing a lot of challenges when they get older, but if you look at things like News of the World or Day of the Races or Night of the Opera and compare it with Innuendo or Made in Heaven, it's not the same thing.
	I love the singles off Innuendo, but not the album tracks.
	My favorite are the first five albums as well.
	Well, the first one Sorry, we're talking… No, no, wait.
	I mean, look, okay.
	So, if the greatest front man, and I would argue one of the greatest singers of the 20th century, comes forward and says, okay, guys, I've got a song.
	It's about my cat.
	And one of the lines is, I get kind of annoyed when you pee all over my Chippendale furniture.
	I just, I'm just not sure that that would be necessarily number one.
	But, you know, I mean, obviously the guy, you know, had AIDS at the time and he was not having a good years of days.
	I don't remember that particular song.
	Oh, it's called Delilah.
	It's the song that Freddie wrote about his cat.
	And you make me pretty mad when you pee all over my Chippendale suite.
	Delilah.
	I mean, it's a fun song.
	My daughter quite likes it.
	And the vocals, of course, are impeccable.
	Playing Twinkle Twinkle on a Stradivarius doesn't make the song a whole lot better.
	I'm glad I didn't listen to that album too much in that case.
	First of all, it's a real pleasure to speak to you.
	I've been listening to your stuff for a few years now.
	It's been a real help along.
	So thanks very much for that.
	I live in Glasgow in Scotland.
	You visited there once, you said, I'm sure.
	I did.
	I actually took entrance exams to go to school in Scotland and also visited Bree is a town on the...
	I'm trying to remember.
	I was like six or something.
	But Bree is a town on the coast.
	Yeah, we were going to move to Scotland.
	Then at some point we ended up moving to Canada.
	And so, yeah, we were looking at the surrounding colonies.
	Anyway, so go on.
	Yeah, so in Scotland, well, in Glasgow, I mean...
	The political ideology is pretty left-wing.
	And there's a kind of prevailing mentality, which is, you know, if you're a socialist, you're a good guy.
	You care about people, and you're involved, and you care about the state of the world.
	And if you're a conservative, you're evil.
	And there's no libertarian tradition at all.
	Well, I'm not counting Adam Smith, who did come from your fair...
	That is true.
	That's a good point.
	And he's also seen as a great liberal as well, though, because I think, well, his idea of the free market seemed to have been different from What is considered to be the free market today, I think that Oh, I had...
	No, let me not distract you with the discussion on Adam Smith.
	But yeah, he's quoted lovingly by Noam Chomsky, so he obviously wasn't...
	Yeah, I was thinking about the Noam Chomsky quote.
	That's right.
	Oh, yes, I would like to give the free market of Adam Smith a try, if you could have such a thing.
	Yeah, I heard that too.
	Sorry.
	But yeah, basically, I was thinking about the kind of responses that...
	You might get from the kind of people I knew at uni, and they might say something like, well, you know, Stefan, you were an entrepreneur, so you have a very skewed view of the free market.
	What the free market's like for most people is like working in a call center or a factory.
	It's boring and soul-destroying.
	And, you know, society doesn't have to be organized in a way where people have to do boring and soul-destroying work.
	It could be a great big community love fest of joys and daisies and roses and skipping through the park.
	Well, I agree with a lot of that.
	But, of course, I wasn't born an entrepreneur, right?
	Yeah.
	I had endless rounds of terrible jobs that I won't list off here.
	So I definitely saw that side for sure.
	It made me a better boss.
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, well, that makes sense.
	And again, I wouldn't say that it was being levelled as a personal criticism of you.
	It would be an argument for some society that wasn't arranged around the principles of the free market.
	No, sorry, but let me just respond.
	Because people...
	People say this, right, a lot, and obviously not just to me, but to lots of people, they say, well, Steph, you have these beliefs because...
	Right.
	Right, which is, you know, it's amateur psychologizing, and actually, it gets to avoid the actual facts of the matter.
	Yeah, it's not an argument.
	No, no, people say, well, Steph, you are anti-family because you had a bad childhood.
	Well, yes, I had a bad childhood, but there's still arguments about volunteerism within the family that need to be addressed.
	Now, if my arguments are proven false, and I still cling to them, then I think if anyone had the interest, they could figure out why from a psychological standpoint.
	But you don't start off, and not you, but one doesn't start off by saying, well, Steph, you believe in the free market because you were an entrepreneur.
	It's like, well, how on earth would you prove that, and what does that have to do with my arguments?
	That is true.
	Now, sorry, the second thing I would say to that person is, so would you say that the majority of young people have pretty bad jobs?
	The majority of young people have pretty bad jobs?
	Just pretend to be your friend.
	Well, I mean, what do you mean by young people?
	Do you mean of university kind of age or younger still?
	Well, when they finish their education, whether that's high school or uni or whatever, they mostly don't have great jobs, right?
	No, no.
	Right.
	So let's just say somebody graduates from high school and they get a job in a call center, right?
	Right.
	And you consider that to be the fault of the free market or somewhat responsible for the free market?
	They would say that it has something to do with it, right?
	But my argument would be, well, how on earth can you blame the free market for the fact that after 12 years of government school, they have so few skills that they're only valuable at four quid an hour in a call market?
	Yeah, I agree.
	I mean, the government has had them for 12 years!
	I mean, if the government had taught these people to be surgeons, they wouldn't be working in a call center.
	If the government had taught these people how to raise capital, how to fund a business, how to grow a business, how to market, they wouldn't be working in a call center.
	If the government had taught them anything of any economic value, I mean, you're taught how to write and to do arithmetic.
	And that takes about a year.
	And the rest of it is 11 years of brain-switching propagandistic bullshit that has you come out of 12 years of education with the ability to answer a fucking phone.
	So don't blame the free market when the government has complete control in your socialist paradise over the education, the infusion of economic value into these children and these young adults.
	Then these young adults come right out of your socialist paradise and are so useless to employers that they're only going to make a couple of quid an hour answering telephones and reading call prompts, which frankly they probably could have done in grade four or grade three.
	So it's your socialist paradise, it's your communist paradise that is produced.
	These economically flaccid non-entities who are worth nothing in the free market.
	Don't blame the free market for putting an accurate price on the crap that your socialist system produces.
	Yeah.
	My criticism is the...
	Sorry, you're breaking up just a bit.
	It's a way...
	Sorry, can you hear me better?
	Yeah, go ahead.
	They have, um, the educationists put the two together.
	I volunteered in America for a while earlier this year and I was hoping that it would have got better.
	In some ways it is, but I have to say, do what you're told when you're told, and any education is just a bonus on top of that lesson.
	I mean, I tried to get an influence and I was.
	It's very difficult with me because I actually had them with a lot of space.
	They got it.
	Yeah, no, but see, but the socialists will always say we haven't had enough time and we don't have enough money.
	That's what the socialists will always say about their programs.
	We haven't had enough time, or we don't have enough money, or there are There are reactive elements in the system that is causing it to fail, right?
	The capitalists are sabotaging the Russian harvest or whatever.
	And I mean, you can make that case with vague credibility about lots of things, but you can't make that about public school.
	I mean, governments have had hundreds of years to get public school, right?
	They have more money now than was ever dreamt of, even remotely dreamt of.
	When public schools were founded.
	So they have way more money than they ever thought and they've had 150 years plus to get it right.
	So the idea that more time and more money is going to solve things is just bullshit.
	Their argument would be that the education system set up that way to serve the capitalists.
	Well then why isn't it serving the capitalists?
	Why isn't it producing people with more value?
	You see, capitalists want to pay you more.
	They want to pay you more.
	And the reason they want to pay you more is that they can charge more for you.
	So would you rather have the income of a mail clerk or the income of a lawyer?
	Would you rather sell the services of somebody who would mow a lawn, or would you rather sell the services of somebody who could do root canals?
	Right?
	So to be able to...
	The capitalists want to sell your labor.
	The more valuable your labor is, the more they can sell it for.
	So capitalists want you to be as economically productive as possible because it's profitable for them.
	It's more profitable for them.
	So there's no way that it serves the capitalists.
	I sort of made the argument earlier in the show that it serves the capitalists who don't want competition and blah, blah, blah.
	And the other thing I would ask, so it doesn't work economically or logically.
	But also, I would also ask, if it serves the needs of the capitalists, then why is it that the people with the most power in the educational system are the public sector unions?
	Those are not capitalists, right?
	They are a socialist construct within a socialist system funded by forced taxation.
	So if it is the agenda of the capitalists that is running the public school system, why are all of the decisions made By the public sector unions and politicians and school boards, which are not capitalists.
	I mean, this is how you know somebody's just propagandizing.
	They're just saying whatever they can say to rescue a corrupt and failed ideology because it only takes a moment of thought.
	Oh, where is this great puppet master that gets to control everything?
	Well...
	It's the unions and the school boards and the politicians, but it certainly isn't, you know, it isn't the capitalists.
	In fact, a lot of the capitalists, yeah, they're quite against the public school system.
	I mean, Bill Gates has been working for years to try and improve things in the public school system because he's so frustrated because, you know, Microsoft has to go overseas to get remotely competent engineers, and it's a very big overhead expense for them.
	them.
	They would love homegrown talent.
	They would love, you know, why the call centers go to India?
	They would love to have people that they didn't have to train in colloquialisms and pretend they had a different name.
	They would love local people that wouldn't have to sponsor and do all the paperwork to have them come over.
	So the capitalists are not happy with the state of education because they want employees and they just can't find them.
	I think it's a good opportunity to make an argument and to change during and because FM I'm so sorry.
	I think we're going to have to move on to another caller.
	You're breaking up really bad.
	I can't do you at all.
	I'm really sorry.
	Thanks very much for taking me.
	Yeah, let's try it again.
	I know we're not finished, so let's try it again.
	It's a great topic, but I just don't want to have to end up spending all night editing.
	All right, if we can move on to the next call.
	Okay, up next we have Dan.
	Hey, what's up, Steph?
	As Norm says in Cheers, my nipples, it's pretty cold outside.
	Anyway, come on.
	Yeah, I just had to rush down the stairs.
	I had to go clean up something real quick.
	I heard my name, I'm like, no, run!
	No!
	It's good to meet you.
	It's my first time doing this.
	Kind of a static right at the moment.
	No problem.
	Good to meet you, Tim.
	What's on your mind?
	How do you feel about direct action?
	You know, the Gaza Strip incident with the flotilla, the Israeli commandos attacking it?
	How do you feel?
	Oh, I saw a little bit about that.
	Can you explain it more?
	I don't know the details.
	I believe it was a human rights mission to go help the people of Graza, because there's like 40,000 children and about 20,000 to 30,000 other people, like the adults.
	And they were basically closed off and they couldn't sell their crops or anything.
	So they were trying to get supplies there, like cement and other construction equipment to help them out there.
	And to try to open up a trade supply from Aloha Graza, I believe it was.
	The Israeli commandos, they attacked the flotilla around like 2.30 in the morning.
	And they basically took over the ship.
	Nine people were killed.
	And the three commandos were captured by the people on the ship, but they let them go.
	Let's see what else...
	I just watched it last week, and they basically tortured some of the ship people, and basically shipped them back to Turkey, because that's where they left and departed from.
	They had like six ships.
	Actually, they had originally nine, but they had to go with six.
	Let's see.
	Sorry, the flotilla left from Turkey, but it was full of Palestinians, is that right?
	I think so.
	It might have been.
	It was a mix.
	Because they did a black market thing, they didn't really do it out in the open.
	I guess they might have heard it from the inside.
	They broke it up from the inside.
	Right.
	Alright.
	And what's your question?
	What's my question?
	You said, what do I think of direct action?
	I'm not sure what that means.
	How do you feel about helping people out in direct action, like helping people, being the first in line to go help someone, like a missionary mission, like going to Africa to go help the sick or something like that, but there's no government intervention, they won't allow you, so you have to do it yourself, like through private means, but they didn't let them pass.
	Basically, so Israelis told them to turn back, but they didn't.
	They just kept going.
	And was it because they were trying to bring some help to the Palestinians?
	I believe so.
	They think they were training an army there.
	They thought they had a commander on the ship to train them.
	It's silly.
	Yeah, I'm sorry.
	I'm not really sure what the question is.
	I mean, I think the Palestinians are in a desperate situation.
	I think, you know...
	The question of why the Palestinians had to pay for what the German government did is still a mystery that no amount of reason will ever solve.
	And, I mean, the whole mess is the result of religion.
	In the Holy Land, they went back.
	And, of course, the Jewish leadership likes to have a home in a place surrounded by enemies so they can create a perpetual state of revenue-generating emergencies and so on.
	I mean, that having been said, what I love about the Jewish culture is the degree to which it shows the potential for human achievement.
	I mean, the Jewish culture is fantastic.
	For producing brilliant people, and that to me is very inspiring.
	But, yeah, I mean, it's a mess.
	I mean, the only short-term solution is statehood.
	I mean, everybody accepts that, according to the Jewish people I've talked to, even on this show.
	There's an older generation that has to kind of fade into the woodwork before the younger generation can implement that, which everybody knows needs to be done.
	And it's wretched.
	I mean, it is...
	It is the apartheid that nobody can speak of.
	It's the usual nonsense.
	It's tragic.
	I feel sorry for the Palestinians.
	I feel sorry for the Jews, in particular the Jewish boys who are circumcised.
	It's just wretched.
	It's just awful.
	This polarity in the Jewish culture, this extreme Focus on achievement of rationality and achievement of rationality in many ways outside of theology in science medicine and so on is all It's based upon rationality, which is great.
	And there is this parallel religiosity or cultural superstition and so on, and it's quite a dichotomy.
	At least the Muslims are like, wow, we're really into the religiosity side and much less into the science and achievement side.
	But the Jews are much more split, and I think that's really quite interesting.
	But yeah, it's a tragic situation, and it is entirely based, I think, upon religiosity.
	I don't see any particularly short-term solution to it.
	Philosophy is, of course, about long-term solutions.
	It's nutrition, not CPR. What philosophy, I think, has to say about it is that irrational beliefs produce disasters.
	Irrational beliefs that are violently imposed impose Catastrophes, even worse than disasters.
	And so, I think that the task of philosophy and of the philosophical is to keep pointing out that these beliefs are irrational, that they're false, that governments don't exist, that gods don't exist, that cultural beliefs must be subject to rational scrutiny, and it doesn't matter if you put on a funny hat while you're dancing, but it does matter if you believe that you're the chosen race and that everybody else is utility.
	I think we just have to keep patiently pointing these things out.
	It's a multigenerational change.
	Nobody's anticipating it's going to change quickly, but that's, I think, the most that can be said about that from a philosophical standpoint, at least from me.
	Yeah, I agree with that.
	It's going to take some time, even after I'm long dead.
	It's going to take forever.
	It might not take forever.
	You just got to be optimistic and just keep on tooting your horn.
	Yeah, you know, you never know when these things are going to collapse.
	I mean, it can happen quite quickly.
	I mean, it can happen quite quickly if you look at some of the falls of totalitarian states, even those that seem quite invincible.
	I mean, I'm not comparing the Jewish, the Israeli state with these two totalitarian states.
	I mean, I understand it's one of the freest states in the region and so on.
	But if you look at Chinese communism, if you look at Indian socialism, if you look at Soviet communism, I mean, these things reverse themselves extremely quickly.
	I mean, most people, they don't have any beliefs of their own, right?
	They're just feathers in the breeze.
	Anyway, the wind blows.
	And so, if the elites and their cultural lapdogs decide to change course, then the narrative gets rewritten in true 1984 fashion.
	We are now at war with Eurasia.
	We have always been at war with Eurasia.
	It gets rewritten, and people would just go along with it.
	They won't really have any memory of the past thing.
	You know, it's like watching the Republicans rail against Obamnicare and then nominating a guy who implemented pretty much the same thing in his home state.
	And, you know, it's because they want power.
	They want to win.
	They want their tribalism.
	It's got nothing to do with any kind of reason and evidence.
	So if the elites realize that the existing system isn't going to work, they will change that system.
	And the narrative in the media will change instantly because the media are the lapdogs of the political and economic powers that be.
	And then everybody will just change direction, and nobody will ever imagine that there was a different direction, and everybody who brings that up will be ridiculed, and, you know, will just move into a new kind of marching order with no memory of the past.
	I mean, we are a strange species at the moment.
	We are incredibly distorted.
	We are incredibly blinded.
	We live like bubbles in a storm, just trying to ride the wings of power, and...
	Imagining that we are somehow self-directed.
	People are just surfing the bloody wave of power and control, trying to survive an environment that is increasingly irrational and brutal on the mind and on the finances, and pretending that we all have responsibility.
	Like I was reading the other day about some guy who was like, oh, you know, kids these days, yeah, the economy's tough, but man, it was tough for me when I graduated school in the early 90s and I did what I could to get a job and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	And, I mean, you can still get work and so on, but the idea that the current recession is anything like what happened in the early 90s, I mean, it's just diluted.
	And people don't want to look at those facts because that means that they really have to.
	Well, in the early 90s, there was a crash.
	I mean, I graduated from college.
	I couldn't get a job at anything.
	Well, I mean, there's lots of reasons.
	I'm mostly due to Federal Reserve spending and the fact that the government was paying for everything through debt gives you an artificial boom.
	You know, the same way I can go buy a bunch of stuff if I don't care about my visa bill next month.
	I can go buy a whole bunch of stuff and I look wealthy.
	But the reality, of course, is that, you know, I think 9 million jobs were added in the year or two after the crash of the early 90s and the job recovery has been below...
	Replacement levels, it's been below what people, you need 150,000 jobs created every month just to take care of people coming into the workforce.
	It's not even been close to that.
	So, you know, the idea, you know, buck up kids, you know, I did it.
	Kids these days, they're spoiled.
	No, no, no, no.
	Humanity, I shouldn't say that phrase.
	Human responses to environment hasn't changed that much in 20 years.
	The environment has changed, and young people want to get started in their lives.
	They want to get jobs.
	They want to get moving just as much as everyone else, but the economy, just, you know, all you have to do is look up the statistics of job recovery between the two, and you'll recognize that, you know, kids these days are facing An incredibly different environment than they used to.
	Not to mention the fact, of course, that schools have become much more expensive.
	The prevalence of higher education has increased, which means each degree is worth less.
	And also the quality of education.
	The people who are graduating...
	In the 90s, they went through school in the 70s.
	Now, school in the 70s was not as craptastic as it is today, because it was in the 1960s that the teachers' unions gained the power to never be fired and really put the lockdown on all the crappy teachers that they were going to milk like bloody cows for the rest of their natural-born lives.
	And so, like everything, like NASA puts a man on the moon and then doesn't change the design of the spaceship for the next 40 years, the first generation is not so bad for the socialized, whatever it is, and then the second generation, third generation, that's worse.
	School now is way worse than it used to be in the past, and so people who came through school in the 70s still had the benefit of teachers who were there, Because they really wanted to be teachers and not because they wanted, you know, comfortable, real pension and healthcare benefits for the rest of their lives and the desire not to get fired and all of the culture that goes along with that.
	And whereas, you know, so whereas the people in the 90s, I mean, the people, the teachers in the 70s had to some degree or even largely retired or at least were just relics or had been corrupted by the system.
	And so, yeah, the education was much worse.
	And of course, the kids who are graduating now would have been in the mid-90s, I guess, that they were in.
	That they were coming out of high school now.
	And so it's a very different environment.
	You know, 1970 to 1995 was 25 years of intense socialism and the final seal-up, the final biosphere seal-up of children in a frankly communist environment.
	And that has a huge effect on the quality of education.
	So again, people just want to say, oh, well, you're kids these days and blah, blah, blah.
	But the reality is, you know, anyway.
	I remember two years ago, I was in high school.
	It took me a few years to graduate.
	It was socialistic.
	I could see it.
	It was scary.
	And I'm starting to see it now.
	I'm looking back like, wow, I was sort of indoctrinated in social medicine.
	I'm like, yeah, let's do that.
	Let's help the poor and the sick and people who don't have the opportunity or the money.
	But now I'm looking back like, no, we need the economy.
	We need to use our heads.
	Break the chains of how hospitals are not privatized anymore, like socialists.
	We need to be innovative and be able to help more people.
	Yeah, and it's really tough to use the same words.
	I mean, that's why I always have a tough time saying public schools as opposed to Coercive schools, communist schools.
	And even the use of the word schools is tough.
	School is associated with education, learning, volunteerism, and so on.
	That's what school is generally considered.
	It's not considered a violent institution, right?
	You say army, people get, you know, it's about violence.
	You say school, people think that it's about learning and reading rat and arithmetic and so on.
	I mean, language is another government program, and it's very confusing to talk about these things.
	We don't even have the words for it.
	We don't have the good word for volunteerism yet.
	But we don't have a good word for what it is.
	We don't just say lovemaking is private rape.
	No, we don't.
	Because if it's rape, it's not lovemaking.
	We don't say that rape is public lovemaking.
	No.
	If you put the word public in front of it, It doesn't reveal the true nature of what it is.
	The only difference between lovemaking and rape is the violence, is the coercion, is the brutality.
	That's the only difference.
	If it's voluntary, it's lovemaking.
	If it's involuntary, it's rape.
	And that's why we have completely different words with completely different and opposite emotional connotations.
	Lovemaking is a wonderful and beautiful thing, and rape is a monstrous evil crime.
	But we have, you know, we have these words that have been invented, public-private, Which had nothing to do with the reality.
	The only difference between public and private schools, I mean outside of the unions and all that, but the only difference is that one is voluntary and the other is violent.
	It's lovemaking and rape.
	We have opposite words.
	But we use the word school and then we just put the word public and private when what we mean is free and violent, right?
	So, violent indoctrination camps versus voluntarily chosen educational facilities.
	Again, there's no good word to it because the government has created this public-private to indicate that it's just, you know, two flavors of ice cream, two different shades of paint, two different ways of getting things done.
	Whereas if so, if you could, you know, if rape was simply public lovemaking and lovemaking was simply private lovemaking, well, it sounds like they're both lovemaking because you've embraced the coercion that is the essence and the only difference between these two interactions.
	And so it's really tough to have even a discussion about these things because the words, you know, again, this is the 1984 thing, the words don't exist.
	That's why, you know, we don't say taxes are public theft, whereas, you know, shoplifting is private theft.
	We have to invent the word taxes and social contract and obligation and caring for the poor because it's all about covering up the violence that is The essence of what is the only thing that's different.
	The only thing that's different between donations and taxes is the gun.
	But again, we have to work like crazy to avoid the reality of the gun.
	Otherwise, the horror of the system and the horror of what we have created for our children becomes too clear and the people recoil.
	Anyway, sorry to do a bit of a ramble, but I just want to point out that it's hard to even find the right words.
	No, it's alright.
	I'm getting more information.
	I'm learning every day from you.
	I try to listen to all your stuff.
	I remember the first thing I listened to, I was skeptical.
	It was the story of your enslavement, I believe.
	Yeah, I watched that a little bit over a year ago.
	I was shocked.
	He's right.
	I remember learning about...
	Well, skepticism is good.
	I hope that you will continue to be skeptical.
	I mean, I hope that I earn people's trust over time, which certainly doesn't mean that everything is perfect or true, but I try to provide good arguments and evidence, and when I'm incorrect, I'll announce it openly and so on.
	But yeah, I think skepticism is good, but to me, as I mentioned before, artificial skepticism is not good, right?
	So lots of people will say, well, I don't agree with everything that Steph says, as if I do, right?
	But I don't know.
	But he's got some good points.
	And that's the way of creating – it's creating the appearance of – like I'm still an independent thinker.
	I don't just take what Steph says on gospel.
	Well, but those aren't the only two options, right?
	To arbitrarily reject stuff to create a sense of pseudo-independence is as irrational as accepting everything I say without any proof or, you know, well, Steph said it.
	I don't even know the arguments, but it must be true.
	I mean, these aren't the only two options.
	You know, the option is for us to meet in reason and evidence and see what the overlap is.
	And people say, well, I don't agree with everything that Steph says, but, but, but, but, but.
	They're really not being very kind to me.
	And I think given the amount of material that I put out there for free, I think people should be kind to me.
	So if people say to me or say to others, I don't agree with everything that Steph says, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	It's like, well, tell me, you know, show me the kindness of pointing out where I'm incorrect.
	Show me the kindness of pointing out where I'm incorrect.
	Like if I'm a blind guy about to wander into a street and there's a bus coming, will you do me the favor of pulling me back?
	Will you do me the kindness, especially since I'm such a public figure, will you do me the kindness of helping me to correct my errors?
	Because that is an act of great charity and benevolence and compassion and brotherly and sisterly affection.
	But people who just say, well, you know, he's wrong about some things.
	He's right about some things, wrong about some things.
	I don't agree with him about some things.
	They say, well, tell me.
	Don't, you know.
	Don't hold these cards so close to your chest.
	I mean, I'm very generous with my thoughts.
	I would hope that people would repay me with at least an email saying, you're factually incorrect about this, your logic is incorrect on that, so that I can do the right thing, refine the conversation, keep approaching truth.
	But this is a story as old as Socrates.
	Everybody told Socrates that he was wrong.
	And then when he would inquire as to how they knew all of this, they would suddenly rouse them up against him and get all kinds of upset.
	So, yeah, I mean, you just see this kind of stuff a lot.
	So I just wanted to sort of mention that.
	But if you are out there and you know where I'm incorrect, let me know, let me know, let me know.
	I will let you know.
	I... I look at your work critically, and I try to see if there's any inconsistencies with your podcast.
	I'm trying to look, is he keeping up on his topics throughout the whole stream?
	So far he's keeping on point.
	He's a little bit rambling, but that's okay.
	It's not a point of being a dick.
	You gotta look for, like, is he getting his message out?
	Is he conveying his thoughts?
	Or is it just rambling on people's emotions in the time?
	So I was watching, um, just before, it was about the psychopaths with the, um...
	I think it was about the ones that are intelligent and the ones that are erratic.
	They rely on impulse, and there's the intelligence we have to watch out for, particularly people's emotions and their wants and needs in the moment.
	And I thought about, hmm, that's getting me a little bit more skeptical about stuff.
	I've got to make sure he's not being...
	Yeah, well, that's a secondary thing, right?
	So, you know, I don't know.
	People have never heard of the Sunday show, but people say...
	Well, Steph's wrong.
	And then people say, well, just call into a Sunday show and tell him and debate him or whatever, right?
	And then people say, oh, yes, but you see, Steph is a brain Svengali.
	You know, he has dark necromancer powers to twist and shape reality.
	He has the patented Steve Jobs reality distortion field.
	And...
	He's a sophist, man.
	He will make my argument look bad and his look good, even though the complete opposite is true.
	And I'm not going to step into his den of iniquity and let his brain viruses attack my noble truths and come out looking the worse, even though I'm right.
	So no, I am not going to say, oh, come on.
	Oh, come on.
	Come on.
	That's just sad.
	Just have to drop your ignorance and pride and step up to the plate and stick to your values.
	Well, I mean, I'm not hitting anyone.
	I mean, yes, of course I'm going to, if I believe my position is right, I'm going to defend my position.
	Of course.
	Because hopefully it's not my position, but it's the truth.
	And so I, you know, people who say that I'm wrong, well, you know, it's just, it's too obvious.
	Anybody who doesn't see it is just fooling themselves.
	And people say, well, Steph's just wrong.
	Well, you should call into his, you know, he does listener conversations.
	I would try to make myself available.
	I don't think I've ever refused a debate.
	I try to make myself as available as possible.
	I will rearrange my schedule.
	I will find whatever time I can.
	I will try and be as flexible as I can.
	People are willing to debate me at any time whatsoever.
	And yes, I will concede some points if I'm incorrect.
	I've done that many, many times.
	So people who say, well, he didn't correct himself.
	It's just a lie.
	It's just nonsense.
	But, you know, this is just empty braggadocio, right?
	So people say, well, Steph's not right about something.
	Oh, well, what is it?
	Well, you know, it's complicated.
	He's got some things which are contradictory and so on.
	Oh, well, what are they?
	Well, you know, I'd still have to look that up and get back to it.
	I mean, this is just nonsense, right?
	And this is just somebody saying, oh, I can beat this guy up.
	Oh, let's not make it a violent metaphor.
	Let's just, you know, oh, Steph, you know, he's a pretty crappy tennis player.
	I could totally beat him.
	And they say, okay, well, here's a racket.
	No, no, I don't want to do it right now.
	And Steph has...
	What he does is he's got a little laser.
	He'll shine lights in your eyes when you're about to hit the ball back so you can't hit it.
	So that's the only reason he looks good, is he uses these tricks and he cheats and so on.
	And it's like, oh, come on.
	I mean, how many times do you have to say somebody's wrong, be invited to debate with that person, and then they keep making up excuses?
	I mean, you get that they...
	It's just a position that they've taken because they weren't raised to be independent critical thinkers, and so they're afraid of fusion, right?
	Like if they step into my outline, they suddenly become me, we become one, and they have no independence, and then they're criticized for being some slavish StephBot follower and so on.
	But it doesn't matter.
	As I've mentioned a million times, I'm completely irrelevant to the equation.
	It doesn't matter who says two and two make four.
	It doesn't matter.
	Who came up with UPB. It doesn't matter who makes the best arguments for the non-aggression principle or for virtue or for statelessness.
	It doesn't matter.
	Yeah, or UPB. It doesn't matter.
	I mean, I don't have...
	I'm proud of my accomplishments because they were hard, and I think I've worked hard for them, but the fact that they're me is irrelevant.
	So when people say, well, I don't agree with everything that Steph says, they've packed a huge amount of anti-philosophical, anti-thought into that, right?
	Because philosophy is not about agreement.
	Like, if you and I are trying to decide where we go on vacation, that's something which we have to agree on.
	But imagine me saying, well, I don't believe I don't believe what Euclid says about the opposite angle theorem.
	Why bring Euclid into it?
	You either agree with the opposite angle theorem or you don't, or the triangle inequality relation, T-I-R. You know, it's actually everything else was called a theorem, but triangle inequality, they had to say relation because otherwise it spells tit, which would have been too much for us in junior high school.
	But what does it matter?
	I don't agree with what Einstein says about the speed of light.
	Well, that's just anti-scientific in such a fundamental way that it actually blows my mind.
	It's not whether you agree or not.
	It's whether it's true or not.
	It's not whether Einstein said it or not.
	It's whether it is or not, whether the evidence supports it, whether the mathematics holds.
	But, you know, Fermat's the last theorem.
	Nobody says, well, Fermat has been disproven.
	No.
	His last theorem.
	Sorry, it has been proven.
	I think it was proven a couple of years ago.
	No, quite a few years ago now.
	Read a book about it a long time ago.
	But it's this language where people don't have honesty.
	The language distorts inevitably.
	And so when people say, well, I don't agree with everything Steph says, well, I mean, it's like saying, I don't accept what Steph proves.
	I mean, that would be a more, I'm going to reject what Steph has proven.
	Or, I'm going to reject UPB although I cannot disprove it.
	That's the truth of the statement.
	Then obviously it's emotional and so on.
	But they have to personalize it, like I'm just asserting stuff and you either agree with me or you don't.
	It's like the equivalent of saying, I don't like every band that Steph likes.
	Of course.
	Of course.
	But this is where people are.
	I mean, they can't think.
	They can't think.
	They can't think.
	And yet they have to pretend that they can, because otherwise the tragedies of what was taken from them is too much to bear.
	Yeah, I'm trying to learn to think now.
	I'm sorry if I'm slow.
	I'm just trying to listen to what you're saying and thinking of...
	You don't have to, because I'm just sort of talking about stuff that I see occasionally sort of floating around.
	And people, they do get, I mean, obviously, there's an emotional basis to this.
	And people say this with God, too.
	Maybe you want to talk about this.
	Because people say, I believe in God.
	But this is a contradictory statement.
	Even taken in no other philosophy, just look at the actual statement.
	I believe in God is a self-contradictory statement.
	Because if something exists, you don't believe in it, it is.
	Right?
	I don't point at a tree and say, I believe in that tree.
	I don't look at the sun and say, I believe in that sun.
	No, that's a tree.
	The sun is out.
	That is the sun.
	I believe in Joe Pesci.
	I believe in Joe Pesci.
	You're the saint of the Catholic anti-imagery of the Mafia movies.
	But to say I believe in God is self-contradictory because you're talking about something that objectively exists and therefore belief doesn't have anything to do with it.
	Do you hear that?
	I have a fire alarm.
	I have a fire alarm.
	Give me a second.
	Do you need to go?
	I think.
	Let's not have somebody else.
	No more philosophers burnt to the crypt.
	That's one of the mottos of free to debate radio.
	Sorry about that.
	Fire alarm.
	Do you believe?
	I believe in gravity.
	Nobody says, I believe that two and two make four.
	I believe that the world is round.
	No.
	The world is round.
	Yeah.
	I believe in God makes no sense because you are saying belief, which is a subjective state.
	Like I can say, I believe, I don't even like the phrase, I believe, because it really muddies the waters of philosophy so much.
	And if anyone in the chatroom can think of a good example, I can't right now.
	Because everything I can say that I believe, I have some, like I said, I believe my wife loves me.
	Well, I have lots of objective evidence for all of that.
	Reason and evidence.
	Yeah, reason and evidence.
	I believe that this show is quite successful.
	Well, I have...
	No, this show is quite successful.
	There's evidence for that.
	The ratings!
	Yeah!
	And, you know, I've got food.
	So that's...
	I say, I believe that I'm a public speaker.
	Well, I think there's evidence for that.
	Right?
	So the guy invited him to Vancouver and made money.
	Because of the people who showed up.
	But...
	So, you can have sort of an I believe thing, but I believe just has no place in philosophy, and it has no place in describing reality.
	Because reality is, or it isn't, we accept reality or we reject it, but we don't believe in reality.
	You know, they always have these cheesy movie things, you know, some magic ass fairy crap that comes out.
	And the tagline is, this movie, believe.
	It's like, no, I don't think I will.
	Thank you very much.
	You can prove it or not.
	Yeah, or I can suspend my disbelief in order to enjoy the fact that, you know, the Tennessee Williams play happening on stage is not real.
	It's just pretend, but I'll suspend my disbelief to enjoy it more.
	That's fine.
	Whatever, right?
	Yeah.
	But this I believe stuff, the moment somebody says I believe, what they're saying is, it's not true.
	It's a belief, but it's not true.
	So I believe is exactly the same as saying it's false.
	When somebody says I believe that God exists, what they're actually saying is it's false that God exists because they have to say I believe rather than God exists.
	So if somebody says I accept the existence of God, well, then they have to show the existence of God, which they can't do, of course, right?
	Yeah.
	And natural consequences of failing to prove something is that you have to reject it.
	I believe in square circles.
	No, you're wrong about square circles.
	It exists, right?
	Square.
	It's made that way.
	So when people say, well, I don't accept everything that Steph says, I mean, they're just basically saying, well, I don't have the capacity to evaluate this very persuasive person's statements, but I'm going to pretend that I don't agree with everything to maintain the veneer of independent thought, which I don't possess.
	And I don't mean that critically.
	I mean, like in a negative way, it's just a fact.
	And this is very clear.
	I mean, this is very clear to anyone with any eyes to see.
	And yet it's very hard for people to process.
	And that's because philosophy has been a government program low these thousands of years.
	And like every government program, it causes more disasters.
	It obscures more truth.
	And frankly, it costs more money than could ever been imagined.
	I'm not even in the workforce yet, and I'm still like, how am I going to get a job of all this billions and trillions of dollars in debt?
	What am I going to do?
	I'm skeptic about the future.
	I'm cynical slightly about it.
	I'm like, what am I going to do?
	What can I do?
	And I'm watching your show and I'm thinking, you know what?
	If I can't do anything that's beyond my reach, I'll try to do what's right in front of me.
	Make myself happy.
	And make other people around me happy.
	And point out the obscurities and lies in front of us.
	Something I can think of.
	Yeah.
	I choose to associate with rational people.
	I do not expose my daughter to irrational people or to abusive thoughts.
	I speak truth to power.
	As much as possible.
	I mean, I was, I tell you, between us, just between us girls, I was pretty nervous going out in Brazil to tell a bunch of politicians and priests that religion was terrible for kids and that taxation is theft.
	I must have gone to pee like five times before I went out because I thought, oh my god, I'm going to have a nervous pee or whatever, right?
	But you go out and you do it.
	I have to pee at least two or three times before I go out on stage.
	I've had this ever since I was an actor, but it can be a little nerve-wracking.
	But this is what you need courage for.
	You need courage for stuff that's easy.
	I'm going to steal myself to climb these stairs.
	I'm going to screw my courage to the sticking place so that I can finish this KitKat.
	The stuff that we can do is just speak the truth.
	As I was saying earlier in the show, we speak the truth.
	And if people continue to advocate and enthusiastically support violence against us, well, everybody knows what my opinion is in the long run with those relationships.
	Everyone, of course, makes their own decisions, but that's something I can do.
	Who will is the way?
	All we have to do is just point at the guy and whatever people we can and let them decide on their own.
	And if they want to do it, they can.
	If they don't, it's got to be a backlash.
	And later on in their life, like having kids, if you abuse them, it's got to come around.
	My father sort of abused me, and he still is.
	And I'm just trying to work my way through...
	What was that?
	Well, I just wanted to say I'm so sorry.
	I really am sorry.
	My advice, of course, is get a therapist and stay in conversation as long as you can, being as honest as you can about what your experience is.
	I need to do that, too.
	It's hard.
	My dad's like a 1950s.
	Guy, since what happened to him, his real father left him when he was three, and he had a stepfather coming later on in his life, and he was cruel to him.
	And when I was little, when I went over to my grandpa's house, he would make me sweep dirt.
	Sweep the dirt on the patio.
	I didn't see the point in him.
	I'm like, okay.
	And what happened, he was a little bit of a nut, and...
	And my dad's relationship with him soured and I'm in sort of this Stockholm Syndrome relationship with my father and I'm like, you know what?
	I gotta be honest with my feelings and I gotta get this out whenever I can.
	When I'm ready and I have to tackle this.
	My parents are divorced and there's so much things.
	I'm surprised I made it through all this and I need to keep going.
	I had to be stronger than him.
	Yeah.
	I'm a little hurt by it.
	I remember, I was just reminded, sorry, when you were talking about being dirty.
	Was it you or your dad who was sweeping dirt?
	No, it was me.
	Yeah.
	I remember when I went to go visit my dad in Africa when I was 16.
	Hadn't seen him in a long time and, you know, he flew me out there to stay for a couple of months.
	And one of the things he sent me to doing was he had a garage with a tin roof And the tin roof had become rusted.
	And so he put me up there with a sanding block and some paint.
	And I sat down and repainted his tin roof.
	Now, this is Africa.
	It's hot.
	You know?
	And I'm up there for days.
	North or south?
	I'm sorry?
	Which part of Africa?
	North or south?
	South.
	Yeah, definitely gets hot down there.
	Yeah, I mean, it was...
	It was hot, and I mean, at the time, I was such an empty vessel of willlessness.
	I really didn't like it in particular, but I didn't have any, you know, there was no option to me called, well, wait a second here, why are you putting me to work in this?
	I mean, I'm a hard worker.
	I don't mind work at all.
	I haven't seen you for years, so why am I up here repairing the roof when it's 9 million degrees outside?
	And you're, you know, having some tea and working on some of your papers.
	It's just strange.
	I mean, there's a family story about my dad.
	I mean, I don't remember this because I was too young, but my dad was taking care of me, so to speak, and he wanted to play tennis with a friend of his, so he played tennis.
	With a friend of his and left me unattended and I crawled around, ended up in a garden shed.
	I drank weed killer, ended up in the hospital.
	Almost died.
	I mean, he's not necessarily the most...
	Well, anyway.
	But yeah, it is.
	I think having these conversations is important.
	Yeah.
	Gotta get it out.
	I feel getting balled up.
	I need to do something about this.
	I dropped out of school because I didn't know myself.
	I'm like, why am I here?
	When I was in the classroom there, when I was in the local college, everyone was like a zombie.
	They didn't talk.
	They just listened to the professor.
	When he asked if someone could answer this question, no one really answered.
	I'm like, why am I here?
	What am I doing?
	I need to figure myself out.
	I sort of dropped out.
	I was going for engineering science.
	I wanted to become a scientist.
	Probably work on robotics or biomedical.
	Something like that.
	Something that can help people and innovate.
	And seeing how the hospitals are kind of like not privatized anymore.
	They're owned by basically the government and the federal government regulating everything.
	There's no room for imagination or progression.
	It's just stuck.
	It's stagnant.
	And it's getting piled up.
	And there's only like what?
	I think there's actually a few hospitals around here on the whole island.
	On Long Island, there's about, I think, nine.
	Nine hospitals.
	Nine major ones.
	And nothing in between.
	I can't think of really any physician area or anything like that, or private doctor, really.
	Maybe a few private doctors.
	Well, but I'm sorry to interrupt.
	I mean, obviously, your life is your own, but my suggestion would be that if you have a real passion for doing that, I wouldn't let the statism of the environment stand in your way.
	Yeah.
	So, okay, maybe you have to work in a semi-socialized hospital or whatever, but when it comes right down to it, it's you and somebody who needs help.
	How it gets funded, how it gets paid for, the weird incentives in the system, it really does come down to you giving somebody help or doing research that is going to help people.
	Now, you might want to read Mary Ruwart's, R-U-W-A-R-T. Some of her work is very interesting.
	She's spent a lot of time in the research world.
	In medicine.
	She's been on my show a couple of times.
	You can look at it as well.
	I'm very much around...
	There's an argument that Murray Rothbard makes, which I think is a fairly good argument.
	I think it's a fairly good argument.
	He says, well, what jobs can volunteers take in a status environment?
	And he basically makes the argument that we can take jobs that would exist in a free society.
	But we really shouldn't take jobs that wouldn't exist in a free society.
	Obviously, there are doctors in a free society, there are researchers in a free society, and so on.
	And so, that's valid.
	Does that mean that we go join the expeditionary marine force of infinite imperialism?
	Well, no, because that wouldn't exist in a free society.
	Policemen, who knows?
	I would say not really prison guards because most of the people are in there as a result of non-violent, non-crimes or a direct result of child abuse in the home and in the school environment and so on.
	But I think it's down to everyone's conscience and I'm not particularly big on faulting people who are trying to do whatever they can to survive in a status environment.
	You might say, take your student loans and do whatever.
	Once you're in a situation of compulsion, ethics doesn't really have anything to say to you, which is why nutritionists don't visit prisons.
	You guys should eat more healthy.
	Well, I just eat whatever slop they put in front of me, so I don't really have a choice, so I'm not really sure how your advice to change my habits is whatever.
	I just want to point out that if it is a passion for yours, if you're enthusiastic about it, I wouldn't let the state take that away.
	That's throwing the baby out at the bathwater.
	Yeah.
	I'll try getting back into that.
	I'll be working with my father soon, so I'll try to work that out.
	If that doesn't work out, I'll try working on my channel.
	I see it on your site.
	It's called Dan's Various Stuff.
	It's my YouTube channel.
	I'm not sure what to do with it yet.
	I'm figuring it out, seeing what I want to do as a passion.
	Maybe talk about a little bit of philosophy, other things, nature stuff, a bunch of other things I can think of.
	Hey, trust me, you never know where speaking the truth is going to lead you.
	I mean, I didn't even view it as a hobby to begin with.
	I just viewed it as, you know, I'd like to get some thoughts out there.
	Here we go!
	So you speak honestly and passionately and with integrity and you just never know where that's going to take you.
	Thanks for a great chat.
	This is the morning for me.
	You've now been introduced to Morning Steph, which most of you have not had much exposure to since I was doing my traffic jams.
	I'm normally the afternoon delight, not the morning ramble fest.
	But here you do get a sense of what is, for me, pre-dawn staff.
	But anyway, I hope you all have a great week.
	Thank you.
	Thank you to the people who are coming through to support the documentary.
	Oh, man!
	I gotta tell you, I'm working with Luke the Bee, who is really...
	It's alchemy, what he does.
	I don't understand it, but the animations and the clips that he's coming up with are...
	To die for.
	My screen is literally dripping with the French kissing I'm giving to his animations.
	They're so beautiful.
	So, Luke the Bee, thank you.
	And we are starting to get a really great soundtrack put forward.
	We've gone with a different instrument choice.
	The accordion and the kazoo.
	No, I'm kidding.
	That's the guitar.
	But I think it's really great stuff.
	So, it's really coming along nicely.
	And thank you so much to everyone.
	You know, we got to buy the software.
	We had to buy some hardware to make sure the rendering times are not weeks.
	And so, If you want to help out, freedomainradio.com forward slash donate.
	All is greatly appreciated.
	But it's coming along.
	And I'm thrilled.
	And I think running time is an hour.
	So it's not going to be the, you know, give half a day to Zeitgeist, but we're going to try and keep it short.
	And I'm very, very pleased with what's coming along.
	Yeah, it's almost two hours.
	I think the second one is two and a half or something like that.
	Two hours and 15 minutes, I believe.
	I think it was two hours and 15 minutes.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So, I mean, we're trying to keep it really compact.
	And when I'm not doing interviews, though, if this one goes well, I will absolutely travel and corner people and do interviews because I really do want to get the philosophy out and the expert opinion behind it.
	And that's the goal for the next one.
	But anyway, this one is coming along.
	And thank you, everybody, so, so much for the support of the documentary and your support of the show.
	Remember, you don't have to donate a penny.
	Live the values.
	That's for me.
	And, you know, if you do like to share the site, if you want to Facebook it, you want to Google Plus it, you want to, I don't know, show it to the last other guy on MySpace, whatever you like.
	But if you can support the show, if you can talk up the show, if you can share the show, that to me is great.
	And that's free.
	That really does help.
	So thank you, everybody, so, so much, as always.
	Have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful Sunday.
	And remember, next week, okay, we'll switch things around a bit.
	We're going to go to, let's see, 22 over 7.
	Let's go to pie time.
	And we'll explain more now.
	We're just going to stay at Eastern Standard.
	And hope yourselves have a great day.

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