Sept. 18, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:51:44
2798 Living For The Future - Wednesday Call In Show September 17th, 2014
How would the privatization of nuclear arms take place in the transition to a free society? Dealing with an impossible situation with family who mistreat their children - should I go the legal route or walk away? Is it possible to be a good education with the government schools?Includes: economic interdependence as war prevention, Matt Damon as a weapon of mass distraction, privatizing the post office, the purpose of evil people, instilling helplessness in the morally energetic, don’t jargon me bro, having credibility, turning into somebody you resent, emotional bandwidth for big projects, letting the future be your guide and leaving a safe miserable job for a passion project.
Hi everybody, Stefan Mullen from Freedom Main Radio.
I hope you're doing well.
Ah, just spent all day in the youthful company of our eternal smoky Russian goddess of brain-chewing reason, Ayn Rand, working on a three-count-em-three-part series, The Truth About Ayn Rand, which I am pouring heart and soul into as somebody who was a knee-bending acolyte of Alicia Rosenbaum for many years.
And still hold her in about the highest regard of any thinkers that I've come across.
With, I guess, the exception of the ancient Greeks who were busy inventing the things when they weren't enjoying the sight of young men throwing spears naked.
Also a great name for a gay club.
Anyway, hope you're doing well.
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Please!
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One of the reasons we're able to come up with, the volume of shows that we're able to come up with and the quality of shows that we're able to come up with is because of Mike and Dostoyanovich!
And they selfishly wish food and shelter.
How many times have I gone over what commitment means?
Commitment means being exploited By bald people.
But, nonetheless, they are selfishly requiring sustenance and shelter, even in the summer.
Like, I can understand it in winter for a short amount of time in the summer, too.
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So, that having been said, Mikey Mike, who's on first?
All right.
Up first is Chris D. And he wrote in and said, could you provide me with some plausible scenarios for, one, the privatization of nuclear arms, and two, crime prevention organizations, particularly with regard to protection for those who cannot afford to pay?
These are the answers that elude me when I imagine an anarchist society.
All right.
So everything else you got sorted out?
Yeah, basically, got it all.
No, but those are...
Dude, back off the mic a little bit.
Sounds like you're pulling a deep throat on it.
Well, not, so I pulled it a little away from my face.
Is that better?
Good, good.
Okay, Linda, sorry.
I mean, go ahead.
So everything else you've got pretty much squared away, but nukes and crime prevention, is that your thing?
I wouldn't say I got it all squared away, but in my conversations with people over this subject, it tends to distill down to these kinds of issues of what do we do with the nuclear weapons and how are people going to have protection that can't afford insurance or some kind of conflict resolution organization?
Okay, so why don't you play your average neighborhood statist?
And I will play, say, me.
Okay.
Okay, so Mr.
Status, let's talk about nuclear weapons at the moment.
Do you feel that our current method of handling nuclear weapons is good?
Well, we haven't had nuclear winter yet, so I guess it's not bad.
I don't know how it could be better, let's say that.
So the way that governments are handling nuclear weapons at the moment is, in your mind, as good as it could possibly be?
It's as good as I can imagine it, knowing that it's not my specialty, my area of expertise.
Well, so for instance, an American bomb, a nuclear bomb, actually fell, I think, Wisconsin or someplace like that in the 50s.
And there were five fuses.
Four of them failed.
The last one actually didn't fail.
So it was kind of blind luck that that nuclear bomb didn't go off in an American, not unpopulated state.
Do you know what the nuclear launch codes were for quite some time in the United States?
It's probably something dumb, like 1, 2, 3, 4.
No, because that sequence is a bit tricky.
It was zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero.
In other words, if someone had just leaned on the key, then bad stuff could have gone down.
Do you know that there's a fair amount of nuclear warheads that appear to be just not, like nobody knows where they are kind of thing?
And this is in particular in the former Soviet Union.
Yeah, I could imagine that.
Okay.
So, I mean, I'm no nuclear expert, but...
I can think of some ways in which things could have been improved.
You know, for 20 years the launch codes should not have been a whole bunch of zeros in a row.
And so I could see ways in which nuclear weapons handling and safety and security and so on could have been improved.
I don't think that we've not had nuclear winter because governments are really great.
At handling nuclear weapons, I think we've not had it because anybody who tries to use a nuclear weapon will be almost certain to destroy their region in retaliation.
It's the mutually assured destruction doctrine.
So from that standpoint, again, we say, well, how would this be handled in a free society?
We want to make sure that we don't imagine it's being handled really well at the moment, right?
Right.
North Carolina, thank you for North Carolina nuclear bomb drop.
That was where it happened.
So I just wanted to point out, it's not like we're trying to improve from a score of A +, right?
It's not like what's beyond 100% or how would a free society do just as well as a government society, right?
Yeah, I see that, sure.
I guess maybe as a statist, I see more accountability, even if there are people that are behind the scenes that maybe the people responsible for launching a nuclear weapon won't be punished, but somebody will be punished for the US or some government launching a nuclear warhead on someone else.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
First of all, people have not been punished for launching nuclear warheads on someone else.
In fact, they're generally considered to be heroes.
You may have heard of a little airplane called the Enola Gay.
Does that ring a bell for you at all?
I can only imagine that's what dropped a bomb on Japan.
Well, two, in fact.
So two bombs were dropped on Japan.
For no military purpose whatsoever.
The Japanese government at the end of the Second World War had already offered unconditional surrender to the United States.
The only thing that they requested was that the Emperor be allowed to stay on the throne.
And the United States said no and dropped bombs before any further negotiations could have occurred.
As you may have noticed from the Japanese tabloids, there's still an Emperor on the throne.
So there was zero utility whatsoever from a military or negotiation or diplomatic or war-ending standpoint.
There was zero point to dropping the nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
So there has been no punishment for a no-military-purpose launch on a purely civilian set of cities, thus Of course irradiating and destroying the genetic integrity of the population fairly significantly.
So no, there's not only no negative consequences, I think they got medals.
Okay, so my question towards, as a statist, my question towards you as an anarchist would be, if the argument for the privatization of nuclear weapons is simply that, well, we're not doing so well now with state-controlled nuclear weapons, but it seems imaginable that we could be doing worse, right?
No, no, no, no, no.
This is not the argument yet.
This is simply pointing out that we scarcely have an optimum situation.
Not to mention the basic fact that the only reason nuclear weapons exist really is because of governments, right?
I mean, it wasn't like GM or GE or Staples woke up one morning and said, hey, you know what would be great?
Bombs that irradiate and destroy entire cities and leave nuclear shadows on the ground and destroy crops and cause genetic damage for dozens of years.
Let's do that, right?
Let's not figure out a better way that scotch tape can come off the serrated bit at the edge so it doesn't cut your damn thumb.
Let's create weapons of mass destruction.
This stuff comes around because of governments and who knows what the next one is going to be.
So these aren't arguments as to why things will be better in a free society.
These are perspectives so that we understand that you don't have to do really well to improve on what's here, right?
I suppose I could go along with that.
Okay, so what is the purpose of a nuclear weapon?
Because if we want to know how things are going to be handled in a free society, we first have to know what they're for.
So in your opinion, Mr.
Statist, what is the purpose of a nuclear weapon?
I would give it two.
And the obvious is mass destruction.
And the second would be the threat of mass destruction.
Well, the purpose of a nuclear weapon...
I mean, the effect of a nuclear weapon is mass destruction.
I mean, the purpose in what are they for?
Of course, I mean, their function is to destroy things.
Would you say that their purpose is offensive or defensive?
I guess offensive would be...
It would be more offensive than defensive.
Okay, so if you want to invade a country, you would nuke it.
Well, no.
I wouldn't as a somewhat rational person.
No, no, but that's – I mean imagining you're some Dr.
Strangelove character, right?
I mean I wouldn't want to walk around somewhere that I just nuked.
So I mean I think that would be – even in a sociopathic sense, I would be really short-sighted to nuclear bomb some land that I plan on putting my physical body on.
Yeah.
the people, even if they're all just little ants to you, you're still irradiating the ground and of course all of that, right?
Yeah.
Plus, I mean, there's the general horror of the world as a whole, which, you know, with the exception of the amount of bombs that were dropped on North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, which is more than was dropped in the entire Second World War, seems to have a horror of indiscriminate bombing, right?
I kind of got lost in all your words there.
Sorry.
So you irradiate the land and you come across as, let's just say, a pretty bad guy for using a new kind of country you want to invade.
So you nuke it.
It's sort of like calling in an airstrike on a car you want to steal.
Yeah, exactly.
It renders the land useless to you.
So it's not a very good offensive weapon, right?
Right.
Okay, so I guess it would be more of a defensive weapon in that sense.
It's more of a threatening weapon.
I really don't know.
I've not thought of it.
I think the word you're looking for is deterrence.
Yeah, okay.
Okay, so it's a deterrent weapon insofar as you say, if you invade me, I may use my nuclear weapons, right?
So it's a deterrence weapon, right?
Yeah, I would agree with that.
Now, how many deterrence weapons do you need?
As I understand it, the U.S. has thousands and thousands of nuclear warheads.
I guess enough to blow up the world once over would seem reasonable enough.
No, because if it's a deterrent weapon, it must be against a specific enemy, right?
Well, if the whole world is your enemy, then, you know...
Okay, what are the odds of every single country except the United States invading the United States?
I don't know if China or someone...
Come on, every single country.
I don't mind if you role-play an annoying person, but don't be an annoying person, right?
I mean, Trinidad and Tobago is not going to invade a nuclear power, right?
Can we at least go with that?
Fiji is not going to send laser-guided shark missiles into New York, right?
I'm thinking more along the lines of the game Risk.
And if you have two players in Risk and one owns all of the nations except the one you own, then...
Okay, can we not use board games in our analysis of the real world military?
Okay, so then what is the upper limit?
That's literally like me trying to start a real estate agent career by buying Monopoly, right?
I mean, nobody owns all these countries, right?
It has to be some specific enemy...
That is going to be attacking you, right?
Yeah, so I was going to the maximum upper limit of what could be the largest enemy possible.
And so if we're not going to do...
Okay, but let's deal with the real world.
Let's deal with the real world.
So there has to be some country that's going to attack you.
And that country that's going to attack you, you may threaten with one or more nuclear warheads.
You don't need thousands, right?
Right.
I suppose not.
I don't know what the limit is.
It seems like thousands is too many.
Thousands is too many.
One is maybe too few.
Yeah, maybe one is too few.
Maybe you need five.
Maybe you need ten.
Because with a modern nuclear weapon, I mean, you can pretty much disable even a very large country with targeted strikes on its major population centers and major transportation hubs.
I mean, the country's pretty much done.
With like five.
Probably, right?
Maybe 10.
Okay, yeah.
Okay, so right now we have an overproduction of hundreds of times the number of nuclear weapons we actually need, right?
Yeah.
We're fine with that, right?
I'm on board with that.
Okay, so in a free society, we need maybe a third of a percent or a half a percent of the current nuclear weapons, right?
Okay.
Yeah, now that I'm thinking more in depth, I mean, maybe we could increase that number a little bit.
There could be some kind of sabotage or you want to have more than you need.
Just like if you have a savings account, you want to have more than just one month's worth of income.
You want to have three to six months.
No, I understand that.
Listen, one nuclear weapon is enough to deter a country from invading you.
Because where do you put that nuclear weapon?
You put it in the military capital of wherever it's coming from.
Or you put it in the largest population center which kills millions and millions of people, right?
Okay.
In other words, if a country has only one nuclear weapon it seems very unlikely it's going to be invaded, right?
Yes.
So, having 10 is having quite a bit of redundancy.
Maybe it's 11, maybe it's 12, but it's definitely not thousands and thousands, right?
I can go with that, yeah.
Yeah, whoever is invading you, neither wants to die, nor do they want to have a revolution, right?
Yeah, thousands is too many, I can go with that.
Right, because let's say that, I mean...
I make something up.
Let's say that China, the leaders in China want to nuke the United States.
Well, of course, they're not going to do that.
Why would China never have a nuclear attack on the United States?
For fear of repercussion?
No.
Well, yeah, that's true.
But, I mean, let's say that the United States had no nuclear weapons.
Well, then they wouldn't nuke the U.S. because they would want to inhabit the U.S. and they would render it uninhabitable.
Alright, let's say that that wasn't an issue either.
So then they wouldn't nuke the US? I don't know.
I'm stumped now.
Well, how much money does the United States owe China?
Yeah, I don't know that the smartest elite of China really think that they're ever going to get paid back.
Well, yeah, but they're getting some interest payments, right?
Okay.
Well, if they took over the U.S. and absorbed the economy, then they could – I don't know.
I would imagine that they could absorb those industries and the profits they make into their economy and that would somewhat offset the debt that they would not be accruing interest from anymore by conquering the U.S. Okay.
I don't think that's true.
Okay.
And there'd be a huge amount of distance.
Also, do you know how much China sells to the United States?
I don't know the number, but I'd imagine we're the biggest buyer of Chinese goods.
Huge.
Absolutely huge.
Absolutely huge.
So, it would really not be very sensible.
So, I'm just sort of pointing out some of the ways in which nuclear weapons could be viewed in a free society.
So first of all, if we're talking about a free society like the whole world over, I don't think anyone's going to bother with nuclear weapons.
I just don't think.
Because that would be like saying, let's say I'm running for...
I don't know.
Let's say I'm running for...
To represent North Carolina in an election, right?
And I say, you know, it's not ISIS, not Al-Qaeda we've got to worry about.
It's those South Carolina people, those South Carolingians.
They are going to come through the sewers with radioactive frogs and they're going to drill their periscopes up the stockings of our lady folk and they're going to take us over and they're going to rule us with an iron flag.
We've got to have nukes, we've got to have laser-guided skysnakes, and we've got to point them exactly at South Carolina!
I mean, that would not be a very believable or compelling campaign speech, right?
I don't think so.
Okay.
I appreciate it.
We can agree on that.
If you don't agree on that, please never run for office.
I like how you always bring the conversation back to some common ground.
That's a useful tactic.
I see that in conversation now, talking with you.
Right.
So the point is that in a free society, there will be a common methodology for resolving disputes, which is kind of what the states have under the federal government.
But...
The reality is that there will be a common methodology that's called reason, evidence, philosophy.
There'll be ways of mediating disputes across geographical areas, whether those will be countries or not, who knows, right?
So if we have a free world, then it will be no more as compelling to sell your nuclear warhead protection services to any particular country or former country than it would be within the states, between the states and so on.
Because remember, if you are in a free society and you want to say, we need nuclear weapons, then you have to sell those services to a skeptical and cheap-ass population who never wants to give you any money, right?
Now, does this mean that there's no value in nuclear weapons?
I think there's huge value in nuclear weapons.
For instance, if there's some giant asteroid that's bigger than both of the Karnashian ass cheeks in a centrifuge, if something that big is slowly turning and being photographed by everybody on the known planet, if something that big I'm very happy for there to be nuclear weapons because Lord knows otherwise we have to send up some elf's dad with an Aerosmith song.
So that's not going to be that great.
So I would say nuclear weapons are fine.
they're great for asteroids or comets or whatever that might be coming but I think it's going to be really hard to sell that stuff in a free society.
If you have just a free country or two and there are other countries around then you want to have the nuclear weapons as deterrence rather than as a make work project for radioactive dweebs You want to have it as deterrence, but you don't need a huge amount for deterrence.
Now, what is going to be the cost of maintaining 10 or 20 nuclear weapons from a defensive standpoint?
And who gets ownership?
So part of the world is stateless, part of it is still state-controlled, and so you want nuclear warheads as deterrence.
Who has the private ownership of those nuclear weapons?
How is that determined?
I'm not sure what you mean when you say, how is that determined?
Well...
Okay, so if the state is in control of the thousands of nuclear warheads...
Oh, no, no, I understand that.
No, we're talking about a free society, and you're saying, how is private ownership determined?
I'm not sure what you mean.
So, what I'm saying is, as you just said, part of the world is free, part of it's still state-controlled, so the free part definitely should have some nuclear warheads as deterrents, No, no, I never said definitely should have.
I never said that.
It's possible.
Okay, it's possible.
They want the nuclear warheads as deterrents, and obviously they transitioned from a state society to stateless, and previously the state had control of the warheads, and now the stateless society, who has control of the warheads?
How is that transition?
How do you see that happening?
But you understand how the free market works, right?
I guess that transition, I do understand how the free market works.
But you know how the free market works.
How do you end up with control over something?
How does Apple end up with control over a factory?
Okay, but it's slightly different.
I feel like it's...
No, no, let's just look one step at a time.
How does Apple end up with control over a factory?
Or let's say the government is privatizing the post office.
Who ends up with control over the post office?
Exactly.
I guess the highest bidder?
Okay, the highest bidder.
Now, well, of course, it's generally the most politically connected, but let's just pretend it's the free market for a moment.
So the highest bidder is going to end up with control over the post office.
And who do they pay for the post office?
How does the highest bidder get the investors to provide money...
Well, who do they pay for the post office?
Who are they paying for the post office?
Well, no, forget that.
Forget that.
We're just talking about...
Your question wasn't who gets paid.
Your question is who ends up with the resource, right?
So let's try and focus on that.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, yeah, yeah.
Okay, so who ends up with the post office?
Well, I mean, my reaction in a free market system, I would say it's who pays the most for it, but who are they paying?
Okay, so let's just say it's who pays the most for it.
So who ends up with the nuclear weapons is whoever pays the most for it, right?
Now, how do you get to pay the most for it in a free society?
I feel like this is an important question, is who are they buying it from?
Who are they paying for the nuclear weapon?
Why does that matter?
Well, because if it goes to the highest bidder, I mean, and there's no transfer of funds, I could see now how maybe it doesn't matter.
No, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
Like, let's say there's a bunch of guys selling off nuclear weapons, and they all go and make off to the hills of Brazil with a fish tank full of Hitler's remains, and they go and try and reanimate his corpse using their...
Who cares?
Maybe it goes to the national debt.
Maybe it goes to all the people for restitution for all the time they spent in jail for non-violent crimes.
Maybe it goes to children who've been abused in government schools or government teen camps.
Who knows?
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter where the money goes.
It doesn't matter where it goes.
But the point is that someone is going to be able to offer the most for the nuclear weapons, right?
Okay, yeah, I'm on board.
Okay.
Now, that person or group, probably it's going to be a group, how are they able to offer the most for those nuclear weapons?
Because they have the most?
They have the most...
Well, no.
No.
Because if you have a lot of money, it's because you're not stupid with money.
And so you could put, I don't know, let's say they cost a trillion dollars.
I don't know, whatever, right?
So you've got a trillion dollars.
Why would you buy nuclear weapons rather than invest in something else or create a factory or just sit around and You know, masturbate to pictures of the queen.
I don't know.
But why would you take all of that money and put it into nuclear weapons?
It's because you will get the best return on investment for that money, right?
That's how you get a hold of a resource, is you are able to put it to its most productive use.
And by its most productive use, I mean that which the customers want the most, right?
Yeah, okay.
Mm-hmm.
Okay, so I'll tell you what I would want from somebody who wanted to take over nuclear weapons.
I would say, look, I want most of these sons of bitches completely deactivated.
I want third parties to ensure they're deactivated.
I want it videoed.
I want it put on YouTube.
I want to know that these weapons are deactivated.
Okay.
Okay.
I don't want them to be used to create new legions of Marvel superheroes.
I don't want them to be used to radiate somebody's cheese and tomato sandwich.
I want these things completely deactivated.
I don't care if you've got to bury them in the moon.
Whatever you've got to do, get this crap deactivated.
And I'd pay money for that.
I would pay money for that.
Then I'd say, listen, but I want to keep a few around.
Space aliens, giant rocks from space, Lord knows what.
Deterrence, right?
Yeah.
Now, I think that's a pretty common belief.
I think when people are actually personally paying for their defense, they want it to be as efficient and effective as possible, right?
Sure.
I mean, if you have a headache and I say, well, you can take chemo or an aspirin, which do you want?
Yeah, the aspirin.
Right.
Because it's the cheapest and most effective, blah, blah, blah.
I mean, I don't know if chemo would do anything for that, but just, you know, indulge me.
Yeah.
Right?
And the reason we're talking about this in detail is it's part of a much larger picture about how things work in a free society.
So how things work in a free society is you've got to go and sell your plan to the general population.
Now, someone who investors genuinely believe will appeal the most to the general population...
Is the person or group who will end up with those resources?
So the allocation, for want of a better word, of nuclear weapons will fall to those who reflect and respond to consumer preferences as efficiently and effectively as possible.
You understand?
understand it's much more democratic and much more citizen controlled than what we currently have.
I mean, you never wanted thousands and thousands of nuclear weapons, did you?
No.
I didn't.
I mean, who the hell would?
So what we have right now is absolutely anti-democratic.
But what we have in the future is an incredibly democratic system where people vote with their dollars to figure out how things will work and what's going to happen, right?
Now, again, personally, I would like to see nuclear weapons installed on the moon to deal with any rogue asteroids.
Because then you get to launch in lower gravity, like one-sixth of the Earth's gravity, plus you don't have air resistance to deal with.
So it's going to be more accurate to point something in a vacuum and have it hit something, if necessary.
I don't even want these things on the planet.
But that's what I would prefer.
It's going to be more expensive, but I'll, you know, I would pay for that myself.
Now, I think this would cost 30 or 40 bucks a year for any reasonably sized population.
As opposed to the Lord knows how many tens of thousands of dollars a year for each working person is currently being sucked out of the future through fiat currency printing and debt for the current military industrial complex.
So, who gets the resources are the people who reflect The dollar voting people's will the most.
Does that make any sense?
It does.
And I feel like I've got like 60 or 70% of the logic of this argument down, but the holes aren't really coming to me.
Not that there are holes, but just the holes in my own understanding.
And so I'll need to really digest that.
But you just have to say, who gets the resources in a free society?
Who gets the resources in a free society are those who please the customers the best.
Who gets the post office in a free society?
Whoever pleases the customers the best.
And that may be somebody who wants to dismantle the post office...
And sell off the resources so that they can be used for things that people want even more than the post office.
And what's the post office for these days?
It's to provide work for traumatized ex-military, like 40% of the post office is ex-military, which is why going postal makes sense.
It's to provide employment for minorities and it's to deliver you bills and junk mail.
Well, you can get bills online and who the hell really wants junk mail?
Right?
So it's just, it's a massive welfare state.
And tree-slaughtering environmental catastrophe.
So, in the future, I mean, not having the infrastructure for physical mail would be fantastic.
And is there really anything which can't be delivered or figured out how to be delivered through other methods, except maybe sort of physical things or whatever, right?
So, who gets resources in a free society is whoever can please...
The customers the most and the best.
So what people really want and are willing to pay for with the disposition and deployment of nuclear weapons is what a free society will provide.
Because everyone who wants to buy these nuclear weapons is going to have to make A pitch to investors, right?
I mean, most people haven't gone through this process, and I'm sorry to be annoying and quote experience, but having given a number of pitches to investors myself is hard work.
Investors are incredibly skeptical.
They have six million other people who want to take and use their money for stuff.
And so if you want to say, listen, I provide the very best place for you to park your money, Better than everyone else.
They are going to want to know that you really know what you're doing.
Also, if you screw anything up, particularly with nuclear weapons, they're going to get a very bad reputation.
Hey, aren't you the group that invested in that guy who sold nuclear weapons to space aliens and the Vogons and they inflicted all their bad poetry on us at gunpoint and stuff like that?
So if...
If you want investors' money, you have to really convince them that you know what you're doing, you're going to do the right thing, that you have a market share, that you've done the market research, that everything is ready to go, and you're not going to give them a bad reputation, right?
Right.
Right, I mean, Jeff Berwick recently, he's got this GoldSculch thing that was going on in Chile.
And salespeople representing his and another guy's organization were selling land plots to people that they didn't actually have the legal right to sell.
So that's bad.
I mean, people paid tens and tens of thousands of dollars for these plots.
Now it's all dissolved into this chaos of suing and countersuing and it's a legal wrangle and the odds of anyone getting their money out are tiny, right?
Right.
Now, what's it going to be like when some people who are involved in that group want to go out and sell people?
Well...
Not good, right?
Right.
And so you don't want to get involved in things where reputations get really tarnished.
Because having a bad reputation significantly raises the cost of doing business.
And I'm cognizant of this every day.
I mean, people donate money for this show.
And if I go off on some If I go off half cocked, which is not possible because I'm always fully cocked, then people are going to be like, damn!
Right?
Damn!
I gave money to this guy and now what is he talking about?
He's actually a reptile man?
What's he doing?
I gave him money to spread reason and peace and evidence in a courageous manner throughout the planet.
And if I start doing stupid crazy shit, people are like, damn!
I can't believe that guy, right?
Yeah, so stay on your rocker, Stefan.
I'm going to stay fully cocked on my rocker.
Rock cocked.
That is our new business.
That is our motto.
Freedom Aid Radio.
Fully rock cocked.
Yes, that would be a wonderful t-shirt.
As long as you leave holes for the nipples.
I fully approve of that t-shirt.
So...
If you understand that process, then people get resources because they're able to prove to incredibly skeptical investors that they can do a return on their investment superior to everyone else and that they are the best people to do that one thing that's better than everyone else.
It's sort of like saying, well, how do movie roles get allocated?
How does the leading man in a movie, how do they get allocated?
Well, with men hair thickness and with women cleavage.
But I mean, how do they get allocated?
They get allocated because people do a huge amount of number crunching as to how audiences respond to particular actors.
Will they come and see a film just because that actor is involved?
And what has been the gross ROI on that actor's movies?
And as far as I understand it, number one is Matt Damon, which is one of the reasons he commands such a high salary.
So how do movie roles get allocated?
Well, based upon not what the actors want, not what the producers want, not what the screenwriter wants, but fundamentally on what the audience wants, right?
All right.
And exactly the same thing is true.
So when you say, well, who ends up with nuclear weapons?
How do they get allocated?
It's exactly the same as saying, how do movie roles get allocated?
Well, people get the most expensive actor they can afford.
If they're smart.
Because expensive actor means good investment.
Yeah, but actors don't blow things up.
In real life, Matt Damon isn't an explosive weapon.
Are you really going to state to me very obvious things like that?
You don't want the conversation at that level, do you?
You don't want to tell me that Matt Damon is not a weapon of mass destruction, right?
You don't want to make that case to me, right?
What's to say that I see that you are on board with that...
A fundamental aspect of this argument.
So I'm saying, what if a rogue seized control of a nuclear arm when the state disintegrated away and then wanted to use it for their own sociopathic wants?
What is the scenario there?
How to deal with some kind of rogue that has a nuclear weapon?
Are you saying to me in 200 years how do we deal with people who somehow against all protections that people are paying for get a hold of a weapon of mass destruction and wish to use it?
Yeah.
Do you think we may be pushing the boundaries of actionable ethics at the moment?
Perhaps, yeah, actually.
And so I don't want to take up everyone else's time.
I think I need to digest the answer to this.
The very brief answer is that's exactly what we're paying for people to avoid, right?
If I'm paying some dudes to hold 10 or 12 nuclear weapons, I'm paying for them to have it not fall into the hands of terrorists, right?
Right.
I'm talking about that in-between period.
You're right.
I'm really picking at...
So whatever they've got to do to keep it safe is whatever they've got to do to keep it safe.
Look, governments who are selling nuclear weapons to private defense agencies don't want them stolen, right?
Right.
Because that's actually money they'll be making from the sale of it, right?
Right.
I mean, it's not like when Brinks ships 50 gold bars, they're like, eh, you know, if a couple fall off the truck, who cares, right?
Alright, I see the perhaps fallacy in my question.
So if I only had a minute...
Hang on, nobody is going to want to buy from a government that loses nuclear weapons, right?
Right.
I guess I'm somewhat confused by that.
So the governments who are going to be selling the weapons off to the private industries have every incentive to make sure they're not stolen.
Whoever is buying them has every incentive because that's how they make their money.
How they make their money is keeping the population safe from nuclear weapons while still having nuclear weapons for their vaguely useful uses like against asteroids or something like that, right?
Right.
The whole point, it's like saying, I mean, again, now you're going to tell me that toilets are not explosive, which is arguable when we've had Indian food.
But it's like saying, what happens if you hire a plumber and the plumber installs a toilet that backfires with the force of a howitzer?
And gives you basically a nuclear shit shadow against your bathroom wall.
That's not exactly what I was asking, and I feel like I just didn't articulate my follow-up question, and I'd actually really like to move on to the second question, because I'm convinced by your argument I was just trying to pick apart some small detail, and I got it.
So just not to take up too much of the other listeners' time, my second question was...
The protection or how crime resolution works for people who can't afford to pay for insurance or dispute resolution organizations.
So they experience a hate crime or something.
Okay, so let's say you have no money in a free society and you You get hit by a car which then drives away, and you wish to pursue some sort of legal justice against that, right?
That's what I'm saying, yeah.
Okay.
So, how does it work right now?
I guess your justice is subsidized by other people that are paying through coercion to fund state justice system.
Okay, Mike, can you just do me a quick favor, Mike Rastoyan?
If you could...
Just look up how long it takes, I think it's in Detroit, how long it takes to get a conviction for a crime, how long justice takes, and how many times they can't get a conviction because all of the witnesses are dead by the time.
I read something on this a little while back, and I think I don't want to talk off the top of my head, but if you could look it up, I'd appreciate that.
We'll get back to the facts, and you can read off that stuff in a sec.
So right now, what happens is you turn things over to the state, and it takes months, usually years, to get any kind of potential resolution.
You are given a lawyer who is underpaid and overworked and has no financial incentive in the disposition of justice.
And then what happens is usually the victim, and it usually is a victim of whoever the state is trying to corner or corral, What they do is they are threatened with huge sentences, and then they say, but if you plead guilty, we'll reduce that by some significant factor.
So, oh, it's going to be 10 years, but if you plead guilty, it's going to be 18 months.
In other words, you can bribe someone with 85% of their own freedom.
You can't bribe anyone with a dollar, but you can bribe them with years of their life, which is why 96, 97% of U.S. Prosecutions never go to trial.
Because, basically, it's just this massive double jeopardy.
Actually, that's not quite the right phrase.
It's this massive gamble that people are unwilling to take, which is, okay, well, if I plead guilty, I know it's going to be over in 18 months.
Maybe I get out in nine months with good behavior, and then it's over.
But if I don't plead guilty, if I work to defend myself if I'm not guilty, then it's going to take years.
I could end up with a much worse sentence.
In fact, I most likely will.
And so I'm just going to take the bullet even if I'm innocent.
So right now...
The chances of getting justice in a status court system are exceedingly low, like indefinitely in the low single digits in terms of percentages.
So that's sort of where we stand at the moment.
So the idea of, well, how could we possibly improve On this current government justice system, I don't know, attack cats.
I mean, who knows?
Anything would be an improvement than what we have right now.
So, again, when you're talking with status, they sort of have this position like, well, it's great now.
And how does a free society replicate the amazingly wonderful government system we have right now?
And I'm like, if I thought a free society would replicate the government system...
I would never ever do what I'm doing, right?
Because it's just not...
It's not what we want in a society.
The only people who think that the government dispenses justice are those who've never had anything to do with the justice system, right?
I would fall into that group.
Okay, so if you've had anything to do with the justice system, then anything would be an improvement.
Like...
A rain cloud of nunchucks would be an improvement over what's going on right now, because at least the nunchucks would hit some guilty people.
What about like a middle-aged prison system?
Is that an improvement on current state-controlled justice system?
That's still a status system, right?
So you're comparing apples to apples here, right?
So, look...
If you want to live in a civilized society, and we assume everyone who's not evil does, so you, me, and 19 other listeners, then obviously we recognize that there are some people who will not have the money to pay for whatever legal issues they get involved in, right?
And they will be taken care of through charity.
I mean, Americans give $100 billion a year to charity, even when basically their wallets are extracted through their widened tax-staring eyeballs to pay for the welfare state, they're still able to cough up over $100 billion in charity, right?
So they'll be taken care of through charity.
It's completely obvious.
Charity rushes in to fill the vacuum that welfare leaves behind, just as welfare has elbowed aside the friendly societies and charities that used to take care of the poor.
But charities take care of the poor intelligently, which means that they're constantly refining ways to make it better.
Because taking care of the poor is a really delicate business, right?
Obviously, you want to help people to get out of being poor, but at the same time, you don't want to help them so much that the safety net turns into a hammock where it's Cooler to chill out in the hammock than it is to go.
So it's a real challenge to help the poor.
I'm not that great at it, other than by doing podcasts.
Whenever I've tried to help the poor, it generally ends up being not helping the poor.
Which is why I outsource my charity to people who know what they're doing.
I don't help the poor by giving them...
By fixing their teeth with a crowbar and I don't help the poor by giving the money directly, I leave that to the experts.
So, yeah, I mean, this would just be another example of people who need charity.
You know, when doctors were not controlled by the state, they used to spend usually a morning or an afternoon or sometimes even a whole day a week working pro bono.
I mean, this is well documented.
Lawyers would do the same thing.
Lawyers have a pro bono system and I personally would like to do business with lawyers who have a pro bono system because I know there are people who need legal protections in a free society if there would even be lawyers.
The whole point of a free society is you shouldn't even need a lawyer because the law book should be about 10 commandments with one asterisk called and we really mean it.
This would be a recognized problem which would affect a tiny, tiny minority of people.
50 cents a year from everyone would be enough to cover whatever costs they needed.
It's not a...
I don't think it's a huge issue.
Well, I'm glad you put it in perspective for me.
And I also...
Sorry, the last thing I'd say is that I would expect pro bono work from my DRO, from my dispute resolution organization.
I would expect pro bono work.
Because...
Both from a it's nice to help people standpoint and also from the standpoint, I do not want a group of people created in society who have no access to dispute resolution, right?
How's that going to work out?
Not well!
People say, well, what if you end up with this pool of society of people who have no access to dispute resolution?
It's like, I don't want that, right?
So I will pay money for that not to happen because it's going to be cheaper for me to pay a little extra in charity than it is for this entire group of people to be created who have no access to peaceful dispute resolution, right?
Yeah, I'm with you.
So that's my thought.
I so appreciate your thoughts.
It's really been an honor and a privilege to have this conversation, and I hope we get to talk again in the future.
I hope so, too.
Thank you very much for your question.
Mike, did we get anything on that Detroit mess?
Still looking forward.
Couldn't find anything immediately.
I remember reading it, too.
Maybe it's Chicago.
It was in the New York Times, and it was maybe just try Detroit murder delay or Chicago murder delay trial.
It's...
It's worth mentioning, I think, if we can find it because it's so ridiculous how unbelievably clogged up the system is where it takes like five years to even get a hearing in a murder trial and by then people have moved away or they're dead or they've gone in the wind or something like that.
I mean, it really is crazy just how little gets achieved in the government system.
As I mentioned this before, the only time I ever wanted to get involved in something legal was I was told it was going to take me about 10 years and a quarter of a million dollars to be able to pursue this with no guarantee of any kind of outcome.
And holy, it was a bad scene.
I won't get into any more details, but I ended up taking another route, which was a private dispute resolution situation, which, you know, long before I even became an anarchist, but...
It certainly did strike me when I did become an anarchist that that's exactly the solution that I pursued, which worked out alright.
Still looking for it, so we'll splice it in if we find it later.
But for now, I think best to move on.
As we continue the search, people in the chat room can help out with that.
Oh, thank you very much, Chris.
All right.
Well, up next is Clark.
And Clark wrote in and said, Do you think it's more effective to take immediate or delayed action when attempting to protect children of relatives from abuse, specifically a situation where the abuse is completely destructive and unrelenting, but not illegal or even socially unacceptable?
Sorry about that.
Can you give me an example?
Hello?
Yes, I called in the show probably about a year ago and the situation being my sister went to rehab and left her kids behind with her mother and I've been trying to help them as much as possible.
I don't know, you probably don't remember the call, but I'm still living with my mom and Trying to...
Right, but what is...
No, I do remember the call, but what is the abuse that you're talking about?
I mean, you said it's not illegal, so I assume it's screaming and spanking kind of thing?
Yeah, screaming.
She's not necessarily spanking.
As far as I'm concerned, she's just pure evil.
Sociopathic, psychotic, whatever name you want to throw at it.
So it's a whole range of things, but overall mental, emotional...
I mean, I can give you some specifics if you want.
Yes, that's a good idea.
So basically, you know, if the one little girl, if she's crying or something like that, she'll just ignore her and wait for it to stop.
And it's not like just normal crying.
She'll be up in her room just screaming her head off, just completely completely Destroyed about something.
And she'll just ignore her and leave her there for as long as it takes for her to stop.
And then also...
It's hard for me to talk about anything specifically because it all sounds trivial when you focus on one thing.
No, listen.
What you have just said does not sound at all trivial to me.
The idea that a child is so angry, frustrated, upset and hysterical and being left alone is basically just seeing a grease fire running out of the house and crossing your fingers that it doesn't burn the whole goddamn place down.
That is not minor at all.
I mean, children need to learn how to self-manage and basically allowing their Emotional system to burn itself out creates such a foundation of rage and resentment that it turns children into like time bombs or proximity mines, I guess, is what I would maybe characterize it more as.
So what you're talking about there is incredibly destructive and this kind of neglect is entirely...
It's underappreciated in terms of its devastating effects on children.
So it's not like, well, I need something bigger than that.
What you're saying there is huge already.
Yeah, and that's just one tactic.
I mean, that's just one thing.
And obviously, it's not trivial to me at all.
I'm used to it sounding trivial to most people.
Honestly, I don't really have any meaningful conversations with people.
So...
Yeah, basically, waiting for a child to calm down is like being a doctor and saying, well, I'll just wait for the patient to bleed out, and then I'll just go in and pronounce them dead.
That is not how you want to be dealing with that stuff.
Well, what happens in that situation is I'll go...
If I'm here, I will go and comfort her anyway, even though my mom doesn't want me to, and then she'll come up there and be like, you're ruining everything.
I've got to start over and just...
Completely evil.
How old are the kids again?
Three and a half and two and a half.
Right.
Well, I mean, again, I'm just giving you, obviously, amateur, off-the-cuff feedback here.
I mean, if there's nothing illegal going on, then the police obviously aren't going to get involved.
Well...
I should probably...
She is also an alcoholic, so it is possibly a child protective services thing, but...
Why do you think she wants these children?
I mean, this is something I... I mean, we had a caller in recently.
Basically, the dad was using the kids as welfare hostages.
They come with a check, so I don't want to see them, but for God's sakes, don't take them away from me.
It's always been kind of baffling to me as to why people who find out they don't like having kids keep the kids.
Well, I could give you two reasons.
I mean, you can drop your kids off at a hospital, you can drop them off at a fire station, you can drop them off at the police station, and the authorities will take those children, no questions asked, and they'll probably do some decent amount of work to try and find some kind of home for them, which is hard to imagine.
It could be worse.
It could be, I guess, but...
I find it baffling as to why people hang on to kids that they just don't want.
Is she getting money for these kids?
No.
Like I said, my opinion, she displays a lot of sociopathic personality traits and I would classify her more like a narcissist to where she's probably training them to be sources to where she can feed on and then the other Thing is, she wants to look good on Facebook and her social circle.
Oh, so she's got ornament kids, right?
Exactly.
They're trained.
Yeah, my mom was like, because my brother and I were blonde.
So blonde.
We were white-haired.
Yeah.
Pre-colonial Eddie Winters kids, and we were cute as a bunch of buttons, and she loved to take us out, and everybody would say how cute and how charming and how intelligent and how well-spoken.
I mean, she just glowed for that kind of stuff.
And, of course, once we got into our teenage years and developed personalities and capacities and, dare I say, body odors all our own, it became kind of a different story.
So, is it that she...
Of course, loneliness drives a lot of people to hang on to their kids as well.
They're the people who can't get away.
Everyone else can just get up and get the fuck out if you're being a total bitch or an asshole.
But kids, they're the people who just can't get away.
And that is pretty brutal.
That's actually pretty relevant.
I mean, the only person who ever comes over here is also an alcoholic, and that's my aunt.
My aunt Teresa comes over on the weekends, and they get pretty much passed out drunk on the couch.
And there's one thing that's, in my experience, I mean, there are definitely some solitary drunks, but in my experience...
Alcoholics have like the most bottomless and terrifying and pathological fear of being alone and That also may be why some drinkers hang on to their kids Yes So How
often do you get to see them?
Well, right now, I barely see them for the past year.
Like I said before on a previous call, I've been their full-time caregiver.
I was seeing them from about 7 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon.
Right now, I've gone back to work full-time.
Kids have been put in daycare, and I'm looking into moving out because I've reached my limit on what I can do here.
I cannot I can't survive in this environment anymore.
I'm way past my limit, so I have to get out because she's just pure evil and she'll stop at nothing to get her way.
I can ignore her and I can not be affected in that moment by what she's saying, but overall it just takes its toll on me.
I just can't do it anymore.
It's driving me crazy.
Just being around her.
And that's the part.
I know what it's like being her kid.
It's pretty much to exist around her is to be destroyed.
You're just a tool to her, just something to be manipulated.
If you have your own needs, your own preferences, you will be destroyed.
I'm going to try and push back at the developing and enveloping cloaks of helplessness that are coming out of you at the moment because that's not a particular value, particularly in this conversation.
So, from a practical standpoint, you can either go for custody or go for some sort of visitation rights.
Or you can not, right?
As far as I, and again, this is all just off the cuff.
I don't even know where you live, so don't sort of tell me any of that stuff.
But you can either try and go and get some legal access to the kids or not.
Now, if you want to do that, then you're going to have the challenge, perhaps, of proving her an unfit mother in a court of law, in family court of law, which is pretty pro-female as far as I understand it.
I've never spent any time in family court, but that's sort of my understanding, right?
And so if you want to do that, then of course you need to go and talk to a lawyer and figure out how you might be able to go about doing that.
I don't know whether or not unfit mother has the category called, and she does a whole bunch of illegal stuff.
I don't know whether or not that's the case in wherever you are.
But if you talk to a lawyer about that and say, look, this is my situation, what do I do?
There's no philosophical answer to where you are, right?
This is a show about philosophy, so I think that probably would be better for you to talk about to a lawyer if you wish to pursue having some sort of contact even if it's supervised contact with your sister's kids But there's no philosophical answer as to how you can help them, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
And maybe we could switch the conversation over to what you talked about before, like the helplessness and all that.
But before we do that, I do not want to get custody of them.
I think what would be best for them is to be put up for adoption and also...
I will have no problem seeing the kids, whether I move out or not.
I can come see them whenever I want.
I can take them whenever I want.
I'll just give her an opportunity to drink.
And regardless of what I do, the next maybe 20 minutes later or the day later, she'll completely forget and be right back.
Maybe not forget, but she'll be right back where she started, like nothing happened.
So that's not an issue.
Well, then you're only...
I think as far as I understand it, then if you don't want to pursue this, then...
In terms of getting custody, then my understanding is that you can either get the government involved or you can attempt to convince your sister about what is best for the children.
I'm assuming that the latter is not exactly what you think is possible.
No, my sister is not going to be helpful at all.
So pretty much it's down to get the government involved or just keep or try to help from the sidelines.
I don't really see any other options.
Even if I try to get custody of kids, I don't see how much I'm going to be able to help them without...
They would be in daycare all day.
Right.
Right.
And, you know, I'd have no girlfriends.
Yeah, look, and I really...
Sympathize, and it's not a topic I particularly enjoy, but it is an important topic to talk about, is that although the children are victims, and although you obviously care enormously about them, which is to your credit, if there's nothing you can do that's productive, there's nothing you can do that's productive.
This is the system.
We live with the system we have, right?
Yes.
We can't magically snap our fingers and change it.
And although the children sound like they're in a desperately bad situation, at some point, at some point, you do have to take care of yourself.
Yeah, I agree completely.
And I've actually been talking to some people on the on the website and chat and I've come to that conclusion and maybe that's probably more relevant to talk about because I've definitely been in that helpless state of mind for about the past half a year probably more and just this past like right now I'm looking into purchasing trailer home and moving out I should be moved out here in a couple weeks but
prior to that I definitely was just kind of Laying on the ground in the pool, my own blood, just being beaten, and just waiting for somebody to help, and nobody helps.
Okay, so let me tell you something very important about life.
And that is this.
In the long run, Whatever strengthens you in the pursuit of virtue helps you.
But whatever contributes to your sense of helplessness will kill your capacity for virtue.
Virtue and helplessness are antonyms.
They're opposites.
Virtue is to confidently act knowing that you can make some difference, knowing you can make some change.
The primary purpose of evil people is to instill helplessness in the morally energetic.
Let me say that again.
The primary purpose of evil people is to instill a sense of helplessness in the morally energetic.
And the best way to do that is with hostages.
If you can't save the children...
Then you must save yourself.
And if being around this family is decaying and degrading your capacity to act effectively, to be happy, to have efficacy in your life.
In other words, if they're like something that lifts your wheels off the ground, so no matter how much gas you hit, all you get is a bunch of spinning, then you must, in my opinion, Withdraw from the situation where you can neither act to save the children nor stand to see them destroyed.
And you must prepare yourself if you want children to be a better parent than what you have observed.
Yep.
I couldn't...
Because if some woman comes around you at the moment What's she going to see?
Oh, yeah.
No, I don't know.
I can't even consider it at the moment.
But yeah, I agree exactly what you're about to say.
I can't even consider it dating.
And this is all straight out of Compton.
No, wait.
Straight out of Nietzsche via Compton.
Right?
Whatever swells your capacity for power is the good.
Whatever diminishes your capacity for power is the evil.
Now, By power, I don't mean what Nietzsche meant by power, which was domination, efficaciousness in an amoral sense.
But I'm mixing virtue into that which is power.
Whatever adds to your capacity for virtue is good.
Whatever detracts from your capacity for virtue is bad.
And so if being around your sister who is mistreating these children...
Adds to your sense of depression and helplessness and makes you feel overwhelmed by the black tidal wave of immorality that races around the world over and over and over again, laps the world sometimes 60 times a second, it feels like.
Yeah.
No, it's overwhelming.
Exactly.
You have to escape that.
You have to escape that.
It's not the children's fault, but it's not your fault either.
And if you cannot...
Act to save the children.
You must act to save yourself.
Look, if the children were in a car underwater that was heading down and you could not get the doors open and you were running out of air, what would you do?
Yeah, I would go back up to get air and then come back down.
Right.
And yeah, that's exactly the situation.
And at some point you would not come back down, right?
Yeah.
If it had been 10 minutes and the kids had no air, they would be dead, right?
Well, yeah.
I guess that's my problem because right now I'm thinking I would go down and get the bodies at least.
Well, you can't, right?
I mean, the analogy dies at that point, right?
so what you're saying about the about her destroying my energy to have virtue or whatever it's
Look, what I'm saying is that there will be less virtue in the world if you allow your sense of energy and efficacy to be destroyed by your sister.
There will be less virtue in the world than if you break free And regain your sense of the power of virtue.
Yeah, I agree completely.
Virtue is designed to have effect in the world.
And not in the imaginary world of politics or the comic book world of the military.
Virtue is designed to have an effect in the real world.
If you are in a situation where virtue cannot have a positive effect, if you stay there, you will sand down your sword to nothingness.
Yeah.
You will lose your spine.
You will lose your capacity for action.
You'll be overwhelmed, drowned, and destroyed by the paralysis of unresponsive, unrelenting, all-powerful evil.
I was just...
Don't let that happen to you, whatever you do.
I was going to comment on how accurate that was.
I mean, that's...
I think of her as, like, a different species now.
And when this started out, I was...
I had, like, a different frame of mind completely.
And even, like, when I listened back to the call I had with you, I'm, like, almost ashamed.
And I can't even...
I can barely bear to listen to myself talk because, yeah, I just completely...
Was completely not taking in the full reality of the situation and how she just has no conscience.
It's just all manipulation.
And I thought I could teach her.
I thought I could show my example.
Like, look, this is what works.
This is what doesn't.
And I had so much progress with them.
And I did a lot of good in the beginning.
And then it just got to the point where it was just a constant battle.
And Like you said, it got to the point where I was completely overwhelmed and it hasn't been until the past month or two that I've really realized I need to just get the fuck out of here because I'm not gonna make it if I stay here any longer.
I'm gonna go crazy and lose all will to survive in this past month.
I've just been really motivated to do stuff, to be just motivated and happy to be alive and to have a chance to do stuff again.
And it's hard.
Yeah, you have to listen to your instincts about when you're spinning your wheels.
Right?
For me, it came right after obsession.
Right, so obsession occurs when you're out of anything even remotely obvious, and you just keep spinning round and round in your head.
I could try this, oh wait, no, I tried that, I could try that, well then there'll be this bad circumstances, well I guess I could try this, but I've heard this really bad thing, I could try that, but, but, but, but, but, right?
Like a Manoj video.
And right after obsession, Which is where you frantically try and find a way, away from the exit sign.
The obsession is anywhere, anywhere, anywhere, how, how, how?
And you obsess over it.
And then, if you listen to yourself, at some point you will get, and it sounds like you're there, like you'll be there for a while, that there is no answer.
There is no answer.
This is why I say to people, you have problems with your parents, problems with people.
Go talk to them.
Lay it on the line.
Tell them your thoughts.
Tell them your feelings.
Be honest.
Be open.
Don't stay in the stupid-ass null zone.
It's like trying to turn yourself, instead of into a planet, into that giant-ass ring of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter.
You just shatter yourself in that null zone.
Go talk.
Go be honest.
Go be open.
purchase in the other person's personality if they have any receptivity to who you are as a human being and if you are in a situation where you cannot affect things for the good it is moral suicide to stay yeah yeah i if you talk if you open up to people they'll let you know exactly who they are And I've done that with her, and she let me know exactly who she was.
Yeah, and so the question is with people in your life, can I have any effect on who you are?
Yeah, that's a great way to put it.
Does my...
Does my perspective, does my argument, can I have any effect on who you are?
Or am I, like some idiot, yelling at a movie?
Am I in a conversation or am I yelling at a statue?
It's like I'm yelling at a rabid grizzly bear who, you know, it's just...
No, even a rabid grizzly bear will roar back or, you know, maybe they'll run away.
But if the person has no capacity for self-knowledge, which is fundamentally no capacity to listen, when you have self-knowledge, you have the capacity to withstand criticism because you are more than just defenses.
To have self-knowledge, you have to go through your defenses, which means you find out who you really are outside of the forts you built to defend yourself against trauma.
If you don't have self-knowledge, all you are is defenses.
And people who don't have self-knowledge feel if they are criticized, In other words, if their defenses are breached, there's nothing for them.
They're like a castle but nothing inside.
Or as I said once about someone, he is an empty hide of bright armor.
He is an empty hide of bright armor.
You think you're fighting someone who's in the armor, you win, and you take the helmet off, and there's nothing there.
So if all people have become Is defenses and justifications and attack and more manipulation.
If that's all who people have come, they have become self-blinded robots.
It's input-output.
There's no observing ego, no third eye that can observe themselves and compare their reactions to any sort of ideal standard.
They simply are massive defense mode.
And they fight dirty, they'll say anything, they'll do anything, they'll sling whatever shit they need to to win the fight, they'll kick you in the balls, they'll pull a trapdoor, they'll release laser condors, whatever they gotta do.
She won't hold anything back.
Yeah, yeah, she won't hold anything.
And when you're with people who will fight dirty, then it's time to toss aside the Queensborough rules for one thing.
But people who are only constructed...
Or have only constructed themselves to win no matter what.
Then there is no capacity for an interaction between two souls.
You are literally trying to fence with a pre-programmed robot with no input.
You're doing all the work.
You're pretending that something is happening that's not happening.
But without self-knowledge, we are as determined as predetermined Our responses and actions are as inexorable as a movie that's already been filmed.
And I don't like to yell at movies, at least I haven't since I was about 10, look over your shoulder!
He's coming!
Because the movie has no input.
It's just playing out.
So, when you are with people who are only defences, Who are only justifications, who can never admit fault or error or change their minds or be wrong or compare their behavior to any kind of ideal standard.
You are in a situation where your ethical efficacy is going to smash like kindling on the rocks of their fundamental indifference.
Yes.
I feel like...
You can only be around that person by not existing, by conforming.
They need you to be the water that pours into their soulless container.
You can't have any shape of your own.
Yeah, and like, you know, it gets to the point where you have no option but to try to completely ignore her, and then she attacks you for that.
It's like, you're so mean to me, you ignore me.
And it's like, you don't remember the other person.
Oh, yeah.
Particularly if you're in the no-win situation, right?
And that's...
No matter what you do, they're right and you're wrong.
It's your fault and they're perfect and nothing needs to be changed.
If you bring up a criticism, it's invalid.
If it's valid, it's your tone that was incorrect.
If your tone is correct, then the time you brought it up was insensitive.
If the time you brought it up was just the right time, then it was with the wrong other person in the room.
Or, you know, right after a meal that she was trying to enjoy.
Or right during a movie she was trying to...
Like, no matter what!
Yeah.
Well, when this was happening, I also had a back injury, and I would be watching the kids all day, and they would make a mess sometimes, and some things would happen sometimes.
It would be a mess somewhere, and she'd come home and just completely flip her wig on me.
10, 20 minutes later, it's like nothing happened.
Eventually, I texted her.
I was like, you realize you come home and yell at me.
You've come home and yelled at me at least once every past couple weeks.
She sent me text after text about all the horrible things I've done to her.
No one's ever treated her as horrible as me and all this stuff.
I brought up What it was like for me being her kid.
And she started crying and shaking her head at me.
She's like, you're crazy.
You're crazy.
For me, I have this crazy kid.
And that's the type of shit she did to me as a kid, too.
And I realize now I have my whole life, as far as interacting with people goes, it's just all been fantasy.
Just kind of I have these hopes and expectations of people and they're just not real.
It has nothing to do with the actual person I'm dealing with.
And then I'm surprised or hurt when they are themselves.
And I'm just now about to be 32 and I'm just now starting to figure that out.
Yeah, look, I mean, you're feeling around people's personalities for an input, Jack.
That's all.
Is there an input jack here?
Does anything go in?
Or is it just speakers with no input?
And that is a very essential aspect of remaining sane in the world.
First you look for the input jack, and then you look for the virtue amp, or so to speak, right?
So, you know, I mean, obviously it's absolutely heartbreaking what's happening to these kids, and if you can explore any ways to help them for the better.
But if you can appeal...
to the parent and you can't bring in any outside agency to secure a better life for these kids I'm afraid in my opinion again this is just my opinion this is not a moral rule I've already come.
You get sanded down.
Yeah, you get sanded down when you're with abrasive people.
You just do.
I've already come to that conclusion.
At this point, I think I'm doing more harm than good just by being here.
I'm showing them, yeah, this is how moms treat their kids.
This is how people treat each other in relationships.
You yell and scream at them to get them what you want.
And I think I could do so much better just not being here at all.
I'm just seeing them.
Well, you're teaching the children that evil people rule.
Good people are helpless and evil people rule.
That's all you're teaching them at this point.
If I were to stand up for myself completely, it would turn into a full-on psychopathic physical attack.
She's capable of pretty much anything.
I told her I was moving out and she evicted me a few days later because of something I was standing.
I was protecting one of the kids in the instance.
And because of that, that's the only thing she had left.
So she went with that.
Well, I can certainly hear, and I've got to move on to the next call, but I can certainly hear how much of the end of Europe you're at.
And I appreciate you calling in so that people can get a sense of this.
If you listen to your own instincts deep down, they will tell you when it's time to pull the ripcord and take your chances with the parachute.
Because the plane is just heading into the mountain either way.
I think that's one of the things I want to share is that people will do whatever is convenient for them.
So many people, even on the forums and chat room and just people I talk to, they just live in this fantasy world where they love their mom, they love their dad, they love all these people, but If you really stand up for yourself and are really yourself, they will not hesitate to destroy you.
I have this huge family and they've all just kind of watched this happen.
and nobody will do anything.
And I'm incredibly sorry for that.
Look, I mean...
If you want to find out how much evil there is in the world, just try defining evil and criticizing it.
And you will very, very quickly see just how prevalent evil is in the world.
This is one of the reasons why people don't want to judge and don't want to be judged.
It's like, I don't want to find out that I'm living in a minefield of conformity to immorality.
I mean, I'd rather go through the matrix, the illusion that I'm around nice people who give money to the homeless and who pray for the sick and who take care of their elderly parents and so on.
But, oh my God!
If you ever want to find out the prevalence of evil, if you ever want to switch the light on and see how many cockroaches there are in the kitchen, simply define evil and act against it.
Boy, will you have an exciting time finding out just how much evil there is in the world and how many enablers of evil and cowards and conformists to evil there is in the world.
Sometimes it feels like you're poking a...
A beaver, and it turns out that after it pulls its house out of the earth, you're facing Smorg himself, some giant-ass dragon.
And, yeah, just define what is evil.
Evil is violations of the non-aggression principle, and we should act against those who consciously and knowingly violate the non-aggression principle.
That's it for this show!
Evil is violation of the non-aggression principle.
we should act against those who knowingly violate the non-aggression principle.
Krakatoa erupts!
Which is why nobody wants to define evil.
Because then it's like, oh shit.
Really?
That many?
That many people are either evil or supporters of evil?
I didn't want to know that!
Knowledge be gone!
Knowledge be gone!
Exorcism!
I need to sneeze, fart that out of my system?
Like deli belly.
But, yeah, no, I mean, that's, and people who don't take, like I had this relativist on a couple of shows ago, who's like, well, you know, what's wrong with, you know, why would people even be bothered by moral condemnation?
It's like, you ever tried it?
You ever tried pulling in on that grenade?
I mean, anyone who doubts the power of ethics just tells me they've never tried to be ethical.
That's all that happens.
All people are confessing, you know.
Well, why would evil people even care about your ethical stout?
Have you tried it?
Then you won't have to worry about whether it happens with any power or depth or efficacy.
So you have obviously got a moral standard.
And you're applying it around you, and your life is changing irrevocably.
And it is amazing.
I mean, it took me a long time to adjust to that basic reality that you think you're, you know, it's like in The Matrix.
You're thinking you're fighting one guy, and then they just replicate, and it's mostly everyone.
It's like, wow!
Wow!
No wonder Socrates said, thank you for the hemlock, right?
Yeah, that's what Socrates said after, like just before he took the hemlock, he said, sacrifice a chicken to this, I can't remember, some deity.
And it turns out that that's what you do when you're given a gift.
Right?
So after he was voted to be killed, he's like, I will take this hemlock.
Thank you very much.
Because I live in hell.
Now I'll take my chances with hell in an afterlife.
Right?
Well, I enjoyed the call.
And just to add on to what we're talking about, just talk to people, random people, whoever it is you're talking to, and mention your struggles with virtue, and they'll let you know very quickly where they stand.
Because just talking about this...
It's so fucking sick how quick people are to jump to my mom's to be on her side and to try to brush it off.
And then there's the other people who are really blown away by it and sympathize and listen to what I'm saying.
About 90% of people, if not more, are quick to jump in and stab you right in the wound and just say, oh, you know, She's just being a mom and, oh, you gotta help your mom.
Just whatever excuse they can come up with.
So people tell you exactly who they are.
Oh yeah, I know.
And they're so ridiculously hypocritical.
Yeah.
You're so judgmental, Steph!
It's like, won't you just be judgmental?
I mean, you're so arrogant!
It's like, were you asserting things without any argument or evidence?
Isn't that kind of arrogant, you douchebags?
I mean, you got mommy issues!
It's like, that's not an argument.
And by the way, have you talked to feminists about their daddy issues?
No, didn't think so, did you?
Because Freedom Aid Radio is one of the first moral movements that threatened the interests of women.
So it's a little different than the ones that came before.
So, yeah, it is horrible to see Just bringing ethics up with people is like they just pull off this rubber mask and underneath there are these horrifying vampiric insect people.
That is the reality of what you experience.
And I say this from the vantage point of having talked about ethics with people for 31 years.
I'm going to be 48 in 8 days.
No, 7 days in a week!
I'm going to be 48 years old.
32 years I've been talking to people about ethics.
Seven or eight years I've been doing this conversation.
I think I have a pretty unique standpoint.
Unique even in history because of the internet.
And I just really want to reassure people, if you think you're alone, you're not alone in that.
It's real.
It's real.
When you bring ethics to the forefront, you reveal the most revolting aspects of the human race And it seems to be omnipresent.
You see people siding with abusers.
You see people attacking the virtuous.
You see people betraying their most stated and virulent and vehement moral goals.
We care only about the children.
We don't like domestic abuse.
Well, we promote...
We think that single moms are great.
They broke up families, but they're heroic.
Well, you know, adult victims of child abuse...
Don't need to spend time with their abusive parents.
Ah!
Evil guy!
It's like, oh my god.
Oh my god.
Do you even listen to yourself?
That's what you want to say to humanity.
You want to walk around with a tape recorder and say, hey, let me just play you back what you wrote, what you said.
Let me just play it back to you.
And let's just spend ten minutes going over how insane you are or how unbelievably offensive you are.
Or how hypocritical you are.
But people simply use words to piss on whatever growing fires of virtue will illuminate their own dark shadows.
That's all they do.
Words are weapons.
Sharpen the knives.
That's the late Michael Hutchins had it.
It is horrendous.
The view of humanity you get when you shoot up the flare of virtue And realize the reptilian horrendous venom fanged insectoids that surround you.
You have to hold your nose and with a strong stomach say we must blow past these vermin and build a future where human beings can grow up to be something other than vile hypocrites.
It is for the future that we shoot up this flare because all it does is attract the airbound spit venom of the broken.
At the moment.
That's pretty fucking awesome.
I agree with that completely.
I'd just like to say it's the best cult I've ever been a part of.
You can go ahead and move on to the next caller.
I think the main reason I wanted to At this point, be a part of this call, just like you said, just to feel like you're not alone because, you know, you talk to so many people and you get the reaction we're talking about, especially this situation.
And now you start to feel like it's easy to feel like you're the only one with any sense, any conscience or virtue.
So it's great to hear what you have to say.
No, thanks.
You can keep us posted how it goes.
Mike, did we get anything on our...
We did.
There's something in the Bronx, apparently.
I'll just read through it real quick.
The state court system has a guideline that requires most felony cases to go to trial that be resolved within 180 days of the suspect's indictment.
While criminal courts in every borough in New York City violate the guideline, in the Bronx, the city's poorest borough, 73% of all felony cases exceeded the 180-day limit as of January.
In recent years, there were more defendants waiting in jail for years for their trials in the Bronx than the rest of the boroughs combined.
The Bronx accounted for more than half of the cases in the city's criminal courts that were more than two years old and for two-thirds of people held for more than five years awaiting trial.
Held for more than five years awaiting trial.
Yes, wherein you may be, of course, found completely innocent.
And then, of course, if you want, you can roll your dice and try and get restitution for those five years, although it's not illegal, I assume, to hold people pending trial.
And how many people are going to jail for violating the 180 days, which is a ridiculous enough amount of time to begin with?
Oh, that would be zero.
That would be a big goose egg.
And so this is the poorest of the poor.
Which was the original caller's issue, right?
What happens to the poorest of the poor who can't afford legal representation?
Well, I'd say the best thing to do in a free society would be to throw a good number of them in jail for five years awaiting trial.
And what would people say?
That's horrendous!
It's like, well, that's what we got, asshole.
Alright.
Well, up next is Chris E. And Chris wrote in and said, Is it possible to be a good educator in government schools, such as working with a group of children who need a good male role model?
I don't know.
Why do you want to be in a government school?
Well, I'm in a government school.
I got a contract many years ago before I even thought of philosophy, really.
I thought I was doing something right with my life.
I had a calling, I guess, to go into education and I I ended up getting a contract.
Through constant education and whatnot and self-knowledge, I've come to kind of a new place and wondering what I'm doing in the public school system and if I'm actually being effective as a teacher anymore.
Well, are you?
I think...
And what does being effective as a teacher mean?
I think that's a good place to start.
Effective would be teaching kids or helping kids come to an ability to think for themselves and reason and be self-learners and be inspired to To pick up, geez, I'm a little nervous.
I might take a little bit of a breather here.
I'm not 100% sure.
Well, a little tough to...
Yeah, it's a little tough to define.
A little tough to measure yourself relative to something you're not sure about, right?
That's correct, yeah, 100%.
Well, I guess, you know, as a school teacher, I've been...
I've been wanting to make an impact on children's lives, and I got to a point...
Okay, okay, I gotta stop you right there.
Because you're starting to sound like some educational brochure.
The important thing is to have an impact on children's lives.
Hey, an asteroid has an impact on people's lives, but we don't give it tenure, right?
So, impact, positive, role model, what does this mean?
Yeah, um...
How would you judge yourself as a successful teacher?
I guess having the kids come back and tell me that they got something.
They understood.
But come back when?
Come back after they've graduated, after they've been successful, after they've been able to pull themselves out of a bad situation.
I think if we...
Wait, wait, hang on, hang on.
Hang on, hang on.
So, you want to teach children to think rationally and critically, right?
That's correct, yes.
How long do you think it will take for them to thank you for that?
Like, reasonably?
Um...
Reasonably?
Um...
I don't have an answer for that.
I don't know how long it would take.
Okay, um...
When you teach kids to think reasonably and rationally and you're not their parent, what happens if they go home and they start to think reasonably and rationally about religion in their home?
Or the state, or wars, or taxation, or the very educational system that their parents are coerced to fund, right?
Yes.
Or the national debt, or fiat currency, or ethics, or conformity, or you name it, right?
How long do you think it will take for the children to appreciate the gift of reason that you have given them?
See, that's a fantastic point.
So, I work with a lot of at-risk youth.
Um...
Abused.
Yeah, abused, completely abused.
Yeah, you have to say at risk, like there's some third dice-rolling party that's causing the problems, as to say, victims of parental child abuse group, because that would probably be too active.
That's right.
I'm sorry, I'm using the jargon that I've been brainwashed to use, obviously.
Yeah, don't jargon me, bro.
Don't joke at me, bro!
So yeah, I work with abused kids.
I work with kids that come to school not fed.
I work with kids that come to school not fully closed properly.
I come to school and I work with children whose parents have beaten them earlier in the day and the number of times I call CAS is horrendous and I feel like I'm fighting A fucking war in this school sometimes and I come home and I'm just exhausted at the end of the day and I just I get up the next day and I get in there and I you know I strap into it and I
feel like if I was to eject myself from this right now I'm opening up a vacuum for a teacher that doesn't really care to get in there.
Okay, okay, slow down, slow down.
First of all, I hugely sympathize with your dedication, with your concern and care for the kids.
Got a couple of questions.
So, what's your fuck you quotient for the day?
How many times a day do you get told to fuck yourself?
I never get told to fuck myself by the students.
Oh, good.
Okay.
It never happens.
Good.
All right.
I'm the only male teacher in the school.
Not saying that that's a matter, really.
But I run a few social-emotional programs.
Basically, I have boys come in and we sit around, chat, eat lunch together, and we talk.
And I feel like I've built a really good rapport of trust with these kids.
And there's honesty always.
And I don't I'm not the best teacher in the world when it comes to the board standards.
I don't really follow them very well.
Wait, so are you trying to say to an anarchist that you don't follow government rules and that's somehow an impediment to your excellence?
No, I'm...
I think you may not...
Who did you call, exactly?
Because you may be a number off in your diet.
Well, that's...
I say that just because I've gotten into a little bit of trouble over the past couple of years being called on.
Not...
No, no.
A little bit of trouble means you're not being a very good anarchist.
You know, I've been in a lot of trouble.
All right, so...
Yeah, no good.
You know, because people are like, oh, you got into trouble with your authority figure.
Bad anarchist.
It's like, well, I guess you've been the kind of anarchist that no one in authority has any problems with.
Good boy.
All right.
And what's the racial composition of your classes?
It's predominantly white.
And is it a lot of single moms?
It is single moms.
The school is connected, well, it's neighbors to a social housing program, a projects block, basically.
I'm working with kids.
A lot of them, you know, their fathers are in prison.
I hear that all the time, that they got to go to the prison and visit their dad over the weekend.
That's always a fun story to hear.
Yay moms!
Good job!
Good sperm donor!
I hear all the time, I hear these women talk outside picking up their children.
Last week there was a woman who was talking about how the fact she just had another child and she was really looking forward to the increased child allowance that was coming in.
Because it was going to help her with some bills that she wasn't meeting.
Yeah, I mean, we've got this completely boss-ackwards economic universe where children are not a liability but an asset because of the forced redistribution of income.
I mean, it's completely insane.
That's right.
And so dysgenic.
But anyway, okay, so...
So my question, I guess, would be, I'm in it right now.
What do I do if this is something that I want to fight?
If what?
What do you want to fight?
What might you want to fight?
I want to fight.
I want to help these kids build a voice for themselves.
I want these kids to...
No, no, no.
You just jargoned me again.
Build a voice for themselves?
What is that?
Program Microsoft Sam?
Okay.
Okay.
So, no.
The moment you slip into Jarrigan is where I become concerned.
That's okay.
And call me on it every time.
That's right.
I want to do Virtue by...
Use the Force, Luke.
No, no.
That last part might be a little confusing, right?
Yeah.
No, I want these kids out of this situation.
I feel like I... What situation?
The abuse.
I feel...
Well, you can't...
I mean, other than calling...
You call CPS, right?
Because I guess you have a mandate, too, right?
You have to, right?
Oh, I have to, but I... There's...
And how does...
Sorry to interrupt.
How does CPS do, in your opinion?
They do a terrible job.
I think they're a horrible organization that...
Just completely drops the ball on the majority of situations.
I've called so many times and I always ask for a follow-up.
I get a follow-up maybe 50 to 60 percent of the time and a lot of the situations is they go in, they have an interview and there's no intervening whatsoever and there's no support given to these families in any aspect whatsoever.
Do the kids know that you've called CPS? A few of them, yeah, definitely.
Definitely.
And are you able to be honest with the kids about your opinion of CPS? Yeah, definitely.
Definitely I can.
There was a situation.
Okay, so you call CPS and you say to the kids, CPS came to your house, I think they're terrible.
I think they suck.
And they say, well, why did you call them?
You say, well, I have to follow the rules, right?
I have to do things which I consider destructive to your family because I have to follow the rules, right?
How do you think the kids process that?
There's every time I've called.
I feel like I'm doing something bad for that kid and I'm causing more strife in that.
You just not answered my question, right?
How do the kids process it?
The kids process it by losing trust in me.
I feel they lose trust in me.
Either you say, I called CPS and that's the best thing to do, in which case the kids having experienced CPS probably don't agree, or you say, well, I called CPS because it's a terrible thing to do, but I have to obey the rules.
So the rules are compelling me to do that, which is against my conscience, but I have to obey the rules, right?
Mm-hmm.
So, see, you're looking at what you say, but the kids...
Are internalizing what you do, right?
That's right.
And if you can't find a way to act in a moral manner in the environment, I'm not saying you can or you can't, but if you can't find a way to act in a moral manner, in a consistently moral manner within the environment, that's part of what is communicated, and a pretty important part of what is communicated to the kids.
Unless you can explicitly say...
I call CPS. It's almost always a disaster, almost always destructive to the family and destructive to you, but I have to obey the rules because I'm hoping I can do more good than ill in this corrupt environment.
You probably can't really have that conversation, right?
No.
No, I definitely can't have that conversation.
Because what if the kids then get called into the principal office and say, Well, Joe Freedomain radio listener teacher says this whole environment is corrupt.
Yeah.
Yeah, I feel like I'm in a tricky situation.
I'm at a loss.
I guess that's why I've called in.
I've kind of hit a wall on what I can do in this position as an educator.
I hope that I'm doing some good but I'm obviously not able to really fully measure that so Thank you.
You started the call by saying I had a calling to teach.
Yeah.
What does that mean?
That's jargony.
That is jargony.
I was one of those...
Lost kids who ended up with a fine arts degree.
And I started teaching private music lessons when I was a lot younger and I really loved teaching music lessons.
I absolutely loved working with the kids and I continued doing that and I thought the logical place to go after that was to work as a music educator in the public school system.
Why the public school system?
I felt like I could get to more children.
But at the same point, it was a secure job with a secure Benefits package.
I realize all of that now.
Secure job benefits.
Not quite a calling.
Not quite a calling.
I felt called to enjoy job security and a great benefits package.
I felt called to cash in my winning lottery ticket because it's a mission of virtue, right?
Yeah.
Because, I mean, teachers, they say that kind of stuff, and it's designed...
I'm not saying you're doing it consciously, right?
It's designed to kind of frame the discussion like you're heroic.
Yeah.
Yeah, and you know what?
I think I just had an aha moment there with that, and I think I wanted to start off this conversation by...
Pinning myself up as somebody that was doing something heroic.
But there's definitely that piece of it that when I got into the job, I wanted that paycheck.
I wanted that contract that I could guarantee myself a paycheck for life.
Right.
And how are the summers off treating you?
I'm definitely one of the teachers that would be in the camp of not having summers off.
I don't agree with summers off.
The kids slip massively.
No, no, but you have summers off, right?
Yeah, no, I do have summers off.
I mean, you don't go in and yell at empty classrooms, right?
I don't yell at classrooms, period.
No, no, I know, but you know what I mean.
You still have the summers off, right?
No, I do have summers off.
And it's pretty nice, right?
I mean, it's summer.
Yeah.
I've worked the past six summers.
I take on part-time jobs in the summertime.
I don't...
So you get more money?
Yeah.
Now, you know, of course, as I'm sure...
The reason why I find teachers' self-praise a little precious is that I'm not saying this is true of you, but in general...
Teachers are idiots.
They're at the low end of the SAT scores.
They're at the low end of achievement, right?
Yeah, no, I agree.
I agree.
I feel...
Right?
And so it's like it's the dumbest among us that we put in charge of our kids, of those who have the capacity to complete the educational degree, right?
And again, I'm not saying this is true for all teachers, but in general, if you're not very good at pushing ideas around your wetware...
You want to be given a room full of kids to instruct.
It seems ridiculous.
It is ridiculous.
Of course it's ridiculous, but of course it's the government, so we get the exact opposite of what any rational society would want.
Yeah, no, I agree.
I mean, in Michigan, they found that only, I think, 20% of the teachers could pass, or the potential teachers could pass the teacher's exam, so naturally they did the intelligent thing and vastly lowered the standards.
Because, you know, the kids are worth it, right?
And of course, teachers are continually saying, well, we're not praised!
It's a thankless profession.
I think Ann Coulter pointed out, do a search for teachers' awards and you get like 8 billion hits.
I mean, the amount of self-praise that goes on.
It's a calling to the kids.
It's mostly a place where stupid people go so they can't get fired.
Yes, I agree wholeheartedly.
I don't count myself among the stupid people.
No, and again, you are a very tall Chinese basketball player.
I absolutely accept and fully understand that you are there, and every bell curve has its blips, right?
But you still felt it necessary to put yourself forward as someone who had a calling when teachers make more money than almost every hour of work.
Then virtually every other profession except lawyers and doctors.
They make more than engineers.
They make more than architects.
I mean, you name it.
They just make a massive...
And then it's like, oh, well, it's a self-sacrificial calling.
Really?
I don't think so.
Because that usually doesn't come with a staggeringly high paycheck plus eternal job security.
And my board is going in for a strike vote next week, which is incredibly frustrating.
So...
Yeah, which is like, okay, fine.
Then you're in it for the money.
Then you don't give a shit about the kids.
I get it.
Okay, then just be honest.
No, it's about the kids.
Really?
Aren't the kids being hurt by your excessive pay demands?
No, it's about the money.
Okay, then it's not about the kids.
No, it's for the kids.
It's like, oh my god, forget it.
I can't believe you people are teaching me online.
Actually, I can't.
And then try being the teacher that votes no on the strike vote or crosses the picket line.
Oh yeah, that'll be fun.
Yeah, because the Donnie Kruger is in full effect and the teachers think they're brilliant because they're too dumb to know how dumb they are.
Definitely.
There was a few...
In general, blah, blah, blah.
Two years back there was a work-to-rule thing.
And I'm a music teacher.
I'm in there.
I want to play some tunes with these kids, right?
And there was a work-to-rule thing and I ran my clubs anyway.
And I took a lot of heat from...
The teachers in the school and the union.
And they forced me to stop.
It was a full-on, like, I was paying penalties.
Wow.
Yeah, I mean, it just buzzes the shit out of me when teachers say that they're underpaid.
Yeah.
I mean, it's like, okay, great.
Then let's privatize the schools and you can get all the money and all the value that the children and their parents voluntarily want to give you.
Because if the government's underpaying you, let's release you into the free market so you can get your full amount of money's worth.
Like if Brad Pitt is in the Soviet theater troupe and he feels he's underpaid, I got it.
Let's open it up to the free market and you go make 10 or 20 million dollars film.
If you're Tom Cruise in the back end of the chorus line in an off-Broadway production because it's being run by the government, I get it.
You're underpaid.
You could be an action hero with abs to die for.
Let's release you into the free market and you can make 10 or 20 million dollars of film.
And teachers say, we're underpaid.
I'm like, great!
Let's get you out into the free market so you can make all that money you feel that you deserve because you're such great teachers.
Let's unshackle you from this horrible price ceiling called the government and set you into the free market so you can go and scoop all of the money out of the grateful parents' pockets for the massive amount of beneficial brain cells you're dropping into their children's craniums.
And they're like...
What?
Free market?
Fuck no!
I don't want to...
No!
God no!
Don't put me out there!
I'll discover my true worth!
No!
I agree with you that the majority of teachers are overpaid.
And those are the teachers that show up for their six hours of working and take their full amount of breaks and their prep times to surf Facebook and dick around because that happens.
I see it all the time.
I even knew a teacher once that would, on video game release day, would take a sick day so he could stay home and play a brand new video game.
Which was probably entirely for the benefit of his children.
For the kids he was teaching, they probably learned more when he was fragging aliens than when he was actually in the classroom, given the 20,000-year monotony state.
Oh, yeah.
100%.
100%.
But I go in.
I'm in there at 7 o'clock.
School starts at 9.
I'm in there at 7 o'clock.
I help with putting together the breakfast program.
Yeah.
Putting together the food, serving food to 80 kids.
Then I get onslaught of children through my room.
On my prep, I got kids in my room practicing on recesses and all that stuff.
Kids are constantly in my room.
At the end of the day, I'm spending another couple hours working on shit.
Then I go home and work on more prepping and making sure that I'm commenting and making...
As much inroads as I possibly can with these kids to let...
Okay, so listen, but what you're telling me is that you're a great teacher, and I have no reason to disbelieve you.
I'm willing...
Obviously, I can't verify any of this, but I'm going to completely believe you.
You are a great teacher.
So, you know, I've looked into that Sudbury school system.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Sorry, it's my fault.
Go ahead.
I'm sorry, I know teachers are used to talking, but hang on a second.
So, you will make more money in a private school, or you can do a podcast and video series on how children should think critically, how they can learn.
You can make a fortune, and you can reach kids all over the world, permanently.
And you can take that money That you're making in the free market, you can hire animators to make it even more engaging.
With all that money, you could even make a film or a TV series or start your own school.
Because if you're a great teacher, and I believe that you are, you're dedicated, you're hardworking, you're really concerned about the kids, and I'm not saying this cynically, I genuinely believe that that is the case, then The government is a complete mismatch for you.
Because your skills, capacities, dedication, and empathy to the children could be far more powerful if you weren't only talking to 20 or 30 or 35 kids at a time.
But play for mankind, as the reggae song says, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I... You're never going to do that, right?
I know.
I mean, I know we're having a very academic discussion.
You're not quitting the school, right?
No, you know, last...
No, I've been really waffling on that.
Look, it's a lot to give up.
I get it.
I get it.
I mean, I was making $160,000 a year, plus benefits, plus, you know, blah, blah, blah, when I quit.
Yeah, it's hard.
It's hard...
Hard to give up.
I mean, and that was a career I'd invested God knows how many years into.
And I was heading into podcasting, no experience, no business model, no investors.
It's hard.
It's really hard to figure out how can I best serve the world, right?
How can I best serve the world?
But it's important.
It is.
So how do you make that transition?
How do you get out?
It's not as easy as just ripping off a band-aid and throwing your resignation in.
Oh no, it's that easy.
You quit.
Mike, you want to chime in about any of this?
Well, Mike, of course, we rescued him from a situation of...
So when we first met Mike, he was stitching together Nike shoes in a Singaporean sub-basement, chained to a wall with birds that packed his eyeballs every time he didn't make at least 19 shoes a minute.
Oh, sorry.
And every time Mike does something wrong, we say...
And his eyes immediately jump out of his head.
No, Mike, he's saying, how do you do it?
Mike, what are your thoughts?
I went from a job where I had two months of paid vacation, and I worked for a hospital system, so I had the most amazing and immaculate medical benefits anyone could ever hope for.
Mike.
Mike.
I mean, can you seriously believe it?
I mean, do you really want to take advice from a guy who quit that kind of sweet gig?
Yeah, no, Mike, lay it on me, please, because I've been trying to work it out in my head.
How did you do it?
Well, I wasn't happy.
I'm not happy either.
I was miserable doing what I was doing before.
And I was working around a lot of people who were even more miserable than me because they'd been doing it for...
20 years, 25 years, 30 years.
I'd see the people dragging themselves in every day.
You know, the lifers, the people that said, oh, this will be a fun summer job and then got roped in because of the excellent perks and benefits.
And before you know it, they blinked and, you know, two decades went by.
And now they're 45 or something, you know?
Totally, totally.
You know, the people that come in on Monday and be like, five more days.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, nothing that can sap your energy, strength, and will to live more than the people that the second you walk in the door are like, oh, my God, I got a case of the Mondays, you know?
Yeah.
And I was just miserable.
I was miserable doing it.
I mean, don't get me wrong.
The money was good doing what I was doing, and the benefits and time off, all that stuff was great.
Got to do a lot of traveling while I worked at that job because of the time off.
But the cost of going there every single day, it wasn't just the eight hours that I'd put it on a daily basis.
I had to go be around some pretty toxic people in toxic situations and deal with really nasty things.
So when I came home, it took me a couple hours to kind of shake it off to the point where I come home to my wife, and it takes me a while to connect with her.
It takes me a while to connect with my friends or actually start resuming my life after going to this terrible place.
And in the hours before going, I would have the full dread on it.
I couldn't, like, oh, I'm enjoying what I'm doing now because the looming sword of Damocles was hanging over my head.
Oh, great, I have to go back to this shitty place and trade, you know, pain and suffering in some ways for money.
And I was just miserable doing it.
And I could have, I mean, don't get me wrong, it would have been easier in many ways for me to stay.
I mean, so many people do it.
There's not many people that say, hey, I'm going to quit this comfortable, safe job where my likelihood of getting fired is nil and I could stay here until I die and make a good paycheck.
There's not a lot of people that stay in that quote-unquote safe job and say, hey, I'm going to pursue a passion or I'm going to do something different.
I'm going to do something that actually excites me, that motivates me.
And a question that Steph has asked on the show quite a few times is, how can I best serve the world?
And I knew with me, that's an interesting question, I knew with me a damn sure wasn't trading suffering for money and going to a place I hated for 20, 30 years.
I knew I had a whole lot more to offer the world, and a perspective that I always used to really make any major decision in my life was looking at things from the deathbed back.
You know, okay, I'm I'm in that deathbed.
I got a couple hours left.
Will I be happy how I spent my time and spent my life?
Will I be thrilled with that?
Will I go to my grave knowing I made a goddamn impact?
I had a positive impression on the world.
I'm happy with how I spent my time.
I'm happy with what I did.
Or will I go, shit, I did what now?
I spent how many years?
What kind of people do I have around me?
Do I have excited, motivated, passionate people that are doing stuff that they're really enthusiastic about?
Or do I have people around me that go, oh, five more days to the weekend?
Now it's like, what's the weekend?
I don't know the last day I took off, but I'm thrilled with it.
I mean, like, when you're doing something that you enjoy doing, it's, you know, sometimes forcing yourself to take a day off here or there is a bit more of a challenge than actually working, but...
Yeah.
I mentioned one other thing, too, as well.
Not to diss Mike's planning abilities, but Mike quits his job in February to join Free Domain Radio.
Come April, the head of Free Domain Radio greets him with the glorious phrase, I have cancer.
I could be dead in three months.
Yeah.
Thanks for joining the ship!
Last ride on the Titanic!
So yeah, Mike's had a pretty exciting time of it.
And Mike has complete job security because he didn't run screaming back to the hospital and beg and weep and hump the leg of the hiring manager and he had his job back.
And so Mike has a permanent tenure.
Mike had literally set fire to me.
And I'd be like, well, we'll maybe mark that down in your performance review, but...
You don't even go to a rubber room!
Here's another leg.
And Stoyan wanted to mention something.
Now, for those who don't know Stoyan's background, Stoyan could actually be making some real money.
I mean, he's a really well-educated, incredibly smart guy.
And Stoyan, what the hell's wrong with you?
What the hell are you doing here?
It would help if I add him to the call if he wants to talk.
It's because Steph is so sexy that I couldn't say no!
Wait, that was like the worst Stoyan impersonation.
I'm adding him in.
I'm adding in the Stoyan.
Is this the first time we're going to hear from Stoyan's voice on the podcast?
Yes, now he basically has one of those smoking...
Hello!
Hello, my name is Stoyan.
Don't smoke.
Whatever you do.
Well, hello Stoyan.
Hello.
I just wanted to share my experience because it was a difficult decision for me and ultimately it came down to what would people a thousand years from now want me to do?
Would they want me to go for the comfort?
And comfort is nice.
Don't get me wrong, I've been comfortable in the past and generally speaking it doesn't last.
Maybe five to six years, sometimes more.
But when you look back, as Mike said, When you look back from your dead-bed, are you going to regret it?
Are you going to regret being comfortable instead of doing something meaningful?
And that pushed me and pretty much I quit that job that if I'm really good and I was good, I could make six figures easily.
If I wanted to take more responsibility, I would make even more and I'd be able to travel around the world, work with very creative people.
But I decided, well, do I want to do that in the long run?
How would that benefit?
How would that benefit the world?
And for me, the decision then became pretty easy.
So...
Well, and sorry, just to be fair and clarify, so Stoyan is still making six figures.
They're just on the other side of the decimal point.
So, just so everyone...
Also, it was tough for him to get a job with Mike and I showing up making chicken noises every time during the interview.
But Stoyan, I know you wanted to work for FDR, but you wanted to work for a couple of years and all that.
I know we've talked about that, but I don't know if you could share it.
What accelerated that for you?
Yeah, I initially wanted to spend at least five years in the workforce and save up some money, find a place, stable job.
And what pushed me was just seeing how difficult it was for Mike and how much work there is to do and really how necessary it is to do the work, seeing how the direction in which the world is going.
And those five years, what could happen in those five years?
What could I be doing?
In those five years, and I decided that it wasn't worth it.
It was a bit riskier.
Actually, a lot riskier in some ways, but in the long run, I think it's the best decision I could have made.
Yeah.
Let's put it this way.
In just two months...
Actually, let's limit that even more.
In one month, we did 2.6 million views.
How many of those were...
New people.
People who just had their first exposure to FDR in a crucial time in history.
With the coming collapse of the economy.
And just trading that for some security.
I mean, I can live with that.
I can live with that.
I've got to do it.
I've been on the fence for two years, especially since I've been getting in a lot of trouble with administration for not following the rules, and I'm following what I feel is right,
and I'm spinning my wheels, and I'm not happy, and I don't enjoy the conversations that happen in the staff room, and I I don't know what I'm doing in this building.
I feel like these kids deserve good education, but I'm really not delivering because the system isn't allowing me to deliver the way that I know education can be brought to kids and kids could benefit from Understanding the world.
I want to ask you a question.
How comfortable are you with fear and uncertainty?
He's a musician.
I'm quite comfortable with fear.
I've definitely done my time living in cars.
Fear and uncertainty is a world that I've known quite well.
Do you think you'll be going back to that if you quit your job?
100%.
100% I'd be going back to fear and uncertainty.
But when I was in the fear and uncertainty world as a musician, man alive, I worked my ass off.
You know?
I worked my ass off more than I'm working my ass off now.
Were you feeling more invigorated?
Yeah.
Back then?
Oh yeah.
Yeah, I felt alive.
Every day I felt alive.
I felt alive even though sometimes feeling alive is feeling intense amounts of pain and terror.
Does that mean that you're not feeling alive right now?
In your current job?
In my current career job?
In the public education system, I do not feel alive.
And how long do you think you're going to last before that fire gets extinguished?
The fire is extinguished.
I'm fully aware of that, and I'm trying to fan the flame as hard as I possibly can to get it re-lit, but it's out.
In that world, but the experience that I've gained from this has taught me a huge amount that I feel I can work with.
I have human capital, and I'm not willing to throw that human capital away.
I'm also not willing to go back to the world of being a professional musician.
I want nothing to do with that world.
I enjoy playing music, but that doesn't do anything for me.
It doesn't do anything for the world.
Right.
And there's also something else that initially when I had my conversation with Mike, this came up.
And it was around the fact that I was very keenly aware that if I were to spend five or ten years in the direction in which I was heading, I would become resentful.
And that resentment would poison everything I do.
So, in a way, I also protected myself by not going there.
So do you think you've reached that phase yet?
I have.
Yeah.
Yeah, I definitely have.
I'm...
I'm...
Your voice broke up a little bit.
I'm sorry.
I'm...
No, no.
That's perfectly fine.
I'm curious.
How are you feeling right now?
I'm feeling afraid.
Afraid?
I'm feeling afraid because I know that there's got to be some sort of action after this conversation and that action is going to put me in a world of uncertainty.
And I want to immediately start planning a safety net, what I'm going to do.
But I don't know if that's the right way to go, and that's where the fear is.
Does that uncertainty seem familiar?
And I'm not talking about your career as a musician way back.
Have you experienced this before?
The uncertainty?
My entire youth.
I've done a lot of therapy work and I've been seeing a therapist for a long while and I've done a lot of work with prior abuses that I went through as a kid.
My ACE scores, I think it was a 6.
Sorry to hear about that.
But at the same time, working through it has definitely been a really beneficial experience.
But that uncertainty is still just boiling under.
I had a mother who was incredibly unstable.
She I was diagnosed bipolar, but just like I heard in some of the other conversations where bipolar has been brought up, it was really just a syndrome of asshole because she was totally able to control it.
Except for when she was around me.
So there was times I'd come home from school and she'd be singing and dancing around the house.
And that was when I was most on edge because you never knew what was going to come.
It was like a left hook out of nowhere.
She could just fly off the handle.
And other times she'd be hidden away in her room for, and I'd be fending for myself.
Right.
So the uncertainties.
I was going to say, do you think you're re-experiencing some of that right now?
Thank you.
Yeah, definitely.
The uncertainty is terrifying.
Where am I going to get my food from?
But it's also tied to resentment, isn't it?
Because that's when your voice started breaking up, when I mentioned resentment.
It's not just uncertainty.
I'm not 100% sure what you mean with resentment.
Just remind him of the resentment that you meant.
Becoming resentful of the work that I'm doing and ultimately becoming resentful of who I will become if I stay there.
There are moments where I resent myself.
If that makes any sense.
I resent myself for making that decision to go to Teachers College.
I resent myself for staying in it for as long as I've stayed in it already to this point.
I resent not taking more risks when I had more...
I can't say I had more ability because I could take a risk tomorrow.
I could walk into that office and drop my resignation, slip and walk out, and that would be an insane risk.
Right.
And 10 years from now, if you can imagine yourself, let's say when you're 40, 50, you're a lot older, what advice would you give I've thought about this a lot.
I would go back to that 18-year-old kid that was signing that university slip and signing the bank statements to To borrow that amount of money so that I could go to university.
And I'd shake them and say, a fine arts degree?
Really?
A fine arts degree.
That's what you're going to dig yourself into debt for.
I graduated with a fine arts degree and $60,000 of debt.
And I couldn't be a musician.
I couldn't just go and...
Be on tour because the banks were calling me.
I needed a paycheck.
What was your monthly payout on that?
I was paying like $600 a month minimum out of the get-go and that was me negotiating that down in June.
That's like a mortgage, right?
Like 20, 25 years?
I paid it off in June.
That's why I've been working in the summers, right?
I've been hyper-focused to just get rid of all that debt.
I'm 100% debt free.
So.
I don't own a house.
I don't own anything but a drunk kid in a car.
Chris, it just kind of strikes me.
Being a teacher, you talk about wanting to help that next generation and help people that are at risk.
It almost sounds to some degree like you want to be the person that you said you wanted to be shaked.
Go back in time and be that person that ended up shaking you.
Convince you not to go down the road that you ultimately ended up going down.
Yeah, and maybe the only thing that's holding me in the position is that I can give some of those kids that shake.
You know, and I can, but there's got to be a better way to do it.
This is taking the call in a slightly different direction, but this was the first question I had for you when you and Steph started talking because it's something I try and keep on my mind quite a bit.
When it comes to helping people and helping these kids, giving advice, that kind of thing, where is your credibility derived from?
I don't have credibility when it comes down to it because I haven't really...
Other than trying to be a musician in my early twenties and having some relative success, I don't have the credibility of being able to show those kids, it's like, hey, listen, this is what I'm doing and I'm going to go for it.
They don't see that.
They see me come in every single day and work my butt off with them.
What really struck me when you started talking is I did not experience much happiness in your voice.
And if you're not happy in a position where you're not happy, it's going to be even harder for people to listen to you.
It's like I'm getting advice from someone who's ultimately not happy with where they are, not happy with what they're doing.
That's going to be an immediate disconnect for people.
Yeah, 100%.
100%.
There's I've wondered sometimes where that disconnect was.
When I put that resignation letter in, what am I going to do?
How am I going to move forward?
It's what Slime was saying, and sorry if you want to jump back in, but it's You're looking at it from the inside out, right?
You're looking at it from, what can I do?
What do I want to do?
Like a push.
Like a push technology.
But if you really want to live a virtuous life, and I'm not saying you don't, I'm not saying you're not even living a virtuous life right now, but if you want to go to, like, the next level of virtue, it becomes, what does the world need?
What is best for the world?
Like, I mean, if you're a doctor in a time of plague, you don't wake up and say, well, what do I feel like doing today?
Because the plague pulls you, right, to heal it, right?
Yeah, yeah.
You make your decision based upon the world's needs, not on your merely personal preferences, if that makes any sense.
And I'm not saying that you self-sacrifice and whatever and never sleep.
But what I'm saying is that you're still looking at it from the inside out.
Like, what do I do with my life?
I think that the most valuable thing is to look at what does the world most need from me.
You were talking about that with the sort of thousand years and the world thing.
I wonder if you could go into that a bit more.
Can't hear you, Stoyan.
Are you muted?
You should be able to hear me now.
Yep, you're back.
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, I usually make...
It is an intellectual exercise, admittedly, but it's very helpful.
And for the past couple of years, I've been taking this approach whenever I have to make a difficult decision.
And what is really helpful is...
In the past, I've had to make very difficult decisions.
I also had to deal with a lot of uncertainty in my childhood, so I wasn't comfortable with it.
But whenever you put the perspective outside of yourself, there's a wonderful shift in which what becomes uncomfortable doesn't really matter that much.
What is difficult is just an obstacle.
What is, you're afraid of something?
Well, so what?
Many people have been afraid in the past that never stopped them.
And whenever you're looking, as Steph was saying, from the inside out, you're always looking at comfort and pleasure.
And if you want to do, I mean, you can always take that approach, but if you want to do great things in your life and you're an intelligent guy, And you have a lot to offer.
So if you want to offer something to the world that is much bigger than what any musician in your environment has done, anyone probably in your city or state has done, you have to take a different perspective.
You have to look from the outside.
And that means just assess it.
What does the world need?
And because the world, admittedly, is pretty sickening as it is now, you just look into the future.
You just look into the future.
What do you wish the world had told your parents?
What do you wish the world had told your parents' parents?
What do you wish priests had been talking about in the 19th century?
Well, peaceful parenting.
Isn't that what we all wish people had been talking about?
20 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 1,000 years ago?
Fuck Socrates with his what is justice.
How about, you bald, greasy bastard, how about you talk about peaceful parenting?
That way at least the hemlock is well-deserved and actually changes things.
Don't you wish that people had been talking about peaceful parenting when the Libertarian Party was founded, when they were talking about classical liberalism?
Wealth of nations?
No!
Wealth of parenting?
Don't you wish that the Republic had been, Plato's Republic had been about peaceful parenting?
And if that conversation had occurred in the past, then all of our lives would be very different now.
And at some point, we have to swallow that jagged little pill of peaceful parenting.
At some point, people have just got to fucking talk about it and talk about it and talk about it until people get it.
Until it gets through their short-circuiting, traumatized, brain-spiking heads of defenses and they get it.
And if you're a teacher and you had to talk to kids, you know how to talk to young people.
You've got that experience.
And you get the issues.
Well, we wish people had talked about it 50 years ago.
So kids in the future, if they could talk now to us, they'd say, do it!
Do it!
Do it!
So I don't get beaten.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, that's...
When you talk about the anarchist state and the ideal...
I get all of that.
And when I hear people trying to work out how that is going to happen, the only answer and the only reason I really listen to your show is to get that peaceful parenting message.
It lights me up.
It does light me up.
Because Everything else, just the gateway.
It really is, but the peaceful parenting piece...
I don't see peaceful parenting.
In the school, when it comes to a percentage, I have a classroom of 30, and I can immediately pick out the students who have got the peaceful parenting piece done at home.
And we're talking one to two children out of a classroom of 30.
And that disgusts me.
Good!
Good, good, good.
So you've got emotional energy to drive you.
Disgust and hatred of evil is a fine jet ski for virtue.
Yeah.
Now I just have to learn how to fill that need with the skills that I have.
Yes, and look, just to be very clear, you don't have to leave the school.
You're obviously doing some good in the school.
I don't want to brush that over and brush that aside.
This is coming up for you now because your debt's paid off, right?
Yeah, 100%.
Right.
Right.
So, I mean, good job.
Great job.
But you can do good in the school.
And you have the security.
And so I'm not, you know, you've just had the stress of paying off your undergrad.
60 grand is a hell of a lot of money.
You just finished that.
You know, it may not be the right time to launch into another stressful enterprise when you just finished off paying off your student loan, right?
Yeah.
It would be nice to have a year.
So, you know, that's fine.
Totally take some time.
This is not a moral issue.
Again, I want to be really clear on that.
You can take the money from the state for the kids.
It's not a moral issue.
I've been consistent from day one on this.
When I was in business, I had government contracts.
Now, I was a menarchist, and I tried to steer us towards stuff I thought the government would still do, like defense and so on.
But nonetheless, it's not a moral issue.
It's not like you're a bad person if you stay, and you're a good person if you go.
I really want to be clear, at least from my standpoint.
I wouldn't have been a bad person if I continued my business career.
Wouldn't it be, you know?
But...
So it's not a moral issue.
I really want to be clear on that.
Because if it becomes a moral issue, you're screwed, right?
Yeah, completely.
Because morals just become like, they become physics, right?
If you're really interested in virtue, once something becomes a moral issue, there's no choice anymore, right?
It's like, you got it.
It's a moral issue.
You got it, right?
Yeah.
And so I really want to be clear, it's not a moral issue, because then there's no choice really involved.
You just have to do the right thing if it's a moral issue, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I think the important thing is to recognize that it's been stressful for you.
You had a stressful childhood.
You got an arts degree, which is probably pretty relaxing.
Musician, paying off your debt, dealing with bureaucracy, dealing with traumatized kids.
So it may not be the right time in terms of just, you know, your personal resources, level of energy, and so on.
But when it comes to how do I do it, you know, that old quote, give a man...
Why he can bear almost any how.
In other words, if you have a purpose, the methodology of how you get there, you just do it, right?
So, I mean, if your goal is to teach kids to think critically, then find innovative ways online or wherever to teach kids how to think critically.
And, you know, obviously, I don't need to tell you at all how to do that or whatever.
But that issue of what do I wish had been said to my parents...
Just say that kind of stuff.
I think that's pretty important.
And that's something that certainly guides me.
And Stoyan and Mike, I really wanted to make sure, get your thoughts on this too.
Do you have something like that that guides you with this stuff that this fine listener might benefit from?
For me, it is the image of the future that we're trying to build.
That is it.
Definitely ditto on my end.
Doing this for the future, not really doing it for the now.
Yeah.
You know what?
I've really gained a crap ton from this conversation.
To be completely honest, I'm probably going to go into work a little exhausted tomorrow because I think I'm going to be up for a while rolling these over.
And I really appreciate you taking all the time and all the work that you guys do with this FDR radio because you really do make a difference and you've made a difference in my life and the way that I approach children in my world.
And you can continue to do that, of course, in the school environment and do good stuff.
Absolutely.
Remember outside and in.
Yeah, definitely.
Now, can I give you a quote?
Yeah, please.
That may help.
This is the true joy in life.
The being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.
The being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap.
The being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
Now, please understand, I'm not calling you a little clod of ailments and grievances.
I think that's what we become in the long run, though, if we end up living from the inside out.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I'm going to read that again because it is important.
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap, the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the That's George Bernard Shaw.
And that is a sentence dedicated at the beginning of Man and Superman, one of his plays, a comedy and a philosophy.
Really?
I'm going to read that.
and leave only the barest husk to be thrown in the grave.
Yeah.
Just be used up completely, Be emptied of words.
Be emptied of power.
Be emptied of dedication.
Be emptied of challenge.
Be emptied of courage.
Spend it all.
Because the only thing the graves get...
Let only your skeleton be what the worms get.
Nothing else.
Have everything else spent to the last penny.
And let that last penny of spending be that which kills you.
Because you have nothing left to give.
And that, I think, is a satisfying life.
You know, there's this, I'm thinking of doing a response to some theologian, Craig, who talks about, without God, there is no meaning to life.
And it seems to me that this question of meaning is like this weird curse that you get if you don't believe in God.
I'm going to curse you with a lack of meaning.
It's like, well, that's just another kind of original sin-made-up bullshit that's supposed to make me give you money.
And allegiance and my children and their foreskins and blah blah blah, right?
But if you spend yourself deeply in the pursuit of virtue and if you have courage in the face of evil and if you encourage the virtuous and stymie the malevolent you will never lack for meaning because the very question itself is selfish.
I want meaning for my life.
But if you are doing great good for the world, the question of whether your life has meaning never comes up.
I mean, if you see a man drowning in the middle of a lake and you dive in and swim like a goddamn jet ski bound octopus to save him, I don't think at any point in that mad swim to save a life do you ever stop, tread water and say, what's the meaning of my life?
Yeah, right?
Yeah.
Nobody stops at that point.
It's like in the middle of an orgasm.
You don't say, but does this orgasm have meaning?
No, you're going, whee!
Yeah.
Yeah, that's it.
Meaning is what comes to fill you...
Sorry, a lack of meaning is what comes to fill you up when selfishness becomes unsustainable.
And again, I'm not calling you...
You are a dedicated, smart...
I'm a wise, intelligent, compassionate guy.
I could reach deep into my bag of adjectives for an hour and still come up with more.
And this is why I want to spend time in this company.
You are a great guy.
And you've done more good in your teaching than most people will do in their lifetimes.
I really appreciate that.
But it's because of that potential, right?
It's because of your potential to really care and do good.
And look, The last thing I'll say is that when you've been in combat, the thing you want to do most is avoid combat, right?
It sucks.
It's loud.
It's noisy.
It's smelly.
You could lose arms, right?
It's no good.
But unfortunately, when war comes, you're just the best at it.
You're just the best at it.
You're the most experienced.
I'd love to live in a world where I had a shitty childhood, but the world is a great place so I can just leave all that stuff behind and don't have to go back to war, right?
That's right.
But the reality is there is a war.
The war is everywhere.
And like it or not, I'm really well trained for it.
It's not like it's yay.
It's like, huh, I'm the guy.
And you're the guy.
And Mike's the guy.
And Stoyan's the guy.
And listeners are the guy.
And the women.
We're just...
Really well trained at it.
My mother's madness was like a black and decker drill being permanently jammed forcefully towards and into my forehead.
And I spent 15 goddamn years fighting that drill back from destroying my brain.
So when a snake strikes at me, I don't even really think about it.
I just catch it, twist its neck, and throw it aside.
Now, it's not like I want to go out and hunt snakes.
I had 15 years of those kinds of reflexes.
But it's 15 years of training, and the world is full of snakes.
And the snakes aren't people, just irrationalities.
I have sharpened my sword against the whetstone of family madness, lo these many years, intense combat, endless training, and victory.
And so if you are an expert swordsman, it is with regret you pull your blade.
But when the war comes, if you leave, everybody else gets cut down.
Because you're the only one who can fight that way.
That's why I fight like hell, man.
Every day.
Because of all the experience.
Yeah.
So, with a terrible childhood, horrible though it sounds, but with a terrible childhood...
That you have survived and flourished from, as you have, comes a deep knowledge of combating evil.
And who else is going to win if not we battle-hardened warriors?
We don't want the fight.
We'd love to never put on the uniform again.
But the fight is here.
Yeah.
Well...
Shit.
I'm going to just...
Keep brandishing my sword then.
Well, I hope you keep us posted on how it's going.
Mike, is there stuff that you wanted to add in?
One thing I will say is I want to reiterate Steph's caution about if you don't have the emotional bandwidth...
To make such a giant shift right now, please don't feel like you have to in so much shape or form.
Don't be throwing around the have-tos.
I know with me, there's been various points in my life where it's like, I just did something really hard and I need to kind of take it easy for a little while.
Relax a bit, not stress myself out with something.
I think that's really, really important.
It's not overloading your plate.
Because there's been various points in my life where I've done that and that doesn't turn out too well.
So if you're going to make a big change, if that's something that you want to do, make sure you set yourself up and you're in the best position to succeed and have things turn out the way that you want them to.
And that is going to involve you being as relaxed as possible, as not stressed as possible.
If that means having extra cash in the bank account to tide you over for a bit, all that stuff's important and it definitely needs to be considered.
So I just want to urge that caution that you don't overload yourself and set yourself up In a disadvantageous situation for something that's pretty important.
Yeah, no, I see that.
But if you're going to rest, then really rest, which means don't get into fights at school, right?
Like if you're going to rest, let's say you want to gather yourself and maybe you want to make a break or not, but if you're going to rest, you have to really rest, which means reduce friction, reduce conflict, and just really let yourself have the chance to relax and unwind before you do whatever's next.
That would, you know...
Sorry, Stoyan, did you want to jump in?
One last thing I wanted to add is really embrace that inner warrior.
because he got you through a war when you were young and he's still in there don't let go of him that is all I wanted to add That's amazing advice and I'm really looking forward to listening back to this to digest it further because it's going to take some time and I really,
really do appreciate all three of you taking as much time and the listeners taking all this time to have this chat too.
So thank you.
Yeah, I appreciate that and I think as everyone knows I get to live with the best people in the world and I get to work with the best people in the world so it's a real honor and a privilege and Remember, it's your donations that make all of this possible.
So, FDRURL.com slash donate.
To help out the show, there is literally no limit to the amount that we can grow.
There is nothing that we cannot get done in this world.
We're only bounded by your dedication, devotion, and generosity.
You know, we're making our sacrifices here at Freedom Aid Radio.
You know, Mike gave up significant income of two months off a year, and job security and benefits, and Stoyan gave up six figures, and...
I don't know.
What do I do?
Sometimes...
No, that's not it.
We'll do another show on that.
But we're all making our sacrifices here.
And again...
When I talk about supporting the show, supporting this conversation, supporting the spread of philosophy, I'm not talking about money.
It helps.
Don't get me wrong.
It's an important part of what we do.
But sharing the show, giving people the books.
They're all free.
Just go and re-cut the show up.
People always write to us and they say, oh, you should cut this part out of the show.
You know, and set it to animation.
It's like, then do it!
Do it!
Slice and dice us up like crazy.
Just tell us where it is so we can publish it back on our own channel and get you some eyeballs.
You know, rework the materials.
Fantastic.
Try not to put in listener-identifiable information in a doxing fashion and we won't have any problems.
But just do the things.
You want to set this crap to a beat and put dancing penguins in?
Do it.
Do what is in you creatively.
If you don't have money and you've got time and you've got the creative juice, do that stuff.
It doesn't even have to be the show.
Whatever you're passionate about, get behind that shit and push it.
You know, Mormonism went from One crazy guy to quite a few crazy guys all ordering magic underpants over the internet.
That's just because they got behind those ideas and pushed them.
Christians broke with their Jewish parents, and if you've ever tried to break with a Jewish mother, you know it's not a small thing to follow this crazy bearded blonde, not really blonde, probably more...
Black guy into the desert.
They faced down lions, got their legs eaten off and shit like that.
Nobody's saying you've got to go into the Colosseum with a man-eating lion to spread philosophy, but get behind what you care about and push that shit into the world, whether it's giving us money, whether it's taking time to spread the word, whether it's having conversations with people, whether it's sharing books, whether it's you name it.
Get behind this stuff.
It does not move without you.
There's only three of us here.
We can't do it all.
It needs you to push it.
So FDRURL.com slash donate.
I guarantee you, we've been growing like crazy.
There is no ceiling to the need the world has for philosophy.
There is no possible way, no matter how big we grow, we can make enough.
Blue pills to break the matrix of mankind in our lifetimes.
But we can get a hell of a long way there.
And how far we go is entirely up to you and your generosity.
