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April 14, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:12:11

2358 Freedomain Radio Call In Show, 14 April 2013

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, discusses friends as business partners, a dream analysis, statism as relief from responsibility, communicating philosophy to friends and family and is atheism a religion?

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	Well, everybody, hello, hello, hello.
	It's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio, 14th of April, 2013.
	4-14-13.
	And I hope you're doing very well.
	Sorry for the slightly late start, but we are ready to roll now.
	I will skip the intro and go directly plunge into the foaming seas of listener queries and criticisms and comments.
	So let's bring up the first person.
	Hello, hello.
	Hey, Steph.
	How's it going?
	It's very well.
	How are you doing, my friend?
	I'm great.
	I just started a new business with a friend of mine.
	And I guess after I ask my question, I'll just mention where people can find it, because I think it would be relevant to their interests.
	But I wanted to ask you maybe one or two questions related to starting the business.
	So, our first question is, what considerations come to mind for you related to going into a business with a friend, and particularly with a friend who is also interested in philosophy and therapy and all that kind of stuff?
	I would say there are philosophical values of virtue, which I'm sure you get and will talk about.
	But I think it's not exactly a moral value, but it's a very practical value, which is something like a work ethic.
	That's very important.
	Some people have a fuse.
	What happens is they start working on a particular project, And they have this initial burst of enthusiasm.
	And then what happens is they fade.
	You know, it's like a flare.
	You shoot it up in the night sky, it goes up, and it makes all this color and light, and then it falls to the ground and fades.
	That's something that is not going to work in an entrepreneurial scenario.
	You need to keep the afterburners on.
	There's times when you really don't want to.
	There's times when it's really hard.
	I don't know if it's driven by love or panic or some combination of other things, but I think it's the commitment.
	We're going to do this no matter what.
	That, I think, is really key.
	If you have that in yourself and you have that in other people, like my wife and I, not to compare it to an entrepreneurial business, but with my wife and I, we were very much like, we're going to be married no matter what.
	We are going to work it out no matter what.
	The love that we felt on our wedding day, the love that we felt in the 10 months, almost from the first time we went out, I mean, that's the core.
	And so the passion that you feel for the business, that's the core.
	That's what you need to return to.
	So I think the work ethic is really key.
	I think keeping honest communication.
	Entrepreneurship, I think, is as much an emotional rollercoaster as it is a financial rollercoaster.
	So I think staying honest with each other and recognizing, I think it's also important to talk ahead of time about the kinds of divisions of labor.
	One of you may be better at dealing with difficult clients than the other one.
	So I think that kind of division of labor is important to talk about beforehand.
	So, I mean, there are basic moral values, you know, like we're not going to lie, we're not going to cheat, we're not going to steal, we're not going to misrepresent, all that kind of stuff.
	I mean, that's the 101.
	But on the other hand, I think you need to have the discussions about What is going to happen when we run into difficulty?
	So you can talk about the kind of difficulties you anticipate you might run into and have a plan.
	Because, you know, when a crisis hits, you don't want to be inventing the plan as you go, right?
	You know, you want the safety instructions before the plane leaves the ground, not, you know, when a wing has fallen off.
	So I think those would be the things that I would look for.
	Do they sound helpful or is this stuff you guys have already worked out?
	Well, we've talked a little bit about how we would deal with conflict resolution and so forth, bringing in third parties, what kind of principles we would be committed to in the conversation that would come up if one person wanted to do one thing and the other person wanted to do the other.
	We haven't talked too much about the work ethic thing.
	That seems very interesting and helpful for me to think about.
	Yeah, I mean, I've had issues with the work ethic.
	You know, my father ran a mine in South America many, many years ago, and he was charged with raising productivity, and this is not a Protestant work culture.
	And so what happened was he decided to move the employees to a piecework system, you know, so the more The more whatever ingots that they pulled out of the ground, the more money they could make.
	Now, in most cultures, this would give at least some portion of the population an incentive to work harder so they could, you know, whatever, right?
	What happened in this mine was nothing changed.
	You know, he sort of calibrated it so they got the same pay for 10 ingots that they were getting now for their average production of 10 ingots.
	And if they doubled it, they'd get double the money.
	And basically, everybody just worked until they had the same money they had before.
	And then they went home.
	And, you know, it's all kinds of tempting to bring moral judgments to this, but that's all nonsense.
	I mean, South America It has had a history of savage government predation, so why would you bother to accumulate anything?
	I mean, why would you?
	That's like, hey, I got a great hobby.
	Let's rub ourselves in marinade, lie without moving in the desert, and wait for the buzzards to come peck out our eyeballs.
	Let's make ourselves a target for the predators.
	I mean, that's not...
	I mean, people forget Argentina had as high a living standard as the United States up to the 1920s.
	And then it's just, I mean, it's collapsed.
	Because they have, you know, so many status pirates sailing this sort of seas of the land.
	That is not much point.
	So, I mean, that's sort of a by-the-by story, but I think it is important to understand some people are...
	They are work to live people.
	You know, I go in, you know, I do my nine to five.
	If I won the lottery, I wouldn't even go back.
	And when I'm done, I will go home and I will have my fun there.
	You know, it's my family, my barbecue, my weekends, whatever it is, you know, my hobbies, whatever it's going to be, right?
	It's the Fred Flintstone approach.
	Nothing wrong with it.
	I think it's a bit of a waste of potential, but if you don't particularly want to exercise your potential in a work area, well, you just go in, you...
	Punch your clock, you make your money, and then you get out.
	And that, I think, is really, really important.
	How big do you want to grow this thing?
	When is enough going to be enough?
	That's an important question as well.
	It's a very important question.
	Because if you have significant ambitions and the other person doesn't, or vice versa, then what's going to happen is there's going to be a sort of law of diminishing returns for each extra dollar that that person is going to have, which is going to blunt their ambition, you know, for...
	If you're really thirsty, for you to go and get a bottle of water is a high priority.
	If somebody already has as much water as they want for the foreseeable future, and you say, we've got to go get more water, and he's like, no, I don't think so.
	I'm good.
	So I think these questions are all important, I think, for the long-term potential of the opportunity.
	Yeah, that's a really interesting comparison to your father's experience.
	When you mentioned that, what I was thinking was the Equivalent for the two of us to the South Americans having this unstable financial situation or economic situation and not wanting to, not really valuing, trying to accumulate capital for that reason.
	For us, it's like our histories are what would drive us away from Working really hard and accumulating capital and our inherent interest in the business to some degree as well.
	But I think the history thing is pretty important to keep track of and think about how our histories act as a disincentive to apply work ethic to the situation.
	Yeah, look, I mean, money can be a challenge.
	I mean, I watched the second of the Atlas Shrugged movies.
	I ordered a personalized copy on Blu-ray, and so I did watch it, and unfortunately, I mean, I think they tried to make it a bit more action-packed than it needed to be, and they really cut out the heart of the book, which is the speeches.
	I know lots of people have problems with Dian Rand's speeches, but to me, the speeches are the point of the book.
	And so...
	His speech about money is really important and it's very true.
	No man or no woman can fundamentally be smaller than his or her paycheck for long.
	You know that old thing that happens when people win the lottery?
	Most people who win the lottery blow it.
	And blow it bad.
	And blow it hard.
	And they then end up miserable and divorced.
	And two years later, you know, the majority of them will almost uniformly say, but winning the lottery was the worst thing that ever happened to them because they're not capable of it.
	They don't have the psychological structure to handle excess, to handle abundance.
	And of course, it's fundamentally unearned, of course, right?
	So...
	I mean, the unearned thing, you know, lotteries, because they're statist institutions for the most part, tend to be kind of problematic that way.
	But, you know, the guy who found the Cullinan diamond, some guy just poking around with a stick in Africa, found the largest diamond ever.
	I mean, of course, that's him.
	Okay, he was poking with a stick, but lots of people do that.
	And is that something that, you know, he makes that money?
	What happens to him and so on?
	So I think it is important to...
	Everyone thinks that there's this thing called success that is going to solve problems.
	Everyone thinks that money is this thing that's going to solve money problems.
	Money is not the thing that solves money problems anymore than more cocaine solves cocaine problems.
	Everybody has this idea that there's this thing called success.
	That is going to make everything better.
	And it's a very, very, very tempting thought.
	If I get more money, if I were sexier, if I have six-pack, if I have this girl, if I have that job, if I have this car...
	I mean, I know a lot of this stuff doesn't particularly key into this audience, but it's very, very common.
	There is a massive...
	I'm just thinking of a line from my novel, The God of Atheists.
	There is deep gold in every chasm between truth and illusion.
	There is deep gold in every chasm between truth and illusion.
	And what I meant by that was that there are people who will sell you an escape from self-knowledge, and most people view self-knowledge as a giant Sucking whirlpool that's going to deposit them at the bottom of the Mariana Trench,
	seven miles deep, where it will take a pebble an hour to drift down from the surface to them, while giant squids slowly peck away at their skulls.
	That's how most people view self-knowledge.
	And that's how I viewed self-knowledge prior to really digging in and pursuing it.
	So I understand the perspective.
	I really do.
	And because of that necessary fear, because of that necessity of self-knowledge, combined with the fear of self-knowledge, and the fear of self-knowledge, to be more precise, is not the fear of self-knowledge.
	It is the fear of what is going to be exposed in our relationships when we achieve self-knowledge, when we achieve the truth, when we achieve wisdom.
	There's such fear of self-knowledge and its resulting impact on relationships that there is a massive industry that has engulfed our senses, engulfed our conscience and our consciousness.
	And that massive industry is Once you get here, you won't have to worry about the giant squid gnawing whirlpool of self-knowledge.
	Once you get here, once you get this piece of paper, once you get this amount of money, once you get this degree, once you travel for this long, whatever it is, once you lose 30 pounds, once you get a hair transplant, once you get your boobs bigger, once you get your nose fixed, Then you will reap all the rewards of self-knowledge.
	You will be confident.
	You will be happy.
	You will be the eternally smiling, sideways posing, after picture in the before and after weight loss pictures.
	And we'll light you right.
	And if you look in the mirror and there is silver in your hair, we can make it go away with this grease, this coating.
	We can whiten your teeth.
	We can polish your eyeballs.
	We can sand down your wrinkles.
	And then you will be happy.
	And people are so desperate for The illusion that they can escape the discontent of the moment by achieving something external to themselves, that there's a huge demand that completely distorts what I think would generally be a free market.
	A free market is not the free trade of goods, fundamentally.
	Because if people are idiots, then it's a free market in idiocy.
	And I don't think that's what the goal of it is.
	The goal of all we're working for is not to make boob jobs cheaper.
	I mean, that's not what we're aiming for, right?
	A free market is a market that is reasonably free from delusions, from illusions, from susceptibility to manipulation, from the thirst to be sold sugary shit that rots the teeth of your futures.
	I think that's what we want, and sorry about this long, hopefully not too rambly, series of observations, but The definition of success, I think, is really important.
	The definition of success is really important to agree on and to recognize.
	Why are we doing this?
	Why do we want to do this?
	What is the work for?
	You know, if our hourly rate works out to be something akin to somebody who's stitching Nikes in a Singaporean dungeon, then what...
	What is our success going to be?
	What is our goal going to be?
	What is our value going to be?
	And the why we're doing this is, is this because it's a genuine desire, or do we think it's going to bring us happiness when we achieve it?
	You know, the idea that happiness comes when we achieve something is a very dangerous notion.
	It's a very dangerous notion.
	And so, yeah, I would definitely put those things in the mix before feeling that I, you know, mined every possible vein of truth from the possible interaction.
	Cool.
	Well, thanks for your thoughts on that.
	I have another related question, if you're willing to answer another.
	So just to give you a brief context, It's a business that we've started up.
	It's a business that puts out t-shirts and they're philosophically themed.
	The name of our company is Robert Barron Swag.
	I love it.
	Thanks.
	Something that I've been really thinking a lot about in the future, at this point we're just trying to get off the ground with crowdfunding and stuff like that.
	In the future, I really want the business to sort of exemplify the properties of the way that a philosopher lives his life.
	I want the company to be that way.
	And something I'm wondering your opinion about is which philosophical values do you think would be most important or most relevant For a business to exemplify in order to be philosophically consistent.
	Philosophically, well the problem is, you know, that's like saying, you know, I want to make a business Selling beakers, how do we make that scientifically consistent?
	Well, science is a very big topic, and so is philosophy.
	So if you could narrow down which aspect of philosophy you're most interested in, that would probably, I think, would help me not use your questions as an excuse for my own personal fortune cookie.
	So I'll try and focus on that.
	Let's see.
	Well, I guess I'm thinking...
	I'm wondering which virtues are most important for the company to display.
	In mind, I have empathy, integrity, that kind of stuff.
	Conducting the business in a way that says to the world, here are our values.
	Walking the walk as well as talking the talk.
	This is the way that we think philosophy looks like when it comes to a business.
	Does that narrow it down at all?
	A little bit.
	I mean, in terms of the themes that we're thinking about doing for t-shirts, the first t-shirt that we've put out is sort of a voluntarist-themed t-shirt.
	So it would be certainly important to be consistent with the values related to the conclusion of voluntarism, atheism, peaceful parenting, all that kind of stuff.
	Right, right.
	Well, I mean, there are some, you know, some practical values, you know, when you get bigger, maybe you can have a daycare on the site for people who can't stay home or won't stay home.
	That's one possibility, of course.
	Are you planning on having kids in the future?
	I'd definitely like to.
	And do you have a timeframe for that?
	Um...
	It would probably be at least five years from now.
	I'm not sure what the end, the cutoff date would be exactly.
	And would you stay home?
	Would your wife or partner stay home?
	Would there be some other arrangement?
	I would definitely stay home.
	It's probably really likely that my partner would stay home as well.
	Well, that's an important part of your business plan, right?
	Go on.
	Well, it's an important part of your business plan because if you're basically planning on working from home in five years and if you're the providing parent, then you can't really get a lot of work done at home when you have a child or children around.
	At least, I don't think you can effectively get.
	Good work done at home without neglecting the children.
	You know, the statistics say that the three to five-year-old kids need a parent's attention approximately every three minutes if you're lucky.
	Right, right.
	So that's an important part of That may be part of your business plan, in which case you might want to hit the gas right at the beginning, grow it as fast as possible, maybe then either hire a business manager or sell the business and live off the proceeds for the first couple of years of your kid's life, whatever it's going to be.
	This is what I mean about shared values.
	If your partner is going to say, well, I want to stay home with my kids and I'm going to have them in a year, that's a pretty important part of your business plan.
	Yeah, definitely.
	So I would look into that for sure.
	Yeah, I'd look into that for sure.
	And I certainly do applaud you on your desire to stay home.
	I think it's a wonderful thing.
	To me, that's living about as philosophically as you can.
	But as far as the business goes, I don't think that...
	I don't think that it necessarily shows a lot of confidence to want to broadcast your basic values.
	You know, like if I wore a baseball cap every time I did a video saying, I'm really not lying, honest.
	That would be a little...
	That would be a little hard, right?
	Because either I'm going to gain a reputation for telling the truth, or I'm not.
	If I gain a reputation for telling the truth, then I don't need an advertisement for it.
	And if I don't, then advertising for it is kind of dishonest, right?
	Because it means I haven't achieved the reputation for truth.
	But I'm advertising that I'm honest, which is in itself dishonest.
	So I wouldn't necessarily attempt to broadcast the values.
	But I think that the most important...
	And you mentioned empathy, which I think is really important.
	But empathy in the business world...
	It's really important.
	Empathy in the business world is basically, what kind of products would I like to buy?
	I mean, obviously, t-shirts come in a wide range of qualities and so on, and everyone assumes high quality is better.
	Of course, it's not.
	It's like saying the only good laptop is one that costs $3,000.
	Well, that's nonsense.
	Lots of people want laptops that cost a lot less than that, and given the choice between a cheaper laptop or an OCHAP laptop, it's a pretty easy choice.
	But, you know, resisting the urge to cut corners, to make a quick buck, and again, I don't think that's a big problem for you, but I think that's important.
	You know, just what kind of shirts would I like to buy?
	And what kind of, you know, I was always conscious of this as a boss.
	You know, what kind of place would I like to work at, having had, having had been a, having had been, having been, having been an employee for, I don't know, gosh, I guess I got my first job when I was eight or nine, and I became an entrepreneur in my late 20s, maybe?
	20-odd years of being an employee gave me some idea of what I wanted out of an employment situation, what I wanted out of being a boss, what I wanted out of creating a work environment.
	I really focused on that and tried to create the kind of environment that I would have appreciated as an employee.
	I think that empathy for customers, empathy for employees, I think is really important.
	Interestingly enough empathy for competitors can also be really important.
	Competitors are A very important part of business.
	You almost never want to be in a business with no competitors because that's a very sure sign that the market is tiny, right?
	You know, imagine you're sort of walking down the street in some Mexican village and you see what looks like a whole bunch of gold lying on the street and everybody's just walking by.
	I mean, maybe they've just, you know, these people in the town have just never noticed that there's a whole bunch of gold at their feet or maybe it's just useless crap that's pyrite or useless crap that looks like gold.
	You need competitors.
	Competitors are very helpful for your business because what competitors do is they go out and advertise that this business space exists and then people will find you through their own research.
	When I was in business, we had competitors, of course, and those competitors were great.
	They obviously made us better.
	You can't run as fast a race unless you're racing with someone, usually.
	They also Created knowledge that the business space I was in even existed.
	Some competitor would advertise or contact some client.
	The client wouldn't just buy from them.
	They'd say, oh, I didn't even know this was a product.
	Let me do some research and then they'd find us and then sometimes we'd win and sometimes they'd win.
	Be friendly to competitors.
	Obviously, never put competitors down.
	That's not something that is a valuable thing to do.
	And so I think the empathy thing is important.
	And I think once you live it, it will be pretty clear, you know, how philosophy is actually being enacted.
	Well, the thing about competitors...
	It was really helpful to me.
	Something clicked in my brain when you're talking about that because I hadn't thought too much about that side of things and how competitors are helpful and the tremendous positive value that they bring to your business.
	Because my first emotional reaction...
	Yeah, oh my god, we've got competitors.
	That's bad.
	But just think about it, right?
	I mean, Apple spends I don't know how many millions and millions of dollars advertising the iPad.
	And what happens?
	Well, most people go down to Best Buy or to Future Shop or The Source or wherever it is that they're going, and they'll say, oh, you have iPads?
	And they'll say, yes.
	And right next to them are all these other tablets, the Windows tablets, the Android tablets, what have you, right?
	So, Apple's advertising has brought people into a tablet space.
	Now, people are like, oh, there's a touch tablet.
	Oh, that's pretty cool.
	I guess I'll go and have a look.
	And, you know, I guess, I mean, some people will order them from the Apple store.
	Oh, we'll go straight online and order them, and that's fine.
	But a lot of people will start saying, oh, tablets, and then they'll go down and they'll find there's all these different kinds of tablets.
	Now, the Android tablets have not been spending all that money advertising themselves, but Apple has brought them a potential customer.
	That level of competition is really, really helpful.
	It can save you a fortune.
	If a new competitor comes along, what it means is that there's unserved market demand.
	At least, there's a perception that there's unserved market demand.
	It's really tough to sell a business in a field where there's no competitors because what it means is that not one single other person in the known universe has imagined that there's an unseen market demand or an unmet market demand in your field which means your company can't grow at least according to other people's metrics so everyone who's constantly looking for advantage It's really important that there be competitors and people trying to get into your field.
	Because if you're in early and you do a good job, you'll always have the advantage over your competitors.
	But them coming into the field is a great indication of your capacity to grow.
	Yeah, that's a really good point.
	Yeah, I like that.
	When you were talking about it's a bad sign when you don't have competitors, there's a great line by Seth Godin.
	Who writes about entrepreneurship and he talked about how one of his first jobs he spent millions of dollars for a company marketing their product and he said we ended up as the leader in a zero billion dollar a year industry.
	That's right.
	Yeah, we were losing money on every t-shirt so we thought we'd double production to make up for the losses, right?
	No, and that's important and I mean we can all analogize this, right?
	So if there's some, you know, really attractive woman, and nobody, she's never with a guy, nobody ever asks her out, and everyone's like, ooh, I wouldn't date her, right?
	I mean, what's your sense of her market value in the dating world?
	Well, it's probably going to be kind of lower.
	Right?
	Whereas if lots of people are asking her out and she's very popular and so on, then she may not say yes to you, but at least you get that there's some demand.
	If there's only one company in the world that will ever hire you, everybody wants competition when they're going for a job.
	Because they want people to bid on their services and they want to get signing bonuses.
	Everybody loves competition when it's advantageous to them.
	In other words, when their employee is looking for work.
	Or entrepreneurs looking for customers.
	You want customers to be competing because if you can only produce 50 t-shirts and you have orders for 500, then you are in a very fortunate position.
	Everybody wants competition and then suddenly competition becomes bad.
	When it's then perceived to be taking something away from you.
	But all competition adds to value.
	So I just really, really focus on that.
	Very cool.
	Well, that's very helpful.
	Thanks very much.
	Do you mind, before I go, if I mention where people can find our product?
	I would mind if you didn't.
	Okay.
	So, Rubber Baron Swag is the company that we started.
	We're crowdfunding our startup costs and we're selling our first t-shirt through a Kickstarter campaign.
	The t-shirt is a Borders or Imaginary Lines t-shirt and I'm really happy with the graphic.
	Our friend Phil, we hired him to do the graphic and I think it looks beautiful.
	Kickstarter is going great.
	It's already like 33% or so funded after a couple days.
	And if people want to find it, I think the easiest way to do it is to go to kickstarter.com and you can do a search for Robber Baron.
	That's one R in Baron.
	And when you do a search for Robber Baron, you'll see two projects and it'll be obvious which one.
	If you're not sure how to spell Baron, then you can just do a search for Robber and you'll see it within a small number of projects there too.
	I don't imagine that Robber is a particularly...
	Good name for a Kickstarter project.
	If this doesn't work, I would suggest rubber barons wherein you can make condoms with giant German helmets at the end.
	That's just one possibility, which if you don't know that in England a rubber is a condom means nothing to you in terms of humor.
	But listen, best of luck to it and shoot me the link and I'll put it on Facebook and Twitter and all that kind of stuff because it sounds wonderful.
	Great.
	Thanks so much, Steph.
	I really appreciate it.
	Thanks.
	Next today we have Chance.
	Must resist urge to make a joke about name.
	Go ahead.
	Yes, everyone does that, so go ahead.
	You're here to ask about weight loss, right?
	Fat Chance?
	Anyway!
	And then I did, but please, go ahead.
	Yes, this is about the dream I sent last week.
	Hang on, man.
	You've got to crack off from your mic.
	It sounds like you're pulling a Linda Lovelace on the input.
	Try again?
	Mic's a little more powerful than I thought it was.
	Better now?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Alright, should I just go on then?
	Yeah, I'm just going to read off what I sent.
	Starts off with me running 100 meter dash, basically on a generic track field.
	First dash, end up with about 16 seconds of time, hoping for a lot faster, like 12 seconds.
	End up flashing back to an event that happened just before I started running that I was looking at, but didn't pay any mind to.
	As soon as everyone left, yeah, I was basically running.
	Then I ran a couple of times, and I finally got a time of 15 seconds, and then everything changed to where I was the only one in a swimming pool with thousands of people watching me on both sides of me.
	Then somebody announced my name and that I was a terrestrial swimmer because of some sort of neck condition.
	After he was done announcing, I just went ahead and dogpedaled about halfway across the pool.
	The crowd was cheering louder and louder as I went further and further.
	About halfway across, senior changed again to me feeling informed to that TV show, promising to change my life and asking for any problems I had.
	I already had put down can't swim well due to bad neck was already written down.
	After a moment I thought and added can't see a left eye due to a complication at birth.
	Then the senior changed again to my dad's living room when I noticed I was able to see out of both of my eyes.
	I then decided to turn on the TV, toggle 3D mode on, found a pair of 3D glasses.
	And the last thing I noticed before I woke up was a dragon appeared on screen and then just fired right past me.
	Did you lose your spot?
	No, that was about it.
	Okay.
	Alright.
	So, you're doing the 100 meter dash by yourself.
	No one around on a track.
	First dash, you end up with a 16 second time.
	Open for 12 seconds.
	Okay.
	End up flashing back to an event that happened before I started running.
	Looking up a paid no mind to.
	Do you remember what event that was?
	Some sort of gathering.
	There was a lot of people just kind of hanging out on the track talking to each other.
	Nothing huge, I don't think.
	Right.
	All right.
	And then you switch to this swimming pool, right?
	Yep.
	Terrible swimmer because of a neck condition.
	Dog paddled across the pool.
	The crowd was cheering louder as I was progressing further.
	Okay, let's stop there for a sec.
	I appreciate you bringing this up, of course.
	Mm-hmm.
	So, and I think you mentioned in real life you're not a good swimmer, right?
	Yeah.
	Not terribly good.
	Right.
	And are you racing against other people in the swimming pool?
	Nope, just myself.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So, it seems to me that this is...
	I mean, to pull a classic Freud on you, where dreams are wish fulfillment, that...
	You have an unmet need for encouragements, this would be my guess, unmet need for positive encouragements from your early life.
	Yeah, that would make sense.
	And do you know why I said that?
	I'm a smart guy, right?
	But I can mention it if it's in the fog of unconscious challenges.
	Well, most of what I remember about my really young childhood is I was more or less left alone to my own devices, more or less.
	Then again, I wasn't exactly the child that was very active, just so to speak.
	Go on.
	Okay.
	Yeah, because most of what I remember from my childhood was just me hanging out by myself mainly.
	Right, like you start off with, you're doing the 100 meter dash by yourself, right?
	And then you're not racing against anyone, but there's cheering, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Now, that's a kind of celebrity.
	It's a kind of, lots of people focus their attention on you.
	Yep.
	And that, of course, is, you know, to mention about the, you know, to sort of tie it into what I was saying earlier, this, of course, is what a lot of people think, you know, that the number one desire, I think, for kids in England is to be famous.
	Everybody just wants to be famous.
	And if I'm famous, that's the best, right?
	That's the best thing ever.
	And, you know, they'd rather be famous.
	I think the tenth one is to have a dad, right?
	But they'd rather be famous than anything else.
	Because there's this idea that if we are watched and people are cheering, then we will be happy.
	Or we will have value if people cheer for us.
	Or we will...
	We will...
	Be filled up.
	Problems of neglect will be solved.
	In other words, if our mom wasn't smiling at us when we were learning to swim, when we were three or four or five, if our mom wasn't smiling or our dad wasn't smiling and clapping and cheering us on, then we can fix that.
	You know, we can...
	We can throw...
	The anonymous stars of unknown people into the sky and have those people cheer us and that will make up for what was not present when we were very little or what was not as present as it should be.
	Okay.
	So, I mean, that's sort of my thought about That there's a desire or hunger for people to cheer you.
	And we all have that desire and that hunger for people to cheer us when we're young.
	Of course, we're excited about what we're doing.
	And remember, I mean, of course, when we're kids, we don't know which culture we're going to be in.
	We don't know what the social norms are going to be.
	But we are incredibly adaptable to those social norms.
	And so we need constant feedback on how to shape ourselves to fit our society, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Mm-hmm.
	And, you know, parenting for me is nothing more or less than, you know, 200 tiny adjustments every day.
	And we need that kind of continual feedback in order to at least have the opportunity to fit in some reasonable way into our society.
	All right.
	No, no.
	I was just listening.
	Okay.
	So...
	Yeah, I mean, and...
	My daughter is, and has been for, I think, six to eight months, quite interested in, you know, she'd say, Daddy, does it ever happen to you, you know, when you are trying to paint your nails and you paint on your knuckle?
	You know, Daddy, does it ever happen to you when you push, did it ever happen to you when you were a child when you pushed so hard on your crayon that you broke the end?
	Yeah.
	Does it ever happen to you?
	And what she's really trying to understand is what is normal.
	What is average, right?
	It's a new experience for her, but she doesn't know if it's a unique experience for her or a common experience of people.
	That's a very important question to ask as a child.
	Is it a unique experience for me, or is it a common experience for people?
	And without that feedback and that comparison, it's hard to understand where you are in the general flow of humanity as a whole.
	Are you, you know, so if, my goodness, it never happened to me that I pushed a pencil and broke the end, well, then what she did was unusual, and she should pay more attention to it and so on, right?
	I mean, obviously, I didn't say that, because of course everyone pushes the pencil and it breaks, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	And so I think those continual feedback questions, and what I'm talking about here is, you know, one tiny tip of a crystal on the top of an iceberg that goes down almost forever, just in terms of the amount of feedback that children need.
	And, you know, I just wanted to sort of comment, too, that when I said tiny, thousand tiny adjustments, these are not sort of me adjusting her like she's heading off in the wrong direction that needs to be, you know, be trimmed or whatever, right?
	Yeah, mostly it's adjusting your own...
	What you're doing at the time, too.
	That's what I've noticed with my younger brothers.
	Yeah, it's adjusting my thoughts.
	It's adjusting her thoughts so that we're both better attuned to reality.
	That's sort of what the key is, right?
	So I brought her a little...
	She actually had the idea, these little remote-controlled helicopters that you can get.
	And I ended up crashing it, you know?
	So I was telling her to be careful, and I was doing okay, but it was an infrared one, and you have to keep pointing it at, and it went too high, and I forgot that I had to point it at it or whatever, right?
	So then it came down, and it broke off one of the little struts.
	Anyway, we finally set it on a pen, and it can still work or whatever, right?
	But I really wanted her to be clear and to understand that I said, isn't it silly that I told you to be careful, but I broke the helicopter?
	And she said, no, it's okay.
	I mean, it's okay that you broke the helicopter.
	It was actually quite exciting.
	But this is the adjustment, right?
	The adjustment is I say to her, be careful, and then I end up breaking the helicopter.
	So that's not me adjusting her, in a sense, like she needs to change something or whatever, but that's me saying, wow, A, I'm sorry because I bought this for you and I broke it, and B, I told you to be careful and you didn't break the helicopter, I did.
	So, these kinds of constant adjustments of what is said beforehand, what happens afterwards, I mean, I don't want to get into too much detail, but if you spent most of your childhood in solitude, or in the experience of solitude, then these adjustments don't occur.
	And I'm not, you know, trying to drop the brick on your parents in particular, because...
	There's a massive amount of adjustments that also need to occur from other children, right?
	You know, one of the things, and I'll get back to your dream in just a sec, but I think this is sort of an important point.
	One of the things that I was thinking about in terms of why people are less receptive to the free market now than they used to be, is that there is a very interesting free market in childhood.
	And the free market that occurs in childhood is, let's get everyone to play.
	Right, so when I was a kid, we'd want to play some particular game, rounders, which is like the British version of baseball.
	And so, you know, there'd be a bunch of kids out in the neighborhood, and, you know, me or some other kid would say, hey, let's play rounders.
	So you're kind of putting forward a proposition there.
	Let's all do this, right?
	And, you know, some of the kids are older, some of them are younger, some are more athletic, some are less athletic, and so on.
	But you have to find a way to make the game enjoyable enough that everybody wants to participate, right?
	Because if you don't have enough kids, you can't play.
	And so you're out there selling an idea.
	Let's play rounders.
	And then you have to negotiate.
	You have to make the team split.
	You have to adjust your pitching speed based upon, you know, whether you have a six-year-old or a ten-year-old batting.
	You have to constantly adjust things because if you play at the highest level of competence, then the kids who can't play well are going to be bored and frustrated and they're not going to want to play.
	And it's the future, too.
	So the next time you say to the six-year-olds, let's play rounders, they'll be like, no, it's boring.
	You guys hit it too hard.
	We can't catch anything.
	We're always out.
	No.
	So you have to make a million micro-adjustments to make the game work for everyone.
	Whereas if you work at the very lowest level, then the 10-year-old kids aren't going to want to play.
	And so it's an interesting kind of free market environment because spontaneous gathered play among children is a volunteeristic gathering, which has to be win-win for everyone in a very challenging environment in order for it to occur.
	And there's no central planning.
	There's no adult saying, you know, at 3.30 we're all going to go over and we're going to play rounders or baseball or whatever it's going to be.
	You have to woo each other.
	You have to want to...
	Right?
	So I was in a little dirt bike club when I was in my early teens.
	I remember sitting out back at the mall for like an hour trying to figure out our name.
	We had to negotiate.
	I liked this name.
	I mean, this happens with bands and stuff.
	I like this name.
	You didn't like that name.
	Or, you know, especially when you're broke, right?
	When you're broke, you say, well, we all get together on our bikes.
	We got a couple of hours.
	What do you want to do?
	And everyone proposes and everyone, you know, you try and figure out something.
	Oh, we did that yesterday.
	Or that's no fun there.
	It's too wet to go there.
	Or you try and work on something.
	And there's constant negotiation in a voluntary environment.
	Nobody has to be there.
	And there's no central planning.
	I mean, that's a very interesting and close analogy to the free market.
	No central planning.
	It's complicated negotiations, and it has to be win-win in order for it to be sustainable.
	Well, what's changed with that now is that children have much less Free-range, unsupervised, spontaneous get-togethers, right?
	Neighborhoods are really atomized, right?
	I mean, the kids are in...
	Daycare all day, or school all day, and then they come in, and they've got to have dinner, they've got to do homework, and maybe on the weekends they'll go out, and there's a little bit of unstructured play, but they can't really go anywhere, so the amount of negotiation is not hugely high.
	I mean, the options are small.
	I mean, I did have the good fortune to be a pretty free-range kid in many ways, like from the age of six or seven, and probably earlier, too, if I could just remember.
	I mean, I'd just go play.
	And...
	I don't remember being told anywhere I couldn't go.
	I mean, obviously, I was not an idiot.
	I wouldn't go crossing the street or anything like that, but I could just...
	We lived on this series of apartment buildings that was on...
	It was called an estate, which makes it sound pretty...
	a lot better than it was.
	But I would just go out with no toys, usually.
	And I would just find what the other kids were doing, and we'd figure out what we wanted to do with, you know, no money, no video games, you know, the usual thing, right?
	And, you know, some kids had bikes, some kids didn't.
	It was a real challenge.
	Some kids had skateboards, some kids didn't.
	It was a real challenge to figure out what to do that worked for everyone.
	And there's a lot of negotiation, no central planning, no central authority.
	Now, of course, a lot of kids that are in structured adult run sports or activities, right?
	Yeah, I noticed a lot of that when I was younger.
	Like that was the case for you?
	Yeah.
	Hey, try baseball.
	That didn't work out so well for me.
	Because there's adults telling you when to show up, what to wear, what teams you're in, who's up next.
	I mean, there's not...
	Because people think that the point of the game is the playing.
	No!
	The point of the game is the negotiation.
	That's what you're training for.
	Right?
	The point of the game is finding win-win solutions in a wide variety of disparate skill sets and so on.
	And that's what people are really working on.
	But, you know, adults come in and take it over and think it's about hitting the ball.
	Well, who gives a shit about hitting a ball?
	I mean, how many people are going to go out of Little League to become pro baseball players?
	Well, none.
	And it's not like they're particularly happy.
	So, you know, adults come in and think, because they lack self-empathy or memory of their history or understand the point of childhood, they come in and they think, ah, well, we need to...
	Baseball is what should be played, or, you know, X is what should be played, and therefore we're going to go in and we're going to organize these kids to do X, right?
	And then there's no negotiation among the children.
	And also, because the adults are doing it and it's competitive...
	Children lose what is possibly the most advantageous thing about free play in a neighborhood, which is mixed-age playing.
	Mixed-age playing is absolutely essential for children to develop as well as possible.
	I mean, I won't get into all the details, but Peter Gray's just got a book out called Free to Learn.
	He talks about this to some degree.
	It's well worth having a look at.
	But adults just come in and...
	Some researcher is mentioned in the book, some researcher asks his audience all over the world, when you think about your childhood and you think about your happiest memories, how many of them have an adult around?
	Well, actually not too many because a lot of it's around discovery and solitude or being with just a few friends and doing something interesting or surprising or cool or new.
	And yeah, so childhood has become very circumscribed.
	It's become very organized.
	It's become very adult-dominated and adult-centered.
	And so what happens is that people grow up...
	And, you know, they're in daycare where they're told what to do and an adult comes and resolves their conflicts.
	And then, you know, they go to school where they're sat in rows and instead of learning from each other or following their own interests, what they do is they are told by the teachers what to do and what to write and, you know, even to the point where they actually trace out other people's letters.
	How crazy is that?
	And then, you know, they go home and they have some after daycare program, which is all structured and organized, and there's not a lot of negotiation.
	And then in the evening, maybe they'll go mini-golfing.
	Well, you don't negotiate to go mini-golfing.
	Your friends come and you go mini-golfing.
	But you don't have to negotiate about what you're going to do or how skill sets are going to be distributed or anything like that.
	Go-karting.
	While you're going, go-karting.
	And then you go to some organized sport.
	Where the adults are again organizing what it is that you're going to do.
	And you don't have to learn how to negotiate.
	You don't have to learn how to win-win.
	And you don't have to learn voluntarism.
	Free play for children is voluntarism.
	It's got to work for everyone or it doesn't work at all.
	And so the idea that then children grow up and they don't believe that voluntarism can work and they believe that you need a central agency...
	A central organizing agency in society, or everything falls apart.
	I mean, it simply mirrors their childhood experience, but not due to abuse or anything like that, but just due to the fact that I think we as a culture have the lowest trust of children of any culture in history, and we feel that we always need to be organizing everything and we feel that we always need to be organizing everything that they
	And this is the idea, of course, that instead of children being evil, which was sort of the old-style Catholic argument, instead of children being evil, children are just incompetent now.
	And we've always got to be elbowing them aside and organizing them.
	Instead of them being, you know, just put them down in a field and let them play, we've got to build their train tracks and lash them to trains and, you know, no choices, no options.
	So, I mean, so the parental nudging is really important, but the free voluntary play with other children, which you can't do if it's not a social value, You know, I mean, if I was a kid these days living on some suburban street, I mean, you'd go outside and where would you go?
	I mean, who would you play with?
	It's tough to find kids.
	I mean, in the summer sometimes, if they're not in camp or daycare, sometimes on the weekends you'll get a little bit of time.
	But the other thing you also need is you need time.
	If you're going to go to the effort of organizing a game of baseball, then you need, like, from 2 o'clock in the afternoon, you've got to at least have a couple of hours.
	Because if everyone's like, well, at 3.30 I have to go in for my mid-afternoon carb boost, you know, whatever it is, right?
	My snack time is whatever.
	You can't play because kids got to, you know, parents are constantly calling them away or they got to go here or they got to do that or they got to text or whatever it is, right?
	You need that unstructured time to invest in the negotiation to get the payoff of the game.
	But, you know, people have it backwards.
	They think that the purpose of the game is the playing.
	No, the purpose of the game is to learn how to negotiate and how to create win-win situations.
	And how to spontaneously self-organize.
	But that would make too many kids entrepreneurs, so maybe that's not to be allowed.
	Anyway, sorry for that long ramble, but if you said it was solitary, it's not just the parents.
	It's also the lack of free play with other kids, I think, that's important.
	Do you want me to continue with the dream?
	I'm sorry if I completely blew away any thought process you might have been having.
	I was just listening to you and thinking about my own life and how to apply it there.
	Do you want to talk about that?
	I want to go on with the rest of the dream.
	Alright, okay.
	Okay, so then...
	Dog paddle across the pool, crowd is cheering louder as you progress further.
	Halfway across the pool, the scenery changed again to me filling out a form to a TV show promising to change my life and asking for any problems I had.
	Now, do you have a bad neck?
	Or is that something that's just in the dream?
	That was something that just made up in the dream.
	Okay.
	Scenery changed.
	Your dad's living room and noticed I was able to see out of both of my eyes.
	Turn on the TV, toggle 3D mode on.
	Found a pair of 3D glasses.
	Dragon then blasted fire directly at the TV. Which means directly at you, right?
	Yep.
	Right, okay.
	Now, I mean, the...
	I don't want to tell you about the metaphors in particular of one eye versus two eyes, but I'm sure you can understand that, and you obviously know a lot more about this than I would, but we have two eyes so that we have perspective and depth, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	And have you been listening to the show for a while?
	A little while.
	A couple months on and off, depending on what I've been doing.
	And how many shows have you listened to, if you had to guess?
	I want to say about three or four dozen.
	Right, okay.
	And so in terms of, I mean, what philosophy does is, I think it, sometimes the wisdom has been called the third eye, you know, like the psychop's eye over the middle of the forehead.
	Because it gives you a kind of perspective on your society and on your life and on your world and on your relationships and so on that can be really quite disorienting.
	And so the idea that...
	if this has anything to do with your imbibement of philosophy, then the idea that you can see out of an eye you formerly couldn't and the first thing you want to do is see in 3D is interesting, then the idea that you can see out of an eye
	I mean, because you may be gaining a perspective from philosophy, and it may not be this show, it may be whatever it is that you're digging into these days, you may be gaining A perspective from philosophy that you didn't have before that is giving you some depth, but which is awakening a danger.
	Yeah.
	Because the dragon's breath, right?
	I mean, it's not a real danger, because otherwise you'd have a real dragon in the dream that would eat you, right?
	I mean, the dream can do anything it wants, right?
	So if it puts the dragon in TV land, then it's startling, kind of enjoyable, and scary, but not dangerous, right?
	Like a roller coaster.
	So the dream is saying, I would say, that the isolation that you experienced as a child has left you with a hunger for positive feedback, or you could even say feedback of any kind, because they also say he's not that great a swimmer, right?
	I think that to be legitimately cheered for overcoming the challenges, right?
	As you say, you actually have lost your sight in your left eye.
	And so to be legitimately cheered for overcoming your challenges, I think is really, really important and something that you deserve, of course.
	I mean, it is a handicap and it is a challenge.
	I mean, as you say, it's probably not that visible or anything, but...
	So it would have left you with a hunger for that, but awakening that hunger for positive feedback, or for feedback of any kind, is going to create a challenge, I would argue, or at least I think the dream is arguing, that awakening that desire for feedback and connection is going to awaken a challenge in your relationships, and in particular with your dad, because it's in your dad's living room that you gain the perspective and then the fire, right?
	Yep.
	Does that make any sense?
	Again, you don't have to tell anything you don't want to, but does that fit anywhere in your life?
	A fair amount.
	I suppose it would be me and my dad's relationship that would be tested the most, because mine and his are probably the best out of all the family members that I know.
	Sorry, you said you and his does what, the best?
	My relationship with him is probably the best out of the rest of my family members.
	Right.
	Right, which is where having that additional perspective may be startling and frightening, but is not dangerous, right?
	So maybe you can have a chat about things with your dad, right?
	Yep.
	Which is, you know, I mean, to have a child and to, to some degree, at least ignore the child is, let's say, counterintuitive, right, to say the least.
	You know, it's like working like hell to get a woman to come out with you and then just, you know, putting in headphones and watching a video the whole night.
	It'd be like, well, what's the point of all that?
	If you didn't want to be with me, there was a pretty easy way to achieve that, which is to not work so hard to ask me out.
	Right.
	If you don't want to spend time with a child, it's actually quite the easiest thing to do in the world.
	Right.
	Mm hmm.
	Thank you.
	So, yeah, so I would definitely encourage you to talk about these things, you know, with your parents, with your family, and say, you know, with this stuff, right?
	I mean, childhood, memory is slippery, right?
	Childhood is challenging.
	I mean, sometimes yesterday seems challenging.
	But I would definitely...
	Talk about these things, and if I were in your shoes, I would start off with not, you know, I was alone my whole childhood.
	I'm not saying you would, but, you know, I have a lot of memories of being alone.
	So it's more like my experience is, and that way you can have a discussion.
	It's a little less confrontational, and it can get you, I think, more...
	Truth, which is when you're in hot pursuit about things that occurred early on in your life, what you need is the truth, and if you startle the witnesses, you tend to get less.
	So that would be my recommendation.
	Okay.
	Unfortunately, I'm going to have to ask Mom for that, because I spent most of my childhood with her.
	Well, but you can ask your dad about that too, right?
	Which is, why was I spending most of my time with you?
	That kind of stuff, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Is there anything else you wanted to add to that?
	Sounds like you have an exciting project ahead of you.
	I don't think so.
	Can't think of anything right now.
	All right.
	Well, thank you very much for bringing the dream to bear.
	And I certainly wish you the best of luck with your conversations.
	And I am sorry for the solitude.
	That is hard.
	That is a hard thing.
	So I'm really sorry about that.
	All right, James, if we can move on to the next caller, that would be superb.
	Alright, next up we have Johnny.
	Hello?
	Hello, go ahead.
	How are you?
	I'm well, how are you?
	That was quick.
	I didn't even get a chance to mute the mic.
	If you don't mind, I wrote these questions down, so I apologize for the scripted tone.
	I just didn't want to take up too much time with my ums.
	No, I appreciate that.
	My first question is, how would Stefan Molyneux distinguish between right-wing statists and left-wing statists?
	In my mind, a left-wing statist is a guy like Sam Sater or Jon Stewart, and a right-wing statist is somebody like Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly.
	For example, there are people who consider themselves right-wing or, dare I say, even libertarian when it comes to a desire for smaller, less intrusive government, lower taxes, immigration policies, etc.
	Yet, they do an about-face when it comes to fighting terrorism or war or killing sand niggers.
	In terms of war, they are very pro-government.
	When it comes to things like social services, they are very anti-government.
	And then there's left-wingers who tend to support large government, large social programs, higher taxes, open immigration policies.
	They tend to be against intrusive, for lack of a better term, imperialistic wars.
	Just your thoughts on that.
	I mean, it's a huge topic, so I'll just touch on it briefly.
	Which would you say is on the ascendancy?
	I don't understand the question.
	On the ascendancy?
	Yeah, which do you think is becoming more prevalent?
	I'm not exposed to that much mainstream media, American mainstream media.
	I mean, I get clips and bits of it here and there via the Internet.
	A few years ago, I would have said it split pretty easily down the middle.
	Now, I'm going to stab a guess at a little bit more on the left-wing side, but there are still very, very many people who, you know, despite the...
	I consider myself...
	I would think that I'm an anarchist, or at the very least, minarchist, libertarian-minded.
	And I found that many people who share these views in terms of, you know, less government involvement, less taxes, as soon as you mention things like terrorism or war, it's like, oh yeah, yeah, we gotta go to war, yeah, yeah.
	So I find it kind of ironic that the same people who Maintain very conservative views when it comes to things like social programs, all of a sudden are all for, you know, money's no object when it comes to fighting foreign wars.
	And again, and vice versa, like I said before, people who want more social programs and more states and, you know, more government involvement in our lives tend to be against the wars, which I would agree with.
	It's like, well, I agree with you on the one hand, but, you know, with being against wars, but I don't understand this idea of wanting the government to run every other aspect of your life.
	And I would say to the conservative right-wingers that I'm all for you when it comes to less taxes and less government involvement, but why then would you be for a government that wants to spend your tax dollars, whatever tax dollars you do, end up paying out?
	On fighting foreign wars.
	And I understand it's a big topic, so if it's too much for you guys to get into it...
	No, no, I can see why you wrote things down, because I just asked you which one was on the ascendancy, and you gave quite a speech.
	You can say left-wing or right-wing.
	But, I mean, again, it's a big topic.
	I'll just give you my thoughts.
	I certainly don't came to be conclusive in any way.
	I don't know that there is any particularly conclusive way.
	But the left wing is in the ascendancy and a female influence over early childhood is definitely on the ascendancy, right?
	Okay.
	And I think those two things are related, right?
	So what do people on the left want?
	Well, they want stuff that takes care of people, right?
	Well, what have women historically done?
	Well, they've...
	They've taken care of people, right?
	So, women take care of the sick, and people on the left want free healthcare, right?
	And they take care of the old, and people on the left, in general, right, want the social security, and what did women generally do?
	Well, they were obviously pretty involved in education, and so people on the left, of course, want...
	Well, you get it.
	You get the pattern, right?
	They want a government-run education.
	And, you know, this is broad strokes and all that, but this is sort of where, you know, the stuff that cares for people would fall into the realm of not wanting to do it yourself, right?
	But this is really important, right?
	When people want the government to do something, what they're saying is, I don't want to do it myself.
	Alright, yes.
	I mean, this is important, right?
	I mean, the government is a reflection of what people don't want, right?
	I mean, if everybody wanted to take care of the elderly, then nobody would suggest a government program.
	If everybody liked to do it, right?
	If everybody wanted to take care of the sick, then there would be no government program for it, right?
	Because there would be no...
	Well, that's an argument that many, again, I'll just use the Term left-wingers will argue that yeah, because people are inherently selfish by nature, there will be no There will be no spontaneous acts of charity and a willingness to help the disenfranchised and the impoverished.
	It'll just become this law of the jungle, survival of the fittest, teeth-gnashing society, where as soon as a feeding frenzy of sharks, as soon as one of them gets...
	I understand.
	I think everyone's heard the arguments a million times.
	I understand that.
	I understand that.
	But what I'm saying is that...
	So, the government taking care of the sick and the old relieves a burden from women, right?
	In general, in aggregate, right?
	Okay, yeah.
	So that's one aspect of things.
	Now, if the government takes over military defense, that takes a burden away from the men who don't want to do military stuff, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Right?
	Because, I mean, if you sort of look at it, so care of...
	The needy within a tribe would have largely been the province of women, again, evolutionarily throughout history, blah, blah, blah.
	Defense against foreign invaders would have been the province of men, right, in general, in aggregate throughout history.
	Right.
	And so, sorry, go ahead.
	Even if it wasn't necessarily, let's say it's not a war of defense primarily, let's say it's a war of offense, nevertheless, it's still the domain of men.
	War is the business of men.
	I mean, it remains 98% of the casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan are men.
	War is the business of men, right?
	So the fact that men are more gung-ho about war, see, they're gung-ho about war when they don't have to go.
	I mean, that's generally the case, right?
	And everyone in the military understands this now, right?
	I mean, Vietnam ended because A, they began to run out of money and B, because the army was collapsing.
	I mean, people were fragging their offices, the soldiers were all on drugs.
	I mean, they were becoming an unusable military force.
	Because they had to go, right?
	And so everybody, just about everybody who cheered the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001, 2003, knew that they weren't going to have to go.
	Yeah.
	Right, so this relief, so if you've got a government there, then most men would rather pay taxes than go, you know, stick people with swords, right?
	And so it relieves men of their responsibility and it allows them to pretend to be manly.
	Without actually having to do anything.
	It allows them to pretend to be tough without actually having to do anything.
	In the same way that for women or for left-wingers to advocate social programs allows them to pretend to be compassionate without actually having to do anything.
	It's just puppet theater.
	Everybody wants the benefits of morality without actually being good.
	In the same way, just about everybody wants the benefits of money without...
	Yeah, I mean, banking, fiat currency, lotteries, theft, I mean, you name it.
	Like, people want happiness without earning it, which is, you know, drugs.
	So, I mean, everybody wants the effects of virtue, but virtue is tough, right?
	And so everybody wants to lose weight, but how many people want to eat less and exercise more?
	I mean, it's just, it's the way things are.
	I mean, we are in a pretty low state in the history of our species as far as personal responsibility goes, right?
	And so on the right, what are they concerned about?
	Well, they're concerned about immigration, Which is perceived to be like a farmer looking at the raccoons coming in to steal the corn.
	Those guys, they come in and sit on welfare and have babies, right?
	Well, I mean, for men who are charged with preserving the scarce resources of the family, you know, the perception that there are parasitical critters out there is obviously pretty important, right?
	And please understand, I'm not calling immigrants parasitical critters.
	I just want to be clear about that.
	Yes, yes.
	But just in terms of, like, how this stuff works evolutionarily and emotionally.
	And so they're concerned about that, and also they want to make sure that people work, right?
	Now, it was, of course, a man's job, in general, to make sure that people worked, particularly, you know, hunter-gatherer was easier in many ways, agriculture was a lot harder, though more stable in some ways, but...
	You know, you had to work.
	Everybody has to work.
	And so the idea that there are all these people coming in are going to take your resources and are not going to work, well, I think that kicks in, you know, old-timey men's cavemen slash farming base of the brain emotional reactions.
	So I think it's that...
	So, you know, against welfare because people got to work, I'm against immigrants because, and I'm for national defense because this is all what men historically were all about, right?
	Just to kind of add into that, this Contributes or seems to strengthen the notion that many on the left have that the right is part of the patriarchy, this overwhelming patriarchy.
	The example you brought up about how war being the business of men, because men are most of its casualties and participants, the fact that the right tend to be more pro-war.
	It shows, oh, that's because it's male-dominated, and that's the problem with the male-dominated society, and that's the problem with the patriarchy, and am I, you know what I mean?
	Yeah, no, I'm sort of right with you there.
	I think that's right.
	I think that's fair.
	So, whereas for women, of course, in general, the women took care of the sick and the old and the poor, and so for them, the idea that the government is going to do it is nice.
	You know, it relieves them of what is often not a particularly pleasant responsibility.
	And so that is, I think, important stuff to understand.
	People don't reason from first principles.
	That's the most important thing.
	You know, if you ever get anything out of this show, the only thing to get is that people don't reason from first principles.
	They don't.
	And in fact, the moment you start to ask them to reason from first principles, they will breathe fire out of a television screen at you in 3D or whatever.
	But people don't reason from first principles.
	Once you understand that, then you have a very interesting area to explore, which is, okay, people are not reasoning from first principles, so where the hell are they getting their ideas from?
	And why are they so passionately wed to ideas?
	Yeah, biology, social conditioning, you know, the best way to move around resources is to control ethics.
	Ethics is simply a stealthy pickpocket of history, the stealthiest and most infinitely handed pickpocket of history.
	And ethics and philosophy They're the operating system on which everything else runs.
	And if that doesn't work, nothing works, right?
	They don't boot.
	So once you understand that...
	And this was the big awakening for me in my sort of late 20s after spending, I don't know, almost 15 years trying to reason with people and finding that reasoning with people...
	I mean, it's like trying to paint a cloud.
	I mean, it just...
	Your paintbrush might get wet, but the cloud doesn't gain any color, right?
	Well, I... Go ahead.
	Go on.
	I don't want to interrupt.
	Sorry.
	Yeah, so once you understand that people, they don't hold their positions because of any recent or evidentiary process, then the fascinating question is, well, why the hell do they hold those beliefs?
	You know, it's sort of like if I just stand around in China screaming, you know, pseudo-Mandarin that I've never learned.
	Right.
	Then the question is, well, if I've never learned Mandarin and I can't talk to anyone who, because I'm just making ridiculous sounds that sound Mandarin-ish-y, based upon, you know, Kung Kung Fu movies or something, then what am I doing there and why?
	It's a fascinating question.
	I had...
	And, sorry, so let me just finish up.
	So once you get that people's deeply held convictions have almost nothing to do with reason and evidence, and the evidence that they have gathered tends to be confirmation bias.
	I mean, if I was a left-leaning or Christian or, you know, all the things that I have been before, or, you know, even a minarchist, I mean, going from minarchism to anarchism is, you know, a huge, it's the hugest step of all.
	So if I was still all that thing, I mean, I'd be much more mainstream.
	I'd be, you know, all of those things would be hunky-dory.
	But once you do actually start from first principles, you realize, my God, I mean, everybody just has these beliefs.
	They have no idea why, fundamentally.
	It's not reason and evidence that's brought them there.
	So the question is, why do they have these intractable beliefs?
	And this is where the Bomb and the Brain series, of course, came from as research I did many years ago to sort of figure out, well...
	You know, if I continue to reason with people who aren't rational, who's the most irrational?
	Well, that would be me, right?
	And so to try and figure out where people got their ideas from, since it wasn't reason and evidence, well, you understand.
	It's biology, it's trauma, it's avoidance, it's all of the sort of basic reptile brain impulses and so on.
	So...
	So, yeah, I mean, the right is traditionally associated with patriarchy.
	The left is, I think, reasonably associated with matriarchy.
	And...
	So, yeah, I mean, this is, I think, really important stuff.
	And, of course, as parenting has declined in quality and generally in participation, as children are more and more turned over to wards of the state and agents of the state in one form or another for instruction, then it's, of course, I mean, you're going to end up with all of this additional...
	I mean, kids will bond with whoever raises them.
	Of course, we know that, right?
	Because Islamic kids tend to grow up, surprisingly, kind of Islamic, right?
	So...
	So kids will bond with whoever raises them.
	You hand your kids over to the state.
	You're just breeding fascists, fundamentally.
	I mean, of course, right?
	I mean, that's understandable.
	And so, I mean, that's like, you know, everybody understands this.
	I mean, you know, if you want to, you know, have a peaceful dog, you get the dog with the mom as a puppy and you raise the, you know, the dog will bond with you and your kids and all.
	I mean, we all understand that animals all bond with whoever is around when they're growing up.
	And then we hand our kids over to the state and wonder why the state keeps getting bigger.
	So, yeah, so, I mean, that would be sort of my general perspective.
	And the other general thing that I would say is that...
	I mean, the absolute is that we must submit to someone in authority.
	And for people on the right, they don't like the competition of the state with God.
	And people on the left, they don't like the competition of God with the state, right?
	In the same way that you can be an atheist communist because you will turn the state into your new God.
	So you can handle being without the religious authority as long as you pump up the secular authority.
	I mean, the amount of authoritarianism needs to be 100%, right?
	And so if God goes down by half, oh my God, we're only at 50%.
	Chaos will result.
	Therefore, you have to build up the state another 50% or more.
	To overcompensate, which is why people on the left tend to be for a bigger state, and they tend to be skeptical of religion, whereas people on the right tend to be for a smaller state, but they're more pro-religious.
	It's the same amount of irrational authority in both environments.
	It's just you're basically taking from one pile and moving it to another.
	It's not any kind of revolution.
	It's just made up nonsense.
	And sorry, the last thing I'll say is that, I mean, again, speaking in very broad terms, The Old Testament tends to be more about patriarchy and the New Testament, in general, tends to be more about matriarchy.
	Jesus, to me, has many more feminine than masculine characteristics and his focus on the poor and on the salvation of women and on the meek and the old and the sick.
	This is traditionally feminine.
	This is traditionally feminine concerns, and I would argue that the New Testament basically had to be written the way it was written because women were gaining a little bit more power in that kind of society, and so you needed, you know, women were very much, quote, subjugated to men, and men were subjugated to other men, but just to use the traditional way of looking at it.
	When women were subjugated to men, you could have an Old Testament, but when women gained more power, then you needed a feminized version of the deity, which comes through as Jesus and of course as Mary, which came along much later.
	So I think these are all, it's just a primordial soup of Reptile brain impulses, traditional roles, and ex-post-factor trauma justifications.
	But clarity and consistency is almost nowhere to be found.
	So that would be my sort of general overview.
	Again, I hope it's not too ridiculously broad, but hopefully that's somewhat helpful.
	Well, no, I wouldn't blame you at all for giving a ridiculously broad answer to what was a ridiculously broad question.
	And going back to what you said earlier, I had a good result with painting clouds, as you put it, where I was with some close friends of mine who I've known for many years, and they are left-wingers.
	I told them years ago that I've given up on these terms, and I think that the difference between left and right is like the difference between Coke and Pepsi.
	But nevertheless, they hold on to their left wing, and You know, they were always railing against Stephen Harper and, oh, Stephen Harper's doing this, oh, Stephen Harper's doing that, oh, the conservatives are doing this, oh, they're doing that.
	And I keep trying to tell them, guys, well, it doesn't matter if it's a liberal or a conservative, they all work for the same big, powerful banking institutions, and they're yes-men, regardless.
	And they kind of think that I'm too much of a conspiracy theorist, and I was talking to The wife of the family.
	And they have a son.
	And their son had some problems with his eyes.
	He was born with some muscular irregularities, abnormalities in the eyes.
	And he had to go for, I don't know how much, therapy.
	And eventually they went for surgery many years later.
	And we were talking about taxes.
	I've stated my belief firmly that what you earn, you should keep.
	And if you want to give something to a collective pool for the good of society, great.
	But that should be voluntary.
	It should not be something where it could eventually result in armed crown agents with guns coming to your home and pulling you out of it.
	That's, in my opinion, ridiculous.
	And she was saying, well, you know, it's great that, think about what we would have done if our son would have had to pay for the operation, and I said, hold on a second here.
	I said, ballpark figure, how much are you spending in taxes every year?
	And she said, oh, well, whatever, let's say around 10, 15 grand.
	And I said, okay, fine, 10, 15.
	And then I asked the husband, how much are you spending out in taxes?
	And his was a little bit, his income is a bit higher, so he's spending a little bit more in taxes.
	So I said, let's take a nice round, even number.
	Let's say it's both of you are putting 15 and 15 a year into taxes.
	That's 30 grand a year.
	So I said, three years goes by, that's 90 grand.
	I said, how much was your son's operation?
	And right then she realized the point of my question.
	Her son's operation did not cost $90,000.
	Yet in the three years that go by, they would have had enough money to pay for two or three operations.
	So the notion that She understood at that moment that, oh yeah, maybe we're not getting our money's worth when it comes to taxes.
	It's like, yeah, you never were getting your money's worth.
	And of course, sorry to interrupt, but I mean...
	Go ahead, that's it.
	I mean, and her taxes don't go to pay for anything medical anyway.
	Most of her taxes.
	All the money that's been taken from them is not going to pay anyone's medical bills.
	It's all just going to pay interest, at least the income tax, which is probably the most of what they pay.
	It's all nonsense.
	The other thing that I would say as well, Is that when people make the argument, I mean it is such a fundamentally self-detonating argument for anyone to say that people won't help the poor.
	You know who's poor?
	Children.
	You know, and I don't notice many gangs of children roaming the streets, at least in the first world, you know, starving and, you know, knocking over chickens and cats and eating them raw or whatever, right?
	I mean, and you will never make back the money that you spend on your children.
	You will never make it back.
	Of course not.
	I mean, because, obviously, I mean, you can't go and then tax your children for providing them with a childhood, right?
	People say, ah, but your children will be there to take care of you when you get old.
	Correct.
	Well, first of all, you can't guarantee that.
	They may want to move away.
	They may be busy.
	They may get hit by a bus.
	Heaven help, right?
	True.
	And there's no contract for that.
	I mean, that's just like handing money to people saying, well, I'm sure they'll give it back to me later.
	I mean, that's no guarantee.
	I mean, it's not an investment to invest in your kids and then say, well, they'll take care of me when I get older.
	It's not an investment.
	If being taken care of is your issue, you have a much more secure and certain investment simply by Putting your money, you know, the quarter million, three hundred thousand, or whatever it's going to be, putting your money aside, having it grow, and then paying people to take care of you.
	Because then you actually have a contract, you actually have resources, as opposed to, I mean, what if your kid decides to become a street mime in New Zealand?
	I mean, how the hell does that help you when you're in some cancer hospice when you're 80?
	Right?
	So, I mean, so, it's one of these things that everybody who's alive, to make the argument that people don't help the poor, It's only alive because their parents entered into a contractual obligation to help the poor for about 22 years, right?
	I mean, the very existence of human beings means that we do things for charity, right?
	Raising children, especially in the modern world, I mean, you could say that in the past, you know, when you get the kids six or seven, you get a hand on the field or whatever, right?
	For the most part, the existence of the human race only occurs because people are willing to give the food out of their mouths to the needy.
	So anybody who says, well, we're not going to help the poor, it's like, well, did you then have to earn your mother's milk?
	No, of course not.
	I mean, the human race exists solely as a result of entirely economically irrational charity.
	And then people say, well, people are too selfish and greedy.
	It's like, well, then there should be no people.
	But there are.
	So I just want to sort of mention that.
	One more thing I wanted to pass by you, and of course, feel free by all means to say we can't deal with that now because there's not enough time.
	What you were saying earlier totally ties into this.
	And the question is, do you believe there's a difference between an atheist and being anti-theist?
	And to clear that up, I find that there are many people out there who are atheists and they ironically become religious in their anti-religiosity.
	In a sense, it becomes like a fundamentalist kind of atheism.
	And if I'm not mistaken, the communist empire was atheistic and made great efforts to stifle and suppress religious culture and practice.
	I've also noticed on blogs and on YouTube and on the internet that there tends to be a strong correlation between people who hold atheist views, yet they support the state vehemently.
	You're kind of an anomaly in that you're an atheist anarchist.
	I found that Many atheists, mainstream atheists, are staunchly statist.
	And you also have the opposite, like the Branch Davidians, and you remember them, in Waco, Texas.
	They're a classic example of people who were very pious, very theistic, and yet their philosophy was libertarian.
	Government, stay out of our lives.
	Your thoughts?
	Yeah, again, that's a...
	I mean, obviously a very big topic, but...
	So...
	Is it possible to be atheist and to not be against religions?
	Well, sure, because most people are atheists about Zeus, but they don't write a lot of blog posts about that damn Zeus.
	Of course.
	I can't believe people, you know, that there's still three people in the world who believe in Zeus, and it tortures me, and I'm really upset, and I'm going to write bestselling books about my skepticism towards Zeus, and you know, all that kind of stuff.
	Right, so it's entirely possible to be an atheist with regards to a particular religion and to have it have no particular impact on your lives.
	I mean, I don't think I've said a whole lot about Zoroastrianism, but I certainly don't believe in any of these Zoroastrian gods.
	But that's because Zoroastrianism doesn't really have much of an effect on me.
	And, right, so where it does have a big effect on you, then I think it makes sense to have some concern about it, right?
	And so, yeah, so I think it, you know, now, I mean, atheism is not a religion.
	I mean, it really got to...
	You've got to be careful of that.
	I mean, that's like saying that abstinence is a sexual position or bald is a haircut or something.
	It's an absence.
	But atheism is also to be against theism.
	So, you know, it is...
	It is sort of important to understand.
	I would be careful with trying to mix the two up.
	I think it's not helpful.
	Now, you could say some people are aggressively anti-religious.
	But then you have the UPB problem, right?
	Which is that if aggression in your beliefs is your issue, then it's almost never worth focusing on atheists, right?
	I mean, I don't know many atheists who say, put to death.
	People who are religious.
	Like, I don't think that there are many atheists who've ever written that, but that's in the Old Testament, right?
	I mean, that's foundational to all the three major religions in the world, where they say, you know, unbelievers should be put to death, and sorcerers, and witches, and blasphemers, and all that.
	So, what I'm saying is that when everybody talks about militant atheism, my question is, well, have they...
	Have they talked to the religious people about the explicit put them to death thing?
	Because, you know, otherwise it's an unbalanced coverage, to put it as nicely as possible, right?
	In other words, again, this is just, atheists make me anxious, so I'm gonna just start making up stuff about atheists.
	I mean, I think that's really important to understand.
	Atheists don't say, let's kill gays and witches and unbelievers, and if a child speaks up against his parents, let's stone them to death, and so on, right?
	And let's sell our kids off into sexual slavery.
	I mean, if you're worried about aggression in beliefs, then you look at the Old Testament, and, I mean, that's all you got, right?
	And so, this idea that there's some sort of fundamentalism in atheism, I think, is...
	Is missing the point.
	If you're concerned about aggression or fundamentalism, then you have to really focus on the religious aspect first, right?
	And people don't want to do that, because once you start to...
	I mean, boy, there's no better cure for religion than to read the Bible cover to cover, right?
	I mean, it's astounding.
	I sort of did it when I was...
	I think 18 or 19 when I was walking up north as a gold prospector, I had a Bible, and I went cover to cover.
	I'm like, dear God.
	I mean, I already was an atheist, but now I'm like, oh my God.
	And I say, well, the New Testament doesn't answer anything, because the New Testament is predicated on the virtue of the God of the Old Testament, right?
	I mean, if the God of the Old Testament is evil, then the man who is his son who follows him and claims to uphold all his rules can't be good.
	The New Testament thing is just a dodge.
	Well, Jews would argue with you on that one about the New Testament.
	Or not just you.
	I'm not saying you in particular.
	Jewish people would argue that the New Testament is in any way legitimately based off the Old Testament.
	Okay, fine, but then they're just left with the evil Old Testament God, then fine.
	Okay, so they can drop the Jesus thing and call him another prophet, but that still doesn't solve the immorality of the Old Testament deity, who has a body count in the billions, or hundreds of millions at least, whereas I think...
	I think that Satan has, I think, four or five deaths that he's responsible for.
	But, I mean, he's like a sunspot in the burning sun of the incredible genocides that the Old Testament deity inflicts for ridiculously emotionally immature reasons, right?
	I mean, just distorted job.
	Yeah, I'm...
	So anyway, I think that saying that atheists can be an annoying and militant group, it's like, okay, well, so then if you have a standard called annoying and militant, then I think that you might want to start with things like circumcision.
	Like, I don't know many atheists who would have the letter A carved into the gland of the baby's penis, the head of the baby's penis, to make sure that the baby knew that he was a goddamn atheist and would always remain so.
	And so, you know, you can start with stuff like that.
	And I don't know many—yeah, I don't know many atheists who would take their child for hours of atheist indoctrination every week, right?
	Right.
	you will have atheists who will teach critical thinking skills, I hope, but I don't tell my daughter there's no such thing as a god, because that means nothing to her.
	And so if militant and intrusive and aggressive is a standard by which you will negatively judge belief systems, regardless of the truth or falsehood of those positions, To me, a militant atheist is like saying a militant mathematician.
	Well, they only seem militant to people who reject mathematics.
	So an atheist who's got good arguments for his or her position is only going to be called militant by people who don't want to grapple those positions.
	If some teacher says two and two make four, and some kid says no, they make five, and the teacher proves it and counts and shows and brings out the coconuts or whatever they do, And then the kid is still rejecting that two and two make four, then saying that the teacher is militant is missing the point.
	The teacher is right.
	And the teacher is obviously insisting that the teacher is right because being right is important.
	Being correct is important.
	And so I think that's an important thing to really focus on.
	And again, if the kid drops out of school or whatever it is, but the problem is that the kid is forming a gang that will beat you up if you say two and two make four.
	And that's a big problem, right?
	So atheists are still in a pretty defensive position within society.
	I mean, a little less in Europe, but then, you know, with Europe, you just switch voluntarists to statists, and you get an even worse equation.
	So, yeah, I have some reservations, at least, about people who focus on the militancy of atheists.
	I mean, atheists are by far the smallest population in prisons, right?
	By far, the smallest population in prisons.
	And atheism diminishes almost in a linear fashion as education and scientific knowledge increases.
	And so, you know, being against theism is being against stuff which promotes criminality and which feeds off ignorance.
	And I just don't think you can be a responsible human being In a state of society, right?
	In a state of society, then majority rules.
	And if the majority is irrational, then that's a problem.
	In a freer society, which of course won't happen while we still have all these irrational beliefs, but in a free society, you can be less concerned about what people think, I guess.
	So I hope that helps.
	Yeah, sure.
	I'm not religious myself.
	I'm not in the position where I'm defending a faith of any kind.
	Just, I've noticed that even people who want to hold on, who maintain the position of, ah, I haven't decided.
	Is there a God?
	Is there not a God?
	They're just kind of holding this neutral, it's not an issue position.
	And I've seen on blog posts and on the chat rooms and discussions and whatnot online that Again, as long as they're expressing themselves sincerely, there will be this attack of people, even who haven't made up their mind, who are just kind of on the bench and saying, eh, one way or the other, it doesn't matter to me, believe or don't believe, it's up to you.
	And a lot of people who call themselves atheists will say, oh, you're an idiot, you're stupid, there's no God.
	It just becomes so big of an issue to convince others that there's absolutely no possibility whatsoever that there's some kind of a...
	I don't know, conscious field of energy, for lack of a better term.
	And if people want to call that God, sure.
	My point is that it's important to allow people the freedom to believe one way or the other.
	As long as those beliefs are not imposed upon others, what's the big deal?
	No, no, but you're missing the point, sorry.
	But you can only hold that position if you take children out of the equation.
	I mean, okay, so believe what you want to believe, don't inflict those beliefs on other people.
	Well, God Almighty, what do you think that most religious people are doing with their children?
	With their children, right.
	Giving them the Bible and the God delusion and saying, take your pick?
	So if you have a problem with people imposing their beliefs on others, then you have a problem with 99.999% of religious parents.
	Agreed.
	No, you're right about that.
	No argument from you there, in that respect.
	And, you know, to be fair, though, I mean, so the atheists who promote statism are not in a wildly different position, and the atheists who promote unthinking criticism of religion is sort of a counter-religion, but it's much less important.
	I mean, atheist indoctrination is far less.
	I mean, it's infinitely, almost infinitely less of a problem than religious indoctrination, right?
	Sure.
	Of course.
	If we're going to worry about indoctrination, the imposition of beliefs, and the promotion of irrationality, and things which are objectively dangerous and difficult for the world, and so on, then, I mean, you've got a lot of stuff to chew through before you even come to the topic of atheism.
	And by the time you get there, the topic of atheism, because it will have Lost all of its enemies will not be much of an issue anymore than anti-thorism is a big problem in the modern world.
	I see what you're saying.
	Yeah, no, agreed.
	Okay, then.
	All right, listen, we've got another caller, and so if you could, I appreciate your patience if we can just move on.
	I want to make sure we get to the last caller before we end the show.
	We've got a little bit over.
	No problem.
	Thank you so much.
	Thanks for your time, guys.
	All right, next up, we have Pepe.
	Hello, hello.
	Hello.
	Hi.
	Do you listen to me?
	Yes, go ahead.
	Yes, go ahead.
	Oh, well, thanks for answering.
	I'm a bit nervous because I'm from Barcelona, Spain, and my English is not so good, but I will try to make my question, okay?
	Good.
	Actually, it's not a question.
	I would like to get some empathy or some idea about some strategy, because since I've been hearing your podcasts and check-ins from anarcho-capitalist and libertarian theories and reading and so on, I realize that I like this kind of philosophy,
	but it's quite difficult to think like this in Spain, in my country, or in the South Europe, because no one really does I think just an anti-statist thing, you know?
	It's just a question of how to deal with people who are your friends or relatives or family or something.
	Because I would really like to make a website or a video or just to get people united to just talk about this.
	But it's a very difficult thing to do because all the people think that you're a fascist or totalitarian or whatever, they don't want to listen to you, you know?
	Sure.
	I don't know.
	I don't know if you've ever talked to people from Spain or who are just libertarian or maybe are not, but my question is if you've got any idea, so how to deal With this, when you feel isolated.
	Actually, I only have one friend, which is a very good friend, very clever, and he's a curious guy, and both we are libertarian and we discuss all these things, blah, blah, blah.
	But the rest of the people, I've never found no one who really wants to understand or make the abstraction or open your mind and try to understand other stuff.
	Do you have any strategy or maybe something you can say to deal with it?
	Because it's kind of depressing.
	Yeah, no, I understand.
	I really do.
	Thank you.
	I mean, there clearly would be some opportunities among the Spanish youth.
	The Spanish youth, of course, are screwed.
	I mean, the unemployment is huge.
	What is it?
	40-50% among the Spanish youth.
	So, you know, they're very much in the position of, you know, this shit doesn't work.
	Desperation and necessity are the midwives of change.
	Unfortunately, because we remain impregnable to reason, for the most part as a species, it is only panic and trauma which will make us change, which is why things have to get so bad before they get better.
	So I want to sort of validate or agree with what you're saying.
	I will tell you this, and I can't predict in any way, shape, or form the outcome of any of these conversations for you, but I will give you a prediction anyway, which is simply my prediction, it's not the truth.
	I believe that most people will cling to the tribe rather than the truth.
	Most people cling to the tribe over the truth, and what that means is that they side with the tribe and attack the truth teller.
	Not everyone, but most people.
	And I think I have enough experience in this now to have some authority in the subject matter.
	Yeah, I agree.
	So if you are going to bring this up with friends and family, it's important to be aware of the likely outcome.
	That they will push you...
	To retract your beliefs or simply avoid talking about them.
	And if you continue to talk about them and if you confront them with the violence that they support in the form of the state, if you use the against me argument, there will likely be not a lot of people who will see the error of their ways and who will change their minds.
	If people could reason, Social change would be as fast as scientific change.
	And scientific change is slowed down by a whole bunch of irrationality put in there by the coercive nature of state funding.
	But if people could reason, then we wouldn't need 150 years to get rid of slavery or to gain equal rights for women or anything.
	If people could reason, then it could happen in a day or two.
	But because people can't reason, you have to just chip away at stuff.
	And you have to make these micro advances.
	And this is why in most communities, and even in scientific communities, the holders of the old views are not convinced.
	They just die off and then new people come along.
	But that's largely because of tenure.
	It doesn't have anything to do...
	That's not the case with Apple's R&D labs, where people who want to use the glass from the Newton PDA, that they just hang in there and dominate that R&D department until they die or retire.
	I mean, that doesn't happen in a market-facing discipline like high-tech R&D or whatever.
	But it happens in institutions where the customer is not king, so it happens in, of course, academia is mostly statist, and scientific funding is to a large degree statist.
	I mean, engineering funding is more private, but scientific funding is largely statist.
	And so people don't listen to reason.
	They will listen to money, which is why we need so many free interactions to make the world a better place.
	and why there's almost no point fighting against publicly funded belief systems.
	I mean, there's almost no point fighting against publicly funded belief systems.
	Because, I mean, I don't have to get into all the reasons why I'm...
	I may do a podcast on it, but...
	Yeah.
	Publicly funded belief systems, I mean, they are immune to change.
	They are inherently vicious because they are unjust, right?
	Unjust organizations are always the most vicious.
	And so you can't...
	If you're going to bring this into your personal life, then your personal life is going to be very exciting, to say the least.
	And so I just wanted to be...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Just a little point.
	It's exciting, but it's also quite depressing in an emotional way, you know?
	It's horrible.
	Yeah, it's horrible.
	Sorry, I'm using the word exciting like horrible.
	No, exciting, I mean, intellectually or in a rational way, it's very exciting.
	But later on, you go to drink a beer, and some guy talks to you about Keynesianism, and I have to make censorship on myself, you know?
	Because if not all the people would say, this guy?
	Where is he from?
	No, no.
	He's talking about shit, you know?
	Yeah.
	Actually, my question, and you get a very good response to me, but I'm focusing on the emotional strategy for dealing with it.
	There is no emotional strategy for dealing with immorality.
	I don't know.
	Look, fundamentally, your friends and family are in a state of nature.
	They are like the oxen in the field when it comes to statism.
	They are in a state of nature.
	They have been propagandized by the state, and they have not been exposed to rational arguments, I would assume, for the immorality of state coercion.
	So, you know, there's this old argument, I think Dawkins makes it, where he says, you cannot refer to a Muslim child.
	You can only refer to a child of Muslim parents, because a child cannot understand the consequences of particular religious ideologies.
	They can't judge independently or effectively.
	And you can't refer to, in a sense, adult status.
	You can refer to adult indoctrination victims of statism.
	Mm-hmm.
	Right?
	So they, you know, forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.
	And so everybody wants to cling to a state of nature when it comes to ethics, almost everyone, because what happens is when you wake people up to the immorality of the system that they're in, their lives become easier or harder?
	Harder, I guess.
	Harder, yeah, of course.
	Of course.
	Now, there's a lot of jobs that they can't morally take.
	Now, the newspaper becomes an obituary of the future and of morality.
	Almost everything that you read in there is some form of government violence spreading its bloody ink across the...
	Agreed.
	Right, so they look at their society and what was before, you know, a sometimes clumsy balletic dance of history now becomes an orgiastic shark-feeding frenzy on the young.
	And so you awaken To a house of horrors.
	You awaken to a world of zombies.
	You awaken to a world that before you thought was a mall and now is a crypt where hands are coming out of the earth and strange and unholy things are in constant motion.
	So how many people want to wake up to that?
	Especially when it's, you know, because it's so hard to wake up, everybody wants to stay asleep.
	And as Plato said, it's not the men who are afraid of the dark that we have to worry about, really, it's the men who are afraid of the light.
	And so, do you want to wake up to a world of horror that you cannot change?
	That's a really hard question.
	Now, I do.
	I do, because if I did not see the horror of the world, my world would be a horror.
	I really want to emphasize that.
	If I did not clearly see the horrors of the world, then my world, my family, my life, my friendships, my parenting, my marriage would be that horror.
	The consequence, the consolation prize, I should say.
	Of waking up to the horror of the world is at least you can get it out of your own goddamn house.
	Yeah, but just one more point.
	Imagine I talk, the thing that you say to me, I talk all this speech to a friend of mine.
	And I do.
	I really check from books and I try to keep things on my mind.
	And later on, the response would be, What about the poor?
	Oh, because if you do this system, what about the poor?
	Ah, it will be a dictatorship of the rich people.
	They are talking too simplistic because we don't have this kind of conversations about freedom here.
	So, I certainly see your point, but...
	I would like to get some empathy about it because I think if you live in the United States or some English where English talk plays, you have the word even more in your mouth, but here in Spain we just have regulation in our mouth, you know?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Sorry for my English, if not.
	No, you're doing...
	No, please don't apologize.
	I mean, I'm wildly impressed with anyone who learns any second language, and the fact that you can have a philosophical discussion in English is something to be immensely proud of.
	I think that you're doing fantastically, so good for you.
	Yeah, of course they're going to say, what about the poor?
	And, I mean, you can say, well, violence is not solving the problem, is it?
	The violence of the state is not solving the problem.
	If you count the unemployed poor, if you count the rising poverty rate, and if you include the unfunded liabilities and the debt, and if you include inflation, the poor are getting worse off as the state is getting bigger.
	So, the one about the poor is a ridiculous argument because the poor, like, it was not a ridiculous argument in 1975, maybe 1985, maybe even 1995, but now the evidence is in that the poor are doing really, really badly.
	I completely understand.
	I completely understand for this reason, and maybe if you want, it's my last statement.
	I just wanted to ask for an emotional strategy because imagine you are in a table and there's nine people and you are the tenth.
	The nine people will fight against you, saying to you, what about pork, you know?
	Although, if you talk with the reason, you talk with the facts, you talk with the statistics, no one or just few people curious or the open-minded people is going to say, okay, let's listen to this guy, you know?
	So for this reason it's depressing, although you say, no, because poverty and we can, in the last 15 years, we've changed, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	It never ends with a fairly conclusion.
	And sometimes I think to myself, you know what, I don't give a fuck.
	I want to make other things, but later on I relax and I keep learning libertarianism.
	But when you have to talk with people here in Europe or in Spain or in Barcelona or whatever, I tell you, it's really, really hard.
	No, it is hard.
	And you don't have to.
	Listen, listen.
	You don't have to.
	But you get pissed.
	No, look, I understand.
	Listen, listen, listen, this is really important.
	This is really important.
	Yes?
	You want people to listen to reason and evidence, right?
	Okay, it would be nice.
	It would be nice.
	But you need to listen to the reason and evidence that most people won't listen to reason and evidence, right?
	You can't reject their irrationality While wishing that they were something else, because that's irrational.
	You don't like people who reject reason and evidence, but you need to accept the reason and evidence that most people will not listen to reason and evidence.
	The state is a fundamentalist religion.
	The state is a fundamentalist religion, and it seems kind of precious for atheists to say, well, fundamentalist religious people reject reason and evidence.
	Well, that's the very definition of fundamentalist religion.
	That's why they have a word called faith.
	This is why they have a word called patriotism.
	Patriotism is merely the faith of the religion of statism.
	And so if you were arguing with religious fundamentalists and you were like, I can't believe, it's so frustrating that they keep rejecting reason and evidence, you're actually the one rejecting reason and evidence, when you have a much higher standard than they do.
	You know, what about the poor is the direct equivalent of Jesus saves?
	It's not anything to do, it's just a way of warding off doubt and questions.
	Yeah, but I like to talk about these things with the people I love, and I realize that I can talk just with one friend, really deeply, and with no censorship involved.
	And there are probably hundreds of thousands of people who envy you for your one friend.
	They will listen to this show, and they will envy you for your one friend.
	But I think you need to relax into the real.
	I'm sorry, that's a very obscure phrase.
	To relax into the real is to take a deep breath and to stop fighting reality and to accept it for what it is, and that includes the social reality of the religion of statism.
	Look, if you had a friend who was put in a Jehovah's Witness church from the age of five to the age of 18 for six to eight hours a day of instruction in how wonderful, virtuous, and if you had a friend who was put in a Jehovah's Witness church from the Yeah.
	And if he lived in an entire country, that was Jehovah's Witness, and if he lived in an entire world, that was Jehovah's Witness, and if he never had access or never saw any arguments against Jehovah's Witness, witness, and if the only way he could get married and have children, which he was ordered to do, was to believe and accept the tenets of the Jehovah's Witness religion, then I think that...
	No, then I think you would have some sympathy for the fact that he would react quite aggressively to any question of his indoctrination.
	Because his environment...
	Like, statism is universal.
	Religion is not.
	Right?
	Atheism and agnosticism are the world's third largest religion.
	So, atheism is far more prevalent than anarchism.
	And also, there are very few children who spend 40 hours a week being indoctrinated in their religion.
	Very few.
	And there are very few children who spent their entire childhoods in a church.
	But if you understand that Statism is a religion, and public school is its church, is its indoctrination.
	Right?
	Attempting to undo this...
	And in religion, you were taught catechisms, and catechisms are just automatic responses to ward off any questions.
	And in the government, in statism, you are taught automatic questions to ward off any...
	Sorry, you were taught automatic answers to ward off any questions.
	And you see this, there's a documentary on, I think, Jesus Camp, where the children are told to chant, how do you know, how do you know, how do you know, to anyone who raises any questions of evolution, they are taught, they are indoctrinated, they are rendered immune to reason by being taught these catechisms.
	Mm-hmm.
	Now, of course, the astonishing madness of teaching children to chant, how do you know, at an evolutionist as opposed to a creationist or religious person as a whole, I mean, it's so ridiculous, it's horrible.
	But the what about the roads, what about the poor, what about the old, what about the sick, what about the uneducated, and so on, these are arguments.
	These are catechisms.
	And if people don't recognize them as catechisms, then you're not involved in any kind of debate.
	I know, but do I have to leave my country?
	No, because this is the whole world.
	You may think that there's some utopia out there where this is less common, but you understand, statism as a religion is virtually universal.
	Yeah, yeah, I agree.
	How many people, I mean, take a million people, how many are outspoken anarchists?
	Maybe 50?
	Well, in Catalonia or in Barcelona, there's quite few people being anarchists, but no one is...
	No, but I mean, rational anarchists.
	Yeah, not left anarchists, not anarcho-syndicalists, not communitarians, but, you know, like rational, private property, free market anarchists, the people who actually have thought through and reject centralized coerciveness, which I know a lot of anarchists do, but they, you know, replace it with some local collective control instead.
	We would be incredibly lucky if it was one person in 10 million.
	Whereas atheism and agnosticism is, I mean, gosh, in many places in the world, it's 80 plus percent of the population.
	In Japan, it's 80 percent of the population.
	In China, it's, I think, over 50 percent.
	In the northern Scandinavian countries, it's 70 to 80 percent of atheists and agnostics.
	Even in Canada, a third of young people are are religious, and in America, I think it's crept up to 10 or 15 percent.
	Right?
	But this is...
	Like thousands and thousands of times more than people who are knowledgeable and wise about philosophy and who come to...
	Genuine, legitimate, useful, true, moral and valid conclusions based on reason and evidence and, you know, therefore reject the various superstitions of statism and religiosity and tribalism and all that kind of stuff.
	So, I'm sorry to tell you, but you are as alone as you feel, but you are lucky to have a friend and you are also lucky to have the internet.
	You understand that the internet could take down to three generations what would probably otherwise take 30 to 50 generations?
	Yeah.
	For sure, the internet is quite nice, but a nice conversation or a social meeting where you can be with people with open minds and without censorship, it would be nice also.
	Because listening to a bot or checking a YouTube video or reading a book, sometimes it's not enough because it's not reciprocal.
	Yes, but you must, sorry to interrupt, the last thing I'll say, you must make an effort.
	This is not going to come to you.
	I go to conferences, and I go and talk to people, and I will spend, like if I go to a conference for two days, I'll speak for an hour maybe, but I will try and talk with people like the whole time I'm there.
	Like the same way if you're crossing a desert, you drink deep at each oasis, right?
	So there are, right, there are going to be libertarian groups, there are going to be rational anarchist groups in, somebody just mentioned in the chatroom, there already is one in Spain.
	Like, go to Galt's Gulch, go travel to find these people.
	You know, if it's a four-hour drive, make a four-hour drive, stay a weekend, arrange it, initiate it, make it happen.
	We're so used to being passive in these situations, but make it happen.
	I wanted the world to be more rational, so I'm doing my best to make that happen.
	Which I completely sympathize, and I hope I don't sound like I'm not sympathetic.
	I'm incredibly sympathetic.
	It's very hard.
	We are a tribal species.
	And when you question the tribe, the tribe can turn on you.
	And so this is a delicate balance.
	But find the people you can connect with.
	And if you have to travel, and if you can only go once a month, then travel and go once a month and drink deep at the oasis of reason that can strengthen you for returning into the matrix.
	I would not push my ideas on my friends and family, I would not even push the truth on friends and family without being fully cognizant of the most likely outcome.
	Which is, I mean, look, all cults disfellow people, right?
	They disfellow people.
	I mean, this happens all over the place.
	I mean, in Amish, in Jehovah's Witness, and so on.
	I think it's called disfellowship or unfellowship or something like that, where everybody in the community is ordered to ostracize you, if you think for yourself, right?
	And if you understand that statism is a fundamentalist religion, then you understand that if you persist with these beliefs, you are most likely going to be unfollowed.
	In other words, if you keep disrupting the religious rituals of your friends' conversations, and you plant uncomfortable seeds of doubt in their mind, you will likely not be invited to the next party, or the next, or the next.
	That's true.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I would like to develop something and I would deeply think about it, but sometimes when I'm depressed, I think if it's worth losing, you know?
	But if I talk to you right now, I feel full of energy.
	Right.
	And pursue that energy.
	But pursue that energy.
	But I just really want to recognize that if you look at statism as the most fundamentalist religion that exists.
	I mean, the number of people who escape fundamentalist religions is far higher than the number of people who mentally escape statism.
	Right?
	It is a death grip on the soul of the species.
	And if you approach status with a recognition that they are in a state of nature, they know not what they do, they have been propagandized with some incredibly advanced methods, and there's almost no competition.
	Honestly, statism has the mental status and the mental authority in people's minds in the modern world in the 21st century that Roman Catholicism had in Europe In Italy, in Rome, in, say, the 14th or 13th century.
	They didn't know of other cultures.
	They didn't know, I mean, to some degree.
	I mean, I guess they knew of the Arabs and so on.
	But it's even worse than that, right?
	Because...
	There were at least other religions, I guess you could say, are other religions analogous to other states.
	Well, not necessarily, because most people accept statism as necessary and virtuous, whereas lots of people are skeptical about religion.
	So I would...
	I would just recognize that you are dealing with a universal fundamentalist religion.
	And, you know, just take your steps accordingly.
	If you can find people to speak with honestly about what's in your heart and in your mind, treasure those people.
	But I'm going to tell you that if you confront fundamentalists with reason, the most likely result and the most universal result is shunning.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Which is a wonderful proof that anarchy works, right?
	If you think about it.
	They're not stoning you to death.
	They're just shunning you.
	And that brings most people back into line.
	So social ostracism is a very powerful weapon.
	And therefore, we don't need a state.
	So they're using an anarchic principle to defend a state.
	Anyway, it's not particularly important.
	But you can have fun with statists.
	Right?
	You can go see a concert with a statist.
	For sure.
	You don't have to define your entire relationship according to moral principles.
	You don't have to.
	That's a personal choice for everyone, but certainly there's no ethics that say you have to speak the truth at all times, in all places, to all people.
	Mm-hmm.
	This is to quote from another novel I wrote called Just Poor.
	The truth is not a sword to be drawn at all costs.
	You count your enemies, you count your opportunities, and sometimes you leave it in its scabbard.
	So this is my particular thought.
	The other thing too is that there's something incredibly powerful about, you know, statism is the ultimate disfellowship because I mean, if you question the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Mormons, they may shun you, but they're not going to throw you in jail.
	But if you fundamentally disagree with the state, I mean, you get caged.
	It's that primitive.
	So, I mean, we understand.
	If people questioned or disagreed with the Jehovah's Witnesses and then they locked them in cages where they would be subject to brutalizations, beatings, knifings, and rapes, we would understand that to be beyond medieval in its primitive viciousness.
	But people who disagree with the religion of the state are caged and brutalized and shanked and raped and beaten and starved and so on.
	So I just really wanted to...
	To point that out, that we are dealing with a very ancient, very powerful mechanism that is far stronger than religion has ever been.
	So I just really want to point that out when you're dealing with people to validate your feelings and to tell you that there's no particular solution, I think, that anyone can provide to you.
	Yeah, yeah, I agree, I agree.
	Thanks for your advice.
	It's quite useful.
	Thank you very much.
	You're very welcome.
	Now, I wanted to mention that our good friend Daniel Mackler will be hosting the Sunday show next week, for which I'm enormously pleased.
	I, of course, will be in Anarchy in New York City.
	I will be talking, I think, at 6 or 7 p.m.
	On Saturday, and I think I'm around for brunch on Sunday.
	Looking forward to chatting with everyone.
	And thanks, James, as always.
	Thanks, everyone, for a wonderfully engaging show.
	You guys are the best, the best audience.
	You know, I will occasionally listen to other shows, and I'm fiercely loyal to the brilliance, honesty, vulnerability, openness, and courage of this audience.
	It is a...
	It is a real privilege to be a part of your lives and thank you so much for your generosity in sharing your thoughts.
	Thank you so much in keeping me in vittles and donations at fdrurl.com forward slash donate if you like.
	Thank you, of course, to Mark for his incredibly generous Bitcoin donation recently and have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful week, everyone.

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