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Feb. 11, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:30:09

2325 Freedomain Radio Sunday Philosophy Call in Show, Feb 10th, 2013

Stefan Molyneux, host Freedomain Radio, discusses Introduction/Should I Finish College? (0:00), Two-Part Question on Parenting (36:02), Apologizing to Your Kids/Drunk Driving (58:40) and The Attack on Boys (2:01:00).

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	Hello everybody!
	It's me!
	Hope you're doing well.
	It is the 10th of February 2013 and before any further ado, I'm afraid I must burst into song.
	Yes, feel free to skip forward for this part because somebody is turning 34 today and I guess all we can say is Happy birthday to you.
	Happy birthday to you.
	Happy birthday, dear James.
	Happy birthday to you, Mr.
	President.
	How are you, James?
	How is your birthday going?
	I'm crying now.
	Well, you know, I guess where I come from, we give the opposite of a present, which is mildly bleeding.
	But listen, man, happy birthday.
	34.
	Ah, yes.
	I remember it well.
	It is quite a ways down the rear view over the hill for me, but it is a fine, fine year.
	So I wish you many happy returns.
	Thank you for everything you have done to, at, around, and holding down and wriggling to this show.
	I really appreciate it.
	Backup recordings, Sunday show, technical help, great conversations, hugely helpful conversations.
	For which I still get praise from listeners.
	So I just wanted to thank you and wish you in all sincerity a great birthday, a great coming year, and hopefully two or three more.
	Always a good thing.
	Yeah, hopefully two or three more.
	Thanks so much.
	I really appreciate it.
	Yep, so far so good today.
	I slept in, you know.
	Yeah, me too, actually.
	It was really quite civilized.
	Very nice.
	So should we move on?
	We got a caller or two, right?
	So let's get them on the roll.
	Yes, we do.
	First caller today we have is Andy.
	Hey, guys.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Can you hear me?
	Yes, can.
	All right.
	Awesome.
	Thanks for taking my call, guys.
	I guess there were two things I kind of wanted to get to.
	First off, this is the first thing I wanted to say.
	Just how awesome it is for what you're doing.
	I'm sure you hear that a lot.
	I'm a college student.
	I'm an undergraduate college student in North Carolina.
	It's just a huge deal for me.
	I just started listening about a year ago.
	Since then, I've really had this incredible awakening.
	As far as intellectually and emotionally and pretty much everything.
	I've always sort of questioned authority, but it wasn't until I started listening to you that I really started to formulate that into a coherent thought process.
	Wait, wait.
	But you don't question my authority, do you?
	Trust me.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Go ahead, please.
	Yeah, but...
	And I'm sort of struck by something that Jeff Tucker was talking about in an interview he did about how the internet can make mentors out of people who are a long ways away.
	And that's sort of how I feel about you and people like Jeff Tucker and people like a lot of other guys out there who I listen to and learn from who can teach me a hell of a lot more than my professors up here about A lot of stuff about just life in general and even some of the academic subjects, especially in history and stuff like that, that you're just not going to get in college.
	I wanted to make sure that you know that I might not be your average listener as far as age-wise and where I am in my life.
	I wanted to make sure that you knew that you were getting through to people like me.
	It's making a huge difference and I really appreciate it.
	Well, thank you.
	And I do, of course, hear from time to time that people say, well, I'm only young but, or I'm just young but.
	Dude, first of all, according to the statistics, your youth outstrips my age intelligence-wise simply through whatever the hell is causing the Flynn effect, right?
	This couple of point rise in IQ. And also, boy, philosophy is a great thing to get when you're young.
	It's a great thing to start when you're young.
	I played tennis for many years, and I taught myself how to play tennis because we were a broke-ass family, couldn't afford lessons.
	Then when I finally did get some lessons, oh man, I had a lot of undoing to do, if that makes any sense.
	A lot of bad habits.
	The same thing with skiing.
	I taught myself skiing.
	Actually, I've never taken.
	But people have given me ideas on how to ski better, and it's just hard to undo bad habits.
	So, to me, it's like people, you know, I really want to join gymnastics, you see, but I'm only 11.
	It's like, no, no, that's good!
	Don't start your gymnastics when you're 35!
	I know James, of course, is going to.
	So, it's the best time.
	It's the most appropriate time, I would argue, to do philosophical work when you're young.
	I wish it got earlier.
	Yeah, well, Socrates is like, you know, everyone thinks, well, the stereotype of the philosopher is...
	You know, the bearded guy on the mountain who nothing bothers.
	And remember, everything to do with philosophy prior to the internet and prior to popularizers like Ayn Rand, everything to do with philosophy was picked and chosen and allowed to survive by the rulers of society.
	In other words, nobody got to be a philosopher unless, to some degree, they served the interests of the rulers of society.
	And it certainly wouldn't surprise me at all If Plato had been threatened with the same lovely tea party that Socrates had, if he didn't write, that Socrates wanted obedience to the state.
	Socrates says, because they say, listen, the authorities will look the other way.
	We'll get you out of town.
	And he's like, no, well, the state gave me life.
	The state is my mother and father.
	I guess Chris Rock also joins that pantheon of philosophy.
	And So we have to obey the state.
	You live under the protections of its laws, even if they're unjust, blah, blah, blah.
	And it would not at all surprise me, and probably will never ever come to light, but it would not surprise me at all.
	Yeah, that's a really good point.
	I hadn't thought of that.
	Yeah, if they'd shaken him down and said, listen, we've got another Meletus in the wings who's going to bring charges against you for impiety and corrupting the young.
	So if you're going to write this death of Socrates, you better not screw around with obedience to the state.
	And then he writes this wonderful piece, which has in it massive obedience to the state, Which is completely against Socratic philosophy.
	Completely against.
	Socrates openly derided the majority of men as incredible fools.
	He was put to death by a vote, and yet he said, obey the law as if the law was something that was not created by men who were fools.
	Subjugate yourself to violent foolishness was never, ever the essence of the Socratic philosophy, but rather know thyself, think independently, challenge authority, question everything.
	And so everything that we have gotten...
	To do with philosophy has been that which either does not harm or actively serves the interests of the rulers of mankind.
	And so this idea that the philosopher has to be old and therefore philosophy is not appropriate to the young is only there because once you're old, you're no harm to philosophy.
	Real philosophy because most times, 99 times out of 100 or more, you've already calcified your thinking into a bunch of boring, culturally-based, repetitive, Dead patterns and therefore you're no harm to anyone.
	Or if people say, well listen, you can't really be philosophical until you get older.
	It's like, well no, philosophy is entirely around the energies of the young.
	You want to be philosophical before you choose your career.
	You want to be philosophical as you're going through your education.
	You especially want to be philosophical before you have a family if that's your goal because all of these things will be incredibly improved by philosophy.
	But the wait till it's too old to do any good sort of stuff Well, that just serves the interest of the ruler.
	Sorry for that little rant.
	And also be detached from everything.
	Be a floating guru on a mountaintop and nothing bothers me because I'm a philosopher.
	Well, fuck.
	I'm that kind of guy.
	Yeah, I know.
	Philosophy is all about the passion.
	The passion to change.
	The energy to change.
	To detach yourself from your emotions is...
	Fundamentally, I mean, this is one of the basic principles of psychology.
	It's incredibly unhealthy to permanently repress your emotions.
	To strive for emotional non-reactivity is to strive for impotence.
	It's like you always say, self-knowledge, yeah.
	I mean, know your emotions and verify them rationally, yeah.
	Yeah, look, if I have some horrible illness, I don't want a doctor who's not bothered by illness at all.
	To me, illness and health, they're pretty much the same.
	I don't mind cancer.
	I don't mind tuberculosis.
	You know, they're just two different ways of being, being healthy and being sick.
	No!
	I want the guy who's like, I view cancer as my own personal enemy.
	I will go down and fire before I will surrender one inch, one cell to cancer.
	I mean, that's the guy I want.
	It's the guy who's really passionate and takes a stand.
	And motivates her because emotional energy is motivation.
	And I want people who are incredibly motivated to heal.
	And that means being angry at injustice and praising justice.
	So anyway, I just want to point that out.
	But please go on with your thoughts.
	I just wanted to say that, but the question I had, and I've got like a hundred of them.
	The one I really wanted to ask you, like I said, I'm a college student.
	I'm double majoring in physics and industrial design, which everybody's like, what?
	But my question is, I've always struggled with learning things because it seems like the academic institutions from grade school up don't approach learning from a logical perspective.
	No one does it anymore, or if they ever did it.
	It's always, you know, read the book, memorize the stuff, and spit it back on the test, which is, you know, what we always hear.
	What we always hear, that's not a good way to learn.
	But even in college, which is what I always expected, like, okay, I always said, like, in college, it's going to be different.
	In college, people are actually going to give a damn about actually learning the material, understanding why things work, and not just kind of spinning it back on a test.
	But even in something like math, that's supposed to be purely logic and the most base stuff is not taught from that perspective.
	You know, you go into calculus class and they write theorems on a whiteboard and they run through the proofs once or twice, but they don't build it back from first principles anymore.
	And then the physics department and the math department don't talk to each other.
	So you're using higher order calculus in calculus class, but you can't use it in the physics class because you're not on the same level.
	You started about the humanities stuff because no one from there looks at things objectively.
	You're subject to the whims of whatever professor your class you're in.
	My question to you is, why does that happen?
	Not so much why, because I know why.
	It's a state school, and it's a cultural norm to do things like that.
	That's all kind of stuff.
	I have, in fact, listened to your podcast.
	I know why.
	I'm wondering, what can I do in my own life to supplement that And to look at these subjects and, you know, I guess filter through all the bullshit and actually begin to really learn this stuff, you know?
	Does that make any sense?
	Medium.
	Well, tell me why you think that our knowledge is so isolated and fragmented.
	I guess it's just...
	I mean, maybe it's just me.
	It's entirely possible that it's just me, but...
	There's not really a focus on understanding, you know, on this holistic kind of understanding of a topic.
	It's more of, you take some pieces of it.
	Like, so for example, I don't know how into higher order math that you are, but as a physics major, I kind of have to be.
	But, like, you know, you'll learn about something called a cross product.
	And They'll kind of tell you about it, how to use it, and then you'll ask a question, you'll raise your hand and say, well, what actually is it?
	How does it work?
	Why does it work?
	And they'll be like, don't worry about it, you'll learn about it in the next class.
	And then you get to the next class and you get a little bit more information about it, but they don't really tell you.
	And it seems to me like it would be a lot more logical to explain a topic if they would start with a topic, not necessarily something as specific as a particular function, but You know, with mathematics in general and maybe just kind of expand on it and build and build and build instead of actually kind of...
	It's like they're just throwing things together and it doesn't necessarily make sense.
	Right.
	I don't know.
	Well, that's a description of it.
	That's a description of it.
	Why do you think...
	I mean, look, let's assume it's not you.
	And generally, if things seem screwed up in the world, I think young people or people of any age should not assume that it's them.
	Yeah.
	You know, because society has been around a lot longer than you have, and society has a great interest in getting things wrong, unfortunately, current society.
	And so don't ever assume, I mean, you know, if after a certain amount of time and stuff, but don't ever say, well, maybe it's me.
	I mean, you can say it, of course, right?
	But always assume that there's something wrong with society as a whole.
	You know, society's the mugger in the alley, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, they'll take your youth, they'll take your money, they'll take your health, they'll take your, you know, just terrible.
	I mean, society's like a mugger in the alley, and I don't think we get mugged in an alley and say, well, maybe it's me.
	Maybe I'm the one who's doing things wrong in this interaction.
	And of course, unfortunately, with society, there's no such thing as an alley.
	You get mugged on an airplane, you get mugged everywhere you go, right?
	I mean, if Texas is mugging, then you get mugged for breathing, sadly.
	So, let's assume it's not you.
	And let's imagine, or let's conjecture, let us reason together about why it may be so fragmented.
	Well, I think my postulation is just because it's easier.
	It's easier for professors to kind of, to have you sit in a classroom with 70 other kids, and I use kids, you know, to say people my age, and, you know, It's easier for them to just write some stuff on a whiteboard and just say, okay, we'll go read the chapter if you want further information or go watch this video lecture and do your homework and turn it in and then pass the test.
	It doesn't work.
	At least it doesn't work for me and it doesn't work for a lot of people that I know.
	Regardless of whether or not someone gets good grades or not, whether or not they can actually do that in the field is an entirely different situation.
	Okay, now let's see.
	Let's compare your education to something that's more private, right?
	Because you're in a...
	Sure.
	I mean, the universities are public institutions almost completely.
	Even the private ones are.
	So if you were to go...
	So let's say that it's easier, right?
	So it's easier for the professor, and maybe in the short run, it's easier for the students, right?
	Right.
	So if you want to become a gymnast, then you go to a coach, and he says, well, I'm going to do...
	What is easiest for me and easiest for you, like in the moment, I don't care really about the consequences and I don't care whether you become any good at it really, but I'm going to do what's easiest for me and for the student in the moment.
	What would you say?
	I would say, okay, that's fine, but I'm doing this because I want benefit later as well.
	I want this to be a holistic kind of experience.
	I don't want to do this gymnastic routine and have myself feel great for a week and then all of a sudden something goes wrong and I strain a muscle a week later.
	Well, no, no.
	You see, because you won't sprain a muscle if the coach is trying to do what's easiest.
	Then he's not going to push you, right?
	Okay.
	Right?
	He's not going to do things, he's not going to, you know, you're not even going to be breathing hard because he's doing what's easiest, right?
	Yeah, so then I would say, okay, this will be great for a week, but then I'll probably lose every bit of benefit that I get from it later.
	Well, you'd say, no, thanks.
	It wouldn't...
	Yeah.
	Like, you'd say, listen, coach, you obviously don't really understand what it is to instruct someone.
	If you think that the best thing that can come out of an instruction is for it to be easiest in the moment...
	For the student and for the teacher.
	Because the whole point of being a teacher is something is hard, the benefits are not immediately obvious, and it is necessary for the achievement of a goal.
	I mean, I don't need a coach to say, have some chocolate.
	Come on, you can do it!
	Lift that Toblerone!
	Work that Lindor!
	Pole vault with that Kit Kat!
	You can do it!
	Come on, I know you can!
	Work it!
	Have some chocolate!
	I don't need that because chocolate is really good, right?
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Find your wife appealing.
	Come on!
	I know you can do it.
	Look at a picture of someone else.
	Work yourself into it, no matter how, right?
	Yeah.
	Love your child.
	Come on!
	I know you don't like her deep down, but come on!
	It's for the stuff that is hard.
	That's exactly why you need teachers.
	That's why you need coaches, right?
	Right.
	To milk the analogy, right?
	You didn't need a whole bunch of coaches.
	Saying when you're 11 or 12 or 13, come on!
	Grow a beard!
	I know you can do it!
	Make your naughty bits go all kinds of funny shapes and colors!
	And let's get some hair everywhere!
	Come on!
	You can do it!
	Because that just happens on its own.
	Yeah, it happens already anyway.
	Sit on a couch!
	Watch some TV! Come on!
	Put down those barbells!
	I know you can do it, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, it's all the stuff that's hard.
	And so the idea that you have a teacher who wants to make things easier for you is...
	Saying, I want a teacher who's the opposite of a teacher.
	The whole point of a teacher is he's going to say, well, this is hard.
	It's worthwhile.
	Here's why.
	You know, the Mr.
	Miyagi stuff, although I think that's a little bit too opaque.
	Sorry, you're too young to get that reference.
	No, no, no.
	I'm not that young.
	Yeah, good, good.
	So, it is hard.
	You know, wax on, wax off.
	I don't know why the hell I'm doing this.
	Now, I think that's a bit too opaque.
	That's just sort of obeying.
	Yeah, yeah.
	But the reality is that it is hard.
	And so the idea that it's going to be easier can only come from a statist institution, right?
	Right.
	Yeah.
	So how do I, as an individual, kind of...
	I mean, I guess what I'm asking is, do you know of any outlets, anybody that's out there online or anywhere that's actually kind of doing that?
	Or am I totally on my own and I'm just going to have to go find the books and read them and draw all kinds of lines on a wall or something like that?
	Do you mean sort of like...
	Are you talking sort of the philosophy of science kind of stuff?
	I mean, yeah, sure.
	I'm sure that's a good place to start, to be honest.
	I mean, that's kind of where everything's...
	I guess what I'm getting at is that a lot of these...
	I think philosophy is something that you have to be exposed to if you want to be successful in any kind of academic endeavor.
	Because if you don't know what an axiom is, if you don't know that in order to make a statement it has to be provable, true or false, which no one really addresses, you know, no one really addresses that concept anymore.
	They kind of just go in assuming everybody knows this, but they don't.
	They don't know that.
	If they did, they wouldn't be behaving as irrationally as they are.
	Right.
	Yeah, people love to assume that you know reason, and the reason they do that is so that you're too embarrassed to say that you don't.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I remember taking a course on Aristotle.
	This was undergraduate, so this was at McGill.
	I took a full-year course on Aristotle, and within a first week or two, it was like, hey, make a logic tree of this argument.
	And everyone was like, you what now?
	I'm sorry?
	Yeah.
	Is that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?
	It's from Genesis.
	What's happening?
	But I don't think anyone really said much about anything.
	Because it's like, okay, I guess I'll go look up...
	So they don't teach it to you, and then they assume you know it, so that you won't say that you don't know it, so they don't have to teach it to you.
	Yeah.
	But why does that happen?
	What the hell is going on with this?
	I mean, it's so bizarre.
	I mean, even on Aristotle, you don't know what a logic tree is?
	You're not going to teach that?
	Because that's huge.
	I would say.
	I would say.
	Yeah, I mean, I had never taken a required course on logic, and some would say it shows up in my podcast.
	But at that point, I'd never taken any course on logic.
	It was never a required thing.
	Of course, everything is supposed to be based on logic, but they'll never teach you logic.
	Right?
	And you say, well, that's bizarre.
	Well, it's sort of like, you know, you ever see those pictures of those, like...
	Really creepy-ass looking fish that live down like a mile or so under the ocean.
	You're like, whoa, that does not look like McPhilea fish.
	That is some freaky-ass spiny-headed, light-fanged crap going on down there in the bowels.
	And it only looks weird because that's not where we have to live, right?
	Right.
	Yeah, that's true.
	Yeah.
	I mean, but at the same time...
	That fish is living in an environment where it's beneficial for it to have that.
	I mean, again, I guess, you know, professors are doing that as well, you know, within the confines of the state and whatnot.
	But, you know, if you don't approach these things logically, it's kind of hard to really understand them and then apply them effectively.
	You know, you can memorize all you want.
	Some people can.
	I can't, which is why I'm having this conversation.
	My biggest problem throughout my entire life is that I don't do the whole memorization thing.
	For some reason, my brain doesn't work that way.
	I have to have a holistic understanding of a concept for it to make sense.
	I think that's because I'm a skeptical person.
	I don't necessarily want to believe what someone's telling me.
	I want to verify it.
	Right.
	So the whole purpose of, I mean, the whole value and magic of our brain, so to speak, is its capacity to synthesize, to extrapolate, to theorize, to tie concepts together, right?
	There was this whole experiment that went on where they taught kids whole word learning, right?
	So you learn the whole word.
	So instead of k, a, te, you'd learn cat and then dog.
	And this produced a whole bunch of dyslexics and people with reading problems, people who hated reading, because memorizing every word is retarded.
	You learn your morphemes, you learn the components of speech, and then you can assemble any word you want, and you learn the weird exceptions for all, you know, English has a lot of, like all languages.
	We don't have masculine and feminine, but we've got lots of exceptions to rules, so you learn those exceptions and it's fine.
	Memorization is a way of crowding out processing.
	Memorization does no harm to power structures.
	Rational processing does enormous harm to power structures.
	As you know, power structures operate.
	Statist, violent, irrational, religious, superstitious power structures operate on two basic principles.
	One, a vocal universal.
	Two, an unspoken exception for themselves.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Right, so these are the two ways in which power structures operate.
	Again, one, explicit universals, and two, unspoken exceptions, right?
	So the government, of course, says, don't steal, and then they tax you, right?
	Right, yeah.
	The religion says, God speaks to everyone, and then they say, but you have to pay me to get the truth.
	Right.
	And you could go on and on with this sort of stuff, right?
	Yeah, it's so hard for people to get that through their heads because they don't know logic.
	It's not that...
	They don't recognize the discrepancy there.
	Well, no, no, no, no.
	No, they do.
	They do.
	And I'm sorry to be annoying, but empirically, we know that they do because there are punishments.
	Right?
	If nobody knew where my treasure was buried...
	And nobody was ever going to know where my treasure was buried.
	I wouldn't need to guard it, right?
	Right.
	Okay.
	But if everyone knows where my treasure is buried, then I've got to be pretty aggressive in making sure that people don't go find my treasure, right?
	I've got to put up fences.
	I've got to scare people away.
	I've got to put up landmines and I've got to sit on my porch with a shotgun or whatever it is, right?
	Because all these people are going to come swarming in trying to steal my treasure.
	Okay.
	We know that people don't believe the state because you get attacked for pointing out what the state is.
	So we know that they don't.
	We know that they don't believe religion because there's hell.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	You don't need to pour flaming hot satanic coals down everyone's throat if you've got the truth.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	So whenever there's a hysterical overreaction, that covers a lie.
	Right?
	And the more profitable the lie for the liar, and the more false the lie, which is usually one and the same thing, the more profitable the lie, the more horrendous the punishment is for questioning it, right?
	Unfortunately, this is just basic human livestock management 101, which is the big lie requires the bigger punishment.
	And so the big lie of religion requires unbelievable punishments, and the big lie of the state requires unbelievable punishments.
	I mean, from death penalties to imprisonment to social ostracism, which is a big punishment for, of course, most people.
	In other words, if you point out that the state is coercion, then you will be turned on by your fellow livestock and stuff we've talked about before.
	But nobody believes it, which is why you need the punishment.
	Nobody believes religion, which is why you need all these punishments and why you need all the social ostracism.
	The other thing, too, is that the worse the lie, the more early you need to inculcate people in it.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	So religion is more of a lie than the state, because at least the state is populated by people and doesn't claim to be, you know, the state doesn't claim to have created the universe, right?
	And the state doesn't claim that it's a virtue of the world, and the state doesn't claim to be eternal and omniscient, and right?
	So all of this nonsense.
	I mean, the modern state, I mean.
	And so the modern state is newer than the religion and therefore religion is more false.
	And that's why religion needs to get children earlier than the state.
	The state doesn't mind waiting until the kids are four or five or six years old to get them.
	But religion's got to baptize them at birth, right?
	It's got to get them right away because otherwise it's just going to be nonsense.
	And of course I've been quite curious.
	To listen to my daughter as she's now four, of course, as she grows up and she starts chatting about various things.
	And she's in the phase now where she's trying to figure out why things are the way they are.
	Right?
	So if something is there, you know, if there's an ambulance off to the side of the road, then she'd say, oh, well, maybe this happened or maybe somebody bumped or maybe somebody got diabetes or whatever it is, right?
	So she's trying to figure out the stuff.
	And, you know, I'm still waiting for...
	Maybe an invisible sky daddy made it happen with his ghostly eternal infinite finger.
	I'm still waiting.
	I haven't obviously told her any of this.
	Yeah, I mean, but if it does, like, if with no exposure she wakes up and says, you know, daddy, I had a dream about a man who turned water into wine, walked on water, he said his name was Jesus, and blah-de-blah-de-blah, I'd be like, whoa.
	Whoa!
	Strike one for the opposite team.
	So, yeah, plus one for the opposite team.
	I mean, it wouldn't be conclusive because she could have seen it on TV or heard it from someone.
	Or if she said it about, you know, she said something in real detail about some infinite ghostly being that visited her and her dreams and it turned out to be like an exact word-for-word Wikipedia entry for one of the 6,000 Norse gods or Hindu gods or something like that, I'd be like, whoa, strike one for an unknown team.
	I didn't know about that.
	So anyway, just sort of pointing out that nobody does believe any of this stuff, which is why they have to be so attacked if they question it.
	And stepping around the exceptions to the universals without ever pointing out that there are exceptions to the universals is really important.
	And don't you get if you start to bring this stuff up, what is your emotional state if you contemplate bringing this stuff up with your professors?
	Oh, dude, I'm scared out of my wits.
	Right.
	Yeah, and you should be.
	I remember getting mocked down for a paper once, which I wrote on the Crimean War, and the professor was really harsh, and I was going to ask him, what is the purpose of history?
	He was a history teacher, history professor.
	I was going to ask him, what is the purpose of history for you?
	That's an important question, right?
	Because I thought it was a fairly good book, and he didn't like it, and so it's like, okay, well, what is it that I'm studying and why?
	If I'm not meeting your goals, what are the goals?
	Why should we study history?
	What is the purpose of history?
	What value does it bring to society?
	And so on, right?
	Because I was using the Crimean War as an argument for the role of the state in Provoking war.
	And to me, if you can prove that in a variety of circumstances, then people will look at that and say, ah, okay, well, so the state provokes war often, and therefore we can use that to solve the problem of war in the future.
	This is back long before I really got into the childhood stuff.
	But anyway, so he didn't like that because, you know, he said your inferences are too broad.
	It's like, well, that's not a argument.
	You're just using the word too.
	You know, it's like someone says, that's an overreaction.
	It's like, well, you haven't proved anything.
	You just put the word over in front of reaction and you think you've proven something.
	Yeah.
	And this is too abstract.
	Well, you haven't made a case.
	You've just taken the word abstract and you've put the word too in front of it.
	Exactly.
	Or when people say unprofessional, well, you just put the word professional, you put the word un in it, you haven't actually made an argument.
	So asking people for the content of their adjectives is really tricky.
	So anyway, I just really wanted to point that out.
	The emotion that you feel, and it should be, like if somebody said to me, what's the purpose of philosophy?
	If somebody said to me, what is the value of philosophy?
	Or if somebody said to me, what is the methodology of philosophy?
	I'd jump for joy at those questions.
	You know, it's fantastic.
	Great series of questions.
	Because those questions are philosophy.
	I mean, yay!
	You know, let's talk, let's spend it.
	Or weeks and months talking about that, because that's really important.
	But if you ask for universal integrations from the majority of academics and intellectuals, what do you get?
	You get this violent response or this sarcastic kind of pretentious thing going on.
	One of the two.
	I mean, it's either rage or it's, why are you asking this question?
	What are you, an idiot?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, you don't answer the question, and by the time you ask it, you're supposed to have known it.
	That's the way they get to bypass the question at all.
	Like, what is the purpose of this?
	Yeah.
	Cool.
	All right.
	So, just to point out, you've got to step through the rings to get to the goal, right?
	I mean, if this is required for your...
	For your career path, then I would say, unfortunately, although it's probably from what I've heard from engineers, a lot of what they study isn't that helpful.
	A lot of it is, of course, offloaded to computers.
	Anyway, so I don't know that there's any huge way to solve it.
	I'm sorry that you have to do all of this stupid-ass memorization.
	I think it's ridiculous.
	Yeah.
	It's using the – it's like trying to play piano with a mop.
	It's not what it's for.
	It's good for you.
	You don't want to clean the floor with your fingers and you don't want to play piano with a mop.
	But unfortunately, that's the way we just – everything's turned against its intended purpose.
	But you can sort of muddle through and struggle through.
	But I don't know that – And because I'm no expert in your field at all, and probably not even remotely competent, somebody mentioned Khan, which I, of course, threatened, or was in my own mind, to scream out in a truly Kirk-ish manner.
	But you could try the Khan Academy, but I think if you...
	I find these very helpful, to be honest.
	I mean, I really do.
	But I think you see it for what it is.
	That it's a system that has evolved.
	to teach people how to think in ways that are useful to the state and scare them away from thinking in ways that are not useful to the state or religion or culture or nationalism or right so in order for us to be valuable to the surf masters we have to think in abstractions but if we think consistently in abstractions we recognize that we really shouldn't be surfs and they shouldn't be masters so it's an incredibly complex dance if they say thinking is terrible Reason is useless.
	Abstractions are worthless.
	Then we're not even fit to dig ditches for them.
	They want us to be engineers to build the bridges for them.
	They want us to be doctors to cure their illnesses.
	They want us to be entrepreneurs to provide their shiny goodies.
	So they want us to think in these abstractions and to be motivated.
	But at the same time, if we go too far in the abstractions, in other words, if we become philosophers, then we say, well, shit.
	You know, what you all do is immoral and there's no such thing as a state and religion is not true and priests are con men and, you know, then we do all that and then the whole thing comes crashing down.
	So it's a really delicate, highly evolved dance with our brains to stimulate stuff that is useful to them and to scare and repress stuff that is dangerous to them.
	And once you see it for what it is, it's...
	I wouldn't say it's quite entertaining because, of course, there's a lot of human brain carnage in the mix.
	But it becomes less creepy, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Well, I know you've got other people to get to.
	So, yeah.
	But thanks a lot.
	I really appreciate it.
	Yeah, I know you had more questions, so we don't have more time, but feel free to call in any time.
	Yeah, I think I will.
	And again, I just want to reiterate how awesome it is of what you're doing and how thankful I am that you are doing what you're doing and whatnot.
	That was the overarching purpose for me calling in today.
	I just wanted to make sure you knew that there are people out here like me that really appreciate what's going on here.
	So, thanks.
	Alright.
	Okay, next up today we have Vedran.
	I apologize.
	It is show policy and two-thirds of the show on the first caller, so I'm afraid we're going to have to have about 28 minutes of silence, if that's okay.
	Sorry, just go ahead.
	Good morning, Steph.
	Good morning.
	How are you doing, my friend?
	Good.
	About two weeks ago, I became a father.
	Congratulations!
	How exciting!
	Good for you!
	Thank you very much.
	Your part of becoming a father was by far the most enjoyable compared to your wife.
	So I have a two-part question about parenting.
	The first part is, so if you were making a soup of wonderful parenting, what are some of the ingredients that you would put in that soup?
	And the second part of that question is how important is it to define definitions for your kid growing up?
	Like what is a relationship?
	What is love?
	What is religion?
	Or is that something that you talk about as you, I guess, progress in your parenting or your day-to-day interactions with the kid?
	It's a great question.
	Let me start with the second one, right?
	So, I think abstractions are really important to talk about when they begin to have an impact on the child.
	So, I mean, I haven't taught my daughter about religion because religion has no impact on her existence.
	I haven't taught my daughter about the state.
	I mean, we occasionally will talk about the bossy ones or who's in charge or kind of thing.
	And she, you know, wants to know why some cars have the lights on them.
	And I said, it's because they're disco cars, can't you tell by the costume?
	Anyway, so, but we...
	When she starts to experience the impact of an abstraction, then I think it's important to explain.
	I don't think it's hugely important to explain ahead of time because kids are empirical, right?
	So saying that there's, you know, such a thing as religion is, you know, it's sort of like learning Spanish if you are never going to go speak Spanish.
	It's sort of, okay, well...
	But once someone is speaking Spanish, then you can say, oh, that's Spanish, and here's what I mean.
	So I think wait till it impacts.
	So for instance...
	Yesterday I was having a conversation with Isabella about frustration, right?
	Because she's trying to learn how to do things and she gets frustrated and she doesn't want to do it, right?
	And so, let's give you a very brief synopsis of the conversation, but it went something like this.
	So I was saying, so frustration is a really helpful emotion, but it can also not be your friend, right?
	And so I said, so if I said, Isabella, you have to jump to the top of that tree, what would you say?
	She'd say, I can't do it.
	I say, yes, exactly.
	So frustration is helpful when it tells you that you can't do something.
	I gave her a couple more examples and so on.
	And then I said, ah, but sometimes frustration tells you you can't do something when you can do something.
	And we went through some examples of that.
	And I said, so frustration is really good because it helps you not waste time and energy Trying to do stuff that you can't do.
	That's good.
	Then it's a useful thing.
	But if it's stopping you from doing things you could do, then it's not that helpful.
	And so I said, when I encourage you to do something, it's because I think you can do it.
	And like I said, I've never encouraged you to jump to the top of a tree or go dance on the moon or anything, because you can't do those things, and neither can I. But there's things I think you can do that If you listen to me and we talk through your frustration, you can do those things.
	And so she was experiencing frustration in her life, and it was keeping her from doing things.
	And, of course, managing frustration is an essential aspect to success in life.
	Because lots of things we try to do that are hard but possible are very frustrating.
	And I pointed out, you know, we've played a couple of video games together, and I pointed out how sometimes we get stuck, but we just keep doing it, and then we get to Keep going.
	And I also pointed out one video game that quite rapidly became completely impossible, at least for me, and I said, well, let's play something else because I can't even imagine how I could do this part.
	Anyway, so...
	So talking about frustration was really helpful.
	I mean, it wouldn't have done her much good to talk about frustration before she had experienced it as something she could identify.
	But once she can identify it, then helping her to recognize both the values and the dangers of frustration was really important, right?
	Because when you work at something you're frustrated at, you are deferring gratification.
	And the deferring of gratification is one of the single biggest Things that you could learn to have a successful life.
	To work hard, to defer gratification and so on.
	So I think that you can explain abstractions in a way that makes sense to them.
	And it really worked, right?
	So later that day, we were playing on the Xbox and she was trying to do something and she was just about to throw down the controller and said, I can't do it!
	And I said, I think you can.
	So have a deep breath.
	Remember we talked about frustration.
	And you can trust me because I've never told you to do something you can't do.
	So try it again, but more slowly.
	And it's okay if it takes a few tries.
	And literally, she picked up the controller and did what she wanted to do and did it fine.
	And I said, oh, fantastic.
	And then I avoided the I told you so stuff because that's always annoying too.
	But I said, it's good.
	So frustration told you it was going to be hard, and I told you it wasn't going to be impossible, and so you did it.
	Fantastic.
	Good for you.
	And so that's a lesson for her which really takes root, right?
	And the first time, you know, first impressions of ideas really count hugely.
	So I would say, yes, introduce abstractions, but only when the child can process them from some empirical standpoint and provide the utility.
	And, you know, also as particularly with emotions.
	Always point out the positives of those emotions, right?
	So I didn't want to say, well, when you're frustrated, you've just got to push through it and you've just got to keep trying.
	No, no, sometimes when you're frustrated, it's, you know, you're frustrated.
	So always point out the positive aspects of their emotions.
	You know, so for anger, right, point out the positive value of anger and then point out some of the pitfalls or the challenges of anger and all that kind of stuff.
	I just asked her the other day if she'd ever been angry and she couldn't remember a time.
	I couldn't either.
	So is this something that, whatever may come up, is it you wait for the situation to come up and then you talk about it or is there value to talking about it before?
	I didn't find much value in talking about it before, right?
	So if she can't process the concept of frustration, even if she's experienced, so when she's, you know, 18 months old and she's frustrated at something, there's not much point talking about the aspects of frustration.
	I think if she can do something like stacking blocks, then just be patient and show her how overcoming frustration looks, right?
	So you can show them empirically what overcoming frustration looks.
	And then you can, when they're at a place where they can start to conceptualize, Emotions and they can see beyond, like over the hill of the moment into the future, then I think it's worth talking about it with them.
	And so, you know, you introduce the word and you give them a little bit of time to acclimatize to the word and you use the word in its appropriate context.
	And then you talk about how it actually impacts their life, right?
	So I started introducing the word frustration probably about a year ago, and we talked about it a little bit here and there, and first of all, it's just around identifying.
	Oh, you look really frustrated to me.
	Are you feeling frustrated?
	Yes, I'm feeling really frustrated.
	Is it because you think you, I can't do it?
	Now, and then, you know, so you're feeling like you can't do it, and you wanna do it, but you can't do it, and that's really frustrating.
	I feel frustrated when I have that happen to me too, right?
	And so the first thing you want to do, of course, is correctly identify the child's emotions to empathize.
	We all have been there.
	To also mirror her emotions.
	I really want her to understand that what she feels is something that I feel and that I think most people feel as well.
	I don't want her to feel alone in her emotions.
	So sometimes fall, she would say, Daddy, did you fall like that when you were a boy?
	Because she wants to know if where she is is consistent with everyone else's experience.
	And so, of course, I would say, yes, I did, and here's what happened, and so on.
	I got a sliver there, too, and that kind of stuff.
	So I think introducing the word is worthwhile, but I think introducing the process of how to manage an emotional state comes a little later.
	Yeah, that makes sense.
	Let's say, for example...
	Go ahead.
	Let's say my kid is playing in the playground with another kid, and they become friends, I guess, or...
	Whatever you call it at that stage.
	And for whatever reason, it's not working out, let's say.
	Would it be good to talk about what the ingredients of a good interaction are or a good relationship are?
	Is there value to that when that comes up?
	I don't think you'll need to.
	So far, that hasn't been an issue.
	I don't think that you'll need to.
	Because if you have consistently provided good interactions to your child, you won't need to tell them that somebody who does something different is doing something different.
	So, if the TV's on and someone's speaking French, I don't need to tell my daughter, hey, that's not English!
	Because she's like, whoa!
	And we can talk about that.
	Different people have different words for different things or whatever, right?
	And so, I would say that If you treat your child with compassion and empathy and curiosity and all those kinds of good things, then you don't need to point out to her that someone else is not doing that because they will immediately know it.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes.
	That makes sense.
	And like it, of course, right?
	So would it be like, let's say another child does something wrong, let's say.
	So would it be something like...
	Where I reaffirm my kid that maybe they don't have to play with them?
	Or is it just, I guess, let them play it out?
	Can you give me a more concrete scenario?
	Like a child grabs your kid's toys?
	Or let's say it's a little bit physical.
	You mean your child gets pushed?
	Yeah.
	But in a playful way, let's say, for example.
	And would I... I don't think you can get pushed in a playful way.
	I mean, pushing is basically just taking over someone else's physical space and moving them against their will.
	I don't think that can be playful.
	Okay, let's use the example of the toy.
	Let somebody grab the toy.
	Right.
	So would I, like, intervene there?
	Well, there's a couple of ways to deal with that, right?
	So there's one argument which says that you just let your kid process it themselves, be there if they want to ask, but...
	They won't want to play with someone who takes their toys, right?
	Okay.
	So they'll figure it out.
	That's not my particular approach, but some people do argue for that.
	What would be your approach?
	Well, my approach is to be more proactive, right?
	So I don't let my daughter play with kids unless I'm playing with them as well.
	Okay.
	Right?
	I mean, so if we're at a playground...
	I'm not sitting there on my phone while my kid is playing with some kids, right?
	I mean, I'm always in there, right?
	And that's going to change the kid's behavior if the kid is not too nice.
	He's going to be more nice because there's a dad there, right?
	So if we go to a play center, then I'm taking my shoes off and I'm Having all kinds of rebirthing experiences, crawling through the little tubes and stuff, right?
	We go to Chuck E. Cheese, then I'm in there playing with her, you know, the whole time.
	I mean, that's what I do, and obviously that's better for her, right?
	I mean, when she's with friends that I trust, right, so she's got a circle of friends that are great kids, then I don't have to be there because the kids are going to treat her well, and that's all been well-established and so on, right?
	So until you know the kids and feel comfortable leaving your child alone with the children, then you as a dad have to be in there so that they don't just suddenly randomly get pushed.
	And that's never happened to Isabella because I'm always there and I will – I mean probably a couple of times I've seen kids who I don't necessarily think of that positive or great and therefore what I do is I'll steer her away from them.
	I'll say let's play somewhere else or something like that.
	But of course it's your job as the parent to make sure that your child is safe.
	And until at least they're older, if your child ends up getting pushed, that's on you, right?
	That's your fault.
	Because you need to be in the environment where either the children are not going to push her or, you know, if you don't know the kids, you need to be in there to make sure that doesn't happen.
	But if your kid ends up getting pushed or someone grabs her toys or someone hits her or whatever, that's your job as a parent to make sure that doesn't happen.
	And it's not It's not hard to do it.
	You just have to be really engaged and involved in what the kid is doing.
	And you need to, of course, make sure that you trust your instincts with other people and so on.
	And then you can, of course, let all that stuff go away when she's with kids who are really, really great, right?
	So, of course, I've met some parents through this show.
	And, of course, their kids are fantastic.
	And hi, Sydney.
	Hi, Lauren.
	We love them to death.
	And they're just incredibly great and wonderful and fun.
	And so I have no qualms whatsoever about letting them go off and play together.
	But until then, you need to be right in there.
	So I think, again, like most things, it's really much more prevention than it is cure, if that makes any sense.
	So going back to part one, the ingredients.
	So would one of the ingredients be don't worry about definition so much early on, just concentrate on setting a good example and providing a safe environment?
	Yeah, I think so.
	I think so.
	I mean, your child is going to learn concepts First and foremost, through your actions.
	So children are focused on people before they're focused on the world.
	And I mean, this is fairly well studied, right?
	Babies will look at faces before they'll look at even shiny things or things with lights or whatever.
	So children have to, I mean, we've evolved to survive within the tribe, which means that the children have to study the people before they study stuff.
	And...
	So your child's relationship with just about everything and everyone including himself or herself is going to be defined and hardwired pretty much into their brains by your actions and your behavior towards them when they're very little.
	And so if you spend the time and you get engaged in the first I don't know.
	I don't know what the exact time frame is.
	I know that it's beginning to diminish now a little bit that my daughter's four.
	I know that's not always that easy for everyone.
	But if you get really involved and you're very consistent and so on, then there's a lot you won't have to teach them if you're consistent.
	And there's a lot you'll have to teach them that they probably won't learn if you're not consistent because, you know, the children are natural empiricists.
	But they're empiricists of people more so than they are empiricists of stuff.
	So if you're in there and you're consistent and you're proactive and you're positive, I think that's That's really important.
	Noticing their emotional states and responding to those emotional states is very important so they get a sense that who they are affects other people and that other people know who they are because that's intimacy, right?
	It's being known.
	So, you know, if my daughter looks sad, I'll say, oh, you're sad?
	You look sad to me.
	And then she might laugh and say, no, no, I'm just playing or whatever, right?
	But it's really important to reflect back their emotions so that You understand and to ask them questions and all that kind of stuff.
	So, yeah, but just recognize that, you know, when you're around adults, you're kind of painting on clouds, you know, like, I mean, so much of who they are is, or I guess you could say you're trying to sculpt hardened rock.
	It doesn't really do much.
	You might chip a nail or a rock or whatever.
	But when you're with kids, I mean, they're very malleable.
	They're incredibly impressionable.
	We know this because, you know, Muslim kids grow up Muslim and Catholic kids grow up Catholic and so on.
	And so I think being respectful of the impressions that you make on children and how impressionable they are and to be aware that even one time raised voice, even one time getting inappropriately angry at a child, it's like a handprint into mud that hardens almost immediately.
	It is extremely Negative.
	And very hard to recover from.
	I don't know about impossible, but certainly very hard.
	And I think that really helps.
	And of course, remember the helplessness of the child.
	And remember that, you know, she ain't there by choice.
	He ain't there by choice.
	And can't go anywhere.
	I mean, I know, so if I have some errands to run, and my wife's busy, then, well, she has to come with me on my errands.
	I mean, she probably doesn't want to do that.
	I mean, if we try and make it fun or whatever.
	But I will always say...
	Thank you for coming on the errands.
	And I will always say, I know it wasn't as much fun as some other things.
	We'll try and make it fun.
	But we do have to go get some groceries, or we have to go and do X, Y, Z, or to go put some money in the bank, whatever it is going on.
	And to recognize that she's not there by choice, right?
	So, if we go out for dinner, right?
	I mean, I just never say, well, I'm just going out for dinner.
	It's like, I'm always appreciative of the fact that she's coming out to dinner with me.
	You know, I mean, it's just...
	The really, really important thing is just never take the child's inability to choose for granted.
	They are there.
	They can't go anywhere.
	They didn't choose to be there.
	They didn't choose you as your dad.
	And so you've got to win them over.
	You know, people just take it for granted.
	Well, my kid's here, and therefore, you know, I can just take that relationship for granted.
	They can't go anywhere.
	But that's the exact opposite of what is true.
	What is true is, yes, they can't go anywhere, and therefore you need to woo them, so to speak, Much more than you would anyone else, right?
	And you think of the amount of energy you put into wooing your wife or your partner or whatever.
	I mean, at least you should.
	And then you say, oh, well, we're married, so I don't have to woo her anymore.
	No, no, no, no.
	Now you're married, you've got to woo her even more and make her all the more thankful to be married to you every day because the stakes are much higher if she gets unhappy.
	Now, if after three dates she doesn't want to go out with you anymore, it's a little sad, but whatever, right?
	But if you've got two kids and your lives are all wound in together and then she suddenly decides she doesn't want to be with you anymore, whoa!
	Right?
	So there is a natural inertia and a tendency to start to take things for granted when they're no longer perceived to be voluntary.
	This is what's so dangerous about the state, of course.
	But really, you know, avoid that like the plague.
	Avoid that like the plague.
	The more, quote, involuntary the relationship is, the higher your standards need to be to make that person enjoy the relationship.
	And I think that's just something to remember as well.
	Thank you very much.
	You're very welcome.
	And congratulations.
	A boy or a girl?
	It's a boy.
	Ah, excellent.
	Okay, well, sorry, I should have asked that beforehand to work in the pronouns, but I'm sure it doesn't matter too much in the parenting.
	But congratulations again.
	I hope you have a great time with it.
	And please call.
	On my website, I've got a couple of podcasts on philosophical parenting, particularly dealing with the early years.
	I hope this will be a futility if you choose to listen to them.
	Oh, sorry.
	Just one more thing.
	There was a book.
	You recommended parental effectiveness training to me through an email.
	But there was another book regarding overpraising your kids.
	Oh, it was an article.
	And this is...
	And the article basically said that if you overpraise your children, and particularly if you praise abilities rather than effort, then it can have a negative effect on their efficacy.
	So if you say to your kid, you're just so smart, then they may end up not being very keen on doing things that make them not look smart.
	Because their definition is, well, they're just smart.
	Whereas if you say you worked really hard at that, great.
	Then they're appreciated or they gain an internal respect for themselves for working hard rather than something that's just innate.
	Because if someone says, well, you're just really smart, then if you try something and fail that's intelligence-based, then you feel like you're not meeting the definition.
	You're not measuring up and there's a failure on your part.
	But if you praise a child for the work that he or she does… Then that's probably more positive.
	And I'm going through that phase at the moment.
	I mean, I'm so blown away by everything my daughter can do that I probably am a bit of a praise fetishist.
	Because I truly, I'm being honest with her.
	It is incredible that we can have conversations about the costs and pitfalls of frustration when she just turned four.
	I mean, that is an incredible thing to me.
	It is incredible that she can figure out logic puzzles and learn stuff that I don't know how to do on the iPad and stuff.
	I mean, that is incredible to me.
	So I don't want to not be honest, but the other thing too is that my wonderment and amazement and passion for her abilities, I don't want her to feel that somehow she just has these innate abilities that are just amazing, because I think that may blunt her capacity or desire to work, which is why we've also been talking about frustration.
	Okay, great.
	Thank you very much.
	You're very welcome.
	Alright, next up today we have Anthony.
	Alright, let's continue.
	Anthony, my friend.
	Hello, how are you?
	I'm great, thanks.
	I was finding what you were talking about regarding frustration really interesting because I teach piano in Glasgow and I earn the children's trust By not forcing them to do anything they don't want to do.
	I pick out the kind of pieces that I think they'll like, I'll show them them, and they can choose what to learn and what not to learn.
	Or they can bring in things that they want to learn.
	So when I find that I'm in a situation where I'd like them to try something out, and I think their motive For not wanting to do it as they're scared, they think it's too hard or something like that.
	I can say, look, you know, do you just want to try it out for 10 minutes?
	And if you still don't want to play this piece, we'll move on to something else.
	And because I build up the trust by not sort of forcing anything on them, they never say no.
	They know that I've got their interests at heart.
	So I liked hearing your example of explaining that sometimes frustration is an indication that we can't do something and at other times it's maybe just fear, fearfulness.
	Right.
	I appreciate that.
	Yeah, no, and I think that's true, but that is a long process, right, to build up trust, right?
	So, you know, for instance, getting your kids to try new food.
	It's tough, you know.
	They already have food they like, but I want to expand my daughter's horizon, so getting her to try new music.
	I'm always trying to introduce you.
	I mean, music is such an incredible part of my life, and I obviously want to share that joy if she's receptive, and she seems to be.
	So, of course, she wants to hear the same song again, right?
	So she loves music.
	Bad Bad Leroy Brown by Queen.
	She Loves Rich Girl by Hall& Oates and some other songs.
	Give a Little Bit by Supertramp.
	Some songs that I've introduced her to.
	And so I picked up her blues CD. I want to get her into some blues and stuff.
	And she's like, I don't want to hear it.
	I want to hear the other song.
	I'm like, but every song that you love, you had to hear for the first time once.
	Right?
	So otherwise, we never would have heard any music.
	Or B, we'd have only ever heard one song.
	And so every song that you like.
	So, you know, it's a whole thing.
	Listen to it for a minute.
	If you don't like it, we won't play it again.
	For a while.
	And so just getting them to try new things, nice foods and all that kind of stuff is a challenge.
	You just have to try and make the case and you have to accept the notes if that's what it is.
	Yeah, I had one child who really doesn't like reading music, so once I introduced her to a piece and said that I could just teach her by ear, and I said, do you know why I've chosen, you know, do you know why I chose this piece to show you?
	And she was like, because I don't like reading music, and she was nine, so they do get it if you've got their interests at heart, I think.
	Right.
	And why do you think that approach?
	I mean, because that's not obviously...
	Sorry, people said it's right.
	Bring back that Leroy Brown.
	Sorry, the Jim Croce song is bad, bad Leroy Brown.
	Bring back that Leroy Brown as a Queen song.
	But why do you think...
	First, it's something you came into your tutoring with.
	Well, you know, when I was about 16, 17, I read the book Summerhill by A.S. Neal.
	Are you aware of that?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	An alternate of schooling, isn't it?
	Is that right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And that kind of launched me into being really interested in parenting, the same way as you are.
	And then I read How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk.
	By Adele Faber and Elaine Maslisch.
	And that was just a guidebook to how my mum did not talk to me growing up.
	So it was really therapeutic to read it because I was like, okay, so I wasn't insane for not enjoying that experience, you know.
	So that's how I got into it.
	So...
	And then, obviously, coming up with FDR, finding out about FDR, our views on how to change the world were very similar in that respect, although I was very much a person, a liberal, very much on the left of politics when I first started listening, or less so, because I'd been listening to other libertarian speakers on YouTube, so...
	But I basically believe the foundation of changing society was changing child rearing, just like you did when I was introduced to FDR. So that made us congruent and it made it easier to get into your way of thinking.
	It struck me, I had an interview with a parent-affection training, and I did some research and came across somebody who had an accent very similar to yours, if not the same.
	Have you done YouTube videos on How to empathize with children?
	Yes, yes.
	I'm amazed you saw that.
	I thought it was wonderful.
	So how cool is that?
	Give me the link.
	I'll put it on the Facebook page.
	I'd like to drive some more traffic if I can to that video.
	I thought it was really, really nice.
	Actually, it wasn't even the topic that I needed, but I just listened to it because it was like, whoa, this dude has some peace, calm, and wisdom.
	So it's really nice to chat with you.
	How wonderful.
	Oh, thank you.
	I can't tell you how touched I am that you listened to that.
	I'd like to, obviously, improve the audio of the quality of the files, but the fact that you listened to it and you liked it, that really means a lot.
	Thank you.
	Good.
	Well, I'm glad.
	And, you know, keep on doing it.
	You never know who's going to listen and who's going to change based on it.
	So that's very cool.
	Yeah.
	I'm just finishing up at uni, then I want to make more of these podcasts, you know, about dealing with no's, and I might sample some of your video on tantrums and add a bit to it, if you don't mind, and things like that.
	Yeah, it's too bad you're not in uni.
	I mean, I'd like to get her into music, but I'm always a little concerned about the teachers and the sort of sergeant major music teacher, who tends to be a bit more, you know, You have to practice and if you don't practice, you won't learn it.
	Yeah, totally.
	I mean, the children, they adore me and their parents adore me because of that.
	It's really quite amazing.
	I volunteered for a while in primary school as well.
	It was the same...
	Most of the teachers were really authoritarian, but the difficult kids were not difficult with me.
	They got the fact that I wasn't trying to cause trouble for them.
	They could sense that I was on their side.
	I've got an example, if you wouldn't mind me telling you.
	I might lead into the question I originally phoned for.
	So the teacher...
	She took the kids outside to learn about lines of symmetry and she was doing the whole control the fun thing, you know, but if there's one word out of you guys, you know, we'll all come back in and you have to be in your best behaviour.
	So, okay, she gave each child a piece of chalk and put them in pairs and said, one of you draw half a shape, the other one complete the shape and then you can draw on the lines of symmetry.
	Good exercise.
	Some of the children just decided to write out their names.
	Just a couple of them.
	And, man, did she ball at them.
	I mean, she was like, is your name symmetrical?
	Oh, I took the shock off them.
	So as soon as I saw this, I just had an instinct and I kind of swooped in and I just went up to one of them and was like, is your name, sorry, I said, what letters in your name are symmetrical?
	And he just looked up at me quizzically for a moment and then pointed at the capital A. I was like, okay, good.
	You can draw a line of symmetry through the A. And then went through his name on O and N, whatever letters were symmetrical.
	He put the lines through it.
	Now, the teacher saw that, and to her credit, she didn't seem terribly challenged by it.
	She was just...
	You know, she didn't seem like she felt threatened by me doing that.
	She seemed quite impressed.
	I really won those kids' respect that day.
	One of them They used to high-five me in the corridors after that, and one sat on either side of me at assembly.
	One of each of these two suits sat on either side of me.
	And they were kids that were considered sometimes to be a bit difficult.
	I didn't think they were difficult.
	I thought they needed a different form of education because they weren't the kind of children that could cope with being ordered around all the time.
	Right, right.
	Yeah, I think that one of the formative experiences that I had was for a couple of years working in a daycare as a teacher's assistant or a co-teacher or whatever.
	Probably a teacher's assistant is the right thing.
	I'm still a teenager.
	And this was a really rough neighborhood with rough, tough kids from broken homes, and they were a handful to say the least.
	But I was a big fan of Tolkien.
	I mean, I guess I still am.
	So I was telling them the story of the Silmarillion.
	I don't know.
	I just started telling the story one day as we were drawing pictures.
	And they really wanted to know more.
	And they really wanted to know the whole story.
	And every day I would go.
	I sort of arranged school when I was 15 when I started there.
	And I worked there for a couple of years.
	And I arranged with the school to leave 15 minutes early every day.
	Because I had to get there by 3.30.
	And it was two bus rides away.
	And...
	Every day, they'd say, like, tell us more of the story.
	We'd sit down and I would tell them the story a little bit more each day.
	And they were wrapped with attention.
	I mean, and these were kids who I'm sure now, maybe even back then, would be ADHD or, you know, they had trouble focusing.
	But to me, kids, they can do just about anything.
	And the challenge, of course, is what people do is they say, well, I'm not interested in my kids or I'm not interested to the kids.
	Therefore, there's something wrong with the children.
	Yeah, that's the opposite of what the free market is, right?
	I mean, if you do some product that nobody buys, do you then get to say, well, what we need to do, you see, is we need to drug our customers so that they like our product.
	I mean, that would be holy.
	If any company even suggested that, and that got out, I mean, there would be lawsuits, there would be criminal charges, there would be horror, stock sell-offs, ostracism, there would be boycotts.
	I mean, they don't like our product, and so let's drug them so they like our product.
	I mean, that's just horrendous.
	But of course, this is why...
	Or public school, right?
	They're not engaged.
	I love your example.
	If children could walk out of classes if they weren't engaged, fingers would be pointed at the teachers that were poor, because it's like, why is your history class empty?
	Are you really that boring?
	History, seriously?
	Everyone likes a good story.
	Yeah, I mean, my daughter is fascinated by history, but it has to be, you know, because the question I had when you were telling your story about symmetry is, Why are we learning symmetry?
	I resolute teach my daughter anything that does not have some utility in her life at the moment, unless it's just like a fun story or whatever, right?
	Like, we're reading through The Hobbit, and she loves it, and half the games we play are smog and the great goblin and all this kind of stuff.
	Of course, I'm editing out the gory bits as I read, but, you know, they chase the goblins away with their swords.
	They don't skewer them like shish kebabs, but...
	It's actually a fun story.
	Even that has practical utility in our life because we then have a world in which to play act, right?
	So like yesterday we built this...
	Yeah, that sounds fantastic.
	So we were, you know, how do we build the fort?
	How should we make it strong so that Smaug can't come in?
	And she also tries to figure out ways to make mean characters nice, right?
	Because the conversations about why is Smaug mean?
	Why is the great goblin not nice?
	Why is Hopper from A Bug's Life not nice?
	And we have to ask those questions because it's really important.
	But that has very practical value to her life.
	Because, of course...
	Smog is so mean because he's got all those teeth and he can't smile.
	Well, no, but see, that's not causal, right?
	Because then she'll meet her big teeth and she'll make that inference and then I'll have to say...
	Well, no, right?
	So she'll meet, I don't know, some creature that has a lot of teeth that is nice, and then I'll have to change that, and so I'll have given her a rule that I can't sustain.
	Oh, right, yeah.
	That was poor entailment on my part.
	Yeah, no, it's fine.
	I mean, it's a fun story, but I always try to give her stuff that, right, so I do say, well, dragons are like dinosaurs, and dinosaurs...
	A lot of them will lay their eggs and then just wander off.
	And the kids just survive on their own.
	Or the kids have to run away because the mommy and daddy will eat the children.
	I mean, because that's, you know, dinosaurs.
	The medulla oblongata.
	I'm sorry?
	The medulla oblongata is bigger in reptiles?
	Is that it?
	Yeah, sorry.
	I know that's a part of the brain, but I'm afraid you stepped a little bit.
	But what I can say is that You know, Smorg probably grew up.
	His mommy and daddy left him.
	He had to fight to survive on his own.
	His brothers and sisters were stealing food from him, and they weren't helping him, and so nobody's really helped him.
	So he's just kind of wanted to just take what he wants, and he doesn't really know much about how to help and how to be helped.
	So everything for him is like, I win and you lose, right?
	We've talked a lot about win-lose negotiations, because we always try to find win-win ones.
	And then, of course, she's fascinated with, well, how could we change Smorg to be nicer?
	And I said, well, that's tough.
	You know, some people you can change to be nicer.
	But I think some people, it's not really possible.
	In fact, it can be kind of dangerous to try.
	So I said, you know, if you're walking in the jungle and there's a lion, you don't just sort of offer him a piece of broccoli and think you're going to save yourself, right?
	What would he do?
	He'd eat me!
	Yes, that's right.
	If the person has really changed and doesn't really want to be nice, then it's dangerous to try.
	But if the person wants to try and be nice, then it may be worth it.
	I'm just still blown away by the conversation I can have with someone who's four.
	Yeah, I am blown away by it as well.
	That was a lovely story.
	Thank you for sharing it with me.
	Oh, you're welcome.
	The original thought I had to phone up about was about light bulbs.
	Why are people so fucking crazy when it comes to light bulbs?
	This could be your parents or your roommate.
	You left the light on.
	If I see a light on, I turn it off.
	And if you say to them, well, you know, I'll tell you what...
	Instead of telling me when the light switch is left on, why don't you just flip the switch and I'll leave a jar of pound coins and every time I leave a light bulb on, you can just take a pound coin and not bother me with it.
	It's like, no, no, it's not about the money.
	It's not about the money.
	Okay, I'll do that, but I'll still tell you.
	It's like, well, what is it about?
	It's about the environment.
	Oh, really?
	Well, you know, I'm a vegetarian.
	You know how much energy goes into buying that burger?
	That's like enough energy to run the lights for like weeks.
	So I don't think that me leaving the light on is a really big thing when it comes to Saving energy and they'll just say, well, you know, it's just common courtesy.
	It's also common courtesy not to bitch at someone for such a trivial thing as leaving a light switch on.
	And no matter what argument you give, it really only comes down to them wanting to admonish you.
	Right.
	Is that not true?
	Am I wrong?
	Yeah, I hear you.
	Have you ever read A Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill?
	No.
	Should I? I think everyone should read it.
	I mean, it's an incredible play.
	I mean, the man was just a stone genius.
	Of course, he was the son of a famous stage actor and so on.
	So he knew the theme.
	And the reason I'm bringing this up is...
	I don't think this spoils anything for anyone, so if you're going to read it, you don't want any spoilers, just switch past the next few seconds.
	The father's a drunk, and this is all fairly revealed early on.
	The mother's a morphine addict, and the father's a drunk, and this was completely autobiographical on the part of the writer.
	In fact, he wrote this play.
	He said it was never going It would be produced until at least 10 years after his death.
	So he'd written one of the most incredible plays of the 20th century.
	He never even saw it performed, and he would not allow it to be performed until at least 10 years after he was dead.
	Interestingly enough, the playwright gave his character, the character who was based on him, the name of a child who died in the family.
	This was, again, just what an agonizing family this was to grow up in.
	There's an argument about the light bulb.
	And, you know, the father is drunk and is yelling at the kid about his son, who's an adult at this point, is yelling at his son about the goddamn light.
	And the son says to the father, look, I've shown you the math.
	It costs pennies for that light to be on.
	It's nothing.
	But the dad won't let it go.
	And, I mean, clearly, if the father's a drunk and he's married to a morphine addict who's raving and crazy, The light bulb clearly is not the issue, right?
	It's not the big issue for the family to be talking about.
	Maybe the drunkenness, the dead boy, and the drug-addicted mother would be something to talk about, but it's a way of not talking about stuff, to focus on inconsequentialities.
	That's the first thing, I think, to recognize.
	The second thing to recognize is that most people feel pretty frustrated in their life, and that's as a result of the culture that we live in.
	And their upbringing.
	And it's also partly as a result of their own choices.
	And particularly people who, as they start to get into the, I don't know how old you are, but particularly as people start to get into their late 20s and early 30s, there's a phase where, you know, the people start to panic a little bit.
	Like, okay, if I'm not going to do it now, whatever it is I'm going to do, when the hell am I going to do it?
	Right?
	I mean, so sometimes, even now, I'll sit and think as I'm 46, I have to be Actors or singers or whatever it is.
	And I'm like, oh man, you know, they really took...
	But if I was working in some dead-end job, I'd be like, well, shit, that's never going to happen to me now.
	I mean, when I was younger, I went to the most prestigious theater school in Canada, and I was thinking of being an actor, a playwright.
	And of course, if I was in my 40s now, I'd be like, well, it's not really likely to happen now.
	I mean, I guess, you know, it's Grandma Moses and stuff.
	But for the most part, she's in news because she's rare.
	So...
	There are people who get kind of frustrated and they feel like they're not achieving what they want.
	They feel like they're thwarted and they're self-thwarted at this point.
	Because if you feel thwarted by other people, you get angry at them.
	If you feel thwarted by your own unwillingness to take risks, unwillingness to follow your dreams, unwillingness to do something positive and powerful and hopefully good in the world, then you feel humiliated.
	Cowardice is very humiliating.
	And so what happens is when people feel humiliated, they will either try to deal with that and the humiliation will say, listen, I'm not pursuing my dreams.
	I'm not doing what I want.
	And so I'm going to start doing that.
	I'm going to write that play.
	I'm going to write that song.
	I'm going to pick up that guitar.
	I'm going to ask that girl out.
	I'm going to quit my dead-end job.
	I'm going to go back to school.
	Whatever it takes to get your life to where you want it to be, then you'll take those actions.
	But a lot of people won't take that.
	What they'll do is they'll feel humiliated and out of control because cowardice is a lack of control.
	It's like closing your eyes when you're driving.
	We're always driving.
	We either drive with our eyes open or closed.
	And if you're closed, it's out of control.
	Then they will attempt to exert control over other people in a way of offsetting their own lack of control.
	They'll attempt to try and get a sense of regaining control By putting someone else's down.
	It's called leveling, right?
	So I feel humiliated and I can't abide that feeling of humiliation, so I'm going to go humiliate someone else.
	And the way they do that is that they hook into some meme that somebody else accepts.
	Right?
	So, I mean, I had a girlfriend once who consistently complained that I was messy.
	And I'm really not a very messy person.
	I really quite like being able to find things.
	I generally tidy up after myself.
	I'm pretty tidy.
	But I accepted this idea that I was messy, and then that just became something she could crab at me about, and I would accept it.
	And the ironic thing is that visiting her years later for unrelated reasons, her place is complete pigsty.
	It's just, wow, what an insight that was.
	But if people can get you to believe something that you will submit to them about, it's bad to leave the lights on.
	Well, if you believe that, and you believe that it's about that, I'm not saying you do, of course you don't, right?
	But then they can regain a sense of control or power by humiliating you.
	I mean, it's a pretty pathetic way for them to attempt to avoid their own failures in life, and it's a desperate problem because it means that they're not actually out there getting the life that they want.
	But, I don't know.
	I mean, I found it sort of useful to...
	I had a conversation with a professor at a social event some time back where he was crabbing about global warming and stuff.
	And I said, well, you know, you can kind of make it a tough living, but you can make a living as a podcaster.
	And the great thing is you never have to drive to work anymore.
	Wouldn't that be really great for the environment, right?
	So you should, you know, quit your job as a professor and you should pass so that you don't have a negative impact.
	Practice what you preach.
	Yeah, I mean, and so that would be really doing something.
	And of course, I think you'll actually reach a lot more people.
	And you've got 50 people in your classes, but you can reach tens or hundreds of thousands or millions of people over the internet.
	So, you know, you can make a living.
	You're better for the environment.
	You're reaching more people.
	So you should do that.
	And, I mean, I was being a bit facetious, of course, because, I mean, I knew that it's not about the environment.
	It's not about the environment.
	It's just about having control and people about something and also creating the sense of impending doom that so many people have, right?
	So anyway, I just wanted to point that out.
	Sorry for the long-winded response.
	But you can ask the person, you know, let's just put aside the issue of the lights for the moment.
	Do you have the kind of life that you dreamed of?
	Do you have the kind of life that you wanted as a little kid?
	Do you have a deeply satisfying – and the people who are crabbing, do they?
	Nope.
	Yeah.
	That's what I was wondering.
	How do you respond to that?
	I can't imagine that approach would go down well.
	I think people would get really defensive.
	What's that got to do with anything?
	Well...
	Let me ask you this.
	What do you think it costs you to be around people this petty?
	Sure.
	Yeah, you're quite right.
	I wouldn't.
	I don't have friends of that variety.
	It's funny that you mentioned a play.
	I was actually going to try to start writing one called The Everyday Authoritarian.
	It was just a short About this exact thing, the whole list of rationalizations for the lightbulb thing.
	This, in the context I should probably confess, was born of something that happened, well, a couple of times when I was visiting my parents.
	The first incident, or second incident, really blew up with my dad.
	Who's alright for the main part.
	I get on with him.
	When I tried to pin him down for a reason why I should care so much about the lightbulb, I went through the money thing.
	And then I went through the environment.
	I went through the environment thing.
	Whatever else he could rationalise, he just kept on trying to cut off the conversation.
	Can we just close it?
	Can we just close it?
	No, because if you're asking that I turn lights off after myself, I want to know why I want to do it.
	Well, when you have a house and you have children, then sometimes you'll want them to do things.
	And I was like, no, that's not my approach to dealing with children.
	But, okay, so that was...
	This is going back a few months, but the topic was something I wanted to raise because I thought it was interesting.
	The worst case of this was about four or five Six in the morning, my mother went downstairs to find a light switch still on and woke me up screaming about the fact that there was a light left on downstairs.
	It's like, seriously, seriously, you're going to wake me up at half five in the morning about a fucking light bulb?
	So that's how it all came up.
	And I just thought it would be interesting to find out your views on why people are so perturbed by such petty things.
	I mean, very often I'll go in the kitchen and someone will have left the butter out or something like that, and I just pop it back in the fridge.
	I don't feel the need to criticize anyone about it.
	Yeah, okay, but let me just remind you, at least, this is all by conjecture, right?
	I don't obviously know your parents, but, oh, my friend, do you not know that most people live in a dream?
	Most people live in a delusional fantasy of language.
	And we know this, because they refer to themselves as citizens, they refer to countries, they refer to gods, they refer to culture, I mean, as if these things are real, right?
	They live in...
	A highly manipulative, controlled dream.
	So when you get very excited, so to speak, or get very emotionally invested in something, it's because it is a metaphor for something much more important.
	So if you look at light, I mean, it is a very powerful metaphor.
	It's illumination, it's control of your environment, it's technology, it's modernism, it's freedom, capitalism, and these things weren't developed by governments, right?
	So if your mother, for instance, feels that she doesn't have any power in her life, then she's going to have a metaphorical relationship to power.
	I love what you're saying.
	It's fascinating.
	So if she had a dream where she said, I dreamt that I went downstairs, my son had left the light on, and I got really angry, and Well, I mean, a therapist or, you know, some idiot on the internet would probably say, well, that's very important.
	And it's not about the light, obviously, right?
	It's about something to do with power, with control over your son, with energy, with whatever it is, right?
	I mean, the environmental movement as a whole is completely irrational.
	It is a dream, and it really...
	I mean, most people think that the government is their mommy and daddy, for God's sakes.
	I mean, in religion, it's even more explicit.
	Mother Mary...
	Our father in heaven, right?
	I mean, they call the priest padre.
	They call the priest father.
	Right?
	So people are living in a dream where if you question religion, then you are attacking their father.
	And so when people tell you what they're upset about, for the most part, what they're saying is, I had a dream, and this was my dream, and you analyze it in terms of the dream.
	Right?
	Not in terms of reality, because most people have such an emotional and irrational relationship to reality that it is almost exactly the same as a dream content that you would bring to someone to talk about.
	That is absolutely fascinating to me.
	And if my mum were to say I had this dream where the light was at, my son left the light on downstairs, Or if someone else brought me this dream and I was to analyze them for it and I went nuts.
	I would be able, if my mum had that dream I'd be able to interpret it.
	I'd say because In my life, I have amazing friendships and I learned all the skills over the last couple of years to have those kinds of relationships, reflective, listening, healthy emotional expression, all those things.
	And I got the rewards for it.
	And since I moved out of home 10 years ago, I was always reading self-help books.
	I was always trying to improve my situation.
	And finally I got the results from it.
	I got the payoff in my life.
	My mum...
	And my judgement is that she...
	She avoids taking responsibility for her life.
	She doesn't appreciate what hand she has in creating the situation.
	And she does the three B's of not accepting responsibility, which is blaming, bitching, and berating.
	And so if I was to analyze the dream, I'd say, well, you know, your son keeps on reminding you Because of the fact that he's this life that is on.
	He's reminding you that he's taking responsibility for his life and you don't do that because all my friends really admire what I've achieved in the last couple of years through volition and they compliment me for it.
	The one person who can't admire it is her because if she She says, well, everyone has a way of coping with life, and learning these things is just your way of coping, like a leveler, you know?
	So if she was to compliment me for my volition, it would be an admission that she doesn't take volition.
	That's how I would analyze that dream.
	And she has to wake you up so that she can stay asleep.
	So the light that's on is your self-knowledge, your illumination, your power.
	Your power.
	And she feels like she doesn't have any power, and so she's terrified of wasting it.
	So the father in A Long Day's Journey Into Night is powerless!
	In life.
	He's powerless to alcohol.
	He's powerless to change his wife's drug addiction.
	He's powerless in his career.
	He carries around, because he played Hamlet when he was younger, and this is all based upon Eugene O'Neill's real father.
	He played Hamlet when he was younger and got the most amazing compliments from the most respected actors and critics, and he carried this around in his wallet, and then he got sucked into doing some Count of Monte Cristo bullshit play.
	for like the next 25 years and wasted his talent so he was powerless even to pursue his artistic goals as an actor and so he's got no power in his life and so the idea that somebody is wasting power is terrifying it's terrifying nothing to do this is why the son says I've told you it's it's pennies it doesn't matter you make a fortune doing this play And so it doesn't matter.
	We're spending more energy complaining about this than it's actually used up by the lightbulb in a year.
	But it has nothing to do with the lightbulb.
	It is all power and your mother has to wake you up because otherwise she would have to deal with the feelings Not in a metaphorical way, by projecting, by creating a dream out of reality, but in a real way, by actually saying, it's not about the life, what's it about?
	She has to go wake you up and have a fight with you.
	You can sleep to the reality of her avoidance.
	Yeah, people always come back to that, oh, it's just a matter of principle.
	What's the counter to the argument?
	It's just a matter of principle.
	What the fuck does that mean?
	The principle is to not waste power?
	Yeah, to not leave lights on.
	What the fuck?
	What does that mean?
	Well, it means that they're trying to make it a moral argument, where you're in the room and you're in the room, and the argument against it is simply curiosity.
	Oh, can you tell me more about these principles of yours, about not wasting energy?
	So, I mean, you can go through the math if you want, which may make them open to realize silly ideas and say, okay, well, So the light on costs, you know, I mean, I used to have this little thing about recharging, you know, phones and iPads and so on, because I thought it was a lot of money.
	It turns out it's like pennies a year.
	It's just nonsense.
	So I've given up on all that sort of nonsense.
	But because, you know, once I got the math, it's like, okay, well, forget that.
	But it also may have to do with the fact that I felt a bit deleted running FDR and the recharging became a dream for me, a metaphor for me.
	I mean, that's certainly possible, but you can look at the math and then you can simply point out The energy it takes to fight has to be replenished with food energy, right?
	And the food energy takes a lot of energy to grow and transport and this and that and the other, right?
	So absolutely wasting more energy talking about this light bulb than you are saving energy in turning the light bulb off.
	That's sort of the first thing.
	The second thing, of course, is that if you want someone to change their behavior, is it a principle that screaming and dragging them out of the bed is the best way to do it?
	I mean, if this is such a principled person, and let's say that it is a noble goal to get the light bulbs turned off, and it is so important that it's worth having a fucking family crisis about it and dragging people out of bed at god-awful farmer hours, let's say that it is such an important issue, what is the best way to get someone to change their mind about a repetitive issue?
	I mean, is it to continue to do the same old shit which hasn't worked, right?
	Because everything that led up to you being dragged out of bed at half five in the morning didn't work.
	And so if this is a continuation, where's the principle?
	Where's the empiricism, right?
	So you can say, well, mom, you're asking me to be empirical.
	About a light switch and energy and so on.
	But are you being empirical about the best way to change people's minds about something that's important to you?
	Or are you just acting out in the same old way?
	So let's not...
	And she'd have to admit that it's not a very good way to get people to change their minds, to just scream at them and drag them out of bed or whatever.
	And so you'd say, okay, well, let's...
	So clearly this is not an argument about principles.
	So let's figure out what it's really about.
	I mean, that to me would be a real breakthrough.
	Because if it...
	And what I would say is, well, it's something like this.
	So mom, if...
	Because if we think it's about principles, but it's about some emotional stuff, then we're not going to be able to solve the problem, right?
	Or it's like that old joke about the guy who is looking for his keys.
	To them, the problem is that you've left the light bulb on, to be honest.
	That's all you're going to get.
	Because they're never going to accept that You can also say, what if I have some unconscious resistance to being dragged out of bed and screaming?
	And what if I don't want to turn the light bulb off because I'm surrendering to power rather than to reason?
	Right?
	So reason with me about the light bulb in ways that I can understand and let's have a commitment to not scream at me about the light bulb because that doesn't make me want to change.
	In fact, that just makes...
	And you know that.
	I mean, everybody knows.
	You scream at someone, they'll just dig their heels in.
	You might get immediate compliance, but they'll just dig their heels in.
	Right?
	So you can use it, of course, as an opportunity to look at better ways of communicating and so on, but if the person remains resolutely committed to the surface of things, then you really can't do much just to solve anything, right?
	Sure.
	It's only about the environment, and I care so much about the environment and a couple of kilojoules of energy or a couple of joules of energy that I'm willing to drag my son out of bed and scream at him because that's how much I care about the environment, and it's only about the environment and so on.
	It's like, okay, well, then...
	You can't talk about it.
	If people think that it's about something it's not about, then there's nothing really to talk about.
	I mean, I guess you can turn the lights off if you want, but it's not going to make any difference to your mom's life.
	She's just going to find something else.
	And of course, if her dreams are unachievable now, then she will be all the more committed to Surface pseudo-empiricism rather than the true reality of things, right?
	So there's a time when you can change your outcome by changing your behavior, but change is not a lifelong privilege, right?
	Change doesn't last forever.
	I'm too old to become a gymnast.
	I'm too old to become an Olympic swimmer.
	That stuff is all past for me.
	There's no circling back to those forks in the road.
	And when people have passed the point of no return for achieving their dreams, they really tend to double down on their fantasies, right?
	It becomes like morphine for a sick person.
	Oh, sorry.
	I think we've lost him, James.
	If we could move on to the next caller.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, so sorry about that.
	All right, we got a phone caller.
	Adam on now.
	A phone!
	Ah, how antique!
	How retro.
	Hello, hello.
	Can you hear me?
	I'm just ringing them up now.
	We're not on the line.
	Hello?
	Hello, this is Living on the line.
	Hi, Jeff.
	How retro, huh?
	I'm in the middle of, I call it Polygamyville, Utah.
	I've talked to you one other time, and we don't have a whole lot of comforts out here, and my Skype is just...
	But anyways, I'll get right to my question.
	I'm very fascinated with the discussion, and my husband is in bed with me listening to And he's been, like, nodding his head, and he's thoroughly enjoying your show and talking about, oh, that sounds like my mother.
	He's talking about my mother, you know?
	But my question today is, I was with a friend, and if you recall, and I know you have millions of people, I was raised Southern Baptist, corporal punishment, strict disciplinarian, that sort of thing, and you've helped me see the light of the air of my ways.
	I've apologized to my children, and I now have a grandson who is 18 months old, and my daughter is implementing peaceful parenting, is peacefully parenting her child, and I've been witness to that, and it just warms my heart.
	And it's so cute, because as I helped her move from San Antonio all the way to Indiana this past weekend, and the baby was...
	I still call him the baby.
	He was...
	In a car seat for 19 whole hours.
	I mean, can you imagine a 19-month-old in a car seat for that long?
	I took him out and walked in there every time we gassed up and that sort of thing, but we did some very creative things to keep him as comfortable as possible.
	And I gave my daughter a break, and I was entertaining the baby while they did their moving things.
	And she, at the very end, just before I came home on the plane from Indianapolis to Utah, she says, Mommy, didn't you ever have any instincts at all to hit Ethan?
	And I said, Honey, absolutely not.
	And she said, You have totally changed.
	Because if that would have been me, I could just see you spanking the crap out of me.
	So I thank you for that, because that's what you have done for me.
	And I'm hoping that I will be able to spread this message to my family and to everybody around me.
	So I'll pause if you want to comment on any of that before I get to my question.
	No, other than to say, I mean, I'm incredibly moved by what you're saying.
	What you're doing is fantastic.
	I mean, what a magnificent gift to give your grandchild and your children.
	And so, I remember the call before.
	I wanted to, you know, I am incredibly moved.
	I better stop talking or I'll get too moved to talk.
	So, thank you for sharing that.
	Congratulations.
	And if you would like to ask your question, I will do my best.
	Great.
	Okay.
	I was in Las Vegas in a courtroom, in a courthouse.
	And I had picked a number and I was waiting for a window lady with my colleague who is also awakening with me.
	And we're activists together.
	And he was a very abused person, went from a child.
	He went from foster home to foster phone.
	And he doesn't talk about this to everybody, but he's an extraordinary man.
	And we were sitting there waiting for my number, for the window lady to call my number, and all of a sudden, I don't know if it...
	But to add more substance, I don't know if I should even say this, it was a black, a tall black man Who was very handsome-looking and very well-groomed.
	He had two children with him who were also very well-groomed, very tidy.
	And he went and he's looking at the machine to figure out which button to push so that he could get the number so that he can see a window lady.
	And in that moment that he was trying to decipher what to do, One of his children, the boy, he had a little boy and a little girl.
	The little boy looked like he was about seven.
	The little girl looked like she was about five or six.
	The little boy just kind of wandered off a little bit to look into a window that was closed, one of the government windows that was closed.
	And that man, he bellowed, he hollered at him in that In that lobby, and he said, boy, you better get over here, or I'm going to whoop your ass, or something to that effect that it just, you know, made my blood.
	I mean, it just scared the hell out of me.
	I mean, I wanted to stand at attention, too.
	And the little kid came right over, and he was very obedient.
	And then I didn't know what to do.
	I was, like, paralyzed.
	Because I just...
	I remember what you said about why you're a philosopher and how nobody said anything to you to comfort you, to your family called 911 or anything.
	And I suspect as...
	I don't want to assume that he's a bad parent because then I stayed put and I'm listening, you know, and my friend is listening with me because we both looked at each other like, wow!
	And...
	And I overheard him, you know, a clerk came over and said, can I help you, sir, or something?
	And he said, well, yeah, I need to, I need to, and she asked him, what are you here for?
	And he said, I need to get a restraining order from my wife.
	And so I'm thinking there are some serious domestic issues here.
	I don't know, you know, I don't want to assume that he's an abusive parent.
	Clearly he had some stressful issues going on.
	And I didn't want to add insult to injury by telling him, hey, that's not an appropriate way to talk to your kid.
	He might have, you know, he wouldn't have hurt me.
	And I'm not afraid of, you know, of having said something like that.
	I don't know that that was the most prudent thing.
	But what could I have possibly said to him to at least tell him, look, I feel for you.
	It sounds like you're going through some really tough times.
	And how could I have said, your children didn't ask to be born, and you still have to remember that and respect them as individuals?
	How could I have done that in a way that would have been meaningful?
	Because I posted this question online to freedom areas, to people that I respect as libertarian people who follow you, and the vast majority of responses I've gotten is, Hey, it's none of your business.
	The fact that you did nothing was the best thing to have done.
	So what is your take?
	Yeah, it's a tough call.
	It's a tough call.
	I mean, the way that black children are raised, and this is all generalized statements within the US, the black culture is still very aggressive towards children as a whole, in general.
	Of course, not to any specific individual.
	But, I mean, Barack Obama was joking about hitting children, and everybody was like, rip-roaring.
	I don't think it has anything, obviously, to do with blackness.
	It has to do with religiosity.
	I mean, fundamentalists are much more aggressive with their children, according to the statistics.
	It's one of the reasons why religion, and particularly fundamentalist religions, are a problem to people who want to save the world, is that they're very harsh on children, to say the least.
	So...
	That's a tough call because if somebody is doing the restraining order thing and bellowing at his kids in public, that is a dangerous and volatile situation.
	Obviously, you're probably not in any particular danger when you're there.
	You're with a friend, you're in a courthouse or whatever.
	What you could do is always focus on that which is best for the child.
	If the parent is incredibly vain and insecure, Then if you humiliate the parent, of course there is the considerable possibility that the parent will then take it out on the child later.
	Like, I can't believe you embarrassed me like that and somebody came up and talked to me and you made me do, you know.
	So that's something to consider.
	So in a situation where if the parent is, you know, probably kind of a decent person but just at their wits end, then, you know, what I've done, it was in a parking lot and I saw a dad yelling at his kids, um, In the car because, you know, and you could hear that it had been a long drive.
	They mentioned something about it having been a long drive and two boys.
	And I went up and I said, look, this is not the way.
	It's not the way to work with your kids.
	This is not what you want to be doing as a parent, right?
	I mean, that's not why you had kids.
	And he did sort of say, oh, God, I just find myself screaming and so on, right?
	So not like a nasty, malicious, evil fellow or anything like that.
	I mean, obviously doing wrong by his kids and those actions are very destructive.
	But there are other people, of course, who are just real cruel, like sadists.
	You can see these people in brain scans.
	It's really weird, right?
	So they've done studies where they'll hook up electrodes to people's brains and they did a study in particular where a group of young men who'd already been in physical fights were shown videos and they were shown videos of accidental injuries to people and then purposeful injuries to people And they got some delight out of seeing the accidental death injuries of people.
	But when people were purposefully injured by someone else, their entire pleasure centers just lit up like the 4th of July.
	So it was deeply pleasurable for them to watch purposeful injuries on other people.
	And that is, I mean, it's hard to process, right?
	It's the complete opposite.
	I mean, I would be horrified.
	And they probably would have horror at seeing affection and kindness, right?
	Their disgust centers would probably light up.
	If you're around someone like that, that's really tough.
	You can, of course, if someone is there and is exasperated and someone, you can say, look, this is obviously a stressful day for you.
	I'm a grandmom.
	I'm a nice person.
	I'm here for the duration.
	I'd be very happy to sit and play with your kids while you go talk to the clerk, give you a bit of a break or something like that.
	Then if you're with the kids, you can say, wow, it's a pretty tough day for you, right?
	This is not where you want to be.
	Where would you most like to be at the moment?
	Oh, Disney World or at the play center or playground or something like that and say, wow, so this is really not fun for you.
	It's probably not a whole lot of fun for your dad, which doesn't mean that it's okay for him to yell at you like that, but I'm sorry that this is where your family's at.
	You know, just that kind of stuff.
	And then at least give the kids a sense, you know, without necessarily provoking the dad, at least give the kids a sense that somebody notices that this is not fun for them and it's not a good situation or environment for them to be in and so on, right?
	So something like that can help out.
	That's brilliant.
	I never thought of that, Stefan, because that's exactly what I could have possibly done, is gone to the dad and say, look, I see you're very stressed out, and would you like me to entertain your kids for you?
	You know, you get to the window, lady.
	And I could have sat there with the kids and, you know, done some love to them, you know, given them some words of love.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, that could help.
	That could definitely help.
	It's a very tough situation.
	I mean, we do have this weird thing where we say, it's none of your business.
	Well, shit, I'm sorry, but it really is my business because I have to live in a world populated by these kids when they grow up.
	As I mentioned, children are catch and release, right?
	They grow and release specimens, right?
	So, you know, if you're on a desert island and you're never going to impinge on my society or environment, then I guess, other than sort of an abstract moral thing, I don't have a lot invested, but I have to live in a world populated by these kids when they grow up.
	And if this is their environment, then they're going to grow up most likely, you know, having problems, maybe being criminals, being mean, being abusive, and then I got to live with their kids.
	And so, no, sorry, we're all in the same pool and it matters to me if you're peeing.
	Sorry, it is my business.
	I don't ever remember that in the 1970s during the big wave of divorces that came out of some, I think, quite positive aspects of feminism.
	The big wave of divorces and the feminists who were saying, listen, don't put up with abuse in your marriage.
	He's a pig.
	Get out.
	I don't remember anyone saying, it's none of your business.
	At least, that was not a very common thing.
	Don't teach me how to deal with my wife, you know, kind of thing.
	I mean, I guess there are a few people there, but nobody ever said, sorry, the marriage is sacrosanct and private, and we shouldn't get involved.
	But people still have this weird thing, like it's not my business how people raise their kids, but Surely it's more of our business how people raise their kids than how people are married to each other because if two people are married to each other and treat each other badly and don't have kids, well, their dysfunction and abuse dies with them.
	But if they have kids and they're abusing their kids, then those kids are going to go out into society with all that screwed upness and so on.
	So it's much more our business how children are raised than how marriages are run and we have no problem Intervening as a society in marriages and saying, this is not good.
	This is something which shouldn't continue.
	You should get help or you could leave if it's abusive.
	So, I mean, it's just hypocrisy to say that we shouldn't get involved or it's not our business.
	It's much more a business than marriages.
	We have no problem getting involved in those, right?
	Right.
	And I think it would be so much more, a much more peaceful approach to, as a Just as an individual observing this, to get involved yourself and do some, like, gun store counseling,
	if you will, rather than calling 911 and CPS. And I know that CPS has a purpose and everything, but I've seen that they're people with guns, and they have ruined more lives, I believe, then have helped by their actions.
	So what is your, do you agree?
	Well, I don't.
	Is there any way to come on what I'm saying?
	Yeah, I mean, it's a government agency, it's a government institution, so I have all the skepticism to do with that.
	On the other hand, if the children are in physical danger, I mean, what else are you supposed to do, right?
	I mean, if you see a child who's literally being beaten Then, yeah.
	I mean, I'd say call the authorities.
	I mean, because, you know, it may not be great, but, I mean, what is the other option?
	I mean, the child's already in harm, right?
	We always take a possible harm over a reason, right?
	Right.
	Well, my friend who I was telling you has gone from foster home to foster home, it is because somebody called 911.
	He has had probably every bone in his body broken, but he said that having stayed with his parents would have still been better than going from place to place where he witnessed young girls being raped by the people who were supposed to be caring for them.
	It was a government, you know, it's like, and he says, and he ran away.
	Since he turned 16, he ran away and went to Alaska and became a fisherman and he talked about the most dangerous jobs and he got beaten up there by the fishermen who were ordering him around and he said he preferred that To be in some of the foster homes that he was in.
	And we've been activists, and in listening to your teachings, I'm steering away from the activism, and I'm putting an end to that, but we have been to DUI checkpoints in Las Vegas and what have you, and there was a case where a lady was The media made a big deal about how they found one drunk lady, and she had a child with her.
	It was a 12-year-old child, and the child was taken into protective services.
	And the lady was not that drunk.
	And I don't know what her percentage point was, but the...
	And I don't know what her history was, but all these drones know is these are the numbers.
	If you blow and it's.08 or above, then you are legally in violation of the drunk laws and the drinking and driving laws, which we don't condone drinking and driving.
	And therefore, this is the checklist of the things we have to do.
	If there's any kids that are going to go to Child Protective Services, they don't take into account the whole thing, which is why governments It's so horrific.
	There's no humanity in government.
	I'm getting this other side.
	On the one hand, you do call CPS, but on the other hand, I'm scared to call CPS because I don't know if that would be even a worse fate for the child.
	What do you think?
	I'm certainly no statist, but a mom who's driving while impaired with a kid in the car?
	That is seriously not good.
	I mean, that can get the child killed, maimed.
	I mean, she can hit other children.
	Drunk driving is just one of these things that is just so wretched that, again, I don't know what the percentages were and all that, the details, but I think in a free society, if a mom was driving drunk or impaired with a kid in the car, I think that would be pretty much a call to some kind of intervention.
	Of course, in a free society, the intervention would be much more positive and beneficial and so on, less Violent, if not non-violent, but that's incredibly dangerous for the child who has no choice, right?
	I mean, you assume the child just gets strapped in, has to go with mom, can't stay alone, and mom's drunk, and that's, I mean, that's incredibly destructive.
	That can be much worse than beating because you can actually just die, right, if you get into a car crash and so on.
	So it's, yeah, it's a tough situation all around.
	But, I mean, you know, obviously we can't fix every family, we can't save every child, but we have a great template, as I've mentioned before, We have a great template for all this kind of stuff, which was the feminist revolution around voluntarism within the marriage, right?
	I mean, that is the template.
	The feminists didn't sort of go in there and try and become counselors to every family.
	What they did was they said to women, we are going to promote your right to leave an abusive family, an abusive husband, and we're going to define to you what abuse is, and we're going to...
	They went pretty far, right?
	I mean, way too far in my opinion, right?
	Calling all marital sex rape and the marriage is a slave institution.
	I think Hillary Clinton said that.
	It's like, well, I guess your family maybe.
	So we already have that template.
	We simply promote volunteerism within the family and that's where things will get better, but it will take time.
	But it's the only thing that will work and it's the only thing that historically has worked.
	You don't try and reform a bureaucracy, you just privatize it, right?
	And you don't try and reform the family necessarily.
	All you do is promote volunteerism within the family and That will help.
	I mean, as long as the family is socialized, so to speak, in other words, it's a bureaucracy where there's no volunteerism, then society will reflect that as well.
	But if we promote volunteerism within the family, we will end up with volunteerism in society.
	There's no other way to do it, I think.
	Well, I sure appreciate your I will have to disagree a little bit about the drunk driving situation because, yeah, I definitely don't agree with driving impaired.
	But there's, you know, I mean, it's alcohol.
	They have no way of testing other things.
	What if they're high on cocaine?
	And the other thing, the DUI checkpoints, it's really just a theater to make people comply.
	And they can catch...
	Four times more drunk drivers the old-fashioned way by patrolling as opposed to doing these grandiose things which cost a lot of money.
	A lot, a lot of money.
	I don't know if you've ever been through a DUI checkpoint.
	It's like millions of dollars.
	And some people actually can pass...
	I call it the clown test when they tell you, okay, walk the straight line and do your alphabet backwards.
	Some people can actually pass those better when they're Under some kind of, you know, using alcohol as medication, for example.
	You know, so, I mean, there's all these other things to factor in, but my point is, when you have the government Just use a checklist and say, okay, here's the number, blow into here.
	You're not looking into how, you know, how impaired was this person?
	How far did they have to go?
	Did she have any other options?
	Were there any other...
	Were there any extenuating circumstances in which she was unable to do anything other than what she was doing?
	Did she not have, you know, bus fare?
	You know, did she not have somebody that could, you know, pick her up?
	That sort of thing.
	So just to point blank say...
	That's it.
	Your kid is being taken away because the kid could, you know, we can all die of just about anything.
	So that's just my own personal opinion about that.
	But I really think what I'm going to do is I'm going to take what we've talked about and I'm going to make a little YouTube of it and I'm going to share it with all of my friends because I think you have some really great points and I really, really, really value everything that you do.
	And I think that you're going to go down in history just to kiss your butt a little bit You're going to go down in history as more famous than Socrates.
	But unfortunately, you'll be dead by then.
	So thank you so much for taking my call, Steph.
	Well, I appreciate that.
	Thank you.
	And look, I agree with you that if the woman is tipsy and driving, I don't think that's cause to just, well, that's it.
	You can't be a mom.
	Take away your kids.
	I mean, there's a whole lot that needs...
	And of course, if the family can be reformed, that is...
	To by far the best interest of the child, right?
	I mean, breaking up the family is incredibly traumatic for the child, and it would only be in the most dire circumstances.
	I think that would be undertaken in a free society.
	But yeah, nonetheless, I mean, the decision points to drive after drinking with a child in the car is not positive.
	So, James, we can go a little over if you like, if there was somebody else who had a question or a comment.
	Yeah.
	We have another person on the line, and his name is Taryn.
	Hello, hello.
	Oh, great.
	Hi, Estevano.
	It's very great to get to talk to you guys.
	It's a really honor, because I found you guys after my search for self-knowledge and whatnot.
	But anyway, yesterday I listened to...
	Stefan's conversation with Warren Pharrell about the attack on boys, so to say, in society and how boys in school, you know, they're failing and women and girls, they're getting so much better grades and stuff.
	And I was comparing it to my own situation because I had two years of college and...
	I dropped out because I thought, you know, it's extremely expensive, you know, and I'm going through all these prerequisites and I still haven't, you know, started doing the classes on the things that I really wanted to do, which were language learning, specifically in Japanese, and fitness and gymnastics, because right now I just turned 21 in December.
	And I've been trying to rationalize it, you know, The government's taking away my life because I have to pay all the...
	If I don't get a degree, I'll have to do all this extra work and I'll pretty much be a failure is what I've been taught.
	But if I do get a degree, my life is taken away because I have to Go through all these debts.
	And when I listened to the conversation yesterday with Warren Farrell, I was wondering, maybe it's, I haven't learned deferred gratification or something like that?
	That's what you guys talked about a little bit.
	Because, you know, I grew up a little bit without my father and my mom and dad.
	They divorced when I was very little.
	And then he ended up going to jail.
	And I just wanted to know, what do you think?
	Do you think I'm wrong for not wanting to go to college and live my life that way?
	Or should I go back?
	It's a big question.
	And look, first of all, it's very wise of you to Ask these questions, right?
	So good for you, right?
	I mean, but secondly, damn, I'm sorry to hear about your family.
	What a mess.
	What did he go to jail for?
	It was for murder.
	I had a step family.
	He remarried, and the last year I was there, and he's in Virginia, and I'm in Indiana.
	With my mom now.
	So, look, I'm really sorry to hear about this.
	It's terrifying and terrible.
	Obviously, on your dad's side for this criminality and on your mom's side for deciding to have kids with a guy capable of this kind of criminality, right?
	So, this is just really wretched all around and I'm incredibly sorry that this is the legacy point that you're starting from.
	So, you know, I mean, people who've gone through pretty normal childhoods I think it's really tough for them to really get just what a burden it is to have this stuff hanging over you, dragging around behind you.
	Like, I can sort of vaguely get that it's tough to learn English, but because I grew up and I'm a native speaker, I don't think I can really get how tough it is to learn English.
	I mean, I can sort of say that I do, but until people have actually gone through it, I think it's...
	So, I mean, I'm really, really sorry for...
	These kinds of challenges and having so many negative examples in your life is pretty wretched, right?
	I mean, there's a whole bunch of whatever you do, do not do this.
	But that's not really the same as knowing what to do, right?
	Right.
	So I'm incredibly sorry for that.
	What a wretched and terrible way to start things off.
	And it's, you know, it's...
	You know, until you get child abuse, I think it's a lot easier to be religious and to believe in the state, right?
	I mean, child abuse news, get how incredibly unfair it is, right?
	I mean, why you?
	Why don't you get born in the house?
	You know, Leave it to Beavers is not just playing on TV, but visible in the living room, right?
	I mean, why you?
	Why me?
	Why other people who've called into this show?
	I mean, who did I piss off in a previous life that I got born into?
	I mean, it's so...
	I mean, you can't even use the word unfair, because to use the word unfair would be to have a standard of fairness that didn't include that, which doesn't.
	But it is just so ridiculously unfair, and, you know...
	People who say, well, you know, God just chose you to test you.
	It's like, well, fuck that.
	I mean, what a load of bullshit.
	Well, yeah, I was having those thoughts, too.
	Most of my family, they're Christian, and I would think, like, what are you guys talking about?
	This is—what you guys believe in is kind of crazy.
	Like, I remember I was in church once, and he said— There's a priest that said something about, you know, just listen to the voice of God or something like that.
	And I was like, and I literally tried it, and I was like, I hear my own thoughts and consciousness.
	Like, I don't understand anything you guys are talking about.
	And then it's kind of contradicting, like, the principles, they don't practice them at home, like beatings and stuff like that.
	And then I guess I'm not religious anymore, so...
	Yeah, I mean, it's right.
	So if I were to knowingly hand a child over permanently to an abuser, it would be incredibly immoral of me to do so.
	And, of course, God, you know, he controls everything.
	He chooses everything.
	So I think this is why child abuse is tough to talk about in religious communities.
	Because child abuse and the randomness of where you just happen to be born is something that's really tough to reconcile with God runs everything and God has a plan and all this.
	Like, what the fuck kind of plan is it where you get born into this kind of household?
	I mean, you tell me how that plan is just a great plan.
	It's a wonderful plan.
	That is the best.
	It's better, way better for you to have been born in that household than any other household, no matter how calm, peaceful, rational, positive, loving, and intimate they are.
	I mean, there is no plan in the world that can morally rest on condoning child abuse or praising child abuse, which if God controls everything and children are born into these monstrous homes.
	I mean, how the hell can you judge everyone equally when some people Get to start at the finish line, and other people get to start in a cave 3,000 miles underground.
	Hey, it's the same race!
	It's all equal, right?
	And so, you know, I'm incredibly sorry.
	It is something that, once you get just how prevalent and how destructive child abuse is, I mean, anybody who can sustain their faith in an all-loving creator when they have sort of seen this kind of stuff, and because I came from such an abusive household, though I think not as abusive as yours, And everyone I knew around me came from these dysfunctional households.
	You know, it was really tough to see the loving hand of God in the world and say, well, but God gives people free will and blah, blah, blah, blah.
	It's like, well, the free will argument doesn't work.
	God designed us as machines and God designed us to replicate child abuse generally if we were exposed to it.
	And God gave us our entire nervous system, our entire psychology, and God gave...
	Children, no independent capacities to be free of parents who are abusive when they're kids.
	And of course, God can...
	I mean, when people pray, they're assuming that God can intervene, right?
	A God who doesn't intervene can't be the foundation of any profitable religion because, you know, it can't do anything for you.
	So the moment that God reaches through and starts to do things in the world, then he's saying that free will doesn't count because if you pray enough, he'll violate his own rules of physics and choice to benefit you.
	So the moment God reaches in...
	To do something different in the world, he's responsible for all the child abuse in the world because he doesn't change it.
	So anyway, I'm sorry, I don't want to get on a religious kick, but once you get the child abuse thing, you get that it's so ridiculously unequal.
	Claiming there's an all-loving God in charge of things is completely mad.
	I mean, it's worse than mad.
	It's an enabling.
	Of this, right?
	Because it lowers people's suspicions.
	Anyway, but sorry, sorry.
	So as far as college goes, are you saying you were taking gymnastics in Japanese?
	Yeah, I was, my major was like in health fitness and I like to do other things like gymnastics and martial arts.
	I know you've made videos about martial arts and how much you don't like that, but I thought it was pretty entertaining.
	Yeah, language.
	And when I expressed that, you know, to my family members that, you know, I think I'd want to go for an alternative way of education because through high school I would study Japanese by myself and I got pretty good at it.
	But when I say I want to do something different, I get antagonized by my family.
	Like, oh, you need to go to college.
	If you don't go to college, you're just going to be a failure or whatever.
	I get financial aid and loans and stuff.
	Right now, I have $12,000.
	Only after two years.
	But if I keep going to college for the next three years, because...
	Nobody finishes at four.
	They finish average five.
	And I can barely pay bills now and have a decent job.
	How would I support my life?
	What was that?
	Sorry, did you mean that you have $12,000 in debt after two years?
	Yes.
	Right, so if you keep going at the current rate, it's going to be $20,000, $30,000, which is the average.
	I think the average is $26,000 in debt.
	Yeah, I mean, certainly I would do the math.
	You know, they say, well, it adds a million dollars to your income over the course of your lifetime, but that includes people who go to college to become, right?
	Right.
	History that you're going to get a million dollars extra, and it also only includes people who finish, and I don't think that those numbers include the amount of money and time that you spend paying off your debts.
	So, it's a tough call.
	It's a tough call.
	I know that there are some FDR listeners who are studying Japanese on the side, on the web.
	You can obviously join groups like that.
	I mean, if you want to get a job speaking Japanese, or whether that's part...
	I mean, they only care whether you speak Japanese.
	They don't care about your piece of paper, so to speak.
	As far as, you know, health and all that, I'm sure there are licenses and so on that you need to have to finish...
	To get the license to do nutrition and health advice and so on.
	So that may be worthwhile.
	But the important thing, of course, is to look at what are the average salary?
	I mean, you can just sit down.
	It's worth doing a spreadsheet on this, I think, right?
	Which is to say, okay, well, let's assume I graduate with X amount of dollars in debt.
	I have to pay it back at X amount of interest.
	What's my monthly payment going to be?
	Let's just say that I get my in nutrition or health sciences or whatever.
	What is the average income in my neck of the woods for somebody who has that credential and, you know, what's it going to be worth and other alternatives to getting these credentials to be able to do stuff, right?
	So, you know, I can talk about first principles on the internet.
	I don't need a license, right?
	I mean, there's lots of things I can't do, which I wouldn't really want to do, like diagnose mental health issues or give people specific nutrition advice or whatever.
	I mean, I don't do any of that stuff.
	I barely give any advice at all.
	So there's stuff that you can do that doesn't require a license, right?
	You can go write software without being licensed, and there's other things that you can be able to do.
	If there's ways that you can do what you want to do without being licensed, I mean, I think that's worth looking into, and you can do a cost-benefit.
	Maybe the people who aren't licensed make only half what the people who are licensed is, and then it just becomes a cost-benefit analysis.
	So that's what I would do, is just sit down and figure that stuff out.
	I mean, I thought of this stuff when I was After my Master's, you know, before I figured out what I wanted to do, I got into the software entrepreneur world.
	I mean, I did math and said, oh, God, I mean, I can't remember.
	I think I finished my Master's when I was 27 or so, maybe 28.
	And I sort of said, okay, well, it takes seven years to do a PhD.
	That takes me to 35 or 36.
	And, man, you know, then it takes you five years to get a tenure-track position.
	That takes me into my sort of early 40s and so on.
	I could be in my early 40s before I have any kind of steady paycheck that I could sort of rely on and sort of start a family and all that kind of stuff.
	And so for me, and of course I was pretty beaten up from dealing with socialist, mystical, irrationalist, subjectivist academics for the whole of my career and I just looked at the desert wasteland of trying to get a job in that field and probably in Canada, in this field like I was in history, right?
	It's kind of a subjective field.
	I have outright Marxists who are happily teaching away at the college.
	I mean, you can't find a lot of Nazis, but you can find Marxists, even though Marxism has a higher death count than Nazism.
	So I just...
	For me, it was just this...
	And I did the math, all this kind of stuff, and when opportunities in software opened up, I was like, okay, so I can do this, and I don't need a license, I don't need to defer to idiots.
	I either provide value or I don't.
	It's not ideological.
	Nobody's going to care.
	They're only going to care whether my product is valuable to them.
	So for me, it was relatively easy to make that decision to steer clear of academia and instead to focus on building a business career, which I have had no regrets since about doing that.
	In fact, if I were an academic, I wouldn't in a million years be able to do what I'm doing here.
	So that's an either-or kind of situation.
	So I would just really try and at least start with the math, right?
	I mean, the math isn't going to make the decision for you because we're not computers, but I think getting a clear idea of the mathematics is important, right?
	So when I said, okay, it's going to take me seven years to get a PhD, and I can probably make about $40,000 a year as a programmer, as an entry-level programmer, right?
	So, right, seven times...
	For $280,000 at a minimum in lost income, plus the additional cost of going to school, I get some TA ships, may offset that, whatever, right?
	But I was looking at some significant lost income, and that's assuming that I stayed at 40K, which of course I wouldn't.
	So if you look at that, I was looking at half a million, three quarters of a million dollars in lost economic opportunity by being in school, plus maybe additional costs, plus the stress of being in an ideological environment where reason doesn't win, whereas in The business world, you know, price and features do a long way towards winning.
	It's not all that, but it's mostly that.
	So for me, there was a whole bunch of calculations that went into it.
	And for me, then I decided to get out.
	I'm very glad I did my master's.
	I mean, that was the first time I'd really had the chance to apply myself to a topic that I absolutely loved.
	And it only took, what, 16 or 17 years or 18 years of schooling to get to that.
	But I would do the cost-benefit analysis.
	Don't forget to take it.
	Count your opportunity costs, like the lost income, and all that kind of stuff.
	I have a friend who's a professor, and he tells his kids if they don't show up to class or whatever, it's like, you're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars just to come to college.
	Use it.
	Get your money's worth.
	Nobody ever comes to his office or whatever, right, and questions.
	Come to my office.
	I'm here.
	Free tutoring, whatever, right?
	So I think people just don't realize the opportunity cost because we're not really taught to think economically.
	But I would add all that stuff up.
	It probably will give you a pretty clear sense of the pluses and minuses.
	And I find for myself, when I really delineate the pluses and minuses, my emotions suit, if that makes sense.
	Like I don't say to myself, well, this is going to be completely wonderful for me in every way, shape or form.
	And then I'm depressed to do it.
	Or, you know, I say, well, this is going to be completely disastrous for me in every way, shape, or form, but I really want to do it.
	I mean, I find if I delineate the pluses and minuses, which my emotions are usually good at processing instinctually anyway, but when I really delineate it, it tends to clarify and give me a lot more certainty about my choices.
	Does that help at all?
	Yeah, it does.
	Yeah, when I did the...
	I didn't really do like a spreadsheet or anything but like for health and huh?
	Yeah, I do, do a spreadsheet Do a spreadsheet.
	Figure out what's going to cost you.
	What's your income going to be if you don't?
	Can you do what you love if you don't?
	If you can't, what's it going to be like if you do?
	How much debt?
	How much are you going to pay?
	Don't be surprised.
	You come out of school and they're like, I have to pay what every month?
	This is stuff you need to know now, not down the road.
	Yeah, like, um, right now I make like $500 a month and I was like, okay, let's see if I, if I could pay off the debts I have now and, and do something and do something else totally.
	And if I can do that, uh, pay off my, my, whatever debts I have, I'd be like free pretty much.
	And, uh, I have found some alternatives, like, uh, certificates for, uh, personal training and, uh, In language certifications and whatnot, but becoming an entrepreneur was on my mind because I'm not too thrilled about the idea of being under someone else's command all the time.
	You know, you have to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning and work until 8 o'clock at night or whatever like that.
	It's just my idea of happiness, you know, isn't like...
	Using a third of my life just working in all that stuff or at least like I should be able to do something I'm passionate about, right?
	Oh yeah, it's not, you know, the best way to avoid doing work is find something you love, right?
	Because then you feel like you're never working a day in your life.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Yeah, so I think if you try and work all this stuff out I'm sure there are tons of things I haven't thought about, but I'm sure there are a checklist to figure out if you should go to college or not.
	Because even if you make more with the degree, you still have to factor in the cost of paying off the debt may make those things more equal.
	As more people go to college, of course, the college degree becomes less worthwhile and way too many people go into college.
	I mean, I don't even know why we have such a thing as college anymore.
	I mean, it's just nonsense.
	There's so many learning opportunities available to people.
	What we should have is To see whether you know something or not.
	Okay.
	That's how you learned it.
	But the idea is you've got to go through this course.
	I mean, like everything else the government touches, it just gets frozen in time, right?
	So the government sort of really got heavily involved in universities 100 or so years ago.
	And hey, guess what?
	They've still managed to stay pretty much the same for the last 100 years, much like public schools and so on.
	So, yeah, you also might want to watch a film called The Great College Conspiracy.
	Just for those who haven't heard it, it lays the case out against college.
	I don't know how accurate it is.
	I just had a sort of look at it, but it's something to look at.
	But I think it comes down to, you know, do the numbers.
	So whatever you're going to do, at least based on the best available information, right?
	So look up the average wages for what it is you want to do with or without a degree in your neighborhood or wherever you want to live.
	Do the numbers of what you're going to owe, look at your tax base, figure out what you want to do, and then figure out what's the cost of being that much in debt when you graduate.
	I mean, that's in your head, right?
	It makes your opportunities fewer.
	You might have to take jobs that you wouldn't otherwise take because you've got to pay this debt off, right?
	You might have to postpone entrepreneurship because you have to pay this debt off.
	I mean, there's lots of things that are going to happen that are going to diminish your freedom as a result of taking on debt.
	What's that worth to you?
	Who knows?
	So get the numbers as clearly as possible.
	The other thing to do as well is if there's somebody in the field that you admire or you respect, call them up.
	People are happy to chat.
	This is a big surprise for me when I go into the business.
	Hey, you know, I really think it's very cool.
	Like if some guy around you has a gym, owns a gym, just say, listen, can I Can I bend your ear for five minutes?
	Those five minutes can change your life.
	I've done shows with people when I say, here's the best way, I think, to set up a podcast.
	Go for it.
	And so, happy to share their knowledge, I think, for the most part.
	Ask the guy, how did you end up with your own gym?
	What happened?
	What would you change if you could do it differently?
	Most people are pretty happy to help out that way.
	And so there's lots of things you can do and lots of information you can get before you make a decision.
	I find that once I get enough information, the decision becomes pretty easy.
	But without enough information, it's pretty hard.
	Right, right.
	I think maybe I called today because maybe I was uncertain.
	Because I had made a decision, but, you know, I kind of...
	I get bashed on, so to say, a lot because, you know, I'm not taking a traditional route, and it's very discouraging.
	Yeah, of course.
	I mean, there is this idea that college is success.
	The whole point, get the kids into college.
	Well, I mean, I don't think anyone has successfully shown the relationship between college and virtue.
	Which is kind of the most important thing, right?
	I mean, all the people who blew up the economy, they currently, I mean, they all have masters and PhDs in math and finance and physics and shit like that, right?
	I mean, there's some pretty evil bastards out there who are incredibly well-educated, who are completely screwing society as a whole, in particular stomping all over the backs of the poor.
	So they all went to college, and how successful is they?
	Well, as predatory sociopaths, they're doing great.
	As decent, virtuous human beings, they're doing the opposite of great.
	So...
	So I would certainly suggest to not think that there's some railroad track to success.
	I think that used to be the case more.
	But of course colleges do a great job of selling themselves.
	You can of course also sit down with your college administrator and say, you know, make the case for me to stay in college.
	Show me the numbers.
	Show me the empirical studies.
	What's the placement rate after graduation?
	What is the average income for somebody who takes this degree and finishes this degree and so on, right?
	And if they don't have those numbers, that tells you quite a lot.
	If they do have those numbers, they should share them with you and save you some research time.
	Be a demanding customer.
	That would be my suggestion.
	I mean, people are asking you to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars, fundamentally, and so on.
	Be a demanding customer.
	I'm sure you don't buy a piece of electronics without doing lots of research.
	When you're talking about years of your life and hundreds of thousands of dollars, you have the right to be a demanding customer and to say to the college, listen, I've got doubts.
	Sell me.
	If they can't sell you, then that means they haven't done the research, which means that they don't give a shit about their customers, frankly.
	And so I would definitely ask some questions about that.
	Right.
	Well, thank you very much for answering my question.
	I didn't write it out today, so...
	Go ahead.
	Yeah, I planned to write it out, but...
	I came in to the conversation quite late, so sorry if I was really jumbled and indirect in my presentation of my question.
	Yeah.
	Congress or lawyers have a huge amount of education.
	They have to be, I guess, recertified and all that, and they're subject to the most oversight of their professional regulatory body and so on, and these scumbags are toasting half the planet.
	Yeah, college, it comes down to, I think, brute economic numbers, so I hope that helps.
	And I'm afraid with that, I must depart into the great ether of not being on the internet.
	Thank you, everybody, so much.
	Thanks again to James.
	Happy birthday again to James for all his help over the years doing this Sunday show.
	It is really great to have him do this kind of work as It takes a huge amount of burden off my mind.
	It means a lot less editing of the show afterwards.
	And he's actually saved some shows where my recording has failed.
	So I really, really appreciate that.
	Have yourself a completely wonderful week, everyone.
	And I guess I'm going to try and get a little preview of the documentary out this week so donators can see what they have paid for and non-donators can find themselves in a hypnotic trance drawn towards their PayPal account to hurl huge wads of fiat currency this way.
	So have a great week, everyone.
	I will talk to you soon.
	One last thing.
	So sorry.
	Anthony wanted us to plug his...
	Sorry, Progressive Parent?
	Yes, the Progressive Parent.
	It's youtube.com slash user slash the Progressive Parent.
	Progressive Parent.
	Yes, please.
	I've only listened to one show, but it was really delightful.
	And the man has some great stuff to say.
	So please go and check his channel out.
	And thanks for that.
	I'm completely sorry that I forgot.

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