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Aug. 11, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:21:12

2451 Freedomain Radio Call In Show August 11th, 2013

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Time	Text
	Good morning, everybody.
	Stefan Molyneux.
	It is the 11th of August, 2013.
	One day before the socialist healthcare system of Canada grants me superpowers with the beginnings of my radiation treatment.
	I can't wait.
	I'm hoping to gain the power of rational thought.
	Just imagine if we actually bring true reason to this show.
	Well, we can't imagine it.
	Ah, let's just go on with wildest guesses and prejudice.
	So, hope everyone's doing well.
	And thanks again, everybody, so much for tuning in, for listening, for supporting what is the most amazing job in the known universe.
	So thank you, everybody.
	Mike, I'm going to do about a monologue of two and a half hours, then we'll take half a caller.
	Is that all right?
	You're the host.
	You can do whatever you'd like to do, Steph.
	You know, folks, you may not know Mike, but whenever he puts the decision back on me, that is a short sign of massive disapproval.
	So, Mike, why don't we bring up the first caller?
	What do you think?
	All right, let's do exactly that.
	Jessica, you are up.
	Hello, Jessica.
	You're not bad.
	You're just drawn that way.
	How are you?
	Hi.
	Hi, Stephan.
	I was just calling in today because I have a hard time expressing my emotions, and I have a wedding coming up and I've been having these kind of daydreams almost where I'm not able to express my happiness and everything like when my fiance is going to be saying his vows.
	I have this dream like everybody else in the audience is crying and I'm not.
	You understand they're sort of like robo-bride, right?
	Yeah.
	Human emotion.
	I'm the first Vulcan to get married to a human.
	Well, first of all, I guess, congratulations on the wedding.
	Thank you.
	That's great.
	I understand the anxiety.
	So is it that you feel emotions inside, but you have trouble translating them to, like, expression, visibility on the outside?
	Or is it that you don't feel them on the inside so much?
	Both.
	Sometimes I really try to suppress it.
	No, no.
	It can't be both.
	Sorry.
	This is the logic part of the show.
	If you feel them on the inside but can't express them on the outside, that's one thing.
	If you don't even feel them on the inside, because if you feel them on the inside but you can't express them on the outside, then the goal would be to unblock your expression.
	But if you don't even feel them on the inside, but you want to make believe like you have them, then the goal would be to pretend to have human emotions.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yes.
	So, is it that you don't feel the emotions at all, or is it that you simply keep them close to your chest, so to speak?
	I just keep them close to me.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Well, you know my first question, right?
	Right.
	Oh yeah, there's that happy laugh.
	It's like, damn it, we're going to talk about childhood, aren't we?
	My childhood.
	Is that what your question is?
	Well, of course, I don't know if you spend a whole lot of time around babies.
	If you're getting married and you're under 45, you probably might be.
	But babies have a rather free use of their own emotions and self-expression, right?
	I mean, we're born that way, is sort of what I'm A baby's hungry, a baby cries.
	A baby's happy, a baby laughs and smiles.
	A baby is tired, they sort of whine and rub their eyes.
	So, in the pre-verbal phase of human life, which, I mean, my daughter's four and a half and she still doesn't know half the time why she has a particular thought or feeling, but in the pre-verbal phase, Phase, it is all about emotional expression.
	That is a survival mechanism that we have.
	If a baby laughed when it was hungry and cried when it was happy, it would not send its parents the right cues, the right signals to keep it alive or to keep it healthy.
	Emotional self-expression is essential to our survival as babies.
	I really believe it's essential to our self-protection as adults.
	So, if it's true that we're all born self-expressed and channeling our emotions into very visible and uninhibited manifestations, right, in our face and voice and eyes and all that, then the question would be, what happened to stop that process when you were little?
	Well, you know, yeah, my parents did what I would always think is kind of typical, you know, stop crying.
	Yeah.
	I mean, when I was a kid, they tried to get me a really good birthday present, and then they would be disappointed because I wasn't really excited about it, I guess.
	Why weren't you excited about it?
	They chose the wrong gifts, I would assume, right?
	Even if I really liked it, it was like, I really like it, but they're like, well, how come you're not excited, you know?
	Right.
	Okay, so let's get back to the first part, where they would say, don't cry.
	What age were you when you remember that, floating around?
	Oh, gosh, young.
	Like, probably three or four.
	Right.
	And what do you think might have happened?
	I mean, there's no point really saying to a baby, don't cry, because all they hear is...
	Right?
	And so what do you think...
	I don't know if you've seen them around any other babies or if you have any younger siblings.
	What do you think they did when you cried as a baby?
	Just try to get me to stop crying.
	Right.
	And how do you think they did that?
	I mean, all parents try to get their babies to stop crying, right?
	Right.
	Because they're unhappy.
	You want to make them happier.
	But the question is how, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, I have a little niece who she's actually turning to this week.
	And just watching them around her, yeah, they just – they're like, oh, it's okay.
	Don't cry.
	Don't cry.
	And they'll – I don't know.
	They'll just kind of tell her to stop crying.
	Stop crying.
	They're not really mean to her or anything, like yelling or things like that.
	I hope you get that's kind of nutty, right?
	Because the baby is crying for a reason.
	The babies don't just sort of wake up and say, hey, how can I make my caregiver's life as difficult as possible?
	The baby is trying to help the parents as much as possible by crying.
	Right?
	I mean, if you have leprosy, right, you don't feel anything and you have to do what's called a VSE, a visual search of extremities, which is you have to check that you haven't got any cuts or scrapes or bruises because you're numb, right?
	You can't feel anything.
	It's a pain in the ass.
	Well, actually, it's not a pain in the ass.
	You probably have to check your ass, too.
	So the baby is trying to really help the parents.
	That's what I had to remind myself when my daughter was crying, that she was trying to help us.
	It's like that Jerry move, help me help you.
	I mean, they're trying to help the parents to help the baby.
	And so for the parents to say, stop crying, is for the parents to say that...
	The crying actually serves no purpose and it's just negative.
	It's not like the baby's trying to help you.
	Let me take an extreme example.
	So let's say some kid is in a swimming pool and they cramp up and they start screaming out for help because they're afraid they're going to drown, right?
	And the parents should be enormously grateful that their child is screaming, right?
	Right.
	Assuming that the parent wants the child to not drown.
	Let's go out on a limb there, right?
	And so, when the child is screaming out in terror, then the parent can go and help the child, right?
	Dive in and pull the child out.
	Now, if the parent says to the child, oh, stop screaming, right?
	Then the parent is saying, your screaming is self-indulgent and annoying.
	And it's a negative thing that serves no purpose.
	Right?
	And so for a parent to say to a child, stop crying, the parent is saying to the child, your emotions are not serving any purpose.
	They're not providing me any information.
	And there's nothing that I need to do, or maybe even can do, to stop you from crying.
	It's not that you're hungry.
	It's not that you're afraid.
	It's not that you're tired.
	It's not that you're frustrated.
	It's not whatever, right?
	There's nothing that the parent needs to do Or can do, maybe, to stop the child from crying, which basically communicates to the child, I believe, communicates to the child, your emotions don't serve any purpose.
	They don't help.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yes.
	Yes, it does.
	So, I mean, if you were to say to your parents when they're around your niece, when they'd say, oh, oh, it's okay, stop crying, stop crying, which is basically a nice way of saying, shut up.
	It's a nice way of doing it.
	And if you were to say to them...
	I'm like, no, don't tell her to stop crying.
	She's crying for a reason.
	Figure out why is she crying.
	And what do they say to that?
	I don't know.
	It kind of goes back to the whole you don't have kids like you'll see when you have a kid type thing.
	Yeah, I love it how people say...
	You don't have kids, and therefore you can't understand.
	It's like, I was a kid for 18 years.
	Doesn't that give me some knowledge?
	And I'm closer to being, like to your parents, you're closer to being a kid and remembering what it was like to be a kid than they are, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	So, I don't know.
	It's just strange, you know?
	Like, I remember there was some guy running for office.
	And in Canada, he was running to be mayor of some town.
	And he didn't have any kids.
	And people were like, well, you can't be a mayor.
	I mean, you don't even know what it's like to have kids.
	And he's like, what are you talking about?
	I mean, I was a kid for 18 years.
	I know what kids need.
	Are you saying that I can't design any policies for women because I'm not a woman or for blacks because I'm not black?
	It's silly, right?
	This idea that you get this magical knowledge when you become a parent.
	Right.
	About what childhood is like is ridiculous.
	In fact, a lot of parents directly exclude their own histories of childhood, right?
	I mean, you can't spank a child if you remember what childhood was like.
	I mean, when you're a kid, you want to be reasoned with and treated gently and just anyway.
	So they say, well, you don't understand because you're not a parent.
	So then what my, you know, my question to them would then be, under what Under what theory, like, what idea are you operating on that tells you that the child is crying for nothing?
	Right.
	I mean, asking parents, or anyone really, for the source of their theory is pretty important.
	Right, so you say, well, what scientific journal have you read or what parenting book have you read That's not like Satan's Bible on raising unholy children.
	What parenting book is it that you've read that gives you this deep knowledge that crying is useless and the children need to be chided out of it?
	And I'm sure they would say, well, it's just common sense or something like that, right?
	Right.
	Then I would say, okay, well, so if it's common sense...
	Then what you're saying is children have evolved to be annoying to their parents.
	And children who are completely dependent upon the goodwill of their parents have somehow evolved crying mechanisms or emotional mechanisms that are directly at odds with what they need to survive, which is their parents' attachment, right?
	Right.
	I mean, that would be insane, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Or if they're religious, God put in children the most annoying sounds possible to try and drive away their parents who are their only chance of survival.
	Right?
	Like that scene in...
	Oh, it's that movie with Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels.
	Dumber.
	What's the most annoying sound in the world?
	Eeeeee!
	Right?
	So basically, nature or God designed children...
	To make the most annoying sounds possible.
	It's like going on a first date and going for 20 minutes, right?
	Yeah.
	I don't seem to get many second dates.
	I don't know what's going on.
	So that would make no sense, right?
	Right.
	I mean, the whole children crying evolved because parents want their children to be happy.
	And so that's a sign that the child needs something that is not currently in the environment and so on, right?
	Right.
	But when you say to a child, oh, stop crying, you're saying to the child that you have no understanding of what emotions are for.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yes, yes, it does.
	Okay, well, tell me what you're thinking and feeling.
	Well, maybe thinking.
	We'll get to the feeling in a sec.
	I'm thinking, yeah, you're right.
	It seems like that's a whole other path with my...
	With my niece and my sister and my mom.
	Because I have, you know, done some research on parenting.
	And anytime I'll even send them little links.
	Or when, like, Dana Martin's on the show, I really like her.
	And I'll send them some things.
	And they just completely reject it.
	So whenever I try to say something, it's always a sensitive subject in the first place.
	But, yeah, it's just...
	Well, since it's a subject for you, we don't know what it is for them.
	Yeah, I mean, I was just reading this article that Christoph, a friend of mine on Facebook, sent me, which is that...
	Are you from North America?
	I don't want to zero in on your GPS coordinates, but...
	Yes.
	So in North America, parenting over the last 50 years has gone...
	At least according to this article, and I'll read it out as a show this week, I hope.
	But very briefly, it's gone the entire wrong direction, right?
	So, you know, there are a couple of things that kids need.
	Kids need their babies, they need comforting, and kids need comforting when they're upset.
	And there's this idea, this feeling, or this weird experience that parents have that is more to do with their own repressed pain, I would think, than anything rational.
	Which is...
	They dole out affection like candy.
	Well, you can't have too much or your teeth will rot.
	You can't have too much affection or you'll get spoiled.
	Like rotten fruit or something.
	It's a terrible thing.
	Spoiled is one of those words that I just think is so destructive.
	It's one of these words that people wave to just excuse their own heartlessness towards their offspring.
	So kids need to be comforted and they need Yeah.
	Yeah.
	You know, it's basically saying that parenting is such a brain-dead shitty job that it can be equally outsourced to people making kind of minimum wage.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Like parenting is sort of the equivalent of washing the windshield on your car and flipping burgers at a greasy spoon for your dinner.
	That's how much skill is involved.
	That's how much parents can be replaced.
	You know, cut out the mom, cut out the dad, and put in someone making seven or eight bucks an hour who generally has a very high turnover rate.
	I mean, it's one of the problems with daycares is because they pay so little, people leave all the time.
	And I think it's within a year or two, most of the staff is replaced, which again gives a lack of continuity to the kids.
	But daycare and nannies and babysitters and all that is basically, economically, it's placing the value of parenting at slightly above minimum wage.
	And is that not the most insane thing?
	Yeah.
	I mean, children...
	are an incredible resource.
	I mean, obviously the most precious things in the known universe and being a good parent is a highly skilled activity.
	A highly skilled activity.
	I mean, for two reasons.
	One is that it's generally complex and challenging because you're trying to adapt your kids to a world that itself will continue to adapt.
	So you have to give your kids very fluid skills.
	It's one thing to parent when everybody's done the same damn thing for 500 generations.
	Go pick those nuts.
	Don't eat those berries and enjoy that banana.
	Hey, I'm done.
	That's your skills for surviving.
	Oh, and don't piss off the witch doctor.
	When he does his freaky dances, do the freaky dances.
	But to raise your children to a post-industrial knowledge-based Continually changing economy with multiculturalism and international trade.
	I mean, it's big.
	It's meaty.
	It's complex.
	It's a challenging task.
	And parents are basically saying, well, yeah, okay, it's like surgery, so I can either get the surgeon or I can get the guy who's buffing the floor outside the surgery, give him a scalpel, and he'll pretty much do it the same.
	We would never imagine that, right?
	Right.
	But people do it with parenting all the time.
	They just hand over their kids to people they barely know and who are being paid almost nothing.
	And, you know, what kind of...
	What do kids need the most, apparently?
	Scientifically, what kids need the most is touch.
	I'm sure you've heard of these awful Romanian orphanages under Ceaușescu where 100,000, 150,000 kids, because he banned abortions, 150,000 kids were stuck in these orphanages, Watching reruns of Lion King all day.
	They were fed and they got water and they were changed and so on, but they weren't touched.
	They just died.
	Touch is life.
	Touch is oxygen for children.
	And what happens in daycare?
	You can't touch the kids.
	Yeah.
	I mean, you couldn't design a worse environment.
	They're exposed to all kinds of Viruses and bacteria.
	One of the reasons why there's such an over-prescription of antibiotics in the world is because children are in daycare, which means they're being exposed to truly medieval and foreign-born pathogens all the time.
	And so they're like 17 times more likely to get the flu.
	I mean, they've spent a whole childhood sick because they're just constantly getting pumped up with...
	With medicines all the time and so on.
	And not touched.
	And because, I mean, when they're little, you have a pretty good ratio, right?
	Five to one or seven to one or whatever.
	They get older.
	When I was in daycare, I think 25 or 30 kids aged five to ten, there were two of us.
	Now, what kind of real personal attention can you give?
	You know, if you've got three kids upset and crying at the same time, what can you do?
	You can't touch them.
	The moment you go down and start talking to one, you're talking to that one in full hearing of everyone else, which means they're self-conscious.
	To comfort someone, you kind of need privacy.
	You can't get that in a daycare.
	And also, kids are put into strollers and car seats and all this all the time, so they're not held nearly as much.
	So, what kids need, and the kids need more than one adult caregiver to really flourish according to the latest science.
	And this is all pretty good science.
	Like, it's not just like, I have a feeling that or it's common sense that.
	I mean, this is all very well documented and researched.
	They need more than one caregiver.
	And, you know, if you have a single mom, then that's not the case.
	If you have two parents working and the kids are in a daycare or pre-K or K or whatever, then they don't have that.
	I mean, then it's Lord of the Flies, right?
	Lots of kids, very few parents.
	So parenting has kind of gone, and this is just a couple of examples of quite a few.
	Parenting has gone the wrong direction, and as a result, there's been quite an eruption in childhood.
	Oh, and also free play.
	Free play has vastly diminished from the 70s, where it's just, you know, when I was a kid, I was like, go out and play.
	Go play.
	And I just get on my bike and go.
	As some writer has termed it, the glorious anarchy of unstructured childhood.
	But now, even though aggression against children by strangers is vastly down, people are just sort of paranoid.
	It's what happens when you have fewer kids and also the media keeps preying on these fears.
	People think the world has something to do with what the media says rather than what's outside their window, which is a true route to paranoid insanity.
	Yeah, so free play has diminished.
	Touch has diminished.
	Comforting has diminished.
	And the adult-to-child ratio of more than one caregiver has diminished.
	And so childhood, I think, is kind of getting worse.
	And so what you needed as a child, sort of to bring it back to the person, what you needed as a child was to be held, to be comforted.
	I mean, I can't sit down without my daughter climbing on my lap.
	I had dinner last night at a restaurant, and she's like, I want to sit on your lap.
	When the waitress comes, until the food comes, when the food comes, I will eat in my table, or my chair, and then I will come back on your lap for dessert.
	Okay.
	That's fine.
	But that's what she wants.
	And I think that's wonderful.
	I think that's entirely right.
	So, sorry for the long kespiel, but...
	It does not sound like your parents would have any good theories as to why they would wave away your need for comfort or your need for altered parental behavior based on crying, even though you were trying to help them as much as possible.
	Right.
	And I'm sorry about that.
	I mean, that's really tragic.
	And it doesn't come out of any theory, right?
	I mean, geez, 99% of human activity is emotional trauma with the theory coming after the fact to make up some bullshit reason as to why The shitty behavior continued, but it would have to do with their own histories, right?
	I mean, do you know anything about their childhoods?
	Yes.
	Yeah, I know some.
	Remaining orphanages, by chance?
	No, just kidding.
	Sorry.
	No.
	I know my mom's childhood was a lot worse.
	I just know more about hers than I know about my dad's.
	My dad's pretty closed off when it comes to his family.
	But my mom will at least...
	I know her mom was an alcoholic.
	They grew up poor.
	She has four other siblings.
	She just had a really bad childhood.
	When she says to me, my childhood was way worse than yours.
	You had a great childhood.
	She always compares them.
	I did good.
	I didn't hate you.
	Oh, she said she didn't hit you, that's right, there was no spanking, is that right?
	No, she doesn't consider spanking hitting.
	Oh, so she hit you, but she calls it spanking?
	Yes.
	Right.
	Yes.
	Well, you know, obviously, I'm sorry about that equivocation, and I'm very sorry, obviously, you, I mean, alcoholism is just such a cancer and a rot and a Pestilence in society.
	So I'm sorry about that.
	But, you know, one of the things you could say to your mom is, well, I didn't live your childhood, I lived mine.
	I didn't have a comparison.
	I only have my own experience of childhood.
	You know, like when you're a kid, it's the old argument, you know, like, well, I don't want these veggies.
	Well, there are starving kids in India.
	Well, why don't you send the veggies to them?
	Right?
	But when you're a kid...
	For your parent to say, you had it better than I did, it's another way of telling you to shut up, right?
	Right.
	Because the reality is that you only experienced your childhood relative to your own needs and those needs that were met and those needs that weren't.
	You didn't say there when you were a kid, well, my mom was raised by alcoholics or an alcoholic and therefore I've got it pretty good.
	That's not how childhood works, right?
	Right.
	I mean, can you imagine lecturing a baby?
	Who's hungry?
	Saying to the baby that there are hungrier children elsewhere.
	What's that going to do to the baby's hunger?
	Nothing.
	Yeah.
	It's only going to add frustration and incomprehension to the baby's experience, right?
	Right.
	And I don't know if it makes a difference, but I don't know if it makes a difference.
	I'm a twin, so there's always two of us.
	So it kind of reminded me...
	When you were saying the touch, I'm thinking, well, there's two of us.
	I'm sure that was a lot of work.
	My dad works out of town a lot.
	He has our whole childhood.
	So he usually leaves Sunday night, come back Thursday night.
	Oh, so he was gone for like 60% of the week, I don't think?
	Yes.
	Why?
	Why wouldn't he change jobs?
	I mean, if you've got twins at home.
	I mean, I just, sorry to be annoying, but I don't understand this thing where, not you, but people say, well, my dad had X and therefore wasn't available to us that much.
	It's like, well, wait a minute, you have children.
	And if you have children, then, you know, we have this thing where, well, my life is an absolute.
	Where I live is an absolute.
	My need for a car is an absolute.
	And then the kids have to adapt to that, because the parents' requirements or needs are just absolutes, right?
	And I was just talking about this with my wife the other day, about how I perilously started a highly speculative donation-based venture right at the beginning of the biggest recession the world has known in a couple of generations.
	And so we're saying, well, if we run low on money or whatever, then We'll just move to a small apartment.
	Whatever we need to do, right?
	Right.
	That's the reality.
	But it's not like, well, we have these requirements and we have to spend this much money.
	Just change it.
	So this idea, well, my dad had to go.
	I'm not saying you're saying this, but there's this weird idea.
	It's like, well, if you have twins, then you're going to have a mom who needs a lot of help, right?
	Right.
	And so then saying, well, I'm sorry, but I have to leave from Sunday night till Thursday night, right?
	Be home Friday, Saturday, and part of Sunday.
	Well, why?
	I mean, why would you change that, for God's sakes?
	I mean, you have twins at home.
	Well, we needed the money because, well, why did you need the money?
	Why couldn't you downsize for a couple of years?
	I mean, even if it means moving in with your parents, living in their basement, I mean, you know, like, I mean, you have babies.
	Right.
	But there's this weird thing where just kids have to adapt to whatever circumstances they're born into.
	And I don't follow that.
	Yeah.
	So I have no doubt that that was pretty rough on your mom.
	But that's not like getting struck by lightning out of a clear blue sky.
	That difficulty for your mom, first of all, it's not your fault, obviously, as a baby.
	And there's no excuse for it.
	If you have...
	I mean, I assume that she knew before you were born that you were kind of ganging up on her in there, right?
	Yeah.
	Two heartbeats, right?
	I mean, that's either a supervillain or twins, right?
	So she knew that ahead of time, and so this is not a shock.
	But what people will often do when talking about their past is they will say, well, this was just the way it was, as if they had no choice in the matter.
	But, I mean, they knew for probably five or six months or more that they were going to have twins.
	So, to me, it would be like, okay, well, organize your life around the fact that you have twins, which is real tough earlier on.
	But it gets easier later because I assume that you were able to play with your twin quite a bit and cancel each other out a little bit as far as parental resource requirements go.
	Yes.
	But...
	Yeah, I just don't see how it's like, well, you know, your father was gone and it was tough on me.
	You know, like this stuff all just happened.
	But it's all the result of choices.
	Why would you plan to have a kid with somebody who was gone Sunday night to Thursday night?
	I mean, wait till that is over, that aspect of the job is over, or find another job where that doesn't happen before you decide to have children.
	Yes, yeah, exactly.
	He still does that.
	I'm full grown.
	I saw this movie, Elysium, last night.
	I saw some interview with Matt Damon where he's like, four hours of working out a day and three hours of makeup to get into his cyber suit or whatever.
	And, you know, he's like, ha, ha, ha, you know, I love the fact that there are three hours of makeup and four hours of working.
	That's before he does any filming, you understand, right?
	Before he does any rehearsal or any filming or anything like that, or being sitting around on set.
	And he's like, ha, ha, ha, you don't understand.
	I have four young children at home.
	I'm very happy to have all that makeup and all that working out because it gets me some peace and quiet.
	Oh, man.
	I used to like that guy.
	You know, back in his Goodwill hunting days, I thought he was a...
	A real talent.
	Now I just think he's a complete hack and a bit of a real jerk.
	Mm-hmm.
	Right?
	Because, I mean, you're a dad.
	I mean, especially for such a crappy film.
	My God, I mean, to not see your kids for six months.
	You're such a piece of junk.
	Right.
	It's like, oh, I'm so happy to be getting makeup because then I can be with my thoughts rather than with my children.
	It's like, why the hell did you have four children if the first thing you wanted to do was escape them?
	And, of course, he's the guy who's constantly been pumping public education, government education...
	State education.
	And where's he putting his kids?
	In the ritziest private school that you can imagine.
	But that's so typical, right?
	Right.
	But sorry, I just sort of pointed out that it's like, this is the prejudice.
	Oh, children, they're so difficult.
	Children, you know, it's great to have some time away from your kids and so on.
	Maybe that was your dad's perspective.
	I don't know.
	But it's like, well, why have kids then if you don't want to spend time with them?
	I don't see my daughter.
	If I do occasional traveling for speaking, I don't see my daughter for a day.
	I'm like, oh my god.
	It's like gravity well.
	It's like my heart is jumping back on the plane before my body is even at the airport, right?
	Right.
	I mean, it's like getting married to someone and then saying, well, I love business travel because otherwise I have to be home with my wife.
	And it's like, what the fuck did you get married for?
	Nobody made you.
	Yeah.
	I know that might be why my dad goes out of town.
	Yeah.
	I don't know.
	I mean, I don't know.
	But it's just a weird thing to do, to have kids and then say, well, you know, I've got this job, you see, where I have to travel all the time.
	And it's like, well, no, you don't.
	You're making that choice.
	And that's quite a different thing.
	All right.
	So listen, we've sort of enough theory and background.
	When's your wedding?
	In November.
	All right.
	So I'm thinking, I have three months to like...
	Three months to grow a heart.
	Yeah.
	I believe there are some movies about this, but you have to play them with Dark Side of the Moon in the background.
	Well, what's going to happen to your relationship with your fiancé if you grow a heart, so to speak, right?
	And you know this is not true, right?
	You have all the feelings.
	It's just that you've Probably received quite a barrage of propaganda about how feelings are useless and annoying to others, right?
	Inconvenient.
	And they are!
	Feelings are inconvenient to sometimes inconvenient to other people.
	In the same way that, you know, if you twist your ankle, it's inconvenient for walking around, but it's very convenient for not screwing up your ankle permanently, right?
	I mean, feelings are inconvenient at times, but they are essential for the maintenance of mental health, relationship health, love, joy, happiness, marriage.
	Parental affections, all that kind of stuff, right?
	So they're inconvenient, but essential, like physical pain.
	And I'm not trying to say all emotions are like physical pain, joy and all that is great.
	But they certainly are inconvenient, you know, at times.
	So that's probably the message you got, that emotions are just kind of useless and inconvenient.
	And of course, like all children, you want to please your parents.
	If your parents say, well, your emotions are useless and inconvenient, you'll be like, okay, bye-bye emotions, right?
	I mean...
	I sort of think if parents took a real dislike to some kid's arm, then the kid would be like that guy who got stuck in the canyon with the boulder on his arm to hack it off.
	Okay, well, parents don't like my arm.
	I guess I'll have to get rid of the arm, right?
	Right.
	And that's the way it works with parenting, and that's with children.
	So, what about your fiancé?
	I mean, does your fiancé have issues with your emotionality or lack of expressed emotionality?
	Yes.
	Yeah, he's, you know, he's...
	Mentioned that he doesn't want to love a rock.
	And I know that...
	And not in a mean way.
	He's very encouraging.
	And I know that it'll just bring us closer if I do open...
	We can be even closer if I can open up even more.
	I feel like, yeah, I'm being robbed of these feelings, this true happiness, you know?
	Right.
	Right.
	Okay, yeah.
	So, I mean, the first person I would sit down with is...
	And, sorry, how are his emotional skills of self-expression?
	They're really good.
	Right, so why is he choosing you?
	He's actually right here.
	I'm right here too.
	Oh, is he on?
	Hi, how are you doing?
	Good, good.
	So, if your skills are...
	And I'm not saying she sounds like a wonderful woman, so I'm not trying to try...
	I'm just asking this sort of curious question.
	If your emotional skills are good and hers are muted to say the best, then why choose her to get married to?
	Why not choose someone who is...
	I'm not saying don't choose her.
	It's a theoretical question.
	Why not choose somebody who's more emotionally expressive?
	I would think...
	For her too, in her defense, I would say this.
	It's not that she's not always emotionally expressive.
	There's just certain things where she'll have...
	When we're together, it's more in front of other people.
	She's really worried about what they may think.
	But as far as for me, I've never been with someone like her where she's honest with me and open.
	She treats me well, is always thinking and what she could do to help me.
	And so on the other end, for me too, is working through this stuff, is like trying to help her, it's hard for me, and I think I've talked to you before, for me it's like to not put expectations on her, but trying to help her, instead of like wanting her to be different, you know?
	Now, when you were a kid, this is to the dude, when you were a kid, how were your parents' emotional self-expression?
	My dad, actually neither of them were too much of showing their emotions.
	I think that was always, for me, a hard thing.
	I could remember to cry or to do anything like that wasn't something that I would do.
	I don't know.
	That's part of being like, oh man, or something, you don't cry.
	And actually, as far as listening to your podcast, even from the beginning, the hardest thing that I had to deal with, not talking about parents, not doing anything, but of you showing emotions and crying and having empathy for others, that was the only part ever that would turn me off.
	And I was like, why does it bother me?
	It just sounded like it was like Fake or something.
	It's like, how can you feel like this?
	And since getting over that and getting in touch with my feelings and stuff, I've told Jessica that.
	I think I've cried more in the last year than I have the previous from when I was five or something.
	Five till 31 or something.
	Yeah, like I was just explaining this to my daughter, that crying lets you know what's important to you.
	Right?
	I mean, you can't plan life.
	If you don't know what's important, you can have priorities if you don't know what's important to you.
	And emotions help you to know what's important to you.
	Like, there's nothing in the world that says you should or shouldn't do anything, right?
	A lot of it has to do with what moves you emotionally.
	Some people are moved by art, and some people are moved by engineering, and some people are moved by music, and some people are moved by accounting, I imagine, I guess, right?
	And all that your emotions are doing is helping you to prioritize.
	They're there to help you as well and help you know what's important to you.
	Right.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, but that's why I think with the wedding, I want him to know that this is very important to me.
	Well, he knows that because you're getting married to him.
	So there's no need to put on a show.
	You don't have to be the bride plus fireworks.
	I assume, right, young man, that you know that you're important to her because she's married to you, right?
	Yeah.
	So it may be that, Jessica, you're concerned about other people because your fiancé mentioned that you're sort of worried about what other people think and so on, right?
	Which is understandable.
	I mean, we're social beings and all that.
	But it may be that you feel that there's some template of emotional display that you need to have.
	Oh, you've got to cry at weddings and blah, blah, blah, right?
	And yes, true, people do cry at weddings, but most of those people are divorcees who are just looking at a slow motion crash that they expect to happen.
	And of course, there's sentimentality.
	People are at their best at weddings, right?
	I mean, they're congenial, they're friendly, they're usually fairly articulate when they speak, and your love is in the air, and people are making actual commitments and promises that they genuinely intend to keep.
	Whereas most people just live range of the moment to survive and win in the instant.
	So there is a kind of people are at their best at weddings and you just wish you could live every day like that or people would be like that every day.
	But there's no need for a show.
	The important thing about the wedding is that the wedding is for you and for your fiancé.
	And if other people like it, whatever.
	If other people think, oh, she should be more emotional, blah, blah, blah.
	Well, hopefully that's not going to be your parents because that would be kind of annoying, right?
	Well, you raised her to not be emotional.
	Boy, I can't believe she's not being emotional.
	But it is for you.
	And I find that feeling, the sort of fluid experience and expression of feeling comes fundamentally from relaxation.
	The moment you intervene and stand outside yourself and observe yourself and give yourself marks, For correct or incorrect behavior is the moment that you will jump out of your own emotional experience and look at yourself really with the cold-eyed evaluating eyes of a stranger, of almost an alien.
	To observe yourself and give yourself points for good and bad behavior is quite primitive when it comes to being authentic, being in the moment.
	And when I say primitive, I don't mean that it's in a critical way.
	It's just Sounds like the way that you were brought up.
	And we live in a pretty anti-emotional culture.
	We live in a pro-sentimental culture, which is quite different from emotions.
	Sentimentality is when you...
	There's an old description of this.
	I see something and I'm moved by it.
	And then I notice myself being moved and I'm moved by the fact that I'm being moved.
	That's, right?
	Oh, look, I'm crying at this story of war-torn...
	Botswana or Bosnia or whatever, right?
	And then, oh, I must be a really cool person and really emotional, really in touch with my feelings because I'm so moved.
	And suddenly you're not observing the thing which gives you emotion.
	You're observing the fact that you have emotion and giving yourself good or bad points for that.
	And that is a hard habit to break.
	It's certainly possible.
	But it comes out of simply refusing to jump outside yourself.
	Just staying inside yourself.
	You can't fly a plane from the outside, right?
	And you can't be who you are by observing yourself and giving yourself points for good or bad behavior.
	So if you're looking forward into the wedding and say, well, if I'm emotional or not emotional, that's good or that's bad, or if people experience it or know it or whatever, then I think that the real focus would be to simply try and relax.
	Look forward to the day, enjoy the day, and your experience of the day is what is most important.
	Not what other people think about your experience of the day, if that makes sense.
	Right.
	I think I would say it's hard for me to relax.
	What you're saying is right on.
	It's definitely how I look at myself.
	I'm looking at myself from the outside.
	Well, sure, because if your parents say your emotions are useless and to some degree inconvenient, Then you're going to focus on pleasing your parents, not on experiencing your emotions, right?
	Right.
	And it has always been, you know, my essential goal as a parent to not have my daughter be concerned with my opinions is really essential as a parent.
	Because the moment she starts thinking about how I'm going to react is the moment that she stops spontaneously reacting.
	Ooh, what's dad going to think of this?
	Is this going to be good or is this going to be bad?
	I will tell her if she asks, and I may even tell her if she doesn't ask, but I do not want her primary concern in any way, shape, or form to be my thoughts about whatever is happening or my emotions about whatever is happening.
	And I mean, if I'm watching something sad and I cry, yeah, I'm fine.
	I say, it's okay, they're happy tears or whatever, right?
	But I really want her to share her experience with me, not to focus on my experience of her.
	And the other thing I would mention as well is that, I don't know, obviously I'm just an amateur and all this stuff, but I would guess that for your fiancé, if you grew up with a mom who wasn't very emotionally expressive and you're marrying a woman who isn't very emotionally expressive, you've got to watch out for that pattern, right?
	Yeah.
	Which means that you can't try and fix your childhood by fixing your wife.
	Yeah.
	Sorry, that's a whole lot.
	Here I do long speeches about daycare and then compress a huge amount into like half a sentence.
	But that's just something that I would watch out for.
	So to work on relaxation, to me, I can only tell you what helped for me.
	What helped for me was body work, which is things like yoga and massages, aromatherapy massage in particular was very helpful for me, which is just a way of making sure that you physically relax.
	I stretch every single day, usually twice a day.
	And that's just a way of, I know that limber body is limber mind, right?
	So I stretch, I exercise, I dance, like I continue to do the body work that keeps the brain connected to the gut, that keeps the brain, because the emotions, you know, there's a second gut, it's a second brain that we have, it's highly complex down, you know, I've got a gut feeling and people aren't just kidding, right?
	There is a whole cognitive aspect to our belly, which is strange but true.
	So, I would recommend some body work, some massage.
	It's kind of ironic.
	I am a massage therapist at a nice day spa where I live.
	Go ahead.
	So, it's like I wonder if maybe I can't relax, but I try to make other...
	Physician, heal thyself!
	Yeah, make other people relax.
	Yeah, for sure, for sure.
	And, you know, oftentimes in life, we give to others what we most need ourself, right?
	True.
	I want the world to be rational to me and my family and so I try to give as much reason to the world as I can.
	Your goal is to help other people relax but you remain tense.
	I would say that focus on receiving a bit of what you're giving to the world and I think that would be very helpful.
	A little bit of therapy?
	I'd never say no to it as a recommendation.
	Yes, yeah.
	But I think that the sort of physical relaxation is really important.
	You know, when you find yourself starting to fret and worry and think about other people and so on, you know, just close your eyes, take deep breaths, return to your body, you know.
	People always want these out-of-body experiences.
	You know, oh, I went to Andromeda on astral travel.
	It's like, I hate out-of-body experiences.
	I want to be in my body.
	I mean, where the hell else am I going to be?
	I'm either going to be in my body or a ghost.
	And I don't want to be dead.
	Right.
	So those would be my suggestions, if that's at all of any use.
	And you might want to talk to your father about his childhood.
	You know, getting the map of where you came from is really important.
	It's hard to know where you're going if you don't know where you came from.
	Yeah, because I think of both my parents, he's the least emotional.
	He hides his emotions, like, very much.
	Well, you don't know that, right?
	He may hide his emotions, but he also may not have them.
	Again, I don't know.
	Maybe obviously you know him better than I do, infinitely better than I do, but I would definitely ask him about that stuff and say, you know, now that I'm getting married, you know, I want to, you know, look out for these things.
	Also, I mean, I'm sure he can understand that how you were raised is going to have some degree of impact on how well your marriage goes, and obviously I hope it goes really well.
	But I think it's important to get a good map of your parents, particularly when you get married and certainly before you have children, if you're going to have children.
	Yes.
	And you might have jeans, the twins, so you might have the jeans for twins.
	I know I'm not going to be working.
	I'm staying at home.
	Yeah, we're doing unschooling.
	We've talked about that.
	Well, good for you.
	And, you know, if the hubby can get a job where he can work from home, we'll be more available.
	I think that'd be very helpful.
	And if you've got a downside for a couple of years, you know, it's really the first three years.
	It's so crucial.
	You know, my job as a parent is like 90% to 95% done already.
	You know, the time that you spend in the first couple of years is...
	It's going to determine how well the rest of your life goes.
	You can't be a happy parent if your kids are unhappy or experiencing significant problems or whatever.
	And, you know, boy, if...
	You know, people go to school for four, five, six, seven, eight years to make themselves happier financially or at least more economically productive later in their life.
	My goodness, I mean, you're going to be a parent for the next 50 years or 60 years.
	You guys sound pretty young, but you're going to be a parent for the next 50 or 60 years.
	You know, what's three years in all of that, right?
	It's, what, six to four percent.
	Of your life.
	And why not spend, you know, four to six percent of your life ensuring as much as possible a really happy foundation for the remainder of your life.
	So, you know, if you can both be home, that'd be great.
	If you've got a downsize for that, I'd recommend that as well.
	Or if you can save for it as well, that would be great.
	But I certainly wish you guys the best.
	I'm completely thrilled.
	I just think, you know, when saint people get married, we get another star in the night sky leading to a greater illumination of the future.
	So, yay!
	Good for you!
	And remember to relax and enjoy your day because it is really about you.
	It's not a show.
	It's an experience.
	Yeah, well, I know I could talk to you for five hours.
	About a thousand different things.
	Yeah, the whole show thing, that was definitely my childhood.
	I got to move on, but if you guys want to chat again before your wedding, just email mycorporations.freedomainradio.com.
	I'd be happy to chat.
	If there's anything that would be of use to chat about, just let me know.
	But now I'm afraid I must gird myself to the tipping point.
	At least we kept you on pace here for your first call.
	Take it out.
	Your first call has got to stop being so interesting.
	All right.
	Thanks again.
	Thank you.
	Thanks so much, guys.
	Take care.
	Thanks.
	All right, Lauren, you are up next.
	Hello.
	Hello, hello.
	Hi, Lauren.
	How are you doing?
	Oh, I am doing very good.
	How are you doing, Steph?
	I'm well, thank you.
	Excellent.
	Well, I'm kind of glad I finally get to talk with you.
	I have kind of a little bit of a theory that has to do with anarchy.
	I just kind of wanted to run it past you, see what you think.
	Because I've noticed...
	All right.
	Well, I've noticed that, you know, you seem to think that the transition to anarchy is going to be a multi-generational one.
	And I'll give you a little background about myself, I guess.
	I grew up in a household that was very Republican, I guess you could say.
	And by the time I graduated high school, my dad was an anarchist.
	By the time I finished with college, my mother was an anarchist.
	Whoa!
	Yep.
	My husband is an anarchist.
	And actually, he was the one who first started listening to your show and kind of got me in on it.
	And I became an anarchist through Market for Liberty.
	My dad was always a reader, and he kind of gave me that thirst for knowledge growing up.
	And so I'm constantly reading books and constantly looking for more information.
	And then listening to your show, I realized that anarchists seem to be very sparse.
	You know, one in a million.
	You don't really get to meet too many of them.
	So three months ago, I started a new job, actually, at Lowe's.
	And the guy I started working with was an anarchist, listens to your show all the time.
	Is that right?
	How cool is that?
	Yeah, no kidding.
	The department manager right next to ours.
	Because I've got friends in those places.
	Sorry, go on.
	Exactly.
	The department manager right next to my department, he's an anarchist.
	So I am starting to think that it's a little bit more, it happens more often than maybe we might think.
	But, you know, I don't think anarchists talk about it so much, at least once they get into that final stage, I guess.
	You know, anarchy goes into stages.
	First, you turn into a Jehovah's Witness, and I tell everybody about it.
	Then you get depressed because too many people slam the door in your face.
	But then you get to a point where you're just kind of content with anarchy.
	You know, you're just—you understand how the world works, you understand— What makes people act?
	What they respond to?
	You have an understanding of economics.
	And so they don't talk about it very much.
	And so you may not know how many anarchists are actually around you.
	So it got me thinking, I mean, is it really a multi-generational thing?
	Because, I mean, all of the anarchists I know grew up in households.
	Where their parents were not anarchists, but yet it still seems to be growing.
	And it got me thinking about economics and philosophy and how the two might actually, you know, coincide or meet.
	First law of economics, people respond to incentives.
	Philosophy seems to be a method of thinking in order to make your actions more efficient.
	At least it's the way I kind of see it.
	And action is what kind of drives the world forward.
	So I kind of feel if anarchists instead just live their lives based on principles, raise their kids up the right way, they become very appealing to those around them.
	I mean, I started working at Lowe's as a part-time seasonal employee and in three months I got a promotion to a full-time sales specialist position just because I understood that my job was to make the company money.
	And I tried to do that the most absolute efficient way possible, as much as I could.
	And people seemed to be kind of drawn to that.
	Yes.
	Strangely enough, business owners are kind of drawn to profitable employees.
	Yes.
	It's not hard to keep a job.
	Just make more money than you cost.
	I mean, it's not that complicated.
	Anyway, go on.
	Well, exactly.
	And as philosophers, I think one of our jobs is to raise our kids peacefully and to teach them about the world using reason and showing them the evidence.
	But I think one of our, I mean, I think our other job, though, is to, when we can, become leaders.
	We need to find the problems in society.
	And rather than so much trying to turn everybody into philosophers, I think what we should be doing is looking at the problems that everybody sees and tries to solve with government.
	And think of those solutions outside of government and then present them or do what we can to create those solutions.
	Because Henry Ford, when he was creating the automobile, when he was making his car, he didn't put a car in every garage by teaching everybody how to build one.
	He put a car in every garage by building it.
	And then the people then responded to the incentive of having a car rather than having to learn it.
	And so, I mean, I get this feeling that anarchy is actually right around the corner.
	Not so much a multi-generational thing, but I feel like we're right on the precipice.
	And as anarchists, we need to become leaders where we can and start thinking about the solutions to problems rather than Of course we all understand that government is not the right way.
	It's evil and it needs to go.
	But we need to start thinking about those things that are going to replace government and where we can start creating those things and create that incentive for those who are not philosophers to see that incentive and then act on it and start moving away from government where they can.
	Yeah.
	Like what?
	Well, like, for instance, my dad and I are working on a way of tracking reputation.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, okay.
	So, like, DROs or sort of mediation...
	And ways of tracking reputations and so on.
	Correct.
	I mean, Facebook actually is pretty close, except you need a thumbs down button.
	And people need to start thinking about other people as individuals rather than a part of a group.
	So let's say, you know, a cop pulls somebody over and then beats the hell out of them.
	We've heard of that story before.
	But what we hear about is the police department or the location where they patrol.
	You never hear, or not too often, the police officer's name.
	And if you could then go to a source and rate that police officer or rate the waitress or rate the person that helped you out or the person you bought from on Craigslist, if there was a way of rating them economically as well as...
	a place that people can go and see, you know, is this person somebody I want to deal with?
	Are they an evil person?
	Are they a government employee?
	I think as soon as people start seeing other people as individuals again, the religion around government will start to diminish and will eventually go away because people will see government as the result of human action rather than some god that can do anything. the religion around government will start to diminish and will And it's this magic wand that you can just wave.
	Because people have to understand that it's other people who are in government, not some god.
	Yeah, I mean, I think it's...
	Nobody knows, obviously, how long it's going to take because it has to do with people's personal choices.
	Like, I mean, if all libertarians stopped hitting their kids tomorrow and raised them peacefully and shunned statists after attempting to reason with them for some reasonable amount of time, then there would be a very important change in society.
	A new idea would be seen.
	New ideas, they don't show up in the social landscape until people start acting on them.
	Like, really, really acting on them.
	Not just reading about them and not just blogging about them and talking about them, but actually making decisions in their personal lives.
	Like, if libertarians wouldn't get married to and breed with statists, that would be something which people change.
	If you want to get with me, if you want to hit this, you've got to not hit the state kind of thing, or your kids.
	So when people really start to act on their beliefs, then they show up in the social landscape, and they don't until that occurs, which is why people like...
	Ron Paul, nice guy, smart guy, certainly better at delivering babies than I'll ever be.
	But, I mean, for the most part, his followers would blog about it, right?
	But would they actually not decide not to have relationships with people who advocated them being thrown in jail for following their conscience?
	Well, no.
	I mean, they'd be disrupting family dinners, making life uncomfortable for people, but they wouldn't, I think, actually be acting on those beliefs.
	So, Our beliefs aren't going to show up in the social landscape until they become inconvenient to other people.
	And so far, we're not even close to that.
	But I mean, I've certainly been advocating it for a long time.
	I'm content and happy with my belief system because it has achieved the maximum good in my life that it's possible.
	You know, I have a peaceful relationship with everyone around me.
	Positive, loving relationships with everyone around me.
	I don't...
	Like, I get that statism is not just a political philosophy.
	Statism is character logic.
	It means it's foundational to the personality.
	It's somebody who's...
	Like, it's not just, oh, well, he's a...
	You know, he happens to be a Republican and I happen to be an anarchist and therefore we have just, you know, he's potato, I'm potato, he's grapefruit...
	I'm orange, but we're both still citrus.
	No, no, no.
	That's not how it is.
	That's not how it works.
	A status is not an anarchist plus this little thing called statism.
	Statism is foundational to the personality.
	Statism is sociopathy incarnate.
	So then if statism then is foundational to your personality, then how is it that somebody can go from being a statist like myself and move toward anarchy?
	I mean, what exactly is it?
	Sorry, I mean committed statist.
	Sorry.
	Thank you for the clarification.
	What I mean is committed statist, right?
	So, statist who, even after they've been exposed to the basic arguments of voluntarism, You know, taxation is theft, government is coercion, blah, blah, blah.
	If they then dig, double down and dig into statism, that's what I mean by foundational.
	Not people who are like, oh my god, you're right, or oh my god, I've never heard of that before, that's wild, that blows my mind, tell me more kind of thing, right?
	That's not foundational to the personality.
	But the people who, upon hearing the arguments for freedom, double down on their addiction to violence, those people, for those people it becomes, it's revealed as foundational, if that makes any sense.
	Well, that's kind of what I struggle with, is because if they dig down into statism, then they're responding to some incentive, first law of economics.
	So what is the incentive that they're responding to, and is there a way of giving them a better incentive through free and voluntary interaction, rather than...
	But this is to assume, sorry to interrupt, but this is to assume that everybody's incentives are the same.
	The incentives of a sadist...
	Are quite the opposite than the incentives of a virtuous person, right?
	And they've done studies on this.
	They've shown people who've tested positive for sadistic tendencies, they show them videos of people getting hurt, and the pleasure center of their brains lights up, like the night sky of the 4th of July.
	Their incentive is the causing of or witnessing of human pain is truly and deeply delightful for them.
	It is their braingasm to see people getting hurt.
	Now, I don't know of any way to rewire that.
	I don't even know if it's possible.
	It would be a massive amount of work.
	But so, you know, I think that people who, when they're told that the system they support is violent, if they then say, That's good.
	I'm fine with that.
	In fact, I think that's great.
	And I think your system of peace and voluntarism is evil.
	I think that basically they're saying, well, I'm kind of sadistic and kind of sociopathic.
	Yes, and I see that.
	You can't cure that.
	No, you can't.
	But the percentage of the population that is that is, what was it, 1 in 20, 1 in 25 are actually sociopaths.
	You might get 1 in 10, maybe.
	Sorry, that is according to the definitions of a statist.
	Okay.
	Right, so to me, again, this is all just my amateur bullcrap hour, but to me, anybody who...
	We all exist in a state of nature until we have knowledge, which is, I think, perfectly fine.
	And we're all raised with massive amounts of propaganda.
	But there's a moment, there's a moment of clarity and illumination when somebody receives the basic knowledge that statism is violence, that the government is force, that it has nothing of its own.
	Everything, as Nietzsche said, everything the government says is a lie and everything it has, it has stolen.
	And there's a moment where that light goes on.
	And in that moment, the true personality is revealed.
	Because when I first realized...
	I didn't realize it on my own.
	When I first read taxation is force, taxation is violence, I recoiled from it.
	I recoiled from it.
	It's like...
	You know, when you're a kid, you toss your stuffed toys around, and then if somebody suddenly said, your stuffed toy is alive, I would recoil from what I was doing because I thought I was playing with an inanimate object.
	Turns out I was throwing around something that was alive.
	I don't want to do that, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Right.
	And so, I think to me, the real test of – and sociopathy is obviously a technical term that I'm not really competent to use or diagnose, not even remotely, but just basically evil – I don't believe that people are evil at all until they gain the knowledge of the basic moral reality of their society.
	But do they recoil when they realize that the system that they support, the system that they advocate, the system they participate in is coercive, is violent, is fundamentally destructive in nature.
	Do they recoil from that?
	Or do they double down?
	And the recoiling from that is when they have a shred of empathy and virtue and can sort of rebuild themselves out of propaganda into truth and reason and so on.
	But – so the incentives, I think they're basically – and I'll stop after this.
	There are two incentives.
	The first incentive is that if they act with integrity, it will harm their social – It will harm their social connections, right?
	Because once you understand that statism is violence, that makes for some awkward Thanksgiving day dinners, right?
	Because then you sort of, oh, do I say something?
	Do I not?
	It's awkward for people, right?
	And they know that, you know, and the more The more sadistic they are deep down, the more likely they are to be surrounded by people like them who will not respond positively, or at least morally, to the revelation that government is forced, right?
	So they're sort of looking on the one side at their social connections.
	What's going to happen if I discover the truth?
	What's going to happen if all my friends in the KKK discover that I'm against racism?
	Well, they're going to shun me, they're going to dump me, they're going to whatever, right?
	So social connections and also...
	Statism arises, I believe, fundamentally out of a despair regarding a virtue, right?
	So, like, obesity arises out of a despair of being attractive, of being healthy, of being athletic, of whatever, right?
	I mean, despair that you're ever going to, so why not eat, right?
	And, you know, like, nobody has salad for their last meal before being executed.
	They have the most Unhealthy crap that they could imagine.
	I know I would, right?
	Powerlessness.
	Yeah, I mean, so you give up and then when you give up, your standards collapse, right?
	And so people who give up on virtue, their standards collapse.
	Well, and you always hear this, you know, well, if you get rid of the government, some other hierarchy is going to rise to take its place.
	Well, that's despair.
	It's despair that virtue can ever work.
	It's a complete collapse of any kind of belief in the efficacy and power.
	Of virtue.
	And of course it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
	Now, how can you make people not despair about virtue?
	Well, I think the best way to make people not despair about virtue is to live a virtuous life and have some power and have some efficacy and have some effect and have some courage.
	And win, you know, somewhat, right?
	And so I think that's a way of demonstrating it.
	Is that going to change sadists into nice people?
	No, it's absolutely not.
	That's real deep and no psychologist or psychiatrist that I know the world over has found a way to fix that.
	But see, I think you may be overestimating, I guess, the thought process of certain people.
	There are sadists, and these are the people that really think about things.
	They have their own kind of philosophy, and they think that one level deeper.
	In my experience, I've encountered three different types of people.
	The first type where everything goes in one ear and out the other.
	These are the people that will act like they're listening to you.
	Their eyes will go a little bit wide.
	They'll nod after everything you say about anarchy, about the evils of the state.
	And at the end of an hour soliloquy, they'll look at you and go, wow, yeah, I totally agree.
	You should run for president.
	You'd be a great president.
	And those are the first type.
	And then you've got the second type, which is what I feel is the majority of people.
	Where they are, they regurgitate everything that they hear.
	And so these are your sheep on animal farm.
	You know, they hear what happens in the news and they regurgitate it back in your face every time you try to make an argument.
	They'll regurgitate whatever buzzword that happens to be on their mind at the time, but they don't actually think about what you're saying.
	All they're thinking about is what they're going to say next.
	And they never actually receive any information that you're giving them.
	The third type of people are the ones that will actually listen to what you say.
	They'll digest it.
	They'll come up with their own opinions and they'll have a conversation with you.
	It's these people that are the thinkers that are actually, you know, the minority in the population.
	These are also your leaders and these are also where you get your status or your in-depth status, your sadists from this category.
	So, you're dealing with a minority of anarchists and a minority of sadists and there's sort of like this battle to win over the leadership of these other two people that are pretty much going to follow.
	They want to be more popular.
	They are the people that are following their incentive rather than actually putting any thought into it.
	I mean, historically speaking, the biggest changes of our morality Happened by a minority of around 33% of the population.
	You know, when slavery was ended, most people were almost neutral to the whole thing.
	And you had a minority that was for and a minority that was against.
	But you still had this huge moral shift happen when you had maybe 33% of the population...
	You know, leading the charge.
	And so, whereas I know that there are sadists, and there are going to still be sadists in a free society, but that's where, you know, your reputation will follow you and your DROs, etc., will keep them at bay.
	But I'm thinking, rather than focusing so much that it has to be multi-generational because these people are out there, it should be instead, okay, these people are out there, how do we solve that problem?
	But how do we give the incentive to the other two group of people to have them move with us?
	Because they're going to be our customers.
	They're going to be the ones purchasing the products of the leaders in the next stage of evolution.
	And with the governments all around the world being on such a precipice of, I don't want to say collapse, because I don't really think that's going to happen, but there's going to be a transition moving so soon.
	And all we need is a strong minority, I guess, to take some leadership and to be kind of inventive and to be those entrepreneurs to come up with those systems that will help alleviate the stress that the failing government is going to put on the population, such as, say, a rise in Bitcoin or something like that, as our fiat money system begins to degrade.
	And so you have a shift then from the fiat money system to the mainstream starting to use something like Bitcoin.
	And you have these little pockets in the economy that may start to emerge to help alleviate.
	And that will give these people that maybe don't think or who are not philosophers, who aren't sadists either, move over just because their money lasts longer.
	They have no idea why it works or why the dollar is failing.
	It's probably some asshole libertarian that caused the whole thing, but they don't realize that.
	But they still will move over if the incentives are there.
	Yeah, and of course the economy is significantly anti- or astatist already, as you're probably aware.
	Between a quarter and a third of the economy is in the black or gray market, right?
	I mean, so there's a huge majority.
	If you only look at the media or sort of the official statistics, then you miss most of the interesting stuff, right, that's going on with the economy.
	And so, yeah, a lot of people.
	And, of course, the government is doing us nothing but favors.
	The one thing that's interesting about the government is it's continually spiraling from agnosticism to the Reformation to the New Testament to the Old Testament.
	It's continually getting more brutal and worse.
	The evolution of religion is away from the sort of intense genocidal brutality of the Old Testament towards more nuanced and reasonable view of life.
	The government has just fallen down a huge well to the Old Testament.
	And, you know, we're definitely in the land of Methuselah now, these days, right?
	With this NSA spying and Benghazi and all of these scandals, even the LIBOR rate-fixing scandal.
	You know, it's a complete mess.
	And so the government is just doing us nothing but favors in terms of providing more and more empirical evidence for that which we have already predicted for many, many years.
	So, from that standpoint, I agree with you that, you know, time is on our side.
	But, you know, we have to try and get as much information out there so the correct diagnosis of the problems is there.
	People don't say, well, we failed because we didn't have enough government, you know, which is what the media wants.
	The media is fundamentally hooked into the power of the state.
	CNN lost 50% of their viewers, what, in 2010, 2011?
	50% CNN lost.
	I mean...
	Yeah, they're tied into the state and they're considered the mainstream media, but when you have CNN losing 50% of their viewers in one year, you not only have us that is trying to get the word out.
	But you have the government.
	See, I used to be in marketing, right?
	And the two things that make advertising work is how many people see the message and what that message says.
	Well, traditionally we've had TV and maybe radio.
	So you've got two sources.
	Well, newspaper, I guess you could throw that in there.
	But it's all owned by the same, you know, five companies.
	So you've got very few sources where you can put your message and everybody will see it.
	Well, now you've got I mean, just with the internet, you are fracturing that central hub for all of their propaganda.
	And with the newer generation just being stuck on YouTube and the internet, there is not one, two, three places where you can put a message and have everybody see it.
	So not only do you have people that maybe aren't hearing the message because the message of liberty cannot blanket every TV and radio channel Like the status propaganda, but you now have the status having the same problem as the libertarians in trying to get a message out.
	And so then you don't have to deal with so much brainwashing from the masses after just a couple of years.
	And so I think this whole transition can be nothing but inevitable because the internet is in a state of anarchy.
	Yeah, it's the Reformation, right?
	Yeah, when everybody's getting their education from the Internet.
	You can actually get facts into the hands of the people.
	It's like when Martin Luther translated the Bible into the vernacular and people actually got to read the text rather than hearing idiots drone on about it and funny hats in Latin, which they couldn't understand, of course.
	I mean, so, yeah, the internet is definitely the digital Gutenberg of the 21st century.
	And it's wonderful.
	It is wonderful to see the vampiric death throes of the mainstream media.
	It is delightful.
	I mean, I just wish I could get enough villagers together to drive a metaphorical state through its black, cancerous, empty heart.
	I don't give a dime to the mainstream media.
	If I happen to be watching TV, I'd actually get up and walk out during the commercials.
	I know that nobody can tell, but I don't want to even see the commercials that these guys are running.
	Yeah, the mainstream media is a blood-soaked, squid-armed vampire fastened on the jugular, particularly the young and the unborn.
	And so, I mean, every now and then I'll go to the New York Times website, you know, hold my nose...
	Take one of my leftover anti-nautia pills from chemo and just grip my teeth and go in and it's just so creepy.
	It is like the uncle squid fingers fester, you know, who all the kids stay away from.
	It is just constantly slithering into people's ears and laying the fly eggs of future infestation of brain deadening.
	I mean, it's absolutely wretched.
	They have nothing to do with the mainstream media.
	I don't return their calls.
	I don't have anything to do with the mainstream media.
	They are just completely vile.
	They are the most skilled verbal abusers that the world has ever known and ever seen because they've all risen to the ranks of all of that.
	And they are almost – I mean, with the exception of Fox News, to some degree, they are all relentlessly pro-big government.
	I mean, Fox News, like all the Republicans, are – they dislike welfare to the poor.
	They love welfare to the rich and military-connected.
	But it is – yeah, I mean watching them die is one of the great roadside attractions of this late Roman Empire.
	And it is just – I just wish they were – I wish the lions took even a little bit more time to chew them apart.
	But their irrelevance and their bias and their state-sucking, court-toadying manipulations are not long for this world.
	And what a delicious spectacle they are.
	That is one of the true joys of living in the 21st century, is watching this bloody, child-eating ghost finally get its exorcism from reality.
	Well, see, that's another thing.
	I haven't had cable in years and I remember I used to watch it all the time.
	And now when I see mainstream news, they look so creepy.
	They don't have any lines on their face.
	They can't show any emotion and their eyes are just like almost completely dead.
	And their manipulation of language is so absolutely apparent.
	I have no idea how anybody can actually watch and listen and believe what they're seeing.
	And so, it's not hard for me to believe that they're losing viewers like crazy, but remind me, was it you, because I read so many different books, I'm not sure, was it you that said that, historically speaking, there's been a pendulum that either rocks the way of the government, where the population almost worships the government, such as like in communism, where they were atheists but believed the government would save them, or it rocks back the other way in favor of religion when the government fails?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, we're all taught that we're bad and authorities need to restrain us.
	Right.
	I mean, so that's either original sin or, you know, just being disobedient to our parents, our priests, and our teachers when we're children.
	So we're all bad, basically, and we need some external authority to restrain us.
	And if people give up the government, then they tend to double down on religion.
	And if they give up on religion, they tend to double down on the government because until it's emotionally dealt with, That paradigm remains in full emotional force, which means it cannot be escaped.
	It will manifest itself somewhere unless it's really confronted and dealt with, which means confronting history, parenting, childhood, and all that kind of stuff that I focus on.
	The reason I do that is that I don't want to push people away from the government straight into the arms of the goblin ghosts of religion.
	I mean, that's not the point.
	And I'm fully aware that if I drive people away from the government, then they're most likely to end up susceptible to religion.
	And if I drive people away from religion, they're most likely to end up susceptible to the government, unless the personal history of subjugation exists.
	And the endless insults of being told that you're bad and need to be forcibly restrained as a child, like you're some sort of feral animal who has to be domesticated.
	I mean, what an insult.
	We've all experienced these bitter insults as children, you know, that we're wrong or bad or instincts of wrong or bad.
	And the adults, with all full exasperation of exhausted authority, must whack us into shape, must yell us into shape, must coerce and confine us into shape so we can fit into this wonderful structure of a war-torn and debt-ridden society.
	And it's just funny how my own perceptions of things have just changed over the last two, three years.
	Because I used to think of spanking as being necessary and raising kids.
	And I, like you said before, I recoiled from it when I actually learned what was going on.
	You learn the science, right?
	And it opens your heart to empathy that you can't do it, right?
	And good for you.
	Wow.
	Congratulations.
	Yeah, I mean, my husband and I have been thinking about having kids, and we're going to do unschooling.
	One or both of us will be home all the time with that child, and it's going to be amazing, let me tell you.
	But in today's world, though, I do not see how it would be possible for that pendulum to go toward religion.
	When kids start off at a very young age, you know, with access to a computer, with access to this window.
	I mean, my dad told me one time, and it did, it stuck and sunk in.
	With this computer, with the internet, you never have to have a question go unanswered.
	question, you can find the answer or you can find what it takes to get the answer because it really is a collection of all human knowledge because, you know, religion doesn't have some big website out there where you can go and learn more about it.
	They have websites, but I couldn't even name one off the top of my head because it's just not that popular and people don't just flock to the internet to learn more about religion.
	They go to some book.
	But unfortunately, the paradigm continues, right?
	I mean, up here in Canada, eh?
	How do they name it?
	Well, you need a C, eh?
	And a N, A, and then a D, eh?
	Hey, Canada!
	But here, you know, the elder generation is 66% religious, the middle generation is 50% religious, the younger generation is 33% religious, And religiosity, atheism is the fastest growing belief system in the world.
	And unfortunately though, as is fully predicted by the theory, as atheism grows, so does statism.
	Because until the emotional trauma of being insulted and told you're bad and need to be subjugated by authority, until that emotional trauma and those endless insults of childhood are emotionally processed and dealt with, which is intensely inconvenient to the elder generation, and therefore suppressed and attacked at all costs, Well, you're just going to trade in a government for a god, and then a god for a government, and a government for a god, and a god for a government, over and over again.
	Until we deal with the trauma and realize that we were unjustly treated, that there was nothing wrong with us as children, and that the only reason we were subjugated was because the society was sick and evil, and therefore our skepticism towards that society and towards our elders was entirely justified.
	But they did not want to change society, so instead they attacked children, and that is the cowardice of the elder generation, which they have to stand to account for.
	Sorry, but that's the way it is.
	Well, but any time that the pendulum swings back toward religion, historically there's always been some type of a book burning or a murdering of the intellectuals or something to that effect.
	But what do you do when you have...
	But there are still book burnings.
	No, there are still book burnings.
	I mean, they're more metaphorical.
	Right.
	And this is what's called progress in a state of society that now they'll just go and attack people's reputation rather than actual burn them at the stake.
	So there is an advantage in that they simply use social pressure, which again is another proof of anarchy.
	But I remember reading, gosh, 20 years ago – I'm just reading a book by Charles Murray at the moment about the sort of end of the middle class in America.
	And Charles Murray is a fine scholar and a committed libertarian.
	And he wrote a book 20 years ago called The Bell Curve, which talked about the possibility of IQ differences in the races and so on.
	And, you know, he's just attacked.
	So this kind of stuff still goes on.
	There was the dean of some college, Harvard or something, who suggested that there may be some innate differences between men and women, which would account for the lack of proportional representation in the STEM, right?
	Science, technology, engineering, and science.
	Medicine, maybe?
	I can't remember what the last one was, but in sort of the hard sciences, and, you know, he just put forward it as a possibility, and, you know, howls and goblins, and he had got fired, and all that kind of stuff, and it's, I mean, this kind of stuff, the lack of capacity for sort of honest,
	open intellectual curiosity and debate, we still get sort of the quote, the book burnings, it's just that, I mean, there was no official book burning of Atlas Shrugged, but, you know, if you try to bring It's philosophy and prophecies up in any sort of so-called civilized intellectual environment.
	They won't have any counter-arguments.
	They just throw her on the bonfires of eye-rolling and sneers.
	And that is what a pitiful confession of impotence that is.
	But still, there's a huge amount of censorship, particularly in universities, a massive amount.
	Of censorship that occurs.
	Because if you go with the prejudices of the left, which is pretty much what dominates academia, you don't have to prove anything.
	I mean, you can just take that for, oh, the workers are oppressed.
	Okay.
	A, right?
	You have to prove it.
	If you say the workers are not oppressed, then you've got to cite all of these authors that the professor has never read but has heard that they're bad authors or whatever, right?
	you know, it's like quoting Austrians, the Austrian economists or whatever about the minimum wage and so on, that you have to make a very rigorous case which the professor can just dismiss by quoting one of his left-wing friends.
	So there's this massive censorship.
	It's a bit of a softer censorship which actually makes it all the more dangerous.
	A hard censorship like an explicit "you can't bring Austrian economics" – you can repeal that.
	But the soft censorship of bigotry against reason or at least differing or dissenting opinions That soft bigotry is almost impossible to dislodge, particularly with tenure, right?
	So tenure was the idea that you can't get fired for having unpopular opinions, which was nonsense.
	I mean, I've never met a professor who has unpopular opinions, not here in Canada.
	But what it meant is that nobody with unpopular opinions ever gets hired again.
	So that sort of soft censorship is still occurring.
	The books get kind of submerged and wrought.
	They don't have even the drama of a fiery exit.
	Well, and see, when I'm looking at a particular theory, I will go through not only what might make that theory valid based on evidence that I see, but for predictions, I take myself through, okay, how?
	Physically, how will this happen?
	Because there's somebody that has to be behind all of these actions in order for something to happen.
	And when it comes to book burnings or...
	Killing off of the intellectuals.
	The one thing that I come back to is that technology is almost like a language that is learned in the young, basically.
	I mean, kids learn language so fast, you should give a two-year-old a tablet and see what they can do with it.
	Oh, my God!
	Have you seen that?
	I mean there's a great video on the internet of a kid, a toddler trying to fix a magazine that she's not able to pinch and zoom.
	And it's like, why is the magazine broken?
	I'd love to see that.
	I'll look that up.
	But I mean it's amazing how quickly kids can actually learn to read, learn mathematics and learn all kinds of stuff just on these tablets when they're young because they can pick it up and learn it so fast.
	So that unless you actually get rid of this This magic box of the collection of all human knowledge, unless you somehow yank the internet, which is just such an integral part of our whole society, how things physically work anymore.
	I don't see how that pendulum can go back to religion when such young kids have access to this knowledge.
	And they don't have, like, when I was growing up, What the teacher told me was the truth.
	And that's all there was to it.
	I had one source of information, and that was authority.
	Nowadays, when you go to a computer, instead of sitting back and receiving input, receiving knowledge, you have to go and seek out knowledge.
	You don't just sit there and receive anymore.
	When that pendulum goes to swing back to religion, you're basically saying that children will seek out religion in this wealth of knowledge of just human information, human knowledge.
	And I don't really see how that could happen because you don't just look at the internet and decide what is true and what is false because an authority tells you.
	You actually have to figure it out.
	Is this fact or is this fiction?
	Because since you are seeking out the knowledge and the information, this is one of those things learned at a young age now, today, that I had to learn in college for myself.
	And I think we cannot underestimate that ability or that skill that these kids are learning at age 2, 3 to go and collect their information rather than just sit back and receive it from some authority.
	I mean, you can see some of the resurgence as communism failed in the Soviet Union.
	You saw its intense resurgence of religion.
	I remember seeing Vladimir Putin interviewed on 60 Minutes.
	I think it was Steve Croft, one of their interviewers.
	And at the end, Vladimir Putin said, you know, God bless you kind of thing.
	And the guy was like, this coming from a communist?
	And Putin smiled like, I don't care.
	I'm in power.
	I mean, I could say...
	You know, I bear Krishna on a weekly basis.
	It doesn't matter.
	I mean, he was amazed.
	Oh, my God, a communist is saying God bless you.
	It's like, no, he's just saying stuff because he's in power.
	And, you know, if he finds it amusing to tweak with your prejudices this way, he'll do it.
	Anyway, listen, I'm sorry.
	I've got to move on to the next caller.
	But thank you so much for calling in.
	Very interesting ideas.
	And I certainly welcome the marketing input to the movement.
	It's really quite essential.
	So thank you so much for your time.
	Thanks for talking to me, Stephan.
	You have a good day.
	My pleasure.
	All right, Omar, you're up next.
	Hello, hello.
	Hi, Stefan.
	How are you?
	I'm well.
	How are you doing?
	Very good.
	First of all, well, sorry in advance because I'm not an English speaker.
	I'm in Spanish, and I'm going to have a hard time trying to express myself.
	Would you rather we switch to Spanish?
	No, no, no.
	Good, good, because that was a total bluff on my part, so please go on.
	Olé!
	All right.
	I'm afraid all the Spanish I learned was from Mighty Mouse, so I'm afraid I don't...
	Oh, no.
	Wait.
	Wait.
	Not Mighty Mouse.
	No, don't worry.
	Speedy Gonzales.
	That's the one.
	Speedy Gonzales.
	Anyway, go on.
	Okay.
	And first of all, I have no words to thank you.
	To you, to your show, the work you do, and the light you have bring over my search of truth in my life.
	And I mean, I have no words.
	So, it's a lot.
	Well, thank you.
	I hugely appreciate that.
	That's very kind.
	Thank you.
	Okay.
	Well, okay.
	The thing is that I noticed that I have...
	Yeah.
	Well, the thing is that I have taken choices in my life.
	To increase my freedom.
	But what is happening is that the more freedom I have, the more is my guilt when I do something wrong.
	And given that many of the paths surrounding me are closed because I live in a very moral society, I feel paralyzed.
	But what I notice is that most people, when they have this problem, what they do to overcome it, It's that they modify the factors that determine the avoidability of their actions, and they can go forward doing immoral things easier than me.
	For example, they began to engage in a lot of economical compromises.
	So, when they have to choose to lie, they can justify it.
	But I can't, because I have made a lot of choices that give me the freedom to go to another solution, and I feel really frustrated.
	Yes.
	Look, I mean, people who lie to themselves seem to get away with a lot.
	Yeah, you know, absolutely.
	You know, guys who weigh 300 pounds can look in the mirror and say, I look great.
	And they can just keep eating more, right?
	People who are alcoholics can say, I don't have a problem with alcohol.
	You know, I'm a social drinker.
	I enjoy a few drinks.
	What's wrong with that?
	You know, I work hard.
	I relax at the end of the day with a beer or two.
	Where's the harm in that, right?
	I mean, people lie to themselves all the time.
	They lie to themselves about how they make their money and whether it's good or bad.
	They lie to themselves about their motives.
	They lie to other people about their goals.
	And so they lie to themselves.
	And a lot of times, that lying to themselves seems to produce some very enviable effects, right?
	I mean, Obama can jet off to Martha's Vineyard for a $17 million one-week vacation.
	He can go play golf with Tiger Woods.
	He can hang with Jay-Z and Beyonce and all these kinds of people.
	And I guess to some people, that looks like that's pretty cool.
	He goes to Berlin and gets 200,000 people and then only a few thousand people the next time he comes because they kind of see through the facade.
	But people who lie, they can kind of do well, and they can have lives of great influence and power and money and envy and this, that, and the other, for sure.
	Absolutely.
	Good riddance.
	They can lie to themselves.
	You can tell them the truth and they will usually continue to lie to themselves.
	It's not your job to get people to stop lying to themselves.
	I would suggest if you're having trouble at work, start your own company.
	I got sick and tired of amorality and immorality in the business world.
	It's just gross.
	And it's very tempting, but it's just kind of gross.
	And so it's one of the reasons why I ended up doing this show is at least I get to work for myself.
	And, you know, the only unethical thing I have to deal with in the hierarchy is my own bad decisions from time to time.
	And so you can become an entrepreneur and start your own gig.
	You can find some people that you trust and want to work with.
	You can maybe even find them through this show, through board.freedomainradio.com.
	And that would be my suggestion.
	But yeah, a lot of people lie to themselves for sure.
	And they will continue to lie to themselves.
	And being around people who lie all the time is constantly frustrating and annoying.
	It's like having a nagging back or shoulder pain.
	Because every time that you're with them, they're saying stuff that isn't true.
	It just gets exhausting to swim against the current of irrationality spewing out of their mouths after a while.
	I can't do it.
	I cannot be around people who lie to themselves and who lie to others.
	It doesn't mean that it's automatically terrible.
	We all will make mistakes and we'll even fool ourselves from time to time.
	But fundamentally, I just can't do it.
	It's too exhausting and it's too frustrating because I've got to bite my tongue the whole time.
	It's like being around status.
	I've got to bite my tongue the whole time.
	And I just got better things to do with my day than chew my own mouth appendage.
	So I would suggest don't go and work for other people, particularly the unenlightened.
	It's going to be frustrating and you're going to swim against the current all the time.
	And philosophy leads you to leadership no matter what.
	You cannot be a philosopher.
	And a follower for long.
	You just, you can't do it.
	And the people that I've known who've gotten involved in this conversation, they've either become leaders or they have left the conversation.
	Right?
	That's the deal.
	Philosophy will bring you to leadership or you must abandon philosophy.
	And so people who get into this conversation, into philosophy, They either will attain positions of independence and leadership or they will have to drop the conversation.
	So if you're at that crossroads where philosophy has led you to find working for amoral or immoral fools unbearable, which is exactly right.
	I mean, this isn't exactly what philosophy should do.
	Make you think for yourself and get out of the prejudices of the mainstream and see the matrix for what it is.
	So if you're at those crossroads, then you have to leap.
	To leadership or you have to let go of philosophy, if that makes any sense.
	I hope that helps.
	We have, I think, time for one more caller.
	I'm totally sure of what you said.
	I agree.
	I cannot go back.
	After you entered these things of philosophy, I cannot be turned back.
	But my problem is that I still have a personal problem.
	I feel paralyzed.
	I feel totally scared.
	Sure.
	I mean, that's called being an entrepreneur.
	I mean, if you're not afraid, you're not an entrepreneur, right?
	The fear, I think, is a very healthy part of that.
	Okay.
	See, I just want to be sure that maybe because of my language, you can misunderstand, but I am a huge fan of philosophy and ethics, and I cannot see my life without it.
	And just, I mean, the thing is that...
	I had a very traumatic child.
	I guess I live in a very violent country.
	I didn't know if you have something to say about how to deal with this depression that I feel completely smashed by the environment surrounding me.
	I don't know if you have some kind of suggestion.
	Well, I mean, certainly, and I'm incredibly sorry to hear about that with your history, but my suggestion is always that self-knowledge and therapy is the way to go to deal with that kind of trauma.
	You know, I say this not, you know, I had a great experience in therapy.
	It's what my wife does, but there is science behind it.
	You know, science seems to indicate that competent talk therapy is the best way to To become happier if what's blocking you is trauma.
	So I'm incredibly sorry about your history from that standpoint, but the best thing to do, at least that I know of, from my own experience and from the science of the matter, I've got an interview with Gabriel Dishter on my channel regarding this very issue about the efficacy of talk therapy in promoting happiness.
	And so I would definitely suggest that that would be That would be the way to go.
	And I hope that you will try that.
	And, you know, there's workbooks that are out there by Nathaniel Brandon and John Bradshaw and other people who...
	They do a good job and they can get you started and make things more efficient in that realm.
	Does that help at all?
	Yeah, well, my problem is that I had a really hard time trying to find therapy.
	So I went to one and I noticed things that were not really...
	I mean, I noticed things that I didn't like.
	Sure, I understand that and you need to be very skeptical when it comes to finding a therapist.
	You need to be very skeptical.
	You are placing your heart and your soul, for want of a better word, into someone else's hands.
	So you need to be skeptical, and if anything seems amiss, I would definitely find a therapist that you work with.
	I didn't go with the first therapist that I started with.
	I think the guy almost fell asleep, and I pretty much believe he was doodling a duck.
	So he was not the guy for me.
	So it's fine.
	But that's like, oh, my first date didn't go well, so I'm never going to date again.
	Just ask someone else that.
	Go talk to another therapist.
	And I've got a podcast, which at least my thoughts on finding a good therapist.
	So, you know, just try again.
	And there's lots of people who believe and do therapy over the internet, which seems to have some good efficacy.
	So you're not limited to those who are in your neighborhood.
	So I would recommend to just keep looking.
	Yeah, I already read a book from Nathaniel Brandon, the one that you mostly recommend, The Psychological Health Team, and it helps a lot, but it's really, really, really hard.
	It's really hard.
	I mean, I have been in this process of pushing myself to remember my childhood.
	I had a lot of really vivid dreams, and I am trying to do my best to understand what my subconscious is telling me, It's really, really hard.
	It is.
	I'm sorry that you're in that position at all.
	I really am.
	The only consolation that I can give you is that if you had been raised better or well, then you would be much more likely somebody who would fit into our existing society, which may not be the best thing in the world in the long run.
	That's the only consolation that I can provide.
	To give you an idea, For example, when I listen to you, that you have your anti-spanking campaign, and sometimes I laugh because in this country, the children that are spanked is lucky.
	I mean, that one is lucky because people hate children.
	I mean, I don't know anyone that has gone to jail or even the children, or at least they killed.
	I mean, here, that's the point.
	To hear the children and not only spanking, It's really heart beating, and most of the people I know have been through that.
	And this is a really poor country, and that's why we are so poor, because people are struggling.
	I have been in this process of listening to all your podcasts, and most of my relationship died.
	The only people that left is my wife and my daughter.
	Your wife and your wife?
	Yeah.
	And I'm meeting a new guy that was the one that introduced me to Freedom Made Radio, and I'm trying to build a relationship with him.
	But it's really, really hard.
	I mean, it's really hard.
	Sometimes I feel completely hopeless, but I don't have the choice to drop down, to drop philosophy.
	I mean, I'm in a position, I don't know if that's wrong, if there is something wrong with me for thinking this, but if I cannot believe in the way I want to, I don't want to live.
	I'm in this position.
	Well, look, I mean, there are basically two types of people in terms of this category.
	There are people who conform to others and there are people who conform to reason.
	And the people who conform to others, I mean, they live their life, they take their little social comforts, they have their barbecues and they talk about the weather and sports and they vanish from this world Like rain into a puddle.
	They may change its size somewhat by having children, but they vanish from the world, leaving barely even an imprint in the minds of those around them.
	Because conformism is invisibility to the future.
	Those who conform to the past are invisible to the future.
	And those who conform to reason, well, we change the world.
	And all the benefits that people claim to love...
	You know, everybody who say against slavery or the subjugation of women or racism or whatever, I mean, they're all conformists that way and they would be pro-slavery and they would be for the subjugation of women and they would be pro-racism if they'd been born a couple of hundred years ago.
	I mean, they're just corks floating on the water.
	And all of the opinions that they hold that we would consider virtuous They only get to hold because courageous people fought to change social thinking so that they could now blindly conform to something a little bit more virtuous, but they certainly would have blindly conformed to whatever evils had come their way in the past.
	So if you're not one of the people who goes along, who just simply swims with the current, which is barely swimming at all, and if you're not somebody who's satisfied with the tiny, petty little social advantages of having people over for Thanksgiving dinner to talk about nothing, well, that's tough.
	But...
	You know, I promise you if you were to try to go back and fit into that world, it would revolt you.
	It would repulse you.
	There's no turning back from reason, really.
	So that would be my suggestion.
	You can look at the difficulties of it, but I would also look at the benefits of it as well.
	You can't love and be a conformist at the same time, right?
	You can't have virtue and the happiness of virtue and be a conformist at the same time.
	And you also can't have any meaningful conversations with anyone and be a conformist at the same time.
	So you would live your life with the petty, empty social satisfactions of talking about nothing and hitting balls around and cheering with the crowd and all that kind of crap.
	And yes, there would be people around your dinner table, but they would be people without anything between their ears.
	Dinner with the zombie horde is not my definition of a fun life.
	So I would focus on the positives that how much virtue has brought you closer to your wife.
	I thought you may have mentioned a kid in there, but look at the positives that come out of it.
	I mean, you leave behind the dead and you join the ranks of the living.
	How is that really to be regretted in any fundamental way?
	Yeah.
	I mean, well, the last of these...
	If you ever doubt yourself, just go back and dine with the dead and see how it is.
	Yeah, it's horrible.
	It's horrible.
	Yeah, it's eye-rollingly.
	I mean, my toes curl with boredom.
	And I just can't do it.
	I'd rather have, you know, 10 minutes conversation with my wife or my daughter or my friends than, you know, a long weekend with people whose emptiness and fear causes them to shy away from anything that has any substance.
	Anyway, listen, I'm sorry.
	I've got to move on to one more caller before the end of the show.
	Thank you so much.
	I wish you the best.
	Please, of course, call in if there's anything else that I can help you with.
	But it's, you know, as I've mentioned, it's crossing a desert to get to an oasis.
	And when you look back, you realize that there was no oasis you came from.
	It was all desert.
	So I hope that helps.
	Okay.
	Thanks a lot.
	You're welcome.
	All right.
	Uno von Morio.
	All right, Richard.
	Richard, your next caller.
	Dick!
	Hey, how's it going?
	Good, haven't said that all show.
	How are you doing, my friend?
	Just fine.
	I really appreciate you taking the call, especially since it's close to the end of the show anyways.
	No problem, just speak fast.
	No, I'm kidding.
	Go ahead.
	Well, to be real honest, to get into this, I feel this tension between relying on empirical information and the realization that I can't know everything.
	Let me restate this.
	I was listening, I was thinking about your e-book, Against the Gods, and And thinking over the scientific method, experimentation, theory, faith, and risk.
	And I have a couple questions related to that.
	Alright.
	Can a strong reliance on empiricism hinder my ability to search for new knowledge?
	And put another way, can I go too far relying upon empirical evidence that I limit my freedom to explore alternatives to push my knowledge beyond today's truth so as to expand the empirical?
	Right.
	Can you give me an example?
	Well, it's kind of like if you're looking for something you don't know, experimentation is a central part of the scientific method, for example.
	And you can't know what you're going to find out.
	Otherwise, what's the point of the experiment if you already know it?
	So you have to put aside what you already know To make room for what you don't know in many cases.
	Sure.
	Does that make sense?
	Right.
	So, I mean, empiricism isn't going to usually tell you what to test for.
	That's right.
	You have to have...
	I mean, there's an infinite number of experiments you can do in the world.
	You know, how fast does tea dry when there are four ants in it, right?
	You could do an infinite number of empirical experiments, but empiricism is not going to teach you what is worth exploring, right?
	Yes.
	And it's...
	The empiricism definitely does not...
	Theory is not based on empiricism.
	To develop a theory, you might have to use some empirical information, but the theory itself is exploring the unknown.
	It's not empirical, it's a theory.
	No, no, sorry, no, but empiricism is what gives rise to reason.
	Yes.
	So, empiricism does breed reason.
	In other words, if matter behaved randomly, we wouldn't be alive or we wouldn't have a sense of reason.
	So, empiricism gives rise to reason, and then reason creates hypotheses which then can be further tested against empirical evidence.
	But to me, at least, empiricism is the root of everything.
	And that's in which way we know that reason is validated.
	Reason is validated relative to sense data.
	Reason is not validated relative to dreams you have at night.
	You know, or whatever it is, right?
	Like, I saw the movie Elysium last night, because, you know, sometimes I just have to take the art bullet for the community.
	And so, Matt Davis' character gets six inches of steel straight into the belly, right?
	And he's also, anyway, this is, you know, and he's, sorry, spoiler, spoiler!
	And it doesn't really, the good news is it doesn't change the movie in any way.
	And then he goes on to have these spectacular combat fights, like literally the next day.
	When, of course, the reality is he wouldn't be able to get out of bed for weeks with that kind of belly wound.
	But it's okay because his girlfriend put a bandage on it.
	So, I mean, this is just lunatic, right?
	That would not empirically be possible.
	I mean, his acid would be leaking into his intestines.
	I mean, it would just be a slow death, not a fast set of ninja moves he could pull out.
	I don't care what kind of exoskeleton he's wearing.
	That ain't going to happen, right?
	So, you can't, you know, rationally apply empirical testing to movies, you know, particularly fantasy movies like this aimed at 12-year-olds who, you know, stepping up from Ninja Turtles to something else with an exoskeleton.
	And so, I agree with you.
	I mean, empiricism isn't going to tell you what interests you or what is valuable or what is worthwhile, right?
	To test.
	Like price will tell you something to do with that, right?
	Price or profitability will tell you where to invest or what business opportunities there are and so on and what would be.
	But empiricism is passive.
	It doesn't do anything until you poke it.
	So it's not going to tell you.
	Like price is active, right?
	Price is a huge amount of information that's active and informs you because it's based upon proactive human choices.
	But empiricism is just a philosophy that says, okay, if you have a theory, then test it against evidence.
	But it doesn't tell you what theory you should have or what's a worthwhile or valuable theory or how to spend your life or anything like that.
	Exactly.
	Yes, I understand that.
	I guess, you know, it's like I'm saying, it's kind of puzzling to kind of figure this out because I'm very much an engineering kind of mindset kind of person and I can...
	When I listen to Against the Gods, which I came from a very, very religious background, which I've totally divorced myself from for many years now, and when you make the claim that, well, when the opponents would make the claim that, you know, God can't exist in some other dimension, and you refute that by saying, well, that's not provable, so it can't possibly be true, and I see that logic.
	It makes 100% sense to me.
	I don't dispute it whatsoever.
	But It's kind of like, through a series of podcasts, and that being a book that I read that you published, it seems like, and maybe it's just a misperception on my part, but it seems like oftentimes you take that empirical approach and go so far with it that you can't explore other possibilities, even if those possibilities might ultimately be proven false, exploring them sometimes has value.
	Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute here.
	Are you telling me that the guy who does dream analysis is not able to explore other possibilities that might not be empirical?
	I mean, come on!
	You show me another libertarian show where they're happy to chat about dreams and all that kind of stuff, right?
	And the value of all of that, or to explore the metaphors in art and so on.
	I mean, I think that the empirical evidence is that I go beyond empirical evidence in pursuit of expanding self-knowledge.
	You've got a very good point there, and I agree with you about that, no doubt.
	It's an overall tendency that I've picked up on, so I guess maybe what you're pointing out to me is my perception is a little bit warped.
	I'm focusing on something that's not overall true in your case, but it's just a tendency.
	No, no.
	I would imagine, though, that empiricism and imagination are not synonymous, right?
	Creativity, imagination, and so on.
	To imagine things that are not It's not empirical, right?
	I mean, there's no empiricism that's going to give you the plot of the matrix.
	That is an exercise in imagination.
	And there is also a need to exercise logic, right?
	There is a logic to the matrix, you know, oh, I need to learn to fly a helicopter.
	Well, I'll just download that and therefore I can, right?
	Not just, oh, I studied that some time ago and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	I'll give you an example.
	In the Matrix, the combat makes sense because he downloads martial arts skills into his brain and then he can do martial arts.
	In Elysium, this guy who's a factory worker and an ex-car thief goes up against military men with 20 years training and experience and wins.
	I mean, that's ridiculous.
	That's like taking someone who's never seen a video game and putting them up against Fatality or some of the best video game players in the world and having them win.
	Like, it just, combat, military combat is highly skilled and, you know, obviously 20 years experience is going to We're good to go.
	The logic is ridiculous.
	The logic of the whole damn film is ridiculous, which I'll get into another time.
	That's a shame.
	Versus The Matrix, which has a logic to it.
	Creativity allows you to envision things that are not.
	As a guy who's written novels and poems and plays and so on, I think it's a great thing to do.
	It's a very powerful and important thing to do because we learn through narrative as well as through reason.
	I mean, our lives fundamentally revolve around narrative, not about reason and evidence.
	If it was reason and evidence, then all our lives would be the same.
	But they're not, because we have different tastes and preferences and abilities and drives and desires and all of that, which is not empiricism.
	Like, there's no fact in the world that says you should be an astronaut rather than an accountant or vice versa, right?
	There's no fact out there that tells you you should do that.
	Now, there's empirical evidence.
	You can say, well, this Neil Armstrong obviously preferred to be An astronaut and my accountant prefer to be an accountant.
	We can sort of figure that out.
	But there's nothing ahead of time that says what they should or shouldn't do.
	And so I think if you feel that empiricism robs you of creativity and imagination and desires and love and preference and so on, none of which you can really derive from empiricism Principles, yes.
	The actual experience, no.
	Then maybe you're looking to still find some of the emotional resonance of religiosity in the sort of empty, scraped-free-of-meaning universe of empiricism.
	Maybe so.
	Maybe I feel that the empiricism is so cut and dry that...
	It does rob me of some of those exploratory creativity kinds of things, but I really want to be grounded in it because I think that's really the only way that you can ferret out what reality is, especially when you're doing investigative research.
	It's important to be grounded very well in the empirical evidence and empirical methodologies.
	Yeah, let me give you a sort of tiny example, right?
	I think children are incredible and I've always just really delighted in the company of children and I think that children have a huge amount to teach us about reality and reason and independent thought and critical thinking and all these kinds of great stuff.
	Some of the greatest philosophical questions I have ever asked in this show came directly out of my experience of working with and being around kids.
	Now, there's nothing empirical that says, you know, I should love kids.
	But nonetheless, I do.
	And the empirical evidence is that I work very hard to improve the conditions of children around the world as best I can by promoting peace, reasoning.
	But why am I pursuing that rather than classifying the various species of boll weevil that show up in the South?
	Well, I think there's good reasons for it.
	Sure, you have a passion for the children.
	You have a passion for seeking truth and helping the well-being of others.
	Yes, but I could seek the well-being of others.
	First of all, I mean, I don't think that's necessary.
	I mean, lots of people do great good in the world, not because they are seeking the well-being of others, but because they're seeking to make a lot of money, and the way that they do that is by, you know, so I don't care if somebody's profit motive is to make money or to, you know, if it's some altruistic thing.
	I mean, if they end up Profit, of course, is a great way of serving the well-being of others and their perceived well-being.
	There's a market for junk food, which is not great for people, but it certainly satisfies their well-being in the moment.
	Creativity is the core and your passion drives that.
	It's very clear to me from listening to you as much as I have that you really are driven by your passion.
	And that comes out.
	It's very obvious.
	And anybody that pushes that down and does not let that be expressed, I think, is doing themselves a disservice and humanity a disservice for not allowing humanity to actually get the benefit of that passion.
	Yeah, but I think people who try to act without passion, they're like pedaling a bike with the chain off.
	It's a lot of energy, but you go nowhere.
	I mean, the passion is something that is sustainable.
	And if you have a good narrative for your passion, so much the better.
	So, I mean, I have a narrative.
	A narrative to me doesn't mean it's false.
	It just means a connection.
	That you can't derive directly from mere empiricism, right?
	So there are lots of warlike people in the world who like child abuse because it produces soldiers, it produces combat, it produces dysfunction that they can fight with and so on, right?
	There's nothing in empiricism that will tell you that child abuse is bad.
	You also mentioned in a previous call, you mentioned about the gut.
	You made some statement about the gut kind of It's something that we need to be in tune to.
	It's a real thing.
	There's intelligence on our gut.
	And I agree with that 100%.
	And as an engineer, in an engineering mindset, my gut has me pursue things that might not, you know, they're not mainstream.
	They're very much kind of on the fringe.
	And many people will say that's crazy.
	You know, pure science, empirical science, what we know is truth, would falsify that avenue of pursuit.
	And yet my gut tells me something else.
	And so I don't want to get rid of those pursuits.
	I mean, I feel very driven to move in those directions, but I have to battle against the scientific status quo.
	This is how it should be done, and you should ignore this other evidence.
	You should ignore what you're thinking here because it just doesn't fit with the existing reality.
	Well, that's how you create new knowledge.
	You create new knowledge by pushing that limit.
	Yes, but you see, we see science...
	Like the view from behind the engine, like the afterburner and the contrary.
	We see science after the theory has gone through the hypothesis and the testing and the validation phase, and then it only really gets to the public when it's confirmed.
	So what we do is we see the empirical side of science after it has been validated by the scientific community.
	And so science looks very dry and very abstract and very, you know, pocket protectors and white coats and unemotional and so on, right?
	But that's not the heart of science as far as I understand it.
	And many scientists have talked about this.
	Einstein himself said that Creativity is more important than mere science.
	And, you know, I mean, if you take the apocryphal story of Newton discovering theories of gravity and so on in the Principia, I think it was, because an apple fell on his head, right?
	And if you look at the creativity of certain scientists, such as Galileo and so on, who did more than just...
	The creative aspect of science is incredibly important and the amount of scientific revelations that have come out of dreams and inspiration and so on is huge.
	I mean if you look at Newton, he himself was involved in some truly crazy shit.
	I mean he was in some really nutty stuff but he had incredible inspiration and I think it's pretty much impossible to have Science or even entrepreneurship without inspiration.
	Because inspiration, everything that comes through science and everything that generates demand through Say's Law and economics is something new.
	And something new has to come out through inspiration, and inspiration is not an empirical process.
	Inspiration is a process of spontaneous generation within the mind.
	Every song that is written is a new song, hopefully, unless you happen to be a bad luck man at work songwriter.
	So what I'm hearing here then is there is a very important role for non-empirical elements to the scientific process.
	Oh, absolutely.
	I mean, don't you think that engineers, like the greatest engineers and architects, are inspired?
	Yeah.
	Isn't that really the difference?
	To me, you know, like there's very specific mechanics To making music, right?
	You've got to go to the studio and you've got to keep practicing and you've got to keep trying.
	And it's really...
	I was just talking to my accountant as a musician as well.
	And he was just saying like, oh my God, we're in the studio.
	And it's like, oh my God, we've got to do this guitar solo like 20 times until we get it right.
	And they spent six weeks on the guitar dubs for Killer Queen.
	I think when they were doing Put Out the Fire, Brian May just could not get the guitar solo right after like a day of trying.
	And he finally went out and had some drinks, came back, and he did it fine.
	So, you know, there's some very annoying, boring, dull mechanics to the production of music.
	But it has to come from inspiration.
	You have to sit down and create something new that wasn't there before.
	By the way, I've got to say that you Canadians have some fantastic musicians.
	I love Rush and Queen and the Guess Who and all kinds of other musicians that have come out of Canada.
	That's great to hear.
	Well, lovely, though, it would be to take credit for Queen, even collectively, which wouldn't make much sense.
	But no, unfortunately, they come from England and Zanzibar.
	Farouk Bulsara, Freddie Mercury, came originally from Zanzibar and was a Zoroastrian.
	Anyways, a girl I dated actually knew the family.
	Anyway, it doesn't matter.
	So the reality is that music requires a lot of practice, a lot of really boring technical skills.
	You've got to do your scales and all that kind of stuff.
	But we all know the blazing...
	Performances that can come out of true inspiration, which, you know, you can't just sort of will yourself to do it.
	You can't will yourself to do a great job or a poor job or anything like that.
	Obviously, everyone tries to do their great.
	But even Barack Obama, who's a consummate sophist and a great public speaker, has had his incredibly dull and dull debate performances and speeches and so on.
	And so the inspiration aspect is to me the essence of life.
	It's just your passions should be validated according to reason and evidence, but the whole reason you're validating anything is because of the passions to begin with.
	Yes, yes.
	So that's really helpful, Stefan.
	I really appreciate that.
	And just to make sure I'm clear, with regard to My sense of having kind of empiricism on one end of the scale and testing and non-empirical experimentation and inspiration kind of on the other end, that they kind of pull each other.
	You know, there's a certain tension between them and that's what I'm still trying to grapple with and I think you've helped me kind of...
	Wait, wait, why is there a tension?
	I guess it just seems as though every time you try and look for something new, if you're too grounded and too focused on what already is, you're not free to explore the unknown.
	Oh, so like if you – yeah, I think it takes a long time to sit down and write music where you could write something original that's not just a rehash of something you've already heard.
	Yes.
	You know, like when I was younger, I tried writing music.
	I wrote a couple of songs and I'm like, boy, this really sounds like so-and-so or this really sounds like so-and-so.
	Yes, yes.
	And in terms of my thinking, you know, I spent 20 years at the feet of – Better philosophers than me, basically not coming up with a whole lot of original stuff at all, but just learning the ropes.
	And then, you know, I was able to, all in a rush it seemed, just start to be able to really think for myself and come up with some useful and creative...
	So it takes a lot of tutelage to become original.
	It takes a lot of, you know, you've got to play a lot of piano before you can do stuff other than chopsticks and scales and Moonlight Sonata and so on.
	Like so many other things in life, it amounts to finding the right balance, you know, the right balance between this tension that I'm feeling.
	So...
	Well, and look, I mean, so I create podcasts, I think, and I think, and I create, and I try to be spontaneous in my communication so that it sounds more like somebody's talking to you and thinking on the fly rather than reading a prepared statement or essay or something, right?
	So I try to follow my instincts around making jokes and making fun of myself and doing tangents to make it lively, but not so much that people forget the original point of what it is that I'm trying to say and all that.
	So I put a lot of work into making my shows accessible and interesting and entertaining, not using too much technical, philosophical language.
	Yet, at the same time, not dumbing it down to the point where I can't get any important ideas across and all that.
	So, all of that is a real balance.
	Now, I could say, well, I'm successful at doing that balance because I got the biggest philosophy show and the most downloads, at least to my knowledge, of sort of what's out there.
	And so the passion and the creativity produces something, and then the empiricism is, is it working?
	Does it interest people?
	Is it connecting with people?
	Do they want to listen to it?
	Do they want to share it?
	Does it stimulate their thinking?
	Does it hopefully at some point improve their lives?
	So the creativity is the creation of the podcast.
	Now, if nobody downloaded anything, that would be important empirical information about my success.
	You can feedback in and change things if you got that type of feedback.
	Now I could very easily, I mean if I wanted to get to a million dollars a month, that would be very easy for me.
	All I would have to do is profess that I had converted to Christianity.
	No, seriously.
	I mean, that would be—I mean, I would make an unbelievable fortune.
	You might be able to do that, but you would lose all the existing colors you have that have grown to know you as the person you are.
	Oh, yeah, absolutely.
	But there are more Christians than anarchist atheists in the world.
	Don't worry about that.
	It kind of goes back to the previous color, you know, in trying to be somebody or not.
	And I don't think you could live with that.
	No, no, no.
	Look, I'm not saying I'm going to do it.
	I know.
	But I'm saying that if I wanted to make a fortune and to be flown around the world to speak in front of congregations and to have, you know, whatever.
	I mean, as a fairly prominent atheist, if I converted, I mean, the Christians would slobber and drool and all that kind of stuff, right?
	And you know that I'm a good enough speaker that I could make a damn convincing case for the conversion.
	Absolutely.
	Right?
	And I would end up debating with atheists and doing a fine job.
	And that would make me a fortune and rise me to a kind of prominence that, if that were my goal, would be the most prominence and the most money I could get would be a conversion to Yes.
	One last thing before I go here, and that is, first of all, I just want to thank you so much for the caller, Lauren.
	The conversation with her was fantastic.
	I loved every second of that.
	I love the show when it goes along those lines.
	And then, please comment, if you will, and I'll end on this thing.
	I'm going to make a statement, and I want you to tell me what you think about this statement, because it may not be very good.
	To reject everything not proven is to reject the use of experimentation and therefore the scientific method.
	Yeah, to reject everything that is not proven is to reject everything new.
	And in fact, I would argue that to reject everything proven is to reject life, because tomorrow sure as shit isn't proven.
	I learned that this summer, right?
	That's for sure.
	You get diagnosed with cancer, and so you're all about, hey, you know, even tomorrow is not promised.
	So yes, tomorrow is not proven, my next breath is not proven.
	Everybody lives on faith to some degree or another, whether they're willing to admit it or not.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	Not faith.
	Not faith.
	No, because faith is the belief in the opposition to evidence.
	Now, if I said to you I am absolutely positive that I will be alive tomorrow, that would be an untrue statement.
	I cannot be absolutely positive I will be alive tomorrow.
	I could have an aneurysm.
	I could get hit by a bus or an asteroid or some weird stroke.
	I might have some hidden heart condition I don't know about or whatever, right?
	So I cannot say to you with a certainty and I do not say to myself with a certainty that I will be alive tomorrow.
	And yet, nonetheless, I don't live as if I'm going to die tomorrow, but I also accept that I may not be alive tomorrow.
	Certainly if I believed I was not going to be alive tomorrow, I'd be having a different kind of day.
	Well, what's the difference between faith and taking a risk?
	I mean, you don't know the outcome of a risk that you take.
	No, faith is claiming knowledge when you have neither evidence nor proof.
	Faith is to pretend to know things that you don't know.
	So you say, well, what is the difference between pretending to know things you don't know and taking a risk?
	Well, there's a big difference.
	Taking a risk by itself is saying, I don't know.
	The outcome.
	Oh, I have to look up that definition.
	You use the word risk, right?
	Maybe you're right.
	Maybe I have the whole idea of the whole definition of what faith is incorrect.
	Well, and I will recommend a book by my friend Peter Boghossian, who is a professor of philosophy who occasionally slums it with us amateurs.
	And he's got a book coming out.
	Oh, dear Lord, I should remember it.
	You can search Boghossian, B-O-G-H-O-S-S-I-A-N. And he's got a book coming out on Amazon.
	I think it's coming out in October or November of this year.
	And I would really, really recommend it.
	I was fortunate enough to read it early and to provide a review of it.
	It's a good book.
	He's very much into street epistemology.
	And his definition, which I think is a good one, is to pretend to know things that you don't know.
	So people say, well, life has no meaning without faith.
	They say, okay, well, so life has no meaning unless you're pretending to know things you don't know.
	You say, well, you know, what's the difference between risk and faith?
	Well...
	So obviously faith is the opposite of empirical evidence then.
	Of course, yeah.
	I mean, faith is the pretense of knowledge where you have no knowledge.
	In fact, I would even argue that faith usually is the pretense of knowledge where knowledge is impossible.
	Like God exists in another dimension or something like that.
	But it's pretending to know things that you don't know.
	I think that's a very good definition.
	It's Peter's one, and I think it's fine.
	And so faith is not just, you know, well, I'm going to live like my daughter's going to be alive tomorrow, so I'm going to take her to the doctor today or whatever, or to the dentist or whatever.
	That's not faith, because that is not pretending to know things you don't know.
	Yeah, I've always kind of looked at the word faith and hope is very synonymous, but obviously that's not correct.
	Sounds like it's not correct.
	No, hope is not the pretense of knowledge that you don't have.
	Right.
	Faith is the pretense of knowledge that, you know, Jesus saves or, you know, the world's going to come to an end in three days.
	Well, I'm going to have to stop using that word.
	It is a tricky word, right?
	Because I remember seeing Melissa Manchester at some concert...
	A long time ago, I saw a concert with Peebo Bryson, Melissa and Matt.
	It was a Christmas concert.
	And Aaron Neville, who, my God, the voice of an angel, listened to his version of Bird on a Wire sometime.
	It's quite incredible.
	Anyway, so she was singing some song and she said, Faith, the acronym that stands for feel as if there's hope.
	And, you know, faith, hope and charity are all sort of bundled together.
	But only one of them is pretending to know things you don't know.
	And so you say, well, I have faith that Jesus is the Son of God.
	Well, you're saying something is true which you don't know is true and you have no way of showing or knowing that it's true.
	Sounds like a perfectly good use of the word faith, though, in that sense.
	It does.
	It does.
	And, of course, it is to the advantage of people who are selling false knowledge to pretend that there's optimism in believing things that aren't true.
	But we don't say, well, I have faith that all red-haired people are thieves.
	Don't interfere with that belief.
	It's a false belief.
	But you don't say, well, I then hide behind the word faith.
	You'd say, no, that's actually just prejudice.
	That's just bigotry.
	I have faith that...
	You know, all blacks are criminals.
	It's like, no, no, that's prejudice bigotry, right?
	It's not faith.
	Well, I can't prove it.
	It's not true, but I'm still going to hold this and call it faith.
	Maybe it's I hope that all black people are criminals.
	I don't know, right?
	But faith fundamentally is pretending to believe things or pretending to have knowledge that you simply don't have and in most cases can never have.
	And putting forward something as true, which you have no validation for.
	And Yes.
	Yes, indeed.
	Well, thank you so much.
	This has been a fantastic call, and I really enjoyed listening to this show today, especially that one caller.
	She was fantastic, so thanks.
	She was.
	And hats off to you.
	This is the first opportunity I've had to speak with you, and I can't say enough positive about you.
	I might have some nitpicky issues about you, but nevertheless, I really have a lot of respect.
	For what you do.
	And I've listened to almost every one of your podcasts going back to when you were doing them in the car.
	Whoa, dude.
	I've listened to them all.
	You had faith they were going to stay good, right?
	Well, I appreciate that.
	And listen, I mean, the nitpicky stuff is great.
	And if it's any, you know, people say, I don't agree with everything.
	Steph says, well, welcome to the club.
	Neither do I. I've had to change my perspective and opinion on things as...
	I think John Kenneth Galbraith said when he changed his opinion on something, he said, well, that's what I do when the facts change.
	What do you do?
	So I think that's great.
	I appreciate your kind words.
	I certainly appreciate that you have plowed your way through an intense number of ramblings.
	And thank you so much.
	And thank you so much to Mike for manning in his indomitable Neanderthal manly way.
	I'm learning a lot about manhood from Mike.
	And in other words, where to scratch.
	That seems to be the key.
	But thank you so much for manning the Sunday show and thank you to the listeners and supporters.
	Had a couple of subscription cancellations this morning that had me spit my scrambled eggs straight into the fireplace.
	But if you could make up some of the slack, fdrurl.com forward slash donate, I would hugely appreciate it.
	There are a number of people who are embarking upon entrepreneurial activities or are having financial troubles because of the economy.
	They've had to pull back their support for the show.
	If you're doing okay and you find this stuff valuable, please, please, please do help out.
	What it is that we're doing.
	Remember, you have two squawking baby chicklet mouths to feed now, not just my big gaping moor, but Mike as well, who lives, breathes, eats, lives, and dies by donations.
	So, thank you everybody so much.
	Have yourselves a wonderful week.

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