All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 23, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:04:58
2333 The Power of Thought, The Energy of Love - Fitness Guru Elliott Hulse on Freedomain Radio

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, interviews fitness guru Elliott Hulse. Warning: Strong language.

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hi, everybody.
Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
I am here with fitness, psychology, and general brain science.
Achieve your ambitions guru, Elliot Hulse.
One of the fittest men.
I normally talk to a bunch of academic libertarians, so you are about the fittest guy I've ever talked to, and I pretty much was convinced until right before the interview that I was going to do the show entirely doing one-fingered push-ups on the back of a porcupine.
But...
Could not get the porcupine in time.
It's winter, so we'll just have to settle with a lot of kind of semi-gay gesticulating, which you can probably see going on in your webcam.
Elliot, thank you so much for taking the time.
My pleasure.
And don't worry, I wouldn't beat you up as a trainer.
You'd want to.
Very gentle.
I hurt my pinky!
Yeah, I'd kick your butt if you said that.
So, yeah, see, I told you.
It doesn't take long.
Now, you have an interesting approach to something you called a non-job.
Now, for the most part, we've all heard some of this, at least to some degree before, you know, where people say, do what you love and the money will follow and so on.
But you've really got a three-part approach to this.
I saw a video where you were talking about an architectural student or a guy who wanted to be an architectural student saying, Didn't want to jump through the two years of racketing around trying to get his credentials.
And so I was wondering if you could share a little bit about how you feel that passion and effort can drive a career of kinds.
Well, let me preface what I'm about to share with you with the fact that I am not an expert in business, in entrepreneurship, in marketing.
I am coming from a place where I'm a personal trainer, and I'm really excited about personal training.
But I had a rebellious spirit coming up as a youth, and then I found that rebellious spirit Being activated in the business world because I was too rebellious to have a job, right?
So I was like, I'm out working for a boss.
I'm going to do my own thing.
And the attitude got me into that.
And the attitude carried me to where I am right now.
It's this whole idea of screw everybody else.
Screw what they're doing.
Screw what they say.
I can find a way.
Everything that I share with you is just my journey of what I've done to get where I am today.
I'm not a multi-millionaire, but I don't have a job.
I do what I love, and people pay me really well to share that.
Any answers that I offer you is just from a place of experience, how I did it.
Right.
Yeah, and of course, nobody ever buys Apple products because Steve Jobs didn't have a PhD in computer science and an advanced post-modern degree in marketing.
And the other thing, too, is I will never go see a movie with, you know, Brant Pitt or Angelina Jolie or Jack Nicholson because they didn't graduate from high-level acting schools.
So that's how you know they suck.
Because they don't have the right piece of paper.
Did you know that Socrates himself never got a PhD in philosophy?
That's why he's so brilliant.
I sort of get the feeling sometimes that the pieces of paper that people want you to get...
Are traps.
You know, it's like, ooh, do you have energy?
Do you have ambition?
Come this way.
You can come into the paper jungle of academia and you'll never fight your way out.
And we will render you neutral and inert by dragging you into this paper jungle.
Yeah.
And what happens is we're such phallic narcissists as we go into that thing with the degree that we get so buried in and we've invested so much that at a certain point you almost can't pull them out.
You see?
It's like you're so heavily invested.
You're in debt, right?
You've put a lot of time and energy and focus onto getting that piece of paper.
And when you're presented with the concept that perhaps that's not worth shit and really has been a waste of your time and money and now you're a slave to debt, it's very hard.
There's that cognitive dissonance.
It's very hard to come out of that and be like, oh yeah, you know what?
I fucked up.
Let me try again.
So I find a lot of people get trapped.
Yeah.
Yeah, they call it the fallacy of sunk costs.
It's like, well, I've put so much effort into getting this degree that now I really have to find a way to make it worthwhile.
And that tends to only occur by staying within an existing system.
Now, you refer to this as the machine.
And, you know, you really got to have those sunglasses, you know, the matrix glasses on when you take the ones that don't have any side by side.
But when did you first get a sense of the machine and of the grinding gears that tend to so often squash people's creativity and initiative?
Was it when you were very young?
Was it After you got out of high school, when do you think it really began to sink into you that there were alternatives to joining the Borg?
Very, very, very young.
My parents are from Belize, right?
I'm a first-generation American, so I'm very rooted in my body.
I don't know if you know what I'm saying, but basically I'm a very physical, passionate, emotional person, and I wasn't very much in my head.
So right away when I went into school, you know, first grade, second grade, There was a contrast between me, who's almost animal-like in my behavior and my attitudes and my thinking, as opposed to the children that did well.
They were very heady.
So I had a best friend who was gifted.
He was very heady, very artistic, but also very mathematical.
Me, on the other hand, I could climb fences, jump off, and do whatever I wanted to do, but I was wrong.
He was right, and I was wrong.
And there grew in me this recognition that, okay, there's something different about me, and the rest of them seem to be trying to move in that particular direction.
But from my vantage point, I saw that it's like, that looks boring.
You know, the whole thing just looked like, you mean you got to sit down and listen to this lady at the front of the classroom that's not your mom you could care less about?
She probably doesn't care about you.
She's just trying to get a paycheck.
And then you're going to go and get into debt so that you can continue to do that thing, so that they give you a paper, so that you can go and work in a big office building that has no free air conditioning and there's no sunlight.
And then you can earn more little pieces of paper to validate your entire existence in this game.
And the whole thing to me was just like, this don't make any fucking sense.
I'd rather not.
Now, what we mean by that is you're actually in touch with your emotions and you're rooted in your physicality.
We call it hysterical because we're desperately envious, desperately envious at this emotional connectedness.
And I mean, I grew up in England and, you know, there your relationship to your body is like, it's your flesh robot that carries your enormously important brain around.
That's all it is.
It's like a big conveyor belt for the entire purpose of your brain, which is the point of your life, which is this thing up here.
I spent a couple of years in theater school doing like, I'm going to be a tree that's jogging.
I'm going to be a kitty cat that's on fire.
All this really crazy body work.
And that gave me an edge in the philosophical world that's really hard to communicate about.
You know, when you do a lot of body work, when you do yoga, you do the Alexandra technique, you do dancing, sword fighting, gymnastics, body movement classes.
I mean, it gives you a sense of rootedness that makes you kind of un-push-over-able, which I'm sure you can understand.
When you're rooted in your body, you feel like an oak tree whose roots reach down to the very center of the earth.
And people don't understand that strength if they've never done that kind of work.
I'm excited just listening to you.
I mean, it's spot on.
I'm a physical coach.
I teach people how to use their bodies.
But I've discovered that the real magnificence trapped in our body is not in the building up of muscles.
It's in the getting in touch with nature.
Like you played a tree.
It seems weird that you're doing this tree thing, but you got in touch with nature and nature can't be fucked with.
We can't beat nature as much as we're trying.
And that's part of your genius.
And the idea, of course, that only the little layer of neofrontal cortex at the top of the brain, which is great!
I love it.
That's how we're able to talk.
But the idea that that represents the pinnacle rather than the cherry on the icing of the human condition, to me, is a huge mistake.
And it's this very abstract, arid, intellectual world that views the body with cynicism and with skepticism, almost as if we're a soul that is betrayed by the mere flesh.
It's sort of an old Christian...
I think it's really tragic, what they call the mind-body dichotomy.
I mean, most people don't even know that their gut, their belly is a second nervous system, a second brain.
When people say, I have this feeling in my gut, it's not happening up here.
It's happening like our radar for evil happens down in our solar plexus and deeper down.
And people, they let go of that wisdom, and I think it makes them very vulnerable to being exploited.
Oh, yeah.
That's how we became slaves.
We're psychological slaves.
Go on.
Well, the head is...
Think of Pavlov, right?
Pavlov taught his dogs how to behave with that little bell that's, you know, it's very heady.
You know, you hear the bell, you see the food.
Hear the bell, see the food.
Hear the bell, see the food.
The dog became so attached to its head in that fucking bell that it lost its connection to instinct.
Now, when Pavlov rings the bell, the dog acts, right?
Now I've got you right where I want you.
All I need to do is, see this?
And I got you right where I want you.
I've captured your animal.
Do you see?
I've become your slave master.
So they capture our animal.
They capture who we are, our hearts and balls.
That's what I like to say.
They capture our hearts and balls by tethering to the head.
Yeah, because you could be talked in and out of ideas very easily, but you can't be talked in and out of your instincts very easily, which is why people always want to remove you from your instincts, and then you become like a dandelion fluff in whatever fashionable breeze is blowing down the avenue, and it's really chilling.
I mean, if they can get you to separate from your gut, from your instincts, from your body, you really are putty in their hands, and to resist authority is to accept the authority of the body.
I know that's a weird way of putting it, but I think that's always been...
You're saying no so that you can say yes to yourself.
Right.
Now, how were you raised as a child?
Obviously, there's something probably innate in your desire for this kind of stuff.
There's a cultural aspect as well, as you say, being from Belize.
How were your parents with all of this, with your experiences with schools, with, I imagine, your frustration with the schooling you were exposed to?
My parents can't, you gotta understand something, which I'm sure you do, that when you're coming from a primitive culture, the idea is that you're not good enough and we're going to where there's better.
So my mom growing up, you know, with nothing, I mean, you know, country, like not even what we consider country, like nothing.
I can tell you stories about the way my parents lived.
She literally believed that the streets of America were paved with gold.
Literally!
She's a little girl and she believed this.
And we laugh about it now, but she's like, no, this is what we believe.
We believe that if you get to America, the streets are paved with gold.
So obviously there's something better there.
To come out of the jungle barefoot into the streets of Brooklyn and quickly have to figure out how this game is played...
It causes you to reject where you come from, even though you're heavily invested in it.
It's still controlling your subconscious.
But my parents had to cut themselves off from that, using the head, and play the game in Brooklyn, New York.
You get it, right?
You got to go to school.
You got to get a job.
My dad figured out how to fix cars on his own.
He didn't go to fucking school.
He watched somebody, and he figured out how to do it.
And he was able to raise his children.
But with that attitude, it's funny.
My parents, there's such a dichotomy.
They're Yin and yang is the only way to describe the experience that I had with my parents.
They instinctively knew.
Their hearts and balls were tied to living on the land and living free.
Freedom is the word my father keeps using.
We were free.
We were free.
They were dirt poor.
He had no shoes.
He lived in a hut made out of straw, practically.
But he was free.
To come to America where the street is paved with gold, and then to have offspring, he had to teach us the game.
So my parents taught us the game of...
I remember my dad saying that, I don't care if I die, you're getting a college degree.
I don't care what happens, you're getting a college degree.
You're not going to be here unless you go to college.
That's it!
There was no questions asked.
We all had to go to college.
Because that was the perception, was if you're going to win at this fucking game, you had better follow their rules really well.
And you're going to do it the best.
And that's what he tried to instill in us.
But...
It didn't take so well.
The idea was there, but the heart and balls of his children, me being the oldest, and then it trickles down, you know, my younger siblings not so much, but I felt that this was wrong because they felt that it was wrong, but I was able to play the game just well enough to get by.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
I know how to play the rules just enough, but I'm not going too far because I know this is wrong.
Right.
Now, you've also said that being in the system, being in the machine, there's nothing wrong with it.
It doesn't seem to me to be a choice.
Let me rephrase that.
To me, there's nothing wrong with anything you do in life as long as you're conscious of why you're doing it.
As long as you know you're in the matrix, you can be in any matrix that you want.
But for me, my concern is always with people who simply believe that that is the truth, that is the reality, And arguing with, say, the value of a college degree is like arguing whether there's a moon or whether physics is valid or something like that.
And so, under what conditions do you think it's okay for someone to be in this system?
Okay.
I'm not very religious, but I read religious texts.
There's very interesting stuff in this.
I'm going to quote Jesus.
Jesus says, be in the world, but not of it.
Okay?
Are you familiar with Eastern philosophy?
Eastern religion?
Middling to fairly somewhat competent, but not hugely...
I'm no expert, let's put it that way.
There's a big detachment from the physical world in Eastern philosophy, Eastern religion.
It's this kind of just-let-everything-go attitude.
Just like, you know, you're here, do the thing, but don't get too attached, guys.
It's not that serious.
There's this element of, like, this is all just a game.
Right?
In Eastern philosophy.
Daoism is known.
Buddha, smiling all the time.
Daoism is about jokes.
You know, a lot of the best Eastern philosophers were jokers.
They were joke tellers.
So it's very different as opposed to like a Jesus who's like...
Blood and dying and suffering.
You know, it's a completely different idea.
But for Jesus to have even said, and that brings it into the West, that you live in the world, but you're not of it, essentially means do the thing.
You know, it's mechanical.
We're just fucking doing it.
It's a game, but don't be of it.
Don't be attached to it like you're self-identified, right?
Don't be self-identified with it because really it's just a game.
Yeah, don't crawl so far inside the game that you no longer think it's a game anymore.
Yeah.
He even says you have to lose yourself to find yourself.
And the yourself that he's talking about is this ego.
It's this figment of our imagination.
And he's like, if you want to find paradise, you've got to lose yourself to find paradise.
It's give up this game.
Just give it up.
It's not that serious.
Not that big a deal.
The kingdom is right here.
Not to be a preacher.
But do you see what I'm saying?
We've had teachers...
Throughout the history of mankind that has told us, I mean, Jesus came up in an empire where Rome is just like the United States is, you know?
It's a fucking empire, except we're doing it way bigger.
Jesus was an enemy of the state, right?
And mainly because he was sharing this idea that you don't have to be a part of the system.
He tells one of his students who comes to him with a piece of coin, and same problem, you know, thousands of years ago, he comes with a coin, and he says to Jesus, what do we do when the taxpayer comes?
Same story we're dealing with, right?
What do I do when the taxpayer comes?
And Jesus says, pull out that coin.
Let me take a look at it.
He looks at the coin and there's a picture of Caesar on it.
And he looks at his student and he says, give Caesar what's his, give me what's mine.
That means give your heart to itself, but play the game.
They want your tax money?
Who cares?
They don't own you.
They don't own your heart.
It's just the game they're playing, and you're a part of the game.
Let it be.
The universe is doing its thing.
You just happen to be a part of it, and this is the game that you're playing.
Yeah, I've often felt that if you're going to be extorted for your money, which is fundamentally what taxation is, if you're going to be extorted for your money and you're going to choose to pay them, then pay them and then don't give them anything else.
Don't give them your mind share, don't give them your frustration, don't give them your subjugation outside.
If you've got to pay them after your 500 bucks, pay them 500 bucks and then don't pay them a dime more of your mental energy.
That's sort of been, you know, buy your freedom.
buy your freedom that way.
That has always been my approach, and I think it works well.
I mean, we didn't invent this world, we certainly didn't invent all these crazy ass hierarchies that are hanging over us like the eternal sword of Damocles, but we can choose to live as free as we can by stepping outside the shadow of power as much as possible.
And I think that is, outside of the material stuff you have to give them to stay out of jail, it is, I think, essential to try and step out of the shadows as much as possible, Because, you know, the powers that be would love it if you would become obsessed with how unjust they are.
Because your obsession isn't going to change them, but now there's another injustice, which is that you've not found happiness.
That is voluntary.
Whether you pay taxes, not so much voluntary, but if you give up your happiness for the sake of staring up the filthy sparrans of evil, then you've lost your freedom and your independence, and that, I think, is the only thing that will actually overcome the injustices in the world in the long run.
To be ourselves.
And it doesn't take very much.
You don't need much, and it's just a choice.
It's purely a choice.
Are you familiar with Viktor Frankl's book, A Man's Search for Meaning?
Yeah.
The guy was in a concentration camp.
I mean, talk about being an economic slave and paying taxes.
Their bodies were bound.
And the man chose freedom.
He chose to say, you know what?
This hurts, but it's just a fucking game.
You're not going to have my heart.
If he could do it in Nazi Germany, then I'm sure we could pay our fucking taxes.
Now, the unjob thing, right?
And let's just talk a little bit more about the mechanics of that, the idea that you love something.
And you do the work to study it, to become not an appointed or anointed expert, but a self-generated expert, which in my view are the only real experts there are, but you love the thing and then you learn about the thing, you share the thing, and then I thought it was very interesting how you talked about how difficult it is to receive other people's reciprocal generosity when you share what it is that you love.
In the case of the guy studying architecture, study architecture, love architecture, write about it, blog about it, video about it, do anything you want, and then people will respond with generosity.
And I thought it was interesting how you focused on how difficult that last part is for people, because we think it's very difficult to go out and sell, so to speak, but for a lot of people it's really difficult when people actually buy.
Yeah, it stems from this deep-seated need for approval before doing anything.
We're constantly seeking our parents' approval, in other words.
There was this raising of the home.
The home is a microcosm of the world.
And we lost the connection with our parents, you know, this oneness.
And we split, and then we're constantly looking for affirmation, confirmation.
Am I okay?
Did I do good enough?
What do you think, Dad?
Like, I hit a home run today.
And we're looking for that approval.
Yes, you are good.
You are an expert.
You have been granted the right of my...
My feelings, good feelings towards you.
Right?
And we play this game with our parents.
We all do it.
I have four children.
I do it with them.
You know, it's a mindfuck and we're all living it.
But we carry that out into the world.
So we're constantly looking for We're looking for patriarchal figures, and we're also looking for matriarchal figures.
We're out there living in the world, and this is how politics works.
We're looking to do the right thing for the approval of the right people.
And the right people, and that's a subjective term, objective term, right people are who?
The right people are steering us in these particular directions.
With our education, with our economics, with our so on and so on and so forth.
Religion, with our ideas.
Our thoughts are not even ours.
We have to ask for permission to think certain things.
I think one of the reasons why a lot of young people are attracted to me is because I think things freely and don't ask for permission.
And then they hear it and they're like, oh my god, you can really think that?
You're allowed to think that way?
I'm giving them permission.
I'm saying, yeah, fuck yeah, you can think that way.
And I give them Again, I become a patriarch because they're looking for that permission.
So, I forget the original question, but if we get too wrapped up in that...
Oh, how difficult it is for people to receive when they give their love and their passions out into the world, how difficult it can be for some people to receive the reciprocal generosity that comes back.
Because we're never good enough.
You're right.
That's exactly what it is.
So, to receive would mean that this game is done.
This game is over.
I no longer have to prove myself.
We've got a lot invested in that.
We keep self-sabotaging.
We don't know how to get the love or receive the love.
Money is just energy.
Money is saying that, in a metaphorical way, I love you.
What you gave me is good enough that I give you an equal in return.
Do you see?
But we're still attached to the game of proving ourselves that when someone gives us love in return, we become very uncomfortable.
It's like, do I really deserve it?
And if I do receive it, what do I do next?
Am I evil?
Am I bad?
I'm taking away from you, but maybe I'm taking away from someone else also.
Maybe a sibling.
You know, this isn't right.
I don't deserve this.
Yeah, there is a great temptation to believe that there is some external solution to the problem of insecurity.
You know, if I'm muscular enough, if I'm pretty enough, if I have the right car or the right job or enough money or the right wife or the right house or anything.
But there is this desire that somehow you can fill up a hole inside yourself like a black hole by pulling in various bits of matter from the outside world.
And, I mean, God, if being rich and famous and beautiful and talented was enough, Marilyn Monroe would probably still be alive today.
It's what Heath Ledger and all these people do.
There is no external solution to the problem of insecurity.
That is a devil you confront within your own heart, within the chambers of your own house.
But so many people, and of course there's lots of people out there who will try to tell you, if you buy my shit, whatever the hell it is that I'm selling, if you buy my shit or do whatever it is that I say or get two inches taller or have a full head of hair or whatever it's going to be… Yeah.
And it's like, no, that's not how you solve the problem of insecurity.
That is a personal, internal confrontation.
If we do that, a lot of the wasted stuff that's out there in the world would recede and I think actually be put to some productive use.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And we're also battling guilt.
Because when we do figure out how to get out of it, you just mentioned Marilyn Monroe, and she died.
When we think of rich and famous people, we think of their tragedies and their fall from grace.
So there's this guilt that comes up that we end up, it's almost masochistic, because we want to move out, we want to do the thing, we want to deserve.
And when we say, yes, I do deserve, we've got all these stories about people who got, who were bad or who got addicted to drugs.
Or someone talked about how in order for Bruce Wayne to become wealthy, his parents had to die.
You know, the Batman.
Batman figure.
Yeah.
So there's this resistance coming up and guilt is not a real feeling.
Guilt is a concept whereby what's coming up in your body, which is natural, is bumping up against a moral judgment.
And that's the insidious slave master that we've got to deal with.
It's hard for people to even realize that, you know, you just feel guilty about doing well.
But it's just a concept and you've got to let it go.
Well, guilt is very complex.
I think sometimes if we do something wrong, we can feel guilty.
That's earned.
But very few people I know have done that kind of stuff, strangled hobos or whatever.
But I think for the most part, guilt is something that is implanted in us so that if we feel anxiety about receiving too much, then we'll want to receive less, and that means there's more for the people who instill guilt in us.
I mean, the idea, I mean, just look at the Pope, right?
I mean, it's insane, right?
I mean, as Jesus said, right?
Everybody who wants to follow through, sell all your stuff, give it to the poor, and come follow me.
And then you've got this guy literally on a gold throne with a gold tea cozy on his head being carried by people around a gold palace.
The reason that you're supposed to feel guilty for abundance is so that the people who really want all the stuff in the world find it easier to take it from you or you find it easier to never have it because guilt for abundance is like, oh, come on.
It's a joke.
To be guilty for the most part is because people in power don't want you competing with them for all the resources they want, which are mostly yours to begin with.
Right.
That's great.
So, as far as the love aspect of things go, why do you think it's so hard for people?
I know a lot of people like this, and I'm sure you get a lot of letters from people about this too.
You know, people say, I'm bored.
I can't find my passion in life.
I can't find what excites me.
I can't find what interests me.
I find that...
Kind of hard to fathom.
I mean, there's lots of things.
I think like you, Jack of all trades, master of almost none, but I really love to research and to – I mean, there's almost no topic.
I mean, every time I see someone doing a job, I'm like, damn, I'd like to have that job for a month.
I don't care what it is.
It's a dishwasher.
It can be a pilot.
It can be anything.
Somebody who teaches people how to rock climb at a gym.
Hey, that'd be a great job to have a month.
I'm always drawn to every house I see and I wonder what it's like to live there.
I mean, I'm always drawn to the details of life and trying to figure things out like that.
So the idea of living a life bereft of any kind of passion or drive is kind of foreign to me.
And of course, I mean, you obviously have your bliss that you're following and you get lots of letters from people who are finding it tough.
Why do you think people find it so tough?
Do you think we just happen to be blessed with lusting, yearnful hearts?
Or do you think that somehow it's natural to people and it gets squeezed out of them?
It's the same story.
It's we're looking for validation.
So the thing that we feel is not right For us to feel.
And it needs to be validated by some external power.
Somebody else needs to say, yes, you know, it's not only okay, but it's fantastic and amazing.
And you really need to put your heart and soul behind hand basket weaving.
You know?
So the economic machine is not set up in such a way that basket weaving is of any high economic importance.
You're not going to be a good taxpayer because you're not going to have that much money.
Right?
So you end up having something come up in your body.
You feel this.
I feel this thing.
Like, I really just want to weave baskets.
In fact, I feel like if I did it, I might be the best basket weaver that has ever walked the planet.
I feel like a genius in here.
But every time I approach others with this idea, my parents, my teachers, my friends, you know, mom, dad, I just want to weave baskets.
And they're like, whoa, okay, kid.
Now, you're out of your fucking mind.
You're going to go to school.
I was a lawyer.
You need to be a lawyer, too.
You're not weaving any fucking baskets around here because you're of no use to anybody, right?
It's fine to have as a hobby.
Right, it's a hobby.
That's not plan A. What you want, what drives you, your passion can't possibly be plan A. Are you crazy?
Your identity can't be what you should be doing.
What drives you, what's passionate.
Sorry, go on, I'm interrupting.
I love it, though, because you get it.
And what a shame.
What a shame, not just for that person, right?
Because they've got to deny themselves, and that is sacrilege in itself.
What a shame is it to all the people that you could possibly serve with that talent?
Think about someone...
Or inspire, yeah.
They could benefit from the magic that you put into your basket, your weaving basket.
It's like, this basket literally changed my life because there's so much love in it.
There's always someone who knows how to appreciate—I'm doing this, but I really mean from my heart—how to appreciate a good piece of art, poetry, something that's come from someone's bowels.
Actually, if you do want to show something coming from your heart, I do have a fairly significant number of female listeners who are more than happy if you take your shirt off.
Wait, wait.
Was it you or was it me?
Wait, I'm 46 and mostly sit for a living.
No, I think it was pretty much you, so we'll save that for the donator-only section.
Yeah, right.
That's very good.
Now, but I think your generosity towards school is showing through, whether you feel it or not.
But I think we made a huge and catastrophic error as a species.
You know, in the past, you used to have about four adults around for every one child.
You know, you'd have a kid there, there'd be extended family, and you'd go out with the family to farm, to hunt, whatever it was, right?
Now, I mean, this wasn't ideal.
There was child sacrifice.
But in terms of how children learn...
There were lots of adults around relative to the kids.
Now, the complete opposite.
You've got like one adult in school for like 20, 30 or even more children.
And the idea that you can somehow run a modern education system when children, if they're encouraged to follow whatever their own bliss is, it would fall apart in about 12 nanoseconds.
And I think this is another reason why you have to get all these kids to sit in rows.
It's like domesticating cows.
You've got to put them in their tiny ass stalls so you can milk them.
And so I think that this inversal where we have very few adults who are riding shotgun on huge herds of children naturally smashes their individuality and the system simply cannot function.
And unfortunately the way the whole economic system is set up, it has to function.
I mean imagine if suddenly people said, "Oh, you know what?
I don't think the school system is really functioning that well.
Let's get a whole bunch more adults in here.
Let's have the mom or the dad come home from work.
Let's just really change it all." Well, you'd have a huge collapse in the tax base.
I mean the whole problem with having women come into the workforce was that they traded the job of parenting, which is something that's rich and wonderful and powerful, for the job of taking dictation and answering the phone, for Christ's sake, which is taxable in a way, of course, that mothering is not, which allows the government to grow like crazy, What a great deal that turned out to be.
And now we've got this crazy situation where we have, like, three sheepdogs, a huge herd of sheep, and none of them can be of any different color.
You know why?
That makes, what you just said makes today...
The best age to ever live in if you have a creative spirit.
The best!
Because prior to this point, you had to shut down what was going on in you because of what you just said.
You've got to contribute to this machine.
We're going somewhere as a race, right?
When I say a race, I mean humankind.
We're going somewhere.
And we're moving really, really fast, really, really hard.
There's no time for your bullshit.
But with the advent of the internet...
We now have the capacity to contribute to the machine, but also, like you're doing, build an audience around the thing that we love.
So I'm sure you feel the same way, but I feel like this is cheating.
Like, I'm a poet.
I literally just get to do what I love to do, and I figured out how to get paid for the thing.
And it's only because of the internet.
Because you and I, we're talking face-to-face, like you're really here, you know?
And this is just bits in the air.
So the neurotic drive for more That's inherent in our journey to where we are here has to be appreciated because it got us here.
And now we have the tools to escape.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
And with the fall of the gatekeepers, I think really is the fall of the machine that you're talking about.
I mean, beforehand, you and I would not be given cameras and hundreds of thousands of people or more to talk to forever.
We just wouldn't have that opportunity.
I mean, I went through academia.
I got all the way through a master's at an Ivy League school, and it just got so progressively exhausting.
It felt like I was just underwater swimming up an icy undercurrent to a glacier with asteroids falling.
It just got more and more difficult to move forward in that environment because the whole point is to weed out anyone.
I mean the moment you have tenure, it means you can't get fired from being unpopular.
They just never want to hire anyone who might conceivably be unpopular.
There's a crushing kind of tyranny in most of academia, particularly I think up here in Canada.
In the US, it's a bit more flexed, particularly in economics.
But anyway, so I think it's really tragic for people to think that this external validation is what's necessary for them to achieve credibility.
These people are the gatekeepers, and they provide the veneer of credibility to people.
And it's always struck me as something essential.
If you have a really good argument, you don't need the paper.
I mean, if you have, I mean, two and two make four, nobody sits there and says, hey, wait, wait, wait.
No, no, no.
I need to see a teacher's certificate before I'm going to accept that two and two make four.
I mean, that's just because it's true, right?
People who figured out the world was round were not, you know.
There was an astronomer 500 years ago who was 11.
He was the court astronomer.
Did he complete his PhD in Hamana Hamana?
It doesn't matter, right?
If you have a good enough argument, you don't need the piece of paper.
People who have pretty flimsy arguments love the piece of paper because they can use it to push people over.
The whole mind, the whole mental edifice of our philosophical and economic system and our personal integrity, our ethics, can all just fall over.
The moment somebody just waves a little piece of paper around in front of us, we're like, oh, wow.
Oh, PhD.
Oh, I'm out of here.
Oh, I can't write.
I mean, it's terrifying the degree that people are susceptible to that kind of stuff rather than having a good argument.
And if we took away that stuff, it would be like not having Spanx.
You'd actually have to work out.
It would actually be like if you didn't have the piece of paper...
What if you just have great arguments?
What if you just have great research?
What if you just have great ideas and great insights?
But because we can just talk to the world as a whole, the gatekeepers become irrelevant and it's only the quality of the content that matters.
Yes.
You mentioned the earth being round.
I mean, we realize what Galileo, was Galileo Copernicus, one of the guys, that propounded this idea, what he had to do?
He had to go to the king.
He had to go to the popes and had to say, look, guys, I got an idea.
Are you willing to help me share this fucking thing or are you going to put me in jail?
Right?
And that was, you know, a big idea.
Think about the...
I want to ask you, when you discovered the internet and you were like, oh, gatekeeper's gone, I can say whatever I want to whoever I want and I can really build my argument with the grassroots.
When you discovered that, because you're a bit older than me, I kind of came up when I was in college, the internet came around.
Did it not feel like striking gold?
Oh my god, it was like standing on top of a geister that was going to interstellar space.
The first time I saw it, my college roommate was a...
Oh God, the guy's got like two PhDs.
He's a great guy.
Anyway, he was out at the University of British Columbia and I was out there on business.
I was an entrepreneur in the software field for about 15 years.
I was out there on business and we'd always loved technology together and all that.
And he showed me this thing.
It was the first time I was like, wait, anybody can type into this little program and see anybody's written word anywhere in the world at any time forever?
Thought angels in my brain just thudding right up against my skull because I was just like, dear God, this is the most exciting thing I've ever seen.
This is going to change the entire planet.
There is no turning back from this.
This is going to cause tyrannies to crumble.
This is going to cause disparate people to join together in the only tribe that counts, the tribe of true thought and individuality.
We can finally find each other like stars reaching filaments of light across interstellar space.
We will be connected as a tribe.
I mean, I literally couldn't sleep for three days thinking about this stuff and immediately began to bring it into the business world and all that.
I mean, I was just like, this is astounding stuff.
And since then, I mean, I did a lot of software stuff and then eventually when the podcasting world came around, I was just like, oh, dear lord in heaven, I can actually just talk to anyone who wants to listen with no barriers and no commercials and no, oh, don't say that word, oh, that's a bad word.
I mean, I was just astounded.
I really thought that this was going to be the most important thing in human history ever.
I mean, the Gutenberg press pales in comparison to what this medium is able to allow us to do.
Sorry for that long rant, but, I mean, that's something that just blew my mind and continues to do so.
I'm with you.
I'm with you 100%.
And to just show how right you are, I read a book not too long ago by Paulo Coelho.
He's kind of a philosophical religious writer, but he wrote a book about the prophet Elijah.
He calls it The Fifth Mountain.
And in this book, he describes how there's this new technology That the religious people, you know, the hierarchy and the political hierarchy have caught wind of, and they're very, very nervous about this technology, and they're doing whatever they can.
There's all types of power plays going on, and the same thing that we're dealing with right now today, to keep this technology away from the people.
You know, this is thousands of years.
This is before Jesus' time, talking about historical context.
So it turns out, as they're describing this particular technology and the fear that the powers to be have in it, and they called it the alphabet.
The alphabet.
The alpha fucking bet.
They were trying to keep the alphabet away from us.
Not only are we beyond the alphabet, like, come on, everybody fucking reads, right?
Not only beyond the alphabet, not only beyond the paperback book, We're at a place where it's become the spirit of the idea that is being injected into the hearts of people through the internet in mediums like this.
Stories were told and shared In generations beyond, by an individual who had an idea, either a poet or an artist, or a Socrates, and he would gather people around him.
And he'd have to not just impart the idea, but have to get the people to feel it.
Do you see the difference?
He had his students around him, and he had to feel.
They had the transfer of passion.
It was heart.
Books, the alphabets, didn't allow that to happen.
We got to where we needed to go here.
But now, Stephan, people can look in your eyes.
You're talking to them, but you're not writing books.
Because books are just symbols.
Symbols, which are words, and letters.
This alphabet thing, it's just a bunch of fucking symbols.
There's no heart in the symbols.
What you can do, and what I can do, and what has made this whole thing...
What's immensely amazing is that we can do like Socrates did.
We can gather people around who can see in our eyes when we're saying the things that we say.
They can get our conviction at a visceral level.
That's where it's becoming such a rapid transformation of our consciousness.
Yeah.
And the other thing that's incredible is that the internet is the first communications medium that's not about the past, right?
So in the past, you'd say, oh, I want to write a book about whatever.
I want to write a book on ethics.
And then the people in the book – and I know this because, I mean, I had an agent and all that – So the people in the book-selling industry, they say, ah, okay, I want to write a book on ethics.
So who would be your audience?
And you would have to come up with some number and some demographic research.
So they would say, well, we only want to sell...
Where there already is a demand.
But that's all about the past.
That's about what people are conditioned to expect, what they're conditioned to receive, what they're used to.
The idea that you can say, I'm going to put a product out there, I have no idea who's even remotely interested in what the hell I have to say or what possible value it can be.
What is the business plan for what the hell you did?
If you had to write about it ten years ago, you wouldn't be able to put a goddamn thing down on paper.
Same thing with me.
But what if you just speak passionately about things that are important and you find that there is a market from it?
And that's what I mean.
It's not looking at the past.
What are people used to?
What is something like this that sold in the past?
And how many people who bought that other thing are going to buy this thing?
What's another kind of crack or a cookie or whatever?
Another kind of restaurant.
But this is, I'm going to speak truth to the skies and see who gathers with no need to prove an existing market.
That's the first time we're actually looking at the future rather than just trying to reproduce some fossilized bullshit from the past.
Wow.
I mean, that's true creativity at its finest.
We're creating things that have never been created before at the most rapid rate possible.
We're growing and sharing at an unprecedented rate.
Because like I said, it's brand new.
And that fosters creativity.
And this is also the first time that creators can be engaged in live conversations with an audience.
You know it.
You post a YouTube video and it's like comment, comment, comment, comment.
Email, email, email, email.
I mean, the degree to which we are responsive...
I mean, you publish a book and you've got to wait months for...
People might write you.
There might be a couple of reviews or something like that.
But the idea that there's live feedback...
People were just sailing blindfolded and therefore they couldn't be nimble.
They couldn't be responsive.
They couldn't be reactive.
If you're sailing blindfold, you need some big-ass tanker.
You know, you got to go slow.
You got to, you know, but we can be incredibly nimble.
We're like mammals that the feet of dinosaurs.
I mean, we are the future, I think.
This is the future of human communication because you simply, you can't, I mean, think of how much time it takes to get a review on a movie and by the time you've done that, you're not going to make another movie for another couple of years and it's already taken you another couple, the previous couple of years to make this movie.
We can put a video out and shape its content and be responsive to the audience in a way that is impossible in any other medium, and that's another reason why I think customer focus is everything.
And there's no customer focus like the internet, particularly when you are, you know, eating what you kill in terms of donations or in your case, ad subscriptions or whatever.
You have to be relevant.
You have to be challenging to your audience.
You have to be challenged by your audience and they have to be part of the conversation because particularly young people, they don't really get one-way medium that much anymore.
Even the video games talk back and the characters in the video games respond to what it is that you're doing.
That sure as hell didn't happen with Pac-Man when I was a kid.
You use the term conversation, and I'd even go as far as to say it's a dance.
Because it's like, and conversation is a dance, but again, I'm a body person.
So the whole idea is that I'm moving, and I'm watching you move, and then I'm going to move based on your move.
And we just do have this dance going on with me and my audience, you know?
So...
Again, going back to Socrates and what he did with his people.
Jesus, we used it as a metaphor before.
He had 12 guys that he danced with.
He danced with these 12 dudes.
You and I, we're dancing with thousands of people on a daily basis.
And these videos stay up, you know, whilst the internet goes bye-bye.
It's not like Jesus where it's like, you know, his story was told and told and told and told and told, written, rewritten, rewritten, rewritten.
It's like, no, I can see Stephen saying this right now in a video that was recorded 70 years ago.
This is what he believes.
It's crazy.
Yeah, that accuracy is really fascinating because what it means is that if you become an influential thinker, there are not going to be schools of thought.
Isn't that great?
You know, I mean, one of the problems with, as you say, Jesus, I mean, whether there was such a person or not, it's not particularly relevant.
What we do now is that there were so many political reinterpretations and obfuscations and manipulations of his maybe words that by the time – so there is no such thing.
And people say, well, I'm a Christian.
And it's like, well, which part?
Which part do you like?
Do you like the Old Testament asshole?
Do you like the newy, dewy, lovey guy in the New Testament?
I mean do you like the spare the rod, spoil the child?
Do you like love, suffer the little children?
I mean what do you like?
Do you like kill the gays?
Do you like hug the gay whales?
I don't know, right?
I mean so – but the great thing about having this stuff down is that there is no school of thought there.
There's no, well, I have this take on what Eliot said.
No, because we've got what Eliot said.
I mean, there's no need to have it all reinterpreted by stuff because it's all right there.
And that's great because then people don't have to focus on schisms.
They can just focus on grabbing as much productive thought and putting it into use as quickly as possible.
And think about what the generation, two generations from now is going to be like.
Because everything that we're doing now is a remix.
Because someone's watching you, check it out.
They watch you and you talk about philosophy and economics.
They come to me, I talk about strength training, but philosophy and physiology, psychology.
So we've got, just consider our shared sphere of influence, right?
They could maybe say there's a hundred of them.
They're remixing what they've gathered from you with what they're gathering from me, and they're going to create something brand fucking new that neither you or I will look at and be like, oh my god, that's brilliant!
Because they got a piece of me and they got a piece of you, and their offspring, their conscious offspring, their intellectual offspring, will be like...
Morphed into another monster that's going to morph with other ideas and it's just a big idea orgy that's going to turn into something who knows what but something interesting for sure.
Yeah, and I think the other thing that it's done is it has raised the standards for intimacy in relationships.
You know all the people talk about the internet, the computers, that they alienate people from each other and so on.
I think there may be some of that, but I think what happens is if you are a free spirit, if you are individuated or at least working in that direction, if you're really into the first commandment of Socrates, know thyself, and you find other...
other people, you know, sadly, it's, I mean, 2,500 years after the guy took his last drink of hemlock, it's still depressingly not present in the human conversation, self-knowledge and the pursuit of truth.
But we're working on that.
Putting our nose to the wheel.
He didn't have our technology.
But what happens is if you meet people on the internet who are really into stuff you're into, right?
And I don't mean like kinky, shaved goat fetish stuff or whatever it is, but like stuff that you're really into that's deep and meaningful for you.
What happens is then it's like if there are only three women in the town, they don't have to be that sexy, you know?
But if there are...
Three million women in the town, then they have to look sexier if they want to attract someone, whatever it is, right?
And so if you have the whole world to choose from, it ups your standards for what you want in a relationship.
Hopefully people will translate that into their local relationships or at least move to find places where they can be with people of a like mind.
But having such a wider group of people we can have a connection with.
I've got friends all over the world that I've made out of this show.
I've been to there.
People have met and there's been, I don't know, half a dozen weddings coming out of my show and all that.
People who've met love going to those things.
And these people would never have met in their local towns or even their local states.
Some of them met cross-country.
Some of them met opposite sides of the world.
Japan and California, for heaven's sakes.
So...
It really ups the standards in a way that it makes it less likely for people to accept a lot less.
If they can find this kind of connection here through this, then either they go find that connection and make it permanent, or at least they can raise the standards of what they can expect locally.
And I think that's really done great things for the potential for human intimacy.
It's like idea eugenics.
It's like we kill off what we don't want and breed with a higher calling, with a higher rate of ideas, if you will.
Where is this taking us?
The stupid gets dropped, the useless DNA that we don't wish is weak and stupid, and the collection of these more potent forms of idea DNA are coming together through what we're doing and the people that are partaking.
What are we creating?
It's just interesting.
Fascinating.
That's all.
Well, what we're creating is the inevitable backlash that occurs with progress, which you just have to surf over to get to the calm seas beyond, right?
I mean, there's always – whenever there's a move forward in the human condition, there are about – You know, 50.01% of the human population who really freaks out and fucking hates that progress.
You know, when slavery was ended, there are a whole bunch of people who, like, that was the worst day of their entire lives.
And all the ones that followed, you know, the slave owners, the slave transporters, the people who, you know, caught them, the people who, you know, ran their entire agricultural system.
I mean, they hated it.
So there was a lot of backlash against that kind of stuff, which still, you know, in certain forms of racism, lasts down to this day.
So whenever there is progress, you know, and this is something I've learned through experience, I still remain incredibly optimistic, but I thought, you know, if you have a great idea, everyone's going to go, either, I don't think it's a great idea, but I don't care that much, or, damn, son, that's a great idea, let's get behind that thing and push it up the mountain.
But there are a lot of people who are like, hey, do I smell a great idea around here?
I must crush it.
Because a great idea will show my smallness, right?
If people get taller, I'm suddenly revealed as short.
If I can't join the race up the mountain, I'm stuck down here in the mud.
And so I think in the optimism of creating the new world, I think we do have to also recognize that there is usually a backlash from the retrograde elements of society that don't want to move forward, right?
Like all the guys, when the women said, don't put up with shitty marriages, and then the divorce rate went up 300-400%, a lot of guys were like, damn, This idea of don't put up with shitty marriages was kind of something – like I was counting on women putting up with shitty marriages.
That was my whole foundation for my behavior as a husband.
Shitty marriages are great.
Be with me till I'm dead because that's what Jesus said or whatever it is, right?
And then when people come along and say, well, you know what?
You don't have to be in a shitty marriage.
Maybe a shitty marriage is the worst place to be.
I mean, a lot of guys really, really didn't like that.
Of course, a lot of women don't like that, too, if we say that to the men.
So there is this backlash, because people make a lot of decisions based on some pretty shitty standards.
You raise those standards, and suddenly those decisions, which seem to make sense and be pretty productive at the time, are suddenly revealed as, like, really, really terrible decisions.
Like, hey, I just dropped a million bucks on slaves.
What do you mean they're free?
Anyway, so I just wanted to mention that.
There's a lot invested in that.
It begs me to ask you the question...
Who our bigger enemy is?
Is it the people that are invested in the matrix?
Or is it the people who are running the matrix?
Oh, the people who run the Matrix, to me, are pretty inconsequential.
Because you've said this, too, in your videos, that the only prison is the belief system that you have.
I mean, that fundamentally is the only prison.
If you end up in a real prison, it's because you're a prisoner of belief.
And the powers that be, we think of them standing on high with sniper lasers on our foreheads and so on, but this is all nonsense.
Yeah.
The way that the leaders – the leaders are like – you think of Mary Poppins this way.
Leaders are like Mary Poppins.
People hanging off these umbrellas.
And what we are for the most part is going – and keeping them above us with a huge amount of energy.
We're doing it.
Yeah.
They only are up there because we are continually pushing them up and holding them up.
And there was an old joke from Monty Python where some guy is next appearing as a central tunnel support in the New Victoria Line, like he's going to be holding up the subway because he was so bad that's the only acting job he can get next.
And we are holding up this infrastructure.
The infrastructure doesn't push us down.
There's propaganda and this and that, but we're still free enough that if an unjust hierarchy is there, it's because we're holding the goddamn thing up.
And what happens is whenever anyone comes along and says, shrug, stop holding this thing, a lot of people kind of freak out.
And so I don't view the rulers as the enemy.
The people will always try and draw you into that, to think that the bad guy is the guy on top or the ruler or the warlord or whatever.
No, no, no.
It is the illusions of the people around you that are the hot air constantly pushing all this bullshit and keeping it above us.
If we simply turn off the fans, literally, like the fans of power, turn off the fans blowing upwards, this shit all comes down and it will come down in a matter of seconds, but we have to turn off the belief systems that keep it going.
Fascinating.
It's like, I read Wilhelm Reich, and he's got a book called The Mass Psychology of Fascism.
But essentially, it's, we're addicted to this.
We're addicted to blowing them up there.
We want a ruler.
It's like in our DNA somehow.
Well, I mean, I think it comes a lot from early childhood, right?
And you've read a lot of psychology, so I'm sure you're aware of the same thing.
If you have an authoritarian, spanking, hitting, yelling, screaming parent, then you are going to be drawn to that same hierarchy.
As you say, the world is a microcosm, really.
I say that the state is an effect of the family.
The power structures in the world are the effects of our early childhood experiences and what we're used to.
So the vast majority of Germans had fathers who screamed at them and forced obedience from them.
So when Hitler starts giving his speeches at Nuremberg, they're like, yeah, that makes sense to me.
Of course.
Yeah.
Hitler himself was, of course, beaten by his father up to 30 times a day until he fell into a coma.
And he was hung as a baby on a wall in a bag filled with bandages.
They bound their babies to keep them out of the way.
And they had lice in the bandages.
They were almost never washed.
So he referred to Jews as lice.
This had a visceral, body-based reaction to the majority of German children who, back in the day...
We're hung on these pegs with lice in their bodies.
And this is the amount of power that this kind of physical transformation of language can have.
And the one thing two Germanys credited after the Second World War, they completely reformed their child-raising practices because they got that if you beat up and abuse your children, what do you get?
Nazism.
And if you don't, what do you get?
Well, liberal, relatively free-market democracy.
And that's what they've really focused on over the past couple of generations.
And so, you know, as we keep focusing on raising children more peacefully, I mean, it seems to me as night follows day, or rather as day follows night, you simply, if you have egalitarian parenting, you can't help but have an egalitarian society because they won't speak any other language.
Hmm.
It's interesting.
And what I'm seeing as you're talking is there's, either way, we're trapped.
I think we're trapped if we go in the direction of being too liberal, because then it spills into the economics, where now we expect the beneficent ruler, like if you see what's happening in the United States with Obama, he's so popular because he's the good dad.
I'm not going to beat you.
I'm going to give you free cell phones.
In fact, those guys who used to beat you, I'm going to take their money away and give it to you.
We all deserve.
We should all share.
And that's a trap, too, because Thoreau says in one of his books, but basically, if you come knocking at my door with a gift, that's when I turn away.
Because there's a power associated with this sharing.
It looks so beneficent.
It looks so, you know, you're being good.
But at the same time, that's a fucking trap.
Because if you look at, like, the welfare system is going to collapse eventually.
Or maybe not.
But as it waves.
As it's wavering, I watched something on YouTube the other day in Delaware or something.
The city didn't get their food stamps in time.
The state didn't issue the funds somehow.
There was like a mistake.
And the people who were receiving food stamps didn't get it for about three or four days.
They were bugging the fuck out.
I mean, they were like, if these people didn't get their shit, guns would have been drawn.
I mean, the whole thing was going to fall down.
And you could see the look on their faces in the news.
They're like panicked, and they're aggressive, and they're angry.
And it's like, shit's going to go down if we don't get our food stamps.
So you become a slave to that also.
So which one?
Well, yeah, but of course you know this is what Nietzsche says.
Everything the government says is a lie and everything it has, it has stolen.
I mean, hey, if Obama wants to dip into his book royalties and spread the gold around the neighborhood, go the fuck to town.
It's your money.
But as the old saying goes, every election is an advanced auction of stolen goods, right?
I mean, he's not making it.
The money he's handing out is just being printed out of nothing.
It's being borrowed from the Chinese with the unborn children and the wombs of the American mothers as the goddamn collateral.
It's all a bunch of theft and illusions.
So, you know, if you're going to come to me with a gift, at least don't make it be my children's kidneys, for Christ's sake, because that doesn't feel like much of a gift at all.
So, yeah, I mean, it's very easy to be generous with other people's imaginary money.
How it's being done is wrong, but the energy that it draws towards it, I'm going to say is right, because subjectively to the individuals who are now tied and invested into that, there's no other way.
There's, you know, okay, we're doing this thing now, and if you don't feed us, we're coming for blood.
Oh, no, there's definitely, of course, a terrible dependency that has been foisted and a huge amount of intellectuals who say that, you know, well, you come from the ghetto, you're of the wrong race, and this, you've got no chance, Whitey controls the system, blah, blah, blah, and then they end up with, you know, making all the wrong decisions, right?
Having kids in their teens, not getting married, not holding jobs, you know.
People who don't have kids in their teens who get married and who hold a job at least for a year have only a 2% chance of ending up in poverty.
If you make those mistakes, you're certainly going to end up in poverty, but there's a whole mechanical system that's set up to keep people from achieving their potential.
If you achieve your potential, then you are competing with all the other people who are in charge who have, quote, achieved their potential, at least done better.
And if you create a culture of dependency, then you serve the power of the state.
And then if anybody says we should shrink the state, the state can then say, well, but what about all the poor people?
And then you're stymied, right?
So it's a terrible matrix of control that occurs.
How we get out of it, it's like any addiction.
You either end it rationally, proactively, preventatively, or you just hit the wall and try and pick up the pieces.
I suspect the latter will probably be the case, much to the suffering of, I think, everyone.
Everyone.
Listen, man, we've had a great chat.
Try to keep the bandwidth available for some of...
Thank you so much for taking the time.
I certainly really enjoyed the chat, really enjoyed your thoughts.
I hope it was valuable to you.
For my listeners, if you could give out your web statistics so they can find your work, which I recommend.
Well, if you're listening to Stefan's show and you're of the more of the economic philosophical mindset, I'd invite you to go to nonjob.org, which is an option to sign up for my newsletter and join our Facebook group.
That's where I'm sharing different ideas of this sort, where I literally spent tens of thousands of dollars learning internet marketing, how to do this whole thing.
And just because of who I am, I don't know, I feel it in me.
I'm giving it all away for free.
I basically just tell you guys exactly what I did, here's how you do it, and I give you all the tools.
I'm earning enough with my passion for strength and fitness that I feel like I owe it to you.
Hey guys, if you want to get out of the matrix, I'll show you how.
So if you participate in that, but also watch my other YouTube channels, just search Elliot Hulse YouTube, you'll hear a lot of A philosophical undertone that is probably in tune with what you're thinking if you're watching Stefan's show.
Participate that way.
Facebook, social media.
Join the conversation.
That's really the way to describe it.
And for Elliot's listeners, if you're listening to me for the first time, I have two things to say to you.
First, drop and give me 50, maggot!
No, I'm kidding.
I'm a terrible parody of the worst personal trainer you could imagine.
That's number one.
Number two is you can check out my show at freedomainradio.com or I have a YouTube channel, youtube.com forward slash freedomainradio.
And thanks.
It was a great chat.
I hope we can do it again sometime.
And congratulations on the matrix-breaking biceps that you are currently wielding.
And thanks for sharing your wisdom with the world.
My pleasure and thank you.
It's been fascinating and fun.
Take care.
▲
Export Selection