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March 24, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:52:59

2352 Brett Veinotte Guests Hosts the Freedomain Radio Sunday Call in Show, 24 March 2013

Brett Veinotte fills in for Stefan Molyneux to discuss Running Away From Yourself, Its Easy to Be a Hater, Emotional Overselling, Sudbury Schools, Bullying People with the Truth, Respect as a False Routine, Supporting What You Believe In and more!

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	Alright, good morning everybody.
	This is the 24th of March, 2013.
	This is James and Steph is out this week coming back from Liberty in the Pines.
	It's one of those Liberty in Pines out of Texas.
	Filling in for Steph today, we have Brett Vinat.
	Brett, good morning.
	Good morning, James.
	It's great to be here.
	Thanks for having me.
	It's a pleasure.
	Brett has the School Sucks podcast.
	I'm sure a lot of our listeners have heard of that, but Brett, why don't you tell us a little bit about that?
	Sure.
	Well, School Sucks Podcast is something that I've been doing since about 2009.
	And we have expanded to a small web community, a YouTube channel, and a live call-in show of our own.
	And, you know, really what we're trying to do on that show is make a very clear distinction.
	And it's really, I think it's missing in a lot of the dialogue about education and schooling.
	Those two things are opposites.
	They're not the same.
	They're not synonyms.
	And we spent a lot of time pointing out some of the detrimental effects of the schooling system in America and certainly around the world.
	And the second phase of the show, if you will, has been to explicate what real education is, how it can be achieved.
	That self-directed process.
	So that's where I like to think we're focusing now.
	But before you can reach for the stars, as they tell you to do in all those nice motivational posters in your middle school, you have to kind of, you know, realize the hole that you were tossed into as a youngster and get out of there first.
	So that's the function of SchoolSucksPodcast.
	And I encourage people to check out what we're doing on YouTube.
	Our YouTube username is SchoolSucksPodcast.
	That's the short version, James.
	So, Mike, you said you might have a few questions for him.
	I think I have a couple questions myself.
	So go ahead, Mike.
	Why don't you go ahead and pepper him with some interesting info.
	Sure, absolutely.
	Brad, you've been around the Liberty scene for quite a while at this point, and you've seen quite a bit.
	And I was curious if you had any thoughts on kind of like the current state of the Liberty community and your thoughts on how it's going, things that you like, things that you don't like, improvements that could potentially be made.
	Just generally your overall thoughts on where we're going and what you think about it.
	Well, I mean, I've been through most of my active period, and I consider that to be the work I've done with the podcast since August of 2009.
	I've been in New Hampshire, and I think I've seen a lot of things that were really positive.
	I've seen a lot of things that rubbed me the wrong way.
	I try not to be...
	I mean, there's things I like...
	For example, here in New Hampshire, people have kind of separated into different places depending on how they want to engage in activism.
	So...
	We have Concord, New Hampshire, which is the state's capital, and people who are interested in this political stuff usually gravitate towards Concord.
	Keene has kind of become the civil disobedience capital of the world, and people who are interested in pursuing that gravitate towards Keene.
	And, you know, people who are more interested in just an urban setting that doesn't really have either of those two focal points usually wind up in Manchester or the seacoast in Portsmouth.
	So there actually is a lot of, certainly through online, there's a lot of communication for people in different places, but I think I've seen that there's some frictions with different agendas,
	and I really, if I take issue with anything, I really don't think that political Activism is good PR. And the reason why is that politics is an arena where people go, in my opinion, from my observation, politics is an arena where people go to be angry, to vent aggression and trauma.
	And you already have, if you're trying to introduce people to new ideas, you know, that doesn't seem to be, that arena that well is already poisoned.
	So it's very difficult to take the message of liberty into a theater where people Only want to be angry and divisive and spiteful and aggressive.
	And, you know, people understand, I think, maybe if it's not even like if they're fully aware of it, but I think on a deep down level, they understand that politics is force.
	So the subtext of so many political conversations, and I think one of the reasons why they become so...
	Acrimonious is that people understand that the subject is, I want my will imposed on you like this.
	So when liberty-minded people go into the political arena, I think that other people take the message of peace, the message of non-aggression, ironically, and view it as a threat.
	So I would like to see people withdraw if I could be king for a day.
	I would like people to withdraw from that political theater a little bit because I just think it's bad PR. You know, the Free State Project is what brought me to New Hampshire, and the gentleman who wrote basically a thesis, I think when he was in academia, for what became the Free State Project, there was one line in his piece where he said something like, we're going to go to a state and take over the government, right?
	So the language of that, and that is probably the most quoted little snippet that appears in all things anti-Free State Project.
	That sounds pretty scary if you don't know what the Free State Project is about.
	Absolutely.
	You just want to take over the government.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So, I mean, it's hard for me to...
	I'm really, like, focused on my own thing.
	I mean, there's a lot of media that I really like, like, of course, Free Domain Radio.
	I was really into Free Talk Live and Complete Liberty and numerous others.
	But, you know, I've been so focused on my own stuff lately that I really don't think I have a good assessment of what's going on in the larger movement.
	And honestly, I would have trouble giving a real specific definition of what that even is.
	That was a long time for me to talk before defining what we were actually talking about.
	I think the politics, first and foremost, is what troubles me.
	I can certainly understand that.
	There's so many things that seem to divide.
	People in the liberty community that, you know, if you look at the face of it, should have so much in common, and the fact that there seems to be infighting at times and bickering, and there's not kind of a cohesive message moving forward about what it is that we're trying to accomplish.
	That can certainly be disconcerting at times.
	I had a couple of good opportunities to reach out to large groups of people here in New Hampshire recently and talk about School Sucks a little bit.
	I really wish, I would really like to see people turn the focus more towards attracting a younger crowd.
	I think this is a message that is generally appealing to a younger audience.
	But focusing more of the outreach, you know, away from the courts, away from police, I mean, because I think a lot of civil disobedience, your audience is bureaucrats.
	Right?
	And a hostile public, you know, that's already also involved in the political system in a given area.
	Focusing more on the schools, focusing more on parenting, and focusing more on self.
	You know, I think it's really frustrating, and I think I did the same thing when I was first waking up to all this stuff many years ago.
	Is that a lot of people have a tendency to run as far away from themselves as they can, right?
	So they say, well, okay, I understand the message of liberty, not on a personal level, but on a global level.
	So what I want to do is end the Fed, right?
	What I want to do, where I want to start, is by taking on one of the most powerful organizations, powerful and secretive organizations in the entire world.
	So, I described it once as this ring of concentric circles where we have a certain level of control at each ring.
	And the first one is obviously the personal.
	The second one would be our relationships, our family, and our community.
	And then beyond that, you can put as many rings as you want and eventually you get to the last one, which is the state.
	And all of the I mean, I guess it's a learning process.
	I wish more people would recognize that it's personal first, you know?
	Once we get our own house in order and through that we can build some meaningful, lasting, mutually beneficial relationships and that might translate to stronger communities and maybe eventually when all that stuff is taken care of in the end there'll be enough strength to take on something like the state.
	But it's not where I think you start.
	Well, it's certainly not where you have the most control over.
	You know, taking down the state or ending the Fed, these are gigantic, gigantic goals that are pretty difficult to do to really contribute to in a significant way as an individual.
	But you have complete and total control over your personal life and how happy you are.
	And taking steps to actually move towards happiness is something that is real and tangible and you can do today, right now, not in, you know, 5 years, 10 years, 15 years with the help of thousands of people.
	You know, I was thinking about that too.
	I make a lot of YouTube videos and I get this bad habit of reading YouTube comments.
	Or reading comments online generally, right?
	I'm sure Steph knows this feeling.
	Probably better than anyone in the Liberty community.
	I read some of this stuff and I'm like, what's wrong with these people?
	I think that's the first impulse.
	Why would somebody be so angry?
	The more I thought about it, and maybe this relates to what we were just talking about, the easiest thing to be in life, as far as meeting the need I think we all have for self-efficacy and to have an impact on the world around us, the easiest way to achieve that is to be a hater.
	To think of really nasty, acerbic, biting comments online, certainly the easiest place to do it.
	No one's coming to get you for anything you do there.
	And I think that maybe the attraction to some of these larger institutions that have this great, great distance from self or from friends or family Is that they're easy to hate because they're absolutely terrible.
	And waking up to all of this stuff usually brings a lot of anger.
	And that anger needs an outlet.
	So I think that might be part of it as well.
	You know, Brad, I'd be interested in hearing more about your personal transformation coming to this material, because I know for me, like you said, you know, coming along to realizing the reality of the state, there was a lot, a lot of anger that came up in me.
	I felt helpless at, you know, many points where it's like, oh my god, like, if I accept all this to be true, and yeah, I went to public school for how many ever years, and I just found it to be...
	I felt a lot of anger and I felt helpless and powerless at times.
	It's interesting to see how that came out and made it nihilistic feelings at the beginning, just wanting to give up.
	It's very interesting, I think, the emotional journey and rollercoaster that people go on when they kind of discover the ideas of liberty.
	And I'd be interested to hear more about your personal transformation, because certainly with your previous occupation, it affected you far more than it would someone in just a general line of work.
	Well, I think I've learned the most and I've made the most meaningful steps really related to a lot of the stuff that we've been talking about, shifting away from the political and the more abstract and the more distant to the personal in the time that I've been doing the show.
	And I think that, obviously, the best way to learn, the best way to achieve mastery, I think, in any given subject is to teach it.
	And I... Hmm.
	Actually, I put this forward kind of as conjecture on my live show the other night.
	If the podcast had its origins in maybe my recognition of the failure of some of my own communication strategies or in the past...
	Did I need the podcast because I had failed so miserably at trying to communicate these ideas to the people that I always thought would be the audience most likely to greet me with open arms and open ears, like friends and family.
	Like, oh, these people just lack information, and I can provide it for them, and then we'll...
	I mean, I think we all go through that.
	And when...
	Because of the anger that I think comes for a lot of people, certainly for myself when we first realized some of this stuff, my Communication strategies were pretty costly, and I think it got to a point where a lot of people really didn't want to talk with me about these things anymore.
	And that might have been partially, partially, I'm not saying it was the only reason, I think, for the podcast, because I think the podcast was also an outlet for me professionally, not just personally.
	I mean, there was a lot of...
	Times where I was sitting in meetings in high schools, just feeling like I was going to explode for what I could not say, but wanted to.
	But, you know, would hurt the company that I worked for, would kind of undermine the goals of the people that I made the contract with, who were parents, and they really didn't know any better.
	And, you know, I think a lot of people maybe come to an understanding of the horrors of state education through an understanding of liberty.
	Maybe when they get to chapter 7 in Murray Rothbard's For a New Liberty, they say, oh, education, that's part of it, too.
	But for me, it was the other way.
	It was my experience in education that really, I think, first made me very anti-authoritarian, and that drove me pretty hard towards the left.
	And it was a gradual process from there.
	I think initially I was very reactionary, very conspiratorial.
	I was initially into the Alex Jones crowd and I think it was around...
	I don't know, 2005, 2006, that I started listening to Free Talk Live, and from there, Complete Liberty, and it was Wes Bertrand who introduced me to Free Domain Radio.
	So, and, you know, Complete Liberty and Free Domain Radio were really transformative for me.
	And it was actually, it was funny, it was around the time that I started listening to Free Domain Radio that I started the podcast.
	Because I was like, I've got to do this, you know?
	And I had done stuff.
	I mean, I had gone to school for communications, so I had done radio stuff.
	I had a radio show in high school.
	And I had been a teacher, and I had a lot to say about a lot of these subjects.
	So there was a confluence of things that brought me to the whole School Sucks project.
	As a podcast in 2009, I tried to...
	Sell it as a documentary or pitch.
	I shouldn't say sell it.
	Pitch it would be more accurate word.
	And the person who was the producer that I introduced the idea to, I thought we were really speaking the same language on a lot of stuff educational.
	And he said something like, this is a paraphrase, but he said something like, it's not Michael Moore enough, Brett.
	You gotta be more like Michael Moore.
	What does that even mean?
	More sweatshirts.
	More what?
	More sweatshirts.
	Sweatshirts.
	He goes around frumpily, sorry.
	Never mind.
	Please go on.
	You know, you're right.
	He does go around kind of frumpily.
	You don't look unpresentable enough, Brett.
	You need to gain about 50 pounds.
	Maybe then you can go and get back.
	I can look pretty unpresentable.
	Sorry, sorry, everybody.
	That was kind of a cheap shot of Michael Moore.
	There are much better reasons to criticize him.
	Go on, please.
	Sure.
	And we were actually talking about this on my show recently, too.
	There are some redeeming features of Michael Moore's work, but what Michael Moore does that makes him so...
	I guess one of the reasons why I take issue with him is because almost everything that he does is an appeal to emotion.
	It's basically trickery.
	And he's a spotlight shiner.
	So instead of trying to understand the complexity and the depth of an issue, he will find these hard cases, these sad stories that can be used as an emotional means to back up whatever message or Ideas or agenda that he wants to push with one of his film, and he will shine a spotlight on those people.
	He will give them...
	And certainly, I mean, I think that there's nothing wrong with recognizing and highlighting the fact that some people are victims of things like, you know, the healthcare industry, Or the Bush administration.
	I mean, I take no issue with that.
	But there's a real trick with documentary filmmaking, too, that makes me somewhat sympathetic to Michael Moore in that film is about reaching people on an emotional level.
	So that was a real challenge for me when I started doing the podcast because you want to persuade people and you understand that really connecting with people is...
	An emotional pursuit.
	If people are only interested in logic, and they have complete disregard for emotion, that that's capricious or foolish to even acknowledge that we're emotional creatures, those aren't really people that I'm interested in having in my life.
	You know what I mean?
	That's a mental health issue.
	Right?
	So, I think that you have to, if you really want to persuade people, you have to be able to connect with them in a meaningful way on an emotional level.
	And when you're producing media, well, how do you do that?
	Right?
	How do you do that without cheating?
	And using logical fallacies and emotional trickery.
	So there is a balance.
	And for me, I was somebody always very interested in film.
	And I remember I heard Martin Scorsese say one time that the way to a person's heart is through music.
	And I tried to, in the production of my podcast, be as honest and as rigorous as I could at the time.
	I mean, I've made so many mistakes along the way, but trying to be...
	As sincere as I could in the arguments that I presented, but you could get to people emotionally through the way that the editing was done, or the media clips that were used, or the music that was used.
	And you didn't have to cheat in the narrative as much.
	So, you know, certainly I'm...
	Like I said, I've screwed up plenty, but I think that I recognize the challenges that somebody like Michael Moore has.
	We've all seen YouTube videos where people try to oversell it emotionally.
	There's so many documentaries on YouTube.
	The site I recommend people go and check out is called Top Documentary Films.
	There's some pretty good stuff there.
	But we know what that looks like, where people are emotional oversellers.
	And a little wax on the facts as well.
	Well, that's where they oversell emotionally, right?
	Because it's great to be emotional.
	It's great to be passionate.
	It's essential if you want to persuade people.
	You have to be.
	But if you're all emotion and no facts, or very little facts, or very selective facts, which I think is the case with Michael Moore's films, then that is the emotional oversell.
	And that can be, I mean, the same thing is done by politicians.
	I mean, that can be extremely dangerous when you get people riled up behind either a false idea or an idea with just enough truth behind it that you can spin it in a way that people believe it to be true.
	Yeah.
	And some of the work we've tried to do recently on my show is point out some of the tactics and the trickery that especially the mainstream media uses to manipulate people.
	They're not even putting too much effort into it anymore.
	I think that...
	Everyone's so conditioned, I don't think they need to.
	Yeah, a lot of the propagandists and the manipulators of public opinion, there actually might be some promise and some opportunity in that because they're getting pretty lazy.
	I mean, they're just recycling the same crap.
	If you check out mainstream media for a given hour any night, I don't know why you do that to yourself, but if you did...
	Well, you know, I feel like I have to do it to...
	I have to just kind of occasionally see what's going on.
	And sometimes it can charge me up a little bit.
	Not that I'm looking to get, like, charged up, but it can just...
	If I see the right thing, or I guess the wrong thing, it can just...
	Give me a push I need sometimes to maybe get on the mic or get on my live show with a couple of co-hosts and explore an idea that I've kind of had at the back of my mind for a while.
	If I get that push, like if it's current, if this is a current issue, maybe sometimes being just completely enraged by something I see on TV or hear on the radio can be motivating.
	But I don't recommend it.
	I don't recommend it, everyone.
	That makes sense what you're saying.
	Sometimes you've got to dip your little toe into the cesspool to kind of see what's going on.
	I definitely can connect to what you're saying as far as finding things that you see motivating.
	It's like, okay, there's so many people out there doing things that I know are...
	Are not so good.
	And it can definitely be whether it's anger or frustration or irritation or any range of emotions, putting that behind the truth and putting that behind an idea that is rational and logically consistent.
	That can be incredibly powerful and produce some amazing content that can really best communicate these ideas.
	Yes, absolutely.
	I was just going to say, guys, I don't know what it is.
	I think I repel callers.
	I have the same problem on my show.
	I don't know what it is.
	I encourage people to call.
	Ask me anything you want.
	Absolutely.
	I did have a question from the chat.
	Maybe it would be helpful if we make it into a two-parter.
	They're wondering what you think about Steph's view of the family.
	It would probably be helpful if you describe what you think Steph's view of the family is.
	I know it's a very general question, but it's the only one we've got at the moment.
	If you have any thoughts on that or what you'd like to say about it.
	Well, I think that My understanding, and you can fill this in as it needs, and I do have to apologize.
	I haven't listened to much of the show over the last year because, like I said, I've been really busy with my own projects and my listenership to most podcasts has decreased because of that.
	The other thing, quick tangent before I get to that question, if you're kind of impressionable like I am, and you listen to somebody who has a really compelling style like Steph does, and you talk a lot for an audience yourself, I noticed that after a while, if you listen too much, you start to sound like him a little bit.
	Which is not, you know, like...
	Right, right, right, right.
	I would be talking to other people.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I'd be talking to other people, right?
	And I would be doing like an interview or doing some chat on my live show.
	And I would just, I would be listening to the recording and I'd be like, right, right, right.
	Where did that come from?
	But there was a lot of examples like that where just the inflection and because he has a speaking style that is somewhat infectious and that's not why I don't listen or haven't listened as much but I think that one of the things that was really helpful for me with Free Domain Radio is Steph articulated that a lot of people were kind
	of as adults fantasizing about their family and their childhood.
	That once they were able to move away, grow up, become adults, get some autonomy, they were constructing this sort of fairytale narrative about what their childhood had been.
	And when we do that, we really, I think, sacrifice self-knowledge.
	We forget where we came from.
	We disown ourselves, to use what sounds like Nathaniel Brandon's quote.
	And we don't have any.
	When we say, oh, you know, my parents were really great or they did their best, we fail to have any empathy for our child selves.
	And I think that, you know, for a lot of us, I think that can create a way forward as adults where...
	If we don't look at the impact, and it's not just family.
	Obviously, on my show, I focus on school.
	It was like 40, 50 episodes in before we address family in any meaningful way.
	People have a kind of programming that I think is very much formed in childhood and I don't think Steph's message is any more prescriptive than this is something that you need to look at.
	And maybe there's varying degrees of depth depending on who the person is or what issues they face as adults.
	Of course, we do understand that Steph and the family is something that is really caricatured in maybe the rest of the Liberty Movement and beyond.
	Bob Murphy had a joke at The Roast where he introduced Steph and he said, I'm Stefan Molyneux and I hate your parents too, you know?
	So there's this perception of, I think, a lot of people who, they hear things, they take quotes out of context, and I really think that Steph's only cause that people need to examine this because it shapes our adult selves.
	in ways that I think a lot of people don't ever want to look at and unfortunately the real consequence of that is that there's a transference or an inheritance for the next generation because it's easier I think for a lot of people to just treat children poorly Than to recognize what was done to them,
	to accept and to face what was done to them as children, whether we're talking about the family or we're talking about school or society or religion.
	All these places where children are mistreated.
	Was that any kind of an answer to what was asked?
	Or is there anything I could do to flesh it out a little better?
	I think so.
	That makes sense to me.
	Yeah, that makes sense to me as well.
	We'll see if the person who had a question has any follow-ups, but right now we have a caller.
	Great.
	So, Damon, please, go right ahead.
	Speak with Brett.
	Brett, good morning!
	Good morning, sir.
	Oh my gosh, you're waking me up.
	This is wonderful.
	I wanted to say thank you first because I think...
	My journey to these types of topics has been opposite of yours.
	I actually started with you in School Sucks about maybe a year and a half ago, and that led me through your discussions with Complete Liberty, and then that led me back to Steph.
	So that has been really amazing.
	Great.
	I'm glad to hear that.
	I'm glad to hear that I could return the favor to those guys.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And I called because I... I see a lot of similarity in your personality and that I love children.
	I'm really vested in education and things like that.
	And I was drawn a little while back, maybe six months ago, to the idea of the democratic schools, the Sudbury schools.
	I've since progressed beyond that because I'm considering children in the near future and I've progressed beyond to really look more personal to the unschooling where I really work with my children one-on-one.
	And worry less about, you know, larger institutions.
	Sure.
	But I've heard or seen you mention that you have looked at the concept of democratic schools and how much of it has so much anarchy embedded into it as a success model, but then kind of drops the ball at the last minute to kind of use punishment and use social enforcement in some ways that might not be so productive.
	I wanted to hear some of your thoughts on that.
	Sure.
	Yeah, my co-host for my live show, Jason Osborne, and I went down to Framingham, Massachusetts, where the original Sudbury School is, about two months ago.
	And we spent a few hours there, and we saw some things that we really liked, and we saw some things that we found to be kind of troubling.
	And what we really liked is that everybody there seemed to be really happy.
	They seem to have positive relationships that was really quite alien to most of the school environments that I witnessed in my decade plus of experience in education.
	We felt like there was obviously a dangerous amount of collectivism And we kind of surmise that this is the result of maybe where the school is, you know, in Massachusetts.
	It's a pretty liberal, pretty...
	Collectivist, pretty unfree place.
	And maybe it would be possible for a school like that to exist up where we are and take the best features of Sudbury and leave the rest behind.
	The thing with democratic school is there is this question, and I really don't know the answer.
	If you're going to have a school...
	And there is a need to make decisions that affect everybody.
	How do you do that?
	I mean, I don't mind the democratic process when there's six people deciding on what to have for dinner, you know?
	So is there an opt-out, right?
	If there are decisions that are made on a community level or school level, is there an alternative for people who don't want to go along with that decision?
	So I think that the problem with Sudbury is that the idea of the school being democratic, that's kind of king there.
	That supersedes everything.
	That democracy and freedom, a mistake that a lot of adults make around the world, democracy and freedom are synonymous.
	So as long as we're democratic, as long as everybody has a voice, there's nothing really to complain about.
	I mean, certainly we can complain about little things and take it to a vote, but as far as the function of the school as a whole, there's nothing to complain about.
	Can I look that back?
	Because you're sparking off ideas in my head, which is, I guess, the best part of the conversation.
	What it sounds like is missing from democracy and that type of school would be negotiation.
	I mean, Steph talks about, and we all talk about, reality not having any conflicts in it.
	So if there's two people that are conflicting, They're either not understanding each other's point of view, or they're not understanding the goals of the problem.
	They try to get to the best solution.
	So the voting seems kind of like a cop-out.
	We're not really ever going to understand each other, so we might as well just count straws and see who gets to win.
	Yeah, I'm really glad that you mentioned that because this was probably the most off-putting part of the whole experience for us.
	We had a tour guide and we asked her, she was talking about this judicial review.
	Now, we only thought there was this school meeting where they voted on things, but there was this judicial review process where She said that if one student breaks the rules, they're often reported, or if one student feels wronged by another, they report it, they file a report, and it goes to judicial review.
	And the question that formed instantaneously in my mind is, well, obviously this changes with age.
	I think it's normal for—maybe it's not ideal, but I think it's normal in the way society works today that when very young children have a problem, they seek adult authorities to mediate or solve that dispute.
	We would like to think that as children grow and become more independent and they reach the teen years, something that I think should happen more quickly in a school like Sudbury, they would seek resolutions To interpersonal conflict without involving other people, without running to some kind of committee, or what is in that sense the authority, right?
	That they would be able to do exactly what you were saying.
	Look, there's no contradictions in nature.
	Where are we misunderstanding each other?
	What do you need?
	What do I need?
	How can we come to a mutually beneficial, non-sacrificial compromise here?
	And what we were told is that, no, whenever there is a conflict, they're encouraged to make reports.
	Students can get in trouble.
	For not reporting things to judicial review.
	A girl later told me that she received a one-day suspension per judicial review for walking on the wrong side of the street.
	And this I found very troubling.
	So I think that Sudbury...
	It was probably started with the best of intentions, but it's an organization that has existed for 40 plus years.
	As organizations continue to exist, I think there's a tendency for them to become more bureaucratic.
	A lot of rules have been put in place there, and I don't know how the process for evaluation are rules removed.
	I just think it was a sign that maybe some things have gotten a little out of hand if a 15 or 16-year-old girl is being punished by a group for walking on the wrong side of the street.
	It tells me that something, despite all the positive aspects of Sudbury, something has gone wrong there.
	It sounds like that idea of negotiation and also competition, they kind of have accepted that idea of monopoly on dispute resolution, which is I think the first subject Steph tackled when he started his podcast.
	That idea that it's all in or all out.
	You can accept our organization or you can leave.
	You would think with these amazing bright minds that are fully being developed that In 40 years, wouldn't some kids have gotten together and created an alternate dispute resolution organization within their school that would have out-competed the official one?
	But it sounds like I bet that's pretty much not allowed.
	It doesn't seem that way.
	We were also interested in the effectiveness of the school.
	What is the output?
	What are people doing after Sudbury?
	Most importantly, are they happy adults?
	We were actually talking about this on a live show recently.
	I had Gardner Goldsmith on with me, who's lived in New Hampshire.
	Most of his life and is very familiar with the Sudbury program and Massachusetts politics.
	And he said the school is notorious for producing very left-wing statists.
	And I find that that's unfortunate.
	But I think I see how that can happen, because what it seems that Sudbury teaches is a hope for the establishment of a benevolent authority.
	Like, yeah, we understand that, you know, maybe things on the national level, and I'm kind of speaking, I think, the best I can for that mindset, haven't gone...
	The right way.
	But it doesn't mean that this isn't a good system.
	It doesn't mean that democracy can't work.
	It's just hope and change, that kind of a thing.
	There were things that I really liked about Sudbury, but I think that, unfortunately, these troubling aspects of it left an impression on me as well.
	So my next step when I was noodling around this in my head was to say, well, it sounds like what's missing is sort of those competitions and not competition like sports team win-lose, but really an ability for the children to play around with the idea of what is their time and what is their identity worth?
	What's their value and how do they exchange that?
	And I was starting to think that it might be possible to implement a similar school, but That really was much more organic in its future development, but you're not dictating how it goes.
	And if you could almost simulate a small economy within the school with, you know, not real money maybe, but some sort of simulation of it, where kids can really push and identify where value is happening and actually have say in immediately getting the people who do the best stuff to have the most resources.
	That might allow some more organic development over time.
	Yeah.
	These are things that we're talking about.
	A question that I've asked for a long time is, is the building necessary?
	Is this just an idea that we might have to move beyond?
	The idea of having a school, what is the real benefit?
	I think most of them, as far as having a place where kids can go, are practical more than anything else.
	You know what I mean?
	Sure.
	People need a place to send their kids during the day.
	People need to create situations where a small number of adults can watch a large number of kids or kind of facilitate activities for a large number of kids just because of the way that the economy works.
	People have got to go to work.
	They can't take their kids with them.
	I think that there's obviously some political and economic realities that are somewhat limiting right now.
	But the broader question is, is school necessary?
	Is the idea of a school building, a physical plant where education happens, is that an idea that really has a way of working?
	I don't know.
	I really don't.
	And that might be another aspect you've noticed.
	So how do you feel about the astonishing lack of parental daily participation in a school like that?
	I'm looking at my life, you know, getting ready to have kids, and I just sold a five-bedroom house with a pool to move to a little tiny apartment because I really want to realign my resources to allow me to work maybe less than half a year and really allow me to spend time and have that family and not And not just,
	you know, I could imagine, I'm from Natick, the next town over from Framingham, and I mean, there's a whole lot of giant single-family houses in those towns, and you wonder if these people are choosing to have their big house instead of choosing to spend time with their kids.
	And so I kind of reject the idea that the economy is forcing them because there's a whole lot of little cheap apartments they could move into.
	No, you're right.
	You're really right.
	And I should know because I know we have a global audience here and we're talking about central Massachusetts, but I used to work in Needham.
	This is a really wealthy area of Massachusetts outside of Boston.
	So these are the suburbs of Boston where most of the people who are making tons of cash And regardless of having to give 60% of it to the state of Massachusetts and the federal government, people who are making a lot of money, this is where they live in Massachusetts.
	And this is where I did most of my tutoring work between 2006 and 2008.
	And these people, you know, dad was president of a bank and mom still worked.
	And all of the out-of-school educational activity was outsourced to people like me.
	So you're right, it is a choice.
	And there is, obviously, that keeping up with the Joneses aspect to it as well.
	Because if dad's salary affords them a 5 or 6 bedroom house on 10 acres in Needham, Massachusetts, I don't even want to think about what the property taxes are there, then yeah, mom's choice to work is certainly not out of necessity.
	So, yeah, I think that's admirable.
	I certainly don't want to call it a sacrifice, but to prioritize like you're doing.
	And I think that a lot of people tell themselves this story.
	I think this was the way it was with me to a certain extent, is that parents say, well, the way that I can help my kids the most is to make as much money, to provide as much financial stability as possible.
	Which is nothing more than a story, of course.
	Yeah, it's awesome.
	I think it's a story that a lot of people are telling themselves.
	I mean, I grew up in one of those big houses and I got $1,000 plus of presents every Christmas.
	And, you know, it actually encouraged some really anti-slaught Social anti-developmental behavior.
	I was into model trains and I would sit in the basement hours and hours a day putting together these models and every year my crack was encouraged and more model trains kept showing up as presents.
	At the same time, no one asked, hey, why is he in the basement not talking to people, not playing with anyone?
	Those types of self-understanding questions that you started this conversation with I think are Yeah, I think it also can, you can form this feeling or this belief that everything, you know, when you're raised like that, you can form this belief that everything is always just somehow going to be taken care of.
	And maybe as an adult, that translates to, somehow everything will just be okay, which can really sap people's motivation.
	My observations from my own life and from the lives of friends that I grew up with who were similar economic status.
	And obviously, once you get to be an adult, No one to blame for that, and 100% responsibility lies with me or whoever we're talking about to change that.
	I think there's a lot of detrimental effects to that.
	I could get even more intriguing.
	I don't know if there are any other topics or callers coming up, but I have some really sidetracked comments.
	Guys, is that alright?
	No other callers at the moment.
	Mike, do you have anything else?
	No, go ahead, Damon.
	Well, I could take this conversation a little more international.
	This past week, I had one of the best weeks of my life.
	I work for a large corporation, and we are expanding into Shanghai.
	And so there's a large number of people being hired from the local populace to join the company.
	And our company is very American, all about selling magic and positive memories, things like that.
	So I've reached out in a mentorship program to become a mentor because I've been 10 years in my field, so I figured I could.
	And I have doing these conversations which allow me to offer so much unique perspective to people.
	And so I have these three young women in Shanghai who picked me out of a hat and said they wanted to talk to me.
	And I think I can circle this back to education.
	It was intriguing.
	In their culture, there's no idea of choice or real honest respect.
	Even though, you know, Asian culture is very much, they talk about respect for elders, respect for many types of people, they don't really respect that idea of individual choice, you know, being the root of where respect actually really comes from.
	So when I started talking about some of those topics, they kind of blew their mind in a positive way.
	And it did really quickly go back to education in childhood that you wouldn't necessarily learn to question anything.
	You learn to figure out what your own values are to figure out what choices you can make in life.
	So yeah, big sidetrack.
	It just blew my mind and I talked to two different women for an hour and we had nothing.
	You wouldn't think we'd have anything in common but My god, this is someone on the other side of the planet, and I was able to connect with them really closely, very quickly, because these types of things we're learning about, respect and choices and how to self-analyze yourself, really are universal.
	It was amazing.
	It's like she was down the street.
	So respect is a kind of a routine or this theatrical performance that people do.
	It's not a thing that is real.
	Right, when we get, I mean in our company we really push the whole everyone says each other's first name, which frankly might be partly theatrics, but it does help with the idea that we all have something to add.
	We're all peers and some people are paid more maybe because they have more experience or their decisions have wider ramifications, but in the end we're each there to help each other one-on-one and that was so foreign to her or The idea that you're equal with your boss is just mind-blowing.
	Yeah, I've worked places like that too, where everybody calls everybody by their first name to their face, and everybody calls anyone above them by their last name behind their back.
	That really is just kind of a routine, right?
	Yeah.
	And it's kind of like the idea, it reminds me, we'll force you to be moral, you know, where once force is introduced, morality is not the right word anymore.
	So, yeah, I think that there's plenty of that here as well.
	More than enough.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	I'm in 2009 listening to Steph's podcast, In Order, taking my time.
	And I just heard one that was talking about how the idea of hierarchy or the idea of someone dictating what someone else should do, how inefficient that is.
	And I think that relates back to all the stuff you're trying to do with school.
	It's the idea of sending people to a place and telling them what they should do and what's best for them and how non-humble that is.
	One of the things that's really peaked My interest in the last year is the idea that no person on the planet can be boring, and we each have millions of hours of experience, and I've only just met you for 30 minutes.
	You can't be boring.
	There's too much content for you to draw from.
	And that idea that I, knowing you for an hour, can know what's best for you when you know yourself for thousands and thousands of hours is just insanity.
	And it's so hard to present that to people, at least in my experience, because it's To present that someone has been that insane for so long, it's really hard to look that in the face.
	Right.
	I could actually take this back to the first question that Michael asked me about some of the issues that I might have with the liberty movement as a whole.
	I think that another thing I would like to see is maybe a little bit less arrogance.
	This is something that I think happens in politics generally, but People will start a conversation with somebody on the issue of religion or politics or schooling or parenting and there's an impulse, and I've certainly been guilty of this myself, there's like an impulse to categorize them and dismiss them, you know?
	And that's not a way to learn anything.
	There's no enrichment that's going to come from that interaction if the one person's effort is to characterize the other person or to sort or group the other person for the purpose of dismissal.
	And I see a lot of that.
	For people who talk about the value of individualism, I think that's something that we should try to avoid at all costs.
	I say the same thing to myself because I know I've done it on my show and in real life.
	But yeah, you're right.
	There's a huge missed opportunity when you do that.
	I'm glad you brought that up, Brad.
	I'm certainly guilty of doing this in the past, too, almost bullying people with the truth.
	It wasn't about honest communication and trying to help them understand ideas.
	It was about me feeling superior because I had this information and understood it, and it happened to be true.
	It definitely happened to be true, but I was going into the interaction not trying to honestly communicate with someone and help them understand, but to bully them with my knowledge and look down on them and say, like, oh, I have this information, and you don't.
	Therefore, in some way, shape, or form, that makes me superior to you.
	Right.
	That's an absolutely horrible way to communicate these ideas, and it's something I've seen other people do.
	It's something I've done in the past.
	I don't know if it's a stage that people tend to go through as they're exposed to this kind of information or if it's more select, but I think it does an absolute disservice to the subject, and it is not in any way, shape, or form empathizing with the people that you're trying to communicate with.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And this is one of the ways that I found nonviolent communication to be helpful.
	I mean, if people are unfamiliar with nonviolent communication or you have kind of a negative concept of it, it's not like a set of PDF scripts that you print offline and bring to your conversations.
	I think it's really a language that you need to speak with yourself first.
	And you need to understand, you know, what needs are you trying to get met by the actions that you take?
	Obviously, there's a lot of tie-ins between NVC and Brandon's six pillars of self-esteem, living purposefully.
	I think there's some correlation between nonviolent communication and objectivism, because they're really the only two philosophies that I think are entirely non-self-sacrificial.
	And, you know, being able to understand why I wanted to engage people that way, like you're talking about, Michael, was incredibly valuable for me.
	It was an incredibly valuable pursuit.
	I actually had a conversation with Steph privately a couple years ago, and one of the things that he told me was, you know, I really hope you understand.
	You really need to understand why you're doing what you're doing.
	Why do you want to do this?
	You kind of need to do RTR with yourself.
	I think that was something for a long time that I didn't do and that I wasn't doing.
	Like I said, the easiest thing in the world, and it still happens to me, when we're doing live radio and I've got dead air to fill, the easiest place to go to is the negative.
	The what somebody else is doing wrong, the judgment.
	It's so—because it's so—I mean, maybe it has something to do with, you know, I think parts of my personality were formed when I had accomplished nothing, probably had lower self-esteem than I do now.
	And I think it's just this hard wiring that you have to fight sometimes, the impulse to go to that place and be a hater.
	Because I find myself doing that a lot.
	And it's really, you have to be vigilant to avoid that.
	So that's one way that I found that self-knowledge, that self-awareness, NVC was really helpful with that for me.
	I think that's a really important idea, Brett.
	Being conscious.
	I think you can break down a lot of the ideas that Steph talks about into two words, be conscious.
	Be conscious of the decisions that you're making and why you're doing the things that you're doing.
	If you're conscious of what you're doing and you make a conscious choice to do something, you win.
	There are no rules.
	There is no right or wrong answer.
	You need to be conscious of the decisions that you're making.
	And, you know, the effects that they're having on other people.
	And, yeah, and part of living consciously is being not just open, but, you know, like really, like eagerly open to any new information.
	And not in the way where you're being kind of, you know, Like the Socratic, like you're kind of toying with somebody.
	Like this cat and mouse game where you're like, oh, tell me more about your ideas, silly.
	You know, like that kind of false interest.
	That jabbing questions at people.
	And I mean, this is another thing that I've talked about so many times and been so guilty of in the past.
	Like, just ask people questions.
	Jab at people with questions.
	Well, you know, that doesn't make them look forward to seeing you again, when you do have a lot of valuable information to share with other people, but you shame them, you guilt them, you judge them, you dismiss them, you categorize them.
	It's not like those kinds of people are going to be lining up to get more knowledge from you in the future.
	So yeah, I think part of living consciously is even if you deep down disagree, even if you deep down know somebody else is wrong, to be eagerly open to any information, any knowledge, feedback that they have.
	And I think there's a laziness, too, where other people might tell us things that we don't want to hear.
	Other people might tell us things that, if we accept their advice, require additional thought and effort on our part.
	And the lazy thing to do is just dismiss them.
	And maybe that happens a lot in political, religious, social, educational, philosophical debate.
	Maybe it happens in our personal lives.
	Maybe it happens in our professional lives.
	But we all know, I think we've all at least interacted with a person, maybe on a professional level, who was like, yeah, Supervisor A said I need to do X, Y, and Z, but he's an asshole, you know?
	I mean, that kind of dismissal.
	And there's a variety of levels of sophistication to that kind of dismissal of another person.
	But really, a real effort to live consciously, I think, would lead to less occurrences of that.
	Those situations that you talked about, like if you're just jabbing away at someone with questions.
	I mean, and it's not coming from a place of genuine interest or curiosity or actually wanting to help them get closer to the truth or to better understand where they're coming from.
	That's going to be communicated.
	That's going to be communicated, like you said.
	The person's probably not going to enjoy that interaction, and this stuff is hard to accept anyway, a lot of the ideas that we talk about.
	And, you know, if someone's not enjoying the interaction, And you're not empathizing with how difficult it is to pretty much hear in the course of a conversation that, hey, all this stuff that you believed for X number of years that you've been alive, there's a lot of it that you might want to reexamine that may not be in the best interest.
	That's going to be a really, really unproductive conversation if you're not connected to that kind of empathy.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And I think when people take some of these more aggressive approaches, other people know what you're trying to do anyway.
	I mean, even if we get real cute about it, this is where the emotions come into it again, because even if they can't articulate, like, oh, I see what you're trying to do.
	You're trying to do this, this, and this.
	And I think it imprints something emotionally about you onto them.
	And they just know that they don't...
	They are not going to look to you as somebody that is empathetic or that they could forge a meaningful connection with if your approach is so costly.
	So yeah, I think that's important.
	Very good point.
	Caller, did you have any more questions for Brett?
	I think I was enjoying the nice passive bliss of listening to you guys talk.
	It was wonderful.
	Cool.
	Yeah, I'd be curious, Bretton, hearing your thoughts on, we just had Dana Martin on the Sunday show a couple weeks ago.
	Yeah.
	And, you know, the idea she talks about with unschooling, I find it completely and totally fascinating.
	And, you know, the idea that your role as a parent is to be more just a facilitator for your child's interests.
	And, like you said before, do we need the building?
	Yeah.
	You know, is the building there to facilitate?
	Or, you know, is that something that can just be done at home?
	I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the unschooling approach versus, you talked about Sudbury schools, and certainly there's Montessori schools, and there's a lot of options for non-traditional schooling.
	And I'd be curious to hear your thoughts and comparisons between each of those and which one you think is closest to the way to go.
	Well, if we define unschooling, the opposite of schooling, then it's just self-directed learning, right?
	So it's just education.
	That's how we learn things as an adult.
	We make a choice.
	We recognize some kind of intrinsic motivation that we have.
	And then we come up with a follow-up plan to that realization.
	And after that, we go through a process and then we know something.
	So the idea of this being radical or new agey or a foreign concept, I think all of us recognize that this is how we learn.
	This is how adults learn.
	And as far as parents are I think there is an importance to being proactive as far as creating an environment where learning can take place.
	And that's very obvious, I think, what parents should do.
	I was watching this video where Steph was talking to a gentleman where he was saying that sometimes people mistake unschooling for unparenting.
	Where it's just complete unschooling or home education, as I refer to it, and Laurette Lynn refers to it, is certainly not about disengagement.
	In fact, I think it requires more engagement.
	Sending your child to government school is disengagement.
	I mean, it needs to be disengagement.
	You would drive yourself crazy if you had to think about what was going on and what they were being exposed to there for 35 hours a week.
	So, you know, I think it's about increasing engagement and really observing what...
	I mean, you really have to be on top of when is it time to introduce new things?
	When are old things getting old?
	What does this physical environment need to have in it to...
	Obviously not forced, but encourage new development.
	So I think it's a tremendous amount of work.
	And I really think that people need to throw out all...
	All language and thought that relates to school, right?
	So age groups, timelines, levels, all that stuff needs to go.
	And it's difficult to let go of that stuff because it's so schooled into us as a generation who spent 15,000 hours in these indoctrination centers.
	I think it's a great challenge, and I have a lot of admiration for people like Dana Martin who Strangely enough, I've never had on my show.
	I don't have any good reason why.
	I'm going to write to her today or tomorrow and get her on.
	I listened to the first 45 minutes of the show that she did, the call-in show.
	I really enjoy her work.
	Is there anything else more specific I could address related to that?
	I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on, you talked about getting rid of the building and throwing everything out.
	And certainly you can go as a facilitator, as a parent, do that yourself.
	You know, you can be there for your child and help facilitate yourself.
	You could also, the idea of paying someone else to do it or having someone help you in that role.
	I'd be interested to see what your thoughts are on that subject.
	Do you think there's a market for, whether it's certainly tutors or that kind of thing, but whether the building exists or not, offloading that and having someone assist you in the process of facilitating for your child?
	So I think there's a market for that, not without a real dramatic paradigm shift and a real evolution in what people's conception of education is.
	I think a lot of the people who have the means to hire somebody like me, and when I was working down in Damon's area there, in the suburbs of Boston, the company I worked for was billing people like $75 an hour.
	And I was working with some kids like five, six hours a week.
	So a lot of people are just priced out of that immediately.
	And in years of being in business, we obviously worked very hard and tried to come up with a lot of different ideas and settings and arrangements to make the service more accessible to more people.
	But it is expensive.
	And I think, unfortunately, right now, A lot of people who have those means are competitive in the ways with each other that I described before, and the concerns go more towards the best private school,
	you know, or getting I think this is partially the appeal for a lot of people of Sudbury, because Sudbury is considered to be this kind of elite, well-established alternative school.
	A lot of parents who might be just as happy if their son or daughter went to Choate or Phillips Exeter or someplace like that, like the name Sudbury.
	You know, my child went to Sudbury School.
	I mean, this is everything from, you know, Harvard University to high school hockey.
	Parents, you know, kind of using their children to, you know, build their own sense of self that was kind of on shaky ground from their own childhood.
	So I think that really, I mean, I've honestly, Michael, I've all but given up on...
	It was a career for me doing things the way I had been doing.
	It wasn't enough work.
	It wasn't sustainable by itself.
	Fortunately, the podcast has picked up some of the slack as far as income for me.
	There was some frustration of just doing the same thing over and over again with the standardized test tutoring.
	I made numerous efforts to reach out to homeschooling groups to build a...
	And I think a lot of it, the outreach I was doing before, what came with the rejection was, you're just trying to sell us something.
	So I was an outsider coming into a community that had already been established.
	Asking them to pay me for something that they felt they were being able to do with far less financial resources already.
	So the lesson that I'm trying to take to the future of being an educator or facilitator of education for money Maybe to try and take the lessons that I've learned from the podcast.
	I've been able to get subscribers the same way Steph has, by push marketing.
	You have to put a tremendous amount of content out there for free, and when people recognize that that has value, then maybe they'll take you some money every month.
	Because they want, first of all, I'm still sending Steph money, but I don't listen to the show regularly because I recognize how valuable it is.
	I paid, what, $60,000, $70,000 for an almost worthless college education?
	And what Free Domain Radio, how many times over has Free Domain Radio multiplied its value compared to the six years that I spent in college between undergrad and grad school?
	So yeah, I mean, that's something that I would continue to support, whether I'm a regular listener or not.
	And I think that when you can prove that what you do has value, maybe push marketing can create a market.
	So that's how I'm kind of rethinking things as far as the tutoring is concerned.
	I'm actually going to start a new website and possibly a new podcast and YouTube channel giving stuff away for free.
	You know, people are paying, I mean, the bread and butter for me for years has been SAT, and people are paying $500, $600, $700, $800 for those courses.
	I'll put one online for free.
	And, you know, I think really what I'm driving at here is the answer to your question is no.
	I don't see from my experience, right?
	In two areas, specifically.
	First, in Massachusetts, where there is a lot of focus and interest in education.
	There is—I'm using this word as positively as I possibly can—a progressive attitude about education.
	And in New Hampshire, where there's a lot of value put on homeschooling and educational freedom, maybe I just haven't been successful as an entrepreneur, but in those two places where offering people a real alternative to the government school or even private school or the building at all, I just haven't been terribly successful.
	And the other side of that, though, is now, if you were successful in that, you would be talking to one person, two people, three people, only a handful, only so many hours in a day.
	Whereas now you get to communicate to everyone that's got an internet connection.
	There's a lot more potential people that you can reach with what you're talking about and a lot more people that you can touch and have a positive effect on.
	Absolutely.
	And that obviously has a value that's different from monetary compensation.
	And I don't forget that.
	I try to maintain gratitude for that.
	And I've thought, there's been times where I've gotten frustrated about Lack of engagement, lack of views, lack of hits, lack of donations coming in.
	And I remind myself, if I had stayed the course and become a schoolteacher, I could reach as many people in a career as I reach in three or four days now.
	And I would also have been restricted in the other environment.
	In how I reach them.
	You know, and I already felt that happening.
	Even in private school, you know, I was being censored to a certain extent and had to censor myself in order to keep my job.
	I don't have to do that anymore.
	So, yeah, I agree.
	And thanks for reminding me of that.
	I need to remind myself of that more, too.
	We actually have another caller on the line.
	Great.
	Go ahead, caller.
	Hey, how are you?
	All right, you're up.
	All right um well so this is a call about unschooling right and um this is my first um my first involvement in this kind of call um but I'm in school myself right now and I'm in a different kind of a structure it's an online school for health coaching and it's um it's Interesting.
	But I'm finding it really difficult because there's no real set, structured way to connect with other people.
	And I think that's the biggest challenge with alternative structures with schools, the connection.
	But in the same way, there's really never any connection in these other schools, like the college I've been to.
	I never really felt like I understood what people were doing there.
	So I think it's really important to have an overall understanding of what you're doing in a school, but I also think that it's important to have a really solid connection with the other people that you're studying with.
	I go to school with people all over the world.
	Can we just define that word a little bit better, connection?
	What would you say, Ashley, is the connection that you're looking to have?
	On what level?
	Sure.
	Well, I used to be in FDR. I used to be an FDR member, avid follower, and it was every single day.
	It was like my job, and it felt great to connect like that.
	But there's no everyday connection with the people.
	Okay, I'll define the connection as you're kind of streamlined consciously.
	Your goals are similar.
	Your core beliefs are very similar.
	And that's what you've discussed.
	And we don't have that in my school.
	Does that make it a little bit more clear?
	Connection I'm talking about.
	Just kind of sharing the consciousness.
	Sharing a conversation.
	Yeah.
	Well, what did you say you were studying again?
	I'm sorry.
	Sure.
	I study holistic health coaching.
	It's alternative.
	I don't know what you guys think about it, but my job is to motivate people through life changes.
	Specifically through their food and lifestyle choices.
	So, I mean, obviously, it's a different subject matter than a lot of, I would say, majority of what probably goes on on the FDR boards, where you were having these other types of connections.
	Is it possible that...
	Being involved in the FDR community was something that required more emotional engagement, that was easier to forge meaningful connections with other people because of what was being discussed.
	Those kinds of connections, there might be educational or philosophical environments where those connections form more easily than other places.
	Well, that's very interesting that you say that because my school is based on these five pillars of primary food versus secondary food.
	Primary food is your physical activity, your relationship with people, your relationship with your spirituality, and it has a lot to do with relationships.
	That's what we consider your primary food.
	And the relationships that you're establishing as Student at my school will really attribute to your ability to connect with people outside.
	It's all about connection.
	So it's boggling to me that I've had, I don't know, I've had a better structure in FDR doing it voluntarily than I do at school, you know, even though this is semi-voluntary.
	Terribly.
	Because you have to motivate yourself to get to the computer.
	But I guess there is...
	It's definitely like...
	My school definitely pushes for connection.
	But they do it on a spiritual level.
	See, I'm not like that.
	I don't really do that.
	I like to connect more on core belief systems.
	Could you tell me a little bit more about that?
	Just to satisfy my own curiosity here, connecting on a spiritual level.
	What do you think that means to the other people in that community?
	To the other people in the community, they have their belief system, which was in place either in early childhood or they've We've gone on a journey and they found out what their higher power is.
	When they do that, they make a connection to their higher power through things like yoga, meditation, and exercise.
	Most of them have a clear definition of what their spirituality means to them.
	Others, like myself, don't really, but I consider myself a very Insightful person, and I can help people just the same.
	So I think the spiritual aspect gets in the way sometimes of me trying to connect with these people because they're talking about higher powers guiding them and forces from the astral plane and all that crazy crap.
	And I'm just trying to keep my feet on the ground here.
	Right, right.
	It's a bizarre atmosphere.
	You want to believe that people who are rational can have non-conventional schooling.
	I really want to find my niche in this.
	I tried to find my quote unquote spirituality there.
	With exercises and visiting certain places and mantras and, you know...
	Okay, let me ask you this, because I'm just thinking about trying to put myself in your shoes in this situation.
	Now, my impulse, right, as I enter this community, with my current belief system, which is, you know, to some degree shaped by, maybe as yours was, by exposure to FDR. And not saying that FDR is responsible for my initial assessment of this community, but I walk in there and I say, look at these nitwits, right?
	And the astral planes.
	So I guess my question would be...
	Do you feel like perhaps you're bringing a certain amount of judgment into that setting with you that could be compromising or blocking the establishment of Better Connections?
	Or do you feel like you've made a genuine effort and the spiritual component of this academic pursuit is just too obstructive for that?
	In a way, I've done more than I would imagine any other person doing.
	To break out of my own, I guess, my own way of thinking.
	Especially being so influenced by FDR. Definitely would consider myself influenced by FDR. I shaped my own perspective within FDR. And, you know, FDR is very freeing in that sense.
	And then to go into an atmosphere where, like, atheism is not really recognized.
	I haven't met a single atheist in my school.
	Can we talk about, is higher power just a term that's used in lieu of God?
	Uh-huh, yeah.
	It transcends all religions.
	Across the board, it acknowledges every sense of God anyone could So it's not necessarily something that's...
	For example, if I need to get to work in 20 minutes, a power greater than myself would be my Nissan.
	Right?
	So, I mean, is it sort of...
	Does it have to be something spiritual?
	And I mean, I know I've had, honestly, in my life, I know this is taking a conversation in a different direction, but I've had some exposure to, you know, like self-help groups and substance abuse, AA, for example, and...
	It sounds like you have, because you already know that the higher power is something that people recognize.
	Yeah, and I mean, this is shifting the direction of the conversation completely, but that was a world in which I was involved many years ago, and I found that as I learned more, the obstacles to maybe embracing Some of the positive aspects of a community like that.
	And I think there would be a lot of disagreement about how many positive aspects there are.
	But the biggest obstacle, and what eventually drove me away from that kind of stuff, was this spiritual aspect of it.
	Likewise.
	I have a similar experience.
	Yeah.
	They like to say your higher power can be a rock if you want, but they don't, you know, it's not highly respected when you're talking about, like, you can never be a counselor and say, And my higher power is a rock.
	No, sure.
	And if you look at the literature for a lot of these 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous or anything similar that have that spiritual component to them, they say, we're allowed to develop an understanding of God as we understood him.
	Okay, well, that really narrows it down, doesn't it?
	As we understood that white-bearded man floating in the clouds, father of Jesus to be.
	It's nice talk, but for some people, especially people who might have been raised in these very strict Roman Catholic or something similar to that kind of settings, that word is always going to have A lot of baggage attached to it.
	And it's something that can really be obstructive, I think.
	Because I just imagine myself in that kind of situation.
	And as much as I would try to check them and be aware of them, And deal with them as they came in.
	I just imagine being flooded with judgment.
	A judgment that I wouldn't want to act on, but I think it would be something that I would have to be conscious of and deal with as it comes in, because I think it would happen.
	I just think that's the way it would go.
	Well, thank you for sharing that.
	Within school, I've noticed it's very different from any AA group.
	It's very different from Alcoholics Anonymous, but they all seem to have this respect for a spiritual practice, spirituality.
	Like I said, I've explored all the spiritual whatever.
	I've done this little journey this past year and a half, and I've found the feelings within those spiritual practices to To be overwhelmingly similar to helplessness.
	Certainly not self-sufficiency.
	If one of the requirements in the step work of all of these programs is that you formulate some kind of higher power and then you surrender to it, I mean, okay, so the higher power is not you.
	I think that that's, whether we're talking about overeating or alcohol abuse or drug abuse, the recognition that these kinds of programs want people to have is that they are not in complete control of the world, which is true.
	So you, I guess, transfer this concept of I am God, I rule, I control all variables of my world, and when I can't control all variables in my world, it is a crisis that needs to be dealt with through food or gambling or alcohol or drugs.
	I recognize, I put faith and transfer control through some kind of, you know, unclear ceremonial process to this higher power.
	And, yeah, it's very disempowering.
	It's not about self-sufficiency.
	It's not about self-control.
	And it's not about, you know, self-responsibility.
	So, yeah, I have a lot of problems with that.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So, the groups that will kind of come together will be yoga groups or meditation groups.
	And I try to get involved in that.
	And...
	I find that people who are really into their spirituality, they're not making any money at all.
	They're not.
	And the funny thing that happens is there's this switch that goes on in their head.
	They say it's something that's going on with the...
	It's something with the energy in this.
	It's an energetic thing, and there's a consequence to my pursuit.
	My pursuits are not happening because the energy is bad, and it's something with the universe, and it's something with the planetary alignment or something.
	And that's been just, like, risky.
	Well, you know, it might just be not, it might just be A problem of not having the vocabulary to talk about some things that might have some truth to them, right?
	So there was this big craze a few years ago called The Secret.
	Secret?
	Secret, right?
	Oprah loved it.
	Oprah loved it.
	It was a book.
	It was a documentary.
	Unfortunately, it was really irresponsible because there was a bit of truth to it and it was glossed over by some magical thinking.
	People who are positive Tend to have, I think, better lives.
	And people who are negative, I think, because maybe it goes down to neuroplasticity or being creatures of habit or liking what we're comfortable with.
	They tend to have more negative experiences in their lives.
	There's nothing magical about it.
	There's no spirits in the air.
	Whatever the secret tried to sell it as was a bunch of BS. But yeah, I've found that people who can maintain positive attitudes lead better lives, and the people that I've been exposed to, who are constantly negative, constantly complaining, have more miserable lives.
	It's not magic.
	I think it's just like, where are you looking?
	What are you expecting?
	I think a lot of times our experiences will match our expectations, and I thought it was irresponsible to sell it to pop culture as some kind of magic.
	Maybe I haven't provided much more vocabulary than the people who are talking about the planets being aligned, but maybe some of these ways of framing somewhat true things in more spiritual or mystical terms is just a lack of adherence, first of all, to reason, and not having the grammar necessary to communicate their observations and their experiences.
	Would you be willing to tell me what you mean about grammar?
	Grammar is really—I'm using that as a substitute for the word vocabulary, right?
	So there's a language that they need to know, and they need to understand the logic of that language.
	And so it's just they're missing the words necessary, and maybe missing the ideas, right, that lead us to the words necessary to better explain ourselves.
	It's easier to just frame things in this more spiritual, God has a plan kind of language.
	Yeah, what about your plan?
	God's plan, but it's your plan.
	And that's the truth in the truth, or the secret, that you do lay out your life because it is your choice regardless, no matter what decision has to be made, you're the one in charge.
	You know, that's the most powerful thing, that's the most powerful realization.
	But a lot of these students in school, they think, you know, if I surrender my beliefs and control, if I surrender my control in life, it's all going to work out.
	But they're missing that where the control lies.
	You know, you have to choose where you want to invest this.
	This control.
	You can control who you interact with.
	You can control where you're going in life.
	You cannot control your feelings.
	You cannot control where you're from.
	There are lots of things that you can't control.
	And letting go of that, that is therapeutic.
	That's beneficial.
	Anyway, I appreciate you Getting into this with me.
	Sure, sure.
	I hope I was somewhat helpful.
	No, you have been because I have the background in Al-Anon, in AA, and I had that background even before school.
	And bringing all of that experience into this, you know, new wave, I mean new age type of thinking.
	Like, dude, I've already been there.
	Like, I'm not getting anything for me.
	Got them missing out a lot.
	But, yeah, so thank you for sharing that with me.
	My pleasure, Ashley.
	Thanks for calling.
	Thanks.
	I saw a bunch of different faces appear, guys, during that conversation on the Skype call.
	Brian, do you want to go ahead?
	Sure, why not?
	Sure, great, great.
	Hey, how's it going?
	Thanks for the call.
	Hey, Ryan.
	You were talking earlier about college and you said it was a waste of time.
	I just finished my winter course about to start spring and it's only the first year I have three more years to go and it doesn't feel like it's that helpful.
	It really feels That it's in the way of what I'm supposed to be studying.
	So, what do you suggest I do?
	Well, I mean, first of all, I need more information before I get it.
	I just want to say that, obviously, as far as...
	I really only want to speak from my own personal experience.
	More than it being a waste of time, college was a waste of money for me, first and foremost, as far as the return on investment.
	The time, well, that's...
	I mean, okay, there's also this other problem where I studied communications...
	I was a freshman in college in 1995.
	I graduated in 2000.
	The entire communications industry was revolutionized by the internet outside of college.
	Nobody told the people teaching in my college about it, apparently, while they were teaching us.
	So it was kind of a degree in media and communications history by the time I graduated, but I did have this very positive experience with a very left-wing socialist kind of history professor, and really Revolutionized and really had a positive influence on my attitude about my own intellectual abilities and my own pursuit of education and my career goals.
	So if I hadn't gone to college, it might have taken me longer to have that experience I'm not going to say that I regret anything, but it's certainly, as far as the financial aspect of it, it's money that could have been better spent somewhere else.
	So can you tell me, Ryan, a little bit more about what you're doing and what your goals are?
	Sure.
	Right now, I'm just Studying prerequisite to become a business major.
	I haven't really applied yet.
	And the first couple of course, it's economic is one requirement.
	I enjoy that class.
	But everything else, it's like Steph said, management is just for a class that to manage people that the government broken down.
	And I don't want to be in that environment, really.
	And all The management class is just stuff that I can learn from Free Domain Radio instead and spend much less money on it.
	I enjoy the experience and meet a lot of people, but My core class right now that I require for business, I'm not really doing super great on it, just like average grade or lower because I can't really find the motivation to study it.
	It's like drill, drill, drill, do your homework and just shut up and don't say anything.
	That's how the class works.
	Well, I mean, what college is today?
	I mean, college is obviously an institution that came to be at a time where most people had no access to information.
	And obviously, you can find out anything that you can in a college.
	And it's not just like saying, well, you know, if you want to learn about business, go Google business on the internet.
	You can get a syllabus for any course that you want to take.
	You could assemble your own list of videos and links and podcasts that would help you achieve mastery of that course following a syllabus written by some professional in academia.
	So, I mean, you can replicate using the internet everything that college does for free except the piece of paper that they give you at the end.
	So, I mean, it really, it comes down to what do you want to use What do you want to do after that?
	Because basically, college is spending $75,000 to $150,000 on a raffle ticket for the job raffle, to be able to put your ticket in, your college degree on a resume.
	Do you have any idea of what you want to do when college is complete, Ryan?
	As of right now, I would probably be looking into the human resource because I would like to communicate with people or start my own business because I'm listening to Steph a lot and he said that we should try not to work for other people or I'm not really sure you know I have a lot of time to think about and you've been sparking a lot of For me to think about too.
	But I have a question that also been sparked by you.
	What do you think I should use all my elective to study?
	Because some of the stuff, especially like philosophy, I could be taking, I'm not sure whether I would excel in that class or be really bad in it.
	Should I be taking class I'm already good at or something I don't really know?
	If I was in, I mean, this is just, again, I can only speak from what I would do.
	I would be interested in, if I were a freshman or sophomore in college, in taking classes where I would find myself at odds with the professor.
	I think a college philosophy professor Of course, it could be fascinating.
	I think it could also be very frustrating, but I seek out opportunities to listen to and engage people who have Very different viewpoints than I do.
	So, I mean, you know, if your priority to have a high GPA or to make like the National Dean's List or something like that, I guess I would take electives that you already are really good at.
	And if you want to have an exciting and stimulating experience, I would...
	I would seek out opportunities like philosophy.
	If you listen to Free Domain Radio and you're taking economics class in college, I'm guessing there's going to be some conflict there.
	It all depends on what your goals are.
	I couldn't steer you definitively in one direction or the other.
	Those would be two considerations, though.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Yeah, you've been very helpful and kind, so I would probably be listening to this again and review what you said, but thank you so much for your time.
	Thank you, Ryan.
	All right.
	Have a nice day.
	You too.
	Oh my goodness, we're almost out of time.
	I do want to say, because I think I'll forget if I don't say it right now, we do do this every Thursday night on my show, 6.30, schoolsucksproject.com slash live.
	People can call in and talk about anything that they want.
	And what I really would like is if people have some kind of area where they feel they have...
	A fair amount of command or expertise.
	They use that as an opportunity, a platform to educate us.
	I'm always impressed with how many really, really bright people there are in the FDR community and in my community.
	And there's certainly a lot of crossover.
	The work that I've done with Steph has really helped build my audience.
	So open phones every Thursday on my show, too.
	And Brad, tell the listeners a bit more about your AV Club and how they can support what it is that you're doing.
	Okay, sure.
	I have asked people for a little over a year to make a monthly contribution, which to me, even though it's smaller each month than like a donation, it allows me to have some predictability with the finances that are coming in to the show.
	So what I ask people to do is become a subscriber, There's a variety of levels depending on what people can handle income-wise.
	But if somebody signs up for at least $6 a month, what I do to offer some additional value...
	is we have this bonus content section where somehow I've accumulated over 200 other files of audio and video, which includes, you know, archives that have been removed from the regular podcast feed, after shows, pre-shows, like a lot of behind the scenes after shows, pre-shows, like a lot of behind the scenes stuff, talking about planning out shows and a lot of looser, more amusing kind of content.
	We do this after show, which has pretty much become a show where we talk about movies.
	And what else is in there?
	Home movies.
	So the thing is, is that if I do something that really, I think, has a lot of value, I'm always going to push market that, right?
	It will always go...
	into the podcast feed because I recognize that my target audience is people who might not have PayPal accounts or bank accounts or Visa cards.
	I'm hoping Bitcoin will change some of this, finally allowing young people in America to have money.
	But I do want to make sure that what I consider to be the most valuable educational content But I think if you enjoy the show, and even in the 200 episodes of School Sucks podcast, if you've only found 30 or 40 of them to be really valuable, I think you'll find a similar ratio with the content that we have.
	Behind this paywall.
	And I'm not saying that this is why people should give money to the show, but it's an extra offering to show my appreciation for people who will make that commitment.
	Because that's how the show grows, and that's what really, frankly, keeps the show going.
	It would be very, very hard to do this if it did not produce any money.
	That's just, those are the facts.
	Yeah, I think that's important to talk about, Brett.
	If you support the work that Brett's doing, if you support the work that Steph is doing, or the work that anyone's doing, if you want more of something, you know, supporting it financially is really important.
	So I wholeheartedly suggest people go over and check out Brett's AV Club and support the work that he's doing, in addition to the work Steph's doing at Free Domain Radio, because, you know, if you support this stuff, if you are a fan of what people are doing, you have to support it financially, otherwise it's just not going to continue to exist.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	If you feel the message is important, if you feel it's important for a young person to be able to go online and discover that they are not defective despite all of the sometimes not so subtle messages of school and society,
	that they are not defective for failing to conform to this very rigid mold, The same way I support Steph's show, even though I'm not a regular listener anymore, just because I don't have the time.
	I supported Free Talk Live for years without listening because I recognize the value that that has in waking somebody up.
	These guys just get on the mic every night of the week for three hours, and they look at current events through the lens of liberty, which is an incredibly valuable orientation project and process for people.
	I support Complete Liberty, even though I don't get to listen to every episode that West does, because it's just an incredibly valuable resource.
	And I will continue to do that for the reasons I've already outlined.
	I occasionally throw some money too to some of these freeware things and Wikipedia.
	Just when Jimmy Wales pops up and he says, hey, give me five bucks.
	I say, all right, Jimmy Wales, you've helped me plenty.
	You've made some of my research a lot easier, at least giving me a place to start.
	So, yeah, I think that that's really important.
	And I think that that is us living into more of the economy that we would like to see instead of just talking about it.
	So, yeah, thanks for bringing that up.
	That's very important to me right now.
	All right.
	Well, thank you, Brett.
	Thank you so much for guest hosting this week.
	It's been a lot of fun.
	And if you have any closing remarks or anything you'd like to say, go for it.
	Well, again, I just want to say thank you, Michael, for the invitation and thanks to James.
	And, of course, thanks to Steph for many, many reasons, including letting me sit in today and for Free Domain as a whole.
	People can check out my work at schoolsucksproject.com.
	You can join our community there.
	Start your own group.
	If you have some niche area within education that you want to...
	Let people know more about or discuss.
	You can be done there.
	Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
	School Sucks Podcast is the name.
	And that's about it.
	Thanks again.
	I really enjoyed this, and I will certainly make myself available to do it any time.

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