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June 9, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:14:52

2404 Freedomain Radio Call In Show June 9th, 2013

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, discusses the NSA spying, the media, what to do when your ex is lying to your child, selling people on peaceful education, and an exploration of Buddhism.

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	Well, hello everybody.
	It's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
	I hope you're doing very well.
	I guess two seconds, two minutes, two words or so on the NSA scandal.
	So this, of course, is a scandal where the government has been strong-arming the data providers for Google, Microsoft, Verizon, Sprint, a couple others, to hand over all the records that Welcome
	to my show!
	Even if this is true, even if they can't listen to the content of your phone calls or the contents of your emails, there's still a huge amount of information that can be gleaned just out of who you call.
	Let's say you're calling Alcoholics Anonymous.
	Let's say you're calling a depression helpline.
	Let's say you called a suicide helpline.
	Let's say you called a helpline for teen homosexuals who are having trouble with the brutality of Homophobia.
	Let's say you called a rape crisis hotline.
	Let's say you called a pregnancy hotline.
	Let's say you're making repeated calls, say, to an oncologist.
	It doesn't matter really whether they know the content of that.
	They sure as heck know what's going on based on just who you call.
	And I myself have always lived online as if everything is recorded and everything is available to anyone who wants it.
	That's just the reality of the digital age.
	This information is a huge, huge boon to the government.
	It gives them the capacity to strong-arm people in a way that they've previously only dreamed of and to threaten people.
	It creates a chilling effect.
	If you know that everything is being recorded and perhaps available to the government, it creates a chilling effect on free speech.
	And it's a little tough for them to wave the boogeyman of terrorism and say, as Obama says, God, the man is just a puff of smoke.
	He is the smoke monster from last when it comes to the truth.
	Because he says, well, I welcome the debate on the balance between freedom and security.
	This is the guy who welcomes the debate whose administration has repeatedly denied and rejected our capacity to find out what is going on with all this data.
	So the fact that he claims he welcomes the debate, I don't know.
	With government, it's just the rule of opposites.
	You know, the NSA was established with the goal of never spying on American citizens or internally to the country.
	So whenever a mandate is created, you know it's the actual opposite.
	The war on drugs is a war to sustain drugs, which is to sustain massive expansions of state power and, you know, not incidentally to make a cop's life a whole lot easier.
	You know, chasing after murderers, chasing after rapists, chasing after people who – that's hard work, you know?
	Whereas, you know, busting low-level drug dealers is pretty easy.
	I mean, it's easy peasy.
	And also – If you get yourself trying to control a very lucrative trade, you get yourself a whole tsunami of bribes that can occur, and that's pretty tasty for the police.
	So, you know, more power, easier work, and lots of supplemental income through bribes.
	That's a pretty sweet deal.
	The war on drugs is not the war to eliminate drugs, but the war to shake down people who like to sell and consume drugs.
	And so, it's achieving its ends perfectly.
	So the NSA was created to not spy on Americans.
	Just take the word not out and you've got the truth.
	I mean, the government is just the opposite world.
	And if you ever want to know the truth behind the government, this is something that comes out of Atlas Shracht.
	She says that later in the day, towards the end, you could only find out what was happening by referencing the strenuous denials of the state.
	There are no riots in Colorado.
	It's treason to say that there are.
	Well, okay, that's how you know there are riots in We welcome the debate means that they don't welcome the debate at all.
	And you can see the strong arming going on.
	So the New York Times a couple of days ago wrote online that the Obama administration has lost all credibility.
	Has lost all credibility.
	Now that's exactly the same as a crack addict saying that crack has lost all credibility for him.
	I mean, they've been such slavish addicts to Obama that for them to say he's lost all credibility was quite shocking.
	I mean, for the New York Times.
	I mean, it's like the Freeman turning on Reagan, for God's sakes.
	Of course, they got their calls from the government, and I'm sure that they got the calls which said, if you let this stand, we are going to cut you off from all information.
	I mean, reporters used to do reporting, right?
	Which was, they would actually go and investigate and try and find out the truth.
	And that was time consuming, that was expensive, and that was legally risky.
	You can get sued for printing things that are unsupported or unsubstantiated.
	And it was very complicated and so on.
	And now, you know, reporters have a whole lot easier time of it because what they do is they go ask the government stuff and print that.
	And they call that reporting.
	It's incredibly dangerous.
	We talk about freedom of the press, for God's sakes.
	The idea that the American media is going to fight for freedom of the press is ludicrous.
	I mean, all they are is a third-party amplification of government propaganda.
	The idea that they're going to somehow fight for freedom of the press is...
	What they want is the freedom to make money without really working.
	Hey, what did the government say?
	I'll make a phone call.
	Oh, unnamed sources in the government say X. How about finding out whether it's true or not?
	No, you see, that takes a lot of work.
	And that might piss off the people who are giving me information.
	So, no, I don't think I'm going to do that.
	So...
	They're not going to fight for freedom of the press.
	They will fight for their income.
	You know, lots of people will fight for their income.
	And from that standpoint, the government infringing upon their rights, so to speak, is going to cause a bit of a backlash.
	But the New York Times, I'm sure, got the call.
	You know, we're going to cut you off from information.
	You might actually have to work for a goddamn living.
	You might actually have to do something other than parse government statements through your slight language reorganizer and call it news.
	All the government propaganda that's fit to print.
	And so later in the day, the New York Times, in its great wisdom, decided to amend its statement, which says the Obama administration not has lost all credibility, period, but has lost all credibility in this particular issue.
	And normally, of course, whenever they edit an article, they put edit notes at the bottom.
	This one, they declined to put edit notes while changing fundamentally the point of the story.
	They declined to point out that it had been changed.
	Fortunately, of course, with the Internet, this stuff can be caught and shared pretty quickly.
	But I hope that it helps people to just realize that you simply are not going to get the truth from any of these mouth-breathing weasel bags of stuffed propaganda winds.
	It's – It's all nonsense.
	I mean...
	I long for the day when people stop even tuning into the mainstream media.
	I just long for that day when these ass clowns have to go and get a real job for which their skills are eminently suited, which means that they're going to do propaganda for some third-world tin pot dictatorship, or in the time-honored tradition of truly economically accurate journalism, they will be asking you, will you want fries with that, sir?
	Anyway, that's it for my intro.
	I hope you're doing well.
	I hope you're not shocked.
	This is not a scandal.
	I mean, this being a scandal is like saying it's a scandal for Lindsay Lohan to be in trouble with the law again, or Amanda Bynes.
	This is not a scandal.
	This is just the inevitable progress of a catastrophic addiction.
	So, anyway, I hope that helps clarify things, at least from my perspective.
	I hope you're doing wonderfully well this beautiful, beautiful Sunday.
	And, Mr.
	JJ, I am eager to hear...
	The questions of wisdom from the wisest listeners in the world.
	What's on your mind?
	Well, there's actually a few things.
	I guess it's...
	Well, I'll say the biggest, most important thing is I have a six-year-old With a woman who is, I guess, she's pretty totalitarian, I guess.
	I don't know if I can describe it.
	Yeah, I don't know if it's that.
	By totalitarian, what do you mean?
	She's authoritarian?
	Does she yell?
	Does she hit?
	I mean, what are we talking about?
	Yeah, that's basically what I'm talking about.
	She has hit him in the past, and I kind of confronted her on it, and I'm kind of hoping that she doesn't do that anymore, but she still does yelling and punishing ghosts in the corner and that kind of stuff.
	And does she call him names?
	Stupid, idiot, disrespectful, you know, does she use moral or insulting words against him?
	Well, yeah, and I mean, she's got him in a Catholic school.
	See, the thing is, I rarely talk to her anymore.
	The only time I really see her is when I'm kind of like picking him up or dropping him off, which is like a...
	It's like an asymptotically low, like it goes down.
	Basically, I'm at the point now where I only get to take them once every month for a couple days.
	And that's looking like it may not, it may not, it may even go even less than that.
	So, sorry, what's your custody?
	How often do you get them?
	I just wanted to make sure I understood that.
	Well, we went to court a few years ago.
	Well, three years ago was when the order was made.
	She wanted to take him to England because she wanted to get married to somebody in England that she met here because he was here for like a month.
	So anyways, we went to court over that and I managed to get an agreement in place that basically said, you know, you can move to England under...
	Like, these conditions.
	It was a whole bunch of different conditions.
	And one of them was, okay, well, if you don't move to England by this date, then I get them, like, every weekend.
	And then she never moved to England.
	She still says she's going to.
	That was, like, almost two years ago or two or three years ago.
	And anyway, there was a clause that said, you know, I get them every weekend.
	And then I got a job where I had to work on weekends, so I was only taking them every two weekends.
	And then, uh, but the agreement was, you know, I would take them every weekend when I could.
	And then I got caught to the situation where I could do that again.
	And then she was like, well, sorry, you already changed it, you know?
	I don't know.
	Is there some reason why you don't have shared custody?
	Like 50-50?
	Well, she, well, I will say that, uh, just like financially, I'm, I'm pretty low on the rungs.
	Uh, To say the least, right, I'm like completely broke and that's something that I've been trying to work on.
	Just recently I've kind of started making changes, like growing up changes, as far as, I don't know, like, you know, I used to be, I guess, pretty addicted to video games, so I basically quit that.
	And now I've got this sales job that I'm like, I'm doing okay with, and it's kind of like a slow start, but it does look like there's a lot of potential in it if I can just really do it.
	I think I got off on a tangent there.
	No, that's okay.
	That's okay.
	So you don't have custody, 50-50 custody, because she has more money.
	Is that right?
	Well, she's actually on welfare, and she lives on the other side of the city.
	And, um, takes him, like, I wanted 50-50 custody, but I didn't know he was mine until he was two months old.
	So, uh, she's been primary caregiver.
	Sorry, just help me understand that.
	So, but weren't you married?
	I don't mean to be old-fashioned on you or anything, but...
	No, no, I was, uh, we were, we were dating for nine months.
	Um, basically, uh, He was conceived like, I guess we were seeing each other casually, to use an euphemism, for a month after we broke up.
	And then she got a new boyfriend, and literally the last time I ever saw her was the day that my son was conceived.
	So she thought it was this other guy over the course of the pregnancy.
	And then you had sex with that protection, right?
	Yes.
	With somebody that you've broken up with?
	Yes.
	Right.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Go on.
	Um...
	And, uh...
	So anyways, over the course of the pregnancy, she thought it was this other guy.
	A month...
	Or basically had...
	Okay, so she has this kid, and she's broken up with this other guy.
	And, um...
	It turns out that the kid looks nothing like this guy, looks exactly like me.
	Have you had a test?
	Yes, I have had a test.
	Okay, and it's yours.
	Yeah, he is mine too.
	What sort of family background, what sort of childhood did you have?
	That led you into these kinds of decisions.
	And I really, look, I sympathize with everyone involved.
	No, you're right.
	You're dead on.
	Because I'm actually in the process of...
	That was actually...
	I've got a list of things that I wanted to talk to you about.
	And that's a big part of it.
	The fact that I don't...
	I haven't talked to my dad in like six or seven months or something.
	He kind of like was pretty, you know...
	Righteous with the spanking.
	Not righteous, but, you know, he was...
	Heavy-handed, let's say.
	Yeah, heavy-handed.
	And, you know, of course, you know, the rest of my family is like, well, he's not like that anymore.
	Well, yeah, it's because I'm bigger, you know.
	Yeah.
	It's amazing how kindly the mugger becomes when you get the knife away from him, right?
	Suddenly he's all...
	Yeah, exactly.
	Right?
	It's like, no, no, I just got the knife away from him, so now he wants to be my friend.
	I think it was about a year ago where we were at the family barbecue thing, and he was there, and it was me, him, and my brother-in-law, and my dad told us this story about how, well, you know, in Singapore, or I think it was Singapore, you know, if a kid If a kid spits, they take a cane to him or something like that.
	It might not seem like the nicest way to do things, but you can bet your ass those kids don't spit on the ground very much.
	He hasn't reformed at all.
	When he spanked you, was it open hand on the butt?
	Was it with implements?
	How did he do it?
	Well, at...
	Well, yeah, he would do that.
	Do what?
	But at times there were implements.
	I think at one point he used a wooden spoon.
	And at one point my mom actually took my sister and I to the hospital because we were like bruised really badly.
	And they were kind of like broken up at that point.
	And did anyone at the hospital do anything?
	Yeah, he was...
	Because when I confronted him on it, he kind of came clean about a lot of stuff and actually told me some interesting tales about my mom that I never really knew.
	Excuse me, I just lost my train of thought there.
	I asked if anyone at the hospital did anything when you came in as a result of battering.
	Okay, so when I confronted him on the smacking and basically stopped talking to him, he did tell me that, you know, that particular incident, he was kind of confronted by, like, authorities or whatnot, or police or something, and basically he said, you know, hey, like, I'm in a really rough situation.
	He was raising the kids, like, four of us kids alone, But himself, well, my mom basically divorced him and went out and partied for two years or something.
	And so he was under a lot of stress, so I guess they saw that he was under a lot of stress, and therefore it was like, you know...
	Yeah, no, because a lot of times when...
	No, I mean, that's, of course, a lot of times when husbands beat their wives with, you know, say, a bat.
	Because, you know, a wooden spoon to a kid is about the same size and proportion as a bat is to an adult woman.
	So a lot of times when husbands beat their wives with a bat, what happens is the police come by and they say to the husbands, well, it's okay.
	See, if you're stressed...
	Yeah.
	...that's what they say.
	Well, you're stressed, so that's okay.
	Right?
	Oh, wait.
	That never happens.
	Yeah, no.
	I mean I knew someone who punched a wall, didn't touch his wife, punched a wall, and the cops came and got him and took him straight to jail.
	He didn't get to say, well, I didn't sleep well.
	Well, I had a headache.
	I stubbed my toe.
	I'm stressed.
	But you see, with children, it's a different matter.
	Now, I mean, the reality is – I mean, I don't know where you're from and don't tell me.
	It doesn't matter.
	But the reality is that in almost every place in the Western world, hitting a child with implements is criminal assault.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Yeah.
	It's criminal assault in the eyes of the law.
	Sorry, it is criminal assault in the eyes of the law?
	Yeah.
	It is to hit children with implements is illegal.
	Oh, I don't know if he used the implements in this specific incident.
	No, but it doesn't matter.
	If he used implements, then he's crossed over into criminal land.
	Yeah, I fully agree with that.
	Well, and I'm simply pointing out that, you know, people have a tough time with this voluntary family stuff.
	Some people do, right?
	And if your dad was at a park and hit some other children with a wooden spoon, he'd go to jail.
	I mean, I was reading the other day, some woman was in a store, and she hit her kid in the face, and she was just taken straight to jail.
	I mean, you go around hitting children with implements, you've just broken the law.
	Like, you're a criminal.
	Now, you may not get charged, right?
	All the childism, right?
	All the prejudice against children.
	Childism is worse than racism, worse than sexism, and very rarely spoken about.
	But the prejudice we have against children is a prejudice that was never against women.
	Wife beating has always been illegal.
	You know, there's this...
	Urban myth that the rule of thumb comes from what you used to be able to beat your wife with something that wasn't wider than a thumb.
	That's not true.
	It's just nonsense.
	It's just propaganda that was invented to make the past look brutal.
	Child abuse, sorry, wife abuse was always illegal and was always punished because, I mean, women were protected throughout most of human history.
	They kept from wars, kept from lifeboats, you know, women and children first, that kind of stuff.
	But our prejudice against children remains so deeply entrenched that we can't even see it.
	It's the largest and greatest human bias that needs to be addressed.
	And once that human bias is addressed, so manyills will be cured in the world that human nature will be unrecognizable in the future.
	But anyway, so I just want to point out that the people whose parents hit them with implements, I mean, that's criminal behavior.
	I mean, that's criminal behavior against the most helpless independent creatures that you can imagine.
	And, you know, lots of people say, well, geez, you know, if my dad would beat my dogs with a spatula, And people get this visceral response, you know, like, oh my god, your dad would beat your dogs with a spatula.
	That's horrendous, right?
	And yet, when you get hit with an implement, people are like, hey, what are you getting your dad for Father's Day?
	Yeah, totally.
	I mean, yeah.
	It's just, you know, we hold dogs in fucking higher esteem than children.
	Yeah, like in the story of your enslavement, there's a little clip of a guy who's mistreating a dog in an elevator.
	The comments would pour in about how horrendous that was and how brutal that was and how they just wanted to do terrible things to that guy for how he treated that dog.
	Yeah.
	And yet, I have had...
	Hundreds and hundreds of conversations with people who've been brutalized far worse as children, and the comments simply don't show up.
	I'm sorry on behalf of the entire human race, how pitiful it is, our conception of the wrongs done against children and our need to protect them.
	I'm sorry that it is not visible to people how wretchedly you were treated, how terrifying an experience that is, and how brutally society ignores what happens.
	I'm so sorry.
	I mean, we really, really need to live in a different world, and damn quickly, where we at least have – let's at least aim for the same sympathy for helpless, independent human children as we do for your average Rottweiler who's mistreated by an owner.
	Let's at least try and raise children to the level of sympathy we reserve for rabbits and frogs.
	That, to me, would be a massive improvement.
	I'm not holding my breath, but I'm certainly working as hard as hell as I can towards it.
	I just wanted to mention that, and I'm very sorry.
	Here, at least, I think it's visible.
	I'm not going to be too sycophantic here, but you've obviously done a lot of good.
	If it weren't for you, I don't know.
	I might even be the exact name or I can pretty much guarantee I wouldn't have, in a sense, started looking into this type of thing further.
	The worst I've ever done to my kid was I held him before I found out about peaceful parenting and whatnot.
	The worst I've ever done was I held him to his wrist and gave him a slap on the wrist.
	Just enough to kind of scare them.
	But even that, I mean, in retrospect, that was bad.
	I shouldn't have done that.
	Well, listen, I mean, good for you.
	And look, I appreciate your kind words.
	I really do.
	But I hope that people who listen to the show, who've made steps towards peaceful parenting, you know, they may glance at me and say, hey, good job, Steph.
	But it's you and people like you who are doing all the work.
	And because I've done the work, I know how much work it is.
	And...
	I'm like a guy who says, hey, do some sit-ups.
	Look at my abs.
	But you are the person who sits there and does 3,000 crunches a day.
	And so you're the one who's actually doing the work.
	I'm just the one blathering about it.
	So I appreciate that.
	And I'm not trying to deflect your praise.
	I appreciate that hugely.
	But I hope that you will keep the majority of praise for yourself.
	Well, and that's...
	I appreciate that.
	But I guess I've got...
	I'm in a situation now where, you know, he's six and I kind of, I didn't even, you know, open the door to wards in a sense, volunteerism like Ron Paul, like, until about five years ago.
	So, I mean, I already kind of had put myself in the situation of having, you know, a child with, like, a crazy woman.
	And now I'm like, how do I... Because I have trouble where, you know, he comes...
	He comes and he starts talking about God and stuff like that.
	He knows that I don't believe in God, but he's in a Catholic school, and he's going into grade one soon.
	And he's getting to the point where they're going to start giving him assignments similar to what my little 15-year-old brother has that says, you know, Like, what are the reasons that you should go to church, you know?
	Like, so they're indoctrinating them real good, you know, or real bad.
	And I'm like, you know, I grapple with how, what's the best way to deal with that to, like, in a sense minimize the damage.
	I myself was raised in a, or grew up in a Catholic school as well.
	And to be honest with you, I was actually...
	When I came out of high school, I kind of had like a crisis and looked at the fact that there's, you know, there's less Christians in the world than there are Christians.
	So I looked into Buddhism and then I... Sorry, you said there are less Christians in the world than there are Christians?
	Yeah, that's right.
	Is that not true?
	Oh, okay.
	I... Sorry, I looked at, like, basically the stats and said that, like, okay, Buddhism is the most prolific religion, so here I am, supposedly...
	Oh, so you're Christians, then other religions, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay.
	And non-Christians and whatnot.
	And I just looked at that, and I was like, well, if Christianity is the truth, then why aren't there more Christians, you know?
	And then I got into Buddhism, and then I kind of got back into Christianity, and then I finally...
	When I first started listening to your podcast, you would go into the atheism arguments or the anti-whatever arguments, and I would like everything else that you said, but then I'd be like, ah!
	And I'd almost skip over those podcasts, but then I think it was the one where you outlined 58 different contradicting lines in the Bible that I was like, okay, wait a minute.
	I should probably take a more honest look at that.
	Honestly, the day that I kicked religion, all of a sudden I could see clear.
	This veil just got lifted over my head and I was finally able to just be like...
	I remember I had this moment where I looked at right after I accepted once and for all that there's no God anymore than there are unicorns and leprechauns.
	I looked at what happened in China where there's kids that are killed for the whole fact that they're not male, you know what I mean?
	And I had the urge to pray, and then I was like, well, I can't.
	I'm not going to do anything.
	And then I was like, oh, well, I guess I might have to do what I can in the real world to try and I'll tell you, of course, I hugely appreciate that you stuck with it.
	I know, it's challenging.
	People look at philosophy like a buffet.
	And I say this having done it myself, too.
	Well, that speaks to me.
	Well, that helps me.
	Well, that appeals to me.
	I'm like, oh, wait.
	Oh, I don't like that one.
	Philosophy, unfortunately, is not a pick-and-choose buffet.
	Philosophy is principles, and the principles take you and...
	I have discomfort with some of them, and you have discomfort with some of them, but nonetheless, we owe ourselves and the world the truth, and it's not a buffet.
	But people who are used to religion are used to buffets, right?
	I mean, Christianity and Islam and Judaism, they're all buffets, right?
	People just pick whatever appeals to them.
	If you're an angry guy, you tend to be Old Testament.
	If you're a hippy-dippy New Age guy, you tend to be New Testament.
	If you're meek, hey, turn the other cheek.
	If you're not meek, hey, and eye for eye, bastards, right?
	And, you know, if you want to be nice to your children, then you say, well, whatever you do to the least of them, you do unto me, says Jesus.
	And if you want to not be nice to your children, spare the rod and spoil the child.
	I mean, it's just a buffet that amplifies your personal prejudices into a universal good, which is incredibly dangerous and very toxic.
	So, I'll tell you my approach to it.
	I mean, my daughter's asking, why do some buildings have crosses on them?
	And I said, target practice.
	No, I didn't.
	And I said, so I'm answering the questions now.
	I, of course, have sworn an oath to do not lie to my daughter.
	But that doesn't mean that I must impose unasked-for truths upon her.
	Does that make sense?
	Unasked-for truths?
	Yes.
	So, for instance, she will ask me, and I will tell her, I don't use the word God, because...
	I don't want to lay words into her mind that have emotional resonance in the culture because that's unfair.
	That's like one musical instrument in the band is 20 times the volume of the others.
	That's just going to screw up the mix, right?
	So we call him Big Invisible Guy.
	I like Big Invisible Guy because it's an acronym for the first word.
	That's kind of cool.
	But we talk about Big Invisible Guy and she's fascinated by Bible stories.
	I mean, of course she would be.
	They're some of the best stories around.
	How do we know that?
	Because they've survived for thousands of years, and the ones that weren't good were forgotten, and the ones that were good were retained, and the ones that are the best tend to be taught to children.
	Now, of course, I was raised as a choir boy in the church in Sunday school, went to church a couple of times a week in boarding school, so I know the stories, and we talk about the stories.
	And I talk to her of them as stories.
	Now, I talk to her about the stories and I ask her what she thinks about the stories and she will tell me what she thinks about the stories and I will ask her if this makes sense or if that makes sense or whatever, right?
	You know, like the story of the loaves and the fishes.
	Can you imagine taking a bite from a loaf of bread and having the loaf of bread regrow the bite?
	Have you ever seen that?
	You know, what do you think, right?
	Does that make sense?
	Ask those kinds of questions.
	Okay.
	So you can ask him the critical questions.
	You do not have to reveal your thoughts on the issue if he doesn't ask.
	It's like an interrogation where you've sworn to tell the truth.
	That doesn't mean you have to volunteer everything.
	Now, if my daughter asks me whether I do or don't believe in the big invisible guy...
	Then I owe her the truth.
	But the truth is not my conclusion.
	The truth is my thinking.
	Because truth is never a conclusion.
	Truth is a process, right?
	Truth is a journey.
	It's not a destination.
	So if I want to tell my daughter the truth about my beliefs about religion, then stating my beliefs about my religion is not stating the truth.
	The only truth that I can state is the thought processes that I have about religion, which are really just thought processes as a whole.
	Okay.
	If she asks me if I believe or don't believe, I will say, well, that's an interesting question.
	Before we talk about that, let's talk about what belief is at all.
	You know, like, if I say, well, I believe, but we don't have the same meaning of the word believe, then we're not having a useful conversation.
	So then we can go in, what does it mean to believe something?
	And what is truth?
	And, you know, those kinds of questions, I mean, she'll just talk all day about those.
	She just loves those.
	I actually have to make notes about the Sunday show because she always wants to know.
	We spend the whole afternoon talking about the Sunday show.
	Well, then what did he say?
	What did you say?
	All that kind of stuff, right?
	Because she always wants to know what the show was about.
	But I really try...
	So I'll say, well, this part doesn't make much sense to me, but what do you think?
	Because the purpose, of course, is to sharpen your son's thinking skills, right?
	Not to show off yours, right?
	Like, there's no point taking a dog for a walk, dragging him in a cage while you get good exercise, because the whole point is to walk the dog soon.
	And so with your son, if he's saying all these things about religion, you can say, well, that's interesting.
	So, you know, do you think it's a story or do you think it's true?
	I think it's true.
	Well, okay, that's very interesting.
	What do you think truth is?
	How do you know whether something's true or something's just a story?
	And you can have great conversations about that without ever touching upon the spoken or formal content of religious doctrines, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Honestly, though, I think that all does make a lot of sense.
	My son, I think, he...
	Like I said, I mean, his mom, and obviously, you know, being the fact that his mom is around him the whole time, you know, he gets a lot of her in him.
	You know what I mean?
	And one of the things is the whole...
	Oh, well, let's not talk about Ike.
	She's one of those...
	Sorry, let's not talk about what?
	Let's not talk about it.
	You'll say something, and it's funny because my mom is the exact same.
	If you say something that makes her uncomfortable, it's like, well, I don't want to talk about it.
	Oh, she's like a wish-away person.
	Yeah, and he gets it in him, too.
	Right.
	Like, he mimics that, so anytime I kind of make him or bring anything to the table that, you know, gets him thinking, it's like, oh, well, I don't want to talk about it, you know what I mean?
	Right.
	Right.
	Yeah, and of course you can't make him talk about it, of course, right?
	Yeah, I don't want to see because yeah, yeah.
	Would he talk about how he feels in the face of his mother's aggression?
	I'm sorry?
	Do you think he would talk about how Um, yeah.
	Yeah, and, yeah.
	Well, I think that's more important than issues of gods and devils and hells and heavens, I think would be that.
	If you would talk about that, talk about that topic.
	You know, from a very open listening standpoint.
	Now, my particular...
	Please understand, I've not faced this situation directly, so please take everything I'm saying with a grain of salt as usual, but I think there are things to be open-minded about.
	And things to help kids think and all that.
	But when it comes to being mistreated, I don't think there's much room for a neutral stand.
	I'd be neutral and curious about the existence of deities, but I won't be neutral if my daughter was ever pushed over by some kid or something like that, or some adult yelled at her or called her stupid.
	I would not be neutral about that.
	Yeah, and that actually, I guess I've taken a very similar stance to that.
	There was one time when he was telling me, he was telling me about how, you know, punishments and whatever that he'd get.
	And I said, I was like, you know, that's not good.
	I'm going to talk to your mom about that, right?
	And I did.
	And, you know, we had an hour-long debate about, you know, whatnot.
	And so I don't know.
	I think that might have probably helped her out, but it helped him out to see what's kind of...
	I think it helped him at least see that, you know, it's like, wait a minute, my mom doesn't...
	I don't necessarily do it because I'm bad, but maybe it's because she's bad or something.
	It always strikes me that people who've made such egregious mistakes as not even knowing who the father of her son is, is willing to impose pretty heavy moral standards on children.
	The lack of humility for people who've made mistakes in their lives always strikes me as extremely bizarre.
	I'm very hesitant about most things in life, and I haven't even made any really big mistakes, but to people who've made And we don't condemn them or whatever, right?
	But if you think that gives you some humility, like, hey, I made a really bad mistake at 25, so I'm going to forgive what you did innocently at 5.
	But that's a big problem.
	But of course, you can always remind your son that you're just a phone call away.
	If your mom scares you, if you're upset, if you're scared, if you're afraid, if you're really nervous about stuff, if you feel like things are going badly, pick up the phone.
	No, day or night.
	Well, that's the other thing.
	She's got a cell phone.
	She doesn't have a home phone.
	And so, I mean, she won't let me call during the week because Aiden's busy all week is the excuse, which is obviously total BS. You mean your son is busy all week?
	Yeah, yeah.
	That's the excuse, right?
	She just doesn't like getting the phone call from me and being like, Well, look, I mean, if you have to go back to court, I hate to say it, but if you go back to court, you should be allowed to talk to your damn son.
	Yeah.
	I don't think she has the right to deny you contact with your son.
	If you've got to go back to court, go back to court and threaten her.
	But that's like, I've got to talk to my son during the week.
	I mean, it's crazy.
	I'm the dad.
	Well, yeah, it all kind of came to a head on Friday when...
	Like, actually kind of a coincidence, talking to you now, but it all came to a head, and she gave me a schedule that said I only get them once a month instead.
	And then she, like, I basically showed up at her door on Friday and was like, okay, well, court order says I get them every weekend.
	And she was like, well, I'm not going to.
	So I called the cops.
	Cops came down, and since I've got this court order that, you know, has all these terms on it, but since it doesn't explicitly say police assistance, they can't do anything.
	So, um...
	So now I've got to go back to court.
	So that's basically how it is.
	So it's an uninforcible court order, is that right?
	Pretty much, yeah.
	Excellent.
	How will we get justice in a free society?
	There's just no way to understand it, because the justice we get from a government society is so fucking great.
	Anyway.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I mean, I guess all the weight that this court order has is its effect on future court orders.
	So if I violate the court order, then that looks bad, is what the cops basically told me.
	As she's doing, right?
	Well, exactly.
	And I thought about that, and I think she is.
	I'll say she's calculating.
	She's intelligent in that way.
	She knew that it didn't say police assistance on it, and therefore she could get away with Yeah, and of course, you know, the problem is, too, it's not like you want your son to be dragged out from his mom's place by the cops, right?
	Well, and I was really worried that that might happen, but I was like, I figured, hey, if it happens once, and then she'll get the message, you know, and then it'll kind of be...
	And then at least he'll see me on the other side, and I can...
	We can try and minimize...
	You could be very clear with him and say, you know, you could be...
	I mean, if you ask how did this happen, you'd say, well, because your mom wasn't obeying the rules.
	I mean, again, I'm not saying, you know, try and poison your son against your mom or anything like that, but we owe people the truth.
	Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
	And it's just...
	I guess it's kind of coincidence that the truth is poisoning against Well, no, that's her choice.
	I mean, she's just doing the stuff that is reflecting badly upon her.
	And, of course, you're facing an extremely biased court system that is pro-mom and, in many ways, pro-mom at the expense of children.
	And so I'm very sorry about that.
	But, my God, I mean, how lucky is he to have one parent in his life who really gives...
	I wouldn't say this mom doesn't, but really cares about his sort of long-term intellectual, moral, and emotional growth.
	I mean, kudos to you, man.
	It's a hard situation to stay in, and good for you for toughing it out.
	I mean, boy, that kid is lucky to have an influence like you.
	I mean, the mom's in welfare, talking about fleeing the country, and yelling at him, and maybe hitting him, and calling him names, perhaps.
	I mean, that's pretty negative, and if it wasn't for you...
	It would be pretty universal, right?
	And then he goes to school and he's told he's a born sinner and going to go to hell.
	So, good for you.
	I mean, you are a northern star that this kid can guide himself by and it may not show up for quite some time, right?
	Because he's got to navigate the majority of his environment, right?
	The majority of his environment is his mom and his school, right?
	So, we plant these seeds and sometimes it can take a decade to grow.
	But sure as hell, if they're not there, they ain't going to grow, right?
	And I appreciate that, and I actually recognize that.
	At least he's got me.
	But she takes more and more steps.
	To minimize, in a sense, my contact with him and whatnot.
	And she will pay for that over time.
	I mean, I hate to say it, but she will pay.
	This is true for both parents.
	We just happen to be talking about the mom here.
	Moms who turn children against fathers or who keep children from fathers will pay the price.
	They will pay the price because he's going to find out the truth at some point.
	He's going to find the truth out at some point.
	And it's going to be rough when he does.
	The better parent, all other things being equal, generally wins out in the long term.
	The long term may be quite some time, but he's going to find out the truth.
	He's going to find out the truth.
	I say this from my own experience.
	My mom kept telling me, well, your dad, he just left and went to Africa, and this turned out to be not the case at all.
	She was threatening all kinds of legal action.
	It was a mess.
	She continued to threaten him with all kinds of legal action for years and years.
	This was not the case.
	It's not good for the moms when – I mean particularly when the sons find out if the moms have been keeping them from the dads.
	There is a – where there's honesty, there are natural consequences to bad behavior.
	The only way that bad behavior ever gets shielded from its own consequences is when you live in a fictional universe and lies and propaganda and all this kind of crap.
	But where the truth is available, there is a hell For the wrongdoers.
	It's just, you know, it's not after death or anything, it's just where the truth is available.
	So there is a certain amount where I feel like, like, like, you know, I, excuse me, I'm trying to think of the right way to put this, but basically that I could, you know, if I had, because I'm, you know,
	I've made some pretty bad decisions with regards to employment, and I just, you know, I'm not a guy that's taken I've been fired lots of times and just now I think I recognize the big things that were holding me back which was namely the fact that I was wasting my days away playing video games and so I quit doing that and I'm at this new job now where it's like there
	is potential to make more money if I can really nail down the sales you know what I mean?
	Um, I'm kind of at like a rock bottom situation now where I'm like, I'm, I'm renting a room with my mom.
	So it's like, it's not, it's not like she's paying for all my stuff.
	It's like slightly less expensive than the average, you know, I'll say room rental and, uh, you know, in and around place.
	Um, so, but I do feel like, you know, Hey, if I, if I was to make more money and, And then there is also the fact that my mom, she's pretty passive-aggressive, and we're at the point where she doesn't want to talk about anything I ever want to talk.
	So I recently kind of got to the point where I don't listen to anything she says.
	But that's a pretty, I'll say in a sense, almost volatile situation.
	But the point that I'm trying to make is that I... I feel like, in a sense, if I was to do more, you know, if I had more money, I could, in a sense, pay like a better lawyer that could kind of like, you know, so that's what I'm trying to use.
	I certainly think that focusing on improving your human capital, like in becoming better at stuff, is a good thing to do.
	You know, getting some money is not a bad way to take some steps towards freedom and empowerment.
	Whether we like it or not, this Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, I think, is all just a theoretical construct.
	But money does give you some choices.
	And so I think focusing on getting some cash is probably a good thing to do.
	So I certainly support you in that.
	The video game thing is interesting.
	I mean, I love video games.
	I love the technology.
	I love the realism.
	I think that what the...
	do is truly astounding.
	But I certainly have noticed that video game playing is proportional in my life.
	Video game playing is proportional to the degree of horror I'm experiencing from the people around me.
	So think of like a leper colony, you know, where everybody's got pustules and body bits falling off and so on.
	You know, could you really blame them for liking pornography with, you know, pretty people having great sex, or at least that's the depiction.
	You know, if you're in a leper colony, then a fantasy world of sexuality would probably be pretty appealing because there's not much going on around you that's going to be very appealing.
	You know, have some sex with some woman whose boobs are falling off, you know, that's not going to be particularly enticing.
	And so I think that if your world, if the real world is horrible, then the fictional world is more appealing.
	And video games are just the latest in this.
	I mean, fantasy play has been around forever.
	When I was a kid, the video games weren't really around.
	So I was into science fiction and so on.
	When I got older, I was into fantasy novels.
	And that's simply because my own world was unbearable.
	And therefore, a fictional world was like a gravity well to me.
	Now, the problem, of course, is that when your real world is unbearable and you escape into fictional worlds, what you're doing is drugging yourself from changing your circumstances.
	It's the old heroin for a toothache.
	Hey, I feel better.
	Wait a minute.
	My tooth is just getting worse, right?
	So that which alleviates symptoms without alleviating the cause tends to contribute to worse symptoms down the road.
	And I think the degree of unhappiness that people have in their environment is pretty measurable by I've played all the way through Morrowind.
	I used to play the Ultimate series when I was a teenager.
	But this is because my environment was so horrible.
	I don't just mean home environment, school environment.
	My friends were dysfunctional.
	It was a mess all around.
	And so, you know, it's like the guy who wants to go back in the Matrix after he betrays Neo.
	You know, that bold guy.
	Cypher.
	Yeah, Cypher.
	Yeah, he's like, you know, I want to go back in and I don't remember because, you know, in this case it was because he'd done bad things.
	But when your environment, you know, my environment growing up was so...
	It was so barren.
	I mean, fundamentally, it was barren.
	I mean, it was barren with lightning and sandstorms and earthquakes and so on, but the barrenness is what I remember the most.
	And by that, I mean, there were no examples of nobility, of courage, of virtue anywhere in my entire welfare-blasted landscape.
	You know, we lived in the kind of apartments that, you know, people in their 30s and 40s should have outgrown, but because they were almost all populated by single moms, You know, 70s was 300% increase in divorce and so on.
	And it was all defensive, brittle, ridiculous, aggressive, violent, disturbed people.
	We had neighbors who moved in next door, and they were going to invite us over for coffee or tea or whatever it was to get to know each other.
	And it turns out that they didn't because this guy was a cop, and he had a knockdown, drag-out fight with his wife and ended up discharging a weapon, like shooting a bullet into the wall.
	And so we didn't actually go around and socialize with these lunatics.
	But we knew, I knew at least that they were living next door, and I also got a pretty good example of someone who can be a cop.
	There's not other cops around there saying, well, this guy's a lunatic.
	He's shooting holes in a crowded apartment building, so maybe he shouldn't be a cop.
	No, they were all fine with that.
	So this gave me a pretty good example of what it was like, of what was acceptable behavior on the part of a cop in society as a whole.
	He didn't get, you know, what are we going to do?
	Call the cops?
	There's one already here.
	So it was the lack of...
	Video games, of course, give you the chance to be heroic, to be brave, to achieve things, to work with squad mates these days who are pretty functional, don't betray and shoot you in the back, usually.
	And that's appealing when you live in a world that is barren of virtue, is barren of nobility, is barren from courage.
	It's an empty, blasted landscape of smashed up, self-hating and defensive and aggressive things.
	human wreckage.
	And I think that's, I just wanted to sort of point that out to be away from courage, to be away from heroism is to die a slow lingering, thirsty death, death in the desert.
	And I just think that it's really, really important to try and populate your environment.
	First of all, with you, with the kind of courage that is necessary to change the world and to improve the world and video games, of course, are a false kind of achievement.
	You know, like I used to play Yeah, totally.
	Yeah, I used to play Unreal Tournament, and so I picked it up again just because I wanted something that I could dip into and play for like 10 minutes and all that.
	And, you know, there's people, they're literally like bragging about their skills in the game.
	Like, I'm really great at this game, newbie, you know, pwnage and stuff like that.
	And, of course, it is a massive confession of...
	I have spent 10,000 hours playing this game to the exclusion of other things that I might have done in my life.
	People think that it's a badge of honor to post, look, I completed this game, and it's like, I've got no problem, complete the game or whatever, but you've done that at the expense of doing courageous good things in the world.
	You've done that at the expense of charity and nobility and helping other people in a positive and productive way.
	And again, I'm not saying you've got to be noble 24-7, but the idea that you brag...
	probably because your world is unbearable is, um, it's kind of, uh, a mess.
	You know, it's like, it's like, I went to live in a cave and look, I can see really well in the dark.
	Look how well I can see in the dark.
	It's like, yeah, you're living in a cave for God's sakes, you know, because wherever you were, it was unbearable and you took to the caves.
	I mean, I have sympathy for that.
	It's terrible, but it's not something to brag about.
	Anyway, I just wanted to mention that.
	Listen, I'm sorry.
	You know, my usual time management skills remain in force and I think I'm going to have to move on to uphaulers.
	But I want to spend some time on this because this is a hugely challenging issue.
	I wish there was an easy solution.
	Can I just ask one question?
	My dad, I think there's a chance that he would contribute monetarily towards some therapy.
	Like I said, I haven't talked to him in six months.
	I'm thinking that it probably would be a good idea.
	Yeah, I mean, if people who've done you wrong wish to make restitution, my personal opinion is unless they're just completely abhorrent to you, then I think that it's worth giving them the opportunity.
	I was just thinking about this the other day.
	I can't remember why.
	Some guy trolled FDR pretty hard a couple of years ago, and he came on my show, and we talked about it.
	You know, he apologized and I was curious about what motivates trolls and I had this guy on the show and we talked about it.
	And so people who've done you harm or who've done you wrong, if they wish to make restitution or are willing to make restitution, I mean, unless they're just completely abhorrent to you, then I think it's worth being open to that.
	That doesn't mean that he's then buying your loyalty back because, you know, one of the most powerful phrases in the English language when it comes to avoiding manipulation or control is to say...
	Let me see how I feel about that.
	Let me see how I feel about that.
	Someone says, well, look, I paid for your therapy.
	I mean, you've got to come see me.
	Let me see how I feel about that.
	And then take time, sit down in a dark place, and see how you feel about it.
	But people will try to make you will stuff who want to manipulate you.
	You owe me this, or you should do this, or this is the right thing to do, or, well, I gave you this, now you should give me that.
	It's like, let me see how I feel about that.
	Let me check in with my gut.
	Let me check in with my instincts.
	Let me check in with my feelings because they do a huge amount of encapsulation, right?
	When it comes to relationships, the intellect will almost always lead you astray because that's like trying to paint a landscape by waving a laser around in pitch blackness.
	You can't do it.
	Even moonlight is better for painting a landscape.
	The second brain around the gut, I think the unconscious has 6,000 times the processing power of the conscious mind and dealing with relationships requires more I've got processing power than the conscious mind can provide.
	The conscious mind is great for other stuff, but I have found it to be very empowering and useful and positive and powerful and true to say, you know, so if you can take the money, go see therapy, and if your dad then says, well, I gave you money, therefore you have to do this, let me see how I feel about that.
	I'll mull it over.
	I'll check in with myself and I'll see how I feel.
	And once people get that they can't give you orders, because if you're checking in with yourself, you're not taking orders.
	You're listening to yourself.
	And That's a very powerful thing to do.
	And then people get, like once you say, let me see how I feel about that, people get that they actually have to make you feel good in order for you to want to spend time with them.
	You know, it's weird that we should even have to say that about relationships.
	It's like putting the fence up, yeah.
	It's like if I said, I would like to start a restaurant, and the radical idea is that the customers are going to enjoy eating there.
	That's my radical business plan, that the food is going to be tasty and that they're going to want to come back.
	That's weird, right?
	As opposed to, I just bark orders and say, hey, I invested half a million dollars in this restaurant.
	You better goddamn well come back.
	That's not a good business plan, right?
	Because that's, you know, the family is still so resistant to voluntarism, right?
	But if you say, let me see how I feel about that, then people will get that they can't just give you orders, they can't manipulate you.
	I'm not saying your dad would do this.
	I'm just saying, right, like, this would be my defense.
	Yeah, like, so, but say, oh, yes, you know, if you feel that, you know, obviously therapy is a good thing, if you get the right therapy, it's going to be a great thing.
	Yes, I appreciate that.
	I assume you do.
	I'll start taking the therapy.
	And then if he starts to push boundaries...
	Hello?
	Yeah, let me just see how I feel about that.
	Do you have a website so I can get a good therapist so I'm not getting some person who's telling me to get in touch with God and all that kind of stuff?
	Yeah.
	I don't know.
	I have thought off and on about whether it might, but I don't know.
	You can post on the message board and see if anyone has found any good therapists that they've experienced around where you are.
	Of course, you can post on Facebook and say, has anyone found?
	You can make an anonymous account or whatever.
	Just post on Facebook and say, has anyone found a good therapist?
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah, I mean, there are some good therapists out there.
	I assume there are, like everything, a lot of bad therapists who will say, but he's your father.
	You have to stay in touch with him.
	It's like, actually, that's not factually true.
	Adult relationships are voluntary.
	The shock is that that's the truth.
	Or they'll say, you know, well, you've turned away from God and that's why you're unhappy.
	I mean, this is not something you want to pay for.
	But, you know, the best thing to do, of course, is to, before you go see the therapist, and it's weird because we're just going to use it.
	Yeah, just interview them.
	I've got how to find a good therapist as a podcast, but, you know, just ask them about their values and what their therapeutic approach is and, you know, whether they bring religion in or what do they think about not talking to parents if parents have been abusive or, you know, this kind of stuff.
	Just get a sense of where they're coming from.
	Okay, cool.
	Awesome.
	Thank you so much.
	I really appreciate that.
	You are the consumer.
	They're not an authority figure.
	They are a service provider, a therapist, and so interview like crazy, that would be my suggestion.
	Okay.
	Awesome.
	Thank you very much, Stefan.
	You're welcome, and again, kudos to you.
	Massive congrats for staying in this very challenging situation.
	I mean, lesser men would run screaming, and I'm sure that's been the impulse from time to time, but good for you.
	Absolutely.
	Okay.
	Well, thanks again.
	Thank you so much.
	I appreciate that.
	And keep me posted if you can.
	Yeah, I'm going to try and call back in again at some point.
	Thanks, man.
	Okay.
	Have a good one.
	You too.
	Heroic.
	Wow.
	What an amazing guy.
	I mean, how to find the inner resources to stand for your child when you've come from this kind of challenging background.
	It's just amazing.
	Best listeners in the world, in my opinion.
	I don't even think it's an opinion anymore.
	James, who have you got next?
	Next up we have Juan.
	Hello, hello.
	Hi, my name is Juan and can you hear me well?
	Yes, actually after the crackly yogurt cup on a string phone call, this is actually very pleasant, so go ahead.
	Okay.
	Well, first of all, I just wanted to say I'm pretty happy that you're doing well with regards to your cancer, and I really hope that you keep it up.
	Okay?
	So, as a short story, I wanted to just let you know that since a couple of years ago, I've been dealing with With different questions with regards to both education and economy.
	And the reason why is I've been in education for basically all my life.
	It's our family business and I am in charge of running some schools over here in Guatemala.
	When I heard about some of your interviews with Dr.
	Gray, this brought up many questions.
	And it's really interesting the format that he proposes for education through play.
	And for us in the administration, as I heard that you both said that that might be the main obstacle for education to Using play to move forward, having the administration say no, and some teachers wanting to incorporate to this new methodology and the administration saying no.
	You see, it made me think, because I'm a young guy, I am the second generation in our family business, and I have new ideas and everything is well set up now and everything's been working for many years and changing that structure, as you might imagine, is quite hard, being that most of the parents and students are accustomed to our methodology.
	It's just a typical methodology over here in Guatemala for a private school where we teach.
	You mean like the teacher puts stuff on the blackboard, you memorize it, and you learn how to do it, and then you spit it back and that kind of stuff?
	No, not quite.
	Not quite that much.
	Meaning that you have a schedule, that you have a curriculum, and that you have to follow some steps towards you actually passing a grade.
	You get tested and you see all of that.
	The memorization and all of that, we are running away from all of that.
	There's still some memorization, of course, like multiplication tables and stuff like that.
	But a significant change in education...
	As Dr.
	Gray proposes, would be great.
	But you see, my issue here is, okay, as an administrator and having a business where we run different schools in the typical way, coming up with a new idea in a society that is The culture here in Latin America hasn't changed that much,
	and we are not as open as maybe Canada and the U.S. So changing something like this, parents would run away, I think, from the idea of, oh, my kid is not going to be good enough at the end,
	and he's not going to get into a good college, and he might not get the best job, and And I think that in some extent, in the US, people that are basically working towards the curriculum of their children from the get-go, from age two, by having them in the best schools and piano lessons and everything, they're thinking in the same way.
	Sure.
	My dilemma is I want to start a new model over here in the region.
	I would love to do that.
	I think that technology would be a great medium to use in order to help me somehow with a hybrid teaching experience, learning experience by using technology.
	My dilemma is how do we actually sell the idea to the parents and to the students that this is a good route to take and that you will not be in a bad position at the end where you will not have the ability to compete in a bad position.
	Because, you see, you have a daughter, I believe, who's about four, right?
	Yes.
	I have a son who's four and another son who's two.
	I think that when they graduate, they will not be competing locally as I used to or as my parents used to.
	They will be competing globally.
	People in Asia...
	Are not taking any of this lightly.
	I mean, they are going to school on Saturdays and they're putting many more hours on it and they are incredibly focused in comparison with us over here and results from education.
	I wouldn't worry too much about competition from overseas in the long run.
	Because, I mean, I remember growing up with, oh, Japan was going to kick America's butt and, you know, they were just going to sell everything and we were going to sell nothing or Canada was going to sell nothing because they worked so hard and they did kinesthetics on the job and all that kind of stuff.
	And, of course, all that happened was they had some productivity gains as a result of some rational...
	Good free market, worker-driven initiatives.
	So what happened was the government said, oh, great, good.
	GDP is up, so we can use that as collateral to borrow, and now Japan is over 200% GDP to debt ratio for the government, and they've been in a recession slash depression for about 20 years with no sign of it ending.
	So if you say, oh, my goodness, that's a really great competitor over there – You just know that the government's going to tie an anvil to the back of that competitor and grind them into the dust.
	Like, oh my god, that guy runs the fastest.
	Well, he gets the biggest anvil and his legs are going to break.
	I don't want to say that don't prepare your kids for competition.
	It will come from somewhere.
	But really efficient competition flares up.
	It's like a solar flare.
	It flares up and the government sits on it and puts it out by just using it as collateral to borrow more.
	Yeah.
	I just wanted to point that out.
	Let me give you a response.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, I would differ a little bit from you there because I see competition in the future very...
	In a virtual environment, I mean, look at us.
	I'm calling you from Guatemala to a show that's virtually virtual.
	I mean, it's virtual.
	You have 50 million downloads on podcasts.
	Everything's moving towards this realm.
	And I believe that most of the qualities that people employing new students or new...
	Young people coming out of college or school will be looking for that ability and you see if it's web design or if it's anything that you can design by just sitting behind a computer and anywhere in the world and having a chance to be a part of a team of design, for example...
	You can be sitting down in China and doing it from there and having no problem.
	I think the comparison with Japan is fair, even though Toyota is the largest car company in the world, I believe, right now.
	Regardless of the errors that the state of Japan made with regards to their economy and their monetary policies.
	But you see, the idea is how then can we sell the idea to parents who are If we want to take it easier on children, because stress, I believe,
	is not a good thing for them, for children, how do we sell the idea that they are Regardless of what Asia is doing, regardless of what the other kid, the neighbor kid,
	which is in normal education here in Guatemala is doing, or typical education, you will have a child that is both capable of doing whatever he knows, what he likes to do, and actually being able to choose what he likes to do from the get-go.
	Because the emotional intelligence is what I'm trying to reach through our education and improve.
	And I was just listening to your last person in the show, and the question popped up in my head.
	How can I improve the self-esteem and the emotional intelligence in our students through some methodology program or whatever?
	In order for them to not make mistakes or to reduce the mistakes that are lifelong mistakes.
	Right.
	Well, let me give you a brief pitch that I would – I was sort of mulling over the question while you were talking.
	Well, still expertly listening.
	But let me give you a brief pitch that I would make to parents, which is to say that if the world doesn't change that much, then you can prepare your children for the life that you're leading.
	Thank you.
	So in a stagnant society, China didn't change much for thousands of years.
	And so the parents could say, okay, well, I'm going to prepare my children for success in the Chinese culture by reproducing what worked for me.
	Because nothing has changed that much, right?
	I mean, if you're still farming the same piece of land you have for a thousand years, then your skills as a farmer, you can reproduce in your children and it's going to work, right?
	And so in a time when culture doesn't change that much, economy doesn't change that much, society doesn't change that much, then you can pretty much do the same thing that you did and your children will have a fairly decent chance, a good chance of success because of course a parent's job to some degree is to groom the child for success Yeah,
	I agree.
	Yeah, I agree.
	Because the world is changing.
	And so what I would suggest to parents is like, okay, so let's say your child is four or five.
	You have the great challenge and the great possibility of trying to figure out what is going to work best for your child in about 20 years, right?
	When they finish college or whatever it is they're going to do.
	They're sort of in their early to mid-20s, and they're going out in the world to make a success of themselves.
	And there are a few things which we can guarantee with virtual certainty.
	The first thing is that if they are culturally bound, in other words, if they believe that their culture is the truth and they believe or have never really had much exposure to other cultural beliefs, then they will be at a severe disadvantage.
	Thank you.
	Because one thing we can be sure of is that interaction with other cultures is going to increase.
	The economy is becoming more global.
	And so you cannot teach your children the mere supremacy of your own culture and deny them access to the truths and values of other cultures, right?
	Right.
	So I would say that...
	And now, how do you teach people to navigate...
	Well, you have to teach them reason, right?
	You have to teach them how to think.
	Because the people who meet across different cultures meet on the common ground of reason and evidence.
	That's why scientists can talk from a wide variety of cultures and religious leaders really can't, right?
	Because science has reason and evidence and that's how they overlap and overcome.
	cultural biases and so on.
	So I would say teach them reason, teach them how to think, teach them the value of evidence, teach them scientific thinking and so on.
	That is going to give them the greatest chance to interact with other cultures, which is going to give them the greatest chance for success if, as we have no reason to disbelieve, current trends about globalization are going to continue.
	So that'd be the first thing.
	And coincidentally, that helps spread philosophy too, because in the absence of culture, you need philosophy, you know, because religion is subsumed under culture.
	So I would argue, you know, we're going to teach your kids how to think because, I mean, nobody knows exactly how the world's going to look in 20 years.
	Nobody knows how it's going to look tomorrow.
	Otherwise, we'd all be billionaires, right?
	But what we do know is that your children are much more likely to interact with people from other cultures.
	Let's say that they have to interact with people from Japan.
	Well, Japan is 80% atheist.
	So are they going to need to know how to...
	I mean, if you only raise them in religion and they have to then interact with the Japanese or the Chinese or the Norwegian who are majority atheist, how are they going to do that?
	Well, because you've taught them how to think.
	You taught them about your own culture, of course, but not as an absolute.
	But they're going to need to know how to reason with other people, and that means that they're going to have to know how to think and use evidence-based research.
	So that would be the first thing.
	And the second thing that I would say is that social skills, I think, are the two major components of success in this world.
	Now, how are you going to teach your kids social skills?
	Well, if the only people they're going to socialize with are the people in the small town they grew up in, then you almost don't need to teach them social skills because they're just going to absorb them from being around people.
	People like themselves.
	But learning how to negotiate with people who come from a very different background, it's really important in terms of future success.
	So we're going to work with teaching them social skills outside of just the culture that they grew up in because that's going to give them the greatest chance for success in 20 years and so on.
	So if parents are looking – and this is habitual for parents.
	There's nothing wrong with it.
	It's just natural.
	It's the easiest thing to do when you're a parent is to reproduce the world that you grew up in, right?
	You already know it.
	You already gone through that experience.
	You were taught by it as a kid.
	But I would sort of argue if the parents are really, as you say, these are the parents who are the most committed to their children's future success, then saying to reproduce that which came before is not going to give your children the greatest chance for success in a multicultural, reason-based and evidence-based future economy.
	So, I mean, that would be sort of my example about how best to make a sales pitch for children.
	Offering something different than what the parents are used to.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, it does.
	You see, you have about how many people that have subscribed to your podcast.
	Could you tell me that number?
	Oh, I don't know.
	I mean, honestly, it's really because a whole bunch of people are getting stuff from torrents or mirror sites or whatever.
	I mean, on YouTube, there are 70,000 subscribers, but I don't know how many people...
	Okay, I make this question because I see myself, as you were mentioning with the other guy before me, The Matrix.
	You see, how many of us in the world have actually decided to go for the truth and to take the, what was it, the red pill?
	Yeah.
	And to actually seek truth and how many, even though I think I am right, I'm sure that people are not even bothering with asking themselves many questions with regards to why I do this or why I do that.
	People just do it because it's cultural and because their parents did it and because that's how they know.
	That's where status quo in their life seems okay.
	They don't need to move the water and make it choppy.
	Well, sorry, but they don't do that with technology, right?
	I mean, they didn't say, well, there were no computers when I was a kid, so I'm not going to get one.
	So people are very happy to embrace change when they see the advantage.
	It's just that most people don't really see the advantage of changing how they parent.
	Anyway, I just want to mention that.
	No, that's a great point.
	That's a great point.
	Now, with regards to how – you see, I would come and pitch the idea to parents over here and especially to those parents who we know that some of their children do not adapt well to the typical education in a school.
	With a schedule and all sorts of stuff.
	And we know that those kids are apt for other types of education.
	we would pitch the idea to them.
	Now, that doesn't change the fact that they are the adults and they are the ones that are going to choose for the kid and that they might not agree with us.
	And I see that as a hurdle.
	I don't see that as an impossible way of pitching and making this project work.
	But that was the dilemma that I wanted to point out to you, that the ideas that Dr.
	Gray proposes are great, even though I think they are a little bit too open and too relaxed for my experience.
	Yeah, you run into the prejudice, right?
	This is the childism that I... I still get lots of emails where people write to me and say, how are you going to educate your daughter?
	Which is sort of like...
	People would never write to me and say, what hobbies are you going to choose for your wife?
	Because it's like, well, I don't get to impose hobbies on my wife.
	I mean, she can choose for herself.
	She's a very intelligent, independent, lovely woman.
	And I mean, but people will quite comfortably write to me and say, how are you going to choose?
	Like, how are you going to educate Isabella?
	How is Isabella going to be educated?
	To which my answer is, well, how am I supposed to know that?
	I mean, what is Isabella going to like?
	I mean, we'll expose her to a wide variety of educational methods, but it's her choice about how she gets educated.
	I can't impose my educational values on her anymore than I can impose, you know, How are you going to choose what your wife wears?
	How are you going to choose your wife's friends?
	It's like, well, that's not my choice.
	Dr.
	Gray proposes the idea that kids in a hunter-gatherer society or group, they learn how to deal with machetes and fire and stuff like that.
	Sometimes they get hurt, but they often don't die from those things.
	I mean, most of us are predisposed, possibly, to completely...
	Negating the idea of letting our children handle a machete because they might get cut and lose severely.
	My daughter's been handling scissors for years, and she's never hurt herself.
	When I was a kid, pen knives and all that kind of stuff, you don't...
	I mean, of course, we do hover over them a little bit much, and some of that's natural.
	We have fewer children, so we have more invested in each child now for the most part.
	So we have this perception of children's incompetence, like adults are competent and children are incompetent, and I find that this is not true at all, you know, after years of being a stay-at-home dad.
	My daughter is incredibly competent with regards to reality.
	Why?
	Because she lives reality every day, and her brain is constantly searching out the principles of reality.
	I mean, she is a budding scientist in every way imaginable, and when I pose to her some of the questions I get on the Sunday show, she gives really great answers.
	Really great responses.
	I mean, she should just do the show.
	I mean, you'd have some kiddie stories thrown in, but she should just do the show.
	She just gives about as good answers as I do, sometimes even better.
	So children are incredibly competent when it comes to reality.
	Now, children are not competent when it comes to adult illusions.
	So children are not competent relative to culture, because culture is an illusion.
	Children are not competent relative to adult prejudices.
	Children are not competent Relative to religion.
	Because these things are neither rational nor empirical.
	In fact, they're generally opposed to both principles.
	And so, people have this perception that children are incompetent and adults are incompetent.
	But that's because children are not very competent with lies.
	Now, adults are very competent with lies because they've had them inflicted on them their whole life.
	They're very facile with lies, culture, religion, and superstition, and patriotism, and all the lies that so infest and bewilder our minds.
	And so the degree to which adults think children are incompetent is directly proportional, exactly proportional, I would argue, to the degree to which adults believe things that are not true, that are not rational, that are not empirical.
	Because children are incompetent relative to lies, and the more lies adults believe, the more incompetent and frustrating children appear to be.
	And the degree of childism is directly related to the degree of adult delusions.
	Because children don't do delusions very well.
	They have to have delusions forcibly, violently, aggressively, manipulatively inflicted upon them.
	And they resist them.
	And this is why, in religions, children are generally considered to be wrong at birth in a lot of religions.
	Because they don't believe the religious nonsense.
	There's no evidence for it.
	It's all anti-rational, anti-empirical.
	And children are both rational and empirical.
	So, if you look at the degree of prejudice against children, you're directly measuring not the degree to which children are incompetent, but the degree to which adults are addicted to lies that children don't believe.
	That's how we know how many delusions the adults have is their view of children.
	And the lower their view of children, the more incompetent they believe children to be, the more lies are infesting the adults' minds that children are inconveniently resisting.
	So I just wanted to sort of point that out.
	And let me tell you, I completely agree with you.
	And with regards to the problem lies on the parents, not on the children.
	Oh, yeah.
	You've got to sell change to parents, right?
	Right.
	And that is something that I wanted to add with regards to Dr.
	Gray's comments that maybe the problem does not lie only in the administration of the schools.
	Maybe the administration of the schools, maybe the teachers of the schools would like to see changes with regards to, you know, a revolution in education where increased effectiveness in the educational process could be something that we could see in the future.
	The problem is probably lying in Because the parents will never let you,
	or it's going to be extremely hard, especially in cultures such as mine, to actually oppose the idea and for them to actually accept it and to have faith, if you might I think the problem does not lie.
	Meaning, changing the structure of education and improving the structure of education does not rely solely or particularly...
	So heavily on administration or the school or anything, if we're talking about private education.
	That is, it lies actually in the culture and in the parents that are so accustomed and so involved in the typical...
	Sorry, it looks like we lost him.
	Okay, yeah, so let me finish up because I think I was getting where he's coming from.
	So basically the question is, who are the primary agents of social change?
	And, I mean, that's a big topic and a big question.
	I'm going to answer it very briefly here, maybe do another podcast on it.
	Let me finish up here.
	So the primary agents of social change are the people who come up with better arguments, more consistent and rational arguments, the people who say things that are basically true.
	You know, countries don't exist.
	Adult relationships are voluntary.
	Hitting children is a violation of the non-aggression principle.
	They're basic truths, which, you know, are really hard to argue against if you're not propagandized.
	So, the arguments have to be out there for social change to even be possible.
	Somebody has to invent the car for the majority of people to drive it.
	I mean, the majority of people are going to invent their own car.
	So, someone has to go ahead and do that.
	And so, the philosophers and the people who are really going to work on communication skills and make good arguments, they're the primary agents of social change.
	From there, it goes directly to parents.
	Parents are the secondary agents of social change, so the degree to which parents are going to listen to reason and raise their children accordingly is the degree to which society is going to change.
	Speaking to institutions, particularly public school institutions, is completely useless, which is why I don't have public school teachers on this show, in particular, unless they just want to call up and talk about their experiences, but I don't...
	They're the result of coercion.
	And so they have no incentive to change any more than you would try and yell at some local Soviet bread store to get better bread and more regularly.
	I mean, they're just part of a system that is coercive, so you can't...
	I won't pretend to reason with people on the other side of a gun.
	I mean, I just won't do it.
	I'm not going to disrespect reason by ignoring the gun in the room.
	I generally will not reason with people who are on the other side of a gun.
	So that's why it's no point reasoning with public school and all that kind of stuff.
	And so, parents, yeah, now convincing parents to change, well, the way that we convince parents to change is we introduce voluntarism into the parent-child relationship.
	I mean, if you can never get fired, you're much less likely to improve.
	We all know that from the public sector.
	And if parents can never get fired, in other words, if adult children can never dissociate from parents who are unrepentant abusers, then parents can never get fired.
	And if parents can never get fired, then they're not going to improve.
	And the introduction of voluntarism into the adult-child-parent relationship is the essence of improving parenting.
	No point going to every individual parent and trying to get them to do a better job just with reason and evidence.
	I mean, that's like going to the post office and trying to get people to do better based on reason and evidence.
	Well, the problem is there's a system of involuntarism in the entire relationship between postal workers and the general public because postal workers have a legal forced monopoly, can't ever get fired and get paid no matter what.
	You can't change it.
	I mean, you just can't.
	And so the introduction of involuntarism into the adult-child-parent relationship is the way that we get parents to improve.
	You can't get fired now, but you might get fired later.
	So do a better job.
	Anyway, that's my particular approach.
	It's exactly the same as the economic approach that is taken with involuntary relationships under free market economics.
	It is entirely consistent with that approach that we make relationships voluntary and that is how they improve.
	Nobody imagines that you can get a better relationship That you can get better service from a government monopoly without introducing voluntarism, without making the people who pay for it pay for it voluntarily and without allowing for competition.
	So it's exactly the same principles that people talk about in the free market simply applied to the family.
	And the fact that some people go nuts when it's applied to the family means that they simply don't understand economics and they don't understand what change means.
	And they're clinging to their unjust privileges as parents in the same way that A lot of public school teachers would hate the privatization because they wouldn't get summers off anymore.
	It's just that same entitlement.
	How do you change things in the government?
	You privatize it.
	How do you change things in the family?
	You make them voluntary.
	That's the only way you can get quality.
	Anyway, I just wanted to point that out.
	That's what I promote.
	Whether you want to do that as a school or not, that's up to you.
	That's where change occurs in society.
	I'm sorry because we had some pretty uncertain questions.
	Interaction with the last caller, but if we could move on to the next caller, I think that'd be great.
	All right, next up is Beata.
	Great name.
	How are you doing, my friend?
	Hello, can you hear me?
	I sure can.
	How are you doing?
	I'm fine, thanks.
	I'm from Germany, actually.
	Well, hello.
	I wanted to say something about Buddhism.
	Go ahead.
	Because I heard your podcast, I think it was from 2011, and I feel a bit uneasy because I think you don't have such a good opinion about Buddhists.
	You said that they preach empathy and understanding, but they didn't really show it to you, and you feel that Buddhism is self-contradictory and shallow.
	So, I really kind of...
	I feel a bit sad because I think you are such an earnest seeker of truth and I really like what you said, what you told your daughter about belief and being the truth.
	And myself, I also think that getting the closest to truth as possible is only leading to happiness.
	Well, let me just correct because I think the last podcast I did on Buddhism was like in 2007 or 2008.
	So maybe you listened to it in 2011, but it's way old.
	I'm perfectly happy to be schooled and to correct any errors that I may have with regards to Buddhism.
	So if you want to step me through the belief system, I'm certainly happy to hear.
	I'm no expert.
	I mean, there's a bunch of stuff I read about it, a book or two and some articles.
	So I'm perfectly happy to have my understanding improved where it is deficient.
	And the first point I want to make is that in order to evaluate the teaching, you should really go to the proper sources and not just to rely upon answers from every Tom, Dick, and Harry.
	So the best source would be the original texts.
	And because they are quite difficult to understand for laypeople, there are some commentaries along with it.
	So a few Tom, Dick, and Harry's.
	Okay.
	The other possibility would be people who have already reached a considerable degree of mental development and wisdom, like the Dalai Lama or the Ajahn Brahm from Australia or Bhikkhu Bodhi, he's an American Buddhist monk.
	Sorry, the Dalai Lama would be the child that the priest chose as the next incarnation of the Buddha, is that right, when he's a couple of years old?
	No, that is actually, I'm a Theravada Buddhist, and they don't believe that thing.
	But there is some core teaching.
	Sorry, but that is the methodology for choosing the Dalai Lama, is that the priests go around, look at a whole bunch of kids and say, hey, the Buddha's in that guy, and let's make him the Dalai Lama, right?
	Yeah, that could be, but I'm not familiar with that tradition, that Buddhist tradition.
	Well, but you just told me to go talk to the Dalai Lama, right?
	Yeah, because what he says, the teachings he gives the Dalai Lama, they are Buddhist teachings, so you can ask him those questions which you put to the John on your podcast.
	Better to put it to the Dalai Lama than to put it to John.
	Okay, well, how about I put them to you?
	So, in the Buddhist teachings, how is truth differentiated from falsehood?
	Okay.
	For that, I want to say that I myself am also not as advanced as those people I mentioned.
	I just want to give some impulses for you to get some more...
	No, no, no.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	I apologize for interrupting, but I really strive to understand, and I really, really do want to understand, so I'm going to have to be annoying and interrupt.
	But it should not be super advanced.
	In a teaching, it should not be super advanced to know the difference between truth and falsehood.
	Like, that should be the beginning, right?
	It shouldn't be, well, you're a Buddhist for 10 years, and then you find out the difference between truth and falsehood.
	Because then it'd be like, well, how the hell did I know what was truth and falsehood for the last 10 years?
	How do I know what was valid or not?
	So it should be the beginning of a teaching to know the difference between truth and falsehood.
	Would you not agree?
	Yes, I agree.
	And everybody is searching for the truth, as well as you, just like you.
	Okay, and how do they know the difference?
	What is the methodology?
	Like, if I go to a scientist and say, what's the difference between truth and falsehood, then we've got answers.
	I certainly put forward answers very early on in the podcast series here, reason and evidence, blah, blah, blah.
	So there are, you know, medicine, how do we know an efficacious medicine or a good medicine from a bad medicine?
	There's double-blind experiments and reproducibility and obviously biological theories behind it.
	So in engineering, how do we know good engineering from bad engineering?
	Well, there's answers.
	So when it comes to Buddhism, how is truth differentiated from falsehood?
	It is an intuitive insight.
	Just as you said, the little children, how do they know what is the truth?
	It is very intuitive.
	Like, for example, you have a child and you tell him that the oven is hot not to touch it, right?
	So that is only an intellectual knowledge, but he won't understand.
	It will not keep him Okay, so empirical evidence is bound up to the truth.
	Okay, and that is the same principle for the Buddhists, to find the Buddhist truth.
	Sorry to interrupt, but I just want to make sure I understand two things, because one thing you said was that the truth is intuitive.
	But the second thing you said was that the truth is empirical.
	And I'm not sure those are the same things, at least in my way of thinking.
	So, is it intuitive or is it empirical?
	Because empirical means, you know, your senses and all that.
	Intuitive is your instinct.
	Okay.
	But if the oven is hot, that is the empiric, right?
	But your instincts tell you to remove the hand.
	That is the instinct, isn't it?
	To remove the hand in order to prevent any damage from the hand.
	So I think it works together.
	The empirical and the instinct work together in that case, don't they?
	Yeah.
	Now, another – I mean, my daughter, I've told her the stove is hot.
	She doesn't touch the stove because she trusts me, right?
	Because I don't tell her lies.
	And so the empirical evidence would be for her, you know, my father has never told me a lie.
	My father tells me this is hot and it's going to be painful.
	And therefore, the empirical evidence is then the consistency of my – The truth value of my conversations with her.
	She doesn't actually have to touch the stove.
	She just has to trust me, which means I have to be consistently honest with her.
	In the Buddhist case, it doesn't work like that.
	Only to intellectually understand the teaching is not enough.
	You have to really experience it yourself.
	The main problem is that with our normal sense perception, we cannot see the truth.
	We cannot see the absolute truth.
	Because we have a distorted perception.
	All right.
	And how is our perception distorted?
	Okay.
	Wait.
	Let's skip some items here on my list.
	The observation is distorted because our mind is always very productive with thinking and planning and remembering and things like that.
	So we don't have a pure observation perspective.
	And pure observation would mean what?
	Is that sort of the counting of things in themselves?
	Sorry, go ahead.
	That is what you're doing in meditation.
	You have to apply mindfulness to what sense object comes right now to you.
	Either it is some sight or sound, smell, taste or touch or a mind object, a thought.
	You have to be aware that right now I'm seeing the tree, right?
	That is what is mindfulness and staying in the present moment.
	Normally, we can't do that over a longer period of time.
	If you try to observe the flame of a candle for one minute without having any thought about it or being distracted by some other sense object, you will find out that it is not possible to do, unless you have had mental training.
	And now, help me to understand what the value is of staring at a candle for a minute.
	Okay.
	In meditation, the meditator finds out that the sense objects All of a sudden they are experienced differently than he usually experienced them.
	When you apply a really continuous mindfulness on the objects, if you are well trained you can do that over hours, then all of a sudden the perception changes, the seemingly continuity of perception dissolves and each object is arising and ceasing in an instant and that happens in an incredible speed from moment to moment.
	And this holds true not only for the sense objects, but also for the mind objects, like volition, feelings, thoughts, intentions, and even the consciousness itself.
	And there is virtually nothing the mind can hold onto anymore, and that is an extremely unpleasant experience for the meditator.
	I'm sorry, I just wanted to understand.
	So if you stare at the candle for a certain amount of time, I missed that part.
	I didn't quite follow what happens.
	Things speed up?
	No.
	Ah, okay.
	To stare at the candle, it's only for you to check that you can't control your mind.
	You can't force your mind to stay for one minute on the candle flame, right?
	That is just for you to understand that our minds are so shaken, sort of.
	They're busy.
	But in the meditation, you don't stare at the candle.
	You close the eyes and you are mindful for the present moment, like your breath.
	But all objects that come, like thoughts, feelings, everything that comes at the present moment, you are mindful of it, right?
	You stay always in the present moment.
	You sort of flow with it.
	Okay, and that way you will find out that all the sense objects are not as continuous as you have perceived them before, like a sound.
	It comes all of a sudden like a vibration.
	And if you...
	That goes on, goes on, and then you find at every moment of consciousness, you find one sense object arising and ceasing at the same moment.
	Okay, I mean, science can tell you that sound is a vibration to begin with, right?
	So I'm not sure that you've gained something by understanding that which science has already described.
	It might be, but to experience it, your mind will gain this intuitive insight of the impermanence, which you can not gain by intellectual thought about your death or something.
	You can intellectually think about it, but only in this experience and meditation it will change your inner...
	You will see that all the sense objects are not worth clinging to and only then you can let go of it.
	You know, your desire for all the sense objects ceases by that, because you see that you can't hang onto it.
	Every sense object comes and goes in a moment, and there is nothing to hold onto, even to your own, what you thought to be your personality.
	You see that's only a bunch of different functions of the mind, which you don't even have control over.
	You find also that it's not only impermanent and unsatisfactory, but also non-self.
	That means everything happens only due to the universal law of cause and effect.
	Like, for example, you move an arm to scratch yourself.
	You think that it was your free will to do that, but in meditation you find out that it's only cause to And it's due to a cause, like an itch.
	The itch is the cause, and that's why you raise your hand to scratch.
	So it is difficult to explain intellectually, but it's an intuitive insight that there is really no inner controller for our actions.
	It's actually all cause and effect, even our personality.
	There is no I or me or mine.
	That part, of course, this non-self part is very difficult to understand without having the experience of meditation itself.
	But I'm trying to somehow explain it.
	Right.
	And I think there's stuff that I would accept in what you're saying, which just means that I accept and be true.
	But it seems to me there's a non-distinction between the external world or the internal world.
	So with regards to the internal world, Yes, the mind is a chatterbox.
	I mean, I've done meditation, I've done yoga, I've done aromatherapy, and so I really appreciate the calming of the mind centering.
	And we can, of course, get stuffed with the hyperkinetic bats of infinite reflection that is distracting.
	And I think a lot of people waste their lives staring at their toes and worrying about things.
	So I think that there is some real value in that internalization and self-knowledge.
	There is.
	I think there is real value.
	Certainly, that's been my experience.
	The personality is one of these things that when you observe it, you change it.
	This is the insight of some of the more modern scientific methodologies, which is that you cannot observe the experiment without changing it.
	And if you are blind to yourself, you act in a certain way.
	But when you began to examine the course of your thoughts and the origins of your emotions, then you were automatically changing your personality through the examination of your personality.
	And in that, personality is non-contiguous.
	It's non-permanent.
	And also, personality is – we think of it as a unity.
	I have a personality, you know, like I have a kidney or two, I guess.
	But the reality in my experience has been, and I've talked about this quite a bit on the show, what I call the Miko system.
	My experience or understanding of the personality is that it is a group of personalities and perspectives and instincts and thoughts and habits and prejudices and philosophies and so on that are all interacting with and striving for truth and some win and some lose and over the course of your life, Hopefully prejudice falls away and the truth wins, but there's a battle in that.
	Prejudice wants to stay alive in the same way that any organism wants to stay alive, and there's a battle, and sometimes that battle is won through force of arms, and sometimes that battle is won through the laying down of arms.
	I would agree with you that there's great value in the internal view of personality, but I don't think that that's No matter what my self-knowledge, the tree in my backyard grows the same way.
	Unless my self-knowledge is that I really want to chop down the tree in the backyard.
	But if I sit home meditating, the world goes on as it goes.
	And the permanence that is in the outside world, I think, is distinct from the flux and impermanence that is in the inside world.
	If that makes any sense.
	Also, the outside world is impermanent, and we don't realize it really, and that's why we suffer also.
	For example, we think that we know that we are impermanent, that we have to die sometime, but we don't really expect it to happen the next moment.
	Well, I mean, I was recently diagnosed with cancer, so I wouldn't say that that's too far off from my thinking.
	But, of course, I think the very first video I did was called Live Like You're Dying.
	So I've certainly been mindful of death.
	I've read the denial of death in my teens, and I've tried to live my life not like I'm about to die, because then you don't go to the dentist, but that death is always a possibility, and certainly an inevitability.
	But yes, certainly the denial of death is one of the reasons why people can live like they've got all the time in the world to waste.
	And this diagnosis like you had, it will also change people's lives often, no?
	Because then they feel the urgency to do something sensible with their lives.
	Actually, interestingly enough, I've had an enormous reduction in urgency.
	Strangely enough.
	I mean, I've had this massive calming of my thoughts.
	Really?
	A massive reduction in my cares and concerns.
	I think that's because if I get a brain clot during this conversation and die, I think I have done the greatest possible good that I can do for the world in the work that I've done over the course of my life and for the world as a whole through this conversation.
	Just person to person, I've had actually a huge reduction in inner chatter since the diagnosis because Compared to the challenge of cancer, other concerns and considerations seem pretty insignificant.
	And, of course, it's my hope and goal that this will continue.
	It will either not continue because I'm dead or hopefully it won't continue because I'm alive and maintain this kind of perspective.
	I think it's possible if I remain mindful of that.
	But I think that inner focus that the Buddhists have, I think, is...
	your thoughts, but not entirely passively, like with the goal of calming the endless chatterbox.
	Because we have a fight or flight mechanism that generally is continually scanning our environment, which was fine when we lived in the jungle and there was a danger behind every tree.
	But I think that we have capacities for other things now that are much more relaxed and peaceful possibilities.
	But we still have, I think, the great challenge of the fight or flight mechanism that was developed to keep us alive that isn't quite as necessary as it used to be.
	The dangers in our life tend not to be something that we can fight or flee or freeze in the face of.
	And so I certainly agree with that.
	I think that's a great possibility that modern living to some degree has provided us, which is the ability to not fret.
	But I think I agree with you that it takes inner reflection and a commitment to slow down the racing brain.
	And then I wanted to say something about your argument that you said that suffering can't be caused by craving and attachment.
	That is the second noble truth, right?
	And you mentioned that toothache you have.
	You said the suffering doesn't come from my attachment.
	It comes from the nerve ends, right?
	But if you think of a mind state, like you are very much absorbed in an interesting book or you are so enthusiastic in love or you won in the lottery or something, then some pain might not be causing any suffering.
	Comfortable or something, but not really causing suffering.
	In another situation, it would have caused you considerable suffering, right?
	And in meditation, you can experience that to a much higher degree.
	Even extreme pain can be experienced with equanimity or even with joy, because pain is a very good object to gain insights.
	And so that shows the meditator that only the state of mind, how you relate to the object, induces, if it is aversion, then it induces suffering.
	But if equanimity is there or clear comprehension, then there is no suffering.
	So that is actually, the meditator finds the truth of the second noble truth.
	Yeah, I mean, I certainly recognize that there are pain management techniques That can help diminish pain.
	You can do things to deal with the pain, but the source of the pain still remains the nerve endings, right?
	Because if you don't have the toothache, you don't have the pain to manage, right?
	It doesn't mean that that completely dictates how you respond to the pain, but the source of that which you have to manage.
	If I'm wrestling an alligator, then I can beat the alligator, right?
	But the reason I'm wrestling is because of the alligator.
	I mean, I'm still wrestling with the nervous pain response, and I can do things to manage it, but what I'm managing is still body-based and not mental-based.
	Yeah, that is true.
	But the Buddha referred, of course, to the mental suffering.
	When he talked about the Second Noble Truth, that was the mental suffering, because I think that is also much higher than the physical suffering most of the time.
	Yeah, but I mean, for the people who's, you know, I was just talking to a guy from Chile, and he was talking about life under the Pinochet regime where, you know, the government would disappear people, right?
	So, I mean, if your husband or your wife just gets snatched black bag by the government and locked away or killed, there's considerable mental anguish to do with that, but that's because of somebody doing an evil action in your environment.
	And yes, there's things that you can do to manage that pain, but the source of the pain is, and then there's mental suffering, it's not a physical pain.
	But the source of that is still external to you, and it's the result of evil actions done by others, right?
	But Marshall Rosenberg, he was doing a lot of this mediating with war tribes in Africa.
	So he says there are people who, even if members of their families have been killed, they are not having any anger, maybe not due to Buddhism, but due to some, I don't know, karma.
	So, not necessarily you have to suffer so much even from losses of members of the family.
	It's your way of thinking, you know, your way how you relate to it.
	That's the most important thing, not what really happens.
	Wait, so you're saying that family members get killed and they experience no suffering or just no anger?
	I mean, there's more suffering, of course, than anger.
	I think that you can...
	The suffering comes from the thinking.
	When you think about the loss you have, of course, normal people without mental training, they suffer, of course.
	But if you have enough mental training, you don't necessarily have to suffer over loss.
	So a family member gets murdered and the goal or the ideal in the Buddhist system is to not experience any negative emotions from that, or distressing emotions?
	Well, that is a very high goal.
	I think only the enlightened people can reach that.
	No, but that would be the goal, right?
	That would be the idea.
	Yes, because there is actually nothing to suffer about, because we all have to separate sometimes to see the impermanence, the reality...
	We will separate.
	Sooner or later, we have to separate.
	And we will meet again, because we also believe in the reincarnation, so we are not happy, but we will meet again.
	So there's no reason to stop it.
	So, as far as the differentiation between truth and falsehood, there's no, as far as I understand it, there's no scientific or empirical evidence for reincarnation, right?
	For the essence of the personality to survive the body's demise.
	Yeah, there is no evidence.
	I don't think, unless you, of course, in meditation, it seems that you can see your previous rebirths.
	That is for that person, I think that is a kind of an empirical evidence.
	But of course, I myself, if I don't have that experience in meditation, I can't prove it.
	Well, and it's subjective experience.
	It's not objective proof, right?
	I mean, every night I dream the most amazing, wonderful, and occasionally terrifying things.
	Like the other night I dreamt I was in Justin Bieber's band.
	Don't ask me why.
	I haven't got around to figuring that one out yet.
	But that is not evidence that I was in Justin Bieber's band.
	That is simply evidence that I had a subjective experience that was incredibly vivid to me.
	This is what I was asking about, the differentiation between truth and falsehood.
	It is well known, of course, that if you If you remove external stimuli from the mind, in general, the mind will manufacture its own stimuli.
	So if you put people in isolation tanks in lukewarm water, they get hallucinations.
	You know, relatively quickly, the mind manufactures its own stimulation in the absence of external stimulation.
	Meditation is one of these states which lends you to be prone to hallucinations.
	And, of course, you experience them as subjectively very vivid.
	But they don't tell you anything about the external world.
	So the fact that people who believe in reincarnation who then remove external stimuli from their mind may have visions or beliefs about reincarnation simply proves that the mind manufactures its own stimuli generally according to particular cultural prejudices or beliefs.
	They tend to flow.
	So religious people have religious visions and so on.
	But that's not the same as an objective truth.
	At least that would be my argument.
	But you don't have proof that it's only a hallucination either.
	From the outside, we can't prove if it is a true recall of the past or if it's a hallucination.
	But this is the wonderful laziness of the empirical though, which is that you don't actually have to disprove that it's a hallucination.
	The person who has a hallucination has to prove that it's true.
	I don't have to lift a finger.
	If somebody says reincarnation is true because I had this vision that I lived in ancient Egypt, I don't actually have to lift a finger for that to remain a false statement.
	The person who is making the claim – and the more outlandish the claim, the more extreme the requirements of proof.
	Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
	And I would be very concerned about a belief system that had as its core the ideal that we should not suffer because we're all going to come back in another life while having no empirical or scientific proof of that whatsoever.
	That is, to me, having a high standard of emotional detachment, which, if it's not true, is...
	It's invalid, right?
	Like if we don't come back, then it would make more sense to grieve the people who we will never get to talk to again in our life.
	And so if people are saying that the emotional state should follow the belief system when the belief system is not only irrational but has never been proven, I think that's giving people a very dangerous relationship with their own emotions.
	To me, that's as bad as saying where you see all Jews are money-grubbing people who want to kill Christians.
	And then somebody's saying, well, then I have a problem with Jews.
	It's like, well, but if that's not true, then the emotional response is not true.
	And if it's not true that we all get to meet again and come back, then the emotional response of detachment is invalid and false.
	And therefore, it becomes dangerous.
	Like, false beliefs lead to false emotions, and the false emotions can be extremely dangerous.
	And if the false emotion is a detachment from emotion, then you're teaching people...
	Not to have their sort of rich and valid emotional experiences based upon the delusion that they're going to meet again.
	Which is, you know, I mean, you can go to Christian families and say, well, why are you upset about your son dying?
	Because now he's in heaven and you're going to meet him again.
	But I don't think that would be technically fair.
	But even that would be in accordance with their belief system.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	But the Buddhists, they don't teach people all of that.
	What I told you are experiences you get in meditation.
	Nobody teaches you or tells you it is like this, this, this, this.
	Not to have any emotions or so.
	It's not like that, that you are indoctrinated like maybe in other religions.
	It's only, I just want to tell you what you yourself experience in meditation.
	And unless you do the meditation yourself, that Mipassana meditation, that special insight meditation, you can't really evaluate its truth.
	You know, that's the problem.
	Everybody has to find out himself if it's true or not.
	You can't prove it to anybody else unless you practice it yourself.
	That's the problem.
	Right, and that to me seems like a dodge.
	That's like saying, well, this is what we believe.
	We believe in reincarnation.
	Well, where's the proof?
	Well, there's no proof.
	You just have to believe it or not.
	It's like, okay, well, then you're talking about a subjective experience.
	Then you're not talking about an objective truth.
	When you say reincarnation, you're talking about an objective truth, right?
	Because reincarnation cannot be a subjective experience.
	Because if subjectivity dies at death, then there is no reincarnation, and therefore subjective experience of reincarnation can't be true.
	If you're saying reincarnation, you're saying an objective metaphysical truth.
	And if then you say, when challenged on the proof for that, you say, well, you either believe it or you don't.
	It's a subjective belief.
	Well, then it can't be both.
	This is exactly the same argument for religion.
	People say, well, I believe in God.
	Well, no.
	Either God exists, and you then accept passively the objective existence of God, or you have a belief in your head about a deity, which then doesn't translate to anything real that's outside.
	But the deity claim is a claim for an external reality outside your mind, right?
	And so if reincarnation is a truth claim about the universe, about reality, about life, then you can't then use the dodge of saying, well, it's a subjective experience that you get to when you meditate, because those two things are not compatible.
	If you're making a truth claim, If you're making a claim about experience, then it's independent of external reality.
	And that's, I think, one of the issues that I have with Buddhism and other forms of belief.
	In order to practice that form of meditation, actually, when I started that, I didn't have any opinion about reincarnation because I never heard that before.
	I didn't believe it also.
	So I just left that aside because it's also not that important.
	If you say that one of the reasons you shouldn't grieve people's deaths is because you're going to meet again, it's not unimportant.
	I mean, that's pretty significant, right?
	That is something that comes automatically.
	It's not the aim of the Buddhist meditation not to grieve over the relatives, you know?
	You want to find out about truth.
	That is the reason why you meditate in Buddhism.
	You want to overcome that distorted perception and then all the insights come automatically.
	Well, okay, but the insights are different from truths, right?
	So I might have an insight about myself, and of course I had a lot of them and continue to have a lot of them.
	And these are insights about myself, and they're going to change my behavior in the world.
	I mean, insights without change is, you know, sort of like building a bridge at the bottom of the ocean.
	It's a lot of work.
	It doesn't add up to much.
	But insights about myself are distinct from objective truths about the world, right?
	And it doesn't mean that it's – like if I say I'm insecure about – My ability to break dance, which I probably would be, then I'm saying a truth about myself, but I'm not saying an objective truth that's out there in the world, other than the reality that my brain is out there in the world.
	And so when I'm making an objective truth statement, then I'm making a truth statement that's independent of subjective experience.
	Like if I say there's a tree in my backyard, that's independent of my meditation.
	And so my concern is if the Buddhism is around self-knowledge and know yourself and look inward and so on, fantastic.
	I think that's great.
	That, to me, is a subset of the Socratic dictum, know thyself.
	Oh, the unexamined life is not worth living, which unfortunately is not true.
	Most people find it very worth living to avoid examining themselves.
	But if I'm making truth statements about the world, about immortality, about reincarnation, about whatever, then that's distinct from my looking inwards.
	And that's, I think, where the barrier lies, where it's no longer a philosophy of self-knowledge but becomes a philosophy of the world.
	Then it moves into the realm where you do have to have objective empirical evidence, rational arguments, and so on.
	But the problem is that with our untrained minds, we cannot perceive the truth.
	You know, that is the problem.
	There is this hurdle.
	We are all deluded by our minds that are always distracted.
	And mostly they are distracted by these three roots, the greed, hatred and delusion.
	And we can overcome that only by this mental training.
	Otherwise, there is no way to… But this is… Sorry to interrupt, but that's just out-and-out manipulation.
	And that's kind of insulting to people, which is to say, look, if you don't believe what I believe, then you're just deluded.
	And once you get rid of your delusions, you'll believe what I believe, even though I have no proof for it.
	I mean, that's just manipulative.
	And it is an appeal to people's insecurity.
	I don't care for people to say to me, well, reincarnation is true, and if you don't believe it, you're just deluded.
	I mean, that's just a tautology.
	That's just a circular argument.
	It doesn't add anything to any truth value.
	Like, if you question what I believe, and if you ask me for evidence, that's because you're deluded and your thinking is mistaken.
	It's like, okay, well, correct my mistake.
	But the way that you correct my mistake is not to demand that I believe what you believe.
	That's just insulting, and that's kind of narcissistic, right?
	To say, well, if you believe what I believe, you'd be correct.
	Well, anyone can say that about anything.
	Well, the reason that you are not a Nazi is because you're deluded.
	And as soon as you accept Nazism, you will have the truth.
	It's like, no, no, no, no, no.
	If you want me to accept the belief system, particularly one that's making empirical claims, show me the evidence.
	Don't just insult – I don't mean you personally, but don't just – the belief system can't just insult me and say, well, the reason I don't believe its supposed truth is because I'm deluded.
	It's like, no, no, no, no.
	You can't just insult me and then say, well, as soon as I spend 10 years staring at my navel, I'll believe what you believe.
	No, no, give me some evidence.
	Give me some proof.
	That's not what scientists don't say.
	Scientists don't say, well, you'll accept Newton's gravity once you meditate on Newton's gravity for 10 years, but we can't prove any of it to you.
	It's like, no, no, no, no.
	They take the burden of proof and work with it.
	I see your point, but I don't see any other way of proving it, you know?
	That's the problem.
	Well, you're right.
	You're absolutely right about that, because you can't prove reincarnation.
	I'd love it.
	If reincarnation were true, I think that'd be fantastic.
	Maybe you try on these gentlemen, you know?
	I'm sorry?
	On these gentlemen which I mentioned to you, maybe they can give you a better answer than me.
	No, no, I don't want an answer.
	I want proof.
	People are going to claim about the perpetuity of human personality.
	I need me some proof, of course, right?
	Because otherwise, how am I going to differentiate them from any other con men or women who want to just get me to believe what they believe rather than prove it to me?
	I don't want people to appeal to my insecurity.
	I don't want people to insult me.
	I don't want people to tell me that I'm deluded unless I believe what they believe.
	That, to me, is not philosophy.
	That is just a form of emotional abuse and manipulation.
	What I want is for people to say, Look, I understand that you're skeptical because that's the work that I do.
	Look, I'm talking about a society with no government.
	I'm talking about adult relationships being voluntary.
	I'm talking about people stopping 95% of the kind of parenting that they're doing and doing the exact reverse.
	I get that the burden of proof is upon me.
	I don't say to people, listen, just keep listening to my podcast until you agree with me.
	Put them on auto loop and sit there and lower all your intellectual defenses and listen to me while you're sleeping and paint my slogans on your walls until you believe what it is that I believe, right?
	And I don't – that's not fair.
	The burden of proof remains upon me to establish the validity of what it is that I'm talking about, right?
	And that's why I work by the scientific, rational, empirical evidence.
	So I make the moral arguments against banking, right?
	I make the moral arguments which I've made repeatedly about the immorality of initiating force against children, and I also provide the empirical evidence of the destructive effects of spanking upon children.
	So that's the reason and the evidence that I keep talking about.
	But even though it's completely obvious to me, the burden of poof remains upon me to make the case that is against people's general cultural prejudices.
	But to simply say, you just need to meditate on spanking children until you agree with me, is not to make an argument.
	And to say that anybody who disagrees with me about anything is deluded and needs to spend 10 years meditating on it until they agree with me, It's not to make an argument, but to kind of insult people and say that they're deluded because they disagree.
	And I think that's not the case.
	People can disagree with me and be very rational.
	And they can even have good evidence behind them.
	And then we need to have – who has the better reason and evidence behind them is the case that we make.
	And that's, to me, something as obvious as spanking.
	If I was going to try to make the case of reincarnation, which is a truly radical departure from the empiricism and science and rationality of our everyday existence – I mean, what an extraordinary amount of proof that I would need to bring to bear on that.
	And just going around insulting people by saying that they're deluded and irrational, not for any reason that I can point out, but just because they don't agree with me fundamentally is argument by intimidation.
	It's not even an argument.
	Okay, sorry.
	I didn't want to insult you.
	No, but you do understand that you did call me deluded for disagreeing, right?
	Without providing any empirical evidence.
	No, I understand that.
	I understand that, but there's people who are less deluded who agree with the Buddhists, right?
	And it is insulting.
	It's not insulting to call me deluded if I am, in fact, deluded.
	It's just a statement of truth, right?
	But if you're going to call me deluded and then not provide any evidence or reasons as to why, then it's just an insult, right?
	Hmm.
	And I'm honestly not saying that you, my German friend, are personally insulting me.
	I'm just saying that that's the implications of this methodology, if I can call it a methodology, of approaching truth and changing people's minds.
	It's like saying, you know, you wouldn't be an atheist if you accepted Jesus, and therefore you should not be an atheist.
	It's like, no, no, that's not, you know, everybody who doesn't accept Jesus is deluded, and they need to go and pray for 10 years until they accept Jesus, and then they will know the truth.
	It's like, that's just kind of an insult, which is to say, the fact that I have some skepticism about the existence, let alone the divinity of Jesus, you don't solve it by just saying, well, that's deluded.
	Yeah, that is true.
	That is not a good argument.
	Right.
	And there may be great arguments for it.
	But it's just that that wouldn't be one of them, right?
	I can't hear you properly.
	Oh, sorry, I was saying that there may be great arguments for the existence and divinity of Jesus, but that just wouldn't be one of them, right?
	Which is, you're deluded if you don't believe.
	Yeah, yeah, of course not.
	And so, I'll leave you with the challenge, and I hope you will call back in, because I, you know, again, I really want to remain open-minded, which doesn't mean slutty-minded, but I want to remain open-minded, and if there are good arguments, I'm, you know, bring me the reason or the evidence, and I will be, you know, I always try to bow.
	I think, as yet, it remains unproven, but I'm certainly, you know, if you want to do the research and see if you can find some of the rational and evidentiary arguments for these perspectives, I'm certainly happy to hear them.
	Okay.
	Thank you so much for calling in.
	I always do want to invite in perspectives that differ from mine.
	There's certainly no monopoly of truth here.
	Hopefully, there's an excellence of methodology, but we're all fallible, which is why we need philosophy.
	I really do appreciate you calling in, and I hope that you will do some more research and call back.
	Thank you so much, and I hope that you're enjoying it.
	I hope you're enjoying life in Germany.
	I went when I was very young and I apparently could speak the language at one point rather fluently but that has somewhat tragically diminished over time through disuse.
	Thank you so much for calling in and I will certainly meditate upon what you've said.
	Thank you everyone so much.
	I believe we're out of time.
	What time is it?
	Oh dear God!
	Yes we are.
	Thank you everybody so much for calling in, for listening, for challenging, for conversing, for opening your hearts and minds.
	I hugely appreciate it.
	It would be A slightly different show with lots of gaps, with nobody talking.
	So I hugely appreciate people calling in.
	If you would like to help out, I would really, really appreciate it.
	My energy level is somewhat diminished.
	It's funny.
	The chemo is not too, too bad, but I definitely have to nap in the afternoon.
	My red blood cell count is low, which means my We're good to go.
	Forgive me, but doctor's orders are to rest when I'm tired.
	That's not something that comes enormously naturally to me, but I'm certainly doing my best to listen to what the good doctors have to say.
	Anyway, if you'd like to help out, and please, I hope that you won't withhold support for lack of productivity, but rather sympathize with...
	The challenges of this kind of ailment, you can go to fdrurl.com forward slash donate.
	I was trying to explain this to a friend of mine the other day.
	It's a funny little sensation being low on red.
	I mean, I've never had anything like this before.
	I've never really been sick before.
	I've never broken a bone, never spent a night in a hospital.
	I've just got a couple of stitches and bangs and scrapes here and there.
	But it's sort of like, if you've ever been in an elevator which is going down, you know that moment when it starts to go down, you just feel like a little light on your feet, a little dizzy, a little disoriented?
	It's sort of like that.
	It's like falling gently and sort of suddenly all the time.
	So it's an odd kind of sensation.
	And not, you know, wickedly unpleasant or anything like that, but definitely a different kind of experience.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, fdrurl.com forward slash donate if you'd like to help out with the show.
	I would appreciate it.
	My apologies again to the people who were hoping to see me speak.
	This summer, I'm going to try and do as much as I can remotely, but we'll have to wait and see how that goes.
	But I simply really can't afford the risk of travel, particularly to the U.S., because I'm not going to be able to get insurance for a pre-existing condition.
	And if I got sick in the U.S., that could be financially pretty catastrophic.
	So, I just ended, of course, the danger of being in a closed space like an airplane for quite some time with people who have a variety of various ailments.
	Not good for the immunocompromised.
	So, I apologize for that.
	But I hope to be rearing back in form next summer.
	So, thanks again to James.
	As always, for helming the man.
	And I really appreciate that, as always.
	I know that it is interfering with his Sunday school, so I really appreciate that.
	And have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful week, everyone.

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