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Oct. 20, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:49:51

2512 Stop Stealing to Pay for Hobbies - Sunday Call In Show October 20th, 2013

Confronting voids in primary relationship, technology as an excuse to revisit communism, stop stealing my money to pay for your hobbies, how children experience the world, trying to hug ghosts, how not to overcome laziness, influencing behavior/owning results and connecting to your feelings to find ambition.

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	Good morning, everybody.
	It's Stefan Molyneux of Freedom Main Radio.
	Hope you're doing well.
	20th of October, lo, we have passed the midpoint of the month.
	And therefore, it is time for me to remind you of one or two few things.
	This show, she'd be an insatiable beast for money.
	Though we have had to drop $5,000 on a server, I'd actually like to upgrade my six-year-old camera so that...
	I don't look like the annoying orange in half my videos.
	I mean, obviously I'll still sound like the annoying orange in the podcast, but I won't look like the annoying orange in the video.
	And I might need to fly out to Los Angeles for business and so on.
	Anyway, it's, as usual, a grab bag of fiscal requirements.
	So if you're new to the show, hey, ignore this.
	Go on a few minutes.
	Enjoy, imbibe, drink deep, face plant.
	Into the deep trough of reason known as the Philosophy Buffet of Free Domain Radio.
	If you've been listening for a while, do you know?
	It's really quite remarkable.
	This is not an act.
	This is good.
	I mean, this is amazing.
	You know, we are...
	It's hard to measure.
	Got a lot of mirrored sites and so on.
	But we did 800,000 podcast things in about six days.
	We are doing, I don't know, what is it, 300,000 a week?
	Views, something like that.
	My weekly book, quarter of a million views a week.
	So I think we're doing two to three million show pings a month.
	Let's just take a moment and absorb that reptilian degree of sun-baked success.
	Two to three million shows a month.
	And you know, at the suggested donation level of 50 cents a podcast, I am on the verge of buying Mike a pair of pants.
	Regretfully, because he's got lovely legs.
	But I am on the verge of buying Mike a pair of pants.
	And we are also on the verge of buying me deodorant from my other armpits so Mike doesn't always have to sit on one side of me with only one eye slowly watering.
	So listen, two to three million show pings a month.
	Now, not everyone listens all the way through, but, I mean, that's pretty good.
	That is pretty, pretty good.
	So, with growth comes challenge.
	You know, as my good friend, some rapper, said, mo' money, mo' problems.
	It's something like that, right?
	Was it Mo' Better Blues?
	Moby Dick?
	No, that last one doesn't feel right at all.
	Anyway, so, just think.
	Two to three million shows a month.
	And just imagine.
	I don't know how many people who listen to the show end up not spanking their children, but I'm telling you, it's not a tiny number.
	It's certainly more than Who Donate.
	Let's say it's 10%.
	200,000 to 300,000 families no longer being spanked every month.
	And that's the direct result out of people's support of the show.
	200,000 to 300,000 people getting their faith in government blown out of the water.
	A month, that's a result of your show.
	You know all those annoying people in your life who just won't listen to reason, who just continue to parrot the same propaganda?
	If you could pay them $20 a month to be atheists and philosophers and anarchists and adherents of the non-aggression principle and respecting property rights, wouldn't you do it?
	Well, you can.
	Just a little bit more indirectly by subscribing to the show.
	FDRURL.com forward slash donate.
	You know, I get questions all the time.
	Somebody came up to me in a public place the other day and He said, oh my god, Stefan Moly.
	And I was like, oh my god.
	I checked my ID. You're right!
	And I had a lunch with him and his lovely wife and their truly charming 14-month-old little boy.
	And they were talking to me about a sister-in-law who was kind of like a bit of a monster to the kids.
	You know, come into family gatherings and Loudly proclaim that she would like people to take these annoying kids off her hands because she was dumb with them and didn't want to see them again and so on.
	This is, I think, a three and a six-year-old.
	I didn't ask them, but I mean, if you could pay 20 bucks to make that person a nicer parent, wouldn't you?
	Well, this is how it works.
	You pay someone with a big megaphone to turn up the volume on the world.
	And I have a big megaphone.
	That's what she said.
	And you can pay me to turn up the volume in the world.
	So, $20 a month, $10 a month, $5 a month, $50 a month, one-time donations.
	I mean, you should.
	You should.
	You know, you should be paying for what you consume, right?
	I mean, we're about integrity.
	We're about philosophy.
	It costs money to produce the show.
	And it costs money to upload the show.
	It costs money to eat so that we can produce the show.
	So, you know, if you're consuming the show, you need to support it.
	I mean, I don't even need to tell you that.
	And it is pretty easy.
	Nobody's asking you to go to war, donate a kidney, just a couple of bucks a month or whatever you feel the show is worth.
	But I genuinely believe, I genuinely believe, and I'm not going to shrink from saying this, I genuinely believe that this show is our best hope for a peaceful future.
	Now, I may be completely delusional.
	I fully accept that.
	It's so nice meeting listeners in the flesh so that I sort of realize that I'm not in a padded room and doing some sort of a biosphere recreation of reality in some Truman Show kind of way.
	But you know that you need to support the show.
	And it's just a matter of clicking less than a price of a coffee a day.
	And you can spread philosophy and reason and evidence and peaceful parenting and skepticism towards superstition and skepticism towards the state.
	All of these things are necessary for a peaceful future, for a future without war, for a future without criminality, for a future without abuse, exploitation.
	And I don't mean kinda, I mean literally without these things.
	But the prosaic thing is that there are no wings of the angel that spread the word of truth across the world.
	It is a matter of grinding and money and resources.
	And since I don't do advertising, because I mean, if I did advertising, I would be in the business, like right now I'm in the business of delivering truth to listeners.
	Whereas if I take advertising, fundamentally, I'm in the business of delivering listeners to advertisers.
	And that's just not the equation that is going to leave the communication of truth uncluttered.
	I mean, I'm leaving a lot of money on the table.
	We did this calculation, Mike, the other day, didn't we, about what we could get from YouTube advertising?
	Up to $70,000 a year?
	Yeah, somewhere around $70,000 a year.
	So I'm leaving a lot of money on the table.
	By not doing the advertising, but I believe that, and there's nothing wrong with advertising, don't get me wrong.
	It's all free market persuasion and communication, unfortunately, lands on the ears of the propagandized, so it's not quite as clean as it would be in a free society, but leaving a lot of money on the table by not taking the YouTube ads.
	But I believe that that is essential because I just want to make sure that I focus on you.
	So, fdrurl.com forward slash donate.
	Wouldn't it be exciting to say I helped out at the beginning?
	Because who knows how big this could go?
	The current rate of growth.
	Well, you do the math.
	I don't have my shoes off.
	But I think it would be pretty cool to say you were in on the beginning and you helped near the beginning because we are literally still at the beginning.
	That's it for my intro rant.
	Thank you so much for your patience and your listening.
	I hope you're having a wonderful morning or afternoon if you're currently mining the asteroid belt in secret with the founders of Facebook.
	I try to get my news in foreign languages.
	I may not be translating that perfectly correctly, but apparently Mark Zuckerberg sounds quite a bit like Marvin the Martian.
	Let's annoy the guy who founded Facebook, which helps me do it a lot of reach.
	Oh!
	I'm all kinds of brave when I'm not near anyone.
	Over Skype?
	Yeah.
	Sorry, Skype!
	Oh, sorry.
	All right.
	You know, just by the by, if anyone knows stuff about cameras, feel free to give me a ping.
	On Skype, I might need some help.
	I'd really like to change.
	I mean, I don't think I can buy more lights without actually, instead of giving a show, I'd be giving an x-ray.
	Have you ever seen my bones moving under my skin?
	But if anyone has any suggestions on how to improve the video quality, I'd like to do that quite a bit.
	Anyway, let's move on with the show.
	Mike, who have we got?
	All right, Sergio, you were up first today.
	Go ahead, Sergio.
	Hi, Steph.
	I have a question that's been on my mind for a bit over two weeks now.
	And basically, it's something that I think might make a big difference to a lot of your listeners as well.
	So it's How can I be a hero after missing out on a lifetime of practice and good habits?
	What do I need to do to get from where I am now to where I want to be in that direction?
	I like literally practical what habits, what to do, and what is missing.
	Yeah.
	Well, I certainly thank you for the implied compliment.
	I really do.
	But tell me what you mean by hero, because there's not much point in me telling you how to make a sandwich when you're talking about something else.
	So tell me, how would you know if you had achieved heroism?
	One test I have is how I would feel.
	So I would experience myself as someone with high self-esteem who is not committed to what I feel like or think in the moment.
	But is committed to actually taking action on what I know to be true and right without anything else than that consideration.
	Nothing getting in the way.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	What kind of actions would you take that you would then know were good and right?
	Creating projects in the world that are going to make a difference.
	That's just a synonym.
	Things which are risky.
	Yeah.
	No, that's just a synonym, right?
	So if you say, I'd like to do things that are good and right, and I say, well, what are the things that are good and right?
	And you say, creating projects.
	Oh, specifically.
	Sorry.
	You asked for practical stuff, so you have to give me practical considerations, right?
	There are three projects I want to do.
	One is, I want to make buildings, large-scale property developments, for a free society.
	At first, getting practice on becoming a property developer.
	And then eventually doing whatever would have to be done to actually partner with whoever are the right people and make something real in that sense somewhere in the world.
	And to make it beautiful to the point where it would make a difference.
	Let's just stop there for a sec because I think that's a very admirable and exciting goal.
	I know you said you had three, but I'm still on my first coffee, so don't give me three.
	Otherwise, I'll try to remember them and walk into a wall.
	Anyway, so...
	I will tell you the big secret that I learned too late in life.
	I'm glad that I learned it, but I learned it too late in life.
	If we want to be heroic, if we want to change the world, if we want to do good, if we want all these kinds of things, then most often, and this comes to some degree out of objectivism, but we often think that we need to choose our projects.
	And I think that's important.
	I mean, you sort of need to choose your project.
	But my question would be to you, instead of trying to figure out how you can be heroic, I would ask you, do you have not just the right project, but the right people in your life?
	In other words, people who are fully dedicated to and deeply believe in what you want to do in your life.
	Two.
	Out of how many?
	I have two.
	Maybe...
	20?
	So, 10% of the people in your life believe and are behind what it is that you want to do?
	Yeah.
	And how much time...
	Actually, wait.
	Sorry.
	I apologize.
	So, no.
	None of them...
	I don't think any of them really get it.
	No one really gets it.
	Yeah.
	So...
	No, I would just say two people would when they could see what was going to be coming from it.
	But yeah, no.
	No one.
	So when you sit down with your family for Sunday dinner or whatever, will you talk about what it is that you want to do?
	And if you do talk about it, what would be the result?
	So if I talk about it to...
	My mom.
	The reaction is, or at least initially was interest, but then she has disagreements on specific aspects of it and gets very emotional, and we ended up dealing with that instead of what I was saying.
	But yeah, she is interested in my ideas at this point, given how long it's been since I haven't done anything with these ideas.
	Oh, you mean you've had these ideas for a long time, but you haven't done much with them?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Now, does she...
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Sorry.
	Does she think that that's your issue, or does she look in the mirror and say, how have I not supported my son in doing what he wants to do?
	So I've tried to have that conversation repeatedly, and at this point, it's...
	Look, let's not talk about the past.
	What do you have to do now rather than just wallowing in things?
	I want you to actually go and take action now and have your life work out.
	And going in the past just makes you depressed.
	So what she's saying is that...
	No, no, no.
	You've got to understand the truth.
	Almost always, almost always when people are talking about the emotional consequences for you of your decisions...
	They're talking about the emotional consequences for them of your decisions.
	I mean, it's called projection.
	So what she's really saying is, if you start talking about the past, I'm going to get depressed.
	Yeah, well, I get depressed as well in the conversation.
	You're not walking on the road at the moment, are you?
	Yeah, I am on the road.
	But you're not actually on the road.
	Because that horn...
	One of the things that's important, it's a necessary but not sufficient requirement for heroism that you not get creamed by a bus.
	I just wanted to mention that.
	I should have mentioned that at the beginning quite as often as you'd think, so I just wanted to mention that.
	That's my bravery training.
	Let me tell you what I think, just in terms of support from people around you.
	I'm not going to put you in the category of a four-year-old exactly, but my daughter likes to go to some place that we have to drive to get there.
	Now, if she really wants to go someplace and I say, well, I just don't want to take you there.
	I'm not going to drive you there.
	I mean, I never would say that in that way, but let's say I did.
	Then tomorrow, I can't say to her, listen, I can't believe you've been talking about going to this place for days.
	You know, why haven't you gone?
	Because her little jaw would drop and she'd say, because you need to drive me and you didn't drive me.
	And I said, well, let's not go past.
	That'll just make you depressed.
	That'll just make you upset if you go past.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	I mean, if you have a difficulty setting and achieving important goals, then the first place to look is how you were parented.
	And if your parents say, well, you need to get this stuff done and not focus on the past and so on, Then what they're saying is we didn't really have any effect on you as parents.
	You know, this is something...
	I will not give this up as a parent.
	I have an incredibly strong effect on my child.
	Did your parents discipline you or attempt to change your behavior when you were a child?
	Sometimes.
	Not really.
	Not that much.
	Yeah.
	It was fairly...
	Hands off maybe a bit too much.
	What does that mean?
	I felt like I missed out on some quality learning about things, like life skills.
	And also, I didn't really have a dad.
	I didn't have a dad.
	I had a stepfather and he was never there.
	And my mom just She didn't really have that many practical life skills, so she didn't have anything to teach there, and didn't go out of her way to find the ones that she didn't have.
	She taught me some good ones, but there are some that are missing that have very much impacted my life.
	I think one of the big things that I can see is missing is just a lifetime of the kinds of habits that build self-esteem.
	Being assertive, being responsible, particularly being responsible, being the one who can actually make stuff happen rather than being afraid of doing anything until I know I can get it right.
	I've been a guy who's lived my whole life in my head and created some beautiful things in there.
	But I don't want to be like someone who never does anything or becomes like a writer who writes about the life I could have had.
	I want to actually make the things that I would write in a book that characters would do and be that person in the world.
	And I see people around me, some of them, who just get the things done that they care about.
	And although I don't really see anything inspiring in the scope of their vision, I see who they are and the fact that they make shit happen because they got something that I was missing when they were growing up.
	And even when they didn't, they got the thing, how can I put it, along the way, they picked up the slack.
	And I think that's something that I kind of waited around for probably a bit too long.
	And not to make myself wrong, but just to be like, I've got to accept the fact that I don't have this stuff.
	At least I don't have it down pat.
	And I, yeah, so that's where I'm coming from.
	Well, let me tell you something, my friend.
	You have fantastic verbal skills.
	You have fantastic verbal skills.
	And, you know, given that this is a show that runs almost entirely on verbal skills, I hope you will take that as a sincere and meaningful compliment.
	So, you describe things very well, very concisely.
	I probably could learn something from you.
	Anyway, so, I just wanted to mention that.
	Now...
	There's a lot to talk about.
	I'm just going to zero in on one thing because I want you to start thinking a particular kind of way that I think will be very helpful for you.
	So what really struck me the most, and there's a lot that I'm very sorry about when you describe your childhood, but what really struck me the most is your mother married a man who didn't take any particular interest in you and wasn't around.
	Is that right?
	That's right.
	How is that possible?
	How is that possible?
	I mean, help me understand.
	And the reason that I say that is that there have been sort of three big fallings away in my life.
	One is when I really put my foot down about being mistreated in relationships.
	And I did that, you know, I started to do that and then through therapy I really began to do that and some relationships fell away through that.
	The second great falling away was when I really began to get into doing this show and I really began to realize how important it was because, of course, I didn't start this show to do what I'm doing now.
	I started the show to kill some time during a long commute.
	And when I began to sort of realize how good I was at it and how important it was, then My friends who – I mean nobody had to listen to every show.
	I get that.
	It's a lot of shows.
	But my friends who didn't ask about it or didn't care about it or anything like that, I just couldn't – I couldn't maintain – I couldn't fake it.
	I just couldn't pretend to not be interested in what I'm doing other than this was a hugely important part of my life.
	And the third, of course, was when my daughter was born.
	My friends who weren't there to help out – And these are friends that I'd helped out in the past, but the friends who weren't there to help out, who didn't take interest, who expected me to drive with an infant and my wife to their house rather than come to my house, well, just didn't have time.
	And, you know, it's sad, but I just could not achieve what I need to achieve without the people in it who are behind me.
	And it's not selfish because I am willing to put A lot of effort into helping other people achieve what they want.
	It's not just in this show.
	I do it wherever I have friends or family.
	So what I want to ask is, how is it possible for your...
	Did your mother know that your stepdad didn't really spend much time with you or take much interest in you or even be around?
	Yeah, she had a story about it.
	What was her story about it?
	Her story is, oh, look, he works a lot.
	That's just what he does.
	When he was growing up, his father was...
	Did you just give me an explanation for what happened in his past and let him be a workaholic?
	And that's just how he is.
	Oh, so wait, wait, wait.
	So your mother...
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Sorry.
	Always extract the principle from what people are saying.
	Oh, I know where this is going.
	Go on.
	So I said to her, like, so how come whenever it comes to some issue with my past and how I got the way I am, the focus becomes, well, what are you going to do about it now to be responsible?
	But whenever I'm looking at the people who were around when I was growing up, there's always an excuse for them.
	Right.
	Like, and you.
	Fantastic.
	Okay, that's an A+. That's like graduate-level philosophy, so good for you.
	The other principle you can get out of it is you can be a jerk because of your past.
	No, seriously, you can be an unfeeling, uncaring, remote, distant, emotionally unavailable, avoidance guy because if you're past and no one can say – in your family, no one can say anything about that.
	They can't tell you to change, right?
	Because they know you had this past, so you can just – Yeah.
	explain it to people.
	Well, you see, he had a stepfather who wasn't around, and his biological father isn't around, and so that's the kind of childhood he had, so this is what he's doing.
	Because I bet you you're a pretty super nice guy, right?
	Yep.
	Yeah.
	I'm a nice guy.
	I do have things that don't work for some people, like I'm late with work projects and arrangements.
	No, no, I don't mean that.
	I mean you're a nice guy.
	I get that you're a nice guy.
	And you can check out Malcolm Gladwell's new book, which is David and Goliath.
	One of the key things to getting things done in this world is the capacity for disagreeableness.
	In his book there's a story of a guy, you know, basically childhood leukemia used to be fatal, now it's curable 90% of the time.
	The reason that it's curable is some guy fought literally tooth and nail with the administration of the ethics board and so on to be able to administer a cocktail of cancer-fighting drugs to children because they used to only treat it with one drug and the children would die on average within four weeks after they got into the hospital because they would bleed out.
	The capacity for disagreeableness It's really, really important to getting things done in life.
	Most people, when they see anyone dancing, will throw down landmines.
	Most people, when they hear anyone singing, will clap their hands over their ears and scowl.
	Most people radiate out disapproval about anyone who is acting out of integrity, And particularly if you're acting out of integrity and joy, that is a sunburnt offense to the raisin-overtained hearts of many people.
	And so having the capacity to take joy in being disagreeable is very important to getting things done in your life because the amount of resistance you will face, and most of it is passive resistance, but the amount of resistance that you will face is enormous.
	I mean, and history and Ayn Rand's novels...
	Repeat with this information.
	I think it's quite accurate.
	Socrates has to drink hemlock.
	Galileo gets tortured.
	Jesus gets nailed to a cross.
	You name it.
	Most of the benefactors of mankind are attacked by people out of their own deep-seated screwed-upness and cowardice and all that.
	So, I think that it's really important that you embrace...
	Disagreeableness.
	I mean, even the guy who invented the car.
	I mean, the guys who sold the horse and buggies and cleaned up the horse shit all throughout the town, they hated that guy.
	Right?
	They hated that guy.
	I mean, all the guys who went out throwing their giant ass harpoons through a whale's ass to get the whale blubber that people used to light their lamps, they hated the robber barons who brought kerosene to the masses and eliminated it.
	You don't hear a lot about how Rockefeller saved the whales, but that's natural because it doesn't fit the narrative.
	But I think the important thing is if you want to take on a task that you can achieve now, the task is to break through the foggy barrier between you and your mother as best as you can while taking no ownership for whether it works or not, whether it's successful or not.
	We commit...
	To what we need to do.
	We do not commit to its success, because to commit to the success of something is to bring a tyrannical element into the relationship.
	I commit to doing the very best shows that I can possibly do, but I cannot make other people listen.
	Right?
	I can only control what I do.
	I can't control what other people do.
	So you have amazing verbal skills.
	You have a very good philosophical mind.
	You have a deep understanding of these principles.
	Bring that to bear with your mother and don't take no for an answer.
	I mean it really is as simple as that.
	Don't take no for an answer.
	One thing I think that you're – like what you're talking about is really relevant because it's what my mom – like in the conversation I had with my mom last week when I was explaining to her how I thought I was missing some of these things that could have made a difference – We've had that conversation before in various forms, but never so clearly.
	And what I got, what she kept saying was, you're being really controlling in this conversation.
	I actually want to go.
	I have other things to do.
	And you're not taking no for an answer.
	Yeah, don't take no for an answer.
	Yeah.
	On some level, there's a way to be a douche about it so that no one would possibly take what you have to say on board, and then there's a way of doing it where you're committed without being a juror.
	No, not to your parents.
	You cannot be a douche to your parents.
	Sorry, it's true.
	You cannot be a douche to your parents.
	Do you know why?
	Because if you're a douche, it's still probably their fault.
	Oh yeah, but I mean, like, people won't get...
	There's a point where people just get defensive and they won't...
	At least most people get defensive.
	It's not...
	You could have won them over.
	It's not your job.
	Listen, listen.
	It's not your job to manage other people's reactions, particularly your parents.
	Look, if you're a salesman and you're going out to deal with a client, that's a different matter.
	But you are a statue that was carved by your parents.
	And the parents don't get to disown the statue directly.
	After they've created it.
	I mean, I don't spend 18 years working on a painting, step back and say, who painted this goddamn ugly thing?
	But yes, absolutely.
	It's essential.
	Do not take no for an answer.
	Do you know, when I was in my 20s, I desperately needed a job.
	I was just broke.
	That's only happened to be a couple of times in my life where I'm just like, oh my god, I have no money.
	I mean, my God, I've got to pay rent.
	I was living in a little room.
	I think I just finished my master's.
	I was living in a little room.
	It cost me $275 a month.
	And I was an expert at drawing as much nutrition out of ramen noodles as humanly possible.
	And I just had, like, no money.
	And there was a recession on.
	Now, I thought, okay, I'll just be a waiter for a while, just to get some money to pay the rent and all that.
	I'd go around to restaurants and, oh, man, there was nothing.
	Nothing.
	You literally see them take your resume and toss it in the garbage.
	And so I'll do some temp work.
	I was good with computers.
	I called up a temp and she went in and did the test.
	And then I just called and I called and I called.
	And I chatted and I made jokes.
	I made it enjoyable for me to call.
	So I wasn't a douche about it.
	And then I just – like I was so out of money, I just called this woman up and I said, I just need to get to work.
	And there's nothing for me to do waiter-wise.
	I got to get a job.
	I need to eat.
	I said, it's not your fault.
	But listen, I will clean computers.
	I'll dust them.
	I'll move them.
	I don't care what it is.
	But please, please, get me some work here.
	I'm dying for some work.
	I will do a great job.
	But I really, really need this.
	And that connected with her.
	And she said, okay, well, I'll make some calls.
	And then I got my first programming job.
	You know, people email me all the time, and a lot of times I won't respond.
	I'm busy, or they've sent two pages, which is going to be too long for me to read.
	But if they email me two or three times, I begin to take them seriously.
	Because if somebody just emails me once, they say it's really, really important.
	They don't get a response.
	Maybe they'll just email back angry and abusive, in which case, well, forget it.
	Or, you know, but if they're really persistent, I know you're busy, blah, blah, blah, but it would mean the world to me if blah, blah, blah, right?
	Then I know that they have some balls, male or female.
	I know that they have some spine.
	I know that they really want something.
	Because if somebody tries once and gives up, they're no good to philosophy.
	They're no good to the future.
	They're no good to the world.
	Because they don't have the willpower, they don't have the focus, they don't have the dedication to just damn well work to get what they want.
	Because nobody cares about you in this life outside of your friends and family.
	I mean, everybody goes to LA and they're beautiful and they're the homecoming king and queen and they were the prettiest people and the most talented people in their high school drama club and they all go to LA or they all go to New York or they all want to be actress and nobody cares.
	The agents don't care.
	The hiring people don't care.
	Directors, they don't care.
	Producers, they don't care.
	You know, you step off that bus with a hundred bucks in your pocket and a song in your heart and you sing it to an empty, bitter, dusty wind that all it wants to do is go up your nose and dust off your brain.
	Nobody cares.
	You have to make people care about what it is that you want.
	And you know, we're raised to be so nice and we're raised to not be pushy and don't get in people's faces and all that.
	Well, that's nonsense.
	I mean, you look at all the people who've made it, and they work hard, and they push hard, and they don't take no for an answer.
	And if they annoy people, well, then they annoy people.
	Sorry.
	And so the way that if you're an actor, I mean, you keep going to acting classes, you keep practicing, you work on your acting, you work on your ancillary skills, motorbike riding, sword fighting, whatever it is that you can do that's going to help, horseback riding, you work on all that stuff.
	And then you just go give yourself, you go give really great auditions.
	And then if you're somebody who's really talented and if you're beautiful to boot, fantastic, then people will start to take notice of you.
	Now, people care about Brad Pitt now because he makes $15 million a film and people hang off that like lampreys off a shark's jaw.
	But they sure as hell didn't care when he first came to town.
	He made them care by just making it happen.
	You know, when Madonna wanted to get the role of Yves Perron, In, I don't know, that Don't Cry For Me Argentina film.
	I can't remember the name of it.
	But when she wanted to get the role of Eva Braun, I mean, this is Madonna, for God's sakes.
	It's not like people don't know her name.
	I mean, she's on a first-name basis with the world, for Christ's sake.
	Do you know what she did?
	She just kept writing letters.
	She made her own audition tapes.
	She sent in those audition tapes.
	She kept calling.
	She kept pestering because she wanted that role so badly.
	And she got it because she really cared.
	And by showing that she really cared and was willing to be vulnerable, was willing to be rejected, people knew how committed she was and that she was going to show up and do the best possible job that she could do, which for Madonna, in terms of a singing and acting role, is actually not that bad, in my opinion.
	So with your parents, with your friends, you just say, no, this is important to me.
	Say to your mom, this is your son...
	Talking about his dreams, talking about his life with you, talking about what's important to me, to him.
	Unless you are currently having a goddamn heart attack, Mom, you don't have anything better to do.
	And if you do have something better to do, it's really important that I know that.
	That when I'm here pouring my heart out to you and trying to figure out my future...
	That you feel that you have something more important to do, that is actually pretty important information for me to have.
	To see where your son's hearts and dreams and desires and goals and the happiness of his existence, to see where that shows up in your list of priorities, mom, is really, really important to me.
	Yeah, it is.
	I do want to help you with your life, but I think that you've got a great place to practice what I would call heroism.
	Which is simply a dedication to a virtuous goal.
	Now, in your family, the virtuous goal is honesty.
	And to be dedicated to honesty means not accepting avoidance, not accepting defenses.
	I mean, you hear me do this in this show all the time.
	Why are you laughing at something that's so tragic?
	You're not answering my question.
	You're not being honest with me.
	I'm doing this all the time because I'm committed to honesty in this conversation, to the truth, as best as I can tease it out.
	And I don't give up.
	Until the other person gives up.
	Which is why some of these calls go on so long because people hang in there and I really appreciate and applaud them for that.
	So you have the...
	This is what...
	This is your practice arena for heroism and it is necessary for your heroism in the world to have people accept your heroism in their relationship.
	And yes, people's resistance will push back and then you just keep pushing.
	You know, someone walks out of the room, you walk after them.
	Someone says, I have something more important to do.
	You say, no, you don't.
	Because it's true.
	Your dreams with your mother is the most important thing that she can talk about.
	Yeah.
	Penn...
	Penn Jillette?
	Penn Jillette.
	In his book, he plays bass for like...
	Because Mike just saw him recently.
	He plays bass for like an hour before the show, right?
	Plays upright bass.
	Then he does like a two-hour show.
	And that's...
	90 minutes.
	Then he does a 90-minute show, and then he hangs around for an hour or two afterwards.
	And do you know what he says?
	Because what the fuck else do I have to do?
	Now, this is a guy I would actually argue has a wife and children.
	Might be not unimportant to go and spend time with his wife and children, but I assume that's late at night as kids are asleep or whatever, right?
	So he'll sit there and press the flash and take photos with strangers, because what the fuck else has he got to do?
	I can't do his voice that well.
	I'd have to be sicker, I think.
	Or...
	Bigger.
	Or more macho.
	Who knows?
	Anyway.
	But this is a guy who's an entertainer.
	Who sits around taking photos for an hour or two a night because what the fuck else has he got to do?
	And your mom, what has she got to do?
	She's got to go and do some laundry?
	Because that's more important than her son's dreams?
	She's got to go make a phone call?
	Does she have to get her nails done?
	She's got to rearrange the closet?
	Got to vacuum something?
	Got to go split the atom?
	What's she got to do that's more important?
	What the fuck else does she have to do?
	You know, if it's important enough for pan-depressor flesh with strangers for two hours a day, I'm sure your mom can take a couple of hours to help you sort out your life and your history.
	So that would be my suggestion.
	Sure.
	Okay.
	And once you've done that, everything else is going to be easy.
	I'm telling you.
	Once you've done that, once you've confronted the voids in your primary relationships and hopefully healed them, once you've confronted the voids in your primary relationship, The unspeakable vacuums that everybody has to dance around, once you've confronted those, nothing else is that hard.
	I mean, it's weird.
	You know, with weightlifting, you start with light weights and go to heavier weights.
	With personal growth, you just start with the heaviest weights.
	And after that, everything feels like a feather.
	So drop me a line if you can.
	Let me know how it goes.
	But great question, and best of luck to you.
	I'm glad that you made it through the conversation without becoming...
	With the bugs on the windshield of some car, so...
	Have a great day.
	All right, Chris, you are next.
	Go ahead, Chris.
	All right, hey, can you hear me?
	Can you guys hear me?
	Loud and clear, Chris.
	What's that?
	Can you guys hear me?
	Yes, go ahead.
	Okay, good.
	Sorry.
	Okay, so I've got some basic notes.
	I just have two kind of general things I want to talk about.
	First of all, obviously, You know, I just want to thank you, you know, a lot for what you do.
	I mean, it's incredible.
	It's hard to believe, actually, that I can, you know, just talk to you like this.
	But, you know, that might be flattering you a bit too much.
	But it's really incredible what you do, your podcast.
	I mean, I just can't believe that I didn't find them sooner.
	You know, it's like someone out there telling, you know, who's able to convince me that I'm not taking crazy pills.
	And I didn't find you until, you know, Well, I appreciate that, and I appreciate your compliments.
	Whatever is honest is not flattery.
	By definition, flattery is lying to someone to manipulate them, and I accept that what I'm doing is very important and very helpful, and I appreciate that you recognize that, and I thank you for your very kind words.
	I would not assume that it's flattery.
	And again, I mean, the praise, Like, you know, I think of Queen.
	So, where would Queen be without the technology?
	They'd be a great bar band.
	Actually, they wouldn't even be a bar band because you need technology to amplify for a bar.
	Right?
	Freddie Mercury would be like an accountant.
	They'd be like a banjo band.
	Yeah, a banjo band.
	Freddie Mercury would be like an accountant.
	Actually, I think he was going.
	He'd be an artist who would be really good in an acapella group.
	You know?
	And so...
	I always think that Queen should always thank their fans and this and that.
	How about thanking the engineers who create all the stuff that allows you to produce, to record?
	I don't care how good a singer you are, if you don't have a big amp, you cannot fill 300,000 people's ears with song.
	So, I mean, I appreciate that and I'm glad.
	It really is the technology.
	It is philosophy.
	It is the combined weight of Western intellectual history.
	I genuinely do believe that I'm doing some great stuff, but I also genuinely and with great humility believe, as Newton said, if I have seen further, it is only because I'm standing on the shoulders of giants.
	And a lot of those giants are technology people without whom we would not be having this conversation.
	So, thank you to all the techs who make it happen.
	You guys are serving philosophy much more than I am because without you, I would not be able to do this.
	So I appreciate that.
	And thank you very much.
	If we can move on to your two questions, that would be great.
	Yes.
	All right.
	Well, I completely agree, obviously, with all that.
	So anyway, the first question I wanted you to – it's not really a question.
	I just want you to talk about – I just have a few notes.
	I'm just going to go off of them.
	It might seem a little robotic, but if you don't mind.
	It's alright.
	The connection makes you sound robotic already, so go for it.
	Oh, okay.
	Perfect, then.
	Perfect.
	Okay.
	So I just wanted to ask you if you could talk a little bit about something called methodological dualism.
	I'm assuming that you know what that is, but I'll just give a few words about it.
	So Mises gave an argument to the effect that the appropriate methodology for the study of social sciences is not the methodology appropriate for the study of the physical sciences.
	You often use metaphors taken from the physical sciences.
	So I wanted to ask you to briefly outline your understanding of scientism.
	I just have a quote here from Mises.
	He says, quote, it's impossible to reform the sciences of human action according to the pattern of physics and the other natural sciences.
	There is no means to establish an posteriori theory of human conduct and social events.
	History can neither prove nor disprove any general statement in the manner in which the natural sciences accept or reject a hypothesis on the ground of laboratory experiments.
	Neither experimental verification nor experimental falsification of a general proposition is possible in its field.
	And I can just say, the reason I think this is important is because I think it's the divide between collectivism and individualism.
	And why, you know, collectivist groups like CZM can't understand the arguments we're making.
	I mean, we're speaking a different language.
	Yeah.
	No, I accept that, and I think that's very accurate.
	And in my debate, Peter Joseph said something very important, where he said that he takes his ethics entirely from the physical sciences.
	Right.
	Which is specifically what Mises rejects.
	Exactly.
	And of course it's what I reject as well.
	Now the physical sciences and philosophy do take their cue for intellectual integrity and truth from reason and evidence.
	Now reason and evidence come from atoms.
	Reason and evidence come from the senses.
	They come from the uniform and consistent and predictable nature of reality.
	That's how we get reason and evidence.
	Now because we get reason and evidence from inanimate things, We sometimes believe that that reason and evidence can then be extended to humanity.
	And that is a great mistake.
	It is a great mistake.
	So a conversation I had with somebody last week, sorry, on Wednesday, I had a long and grueling and frankly quite disturbing conversation with, I think it was a zeitgeist who was talking about, yeah, can price be objective?
	And the reality is price cannot be objective.
	Because price is an expression of human desire.
	Human desire cannot be scientifically and objectively addressed.
	Human beings are not pawns.
	They're not livestock.
	They're not chess pieces.
	They're not inert.
	You cannot design society around them.
	They're not bricks that you can use to build a house.
	Human beings cannot be predicted.
	The desires of each human being is subjective to that person.
	And environment does not determine human fate.
	I mean, my brother is a very, very different person than I am.
	I'm sure we've all known this, right?
	One guy, two brothers, and one brother says, well, my father was an alcoholic, so that's why I became an alcoholic.
	And the other brother says, my father was an alcoholic, and that's why I don't touch drink, because it's just, I see how destructive it is.
	You can't predict these things.
	You can have an influence and so on.
	You know, the guys who just won the Nobel Prize in economics won it because they proved that stocks are a random walk.
	You cannot predict Stocks.
	You cannot predict what the price of a stock is going to be in five minutes.
	I mean, anybody who could would own the market.
	But then as soon as they tried to own the market, the market would immediately respond to that.
	And people would short whatever he was buying or whatever.
	The market would change and his knowledge would then become invalid.
	So you cannot predict what human beings are going to do.
	So the people who are central planning, inclined, Basically, they want to be parents to an infantile humanity.
	This is disrespectful to the capacities and individualism of everyone.
	And in order to do that, they have to become pathologically narcissistic.
	In other words, their needs to run humanity for their better, their needs must be respected.
	But for their needs to be respected, other people's needs must be eclipsed and denied.
	And it's a UPP violation, right?
	I know how society should be run, but other people should not be able to run their own society.
	I know how resources should be allocated, but other people should not be allowed to allocate their own resources.
	I mean, it's just so irrational that, again, it can only come from...
	They hide it with this so-called computer, which again, they even themselves see it as being a kind of, it's too simple, so they say, oh, it's more complicated than that, but then of course they can't explain it, but the fact of the matter is that someone's got to program that computer in order to do what they want it to do, so it has to have some kind of programming, and only human beings can imbibe that.
	Well, yeah.
	Look, I mean, there's an old joke in computer science, which is to say, I want a computer fast enough to finish an infinite loop.
	Right?
	And, you know, 10 go to 20, 20 go to 10.
	Those lose lines of code.
	You can't.
	It doesn't matter how fast your computer is.
	You can't process it.
	Right.
	And I hope people understand.
	Sorry, hang on a second.
	I hope people understand this is nothing new.
	It is as predictable as sunrise that whenever some new technology comes along, people say, aha, now, socialism.
	Now we have 3D printers so socialism can work.
	Now we have the internet and open source and now socialism can work.
	And exactly the same thing happened with Marx.
	Marx said socialism could not create industrialization, but now that we have industrialization, now we can have socialism.
	So where the computer is to the zeitgeist movement now, so the factory was to Marx in the 19th century.
	And every time some new technology comes along, people say, aha, now socialism.
	And it's boring, it's predictable, and it just arises out of a lack of self-knowledge and a lack of knowledge of intellectual history.
	But yeah, so they have to say, look, so you get your ethics.
	And it's not, I mean, Sam Harris does the same thing.
	He says, you know, well, if we want to get rid of cholera, then cleaning the water would be a good thing.
	That's science.
	And it's like, yes, it is science that clearly the water is a good thing.
	But you cannot get your ethics from science because science is value neutral.
	So is that where you think Sam Harris is going wrong as well?
	Because I haven't read that much of Sam Harris, but I remember reading an audiobook of his.
	I don't remember much of it, but basically he just says, you know, he's a moral relativist as far as I understand, right?
	Well, I don't know what he is because the problem is that people who don't do philosophy just make shit up on emotional reasons and then if they're very skilled and knowledgeable and verbally acute, create a whole bunch of word salad to hide up the fact that they're just pursuing their own emotional agendas.
	But for sure, if you're into free will, you're going to be on the free market side.
	There's a reason the same word is used in both formulations because free will is not predictable by a central planning agency.
	It's not predictable.
	And so Sam Harris is a determinist.
	He denies free will.
	And he also bases his ethics on science, i.e.
	that which is advantageous to people based upon health and wealth and other forms of standards and so on.
	And these two invariably and inevitably go hand in hand.
	If you are a determinist, then you can be a central planner because people are fundamentally inanimate objects.
	You know, you don't negotiate with your chess pieces about where they want to go, because they're just things!
	You know, there's just wood.
	And Bastiat spoke pretty clearly about all this stuff very long ago, so...
	Yeah, so of course what you do is you create, as everyone who seeks power does, and I'm sorry, it's not boring for you, it's just boring for those of us who've seen it for a couple of decades, everyone who seeks power creates a definition of human nature that excludes themselves.
	Everyone who's in the government creates a definition of virtue, i.e., you as sheep must respect the non-aggression principle and property rights, and then they exclude themselves through laws and taxation and blah, blah, blah.
	So everyone who creates a moral rule does it to exclude themselves.
	So this is in the documentary that's coming up, but the basic argument is that morality was, of course, invented for the exclusion.
	It's not invented for the universality.
	It's invented for the exclusion.
	In other words, people invent a concept of property rights to repress the desire or guilt the desire other people to steal because they want to be better at stealing because they don't want competition.
	So again, I'm not an expert on Sam Harris's ethics.
	But the other thing too is that all these scientists, what do they do?
	They suck at the government tit all the time.
	This is one of the great tragedies of World War II is that it turned engineering into academic science.
	You've got this complete bullshit peer review system which is all political.
	They did a study recently where they tried to replicate the 56 biggest findings in cancer research and they could replicate like six of them.
	It's like 10%.
	90% of this shit went unchallenged.
	80,000 patients went through trials for bullshit and probably died.
	This shit gets people killed.
	And people say, well, this person hasn't been peer-reviewed.
	This person hasn't been...
	Like, peer-reviewed is just...
	You know what peer-review is in a rational society?
	It's the custom of fucking parting money for something.
	That's peer-reviewed.
	I don't need peer-review on an iPad.
	I just need to know if I'm going to buy it or not.
	And same thing is true of Apple.
	But peer-review is because nobody gives a shit about what you're doing and won't part with a goddamn penny for it.
	And so you've got to submit to some other process to get your grants and suck off the blood of the taxpayer even more, goddamn scientists.
	And so you invent this process called peer review because there's no fucking market for what you're doing because you're a bunch of parasites diddling around with your big dick telescopes and making pretty pictures.
	Sell them to me.
	Put them in a fucking calendar.
	Pose nude with them.
	I don't care.
	Ride them like Miley Cyrus rides a wrecking ball.
	I'd like to see Neil deGrasse Tyson on that but that's just a little aside.
	But, you know, take your big cock and point it at the money market.
	I mean, that'd be great.
	Fantastic.
	You know, shake it.
	Wear a money belt and a leopard skin.
	I don't care.
	But go sell something in the fucking marketplace.
	And stop taking my money for your hobbies!
	99% of science these days is a fucking hobby!
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I like stars!
	I think moons are pretty!
	I used to play with oranges and grapes on my bedspread, so I would really like a giant telescope for $2 trillion so I can point it in a nebula and say, ooh, that's sparkly!
	Good God, people!
	Okay, so can I just say...
	Stop taking my money because you like looking at sparkly things!
	Jesus, I mean...
	What are you, Marilyn Monroe?
	It's a hobby.
	People have telescopes in the park.
	It's a hobby.
	People like mixing beakers and shit in their basement.
	It's a hobby.
	Go make something that people want that's useful.
	Like a medicine that you could sell to people.
	But this giant super collider, blah-de-blah-de-blahs, it's like, oh my god.
	I mean, leave my child's future alone and go play with a Meccano set like you're supposed to.
	Anyway, sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, so can I just say that I think you're probably one of the funniest people that I've ever not met or listened to.
	And I think you can very successfully stand up.
	You do stand up.
	I think you're really, really funny.
	I think if you did like a kind of a satirical, you know, set where it was just constantly, you know, constant satire, I think you'd really, really get a good response.
	But anyway, that might be a good idea.
	Can I tell you something too?
	You know that someone's in philosophy when they don't laugh, but they inform someone that they're funny.
	It's like you go to a comedy club and people say, you know, that is funny.
	They're thinking about it.
	Anyway, I appreciate that.
	I get so exasperated because I love science.
	Don't get me wrong.
	I love the methodology of science and all that.
	But the purpose of knowledge is to satisfy demand.
	I mean, and maybe there's charity and people would give stuff so that, you know, Geeky guys could clear telescopes to things that don't matter.
	I think they probably would.
	Yeah, I think they would.
	But before the Second World War, there literally were only a few hundred thousand scientists in the whole world.
	The whole world, there were only a few hundred thousand scientists.
	Now, of course, in the war, they roped in all these scientists and diverted them from industry and from technology where they were actually producing stuff that consumers wanted that made the world richer and better.
	They diverted all of this stuff to the military-industrial complex.
	And now the military-industrial complex and academia – even the taste in my mouth is disgusting.
	It tastes like fascism.
	But academia and military-industrial complex employ the vast majority of scientists.
	And now there are like 7 million scientists in the world.
	That's like piling 9,000 hookers on a street corner.
	I mean just nobody can even untangle them, let alone use them for any functional thing.
	So, I mean, it's ridiculous.
	And it's all just a big bloated statist mess.
	And so what they do is they're continually creating alarms so that they can get more money.
	Global warming!
	Now, I just read there's a giant asteroid coming to hit us in 2034 and prove Bob Geldof right.
	I don't know.
	So it's just this continual panic that they need to invent because there's no market demand for what they...
	So all that researchers...
	And now what they're doing is they're creating such a vast amount of information that nobody can sift through it all.
	There's no money and no career to be made from debunking the bullshit that endlessly comes out of these research labs.
	And you can look up The Economist just had an article on it.
	I'm not making all this stuff up.
	I mean, just a huge amount of this stuff is non-replicable.
	It's complete bullshit.
	And it's just used to get published.
	There are six PhD graduates for every position in academia, for Christ's sakes.
	So what does that mean?
	That means everybody has got to be a conformist, water-in-a-container, Eel-based life form with no spine.
	And nobody in the field is going to overturn and challenge the leaders of the field because you'd only do that in your graduate work.
	And if you do that in your graduate work, you're not going to get a job because people are like, fuck, I don't want to debunker around.
	Most of my stuff is bullshit too.
	I don't want somebody who's really good at debunking people.
	I think I won't hire this person.
	And this is why like 90% of stuff never gets reviewed.
	And the data is not released and nobody cares.
	And the whole peer review process is just...
	A peer review process is about as valuable at picking truth as voters are at picking the leaders of society.
	But anyway, sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, no, no, that's okay.
	Yeah, but I just had to say that there about you being funny because I pretty much have to stop listening to you on my drive to and from work because sometimes I'm just laughing so hard that I can't even see.
	Don't crash!
	No, I won't.
	And certainly don't crash.
	Did you see a guy walking down the road talking to me on a show forever?
	A few minutes ago, because I think you might want to mention to him to get to a sidewalk.
	Anyway, sorry, did you have another question?
	Yes, yes, I have another brief point to make.
	So, the next thing I want to talk about is this concept of a, quote, mixed economy.
	I'm not sure if Mises coined that term.
	But my problem with it, and I'm sure you'll agree, is that qualitatively speaking, there can be no such thing as a mixed economy, right?
	So we either have some degree of socialism or we have freedom.
	I think this is pretty fundamental.
	I think it's a pretty fundamental beam that minarchists and statists in general are standing on, which needs to be cleared away.
	I think it was Rothbard who said that communism was only successful because it was nearly universally interpreted as being qualitative understanding, and so it was radical and uncompromising.
	And so...
	Well, anyway, if you could just talk about that.
	I have some other little things to say about that, but if you could just talk about that.
	Well, a mixed economy is...
	It's just one of these value-neutral terms designed to cover up evil.
	Yeah, totally.
	If a man rapes his wife in a marriage, we don't call that a mixed marriage.
	We don't say, well, it's a mix of lovemaking and rape.
	Exactly.
	If I put poison in your cappuccino, we don't say it's like a mixed drink.
	There's some cappuccino, there's some poison.
	Mixed is a value-neutral term.
	You know, it's weird if I can just interject here.
	It's funny that most people today understand completely that there's something drastically wrong with the world.
	But when you give them examples to counter their kind of logical framework, like rape isn't lovemaking and stuff like that, that is appalling to them.
	And they can't even believe that they can be that wrong.
	But the sad thing is that they are.
	They are.
	Yeah, I think people don't have any problem with the truth.
	They just have problems with other people's reactions to the truth, right?
	So people say, okay, well, if I accept this, if I accept what you're saying, what's going to happen to my social circles?
	Remember, human beings fundamentally survive socially.
	I mean, throughout tribal history and so on, we needed other people to watch us while we slept, and we needed other people to take care of us while we were pregnant and so on, right?
	So human beings survive socially.
	So the first thing that people do when they encounter a new idea is they don't They don't compare it relative to reason and evidence.
	They compare it relative to other people's reactions to the idea.
	And this is the whole idea of blasphemy.
	Blasphemy is we are not going to evaluate the truth or falsehood of your proposition.
	We are simply going to raise a massive amount of offense until people shut up.
	So blasphemy and heresy and all this kind of stuff is simply – and this is – I mean the global warming guys talk about this too, right?
	They're just – you're a denier.
	You're in the pay of big oil.
	Yeah, like the $4 trillion spent on global warming has had no effect on how scientists work, right?
	Because scientists are superhuman.
	They have no reproductive organs.
	They entirely live in their lab coats.
	In fact, they're born in lab coats.
	Not many people understand that.
	No human desires of any kind, only a selfless dedication to the truth.
	They're not influenced.
	By money because they're not human.
	Anyway, it's all nonsense.
	Of course they're influenced by money.
	People respond to incentives.
	And so when you don't have a lot of truth, all you have to do is create a massive amount of offense and people will avoid the topic.
	So, I mean, most people, I mean, of course they don't believe in any deities.
	9,999 deities they fully accept don't exist, but they're one.
	It does, right?
	And so when you tell the truth to people, all they do is they put it through their little social computer and say, what are people's reactions to this going to be?
	Oh, are people's reactions to this going to be negative?
	Oh, so I cannot now evaluate that it's true because I know I'm not going to repeat it.
	See, this is really important.
	Shame control is the essence of anti-philosophical thinking.
	So what happens is you say something like taxation is theft and people are like, fuck, if that's true, then I'm going to get a difficult life from here on in because I'm going to know something that's true that is going to be upsetting to people.
	And so they will not evaluate that it's true.
	They will not evaluate whether it's true or not because if they evaluate that it's true and they decide not to speak it, then they know that they're cowards and they reject truth for the sake of social conformity.
	People don't want to know that about themselves because it's shameful to know the truth and to refuse to speak it because you're afraid of other people getting upset.
	That tells you that you're a coward.
	That tells you that you're surrounded by bullies.
	That tells you that you have no virtue, that you have no integrity.
	And you're just another piece of social fluff blowing along the hellish black winds of conformity.
	People don't want to know that about themselves, so they just reject it.
	They don't even examine the question.
	They just get offended and upset so that they can avoid their own cowardice and the bullying nature of the people around them.
	Anyway, go ahead.
	It's just another extension of this platonic ideology of perfect forms that keeps pushing its way forward.
	Well, I mean, in economics, you simply have to look at the value-neutral terms that are constantly introduced.
	Most economics is just a massive cover for evil, and most economics would be of no interest to anyone in a free society, right?
	I mean, Because they're trying to read human intentions, which they've actually said are impossible, right?
	Because economics are about, well, what if the Fed does this?
	And what if human beings do?
	But they've already proven that even in the stock market, you can't predict what the price of stock is going to be, let alone what the decisions of people are going to be.
	So economics, by its own definition, in terms of its ability to predict and control and guide state actions, has already rendered itself completely invalid.
	You know, they just gave the economics, the Nobel Prize in economics to people who've said that modern economics I wonder if people can pinpoint the exact moment where Steph's morning coffee kicked in on the show today.
	Corey, you're up next.
	I'm not even going to take this one orally.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Go ahead, Corey.
	Apparently, it's good for my cancer to take it anally.
	Hi, Stefan.
	Hello, hello.
	How are you doing?
	I'm doing alright.
	How are you doing?
	Hey, Corey, didn't we just do a response?
	Did you send a letter in?
	Yeah, I sent an email to you.
	About racing thoughts?
	Yeah, I did.
	Okay, good.
	Um...
	Huh?
	I said I remember the letter, so go ahead.
	Oh, okay, good.
	Um...
	Yeah, um...
	I think it had to do with my relationship with my mom.
	I talked to her about seeing a therapist because I deal with anxiety.
	The relationship kind of confuses me because I can talk to her about anarchism and unschooling and You know, like, on the outside, like, you know, she seems like a pretty nice person and whatever, but when it comes to talking about emotions,
	she, her typical response is like, you know, you just gotta have willpower and get through it, or, you know, the past is the past, you can't change it, so you just gotta move on.
	I'm sorry to interrupt.
	I'm sorry to interrupt you just when you're starting.
	Does your mother use willpower to overcome a lot of her own obstacles?
	Is she a good example of what she is saying is the good for you?
	Well, she says she does.
	She says that, you know, she has had, like, something like a panic attack before, but she said, you know, oh, you can't let that happen, and you just gotta, you know, control it and don't let it control you or whatever, but that seems to be kind of, like, dismissive, like she's not in touch with herself.
	Sorry, let me understand this.
	Does your mother, is she a psychiatrist or a psychologist?
	Does she have formal training in the area of anxiety management?
	No.
	I mean, she's taken a few classes on it, but no.
	Yeah, because, I mean, again, I'm no psychologist and I'm no expert, but my understanding is that you don't will away a panic attack.
	Because otherwise there'd be no such thing as the profession of psychology or psychiatry, right?
	Just will it away.
	I mean, this is not a willpower issue, right?
	Right, yeah.
	So, I mean, I guess I would ask, you know, okay, but on what basis are you saying that this is the best way to do it?
	Like, how do you know?
	And if she says, well, I had anxiety and I willed it away, then I think that that would by definition not be social anxiety.
	If you can just will it away, That's by definition not a problem.
	If you have a problem, then you can't will it away, and if you could will it away, it's not a psychological problem.
	Does that make any sense?
	Kind of, yeah.
	I guess I would wonder what she was experiencing then, or maybe she was able to will it away in some sense, but she's not in touch with herself.
	Well, no.
	My question would be, how do you know?
	How do you know if she's even telling the truth about having...
	Did you ever see her have a panic attack?
	Did you...
	I mean, have you ever witnessed this directly?
	No.
	No.
	Okay.
	Do you know...
	Has she ever seen a professional for it?
	Did she ever...
	I mean, how do you know that this has even happened?
	I don't.
	I just...
	Well, that's important, right?
	That's important.
	I mean, be skeptical of people who give you unverified things that have no research or knowledge or understanding...
	Or science behind them.
	You know, when, as far as I understand it, a panic attack is when the fight-or-flight mechanism emanating out of the hypothalamus completely overwhelms and turns into static, the neofrontal cortex, so that your willpower, in a sense, is washed away by this storm of electrical activity, biochemical activity, and hormonal activity, and particularly cortisol, of course, the stress hormone.
	It washes away.
	It's like a tsunami on a little sandcastle.
	It washes away your identity.
	It washes away your capacity to reason.
	It washes away your willpower.
	So I don't think, and again, please don't take my explanation of it as anything true or scientific.
	That's just my amateur understanding of it.
	But if that's not what your mother experienced, you know, we all have these things where, you know, oh, I feel a little bit awkward walking into this room of people I don't even know that I'm supposed to interact with.
	Oh, you know, I'm sure it'll be fine, and you go in and do it.
	I mean, that's not a panic attack, right?
	A panic attack is a genuine storm of unmanageable terror.
	And, I mean, boy, it's...
	I mean, Nathaniel Brandon describes...
	I think Henry James' father used to have this and just had it in a terrible, terrible situation.
	And so I think that for your mother to give you advice...
	With no knowledge and with a self-assessment of what she thinks a panic attack might have been is entirely irresponsible.
	I mean, if you have this level of anxiety, yes, I mean, you need to go and talk to a competent professional.
	You need to go and talk.
	Now, I mean, I know if you go to a psychiatrist, they'll just give you a bunch of pills and everybody knows what I think of that.
	And not just me, but a whole bunch of researchers think that that's incredibly dangerous.
	I personally would go to talk therapy and find yourself a good talk therapist.
	But for your mother to say, just will through it like I did, is incredibly irresponsible because she doesn't know, right?
	Yeah.
	And what that means, when people are being irresponsible, they're just being responsible to something else, right?
	This is an important thing to understand, right?
	So the question is why would your mother not want you to go and see a therapist?
	Probably Maybe to her it means, you know, maybe she did something wrong as a parent and she doesn't want to admit that.
	All right.
	That's about as nice a way as I could imagine.
	You must be such a nice young lady.
	Oh, how nice.
	No, that's very nice.
	But so, tell me, what do you think?
	Well, what she's told me is that, you know, it doesn't seem that bad.
	Hey, wait a minute.
	Did you see the switch you did there?
	I'm sorry, what are you asking?
	I'm sorry to interrupt you.
	I asked you, what do you think?
	And do you know what you said?
	What she thinks.
	What she told me.
	What she told me, yeah.
	Right, you see the difference, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, what do you think?
	Um...
	Well, I think it's, like I said, I don't, I think it makes her uncomfortable.
	No, you already said that, but what I mean is, I'm sorry, I was not more specific in my question.
	If she were to say that there are things she could have done better as a parent, what would you think?
	Would you think she was right or would you think she was wrong?
	If she said that to me, I would think that's right.
	Okay, and what do you think she could have done better as a parent?
	She could have been there for me.
	She, you know, instead of dismissing my feelings, she could have said, you know, oh, I'm really sorry to hear that.
	Would you...
	Sorry, you're talking about now.
	What I mean is as a mother, as a child.
	Um...
	Well, she, like, she dropped me off at a babysitter when I was, like, an infant, and then daycare after that, and then public school after that.
	So, she, you know, instead of doing that, she, I don't know, she could have spent more time somehow.
	Where was your father?
	They were married until I was three.
	He wasn't very good around children.
	He wasn't very good around me and they had relationship issues.
	They divorced when I was three and he kept in touch with me until I was about 10 and they were on the phone one time and they got into an argument and he didn't call after that.
	What do you mean you didn't call after that?
	How old were you when that phone call occurred?
	I was 10.
	You were 10.
	And your father never called again?
	No.
	My god, that's...
	I mean, I feel teary.
	That's just incredibly appalling.
	You never...
	No goodbyes?
	No, this is what's happening?
	No...
	I'm joining the Foreign Legion to forget.
	One day he completely stopped calling.
	Yeah.
	And what did your mother have to say about this?
	She thought that was pretty terrible.
	But she said, you know, she's sure he still loves me.
	Yeah, yeah, okay.
	Did your mother talk to your father again?
	No.
	He didn't try to contact either of us.
	I was able to get into contact with him.
	He'll call every now and again now.
	But he didn't call for 10 years.
	I mean, we sort of talked about it, but there's a lot of fear for me to, I guess, explain how that made me feel.
	Yeah, how did that make you feel?
	I mean, I can't imagine.
	horrible just really like unloved Unimportant, right?
	Like the bond, right?
	You need to rely on the bond with your parents.
	The bond is how you find the world.
	It's how you find yourself.
	It's your avenue to reality and your eventual avenue to connection with other people.
	To simply not even have an explanation, to not have a goodbye, to simply vanish as a father for 10 years.
	And you're saying that your mother didn't call him.
	Now, did your mother know when she hung up the phone that he wasn't going to call back?
	No, I don't think so.
	I'm not exactly sure how it ended.
	You don't know?
	No.
	Yeah, that's something you need to know.
	Now, I don't know if you'll ever get the truth.
	You know, this is the great challenge with dysfunctional families is you'll never know the truth.
	Right?
	So I was just chatting the other day with someone and saying, you know, I'd like to know what happened to these people from my youth.
	Now you can look them up or I've just never really got around to doing it.
	But the reality is that you don't know the truth because the public faces, the public personas, the public stories that people have, the avoidance.
	I mean, to get to the truth in relationships really requires the participation of the other person.
	And so if you sit down with your parents and say, I mean, what the hell happened here?
	Like, how insane was this?
	That my relationship with my father ended with no explanation, with no goodbye, with no apologies, with no understanding.
	You all just ripped my father out of my life with no words and no gentility or kindness of understanding for me.
	And it's something we still haven't talked about.
	Well, I swear by God that is something your family damn well needs to talk about.
	Because that is completely fucked up, and that is so harmful to a child.
	And look, my daughter only wants to marry me when she gets older.
	Maybe some of her friends, too.
	I don't know.
	We're going to set up some sort of Mormon enclave.
	But she wants to get married, and her relationship with me is very powerful.
	And of course, a daughter's relationship with a father is a template for a future relationship.
	Romance for future husbands and all that, right?
	So husband, hopefully singular.
	So that is a nuclear strike on a child's development.
	I hope you get that.
	That is so devastatingly harmful, you almost could not design or imagine a more harmful thing to do to a child.
	Because it's not even like you got hit with a belt, where it's obviously appalling and repulsive and so on, but it's something there.
	The absences, particularly the unexplained and unpredictable absences, are about the most harmful thing that goes on.
	Neglect, I believe, is about the most harmful thing that goes on in parenting, and this was a case of completely, astoundingly pathological neglect and avoidance.
	Abandonment.
	You abandon without explanation by your own father, and your mother appears to say that she has had no, because she says, oh, it was terrible.
	But she chose him.
	She's got a responsibility to fix it.
	She chose him as your father.
	I mean, your father's responsible too, don't get me wrong.
	But your father was gone, and it's your mother's job to get him back.
	Right.
	And who knows?
	Who knows what she said to him that made him never come back?
	Right.
	Or that influenced him in that direction.
	Who knows?
	Who knows what she said to him?
	And you may never know because you can't get the truth.
	You know, many times I wondered what my mother's childhood was like and I would ask her about it, but I just wasn't getting any truths.
	Because you just, you know, so much of the stuff is sealed up and thrown in a lead-dissolving bottle in thin paper into the ocean.
	Even if you recover it, you can't read it.
	So I'm incredibly sorry that you had this experience.
	Because, of course, you didn't know, right?
	Oh, my parents had a fight.
	Well, they fought before.
	And then, you know, you wait.
	And no call comes.
	And you wait and no visits come.
	And it's incredibly...
	I mean, it's just unbelievably terrible.
	I'm so sorry, Corrie.
	What a complete opposite of what you needed.
	Yeah.
	And the idea, then, that you can just will this away...
	You know, I guess my question to your mom would be, well, if you can just will away negative things, why did you get divorced?
	Right?
	I mean, if you can just take negative experiences and just will them away, why on earth would you ever end up getting divorced?
	Right?
	Would that be a fair question?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, definitely.
	So, unfortunately, I'll tell you what I think.
	Hopefully it will be of some help.
	I did actually...
	Yesterday I recorded an answer, which I'll publish the next day or two, but I recorded an answer, my answer at least to your question about raising thoughts, so I won't delve into that here.
	But...
	Children need to know that they're number one in their parents' minds.
	Why?
	Because children have no power.
	Parents are the giant levers through which children get things done in the world.
	And if you want to give your children a sense of competence, of efficacy, to prevent them from feeling small and powerless and ineffectual, you have to be the lever by which they get things done as a parent, which means you have to put their needs very high.
	You know, when my baby was a toddler, And she wanted to reach something from a shelf.
	What would she do?
	She couldn't climb the shelf.
	She couldn't go get a ladder.
	Do you know what she did?
	She used you?
	Yeah.
	She would.
	And she actually would...
	I mentioned this in the show before.
	When she was a baby, she wanted to get something across the room.
	She would ask to be picked up and then she would reach to it and she would basically fly me like a little pilot across the room to get what she wanted.
	Right.
	A sense of efficacy comes...
	Out of our bond with parents, our sense of identity.
	Identity is relational.
	Identity is a conversation, and if no one's listening, it's hard to have an identity.
	You know, it's hard to be a recording artist if nobody presses record, and it's hard to have a self when there's no other to respond.
	Can't become a good tennis player playing against a wall, right?
	You have to play with other people.
	And excellence in identity is the result of conversation with other people.
	Now, a lot of parenting is doing stuff that you otherwise would never do.
	In other words, stuff that you kind of don't want to do.
	And you only want to do it because it's your kid and you love them, right?
	I mean, when I'm 60, I'm not going to be going to play centers and running up and down tubes and jumping in bouncy castles.
	And I'm just not going to be doing that.
	I, you know, if I ever, I rarely do, but if I ever stop at McDonald's for A bite to eat?
	I'm not going to say, well, that was a great meal.
	I think I would go into the stinky, pee-infested tubes of inner intestine kid fun hell and play around for a while.
	I'm just not going to do it.
	I like butterflies.
	It doesn't mean I'm going to go to the Butterfly Conservatory.
	No, not particularly interested in toys.
	But you do all of these things because it's fun for your kid and because you love your child and you want your child to be happy.
	And so putting aside personal preferences for the sake of Your children, which is another way of saying import your children's preferences into your personal preferences.
	That is important.
	I'm not a big fan of chutes and ladders.
	I don't invite friends over.
	We have dinner and I say, okay, let's play Candyland.
	Although DeBlob 2 on the Xbox was great.
	But you do these things because it's your child and you love your child and so on.
	So what I'm trying to point out is that If you have people who don't put your needs first as a baby and as a toddler and as a child, that is really important, and that is really difficult.
	Now, you didn't want your parents to fight, so by fighting in front of you, they put their needs ahead of yours, at the expense of yours.
	You didn't want your parents to get divorced.
	By getting divorced, they put their needs at your expense ahead of you.
	You didn't want your daddy to vanish.
	You don't want your mom to just tell you to wish away That which she couldn't wish away in something much more important, which was the integrity of your entire family.
	I mean, divorce is emotionally catastrophic.
	It is financially catastrophic.
	It is relationally catastrophic.
	It is emotionally catastrophic at every level.
	It's even more significant than an anxiety attack.
	And if your mother thinks that you can will negative things away, then she should have just damn well done that when she was married.
	But she didn't.
	But now she's telling you to do it, which means that right now she's putting her own anxieties ahead of what is good for you.
	And I really want to identify that for you because when that dynamic is in place, people cannot be trusted.
	When that dynamic is in place, people cannot be trusted.
	You need to fix that dynamic, which means you need to bring your needs to your mother and be relentless in getting your mother to accept that you have needs even if they're inconvenient to her in order to get her to focus on you.
	In order to get her to focus on you.
	There are things that my daughter brings up that make me a little uncomfortable.
	I focus on that.
	I focus on her.
	My discomfort is not her business.
	And it is through that process that she will become interested in other people's needs, which she is.
	Right?
	I mean, she started feeding me when she was 13 months old.
	Daddy, this is good, good, good.
	And she would...
	Now she shares stuff and she wants to know what I'm thinking and feeling and she wants to know whether I enjoyed my show and blah blah blah.
	And you cannot trust people who do not have your needs in their minds as a very alive and necessary thing.
	That doesn't mean, of course, that everybody has to always Bow to your needs and fulfill your needs and so on, but your needs have to be very present in their mind and they cannot have the option of wishing away your needs for their own emotional preferences.
	Those people are not trustworthy because you cannot rely on them.
	People who are trustworthy are those who keep their words and who do what they say and who have standards that you can rely upon.
	That doesn't mean that they always perfectly fulfill those standards, but if they don't, you can call them on it and they will say, Crap, I didn't fulfill those standards.
	You're absolutely right.
	And people who don't have your needs in their minds to whom your emotional life is not vivid and a necessary part of their calculations and their negotiations cannot be trusted because they can wink you out of existence in their own mind anytime that you're inconvenient, which means you cannot have a strong bond because you can be wished away.
	Your emotional needs can be wished away anytime that they prefer it.
	And it may even be unconscious for them Which is even worse because then they don't wish you away.
	You simply vanish as if you were never there.
	And you will only be there for their convenience and you will only be there for their prestige and you will only be there to satisfy their needs.
	It's a UPB violation because if needs are to be satisfied in relationships, then everybody's needs must be taken into account.
	Right.
	So I would really sit down and focus and say, you know, this advice is really bad, mom.
	This advice serves your needs, not my needs.
	Social anxieties and phobias and so on, they're very treatable.
	They're very treatable.
	But telling people to will it away, to wish it away, particularly from a woman who got divorced, is incredibly selfish and harmful to you because she's holding you back from treatment.
	It is very treatable.
	And The challenge, of course, is that people who have a shallow relationship with you never want you to have a deep relationship with others.
	You know, when I met my wife and I realized what a really good relationship was, every other sandwich on the buffet had flies and maggots on it.
	That's what it looked like to me.
	Like once I really finally understood and got what a really great relationship is, That was not immediately beneficial to the selfish shallowness of those around me at the time because I had something real.
	And once you have something real, you realize around you, you know, I see dead people.
	I see crazy people.
	I see selfish people.
	I see narcissistic people.
	Once you hold on to something real, once you touch flesh, you realize that you've only been trying to hug ghosts your whole life long.
	So I would really recommend to try and connect with your mom at that level.
	I would hugely and strongly recommend you don't need your mom's permission to go into therapy.
	You don't need your mom's support to go into therapy.
	In fact, if you need to have her permission or support, it's all the more reason for you to get into therapy.
	Right, yeah.
	And if it's uncomfortable for your mom for you to go into therapy, that's her business and you should not put your life in hold to satisfy The neurotic needs of other people, that will mean that you will be frozen into a conformist statue for the rest of your life.
	So that would be my suggestion, if that helps.
	It does.
	Thank you.
	Is there anything else you want to add?
	I think there were, but I'm...
	You don't have to.
	This is enough for you to...
	Okay, enough for you to process.
	Okay, well, thanks very much.
	Corey, I appreciate you calling in.
	I really do.
	I hope that I Give you some useful perspectives.
	I try to be very cautious but direct with people, and I hope that helps.
	So thank you so much.
	And Mike, who do we have next?
	All right, Brian, you're up next.
	Go ahead.
	Hey, Seth.
	How's it going?
	Good.
	Now that Monty Python song is stuck in my head.
	But anyway, go on.
	Oh, well, I'm sorry.
	This is going to be an emotional letdown.
	That last call was pretty moving.
	I just wanted to focus on politics, actually, or political theory.
	Sure.
	One real quick question and then maybe a longer play of disagreement.
	The first question is recently I've heard you kind of consistently employ the definition of libertarianism as you own yourself and you own the effects of your actions and I wanted to ask you if you could actually define the word own as you employ it in that sentence.
	Well, create and are responsible for I think would be two ways that I think would be helpful in expanding that idea if that helps.
	So you create your body or create yourself?
	I mean, the way I see it is...
	No, you create your actions.
	Okay.
	But you certainly do create your body.
	You create your body insofar as you maintain it.
	You give it water, you give it food, you give it rest, you exercise it and so on.
	You certainly maintain your body, which is a form of creation, right?
	I mean, the work that is used to maintain a car is as important as the work that is used to create a car, right?
	Because if nobody maintained their cars, we'd need like 20 times the amount of cars in the world, right?
	So maintenance is an act of creation and so on.
	So yes, I mean, you certainly do sustain your body and you are responsible for what occurs, for the actions that your body takes.
	You're responsible for the words, That you put out, you are responsible for the actions of your limbs and so on.
	And I mean, there are certain, if somebody has epilepsy and so on, then they are not because that's all involuntary.
	Somebody who sleepwalks is, you know, not responsible.
	But when you're awake and you're alert and you're conscious and you are a reasonable mental functioning, then yes, you are responsible for the choices that you make and the effects and your actions, your words and the effects thereof.
	Okay, my only suggestion then would be if you employ that in the future, generally speaking to most libertarians, the word ownership implies or is defined by the exclusive right to control a scarce resource, and therefore if you're going to use a term that's basically not very commonly utilized within libertarian thinking,
	Then your explanation, kind of defining your terms, I think it's a little more helpful, because it seems a little contradictory to say, you know, because when I say libertarianism means you own yourself, it means that when deciding who gets to control that body, you are the person who gets to control it.
	But then, as I think your friend Stephanie Cella has pointed out, the concept that we own the results of our actions isn't necessarily true in the same sense of ownership in bodies, because You could deface somebody's Marvel statue, for example, in the whole IP debate.
	And just because you did it doesn't necessarily mean that you now have the right to control it.
	But I understand you're talking about ownership in the sense of responsibility.
	No, no, no.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	Whoa, whoa, whoa.
	Let's say I spray graffiti on Michelangelo's David.
	Okay.
	I own the graffiti.
	I am responsible for the graffiti.
	I don't own the statue.
	See, again, we're using different definitions of the term, which is why I'm asking for an explanation.
	No, you don't own the graffiti if you're using ownership in the sense of property.
	If you're using ownership in the sense of responsibility, then I do agree with you.
	And that's where my confusion came in, is that basically there's—I'm not saying equivocation in the sense of deceit, but there's a different definition of the word being— Yeah, no, I understand.
	So basically I say we own the effects of our actions.
	And if people say, well, what is ownership?
	What is creation and responsibility?
	But yeah, we own ourselves.
	We own the effects of our actions.
	You can't have property without self-ownership, obviously, right?
	And you also, I mean, the reason why is that the non-aggression principle and property rights are two sides of the same moral coin.
	And what I mean by that is that you own, you go out and you pull a fish out of the lake, you own that fish.
	But if you go and strangle a hobo, you own that murder.
	You have created that in the world.
	That is yours.
	And that's why we prosecute the guy who's strangled and not the guy standing next to him.
	And that's why if somebody disagrees with me in a debate and they say, your arguments are fallacious, they've just asserted property rights.
	And not in a conditional way, but in an absolute way.
	So when Peter Joseph says, you know, Steph, you're a douchebag and a piece of shit, For your arguments, which are con men and blah, blah, blah, because, you know, he's so dedicated to nonviolent communication.
	But no, he's basically, he's establishing perfect property rights.
	Nothing more needs to be said, as far as the establishment of property rights go, because it's accepting that I'm responsible for the effects of my actions, and I own them.
	Which is property.
	The arguments are my property, which he traces directly back to me and gives me 100% ownership.
	He doesn't say, Steph, you are 10% responsible for your argument, but 90% of it is structural violence.
	So let's you and I team up and find structural violence and reform it together.
	Now, he will say that a man who beats his child is probably the victim of structural violence.
	But me, I'm 100% responsible for an argument that goes against his grain, but a man who beats his son is really not that responsible.
	But no, so I mean, we own ourselves, therefore we own the effects of our actions.
	The nice thing about that formulation is it covers property and immorality at the same time.
	You don't need two separate formulations, so I own a murderer just as I own a fish.
	Because you create, fundamentally resources are created.
	This is one thing that, not you, but People who don't really understand these arguments don't really follow.
	They think that all this property is just lying around and people just grab it.
	These fish are all just floating and they jump into somebody's boat and the boat was just floating.
	Everything that is of value, almost without exception, is created, is brought into being.
	So if you go to a store, there's an apple.
	Well, somebody had to grow that apple, water the tree, pick the apple, bring it to the store.
	The accessibility of that apple is created.
	Property is almost always created rather than found.
	So a fish does not exist in a usable format in any way, shape, or form when it's at the bottom of the lake.
	Nobody can use it.
	In terms of property, it's non-existent.
	Now, somebody who then goes and makes a fishing rod and a line and a tackle and baits it, gets the worms, goes out in the boat, drops it down, sits there and waits for a while, Hauls it out, brings it home, cleans it, guts it, fries it up.
	Now, that's a huge amount of labor to turn it into a consumable good, which is something you can eat.
	I mean, it doesn't just jump out into the fry pan and into your belly, right?
	I mean, so property is almost always created.
	It is almost never found.
	You say, well, you just go and enclose some land.
	But nobody cares about enclosing land except as a prerequisite to doing something else with that property, like planting crops or building a house or something like that.
	So property...
	It's almost always created and it is almost never just lying around.
	Gold doesn't just lie around.
	If it did, it wouldn't be of any value, right?
	That's why we don't use like granite as currency because it's everywhere, right?
	And so you've got to dig, you build it up, refine it, melt it down, put it into something useful format and whatever, right?
	And so diamond is the same thing.
	Property is almost always created.
	It is almost never just found.
	And that's why Creation is the ownership of something that wasn't there before, which is true also of theft and murder and rape and assault.
	I have created the bruise in the faces of somebody I punch, and they weren't there before.
	And therefore, I own that.
	I am responsible for that, and I have to do restitution for that, because I've created something that wasn't there before.
	So the nice thing with this formulation is it covers property and immorality in the same formulation, which I think is efficient.
	Does that make any sense?
	No.
	I mean, I understand where you're coming from, but I don't want to use the word equivocation in the sense that I'm accusing you of intentional deception.
	I think that your utilization of the word ownership is basically dancing between I mean, no, you don't own the bruise in my cheek.
	Wait, wait, wait, wait.
	Come on, come on.
	This is a philosophy show.
	You can't use the phrase dancing between two realms.
	That sounds like an Asia album.
	You've got to get something a little bit more concrete than dancing between two realms.
	Is there perhaps a better term than a clarification?
	Where's the logical flaw?
	Where's the logical flaw in what I'm saying?
	Yeah, so here's what I'm discussing is that there's two definitions of the word ownership.
	And the moral responsibility definition of ownership, I understand that being employed with, if I hit your cheek and create a bruise, I am morally responsible for that.
	I own that in the sense that you morally own responsibility.
	But at the same time, it is my cheek.
	It is therefore not the bruise, the inflamed or the bleeding or whatever causes the bruise.
	Still belongs to the person whose body it belongs to when we're using the word ownership as a term of property rights, a term of exclusive right to control.
	So moral responsibility and exclusive right control, I'm not saying that that's not an important element of philosophy or understanding as more responsibility, but when trying to decide who has the right to control, because ultimately that is what all human disputes ultimately boil down to, as Murray Rothbard says, you know, all human rights are property rights.
	We are ultimately conflicting with each other on the use of rivalrous resources, and therefore moral responsibility...
	Sorry, but to interrupt, I don't see how that...
	I mean, so rape is a disagreement about who has the right to control a vagina or a rectum, right?
	Correct.
	But when you rape a woman, you don't own her vagina now.
	I'm sorry?
	When you rape a woman, you do not own her vagina now.
	She still owns the vagina.
	you're the one who owns the moral responsibility of the rape.
	But that's why it's a crime, because you never did own her vagina.
	Correct.
	That's why it's a crime.
	If I steal something, then it – right?
	Exactly.
	But my point is that by doing the rape, you do not now acquire ownership of something you did not have before.
	So to say that you own the – But of course, if I steal something, if I steal something, I don't acquire ownership of it.
	I have to return it, right?
	Correct.
	I guess where the disconnect there is that...
	We're in agreement.
	So if I punch you in the cheek, I'm asserting ownership over your cheek, which I do not own, which is immoral.
	Correct.
	If I punch myself in the cheek, people might think that's ridiculous or bad or whatever, but I don't go to jail, right?
	Because it's my cheek.
	Correct.
	There's no disagreement there.
	Right.
	But if I punch you in the cheek, I'm asserting ownership over your cheek, which I don't have, right?
	So it's immoral.
	You're asserting ownership when the definition ownership is...
	The exclusive right to control.
	When you're talking about the term ownership as moral responsibility, then I think it's conflating two terms that are not necessarily the same.
	But telling me that I'm conflating two terms is not making an argument.
	That's describing something that may be a problem.
	Do you agree that the term ownership has different definitions?
	Multiple definitions.
	I don't honestly know.
	I mean, I honestly don't know.
	I would think that the responsible philosopher would be to try to define ownership in as broad and useful a sense as possible so that it had the fewest possible definitions.
	And if you could get down to one definition, that would be ideal.
	So it may have multiple definitions at the moment, but I would argue that one definition— We want the unified field theory.
	We want the speed of lightest concept.
	We want all of that stuff that makes things easier to understand.
	I mean, ultimately, ownership is the noise I'm making.
	We're talking about concepts here.
	So the word, the noise, ownership I make, I'm asserting it has reference to different concepts.
	So there's the concept of moral responsibility, and then there's the concept of exclusive right to control.
	And my disagreement is I do not believe those concepts are the same, even though we use the same noise ownership or the same squiggly lines when we're typing it to refer to either concept.
	Well, sorry, no, but see, this is the annoying thing.
	Sorry to express my annoyance, but you're basically repeating the same thing.
	I made an argument that if I rape a woman, I am claiming exclusive use of her vagina, which I do not own, and that's immoral.
	I agree.
	And that's a violation of exclusive use.
	So we agreed on that.
	And now you're telling me again that there are two different meanings, even though we agree with that ownership in the moral sense.
	I'm sorry, Steph.
	I'm going to stop you here.
	Would you not also agree to the statement that you, quote-unquote, own the rape?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	You've created that rape.
	You own the immorality of what it is that you've done, for sure.
	Okay.
	- Okay, but is there a dispute over the exclusive right to use the quote unquote rape? - I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what that means.
	If I steal something, I'm responsible for the theft.
	I own the theft.
	What is the theft?
	I guess that's the disagreement or the confusion is that the theft is not a rivalrous resource.
	It's a moral concept.
	It's not something we're actually disputing.
	No, but it can't be transferred.
	It can't be transferred because nobody else did the theft except for me.
	So I can't transfer that ownership, right?
	Any more than I can transfer my free will to somebody else.
	Fair enough.
	So I guess maybe it's the tangible versus the intangible that I'm having a problem with, which is that when we're actually disputing ownership, we're disputing over tangible rivalrous resources.
	And when you use the word, I own the rake or I own the steps, you're kind of speaking about moral responsibility, which I don't see as being the same thing as tangible resources that we have conflicts over.
	Okay.
	Well, I appreciate that you don't see it as the same thing.
	I certainly do, and I think I've made the case, and I'll leave people to decide who made the better case, and let's move on to the next caller.
	Okay, thanks.
	All right, Brandon, you're up next.
	Hello, Stefan.
	Go ahead, my friend.
	That last call kind of confused me.
	I didn't know what you guys were talking about.
	That's all right.
	I think that may have been...
	The plan.
	Not my plan.
	Go ahead.
	My topic is overcoming laziness.
	So I was wondering if you had any tips or anything to help someone that...
	Wait a minute here.
	Brandon, are you seriously asking a stay-at-home podcaster on how to overcome laziness?
	Yeah, that's right.
	Are you mad?
	Well, okay, um...
	Tell me what laziness is?
	Assume this is your problem.
	You don't have a friend who's lazy.
	What are you lazy in and what does that mean?
	That's a great question.
	I'm trying to figure that out myself.
	I don't know if my laziness is just an addiction because...
	No, no.
	You're describing the laziness.
	That's not what I'm asking for.
	Because I'm saying, what is X? And you're saying, well, I don't know if X is an addiction.
	It's like, no, no, no.
	What is X? Right?
	So let me ask you this.
	Why is the word lazy even in your life?
	Because...
	Right?
	So in other words, has someone called you lazy?
	No.
	I mean, I call myself lazy.
	So nobody else has ever called you lazy, but you call yourself lazy.
	Is that right?
	I guess, yeah, people have called me lazy before, sure.
	Wait a second here.
	Are you even engaged in this conversation?
	I just asked you if people have called you lazy, and you said no.
	And then I asked you to clarify that, and you said, well, yeah, I guess, sure.
	Listen, if you're not even going to be energetic in this conversation, I'll move on to the next caller.
	I need you to be focused, and I need you to answer the questions honestly, because I don't want to waste time.
	Is that fair?
	Yes, it's fair.
	So shake the cobwebs out of your brain, sit up, walk around, shake it out, move your arms a little, jump up or down a little, and focus on the conversation, okay?
	Because they don't want this equivocation.
	All right.
	Fair enough?
	All right.
	Who has called you lazy?
	I've had roommates that have called me lazy.
	All right.
	Has anybody else ever called you lazy?
	Sure.
	I've worked jobs and people have said I was lazy.
	Has anybody else ever called you lazy?
	No.
	Not that I can recall by memory.
	Okay, so your family never calls you lazy?
	No, I don't think they would directly say I'm lazy.
	Huh?
	What does that mean?
	Did they spray paint it on the wall?
	Did they hire skywriters?
	Did they get a tattoo?
	Okay, well maybe they say I'm slow or I use other terms that could describe it.
	And do you take drugs?
	No.
	Okay.
	Do you drink coffee?
	Yeah, I drink coffee.
	Is this you on coffee?
	No.
	This is how I am.
	Alright.
	So, have you ever done drugs in the past?
	I've tried drugs before.
	Yeah.
	But it's never been anything habitual?
	No.
	Do you drink?
	Yeah, occasionally.
	Do you exercise?
	Not really.
	No, you're lazy, right?
	No, absolutely not.
	Okay.
	How's your diet?
	It's mediocre.
	Sometimes I eat healthy and sometimes I don't.
	And do you have any problems with this way of being that you want to change?
	Yeah, I have a lot of problems with it.
	And what are those problems?
	Well, I have trouble keeping up with jobs that I have and keeping up with other people.
	And then I have projects that I've been very ambitious with that I haven't accomplished at all.
	Do you let people down a lot?
	Like, do you make commitments and then not follow through?
	Yeah.
	Do people rely on you and then they get screwed?
	No, I don't try and set up.
	Well, no, I just said the same thing a different way and you said yes to one and no to the other, right?
	Oh.
	If you make commitments to other people and don't follow through on them, then those other people get screwed, right?
	Sure, yeah.
	Yeah, like, I mean, if I say to my friend, I'm going to pick you up from the airport, And then I don't show up.
	He hangs around for the airport for an hour, but he could have just taken a cab.
	He just got screwed, right?
	True, yeah.
	Okay.
	Now, is there anything else?
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I've committed to trying to write a book.
	That's why I'm talking about laziness.
	And I haven't done anything.
	You've committed to try writing a book?
	What, are you crazy?
	Yeah.
	I mean, that's one of the hardest things to do.
	It is hard.
	You don't roll off the couch at 300 pounds and say I'm going to run a marathon tomorrow.
	But anyway, I appreciate you bringing this up.
	So I'll tell you what I think about laziness and then you can tell me if it meets anything because I feel like I'm just going to be pulling teeth trying to get you to tell stuff.
	So I'll tell you what I think about laziness and you can tell me whether it makes any sense to you.
	First of all, we're never lazy about that which gives us joy.
	Would you agree with that?
	And so, in general, laziness is associated to me, at least, with a deficiency of joy.
	Would you agree with that?
	Sure.
	Yep.
	Sure.
	Okay.
	So, do you have anything in life which gives you joy?
	My wife?
	Your wife?
	Yep.
	Okay.
	So, she gives you joy.
	So, are you lazy in your relationship?
	No.
	Oh, good.
	Okay, so we're on the pattern.
	Now, what else in your life gives you joy?
	Well, I play a lot of video games.
	Are you lazy about playing video games?
	Like you sit on the couch and say, well, I just don't really have the energy or the motivation or the desire to go and play video games.
	Yeah, sure.
	Sometimes I won't.
	I don't want to do anything.
	But you play a lot, so most times you overcome that, right?
	So it gives you happiness.
	Does it give you joy, like satisfaction to play video games?
	Yeah.
	So you feel like, that was a great use of my time.
	I feel really satisfied as a human being with that choice.
	Now I feel like I'm eating my own words.
	Sometimes I don't feel like that.
	Sometimes I do feel like I waste my time.
	In fact, probably most of the time after I I play a game.
	I feel like I wasted my time.
	But at the moment, I felt like I was...
	I feel excited.
	Sure.
	Sure.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So, is there anything else other than video games and your wife that gives you joy?
	Just being around friends.
	Social interaction.
	Is there anything that is productive in your life that gives you joy?
	Productive?
	Probably not.
	Yeah.
	Well, what does probably mean?
	You can't sculpt something out of fog, my friends, and I can't give you any advice if you've got all these equivocations.
	Can you tell me something in your life that is productive?
	I'm not saying that your relationship with your wife and your friends and maybe even video games isn't important to you, but in terms of productive, in terms of like it makes you some money or it advances your knowledge or something like that.
	I mean, is there anything in your life that's productive?
	Well, I like to read up on a lot of different things.
	And if it's self-knowledge, then just listening to your show, I feel like it's something that's really productive.
	I asked you if there's something that's productive.
	In terms of, well, let's say, is there anything that makes money that gives you joy?
	Anything that you can make money at that gives you joy?
	No, I'm not.
	I don't make any money doing anything that I enjoy at all.
	And how do you make your money?
	Right now I'm unemployed, but for a long time.
	And how long have you been unemployed for?
	For probably like over four months or five months.
	Right.
	And so how are you living?
	My wife.
	And how much time a day do you spend looking for work?
	Not very much at all.
	And how does your wife feel about all that?
	I'm sure she hates it.
	What do you mean you're sure she hates it?
	You don't know?
	She won't.
	Have you not asked her?
	She would probably avoid us if she'd say she's still happy.
	But I would think otherwise...
	I'm sorry, can you say that again?
	I would...
	Wait, no, listen, listen.
	You're only going to get one more equivocation before I'm going to have to yank the call?
	Because you said to me you get great joy out of your relationship with your wife, and by that I assume that you mean you guys are close and intimate and know each other and so on, and now you don't even know whether she's happy or unhappy about you being unemployed and barely looking for work for four months?
	I think she's happy with me.
	But it would be better if I worked.
	You just said that you thought she hated you not looking for work, and now you think she's happy with you.
	Okay, I think that's the last one.
	Let's move on to the next caller.
	Thank you very much.
	Okay.
	You can call back in if and when you really want to talk about these issues rather than just make up stories in the moment.
	Who's next?
	Sam, go ahead.
	Go ahead, Sam.
	Hello, Steph.
	Hey, Sam.
	How you doing?
	I'm pretty good.
	Just one thing I want to get out of the way really quickly.
	I do have somewhat of a stammering problem.
	I'm sure you can figure it out.
	Oh, thank you for letting me know.
	I appreciate that.
	So go ahead.
	Yeah, I just wanted to say if that screws anything up, I apologize in advance.
	Don't worry about it.
	Okay.
	So anyway, I've reached a little bit of a dead end in my life, and I was wondering if you had any advice regarding this.
	I may.
	Let me have it, brother.
	Okay.
	So, I live in a very small town.
	It is kind of a tourist trap.
	And there is very little, if any, economic opportunity.
	Aside from, like, fast food.
	Yep.
	Right now, I am 20 years old, living at home, eating at a living, working as a dishwasher at a chicken shack.
	I have become a...
	What?
	You call that a dead end?
	No, I'm just kidding.
	Go on, I can understand that.
	I tell you, I did dishwasher for three days when I was about 16.
	And I just...
	So, you know, good for you, man.
	I just...
	I couldn't do it.
	But anyway, go ahead.
	Okay, so anyway...
	There's not really much I can do to go upwards.
	You know what I'm saying?
	I can't make a career out of this.
	Right.
	I think I understand.
	Dishwasher, not much opportunity for advancement.
	Got it.
	The only option that is...
	But I can see how you could...
	I'm pretty sure you were going to disagree with that.
	I'm sorry, you just cut out for a second there.
	You said your only other option is what?
	Military service.
	Military service, right.
	Right, because, you know, washing your hands in blood is much better than washing your hands in soap water.
	Okay.
	All right, well, I've actually got that all rolling.
	Went and took their...
	I scored 99th percentile, which I was pretty proud of.
	And they said I could get a job as a nuclear propulsion technician.
	But I've been battling with my family doctor over some documents she's produced, and it's given me time to think about it.
	Because, you know, I really...
	Can you get to...
	I'm sorry to interrupt you.
	Could you get to your question?
	Okay.
	If you were in my situation, what would you do? - If I was in your situation?
	Yeah.
	Living in a small town.
	Why is your family letting you be a dishwasher?
	Do they think that's what you're good at?
	Do they think that's all you're worth?
	I mean, how is it that you've ended up being a dishwasher?
	You're obviously smart.
	You can be a nuclear technician, whatever the hell that is.
	You can help drive Empire from under the water, I suppose.
	But how is it that your family has let you, a smart guy, end up being a dishwasher?
	I don't know.
	They kind of call it my fault because, well, I never really did well in school.
	I never really felt like it was worth it.
	Why did you never really do well in school?
	You have a family with you who are supposed to help you.
	You know, it's like people who say to me, well, I never really ate that well when I was five years old.
	It's like, I bet you ate what was in the house and what was put in front of you.
	So you not doing well in school is a family issue.
	Well, I eventually did.
	But I bet you they made it your issue, didn't they?
	Yes.
	Yes, of course.
	Well, they eventually helped me like...
	During the last half of my senior year in high school, they finally opened their eyes, I guess, and realized that I was completely not doing...
	I was not thriving, so they pulled me out and put me in this independent study program.
	I finished out that way.
	You mean the last six months of your 12-year school career?
	Yeah.
	That's great.
	Now, did they know beforehand that you were having trouble in school?
	Did they meet with the teachers?
	Did they review your report cards?
	Did they know that you were having trouble in school?
	Yes.
	And what did they do about that?
	Lots of yelling.
	Oh, they yelled.
	Okay, that's great.
	Okay, so they yelled, and they believed that yelling was the best way to help you deal with that.
	that, is that right?
	Because that's all they would do.
	They would get my report card, they'd see it, they'd yell at me, and I'd just leave for that.
	Did they meet with your teachers at all?
	No.
	Oh, so they never met with your teacher.
	Why do you think they never met with your teacher?
	I mean, if your child is having difficulty with something, I think the first place you would want to go is to the expert, right?
	Right.
	They probably just...
	You know, like, if your son is walking with a limp...
	You take him to a doctor.
	You don't yell at the leg, right?
	Right.
	So you would go to the teacher and you go to the teacher and say, teacher, our son is having difficulty in school.
	What do you recommend?
	I can guarantee you that no teacher would say you need to yell at him.
	Well, it's not like I didn't understand it.
	It's just that I thought it was...
	No, no, no, no.
	We're talking about your parents.
	We're not talking about you again.
	So, let me ask you this.
	Are they malevolent or just stupid?
	Well, my mother is very loving and nurturing.
	She was very caring to me as a child.
	No, no.
	Hang on.
	Hang on.
	Before you start giving me all of the propagandistic adjectives, if your son is having trouble in school, you talk to the teacher, right?
	Right.
	Because the teacher is the expert on education.
	You as the parents are not an expert on education.
	I don't clean my daughter's teeth because I'm not retarded.
	And so I take her to a dentist to get her teeth cleaned.
	If she has a problem with a tooth, she hasn't.
	But if she would say, my tooth is owie, I wouldn't yell at the tooth.
	I would take her.
	How many parents do you think try to fix their own children's teeth as opposed to taking them to a dentist?
	I don't think that many would.
	Right.
	So parents, obviously, if there are educational problems, they sit down with the teacher, right?
	Right.
	In the same way that if there's a tooth problem, you take your kid to a dentist, right?
	Right.
	That's why I'm asking.
	Are they not smart enough to know that you ask a teacher about educational problems?
	In other words, are they severely stupid?
	Severely stupid.
	Do you think that they are?
	I don't...
	I think they may be ignorant.
	I don't know about stupid.
	Did they take you to a dentist?
	Yes.
	Okay, so they're not stupid.
	At least not that stupid, right?
	Because they know that when there's a challenge that you don't know how to solve, or if there's a challenge that involves some specialized information, you go to the expert.
	And the funny thing is, you've got to pay to go to the dentist, but going to meet with the teacher is free, right?
	Okay.
	So they're not stupid because they took you to a dentist and they were in fact willing to pay for you to go to a dentist because you had problems with your teeth or they wanted to prevent problems with your teeth.
	And so when you had education, they certainly were smart enough to know that you sit down with the teacher.
	Now, in fact, I believe that the teacher even schedules time with parents to go and meet, right?
	Right.
	Did they ever show up when the teacher said, please come in to talk to me about your son?
	I don't remember if that ever happened.
	I don't believe it did.
	No, I think that teachers schedule time.
	I remember when I was in my high school, even in my junior high school, even in my primary school, there was a parent-teacher night, right?
	So every night, I can't remember how often it happened.
	It was every couple of months, I think.
	It could have been more, slightly less often.
	But the teacher would say, I will be available from this time until this time.
	Please come in to talk to me about your son's Progress or difficulties or whatever, right?
	And so, your parents, I would assume, did not show up to those meetings?
	No, I don't.
	Okay.
	And so, to your knowledge, right?
	Because if they had shown up to the meetings, then I'm sure that the teachers would have said, well, you need to sit down with him, help him with his homework.
	You might need to get him a tutor.
	There may be some other educational environment that might be more appropriate to him or so on.
	But here are the issues that I see.
	Here are the difficulties that I see.
	Here are the recommendations that I would make and so on, right?
	And none of those recommendations would say, just yell at your kid and everything will be fine.
	Right.
	Well, I'm just sort of – I know this isn't the truth.
	I'm just sort of pointing out what I believe their line of thinking was for what it's worth.
	Yeah, don't make up other people's lines of thinking.
	You just ask them.
	That's trying to play tennis with yourself.
	You can't run that fast.
	So don't make up other people's line of thinking.
	Let me ask you something else.
	How long did they spend?
	How many years did they spend yelling at you to improve your grades?
	They did it all throughout my school career until I went to independent studies.
	So 12 years almost, right?
	So 12 years they had a theory that yelling at you was going to improve your grades.
	Is that correct?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Did it improve your grades?
	No.
	Did they change what they were doing?
	They did eventually.
	No, no, no.
	I'm talking about before the very end.
	Oh.
	Right?
	Okay.
	So for 12 years, they yelled at you to improve your grades while never consulting with an expert about what might improve your grades.
	Your grades did not improve, yet they continued to yell at you, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	What is it telling you?
	It's telling me that they probably didn't think...
	Well, this is how they explained it to me in one of their yelling sessions.
	They explained to me that they knew I was smart enough to understand everything, which I actually was, and that I should be doing fine on my own.
	That's what they told me.
	And how did they know that?
	Because I... Because I was very...
	I could read at a very young age.
	I could...
	No, no, no.
	I know the smart...
	Okay, forget that question.
	Let me just tell you something straight up.
	Okay?
	The moment that people try to influence your behavior, they take ownership of the results.
	Let me repeat that for you.
	The moment that people try to influence or change your behavior...
	They take ownership of the results.
	They take ownership of the results.
	So let's say I say to Mike, I say, Mike, I think that we need to do an email campaign to get more listeners.
	Whatever, right?
	Mike goes off and does exactly what I tell him to do, and the listenership goes down.
	Do I then get to say to Mike, Mike, what the hell were you doing that for?
	That was stupid.
	No, you don't get to do that.
	Of course not.
	Because I told him what to do.
	I took ownership.
	Please understand, I don't tell Mike what to do because he's a biter.
	Anyway, but if I tell Mike to do something, then I have ownership in the result.
	If I say to my daughter, I am going to coach you into being a great gymnast, and then she sucks at gymnastics, Do I have any ownership in that?
	Yeah, because you were the one coach in her in the first place.
	Well, I have two levels of ownership.
	The first is that she sucks because I'm a terrible coach and I don't know what I'm doing.
	But more importantly, she could have been really great if I'd gotten her a really good coach.
	It's not only the mess that I've made, it's the glory that I've prevented.
	By taking ownership and doing shitty things and being a shitty coach, not only have I had bad outcomes, but I've prevented her from having a good outcome because I've taken ownership of something, denied someone ownership of that same thing, and the results have been terrible, and I've also excluded the great results that might have happened.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So, when your parents say, we are going to do X to improve your schooling...
	Yell at you.
	They take ownership over the quality of your education.
	Do you understand?
	Yes.
	And they cannot blame you as a child for bad education if they have put themselves in charge of improving it.
	That makes about as much sense as me saying, I'm going to fix my car and then hitting the car with a tree and Because it didn't get fixed.
	If my doctor says, take these pills and you'll get better, and I take all the pills, and then he calls me stupid for not getting better, does that make any sense?
	No, it doesn't.
	Of course not.
	So, your parents took on the task of improving your education.
	They cannot say that you are at fault for your education not being improved.
	Right?
	Now, they'll probably say, well, we told him to do this and do that, and he didn't do this and he didn't do that.
	Well, so what?
	If it doesn't work, you change what you're doing.
	Right?
	Right.
	I mean, that's like me saying, you know, how do I get to this town?
	And someone says, well, you follow that road.
	And I follow that road.
	And I don't see the town.
	It's supposed to be 10 minutes away.
	And I keep driving for three years.
	And say, well, the guy told me to go this way.
	No, no, come on.
	If the town's not there in 10 minutes, you know you got bad instructions.
	You change what you're doing, right?
	Right.
	Except your parents drove for 12 years.
	Yeah.
	And with you dragging behind the car.
	Well, actually more than 12 years because after I got done with the independent study, they put me right into a community college, which I was also having, which I just went right back to having a terrible time with.
	Yeah, and so that's year 20, I think you said, right?
	And, you know, they're kind of responsible for your education as a baby and a toddler too, right?
	Right.
	So 20 years, they're driving a town that they were supposed to find in 10 minutes.
	They're driving 20 years the wrong way.
	I'm pointing this out.
	I'm pointing this out.
	So you do not internalize the failures of your environment.
	Oh my God, if there's one wand that I could wave over the world, it would be stop internalizing the failures of your environment.
	Stop blaming yourself for the bad choices of your caregivers.
	Stop taking as a personal defect the bad parenting that was inflicted upon you.
	Right?
	You're not bad at school.
	You're not bad at learning.
	You're not bad at thinking.
	I mean, let me ask you this.
	I've never been exposed to Mandarin.
	Am I bad at Mandarin?
	No.
	You've just never been exposed to it.
	Never been exposed to it.
	You're not bad at rationality, at empathy, at curiosity, at love.
	At learning, at growth, at planning, you've just never been exposed to them.
	In fact, you've kind of been exposed to the opposite.
	If somebody says they're going to teach me Mandarin, and they teach me all the wrong words for stuff, am I bad at Mandarin?
	No.
	Not really, no.
	I learned diligently.
	Now, of course, you could say, well, I chose the wrong teacher, but we don't get to choose our parents now, do we?
	No.
	We don't get to choose the town we're born into.
	We don't get to choose the shitty-ass public educational system, right?
	Right.
	We just try to survive.
	Right.
	As I've mentioned before in this show, I had a teacher who said to me once, wrote it down in my yearbook, Stefan Molyneux, if effort matched ability, you'd be an A+. Oh, you're just lazy.
	Nothing wrong with your environment.
	Nothing wrong with my teaching.
	Nothing wrong with the content.
	Nothing wrong with the world.
	Nothing wrong with the fact that you're forced to be here.
	Nothing wrong with the fact that your parents are forced to pay for it.
	Nothing wrong with the fact that the class is disruptive.
	Nothing wrong with the fact that half the kids are drugged.
	Nothing wrong with any of that.
	You just lack motivation.
	I like 95% of all the teachers I've had.
	Oh, and they suck.
	They do suck.
	Teachers suck.
	They suck the very life ambition.
	I mean, if they could get their fucking proboscis into your bone marrow, they'd take that too!
	They suck in just ways that can't possibly be explained to the future.
	Let me tell the future just how much public school teachers suck.
	They can't tell you why they're teaching you anything.
	They can't tell you how it's relevant.
	They can't tell you why it's important.
	They can't explain it to ways in which you understand.
	They can't tell you how you're going to use this knowledge in the future.
	They can't tell you how to think.
	They can't tell you anything about ethics.
	They can't teach you anything about philosophy.
	They can't teach you anything about empiricism.
	They're boring.
	They're droners.
	They're petty.
	They're vicious.
	They're control freaks.
	They're backward.
	They're retrograde.
	It's like some little space-time portal opened up from the asshole of the Prussian Empire and dumped all of these cluster fracks on children.
	They suck!
	I didn't even have one good teacher, and I was schooled in three continents by probably 100 or 200 of them.
	They suck!
	I mean, kids love to learn.
	They take an incredible joy out of learning.
	They're hungry, thirsty for the world.
	To make children bored of learning is like making Pavarotti bored of cheesecake.
	It's like making teenage boys bored of sex.
	It's like making teenage girls bored of gossip and cattiness.
	It's not easy to scrub the wonder and joy and curiosity out of children's souls.
	Oh, but they do it.
	Oh, they get them into a corner and they drone at them about inconsequential things and they dart back and punish them for thinking for themselves or speaking out of turn.
	Oh, I have to go to the washroom.
	Can I put my hand up?
	Fuck, even cattle can pee where they stand.
	Fuck.
	You don't have to ask permission to go to the washroom in jail, for God's sakes.
	Yeah, I don't know if I can get into that story.
	Continue, please.
	And it's not easy!
	It's not easy to take joy out of children.
	You know, with kids, what do you always have to say when they're four years old?
	Don't run.
	Don't run on the deck of the pool.
	It's slippery.
	Because they're so excited about life, all they want to do is run everywhere to get to the next thing.
	I took a couple of kids out for the day a couple of weeks ago.
	And...
	I mean, they're great kids.
	I mean, my daughter and a couple other kids.
	And we had to walk from one place to another, and there was this big, huge giant park area.
	And I said to all the kids, I said, oh, kids, kids, come over here.
	Look at this thing on the ground.
	I have never seen anything quite like this before.
	They all come over.
	They all come lean down, leaning down, leaning down.
	I said, look, look, it's right under there under the grass.
	They're all down there.
	They said, you've got to crouch down.
	Get on your knees.
	Look right under there.
	They're all down there, faces in the grass, and I jump up and say, I'm going to win the race!
	And I go running off.
	Because I'm so petty, it's important to beat little children in a running race.
	But they were laughing so hard, because they were surprised.
	They were laughing so hard, they could barely run.
	Anyway, it was a huge amount of fun, and we went for lunch and just had a blast.
	Anyway, they want to run everywhere.
	They're so excited to get to the next thing.
	Asked some friends of ours how their kid was enjoying school.
	You know what the kid liked most?
	The school bus and recess.
	In other words, everything that wasn't school was okay with her.
	Everything that didn't involve sitting there like a saggy-ass turnip rotting in the sun.
	Oh, I can't even use a sun metaphor in the school.
	Rotting in the damp, cloying, statist rain.
	I mean, it is as easy to scrub joy out of children as it is to get them to stop running everywhere, which is not something you really want to do.
	But they do it.
	Those leachy, statist vampires from hell, oh, they managed to do it.
	And then do you know what we say to the children who've had their joy and their blood sucked dry by dismal teachers in a boring system, in a pointless environment, in a prison-like school?
	Do you know what we say to them?
	You lack motivation, don't you, sweetie?
	I guess you're just a little bit lazy now, aren't you?
	Oh, I think you're going to have to stay late because you weren't listening to teacher.
	Oh, did you walk out of the movie that was boring?
	I'm sorry, you're going to have to go back in, pay three times and watch it five times now.
	Yeah, I've seen that in a lot of movie theaters.
	No, they give you your fucking money back and say sorry for the inconvenience.
	No, not our government schools.
	If you have any problem...
	With the government schools, you are the problem.
	Because that's how much we love our children, you see.
	That's how much we care for the next generation.
	Lay them down with debt, drug them, inflict heavily praised single families on them, stuff them in brain-dead schools where you have to have metal detectors because you're afraid of people sticking shivs into each other.
	Or they're so bored they're fucking sticking shivs into themselves just for some stimulation.
	You know, might as well go to a concentration camp and say, you people aren't really motivated for this work, are you?
	What's the matter with you?
	We give you rations, a place to sleep.
	Why aren't you working harder?
	You must be lazy.
	Can we get out of here?
	No!
	Anyway, it's the end of the rant.
	I just want to sort of point out that, I mean, it's not just your parents.
	It's a whole environment, right?
	But you've got a lot to be pissed off about, I would say.
	I know.
	And when you're a kid, and I would say this is true probably into your early to mid-20s, like your brain is still working to mature.
	Your brain only matures finally at about the age of 25.
	Where you are until about the age of 25 is almost exclusively the responsibility of people around you.
	And all they'll do is say, we shaped you, we made you, we applied 12 years, 20 years of intensive effort to make you who you are.
	But now who you are, we don't like.
	It's all your fault.
	No.
	People have to want and expect more from you.
	And I don't mean more effort.
	It means if I want a painting to be better, I have to get better at painting.
	I can't blame the painting.
	You understand?
	So if your parents have parented you to the point where you are a smart guy who's a dishwasher...
	Then they damn well need to commit to be better parents.
	And if they don't commit to be better parents, well, I guess you have some choices.
	I would hope one of those choices is not the gun.
	Don't do that.
	Don't do it.
	Don't do it.
	You need to find a way to bring structure to your life without it being imposed upon you.
	I mean, who the hell would join military service if they hadn't been conditioned to order, structure, obedience, and mental decay in public schools?
	Don't go.
	That structure will...
	I mean, even the moral considerations aside, you need to develop a will and a muscle to build structure, passion, goals, ambition, achievement in your own life.
	You go into the army, you're just going to be obeying more orders, just like you were in public school, except, you know, with bonus death.
	Don't take your considerable skills and use it to fuel the kill-bots of the military.
	Don't use it to make their murders more efficient.
	That will do even worse things to your soul than public school teachers could even dream of in their darkest, most nihilistic, Nosferatu-laden fantasies.
	That is a cowardly way out.
	It is a way of swapping one form of domination for another.
	It's a way of avoiding, defining for your life in a productive sense, who it is you want to be.
	And it is a way of not contributing to the world, but rather stealing.
	Your paycheck will be the result of theft, particularly from children.
	I don't think you want that, right?
	I don't think you want that.
	You don't want to be paid by money stolen from the poor through inflation, stolen from children through debt.
	I mean, that's not what you want your paycheck to come from.
	And you don't want to bend your considerable intellect and capacity to the enhancement of A murderous empire.
	That may be something that you can't recover from.
	And you don't know what's going to happen in the military, too, just from a practical standpoint.
	Who knows if they're going to declare some other crazy-ass war now and keep you out forever.
	Who knows what's going to happen?
	There's just no way to know.
	A lot of people, you know, joined up after 9-11, think they might have a little jaunt to Afghanistan.
	Oops!
	Not so much, right?
	A little more than that.
	The more than they bargained for.
	And now they still can be called up at any time.
	So don't do the military.
	That's not the way to be good.
	That's not the way to be happy.
	And I think that you're open and up for more challenges than fitting yourself into a murder jigsaw puzzle, right?
	Find something that people want.
	Find something that people care about.
	Provide it to them as best you can.
	That is the way of pride.
	That is the way of self-sufficiency.
	And of course, you join the military.
	If you stay for 20 years, you'll end up being paid, at least until the money completely runs out.
	Buy again.
	Theft and exploitation.
	So, that would be my suggestion.
	I hope that helps.
	So, I've been into entrepreneurship.
	Well, I think if you're smart, I think that would be a useful thing to do.
	For sure.
	And you are smart.
	I mean, I believe what the...
	I mean, the army is pretty good at intelligence tests.
	And so I would definitely look into that.
	But, you know, I think self-knowledge therapy, sit down and talk with your parents, you know.
	Don't be satisfied with bad service, you know.
	Don't be satisfied with bad service.
	You know, if your soup is cold, send it back.
	Right?
	Right.
	And if you got bad service from your parents, talk to them about it.
	Right?
	Right.
	I mean, if somebody says, oh, I'm going to fix your car, you know, the window is not rolling up and down, and they say, I'm going to fix your car.
	It's $200, right?
	You pay them the $200, you get in the car, try and roll the window up, fucking handle falls off, what do you say?
	Yeah.
	Say, I got bad service.
	Say, hey, didn't fix my car.
	Fix it.
	Got bad service.
	Say something about it.
	Got bad service from your parents?
	Friends?
	Boyfriends?
	Girlfriends?
	Say something about it.
	That's important.
	How are people supposed to improve without feedback?
	Well, of course, as parents, it's their responsibility to know what the hell they're doing before they have children.
	I mean, I don't get to starve a cat saying, well, I didn't know you had to feed them.
	I thought they lived off sunlight and dust bunnies.
	People would say, well, you know, if you're going to get a cat, read a fucking book.
	I thought yelling at children made them smarter, made them more motivated.
	Well, you know what?
	No excuse.
	Read a fucking book.
	I mean, it's a little more important than a kitty, right?
	I didn't know you had to feed goldfish.
	Read a book, man.
	Jesus.
	Talk to an expert.
	Fucking people in the pet store.
	They're a helpline.
	Phone people up.
	Ask.
	Kid's not smart.
	It's not doing well in school.
	Pick up a book.
	Libraries are free.
	Go.
	Internet's there.
	Go look it up.
	Ask some experts.
	I mean, Jesus.
	I don't even know why we need to say this to parents.
	Pick up a fucking book.
	Learn about parenting.
	Jesus.
	Well, there were no cell phones around when I was a kid, so I'm not going to get a cell phone now.
	Well, this is how we parented when I was a kid, so this is how I'm going to have to parent now.
	Like, well, if you have a cell phone, you're happy to upgrade things, so you're responsible for not parenting as you were parented, right?
	No dishwashers when I was a kid, so I'm going to have one of those newfangled Satan mouths in my mouth.
	I don't even know them.
	When I was a kid, Ethernet was good enough.
	This Wi-Fi, I don't know about...
	Anyway, I could go on and on.
	And I probably would, but anyway.
	So no, sit down and say, look, I was not satisfied.
	The service I received as a child.
	So let's talk about it.
	Because me being a dishwasher, though I'm smart, yeah, it's got something to do with shitty schools.
	Yeah, it's got something to do with the shitty economy.
	But it probably has even more to do with how you were parented.
	And that's something to talk about.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	All right.
	Thank you so much.
	Best of luck to you, man.
	Let me know what happens once you get out of the suds because don't waste your brain.
	The world needs you.
	Who's next, Mike?
	Gerald, you were up next, sir.
	Go ahead.
	Hello.
	Hey, Stefan.
	How's it going?
	It's going well.
	How are you doing?
	I'm doing okay.
	Same way I was calling, I'm just kind of having trouble deciding what to do with my life.
	Basically, I'm 26 years old.
	I graduated with a degree in medical informatics back in 2010.
	I moved back home for medical informatics, basically IT, but with a focus on medical database architecture and that kind of stuff.
	Oh, medical informatics.
	Okay, got it.
	I moved back home.
	I hear they're hiring at the Obama website.
	You may want to go ahead.
	You don't want to work there.
	So yeah, I moved back home for a couple of years.
	I was applying to medical school, didn't get in.
	I was applying to dental school, didn't get in either.
	Thank God, because I've kind of been miserable with that.
	Father got pretty sick for a couple of years.
	One of the big reasons I stayed home was to help take care of him.
	Basically, I just took work.
	I was like a general education teacher at a local trade school for paramedics.
	What the fuck are you doing with your career?
	Wait a minute.
	I mean, Jesus.
	I mean, you're like addicted to school or something?
	I mean, you go get a degree in medical technology and then you want to be a...
	I mean, isn't that a job?
	Well, yeah, but, you know, the school closed down.
	It was a kind of dead-end job.
	No, you know, place for advancement.
	And, you know, so after my father passed...
	Wait, wait, sorry.
	What do you mean no place for...
	I mean...
	All jobs have some place for advancement, right?
	I mean, the heads of studios—I mean, I was just reading in the Malcolm Gladwell book, but the head of some Hollywood studio started out as the mailboy, like the guy who pushed the cart around with the mail, right?
	All jobs almost always have some capacity for advancement.
	Well, basically, the entire operation shut down.
	They were hemorrhaging money and— Everything was just close.
	You mean the school?
	Yeah, it was like, you know, one of those career education schools.
	It wasn't one of those ones funded by the government with massive amounts of public funding or anything like that.
	Was it like one of these back-of-the-match books kind of things?
	I mean, it was okay.
	I mean, they did a pretty good job.
	It's just, I think the, you know, what's it, the corporate center wanted to focus more on Other fields of study besides the more medical-oriented ones, so they just start closing down all those schools associated with that.
	All right.
	So, yeah.
	Okay.
	I mean, it seems that there would be a need for medical IT work in...
	Are you in America?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	But, all right, so you spent a couple of years off.
	You didn't get into medical school or dental school, took a couple of years off to help with your dad.
	Yeah.
	And now you don't know what to do.
	Well, yeah, now I'm studying at an Ivy League school, getting my master's in chemical engineering, and I just don't feel my hearts in it.
	And I think it can land a good job in the future, but I just don't enjoy it.
	Yeah, engineers usually do fairly well.
	I mean, there's been some problems lately, but I think petrochemical engineer is like the most guaranteed for work.
	But of course, I imagine there's quite a bit of travel, but...
	Okay, so how long is the master's going to be?
	It's going to take me about two years.
	I have to make up some undergraduate classes, obviously.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And why did you choose this field?
	I'm going to be perfectly honest with you.
	I looked at earnings per career and just chose based off that.
	There's nothing wrong with that.
	I mean, that's a choice that's more sensible than a lot of people make with their arts degrees.
	Myself included.
	Okay, so you wanted to do it for the money, right?
	Yeah.
	And you're finding that your heart's not in it, right?
	No, it's just not there.
	I mean, the subjects are kind of interesting, but I'm just not interested in school.
	I notice that I start procrastinating on things, like when I should be working on the weekends, I just end up playing video games.
	It's kind of hard for me to focus on things, all that kind of stuff.
	So I'm not sure if I'm making...
	And why do you think that is?
	I don't really know.
	Maybe it's because of my age.
	I don't feel like I fit in the student environment anymore.
	I think maybe it's just part because I'm not really sure how much I want to do it.
	Maybe it's because my mind is on other things like, you know, my dad passed away in late August and mom's kind of home alone and I can't worry about her all the time.
	Yeah.
	I don't know.
	Why do you worry about her?
	Well, she was having problems with depression.
	Basically, she was put in a mental institution two or three times over the past couple of years, just because she was having so much problems dealing with my father's ailment.
	So basically, I had to help take care of my dad at home, do stuff for him, and help take care of my mom, and all that kind.
	Well, you know, with all due sympathy to your father's illness, not everybody who takes care of someone who's ill ends up in a mental institution.
	Yeah, I know.
	I mean, my mom...
	It's not solely...
	Yeah, no, I know.
	That's true.
	I mean, I know plenty of people have done it, but, you know, it just kind of all fell on me, and I, you know, maybe that's affecting me, too.
	I'm not really sure.
	Yeah, I mean, it sounds like...
	Right at a time when your life was supposed to be launching, you kind of got dragged into a caregiver role.
	Yeah, pretty much.
	Right?
	Which was your mom's job.
	Yeah, I can agree with that.
	And, you know, I kind of felt loaded.
	And look, I'm not saying it was only your mom's job or you have no responsibility in it or whatever, right?
	But in your early 20s, when your mom should have been taken...
	I mean, I'm sorry.
	I'm incredibly sorry your dad got sick.
	That's a tough thing no matter what.
	But you kind of got dragged into a kick, if a roll, because your mom was under-functioning.
	Is that right?
	Yeah, pretty much.
	I mean, my dad needed me help.
	I mean, he lost functionality of his legs because it had metastasized.
	And, you know, I basically had to do pretty much a lot for him.
	I mean, not everything, but a good deal.
	And then, you know, mom was in the institution.
	So it was just kind of bouncing back and forth between him and her, him and her.
	Eventually, I started to fall into depression where some days I couldn't even get out of bed.
	It was horrible.
	It's a heavy weight.
	It's a heavy weight for anyone.
	It's a heavy weight for a young man who should be outstarting his life.
	I took a couple of years off from my job.
	Now, I haven't programmed in several years some kind of out of it.
	Back when I was doing it in college, I was very good.
	I remember one project I programmed in 15 minutes.
	It took everyone else about two hours in groups.
	So I was always pretty good at it.
	But I'm not sure if I could really go back to it, or if I even want to go back to it, just because I think there'll be more room for development as an engineer, e.g.
	getting into management and stuff like that.
	I mean, did your mother have any...
	Instability when you were younger?
	When you were a child?
	I think she claimed to have some postpartum depression.
	I mean, my parents were always good.
	I mean, kind of maybe a little overbearing.
	They were always like on my butt, you know, in my business all the time.
	But it's not like I was ever abused as a kid or neglected as a kid.
	So your mother didn't have instability to your memory.
	Postpartum, you probably wouldn't remember, right?
	But your mother didn't have any instability sort of toddler until your father got sick?
	No, yeah.
	She was perfectly healthy.
	I mean, she do like to complain a lot about the marriage.
	But, you know, I guess people just like to, you know, hear themselves talk sometimes.
	No, I wouldn't.
	I wouldn't say that.
	I don't think I complained about my marriage at all.
	So I don't think that's necessarily the case.
	But so, I mean, you went through a very difficult time with your father being sick.
	That's very...
	Hard emotionally.
	Yeah.
	And did you get any help from a counselor to help with this?
	Especially because your mom was under-functioning, to put it as mildly as possible, and a heavy weight fell on you at a time in your life when you should be out conquering the world or starting that process.
	Did you ever consider or think of or did you actually ever achieve?
	Any kind of help with processing all of this stuff?
	Yeah, I saw a therapist.
	She recommended that I move out.
	So I took an apartment about 10 minutes away from my parents' house.
	I think that helped a lot with the depression.
	I mean, I could get out better every day at that point.
	So I was feeling better about that.
	Beyond that, I don't really feel like I got much from it all that much.
	I mean, it was more like just kind of venting, which I guess I could do to a bartender for free instead of $100 an hour.
	How long did you go?
	About three or four sessions before the insurance stopped paying for it.
	I was like, I don't think that the money I would have to pay would equal the amount I was getting out of it.
	So I guess that was just a rational economic decision.
	Right.
	Do you feel that you have...
	It's processed emotionally, the sickness, obviously the death of your father is so recent that that's going to have obviously a big impact.
	When somebody's also been sick for a long time, death is really complicated, right?
	Because, you know, you're happy they're not suffering.
	You knew it was going to come.
	They're, you know, they're less of a burden.
	But at the same time, you wish it hadn't happened and that they were held.
	Like, it's really complicated stuff to process.
	Oh, yeah.
	I mean, it was incredibly difficult.
	I mean, by the end, I was pretty much glad he died because I, you know, talked to him, you know, a couple hours before and he could barely breathe.
	I mean, he was obviously really struggling just, you know, functioning in any sort of way.
	I was like, you know, it's about time.
	I don't want to lose them, but I don't want to just keep them around.
	That would just be, you know, kind of selfish on my part.
	Well, there's no him left at that point, right?
	I mean, there's no possibility of...
	In any practical relational way.
	Yeah, it's over.
	Wow.
	I mean, I'm incredibly sorry that it happened.
	I'm just...
	What a difficult, difficult thing to go through.
	And, I mean, that's...
	That's shitty luck, obviously.
	I'm assuming that your dad, you said metastasized with cancer, and he didn't have my kind of friendly cancer, but a less friendly kind, and I assume that he didn't bring it on himself, so I'm just sorry that that terrible luck happened to your family.
	It's incredibly hard to go through something like that.
	There is an endlessness to that kind of stuff, too, because you don't know when the hell it's going to be over or what's going to happen.
	I guess you knew at some point where it was going to go, that it was going to be terminal.
	But I'm incredibly sorry that at a time when you should have been out there launching yourself in the world, you got kind of dragged back in due to your father's illness and your mother's under-functioning, which resulted, of course, in a lot of trauma and depression for you.
	That's really hard, really hard to process.
	And it is, of course, I guess you started school last month, like just September, right?
	And your father died, August.
	So you got a lot of stuff to process.
	Listen, if you're in school, you probably get some free counseling.
	Yeah.
	And I would really recommend that.
	I mean, I don't think this is a particular philosophy thing where I can sort of give you any kind of feedback other than you have a lot to process.
	And I think you should really respect that you have a lot to process.
	You know, we often want to overleap complexities and get on with our lives, but generally, I find that it's worth circling back, really tying up loose ends and solving things and really going through the emotions.
	You've probably got a lot of emotions that You couldn't experience because you were being needed, right?
	It's hard to experience emotion when you're necessary for other people's functioning and survival.
	We kind of go into hibernation mode as far as strong feelings go because, I mean, you didn't want any of it, right?
	You didn't want your dad to be sick.
	You didn't want to be there.
	You didn't want to wipe his ass.
	You did all this stuff.
	You didn't want your mom to be in the mental hospital, but that's what was happening.
	And so when we are fundamentally repelled by a situation which we feel necessary to be there, We kind of go into hibernation emotionally, I think.
	And reawakening those feelings, I think, and processing those feelings that couldn't be processed at the time, I think would be really helpful and really important.
	And I think a good therapist...
	I'm a bit surprised that your therapist just said, move out.
	I mean, that's not...
	I mean, it's not therapy as far as I understand it.
	And again, I don't know anything about all the schools and all that kind of stuff.
	But as far as I understand it, therapists are most...
	It's supposed to help you to get you to understand stuff, to process stuff, not necessarily tell you what to do.
	But again, there may be different schools that I'm not aware of.
	But if you find a really good therapist, then I think that could be really helpful in helping you process.
	Maybe chemical engineering is the right thing for you.
	Maybe it's not.
	I don't know.
	I obviously can't tell you that, and I don't think you even know for sure at the moment.
	But I do know for sure that you've had a lot of challenging, challenging, challenging stuff to deal with over the last couple of years.
	And I think that if you get a good therapist, you won't have to pay.
	And if you're in school, you'll have the time.
	Then that may be, I would say, would be the most helpful thing to do at the moment.
	And then with the emotions about the past somewhat resolved, I think you'll have a much stronger sense of what you need to do or where you could go in the future.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, because I do think that's been one of the biggest underlying factors because I never had problems focusing in school.
	I was always a very good student.
	I mean, I'm still pulling in good grades, but nowhere near where I used to be.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I would definitely focus on that.
	I mean, your intellect, your verbal skills are great, your intellect, but I don't get a sense of emotional connectivity from you about this stuff, like you've told me about these unbelievably...
	Biblical-style tragedies in your life, and it's very matter-of-fact.
	Well, I've always just learned to suppress my emotions.
	The nerdy kid in school is teased a lot, so now I just kind of try to keep on the download, just try to be as logical as possible.
	I always kind of try to shield myself from emotions, if that makes sense, which I know isn't the healthiest thing.
	I'm working on it.
	Well, it probably was healthy at the time.
	I mean, if people are teasing you or torturing you or abusing you in school or whatever, I mean, you don't want to show your feelings, right?
	I mean, you don't want to say to the torturer, it really hurts when you do that, because what's the torturer going to do?
	So shielding yourself from vulnerability is one of the ways we get turned into useful robots to the powers that be.
	And so this is one of the reasons why we jam all these kids together with very little adult supervision and basically let the lowest common denominator of emotional...
	Immaturity and or abuse dominate the social sphere so that people learn to not have feelings, to view their feelings that they're enemies and that they're easy to control because they have no passions that run counter to the desires of those around them.
	So it probably was a healthy thing in the environment to do.
	But you understand that when you say, I don't know what to do with my life, what you're telling me is you don't know what your passions are.
	But if you've made passions the enemy of your environment, For years, then it's natural that they're not going to be here to guide you in terms of what you're going to do.
	And for very sensible reasons, you suppressed your emotions.
	For tragically environmental reasons, some of which were malevolent and some of which were accidental, you repressed your emotions.
	But naturally then, what you're saying is, you're like a sailboat captain saying, The wind is blowing me in the wrong direction, so I'm going to stop the wind with my will.
	And then the wind stops, and it keeps stopping, and then you say, well, now I need to get somewhere.
	Well, you've got to bring the wind back, right?
	And that means getting in touch with it.
	Yeah, that's true, and that's actually pretty insightful.
	I never thought connecting my lack of ambition in a professional sense with my lack of emotion in a social sense.
	That does make a lot of sense, though.
	You're looking for what is going to be your life's passion.
	Mm-hmm.
	And passion means reconnecting with your emotions and that would be my suggestion.
	I think the best way to do that is with a really good therapist.
	There's some work that you could do on your own, right?
	You can pick up these workbooks by John Bradshaw, by Nathaniel Brandon.
	You can read Alice Miller.
	There's lots of really good stuff that's out there, but I think that you really want to connect with your feelings and through that will come.
	I mean, you know, we smart guys, you know, we verbal guys, we analytical guys, we do view the emotions with some impatience.
	And we do view that sometimes, you know, well, there's a clog in the exhaust that I need to clean out called feelings.
	Let me throw it in the recycling bin and have it taken away to a dump somewhere so I can get on with my life and get my intellectual goals achieved.
	But without desire, there is no ambition.
	Without ambition, there's little achievement.
	Feelings are the root of a successful life.
	Feelings are how we know whether we are successful or not.
	True.
	Because they give us happiness and so on.
	And they are...
	A life without feeling is a life with neither sails nor rudder.
	And the view gets stacked pretty quickly.
	So I think that reconnecting the feelings is really, really important.
	And depression, of course, is when the feelings are incredibly antithetical to our environment.
	Maybe that's what your therapist was getting at when she was saying to move out so that you could have more room for your feelings.
	And as you said, your depression did lessen at that point.
	So it may have been good advice.
	But I think knowing what to do with your life is always...
	Being in touch with your feelings.
	And I think that would be my advice about how to move forward.
	Oh, awesome.
	Thank you very much.
	That makes a lot of sense.
	And I'll definitely work on that.
	I appreciate that.
	Again, as always, drop me a line.
	Let me know how it goes.
	That's it for the show for the week.
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	Sorry, we're so far behind.
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	Anything else, Mike, that I need to...
	Alright, thanks everyone.
	Have a wonderful week.

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