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Jan. 7, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:21:59
2580 Avoiding Martyrdom - Sunday Call In Show January 5th, 2014

The free market has no use for economists, shaming children into doing what you want, metaphors for taxation, a constructive use of anger, the fallacy of female intuition, moral quandaries in the workplace and avoiding economic martyrdom.

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Good morning, everybody.
I say to you, good morning from the bowels of the dairy farm where I've just finished milking the back 40.
I think that's how you put it.
Seven o'clock in the morning in the fine and sunny climate of California.
I'm afraid there has to be a little bit of a short show today for reasons I will explain.
So we have to drive across Los Angeles this morning to get somewhere.
And, oh, because, yeah, we also, we got a hotel to save some money.
We got a hotel outside of Los Angeles for a couple of days, and we're going to go to LA for the Joe Rogan show tomorrow.
And when we mentioned this to some friends of ours out here, they sort of went vaguely pale.
And they said, you're crossing Los Angeles by car.
And apparently this is sort of akin to trying to get elephants over the Himalayas.
I think the only thing more frightening to people in Los Angeles than the carjacking is actually just being in a car with other cars on the road.
And as they said, we are boring California people in the same way that you in Canada talk about weather, which is what I talked about the last show opening with.
We talk about traffic, and so they suggested that we not wait too long, even though it's Sunday.
Apparently it's the end of a holiday and therefore people are all going to be parking their cars on the freeway in California.
That's how it works as far as I understand it.
So we should probably go.
We're going to do a little bit of a short show just to make sure we get on the road and do not end up having to spend six hours crossing Los Angeles.
Apparently you do that either by camel, catapult, trampoline, dragging yourself along the tarmac with your teeth or sitting in your car until your flesh rots.
So, sorry for that.
But you know what?
This trains me to be a little bit concise.
That training will fail.
But it is definitely a training of a kind.
So, Mike, who do we have up first?
All right, Jeff.
You're up first today.
Go ahead, Jeff.
Jeff, so nice to talk to a man on this show.
Gosh, just feels like it's an estrogen fest the whole damn time.
So, Jeff, what's up?
Oh, shit.
I was going to talk about my high estrogen levels, and fuck.
Oh, shit.
Sorry.
And yet another reason why I do not have a radio show.
I was going to say, yeah, I mean, I can tell I called in today because you're going to be going on, you're doing a shorter show, and It just seems to be the...
I'm really just...
You really should just kick me off.
Let's face it.
Every time I've tried to call in and been around, I think it's been like six attempts now.
So this is pretty...
I don't even know what to do.
I'm like...
Well, good.
At least you're taking the precious time you have on this show to complain about not having enough time on this show.
So good for you.
It's a nice self-looping complaint.
All right, and I actually had something typed up to try to keep it concise.
So I got a big debate coming up.
Perhaps you can help me.
I was arguing with a friend about Keynesian economics.
He's actually going to school for it.
He's going to get his PhD.
And so I kind of wrote up a little, you know, a little, like, well, Keynesianism, eh, I don't know.
And so what do you think?
That's what I have so far.
Keynesianism is dumb.
That's it.
Okay, that's very concise.
Very concise.
But not correct.
No, the problem is that it's disarmingly...
It kind of disarmingly makes sense.
That's one of the big problems with Keynesianism.
Like, if you throw ethics completely to the wind, if you pretend there's no such thing as the initiation of force, and if you pretend that the government is a family, Which is really fundamental.
I mean, people can only believe 90% of what they believe about the government because they believe that the government is a family.
And the reason they believe the government is a family is like ducklings, we bond to whoever raises us and we're raised by the government these days for the most part.
I mean, our parents are our caretakers but we're raised by the government and therefore government as family metaphors really work.
And of course, when you're a family, you...
You save money in the good times and you spend money in the rough times, right?
So when you have an excess of money, you put that money aside for a rainy day.
When the rainy day arrives and you're low on cash, you spend that money, right?
That's kind of what you do.
I mean, obviously, as individuals, you do that too, but as families, it's even more important to do that because as an individual, you can cut your expenses quite a lot.
But as a family, you're responsible for your dependents, just like the government is, right?
And the poor as children is fundamental to a misapprehension of the state.
So Keynesianism kind of makes sense from that standpoint, and that's why it's tough to penetrate.
Because as soon as you start saying that state is force, people unconsciously hear that as, my family are axe murderers, and you get all the defenses that kick in to defend the family and therefore promote the state.
Sorry, go ahead.
Oh, I was going to say, yeah, that's about how it seems in my case.
Any time I kind of try to – of course I'll try to lead the argument that way.
I'll say, well, hold on.
Let's take a look at the premise here.
If you're actually talking about a family, if you're actually talking about that feel-good – that's such a good analogy.
Family makes you feel good.
Nice and warm.
You had a little extra cash.
Cool.
I was like, well, how do they get the money?
It's like if it was a family of thieves, maybe you could see the analogy there.
So, but you're right, I think that's one of the biggest problems I have with anybody I'm debating, especially my friends, is just how defensive they get when I start saying that mommy might be wielding a knife.
You know, it's like, I think that's really, I guess you deal with that all the time, huh?
But yeah.
Oh yeah, I mean look, that's why, you know, everyone thinks I'm talking about the family on the show, but I'm talking about the state.
That's why we talk about the family, so that people can resolve stuff with their families and therefore can be in a position to talk about the state.
I mean, it's not like I'm using people to talk about the state, but the reality is when I'm asking people, you know, how are you disciplined or what's the relationship like with your parents or what was it like for you growing up?
What we're doing is we're talking about the government because for 99.999% of the population, the family and the government are unconsciously synonymous.
Because, you know, when we were kids as a species, right, when we were evolving as a species, the tribe was our family.
I mean, we had individual parents, but usually we were kind of raised collectively.
And so the family and the tribe were kind of synonymous.
And that's sort of hardwired into us.
And so now that we have nation states, our families plus the state are kind of synonymous.
And this is why people get so insane about politics.
Because it's got nothing to do with politics.
I mean, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times is regularly working out her daddy issues with Obama, talking about how he needs to be a more assertive father of the nation and he needs to be this kind of father, not this kind of father.
And it's like, okay, okay.
We get it.
You have issues with your dad.
Why are you pretending that it has anything to do with Obama?
Because it's easier, right?
And it works.
Big Daddy with Adam Sandler?
I remember the scene where it's like, there's a one distant punk kid or something like giving him the stink eye or something.
He's like, you're not mad at me.
You're mad at your dad.
He's like, I hate my dad.
He's like walking away.
He's like, I don't know.
That just reminds me of that.
But yeah, I guess I should move on.
I think it's a really good explanation.
One of my biggest problems lately is I run my own business.
The last thing, again, sorry.
The Keynesian stuff is relatively easy to oppose if you're willing to take a very strong stand on the ethics side of it.
Because they're all like, well, what should you do with the stolen money?
That's all Keynesianism is fundamentally.
Yeah.
Should we spend the stolen money or should we save the stolen money?
I think the word you repeated there is the important one.
It's the stolen part that actually matters.
Why should the governments have monopoly on currency at all?
Why should they have the capacity to tax?
What should we do with stolen money is not the ethical question that's fundamental.
It's should the money be stolen?
So don't get, I would say, avoid the complications of the effects, like once the money passes through the black curtain of theft, what should we do with it?
Well, I don't know.
But should it be stolen in the first place, right?
I think a lot of us get kind of sucked up in arguments, and we kind of get into the academic side of it, where we start looking up all the numbers and all the figures, and it's like, well, if you look at this, but a lot of times I think you're right.
You've got to start with the initial premise.
Where does this come from?
What are we talking about?
Let's start square one here.
Initiation of force?
Eh?
What do you think about that?
So yeah, that's a very good point.
Let me just mention one other thing.
So he's obviously training to be an economist, and economists are conciliary, right?
Economists are advisors to the mafia.
They are investment advisors to the mafia.
I mean, most economists have jobs because there are governments.
Economists, it's a fairly evil profession.
Again, for the most part, not all.
It's a fairly evil profession.
If you think in a purely free society, what do economists do?
They calculate the effects of government spending.
They calculate or argue against sometimes this or that government policy.
They advise governments.
They run the Federal Reserve.
They run the central banks.
Or they attempt to predict the effects of central banking.
That's fun.
All they're doing is they are attached to state power, either pro or con.
And if state power were eliminated, in other words, what would an economist do in a free market cryptocurrency world?
What the hell would they do?
They are shadows of state power, in one way or another.
And this guy, obviously, what job would he have?
You know, he'd be a cab driver.
Anyway, go ahead.
Well, I was going to say, the interesting thing is, I was like, I was talking to them about their living situation, and apparently he's a teacher aide, and he gets paid about $17,000 a year.
And I was like, it's not enough to make rent, because he's in California.
It's not enough to get anything done.
And of course he works excruciatingly long hours and can't hold a regular job.
And I was like, I don't know why I would take economic advice from you.
You're up to your job.
No, no, but he's putting his time in, right?
He's putting his time in so that he can get some pretty cushy tenure job or some pretty cushy job.
I mean, how tough is it to work for the Fed?
You know, come up with a bunch of charts, go on a couple of seminars in Hawaii.
I mean, it's pretty easy-peasy stuff.
And, I mean, get a job as an economics professor.
I mean, my goodness.
I mean, what a cushy job.
I mean, Walter Block has a whole article about this.
You know, you work a couple hours a week, you get paid $175,000 a year, you get summers off.
I mean, you know, the state takes care of its own, right?
I know.
Again, it was kind of a joke.
It's like, eh, you know, you're kind of doing these things, but, you know.
Again, um...
I mean, and that, this $17,000 a year for lots of work, I mean, that makes perfect sense if you want to make conformists.
Right?
If you want to make a conformist, what you have to do is have a huge pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and make the rainbow serrated and filled with biting condors and all this kind of stuff.
So...
So once you've got people to sacrifice an enormous amount to get that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, then what you've got is People who've sunk years and years and years doing really shitty work.
And they've, you know, got huge, hopefully huge debts.
Or at the very least, they've got massive opportunity costs that they've had to spend, right?
All the money they could have made if they hadn't been doing this stuff.
So you make the path to the PhD really long, really arduous, really expensive, really unpleasant.
And that way, nobody can afford to buck the system who wants to get the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
I mean, this is natural.
This is what all these kinds of corrupt organizations do.
So, I mean, how is he going to really...
He's going to have to be a complete conformist within the system now because he's sacrificed so much that if he doesn't get that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, he's really screwed.
And so it's nice.
I mean, they get free labor, and they also get to ensure that everyone is a blind conformist within the system.
So my question is, why are you friends with the guy?
Oh, yeah.
Well, it's actually a friend of one of my best friends, and she's really my friend.
And it's kind of the boyfriend, so we're kind of associates.
Do you want to put it that way?
So yeah, it's interesting.
The more I learn and I change...
Wait, it's your best friend's boyfriend?
Yeah, I guess so.
And what does she see in the guy?
I don't know.
She says we're similar, which is kind of weird to me.
I'm like, I don't...
I'm like, I don't know.
I don't know how to take that.
It's like, I don't know.
It's been interesting, though, I have to say, as I've been changing my views in the world, as I've been kind of growing, really looking into this thing.
It all started when I was like, I worked for kind of a shitty job.
I worked as a grocery store clerk.
And I'm like, the man is...
You have a lot of shitty managers and shit all your life.
I mean, what else are we fucking...
What else are we going to do?
So, yeah.
Oh, I forgot to mention Serrated Rainbow.
That's a badass band name.
I'm sorry.
That's really cool.
Serrated Rainbow.
Yeah, nice.
But yeah.
Chainsaw Sunshine.
But no.
So yeah, I mean, I worked a really kind of cruddy job.
And then I started my own business.
And then all of a sudden, all of those...
Aspects that seemed so cruddy when it was in my hands really kind of put a lot of things into perspective.
So of course it kind of drew me more towards this.
It actually drew me towards your show.
I'm just learning about market things and being like, well, you know, I really would like my company to not suck.
So let's start with that.
Because, you know, I went into it with like, of course, these really idealistic ideas.
It's like, well, most of our money is going to go to charity and we're going to treat everybody right.
And we're going to try to make sure everybody gets like X amount and everybody's a partner and everybody does the same work.
And it's very idealistic when I really look back at it.
It doesn't really work that way, does it?
That doesn't mean you can't be good, but my God, the amount of things that I have changed just by kind of doing it myself is such a huge fundamental shift.
I mean, it truly is a definition of a paradigm shift.
It really is.
And so, yeah, I have a lot of these things.
Yeah, and she is in the same line of work as I am, and that's what makes it so interesting.
I asked her the other day, and I was like, well, since you've done this, since you've started your own business, what perspectives have changed for you?
And unfortunately, the answer that I got, it seemed a little forced.
You know when you're being sold.
Especially from a friend.
And she was trying to find a labored way to not agree with my points.
And I was like...
I'm sorry if I'm being vague here.
I don't want to bring up two hours of conversation to kind of explain it.
I know we're trying to be a little concise today.
So let's just say she has some very liberal ideas that she maintained in a similar way that I did.
And since I started my own business, I have changed a little bit.
So...
I feel that she's learned the same lessons but haven't done it.
But again, you know, I'm not early.
Okay.
Well, you know, you can be patient and see how far she goes.
But yeah, just remember, economists are basically there to make sure that everyone talks about the pragmatic uses of state power, not whether state power is justified.
You know, as that old quote, once they can get you to ask the wrong questions, they don't care about the answers.
And once you can get a whole bunch of economists deciding whether the minimum wage should be raised or lowered, they don't care about the answer because the fundamental state power is justified.
Anyway, it's something to talk about.
Hopefully it will help and it will provoke a nice juicy ethical crisis perhaps in your friend's boyfriend, which would be useful, but I certainly wouldn't hold my breath.
He's invested too much probably to back out now or to try anything different or to take a Rothbardian approach or something like that, but I hope that helps.
So do you mind if we move on to the next?
I had some really interesting observations about my sister also, and it's a little bit more family, aren't you?
I know the show's a little bit.
We'll kind of start there.
Would we mind if I gave you about maybe five minutes to try that and see where that goes?
Sure.
Okay, cool.
Now, my sister, we recently, she had twins a couple years ago.
She had twins very young.
And I'm very proud uncle, very cool.
And I actually got her to not spank her kids, so that's kind of a really cool success story, just so you know.
I remember one specific instance where, in one specific instance where it's Chloe and Claire.
Claire's jumping on the bed.
My sister walks in, she's just, you know, ugh, these stupid kids are jumping on the freaking bed again.
And then she remembered what I had kind of talked to her about.
I was like, well, why don't you just try this?
Let's just start that.
And she goes, Claire, Mommy doesn't want you to jump on the bed because if you fall and hurt yourself, Mommy will be very upset.
And she's only two years old, like a couple days over two years old.
And she looks, stops, looks at my sister dead in the face and says, Mommy will be sad?
And of course my sister just is like floored.
She's like, what, huh?
And she didn't expect it to work.
And I thought that was an interesting story to share with you.
On...
From a slightly different perspective.
So yeah, I definitely thought that was interesting.
Yeah, I mean, that's obviously way better than aggression.
But I try to avoid saying to my daughter, you should do this because daddy will be sad.
Because it focuses on, you know, she should please me or make me happy.
Or if I'm sad, that's a good enough reason.
Or if I'm upset, that's a good enough reason.
And again, it's not bad.
But that would be my suggestion to sort of keep going down that road.
Yeah.
I'm glad you mentioned that because she was still kind of skeptical about the whole thing, so I was a little worried about her implementation, to be honest.
But she's going through some stuff, too.
I'm trying to help her with her boo, her baby daddy.
And, yeah, he's really great, but I mean...
I'm not popping rap culture.
Baby mama, I know, but what's baby daddy?
Same difference, but the mama is the mama, but the daddy is the daddy.
So when you say baby daddy, it just means daddy.
Right, but why baby daddy?
The baby is what you're...
Oh, the father of her child.
Not that the daddy is, like, immature, but just that he's the father of her baby.
Yes.
That would be the cochlea.
Cool.
So, I don't know.
That's just been a terrible thing.
I've been trying to tell her that going through the state might not be the best idea, but of course she's got it in her head that if you go through...
She's just like, well, if I get him to pay alimony, everything will be cool.
If I just go through the court, then he has to pay.
I was like...
I don't know.
So I was curious if you knew anything.
I've kind of looked around, I've felt around a little bit.
I didn't want to waste any of your time on the show.
I know you're short.
But did you have any specific things about, you know, that whole idea of having to go through court to get to pay for the children kind of thing or something along those lines?
Because, I mean, I was just like, I didn't have any, I wasn't armed with any information.
I'm just trying to look that up.
I was wondering if you had any insight on that.
Yeah, I mean, statistically, the way to get a child to pay for children is to have him involved in the children's lives.
You know, that's, I mean, that's much more certain than anything to do with courts.
Statistically, if a man is involved in his children's lives, if a father who's no longer married to the mom, right?
I don't know what you call them.
Can't say ex-father or as a father.
But the ex-husband, if he's involved with the children's lives, if he's involved in their decisions, if he has free and easy access to the children, that's the best guarantee that I know of to have a father pay for the children.
If a mother cuts off access to the children or if the mother makes it very difficult for the father to see the children, then that's when the statistics begin to plummet, right?
The numbers begin to plummet in terms of who pays, right?
And so a father is paying his fair share for co-parenting children.
If the father is denied access to the children or if it becomes contentious or problematic or the woman makes it difficult, then men begin to stop paying for the children.
And this is not to say that there aren't genuine deadbeat dads and this is not to say that some women aren't perfectly nice and the guys are jerks anyway, but if she wants to go with the numbers, right, where she is dating an economist, so you guys can look this up in more detail, but...
The way to have a man pay is to give him free and equal and easy access to the children.
And you sure as heck don't need courts to do that.
And that, I think, is the best way to achieve her goal.
All right.
Where do you usually find statistics for something like that?
I'll look it up.
I mean, I'm just saying if you know anything off the top of your head of any studies or anything.
Yeah, you can just do Google for deadbeat access and stuff like that, and you'll find that.
I think I've got it somewhere in a presentation.
I don't know, Mike, if you remember this before the end of the show.
Was it The Truth About Violence or something like that?
There's good statistics on this kind of stuff.
I think that's where it is, yeah, The Truth About Violence presentation.
Yeah, look at The Truth About Violence, and I think that will really help.
All right.
So yeah, good for you, man.
And I'm sorry to hear about your sister's family situation.
That's really tragic that she has twins and the dad's not around.
That's just ratchet.
I'm really sorry about that.
But good for her for beginning the process of reasoning.
Just remember that it's a long-term process and it almost never ends.
Yeah, she was really young, so it's tough to be like, hold on, stop.
Just think.
Just think with me.
And the biggest problem, she's always like, well, you always get so deep with stuff.
You always...
I was like, is that saying that you can't get...
She's like, well, no, I think about that stuff, but, you know, I don't want to.
I'm like, ah, why don't you want...
Well, you know, you can ask her, yeah, how well is not going deep worked out for her?
She's now a single mom with twins, right?
Yeah.
That's actually usually where I go.
Yeah, I love these people who...
There's a show, I can't even remember what show...
It was.
There was a show where a guy was...
He was Skyping with his father-in-law, who was a psychiatrist.
And he says something like...
He's very awkward with his psychiatrist father-in-law.
And so he's just babbling, because he doesn't know what to say, obviously.
And he says, Oh, I'm just...
I'm having fun, doing good, living the dream, right?
And the psychiatrist just leans forward and says, so tell me about this dream?
And he's like, no, no, no, I didn't have a dream.
I mean, it's not like I don't have dreams.
And he goes on like that, right?
And the psychiatrist is supposed to be not listening and looks like a fool because this guy is just saying something because he feels awkward and then the psychiatrist thinks that it's something about a dream that he can talk about.
And this is, of course, mocking somebody who would be interested in dreams or self-knowledge and making them look kind of clueless and the guy who's babbling is supposed to be, you know, centered or grounded, but they just, you know, because they're really interested in deep topics, he just doesn't, you know, he feels awkward talking to them.
And this is just the populist appeal to You know, don't go deep.
Don't go deep.
Whatever you do, if you go deep, you will never ever come back up for air, the horror, the depth.
Stay shallow and watch some reality TV. Anyway, it's just sad, but there it is.
All right, so we're going to move on to the next caller.
Thank you so much for calling in and thank you so much for what it is you're doing for your sister's kids.
That is magnificent.
All right, Charlie, do we have Charlie up next?
Yep, Charlie's up next.
There you go.
Yeah, hey Steph, how you doing?
I'm well, Hayden.
I'm doing awesome.
Finally got a chance to call in.
I had one anecdote I would like to share, and then a question.
So, which one would you like first?
Your show, this part of the show is yours, so it's your choice.
Alright, so I think I made a Facebook post maybe about a month ago and I've been doing this kind of hypothetical experimentation trying to find my footing in life and so what I made a post was on a scenario in which the dog pound comes around to people's neighborhoods and they take their dog.
But the people get a choice as to whether the dog is going to be used for a drug sniffing dog or a seeing eye dog to help old blind ladies.
So I was just taking some very quick statistics and about probably about 40% of the people had a really big issue with the dog pound just coming to take their dog.
And the rest of the people, the 60%, they kept coming up with all these scenarios why, you know, drugs are bad and old blind ladies.
And so I just put it out there and I said, well, do you not care about just somebody coming to take your dog without your permission?
They said, well, you know, it's for the greater good.
I said, but it's your dog.
And I got two things out of that.
One, I was really shocked when I addressed the issue directly, how people came up.
They kept backpedaling.
But I was also shocked that at least about 40% of the people admitted that, you know, the dog pound coming to take their dog was something that was really not a good thing.
And, you know, I think about the state and taxes and things like that, and I was just wondering if People would, before you could get 40% of the population anywhere, any demographic to admit that, you know, violence is bad.
But I've been using those kinds of things to kind of reframe my idea of reality and culture and government and all that kind of stuff.
And I just thought that was interesting.
I just wanted to share that with your listeners.
No, I think that is interesting, and it is chilling the degree to which people will give up this kind of stuff.
I mean, the difference is, of course, money can be donated.
You don't really donate your dogs for drug sniffing.
You can take money and donate it, but you can't really donate your dogs.
So it's not a perfect analogy, but it's not bad.
I mean, the closer analogy probably would be kids.
You know, government comes and takes your kids and sends them to work or whatever, because that's kind of public school.
It's impressment.
It's when governments take your children.
And...
Confine them.
And of course, national debts is the governments are taking your children's lives in the future, right?
All their future productivity and so on is being stolen from them in the present.
And the fact that the prison may be a cubicle rather than a debtor's prison is morally fundamentally not particularly relevant.
So, yeah, it is a lack of self-protection.
Most people, when they're in the grip of an evil, will choose to redefine that evil as good rather than fight it.
Because that's easier.
And what is the fight going to achieve?
Most people can't, you know, they just can't comprehend why you would want to take on something like anti-statism or, in certain areas, anti-theology or anti-superstition or whatever.
Why would you bother?
I mean, it's not going to change anything.
It's just going to make your life uncomfortable.
But...
Knowingly submitting to an evil makes you morally uncomfortable, and so if you redefine that evil as good, you know, we're helping the poor, we're defending the country, we're...
As Harry Brown used to say about the drug war, it takes a personal tragedy and makes it into a national disaster.
You get to redefine it.
Now, unfortunately, then you lose all moral compass.
Your entire life gets screwed up because you can't anymore determine...
Good from evil, right from wrong, and your relationships suffer accordingly, which again is good for the evil people who don't want you to be able to identify them, but it is natural.
And from a purely utilitarian standpoint, I can certainly understand why people would do that.
That's just obviously fundamentally cowardly, but I can understand why people do it.
Sorry, go ahead.
Right, and the second part is more of a question, and I've heard you talk about the usefulness of anger and not continuing the cycle of violence and abuse.
And my question is, did you have or do you believe that there's a natural evolution to processing your anger when you're doing self-work?
Yeah, processing is a tough word for self-knowledge because it sounds like basically you're producing a can of tuna through the industrial innards of your psyche.
So processing, you know, these are pasteurized emotions.
These are raw unpasteurized emotions.
Clearly we need to pasteurize them.
I think it's just accepting that you have the anger and allowing yourself to experience the anger.
That is the mark of a free man and a free woman.
Is to experience emotions inconvenient to evil people.
I mean, political freedom and economic freedom are certainly important.
Don't get me wrong.
We're having this conversation because of that.
But these all came around because people allowed themselves to feel emotions inconvenient to evil people.
That is the most fundamental freedom that there is.
And that is, you know, I mean, why was there an American Revolution?
Because the revolutionaries felt emotions, anger, and so on, that were inconvenient to the people who ruled over them.
And then they got to rule over other people in their turn.
But nonetheless, the most fundamental freedom, and this is really true in families, and this is really something to ask yourself with your families, with your friends, are you allowed to feel emotions that are inconvenient to to the powers that be and you know it doesn't necessarily have to be evil people I mean eventually it's all defined by evil people but are you allowed to experience emotions that are inconvenient to those around you?
And that I think is really, really important.
So I would argue, you know, everybody's concerned about censorship and so on.
Like they think that censorship is somehow fundamentally in newspapers or the web or whatever.
No, no.
Censorship is fundamentally about your emotions.
Are you allowed to experience and express emotions inconvenient to those around you?
That is the most fundamental freedom that there is.
And any place where you must self-censor your emotions for fear of reprisals, for fear of ostracism or contempt or attacks or withdrawals or whatever it is, you're fundamentally not free.
Your relationships then are an interference to your genuine experience of yourself and the world.
And anything which comes between you and your genuine experience Of yourself and the world makes you enslaved.
And most people go through this soft totalitarianism of disapproval for emotions inconvenient to others.
Well, I worship the emotions inconvenient to evil.
They are the greatest moral strength that there is.
Without that, without those emotions inconvenient to evil, all of the intellectualizations in the world will not move one atom in the known universe.
But with With genuine and self-accepted passion behind it, virtue plus passion is irresistible.
Virtue without passion is, you know, academic in the worst sense of the word.
And passion without virtue is just a kind of self-hedonism.
But you put the two together and you have the greatest engine to power, the future of freedom that I can imagine.
At least that's certainly my argument.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I found myself short some friends from last year because...
I saw that contradiction that you're talking about, people not allowing you to feel authentic emotions in your relationships.
And the thing that made me cut individuals off is that, you know, let's say you have a scenario and you're angry about something and then you get this counsel from your friends about, well, you know, let's not think about people in that way and people aren't like that.
But what is so funny and ironic Is that when the tables are turned, they want you to be like that.
They want you to have that standard of, you know, not everyone's not like that or being more perfect.
And I said, you know what?
I just can't hang out with you guys anymore.
I just can't do it.
I'm sorry to interrupt, but most human communication is designed to disarm any genuine emotion.
So people either talk about shallow stuff, in which case intruding with your feelings is sort of like taking a slow pee into the lobster bisque at a fancy restaurant.
So they either talk about shallow stupid shit forever, which is a way of fencing off any real emotions.
That's sort of number one.
And the second thing is that anytime any genuine emotions do come up, they will always attempt to disarm your feelings.
They will always attempt to disarm your feelings by saying, well, you need to forgive or you haven't thought about this perspective or I can understand that you're upset.
But in other words, the true state of wisdom is free of passion.
And I think that's, I mean, this comes from the sort of Confucius stuff and the Socrates stuff, you know, the guru state.
They've got a rise above feelings, feelings of the enemies and so on.
And this is all nonsense.
This is all nonsense.
I mean, religion continues because people aren't outraged at being lied to.
The state continues because people aren't outraged at being stolen from.
It's the outrage that counts.
Genuine emotions are destructive of irrational hierarchies.
How many times do you hear people in this show?
They get emotional and they apologize.
What?
You didn't just take a shit in my bathtub.
You're just crying.
How could that possibly be offensive?
How could that possibly be a negative to have a genuine connected emotion in conversation about important issues with another human being?
They apologize like they just ran over my dog.
It's tragic.
And really the freedom, the only freedom that really counts because it is the foundation upon which all other freedoms are built is the freedom of self-expression.
There's an old quote by Voltaire.
He says, I disagree with everything you say, but I would defend to the death your right to say it.
And that's just at an intellectual level, but at a much deeper level.
The emotions, the opportunities for intimacy that arise from inconvenient emotions in the part of your friend or your lover, your wife, your parents, is staggering.
When my wife and I have had strong oppositions of feelings, we've had incredible breakthroughs in our relationships.
And they are astounding opportunities for growth and people just ignore them all the time.
Because, I mean, because they're, you know, we live in emotional totalitarianism fundamentally is what I'm saying.
You know, we have some vestiges of political freedom because in the past, you know, if Jefferson and Washington, you know, sitting around together saying, and one says, you know, I really fucking hate these British taxes.
And they're like, well, you know, you have to understand that the British, they have this history of taxation.
They're used to it.
You know, they have a king who goes back thousands of years.
You know, you've got to really try and put yourself in King George's shoes, try and understand where he's coming from.
He's got to pay for the army, and they did settle the place.
So, you know, be reasonable about it.
Well, you'd still be like Canada with the queen on the money, right?
But no, they did not have totalitarianism of anti-emotionalism.
The Enlightenment was a very passionate era.
If you really look at it, imagine that your emotions are newspapers and everyone around you is the state.
What are your First Amendment rights?
Are you allowed to communicate?
That which is inconvenient to others around you.
Well, if you're not, I would say you don't really have any relationship.
There's nothing to teach each other, nothing to grow from.
You're all just an echo chamber of everyone agreeing with everyone else.
For what purpose?
I can't possibly imagine, other than maintaining the power structure that is.
So anyway, I just wanted to mention that, but go ahead.
Why do you think people are very quick to come to the defense of abstract or people they don't even know, but not the people they say they're in relationships with?
Like you mentioned the King George thing, and probably none of those people ever met King George, but they know you when they're talking to you.
So, you know, a person who is very far removed, or a principle that's very far removed, of people they haven't met or demographic, they're very very quick.
Is that a projection of defense?
Is that what that is?
Well, it's a biological imperative that For most of human development, people who challenged the powers that were would get killed or exiled and therefore would not be able to reproduce.
I mean, those genes, they still pop up.
We are the progressive and evolutionary mutations in the social body of people who question authority.
But for most people, they don't.
It was highly hazardous for people in the past to oppose or question authority.
To oppose or question authority, you were either going to kill or be killed, right?
So if you said the tribal ruler is unjust or the witch doctor is crazy, you were setting yourself up to decapitate the existing social structure.
You were going to pull a Macbeth on King Duncan, which is to kill the king and to try and take his place.
And so you wouldn't broadcast that, right?
And broadcasting that would give the tribal leader the chance to act against you and all that kind of stuff and kill you in your sleep or whatever.
So there is, and again, I understand it.
I really, I really get it.
I really, really understand it.
But the fact is that we have to think and not just, you know, my whole life as a kid I was told to Overcome my biological impulses.
Don't eat this because it's sweet.
Eat this even though it doesn't taste as good because it's good for you.
I was constantly told to overcome my biological impulses.
So yeah, I'm just telling people that we know what the values are, we know what the virtues are, so deal with it.
I'm sorry.
Or if people don't want to overcome their biological impulses to avoid criticizing those in power, that's fine.
Then society just owes me and every other child in the universe A huge fucking apology for telling us not to eat sugar or punishing us for not studying or any of that kind of stuff, right?
I mean, I either...
I demand either growth or an apology, but not this endless avoidance, which is truly contemptuous.
I feel truly contemptuous about it.
Thank you.
The growth and the apology thing.
Thank you.
Because that's where I think the source of my anger has been continuous.
And I've just been trying to balance it between not turning it inward on myself but using it constructively.
Yeah.
I mean that is the most fundamental aspect.
I understand people have this conformity, I understand this, but all of the values that I talk about were imposed upon me as a child.
Universally and absolutely.
And that's all I ask, is people either have to say, you know, sorry, you know, what we told you as a child was wrong.
We apologize.
It was manipulative.
It was destructive.
We abused our power because we don't like it when these values are applied to us.
So sorry about that.
That was really wrong.
Okay.
Yeah, okay.
I can accept that.
That's a mature and wise thing to do.
Or they can say, oh, you know what?
You are reminding us of the values and virtues we impose upon children very aggressively, so we will live by them, and we're sorry that we didn't.
But no, people just, they want to boss children around and when those children grow up and say, oh yeah, those moral standards, yeah, you're subject to them because you subjected me to them at the age of five, so guess what?
You're fucking subjected to them at the age of 30.
But they don't.
They just want to weasel out and avoid and bully children and then avoid the repercussions and impose values and then squirm and just like, ugh, vermin, vermin, I tell you.
That's exactly right.
That's how I've felt for a long time in trying to gain my idea of what the real nature of things is and trying to Let each of my false preconceived notions fall one at a time from religion to worshiping celebrity to...
I have this joke between me and a friend of mine, and we talk about helping little old ladies across the street, and we have this joke saying that we won't help little old ladies across the street because...
Little old ladies are just assholes who were before, but now they're old, and they're playing on the sympathies of younger people.
I mean, that may not be true, but it's the concept of that, of constantly being manipulated, and having the principles of people change, especially when they get older, and now they're in a position of either the elderly or adulthood.
I just think it's just very, very interesting how...
I call it asshole mathematics.
Yeah, I hear you.
Or like the first caller's sister, right?
The first caller's sister made such a disastrous decision in who she had babies with that she had twins with a guy who she's now terrified is not going to pay a penny for them, right?
And so now she's going to try and use the power of the state to extract money from him, or she may or may not, depending on whether she listens to advice or not.
Right.
And so, but she doesn't self-attack for that.
She's, you know, well, I gotta go get money from this, I'll use a stay to get money from this baby daddy or whatever.
And that's fine.
You know, she doesn't seem to be self-attacking.
Like, oh my God, I can't believe I bought two lovely children in the world and now I have to raise them without the father that they desperately need to be healthy and happy.
No, the only person she's getting angry at is the kid jumping on the bed.
I mean, morally, that's completely deranged.
If you're concerned about your children growing up well, you should have married somebody who was going to damn well stick around.
Them jumping on the bed is the least of their problems, but that's what you're getting upset at.
Well, you see, mommy's going to be sad because you might get hurt, but mommy had babies with a daddy who didn't stick around or drove the daddy off.
I don't know.
Should be apologizing for that, but no.
Upset about jumping on the bed.
I mean, this is where people are.
Madness.
This is one source of my...
I mean, I've grew up under a single parent, single mother, who was very brutal.
Ironically, she was a social worker, but extremely fucking violent.
But, you know, 30 years of Oprah and all this woman bullshit, and guess what?
Women's intuition.
And it's like, okay, women's intuition.
So, where's that intuition when you're picking your future fucking boyfriend, your ex-boyfriend?
Oh, yeah.
No, I love that.
I love how women say, you know, well, women, we have an instinct for these things.
It's like, oh, okay, great.
So, yeah, you're right.
Where was this fantastic instinct when you were dating the loser who bails on the babies?
Right.
Women's intuition is exactly the same as I'll ask the Pope.
It's just a mystical way to avoid the responsibility of having to actually come up with reason and evidence for your position.
Got it.
I don't want to monopolize the conversation, but thanks for helping me gain some footing with anger processing and dealing with duplicitous people and their asshole mathematics.
Yeah, you know, when you say speak truth to power, everyone thinks it's talking to a cop.
No, speaking truth to power is being honest in your relationships.
That's all it is.
Being honest in your relationships.
And I'll tell you, I don't mean to pull the C card, but, you know, faced a very aggressive life-ending illness a couple of months ago.
And damn, I'm glad that I have been speaking the truth to those I love for at least 11, 12 years.
It's fantastic.
Because, you know, when you get old and when your life is at its lowest ember and you can't go back and fix your mistakes and so on, the greatest devil in the world will always reveal the truth just to make you suffer.
The greatest devil in the world will never reveal the truth in time for you to fix it, but always right after you've missed the exit, it will say you're going the wrong way.
Right after.
So you get to really simmer and all of that.
When you get older, if you haven't spoken truth to the people in your life, if you haven't been honest and seen what effects that has on your relationships and let yourself choose relationships based upon people who respond positively to who you are, how can I possibly be controversial in saying speak truth and love those who respond positively to who you actually are?
Well, if you avoid all of that and you spend your life in trivia and staring across empty chicken bones at dusty dinner tables speaking with the dead, We're good to go.
So, thanks, man.
Thank you so much for your call.
I really appreciate it.
It's a great, great topic.
And, yeah, best of luck with the truth.
It's a rough ride, but it's worth it.
And who do we have next, Mike?
All right.
Thanks, man.
I think Asshole Mathematics is a perfect show title.
I think we should perhaps pull back on some of the provocative titles.
It's just my thought.
All right.
Up next today is Mark.
Go ahead, Mark.
Hey Stefan, how's it going?
Well, how are you doing?
I'm doing alright.
I'll just jump right into things here.
I'm a registered pharmacist, and I've only been working for about four months.
I'm a recent graduate, and I work in a hospital, and I do night shift.
And during my training, I sort of ran into an ethical issue, and it's about the circumcision thing.
During my training, I got more enlightened about the controversy about it, and I sort of agree with you in that I think it is inhumane, and I don't really want to play a part in it.
But because of the nature of my job, there are medications that are maintained by the pharmacy department that I'm responsible for quote-unquote verifying.
And, you know, I don't want to ruin the show with technical jargon or anything, but I feel like to get the proper context, I sort of have to explain a little bit about what that means.
Is that okay?
Oh, totally.
Okay.
Well, basically, when we get a physician's order, you know, we do our pharmacy thing.
We make sure it's transcribed into the computer and it's the right patient, the right drug, the right strength, route, frequency, etc., Make sure it's safe for the patient.
They're not going to overdose on it, etc., etc.
And then after we enter it, it goes into what's called a verification queue.
And verifying is basically the same process.
It's just like a double check.
And these particular orders, it's for the anesthetic.
It's for the lidocaine.
And they're actually entered by the nurse on the floor because they're verbal orders.
So after a baby boy is born, Um, you know, the nurse will enter it in, and it's basically my job to just...
I don't even know how to explain it.
It's almost just like, after I verify it, it creates an active order for the patient, which is the baby boy, so that the nurse can document when it was given and that it was given.
Um...
My point in explaining all this is that the medication that they use, the lidocaine, the anesthetic, it's already down there.
I'm not actually physically delivering it.
So my problem is that I've just been not verifying this order because I didn't really, I kind of felt bad doing it, kind of didn't want to play a part in it.
And my management asked me, you know, hey, why aren't you doing this?
And I explained it and they're not really happy.
And I've talked to human resources about it, and essentially, you know, this is deemed a quote-unquote essential task, and I could be terminated over it.
So my question for you is, you know, should I feel morally culpable in any way or guilty about this?
I mean, what an incredibly difficult situation.
Before we get into whatever, I mean, I'm incredibly sorry that you live in such a screwed up planet that this is an issue.
Like I'm sorry that you saying I don't want to participate in parents hacking off half the foreskin of the penis, half the skin of the penis.
That's even remotely controversial.
You know, in any sane society, if somebody mistyped in an order and said, well, the parents want to cut off the baby finger of the baby and you caught it and said, no, no, no, no.
I'm not giving them painkiller to cut the baby finger off the child.
People would be like, oh my god, thank god you caught that.
That would have been terrible.
Good for you.
Employee of the month, right?
I'm incredibly sorry that this is even an issue.
You know, that boys are...
I'm so contemptuously treated in this society.
I mean, the school outcomes for boys are terrible.
Boys are drugged at a 10 to 1 ratio to girls with these SSRIs.
I'm just incredibly sorry that you live in this society where this is even an issue.
So I just really wanted to say that up front, like what a shitty thing to have to look at and examine and figure out when you are heading off to work.
Now, what are the job prospects like in your field these days?
Yeah, that's the thing.
I graduated somewhat recently, and it took me eight months to find a job.
And that's with the monopoly privilege of dispensation of medications.
There's a ton of pharmacists graduating.
A lot of people are gravitating towards the field because there's no blue-collar work anymore.
The job prospects are not that great.
If I leave this, in addition to the job market being worse than it was before when I was trying to find a job, I'm going to have to explain why.
You know, my job only lasted four months.
And keep in mind, you know, it took me eight months to find a job, and the only thing I could get was a night shift, you know, something nobody else wants to do, which is fine with me, but that just sort of illustrates the kind of market I'm looking at.
Yeah, and of course, if you applied for a new job, I would assume you would have to tell them that this is your limitation, right?
Sure, sure.
I don't process circumcision because genital mutilation is...
I'm in the do-no-harm category, which everybody should be, but it's not the case.
And so I don't process that.
And then, again, if there's 100 applicants and there's one person who's not going to process, I guess, a fairly common procedure, I mean, how many of these would you have to approve of in a given day?
I mean, I think it is important to...
Make the distinction between approving of the circumcision and just verifying the anesthetic for it.
We can get into that if you want, about the distinction, if you think that there is one.
But as far as how many there are a night, of course it varies.
I've seen like, I'd say one every other night maybe.
It just depends.
Sometimes I see a string of them, other times I don't see any for a few days.
Right.
And do you know what the hospital's policy is?
I mean, here in Canada, they won't do it at a hospital.
Oh, yeah?
I mean, is there any chance to lobby the hospital to get them to not do circumcisions?
Yes.
When I met with my management about this quote-unquote issue that I have, They kind of stonewalled me.
I don't really like how they handled it.
They basically said, hey, every pharmacist has to do this, no exceptions.
But the clinical pharmacy manager, he said, hey, I see that you have a strong opinion about this.
And I, you know, he said that he would be able to, or he'd be willing to work with me, I don't know to what extent, but he'd be able to work with me to maybe bring something to the P&T Committee, the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee, or perhaps the obstetricians themselves about my, you know, my opinion.
So there is a possibility if I stay with them, I could influence the physicians.
Yeah, I mean, you know, maybe you could stay and influence people to try and talk people out of circumcision.
You know, I mean, a lot of people just, they don't really know the facts about it, right?
I mean, you know, you could crib together some notes from the presentation that I put together or some other source.
Circumcision.org is pretty good.
And just maybe they just don't have the information.
Yeah, I've watched your presentation that you put on YouTube and I... I went further than that, and I actually looked at your sources that you used and some of the sources of those sources.
I did my due diligence because I didn't want the clinical pharmacy manager to sort of try to railroad me with the AAP's policy statement.
You know what I mean?
I didn't want to come unprepared.
But yeah, I mean, if I do end up doing this every night, I'm afraid...
I'm afraid I'm, like, disappointed with myself and that I'll be doing it for the wrong reasons because I'm sort of afraid of all the debt that I have.
It sort of goes back to a point you made on your first call.
Now, I've got a ton of student loan debt, like, more than a typical person, which is, you know, okay for a pharmacist's salary, but not if you can't make it.
But I'm afraid that if I don't verify this order...
I'm afraid that I'm, like, taking a sort of irrational stance, maybe drawing a line irrationally because I don't want to throw away my job and I don't want to throw away everything I have here over basically nothing.
And I think there's an argument to be made...
Over nothing?
Wait, wait, hang on.
I, you know, I think that that's an important question.
I don't have a...
Obviously, there's no definitive answer that I can think of anyway, but it's not over nothing, right?
The actual procedure, no, that's not what I mean.
What I mean is, if I don't do this, and if nobody does it, it's not going to prevent it from happening.
You mean it would just happen without anesthetic?
No, they have the anesthetic down there, on the floor.
But your approval is necessary, right?
That's what I'm saying.
I don't think it is.
They just put it in a drawer and they get it out of their drawer.
They have machines called Pyxis machines.
And again, I don't want to get super technical, but on different floors, if pharmacy verifies something, it allows the nurses to get the medication out of the Pyxis machines.
This particular strength of anesthetic and size of anesthetic, it's not in their Pyxis machines.
It's just in a drawer in the nursery.
Well, but I would assume that, oh, so they administer, it's a formality that, so even if you don't approve it, then it just happens anyway?
Well, I don't think that's ever happened before, so I can't say that 100% certainty, but that is what it feels like.
It feels like a formality.
It feels like when I verify it, It creates an active order on the patient's electronic profile that allows the nurse to say, hey, we gave the lidocaine at this time.
Yeah, I would assume it's also some sort of insurance requirement or some sort of legal requirement that has to go through this process and they have to track it and all that.
Okay, so let me just, again, I'm really sorry that this is what you're facing, but I mean, here's some moral realities, right, which I'm sure you're aware of, but it's just worth reinforcing.
The first, of course, is that you're not causing this.
It's the parent's choice to circumcise.
With very few exceptions, it is the parent's choice to circumcise.
And by that I mean occasionally kids are circumcised even without the parent's explicit approval.
That's pretty rare these days though, but it is the parents who are making the choice, and it is the doctors who are performing the operation, and it is the nurses who are applying the lidocaine, right?
I don't know who's applying on the Latican.
It could be the nurses, it could be the obstetrician, but your point is taken.
Yeah, so it is not you who is making this happen.
So if the parents choose not to circumcise, no circumcision occurs.
If the doctor refuses to do the procedure, no circumcision occurs.
If you don't fulfill your role in the process, it almost certainly will still occur, right?
You know, I wish I knew 100%, but that is my understanding.
I do not think that me not doing this would make it.
I pay all of my taxes.
Now, is my taxes used to throw people in prison?
Yes.
Are my taxes used to prosecute wars in Afghanistan?
Yes.
Is it used to pay off native leaders to exploit their Charges on these godforsaken reservations?
Yes.
Is it used as collateral to further put my daughter into debt?
Yes.
If I did not pay my taxes, what would happen?
Well, they'd print more money, they'd raise taxes on someone else.
So me not paying my taxes doesn't solve the problem.
I say, well, what if nobody paid their taxes?
Well, this is not...
That's literally saying we need a contingency in case everyone wins the lottery at the same time, right?
I mean, that's not going to happen, right?
So, I mean, do you feel the same way about taxes?
Because obviously the money that you pay in taxes is going to support a whole bunch of unjust, immoral, vicious things where people get killed and bombed and raped and in prison and all that kind of stuff, right?
This is just a little bit more immediate, right?
But it's in the same category, right?
Yeah, I mean, it's almost like with the taxes analogy.
You're paying the taxes because it is coercion.
If you don't do it, you'll be hauled away or whatever.
And it's not, like you said, you're not the one who's culpable when it comes to all the bad things that you use the taxes for.
So I understand that point.
Yeah, so you are not making the decisions.
Now, there's things that you can do within the context of your job that can help reduce circumcisions, right?
So you can make a short presentation saying, here's the latest facts about circumcision in these, these, these, these, and these countries.
The process is not allowed to be done in hospitals.
You can do that research.
It's pretty easy, right?
They're just going through the process of trying to ban it, or they maybe have banned it already in Germany, right?
And you can't get done in a hospital here in Canada, to my knowledge.
Again, I'm no expert on the subject.
But you can say, you know, here's the medical reality, here's the, you know, and all that.
And, you know, people have options.
If they really, really want to go circumcise their kids, they can go elsewhere than a hospital, I would imagine, to get it done.
So you can, within the context, you can do...
More good, I would argue, by making the case within the hospital environment.
And again, knowing that nobody's going to say, oh, okay, well, we'll just change it, right?
It may take years.
Right.
But I can almost guarantee you that no other pharmacist in that hospital is going to take on that crusade.
No, nobody cares.
Everyone of my colleagues that I've talked this about, they just said, you know...
It doesn't seem to be an issue at all.
No one's heard of this being contested.
What being tested?
Contested.
Sorry.
Oh, contested.
Yeah, yeah.
No one is even aware that it's an issue, right?
But they are physically removing half the skin of the penis that is perfectly healthy for no medical reason whatsoever.
And so you can make this case.
And again, it may take a long time.
You can make it in a positive and friendly manner so that it doesn't threaten your job.
And just say, you know, here's the reasons why I have trouble with it.
I understand it's a culturally accepted practice, you know, but at some point so was female circumcision, right?
Or in some countries, right?
But it is, you know, the physical removal of healthy tissue and kind of goes against the do no harm thing, right?
And, you know, if people want to get circumcised, they can get circumcised as adults if that's what they choose and so on.
But it feels like it doesn't feel right to me to impose that on babies.
I know this is not a widespread or mainstream position here, though, of course, in other places in the world, it is considered barbaric and so on, right?
But you can make that case.
And if you make that case, you may have a chance to, slowly over time, affect hospital policy.
Now, even if you can't affect hospital policy, You can bring the information to the attention of the doctors, right?
And then the doctors may have a case, a stronger case to make to the parents.
Yeah, hopefully, yeah.
I'm not trying to be nitpicky or anything, but would your advice or position for me change if I was actually delivering the medication?
Because I feel like you're right.
Okay.
No, it would not change because, again, you are not initiating the process.
So my money is taken from me and used to support wars.
I do not declare the wars.
The morality is on the declarer of wars.
It's on them.
Okay.
Well, I mean, the main difference I see in that is that the money's taken from you by force of threat, whereas with me, this is a voluntary job position.
No, not necessarily, because you're facing, hang on, you're facing a 100% tax if you lose your job, right?
You mean losing all my income?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
And losing your ability to...
Yeah, and losing your ability to bring information that will help people make better decisions.
Right?
Could I podcast from prison?
Probably not.
Right.
So I would lose my capacity to influence the world if I didn't pay my taxes.
Okay.
And this is so people will say, oh, well, then you should run for politics.
And so if politics isn't, you can make a case with reason and evidence to the people around you.
And that is a way to really have influence in a situation that very few other people are going to try for.
And it sounds kind of cold-hearted, but...
Because I know every time that flashes across, you know another boy is going to lose half his penis skin, right?
Yeah.
And that is, to say the least, a downer.
But this happens, you know, okay, it flashes across your screen, but you know in your mind's eye, you know, if your vision turned red every time a little boy got circumcised, you would only see red, right?
Yeah.
It's happening all across the world.
It happens to show up on your screen in a vivid way, but it's happening all across the world, you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of times a day, right?
Yeah.
And there are people being dragged off to prison for nonviolent offenses all the time.
There are thousands and thousands and thousands of children across the world being raped as we are speaking.
And adults.
There are millions of children being beaten as we speak.
And if that scrolls across your mind's eye, you will go insane.
Selective disattention, I think, is sort of a necessary component of survival and a capacity for happiness in a world still so dedicated to violence that it should be R-rated.
Children should not be allowed to see the world.
When I brought some of these issues up to my clinical pharmacist manager, He brought up all kinds of counter examples like, oh, are you also going to refuse elective surgeries like tonsillectomies?
They're afraid I'm going to open this Pandora's box of refusals.
Sorry, again, I'm no doctor, but aren't tonsillectomies when there's a problem with the tonsils?
Um, yes, but it is prophylactic in a sense, in the same way that a circumcision is prophylactic for UTIs.
And I'm not arguing for that.
You and I both know that the UTI thing is, you know, specious argument, but, you know, I'm just, I don't know.
It was very frustrating.
Sorry, but my brother had his tonsils out and I didn't.
My brother had his wisdom teeth out and I didn't.
I still have them, so...
I assume that there's some...
I don't give it to everyone, right?
Otherwise...
Oh, yeah, it's ridiculous.
It's not indiscriminate as long as the parents give the say-so.
It's just a little frustrating talking to my management about it.
He even said that this wasn't a moral issue and that...
Yeah, I brought up the Germany thing after I was a little exasperated about it.
I was like, you know, this is even illegal in some parts of the world.
I gave that example and he just said, hey, this isn't Germany.
And I think that, you know, is a good illustration of the, you know, this is a really, this issue is inertia.
Yeah, but my rebuttal would be that the reason this isn't Germany is because More Americans, I assume, from America, more Americans aren't doing what I'm doing.
You know, Germany had circumcisions until people agitated and made the case, and then they didn't.
Yeah.
You know, so the fact that this isn't Germany is because more people like me aren't talking and more people like you aren't listening.
Yeah.
And I don't know any place in the world where tonsillectomies are illegal.
No, neither do I. So listen, I mean, I'm sorry that you're in the position.
I couldn't give you the advice to stand fast to your principles and suffer massive economic catastrophe.
I mean, I guess I could make that case, but I'd be a hypocrite in doing so.
So I'm not going to make that case.
Why is that?
Well, because I pay my taxes.
Right, right.
Okay.
So you think that I should stay on?
If you want to make the case, but when you see that flash across your screen, that's parents making bad decisions.
Maybe somewhat understandably, maybe somewhat not understandably.
The more that the medical profession views circumcision as benign, or maybe even advantageous if they quote the UTI argument, As if there's no such thing as soap.
Then the more parents can be excused, to some degree at least, for having the procedure done.
You know, I don't usually second guess my doctor.
I mean, I just don't.
Because I can't train myself in becoming a physician.
I respect the division of labor.
So, I think that there's a lot of...
I wouldn't do stuff to threaten my job.
I would, you know, recognizing that, you know, what's happened to tax rates since this show started?
Well, they're higher.
I mean, it's certainly because, you know, David's deferred taxes, right?
So, you know, it's like, this is a long haul, and it's always earlier than you think, right?
Because you've become enlightened, and you've become knowledgeable, and all the other people haven't, right?
So...
So, be patient.
It's going to take, you know, you might be close to retirement when the last hospital bans this stuff.
It is going to take a long time because, and particularly stuff involving children is really damn slow.
Because the recognition, of course, is that most, well, I shouldn't say most, I don't know, a lot of the parents, you know, I've heard that there may be some Jews in the medical profession, right, in which case doctors are not likely to start counseling children.
About the immorality of circumcision, at least the Jewish doctors.
So these are just the realities of what you're dealing with.
You not having a job is going to remove you from a position of influence in the debate, right?
Yeah, you're right about that.
There's probably not a whole lot of liberty-oriented pharmacists, period.
I mean, it's not really a great job.
For a liberty-oriented person, you don't have a lot of autonomy.
Oh, sorry.
Somebody has just clarified.
Circumcision isn't illegal in Germany.
The parliament there overruled the courts.
The court struck back and ordered doctors to disclose more to patients.
The European Council has proposed a ban on circumcision which would apply broadly, not just in Germany.
And, you know, again, this is part of what the lefties do that the righties don't do is they focus on things like four skins, which, you know, is pretty actionable as opposed to the welfare state, which is pretty much not.
So I just wanted to clarify that with regards to Germany, but at least they're having a debate.
Yeah, sure.
In the same way that I'm not going to go to jail because I disagree with how my tax money is spent.
I've talked about some of the reasons.
I have good reasons for it.
I think I'm doing the right thing.
But I wouldn't counsel you to do it.
I would counsel you to be patient, to recognize that turning a great wrong in society back in the right direction takes a damn long time.
Most people will resist reason and evidence.
Usually it's an intergenerational change.
You know, like in science, you have to wait for the believers in the old system to die off, which is only true because it's academia.
Science is academia.
You don't need that.
You don't have to wait for the iPhone 4 developers to die off to get an iPhone 5 because that's a free market thing.
But in academia and in cartels, such as the medical profession, yes, you have to wait that long.
And, you know, it's slow and steady wins the race.
But, you know, I'm...
I'm sorry you're facing this, but I think pharmacists have to deal with this a lot.
Pharmacists who don't believe in the efficacy of SSRIs, what do you do?
It's all very challenging.
Yeah, but I don't think that economic martyrdom is the way to move the debate forward.
Okay, one more thing.
I just think it's weird that, like, you know, typically in the medical field, you would never, ever choose an invasive procedure when a non-invasive procedure, antibiotics, is more effective.
But when it comes to this, somehow that, you know, slipped through the cracks.
I just think that's odd.
But hey...
Yeah, look, I mean, women get a lot of UTIs.
Women get a lot of urinary tract infections.
And if removing the clitoris Cut down on urinary tract infections, would that be okay?
No, women just take antibiotics.
So, yeah, it is tragic and it has a lot to do with male disposability and the fact that the tribe needs to symbolically emasculate.
Circumcision is a step up from what used to happen, right?
Which was a ritual child sacrifice.
But it is a step in the right direction, I guess.
But it is, you know, the roots are very deep in why it's done and what it's all about.
And, you know, men just have to look to women to figure out how to get stuff done.
You know, it's not that complicated.
You just have to look at women to get things.
You know, women wanted voluntary marriages.
Yeah, okay.
So women get voluntary marriages.
It didn't really take that long.
It had a lot to do with labor-saving devices and so on.
But, yeah, women, okay.
You want no-fault divorce.
Fantastic.
Okay.
Then men want no-fault diffus.
If they weren't, right?
And, you know, so just look to women.
How did women end up getting rid of, at least to some degree, how did that practice of female genital mutilation die out in the West?
Well, women loudly and vociferously and repeatedly proclaimed that it was an outrage and an invasion.
And, you know, just Look at how women get things done, and it's quite instructive.
And women didn't use a lot of abstract arguments.
I mean, some of them did.
But, you know, just use moral outrage to get things done.
Who are you to say, I can't get divorced from a guy just because I'm bored?
Okay, great.
Well, maybe you find your parents boring.
I don't know.
Maybe you do, maybe you don't.
But you just have to say, sorry, it's my right.
And so that would be my suggestion.
Okay.
Well, hey, thanks for your advice and thanks for talking me down from this cliff, metaphorically speaking.
You are very, very welcome.
I appreciate you calling in.
And look, I hugely appreciate your moral sensitivity in this area.
You know, sometimes we wish we'd taken a blue pill and your life would be a whole lot easier if you didn't care about genital mutilation of boys.
So I appreciate your moral sensitivity in this area.
It's brutal.
I mean, it's brutal because you get not just to see the inhumanity With regards to children, but you see the inhumanity of all of the people around you in the healthcare profession.
When we sympathize with the victims, it's not just the victims' horror that we experience.
It's the horror of everyone who doesn't sympathize with the victims around us, whose nature would not have been revealed had we not done that, right?
Yeah.
So, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry that this is the decision.
You know, I think it's fantastic, your moral sensitivity in this area.
I mean, gosh, what a great dad you're going to be in time.
But, you know, it's not on you.
It's not on you, and that's good that you could do in this situation, and bankruptcy is not going to move you forward.
It's not going to move the moral argument forward, in my opinion.
Okay.
Thanks, Steph.
Okay.
Alright, well thanks everybody.
I'm sorry we're going to have to have a bit of a short show today.
I hugely appreciate everyone's calling in.
I'm sorry if you had to wait.
We can go longer next time.
But apparently I am to be terrified of Los Angeles roads, or as they call them, the extremely long parking lots of LA. So I'm going to defer to the judgment of those who've lived here longer.
Well, I've never lived here.
But yeah, we're going to hit the road and get to the Pricey Hotel in preparation for tomorrow, 3 p.m., Pacific Standard Time, I guess 6 p.m.
Eastern.
Mike, do we have a website for that?
It's on the Freedom Aid Radio forums right now.
It's ustream.tv slash Joe Rogan.
You'll be able to watch it live with video.
Watch it live with video.
Absolutely.
And we're also working on getting video for the...
For the Sunday shows.
Because this does mean pants for me.
Shockingly.
Appallingly.
But, you know, these are the kinds of bullets I'm willing to take for philosophy.
Just like coming to sunny California.
No pants for me.
No pants for you.
Mike obviously will still continue with the casual everyday dress code of the Freedom Aid Radio mothership.
But, yeah, thanks everybody.
Sorry for the short show.
Have yourself a great, great week.
I will talk to you soon.
I guess I'll chat at everyone tomorrow afternoon.
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