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Oct. 6, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:03:31

2814 Should Freedomain Radio be funded by the State? - Saturday Call In Show October 4th, 2014

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	Hi everybody!
	It's me, and you, and everybody else in the known universe over time.
	Hopefully this show continues to grow in size, power, and girdle size.
	So, working on the truth about Ayn Rand.
	It's a three-part series.
	Part the first, her personal history.
	Part the second, her philosophy.
	Part the third, her common objections.
	And should those prove to be...
	Enjoyable and engaging for people, there will be a part of the fourth, which is my criticisms of her, which are relatively minor, but not unimportant, I think.
	And parts five and six may be a review of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
	So, I'm really looking forward to it.
	It's fantastic.
	It's a great set of presentations, and I'm really excited to be working on them.
	Honestly, it's a real privilege.
	I mean, the woman was a stone genius, and Literary, philosophical, and so it's a real privilege to work on material involving her, and I've got some really, I think, very useful and helpful things to say about her.
	Here's a tiny preview.
	People start dissing Ayn Rand to you.
	You can say, wait, is it Ayn Rand that you have a problem with, or Aristotle?
	And they'll say, what?
	And you say, well, the vast majority of Ayn Rand's thinking is based on Aristotle.
	And she herself acknowledged that, and she named the three parts of her magnum opus after the three laws of logic developed by Aristotle.
	So where is, like, is it, like, if you hate Ayn Rand as a whole, then you must hate Aristotle in the majority.
	So let's put Ayn Rand aside.
	Tell me what you don't like about Aristotle.
	See, if you say Ayn Rand was a hack and a terrible writer and she's a philosopher for 12-year-olds, I guess in certain circles that makes you sound intelligent.
	However, if you say Aristotle was a hack and a terrible writer and is a philosopher for 12-year-olds, then you sound like an idiot.
	Yet, when people dis Ayn Rand, it's a proxy for attacking Aristotelianism, which has been a particular strategy of power mongers for about 2,500 years.
	So, you can ask people, is it the Aristotelian part of her philosophy, which is the most of it, or is it something else?
	Say, oh, well, she was really into self-love and selfishness.
	It's like, well, actually, she got that mostly from Aristotle.
	So, is it Aristotle's Are there arguments against altruism that you have an issue with, or is it Ayn Rand's?
	And quickly, they'll say they have no Idea what they're talking about.
	So remember, Ayn Rand, people use her as a proxy to attack Aristotelianism, even if they don't have any clue what they're doing.
	And it's very quick to find out whether anybody has any idea what they're talking about.
	Ayn Rand did not emerge out of nowhere.
	She is the last step or the latest step in a long series of philosophers from Aristotle onwards who have worked on trying to justify the cognitive behavior efficacy of man's mind.
	She's not out of nowhere.
	She is part of a long philosophical tradition in the West that rejects Platonic superstition and really focuses on empiricism and science and our capacity of the mind to...
	Tease out universal truths from the chaos of sensory data.
	So it is just pitiful to see people attack Ayn Rand like she's just some isolated phenomenon that has no links and no history.
	And I can guarantee you that the education that Ayn Rand received as a teenager and into her young 20s was vastly superior to what most people get with a PhD these days.
	So anyway, we'll get more into that as I start recording tomorrow.
	And Monday, Tuesday, but I am thrilled to be doing it.
	It's long overdue, but of course it's taken quite a bit of time.
	I approach, certainly thinkers I respect, I approach with a good deal of reverence, which needs to be undone for me to do a proper job.
	So let's move on.
	Let's get straight to the callers and looking forward to hearing what you have to say.
	Alright, up for us today is Julian.
	Julian wrote in and said, What can we as individuals do to make governments answer mass protests in a timely and efficient manner?
	In what ways can citizens ensure that their voices are heard and answered to accordingly?
	Have you listened to this show before, just out of curiosity?
	Yeah, I've been listening to a lot of it in the last few months.
	So, um...
	What do you think my answer is going to be?
	Well, I've thought about that too.
	It would either be a variation of electing a different government or...
	I'm not sure.
	I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I would think that could be one answer.
	Picture something like this.
	So, Ms.
	Emma Watson, what can we do to further the aims of patriarchy in the world?
	To further the aims of patriarchy?
	Yeah, how can we get men back on top?
	How can we get women back in the kitchen, barefoot, pregnant, you know, with a beer between their cleavage, ready to bend over and feed men the way that nature intended?
	She'd probably be a little like, do you listen to?
	Right?
	Because if you're asking me, how do we get governments to respond to the moral will of the people?
	I can tell you what I think, and then you can tell me What you think of what I think?
	Well, I guess I just think about this because to me that's the biggest failure of democracy is when masses of people express a problem in society that's not being addressed and it gets completely ignored or shoved aside or they find a way to kind of...
	So you're saying that the biggest problem in democracy is that governments ignore their people sometimes?
	Not that it's the biggest problem, but I see it as a huge demonstration, a very obvious demonstration of the problem.
	Okay, so if it's a manifestation of a larger or deeper problem, what is that larger or deeper problem?
	That we have very, very shitty governments.
	Okay, so your explication of the big problem is that governments are shitty.
	I mean, we could go on and on about No, the interest of government lies in money and not in the interest of the people.
	Why does only the interest of government lie in money?
	I mean, people who buy lottery tickets, who are entrepreneurs, who save their money, who invest, they're all interested in getting more money.
	So why is it money that is the defining characteristics with government when it seems that's a pretty common human phenomenon?
	That's just the way our society has grown to work as you go into the history of the world.
	No, no, no.
	Listen, you've got to listen to what I'm saying.
	If we're going to have a conversation, you have to listen to what I'm saying.
	You don't have to agree with me, but you've got to at least acknowledge that I've actually opened my mouth and said stuff, okay?
	So, you're saying that the government is too interested in money, and I'm asking you, isn't everyone interested in money?
	Why is it solely the government that that's produced such a problem with?
	Well, I'm not interested in money past the point of ignoring large social issues, and That's what worries me.
	Oh, so when I say that most people are interested in money, you say, I'm not interested in money.
	You got me cornered there.
	So you're kind of avoiding the issues, right?
	I guess what my question is, do you think there are any solutions?
	The problem is not money!
	The problem with governments is not that there's a medium of exchange in the world designed to facilitate trade in unequal items.
	That is not the problem with governments.
	It's like saying, well, the problem with concentration camps is the paycheck of the guards.
	No!
	The problem with government is it has a monopoly on the initiation of violence, right?
	What do you mean by that?
	What part is unclear?
	Do you mean to say that they are the ultimate force, that no one can physically combat them?
	Governments are a social agency with a monopoly on the initiation of violence in a geographical area, right?
	Right.
	The problem is not money.
	The problem...
	It's like saying, well, the problem with a hitman is he takes Amex.
	Right?
	So if we get rid of Amex...
	There'll be no murder, right?
	No.
	The problem with Hitman is he's willing to kill people.
	Right.
	So the problem with governments is that they have this monopoly on violence.
	Now people want to buy that monopoly on violence because most people are pretty squeamish about pushing a shiv into someone on their own.
	Most people don't want to take the personal risk of going to mug someone, so they want the government instead to pass a law.
	Most people, most corporations, all corporations or no corporations, Could possibly put together the money to intercept all shipments in all ports coming into a given geographical area.
	So what do they do?
	They ask the government, which has all this stuff set up, right, with the customs and the Coast Guard and this and that and the other, to pass a law saying, don't let cheaper goods into the country so I can keep my price up.
	People talk about collusion between companies.
	Like, no, no, no.
	They only...
	They all try and they all fail.
	The only way it ever works is if you get the government to do stuff.
	The government can block your competition.
	The government can pass laws and people won't break that.
	So the issue is not money.
	I'm not trying to sound mad at you, but it really frustrates me that money, which is a noble historical medium to facilitate trade, somehow gets blamed for the giant asshole howitzer gun farts of government power.
	Money is just what people use to exchange.
	So if you want an egg, you don't have to carry around six million things until you find someone who wants one of those six million things and happens to have an egg that you want.
	It's just a medium of exchange.
	Governments are not corrupted by money.
	It's like saying hitmen are corrupted by money.
	No.
	Hitmen are already willing to use violence.
	And people bribe the government so they don't have to take the personal risk of using violence themselves.
	Because violence is very much like opening Pandora's box, hoping to find the genie of hope and profit at the bottom.
	People don't like to use violence themselves, which is why beer companies don't hire armies to blow up other beer companies' factories.
	I mean, there's probably other reasons to do with empathy and whatever, right?
	But nobody wants to uncork that aggression of violence.
	So in Canada here, the government runs the liquor, right?
	And you can't buy most beers or wines or whatever because it's whatever the government wants to let in, right?
	The beer companies here, they love that because they get to keep out all the microbreweries and all the small people who might send stuff in that would undercut their prices.
	So those beer companies don't want to hire their own guys to go and take access to the kegs of microbreweries and so on, because that's, you know, microbreweries might fight back, right?
	It ain't so much fun when the rabbit's got a gun.
	And so...
	They want the state around so that they can take their superior cash reserves and use it to influence the government so that the government can use the force.
	Because nobody can fight back against the government.
	It's like having some 9-foot tall hair on the back of his finger's brother in grade 7.
	You ain't gonna get bullied a lot because nobody can fight back such a human monster, right?
	And so the issue is not money.
	The issue is that the government has a monopoly on violence.
	And because of that monopoly on violence, everybody wants to bribe the government to use that violence so that the violence doesn't bounce back to them, right?
	Single moms want to use the government to get all these kinds of benefits because robbing stores is risky, right?
	They might have a store tiger in the back.
	There may be jet flames.
	There might be trap doors, right?
	One of these sunglasses displays might be a transformer.
	You never know.
	So it's kind of risky to go and steal stuff.
	But if you can get the government to pass a law, the money just comes to you risk-free.
	As I've said about the government for years, the government, it's free evil, subsidized evil.
	And so people want free health care.
	But they don't like pulling a Denzel Washington and taking doctors hostage because that can go badly.
	So they want the government to fund and pass laws and go into debt and borrow and print.
	That way, it has all of the appearance of a civilized interaction.
	But the government is...
	To theft, as roofing is to rape, it's still the same goddamn thing.
	It's just not quite as violent because the victim is incapacitated.
	So that's my, you know, it's not about money and it's the basic capacity.
	You have an agency which has a monopoly on the use of force.
	And if you have that in society, attempting to control that, It's like standing in front of five people sneezing Ebola into your face while blowing back with a tiny little electric fan.
	You can't manage that once you have that monopoly of violence in society.
	You can't do anything about it.
	The events are going to roll forward the way that the events are going to roll forward based upon the logic of having this giant monopoly of violence in society.
	It's not going to go away.
	It's not going to get smaller.
	Everyone's going to try and use it for their own advantage.
	And of course, if the government was receptive...
	To the opinions of the people, they probably wouldn't spend 12 years propagandizing the living shit out of the few remaining brain cells in the first place.
	Like, if I'm interested in your opinion, like I say, oh, Julian, I'm really, really interested in your opinion, I don't think what I do is lock you up for 12 years in my basement, keep you awake, and force you to listen to every single one of my podcasts while injecting you with Novocaine and stimulants, right?
	Because that wouldn't be interesting.
	I wouldn't then be interested in your opinions.
	I'd be interested in brainwashing you into my opinions.
	But this is kind of an analogous to public school, right?
	I mean, it's true they're not locked up day and night, but the reality is it's impressionable young minds with no recourse to better information who are punished, not just in the present, but in the future for nonconformity with status bullshit.
	And so, if the government was interested in hearing your opinions, it wouldn't be brainwashing you for 12 years in the first place.
	They're not interested in your opinions.
	The only reason that people are allowed in the West to congregate and to protest It's because if you take those rights away, then the Western livestock, which is kind of the most productive livestock in the world, the Western livestock gets kind of depressed and stops producing milk, stops producing as much tax money.
	So yeah, they'll let some protests happen and all that because that gives people the illusion of freedom, which means that they'll keep working mostly for the state.
	So saying, well, why doesn't the government just listen?
	To the people is like saying, well, why doesn't the zookeeper just turn the animals loose?
	Well, because that's the source of his income.
	But don't you think, hypothetically, we could have a government, we could somehow elect the government, they would either listen to people, and or have protests that are so effective.
	Oh, my God.
	Oh, my God.
	Listen.
	Stop, stop, stop.
	Okay.
	Sorry, man.
	This is Logic 101.
	If I tell you that two and two make four, returning with the word hypothetically is not an argument.
	But hypothetically, couldn't it equal a unicorn?
	It's like, no, no, no.
	Your job is to rebut what I've said.
	You can't just repeat your opinions as if I haven't said anything.
	Put the word hypothetically in front of there and think we're having a debate.
	So you can tell me how the government is not a monopoly of violence.
	You can tell me that people really like doing violence in person rather than through a proxy.
	You can tell me how the economic logic of a monopoly of violence doesn't result in crony capitalism.
	You can tell me that there's no brainwashing in public school.
	You can rebut these arguments with reason and evidence, but I can't let you get away with returning with hypothetically, right?
	I've just told you why this stuff can't all happen, at least in my opinion.
	Then returning to me with hypothetically...
	It doesn't actually add anything.
	All you get to do is repeat what you said at the beginning as if I hadn't said anything, but you've inserted the word hypothetically, which has no value whatsoever.
	Realistically, can there be a foreign protest so effective that it would either kill all the protesters?
	No, no, Julian!
	Replacing the word hypothetically with realistically does not solve the problem that you're not addressing any of my arguments.
	I guess...
	Do you accept...
	What I'm saying is that I do believe what I... We'll do it step by step because you're not used to this, right?
	I'm sorry that you're not used to this.
	Did you go to government schools?
	I grew up in Canada, so I don't know if that term applies in Montreal.
	You don't know.
	I mean, they were public schools.
	Let me ask you this.
	Did your parents get a bill in the mail for the school?
	No, no.
	It was a government school.
	I don't believe I was brainwashed as much as...
	So you went to a government school and you have no idea that you have no idea how to have a debate, right?
	Of course I'm not out of a debate, but I'm just curious to know your opinion on these issues.
	I haven't really had a chance to...
	To rebuke what you said.
	I have to go back.
	And I'm sorry to keep interrupting you, but this is instructive, right, for people as a whole.
	So you said, how could the government listen to the people and change for the better, right?
	Yeah.
	And I gave you six or seven arguments with some evidence as to why that can't happen.
	Now, do you know what your job is if you disagree with me?
	Which you're perfectly welcome to do, and I may be completely wrong.
	I don't at all disagree with you, but what I do believe is that there is, right now, a way for if everyone protests, or even some people protest, for it to be a very effective way to get a point across and for government to basically be resorted to either kill everyone or to respond to the demands.
	Wait, sorry, are you saying that if everyone protests?
	If everyone organized a monstrous protest, then it could cause enough repercussions in society for something to have to happen.
	So you're putting forward a proposition.
	We'll forget that you've completely ignored everything I've said and we'll just go to your proposition.
	So what percentage of the population do you think would have to protest in order for there to be significant change?
	I don't think it comes to a certain percentage as opposed to...
	Roughly.
	It's got to be more than one person and it's got to be less than everyone because some people are in hospital beds or comas.
	So give me just some rough idea.
	You obviously put some thought into this.
	So are we talking 20% or 30% or 10% or what?
	I think it would have to be over 50% because that would make more sense in a voting perspective.
	Okay, okay.
	Got it.
	So you want over 50% of people to protest in some significant way, right?
	Yeah.
	Protesting doesn't mean take a day off from internet porn.
	Actually, that would be a protest at the SEC in America.
	So, you want 50% of people to protest in some significant way.
	Would you like the protest to have something to do with reducing government power or spending?
	If we're talking about this happening tomorrow, I think there are issues that would have to be dealt with before that.
	Okay, so what's the issue that you would like to see dealt with first, if you could snap your fingers and have 51% of people protest?
	In my town or in another place?
	I don't know.
	What have you thought about?
	I mean, another place could be anywhere else in the world.
	51% of the entire Canadian population marching at your say-so.
	What signs do you want them to hold?
	What do you want them to be chanting?
	Two, four, six, eight.
	Blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue.
	Right now, it would be not engaging in war with ISIS in any form for Canada.
	So not engaging in war with ISIS would be something that you would want to have happen, right?
	I think that that would be a step in the right direction in terms of not repeating the same steps over and over again of starting wars in the Middle East and at least kind of looking back, taking a step back and looking at the situation.
	And I'm fearful that that's not going to happen within the next few weeks or months.
	Right, right.
	Okay.
	And because, of course, you know that the biggest anti-war protests in history were against the Iraq invasion of 2003, right?
	Tens of millions of people all throughout the world all turned out to mass.
	It was by far, by far the biggest anti-war protest that I've ever heard about, which occurred in 2003, right?
	And there was no, I don't believe that there was any particular halt to that.
	Even in America, there was huge protests against it.
	I mean, I think we can both agree America would not be stopped by that.
	Maybe some other countries were influenced into not engaging in that.
	But I mean, that's why I'm asking this question in the first place is because I agree that they've been ineffective.
	But I think that it's a beautiful form of people showing what they want.
	So why would you work to create something like this in Canada?
	I'm a bit dismayed.
	I don't know if you remember the protests we had in Montreal for the student hikes in Quebec?
	No.
	Well, around two years ago, this is when we elected the PQ. We had the Liberal Party and they were going to increase...
	Sorry, for people who don't know, Parti Québécois?
	Parti Québécois, yes.
	The separatist party here in Quebec.
	And what we did...
	If I understand it rightly, they want to separate from Canada but not take any of the national debt.
	That's a whole other mess we can get into another time if you want.
	I have a lot of opinions about that.
	But long story short, we protested for almost two thirds of a year, I'd say over 200 days, day and night at certain points.
	And the biggest thing that happened was that we held elections early and elected the other party that we had in power, kind of like a Democrat Republic thing, blue, red.
	And we switched to the other party who then through changing the regulations around taxes, basically hiked it the exact same amount the other party would hike despite campaigning not to hike it.
	And that's why they got in.
	And then recently we voted them out.
	Okay, hang on, hang on, slow down, slow down.
	Okay.
	So you were hoping to get a tax reduced or eliminated and the other party promised to do it and then ended up enacting the tax anyway?
	It was tuition fees going up for university.
	And rather than increasing the fees, they removed a tax return that we can get for going to schools.
	So it indirectly went up by the same amount.
	Right.
	So that didn't work, right?
	Exactly.
	Protesting didn't work, and I feel that people in Montreal don't believe in protesting anymore.
	Why should tuition fees not be increased?
	Personally, I believe more on the model of it being funded by the state.
	No, the state doesn't fund anything.
	The state has no money.
	That's true.
	I'm sorry.
	I mean the taxpayer.
	I'm post-education.
	Hang on.
	I'm post-education.
	So, Julian, why should I be forced to pay for your education?
	Because I think everyone should agree that education is one of the most important things in society.
	What's lacking in countries that are war-torn, like the Middle East, is no education.
	I know there's more problems, but they don't have education.
	Are you saying that I should give you money for your education in self-defense?
	What do you mean in self-defense?
	Well, you're saying that there are these war-torn countries and it's because people don't have enough BAs.
	So I should be forced to give you money.
	Otherwise, what?
	You're going to go start a child army?
	Well, I do think that schooling should move to a more online platform where the costs...
	Sorry, to what platform?
	Online.
	Okay.
	Through online courses, we could make education a lot more accessible and affordable.
	Listen, but do you think...
	Look, I do a lot of research, and it costs me, of course, to have researchers put together information.
	I do a lot of research and have to undergo a lot of education for my show.
	Do you think that taxpayers should be forced to fund...
	What I'm doing.
	I also educate other people.
	I do it for free.
	I don't demand that the government's paying me by download, but do you think that I should receive government money or taxpayer money?
	I do, because I consider what you do to be as good as a lot of the education I've gotten to this point.
	Now I'm in university and I'm getting a great education, but I feel like I would learn more from a 30-minute video from you than a three-hour class in high school or in a CGEP. Okay, I appreciate the compliment, but I'm not so blinded by the compliment that I noticed that you haven't answered the question.
	Are you paying for school, I mean?
	No, no, not me paying.
	Or them funding you, I do think they should fund you.
	Okay, we're not getting anywhere.
	Are you a donor to the show?
	I'm not a donor.
	I've only been listening for about two months.
	And I'm a university student who's not rolling in the cash.
	Do you share the videos with other people?
	I do.
	I've told a lot of people.
	I appreciate that.
	And that's totally fine with me.
	But tell me, so let's go back to you.
	Why should I be forced to pay for your education?
	It would be interesting if we had different functioning societies with different rules, but in the societies that I believe function the best, higher education should be a focus, and we should find ways to make it very accessible, and if that's through taxpayers funding it, then that's a society that I would be alright living in, and paying taxes too, as opposed to one that spends billions on military stuff.
	If you're okay with paying people to study art history, please feel free to do it.
	What course are you taking?
	I'm in journalism.
	You're in journalism.
	Okay.
	So, if you want to be a journalist, why are you taking journalism?
	I actually don't see journalism as the rest of my life.
	I see it as a way to expand my horizons and meet a lot of interesting people.
	So it's a social club.
	So now I have to pay for your social club.
	No, of course not.
	It's for me to meet like-minded people like myself that want to find a way to help the world because that's what I want to spend my life doing.
	And journalism can really only do that so far.
	Hang on.
	So the education is irrelevant.
	You're just there to meet people like yourself, which you could do through fucking Facebook and Meetup, right?
	Oh, no.
	I'm very opposed to social media.
	I cut that out of my life around two years ago, and it's really changed a lot of my perspectives about things.
	Okay, but you could find people who have similar interests to you.
	But that's not the only reason I'm going to school.
	It's an important certification.
	You're there for the contacts, right?
	And sorry, you said something about certification?
	Yeah.
	It's an important certification in the society we live in.
	I would argue, I would agree with you that we could find a better way, but that's the system we have set up.
	Well, but this is a tautology, right?
	So because there is this relatively cheap education, which means I think in Canada you only pay about 10% of the costs of your education.
	The rest of it is borne by me and by other people.
	Yeah.
	And so you need the certification because it's relatively cheap to get.
	You only have to give up time and opportunity costs and lost income, which most people don't really factor into it.
	Most degrees cost north of a quarter million to $300,000 when you put everything together.
	But most people don't really think of it that way.
	They just look at tuition.
	But because it's relatively easy to get, it then becomes a requirement, right?
	So as you're aware, degree inflation has been a huge problem in that a lot of jobs that you used to only need a high school for, you now need some college or some university or some SEGEP for, which is...
	It's because so many people have it and so many people can get it because it's so subsidized.
	Now, if you don't have it, you're looked at as like, well, why didn't you go to college?
	Everybody goes to college, right?
	But that's because it's so relatively cheap, right?
	And so there's a huge amount of lost human capital because people get sucked into a college system Which doesn't have a clear cost-benefit analysis, right?
	And so, I don't think that it's necessary to the case to say, well, I have to go, you have to pay for my education because you need this certification.
	No, you need the certification because education is so subsidized that everyone expects you're going to have it, right?
	That's a course, like, it's circular, right?
	Sorry, I missed that last point.
	That was only one point.
	I just got distracted the last 10 seconds there.
	It's just circular, right?
	Because you're saying, Steph, you've got to fund my education because I need this accreditation.
	And I'm saying, no, you need this accreditation because people are subsidizing the education.
	It's so cheap.
	Like, if it costs you $80,000 to get a journalism degree, would you get it?
	Um...
	That's a good question.
	I don't have that kind of money just lying around at all.
	No, no, but you would borrow it and then you would pay it back from your increased earnings, right?
	Like if it costs you $50,000 to get an MD license, then you'd probably do that if you wanted to be a doctor because you'd be able to pay it back relatively quickly, right?
	Yeah.
	So the question is, would it be worth...
	Spending $80,000 or whatever to get a journalism degree because it would make you so much more economically valuable that you'd be able to pay it off with your increased earnings.
	I mean, I have to say no.
	I actually wasn't very motivated for university for a while.
	I took two years off school before I went back.
	And I made sure that I not only was going to be interested in my program, but just the cost is very affordable here.
	And that's a big contributor to me wanting to go to school.
	I thought I was getting ready to start doing other stuff and trying to pursue my goals and build a resume without school.
	So this is kind of an example.
	You got sucked into school Because it's incredibly cheap, right?
	Yeah.
	No, that's not the only reason.
	I don't want to say yes to that.
	No, but it had a big factor, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So, some jobs are clearly, you know, petroleum engineer or whatever.
	They're going to I think we're good to go.
	But this is what I really want to get across to you, Julian.
	If there's a clear benefit to society, what that means is that it is cost effective for society to invest in higher education.
	If it is cost effective for society to invest in higher education, then the companies who benefit from those degrees or that education will pay for people to take those degrees.
	This is how my father got his PhD in geology.
	He was an expert in finding gold in Africa.
	And so to get his PhD, the company he was involved with that he'd worked summers in, they said, go get your PhD.
	We'll pay for it.
	Everything.
	You just got to work for us for like two years after you graduate, right?
	And then, of course, they were hoping that he'd stay and so on, right?
	So those companies that wanted my dad's expertise, and he was.
	He lectured at universities around the world.
	I saw him lecture in Montreal.
	You know, very accomplished professional in the field.
	So the company that invested in his Ph.D. more than reaped their rewards for that Ph.D., Now, that's how you know the education is worth something to society because people are willing to invest in it.
	Now, how many people are going to pay for, say, gender studies or art history or history, right?
	Not counting becoming a professor or working in the educational field because, again, that's circular.
	I mean, outside of that stuff.
	Do you think you could get a media outlet to pay for your education in return for a commitment for you to work for them afterwards?
	I think so, yeah.
	Great!
	Then you don't need to come to me with a fucking tank.
	You don't need to force me to do it.
	Because what would happen is if we had a system wherein it wasn't a push economy subsidized by people who want to get an education because that's kind of what's expected.
	We want a pull economy where people who need skills pay for people to acquire those skills in return for a work commitment.
	That way, you know for sure that what you're doing has value because people are willing to subsidize you for it at an individual level.
	There's no violence involved.
	And by the way, you don't graduate saying, oh man...
	I've got an undergraduate degree in history or something like that.
	What do I do, right?
	Well, you say, would you like double foam on that, I suppose, right?
	But you know you have a job in the field afterwards guaranteed, right?
	Now that's how we need to fund higher education.
	But I'm always concerned when people say, hey, man, there are these intangible benefits, right?
	And then they give me scare scenarios like, well, we could dissolve into civil war unless people have lots of gender studies degrees.
	It's like, no, no, no.
	I mean, that's just a Pascal's wager.
	You're basically doing a stick-up.
	Give me my tuition or the future gets it.
	That's not what you want to do, right?
	If you say to me, listen, Steph, if I get my journalism degree, I'm going to produce...
	$100,000 worth of value every year.
	Right?
	And my living expenses are only going to be $50,000.
	Let's take taxes out of it for the moment, right?
	So I'm going to, you know, if I don't get a journalism degree, I'm going to make $30,000 a year.
	If I have a journalism degree, I'm going to make $100,000 a year, which means I contribute that much more value.
	Well, I'd say, great.
	Then you don't need to come at me with a gun.
	Just come at me with a contract.
	I'll lend you the money.
	You can pay me back with some interest out of the money you make from your degree.
	People who make a degree, making like a million dollars more over the course of their lifetime, they don't need subsidies.
	Right?
	That's, I don't know, that's like me saying, you know, Brad Pitt would do a lot better with the ladies if only I could introduce them to him.
	It's like, I think Brad Pitt doesn't need any subsidies from me on how to meet women.
	So if you have something that is of real value, people will pay you for it.
	If they don't, then don't give me these scare stories of third world countries and civil wars and therefore this is a stick-up, give me your money, Whitey.
	I mean, that's just not what I want to hear.
	But isn't a student debt problem in the first world, let's say comparing the U.S. to Quebec, isn't that a much bigger problem than having the population subsidize some of the education?
	I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying.
	We have very low student debt in comparison to anywhere in the United States.
	That's a direct result of the subsidization.
	Yes, but oh my god, you've been so well trained by the government.
	I'm so sorry to tell you this.
	I mean, my god, you're just like this chattering 1984 output box.
	Dude, where do you think the money has come from?
	What is the provincial debt of Quebec?
	I used to know this, actually, because I used to talk about separation.
	I'm not sure where it stands now.
	Fucking huge is the phrase you're looking for.
	Like, unbelievably ginormous.
	It's pretty subsidized here in Canada, too.
	It's pretty subsidized here in Ontario, too.
	Per capita, in Ontario, we have a provincial debt five times higher than California, which is known as the basket case.
	Outside of Michigan of America.
	So all that's happened is your student debt has been transferred from you to your children.
	There's no free lunch.
	There's no such thing as a free lunch.
	I guess that makes sense.
	Mike's just looking it up.
	So, Quebec...
	It has an official debt of $270 billion.
	What is it per capita?
	It's the highest in Canada.
	At least it was the last time I checked.
	Well, and of course, most of that money goes directly to the mafia, right?
	You know what Quebec politics is like.
	That's something else I think we should protest.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Good luck with that.
	I mean, it's the mafia.
	I mean, it's two mafias, but one has a flag.
	So, anyway, look, I mean, you could get your subsidies, but the money still has to come from somewhere, right?
	Of course, when governments began subsidizing education, that's when the cost of education went through the roof.
	Because whenever you start subsidizing something, you start school spending huge amounts of money.
	And so then...
	They end up in debt.
	The government ends up in debt.
	Students get a bit of a break, but so what?
	So much money gets hoovered out of the economy that all that happens is your salary is simply far lower than it would have been if you hadn't got this, quote, free tuition.
	So, anyway, listen, I mean, I sort of don't want to keep hammering you on this stuff, and I do apologize for being relentlessly abrasive.
	I I'm sorry.
	No, I mean, I enjoy an argument like this.
	It takes a few minutes to overcome that, but there's not enough quaaludes on the planet to put up my ass to have me stop doing that.
	But keep listening to this stuff.
	I mean, look at the sort of – you can find these videos on YouTube like the scams of higher education.
	Here we go.
	In latest research bulletin on government debt, the Fraser Institute notes that Quebec continues to have the highest debt per person of any Canadian province.
	$22,300, not including our share of the federal debt, which is another $19,000.
	So let's just shave it off, right?
	$40,000 in debt.
	Well, is that bad?
	Well, yeah.
	Because see, there's quite a lot of children in that number.
	This is per person, not per working person, right?
	So there's a lot of kids there, a lot of retired people.
	Also a lot of government workers whose salary is paid out of that and cannot therefore logically be used to pay into it.
	And so if you look at private sector worker in terms of the debt that is owed by Quebec, it is going to be far more than their annual income.
	I would guess $120,000, $130,000, $140,000.
	Well, no, that wouldn't even count unemployed people or underemployed people or people who don't pay taxes because they're in school or people who don't pay taxes because they make too little.
	It's probably closer to the people who are actually paying taxes to about $200,000.
	And so either you're going to be broke or you're going to be making money and be on the hook for $200,000.
	So it's not free at all.
	And to protest and say, I want free stuff is simply saying, I want the debt to be passed on to other people, or myself in the future, or for sure my children.
	That's not really very fair, right?
	You know, like the environment, I'm sure you accept that we don't want to completely screw up the environment and leave our kids standing in a satanic mill Dickensian ash heap of environmental degradation.
	We borrow the environment I mean, they deserve to have an environment delivered to them that is livable and safe and relatively clean and all that kind of stuff, right?
	Well, the same is true of the economy.
	We borrow the economy from our children.
	And the amount of debt that we are piling on our children, the amount of inflation that we're piling on our children is absolutely staggering.
	I mean, we're clear-cutting the planet in the economy of the future.
	We are irradiating the fish.
	We are driving all the birds from the sky with fiat currency arrows of feather-piercing death.
	And it's absolutely horrendous.
	If we had any kind of sense of really what we're doing to the economy of the future.
	And I say this, you know, you're a young guy and I'm a middle-aged guy.
	And what my generation has done to the economic opportunities of your generation is It is damn close to fiscal genocide.
	It is damn close to fiscal genocide.
	We have bribed, we have bought, we have paid ourselves, we have hoarded, we have inflated, we have kept.
	So many of the economic advantages we inherited from the previous generation, we have squandered and eaten.
	We have eaten the seed crop and now expect you to live through a starved spring.
	And I think it's brutal.
	And I think for you to protest and say, well, a little more free stuff will solve my problems, only shows to me how effective government propaganda is.
	Because it's the demand for free stuff that has gotten you in the situation.
	I mean, God, just think about this, Julian.
	Governments have had you for 12 years, night and day.
	Right?
	You get up at 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning, you go to school, you go to school all day, you come home, you got an hour or two of homework at night.
	And the homework is all bullshit.
	There's never been a study that shows any effective positive correlation between homework and any kind of academic efficacy, even in the realm of math, where it's supposed to be the most beneficial.
	Homework is just useless bitty work, busy work.
	It's the moral equivalent of...
	Having kids in the Stalinist Soviet Union study Marxism in their spare time.
	And so the government has had you for 12 years.
	For 12 years.
	Now you have graduated from a government school after 12 years of 8 or 9 hours a day of education and homework.
	And what can you do that has economic value?
	That's a good point.
	Nothing.
	Right?
	If you had to go and get a job with what governments had taught you in 12 years, 12 years, what would you do?
	I mean, it does make sense when you talk about it that way.
	I definitely think that the first few years, you do learn a lot, but then it all kind of does start to slow down.
	Well, and in fact, in most studies in the U.S., the longer a child is exposed to government education, the worse the child does intellectually.
	It is a brain virus.
	They might as well be releasing some brain-eating virus in the form of matronly, generally overweight public sector union bugs into your brain so they can eat stuff up and discourage you and then have universities try to rescue you and generally fail.
	But at the beginning...
	You learn how to learn.
	In other words, you learn your letters, you learn some numbers, you learn to read, and so on, right?
	And that you can do at home.
	Done all that for my daughter.
	You don't need a government professional educator to say, C-A-T. Cat.
	Do you know, one of the things that's not too hard to teach other people is what you already know how to do.
	Look, I can walk.
	I can teach my daughter how to walk.
	Look, I can read.
	I can teach my daughter how to read.
	Look, I can do numbers.
	I can teach my daughter how to do numbers.
	I can teach her how to play tennis.
	I can teach her how to fly fish.
	I can teach her how to ski.
	I can teach her how to do all the things I know how to do.
	So you don't need government schools.
	To teach children letters and numbers.
	I don't know what education looks like in a free society.
	I know it sure as hell isn't going to look like anything like this.
	And by the time you graduate, let's say that you are going to be 17 or 18 when you graduate.
	I think it's 17 now because they got rid of grade 13.
	Didn't give me a goddamn refund for another fucking year I spent in that shit pit.
	But let's say you graduate at 17.
	My God!
	I mean, I have been running my show...
	A little longer than half the time most people spend in government schools.
	Every course you could imagine is available online from the very best teachers from the very Ivy League schools.
	There's that end of the spectrum and then there's me in a car.
	So there's everything out there for you to learn whatever you need, whatever you want.
	So the idea that we need all of this formal structure in order to learn, grades and tests are antithetical to learning.
	Homework is antithetical to learning.
	Summers off are antithetical to learning.
	Hey, you got a really big, important operation, doctor.
	Go on vacation for two months, then do it.
	No.
	No.
	I think practice makes perfect.
	You don't take two months off from anything and expect to be as good at it when you come back.
	Putting children segregated by age is antithetical to learning and it's antithetical to the development of empathy.
	Really?
	I never thought about that.
	The development of empathy has a lot to do with children of different ages being together, which is the Waldorf School approach.
	Because if you get kids, kids of the same age, what are they?
	They're competitive.
	Right?
	Competition is a fine thing.
	Don't get me wrong.
	I want to be the best at what I do.
	But competition does not foster empathy.
	Competition can help foster excellence, and excellence is an important part of life, but it doesn't really foster empathy.
	What fosters empathy is, oh, here, I was helped with this by some older kid.
	Let me help you, younger kid.
	Let me be your mentor.
	Let me help you.
	Let me find out if I know this by trying to explain it to someone.
	Who's two years younger than me, right?
	If I think that I know long division, let me try explaining it to someone who's six.
	That's how I know if I really know it.
	So then don't you think we should be protesting for schools that are like that as opposed to what we have now?
	Or if not protesting, how could we achieve having a much better system like the one you're describing?
	Well, you have to get rid of the monopoly on violence.
	And I guess protesting is not your answer to that.
	Do you have any proposition?
	No, listen.
	First of all, government teachers have absolutely no interest in furthering rational thought and ethics among the students.
	That's a generalization.
	Sorry?
	That's a generalization, I'm pretty sure.
	I didn't say none of them do it.
	I said they have no incentive.
	Okay, sorry, I didn't hear that.
	Most people have no incentive to jump off a bridge.
	That doesn't mean nobody jumps off a bridge, right?
	Right.
	And generally the best students, sorry, generally the best teachers are the ones who get chased out by the unions.
	I don't know if you ever saw a film with James Earl Olmos or Edward Olmos or something like that, Mr.
	Battlestar Galactica, called Stand to Deliver about an outstanding teacher in America.
	Well, he quit.
	In frustration.
	John Taylor Gatto voted the best teacher in New York State, quit in horrifying frustration.
	Read The Bee Eater about Michelle Rhee who tried to take on an incredibly corrupt and vile teachers union.
	And couldn't...
	Like she had a proposal that said, listen...
	If you're a good teacher, like currently you're making like 60, 70k.
	If you're a good teacher, you'll make 125, 150.
	If your students do well, if you get good responses, you'll make a shit ton of money.
	And all we want in return for that is that if you're shitty and your students hate you and they learn nothing, we'll fire you.
	Right?
	If you do really well, you'll make a fortune.
	And if the students hate you and they learn nothing, you'll be fired.
	Right?
	That's not radical to me.
	That's basic market value.
	And that's how you get people in front of the kids who can motivate the kids and who the kids care about.
	She fought tooth and nail to get this and the union wouldn't even bring it to a vote.
	It wasn't even rejected.
	It was not even allowed to come to a vote.
	As the past head I will start caring about the interests of children when children start paying union dues.
	The children are hostages because the parents are forced to pay.
	They are hostages to extract more money from desperate parents and terrified politicians whose economy that they rely on for taxes will grind to a halt when schools do.
	It's all a shakedown with children as hostages.
	Now, does that mean...
	That some people aren't nice to the hostages?
	Sure they!
	Some of them are nice to the hostages.
	I had one or two teachers who, a few times in my life, showed me some little bits of kindness in my 22-year career in education or 22-year exposure to education in a variety of countries, in a variety of public and private and three different universities from undergraduate to a master's level.
	A few teachers on occasion Maybe it happened five or ten times over the course of my entire time there.
	Were vaguely nice about something.
	And that's not proof of anything.
	I'm just telling you my experience.
	Let's say I wanted to start a school that preaches those values or those ways of teaching you talk about.
	I imagine the state wouldn't really want that if it sees it as being much better than what they're offering.
	Yeah.
	Well, of course, whatever you try to do with a school, you're basically asking people to double pay because they pay through their property taxes and then you ask them to pay again, whatever it's going to be.
	I think, what is it, 45% of public school teachers in Detroit send their kids to private schools?
	No, that's very important.
	They're the ones who can afford it, who have enough security.
	I mean, I bet you they all would if they could.
	Yeah, the people my age I met in the States all went to private school to get a better education.
	Sure.
	The real education.
	I don't know how much better it really is, but I know that the public ones, they're terrible.
	There's lots of studies that say that the, quote, quality of your education doesn't have anything to do with how you turn out.
	I know it sounds counterintuitive, but there's no data that people can find.
	And you can look at Charles Murray on this, M-U-R-R-A-Y. There's no data that can conclusively show that if you send your kids to this school or that school, they end up better educated.
	The complexity and challenges of education is very deep and very great.
	Philosophers for 2,500 years have been saying, how the fuck do we get people interested in philosophy, right?
	And this has been my big challenge.
	Hey, Why don't you come on board this little Education Express, which will set you at odds with your society and cause lots of problems in your personal relationships and make you really unhappy for no particular clear benefit you can find in the short run and no possibility of social change in any fundamental way during the course of your entire lifetime.
	Come on board!
	We're going over the cliff, baby!
	But slow enough that you'll feel it hurt.
	So it's a huge challenge.
	I don't know the answer as to how you get people...
	A lot of it seems to have to do with innate intelligence.
	Now, I think that children who go to private school have a happier time.
	I think that they have a nicer time, but it doesn't seem to affect, in the long run, how they end up doing in life.
	What that tells me is that putting kids in a classroom...
	In general, I just don't even know if it's that good an idea.
	There's homeschooling, there's unschooling, there's lots of different ways of getting it done.
	I don't know what the answer is, but I know that we're prevented from exploring any kind of real answer about education because of this monopoly of violence that prevents all forms of progress.
	But that seems very counterproductive to all mankind.
	I don't think it serves the government to prevent people from getting the best, or from at least working on the education system to make it the best we can have it.
	I think it's very counterproductive.
	Why doesn't it serve the government?
	I don't think it serves...
	I don't think it hurts them if they just have a smarter population.
	I feel like some countries, let's say Finland, Switzerland, they seem to have a higher concentration of very intelligent people that are furthering things more than Canada or the States.
	Well, okay, that's a big topic, but it's a balance.
	The government wants people smart enough To pay lots of taxes, right?
	To make lots of money and pay lots of taxes.
	So they want people who have lots of technical skills, right?
	Yeah.
	They don't want people who are critical thinkers.
	They don't want people that they actually have to make rational arguments with empirical evidence when they give a speech.
	You see Obama speaking?
	He's not speaking.
	He's like a swaying hypnotic cobra.
	With those pauses and that certainty and that body language that just bespeaks a kind of Certainty that goes right down to the roots of the planet, and this is the way that it is.
	And he really raises his voice.
	So many pauses.
	Such humor, the silliness of his enemies, and such eye contact, and so many pauses.
	Such a good-natured certainty about everything that needs to be done.
	done.
	No doubt, no differences, no complicated information, no emotion other than ridicule and the occasional bit of passion for rhetoric that leads nowhere other than to people's little joy, joy, juice, endorphin, push button of happy futureness.
	I mean, this all, if you had any kind of intelligence, you'd stop him the whole time and say, what?
	How do you know?
	And what do you know?
	Are you saying there's no ambiguity?
	Are you saying there are no opposing opinions?
	How the fuck do you know with such certainty how 300 million people ought to live?
	How is that even remotely possible?
	Certainty in complexity is the mark of immense idiocy.
	And anybody who's in charge of a complicated post-information technology comprised of 300 people, it seems sometimes speaking 400 million languages, well, anybody who's certain in that situation is a demagogic fool.
	So, does the government want people to know the root of political power is violence?
	Does the government want to know that everything they want for free has to be paid for at gunpoint by someone else?
	Does the government want people to know the actual complexity of the law?
	Does the government want people to know how ridiculously hyper-complex the tax code system is to the point where people are doing something illegal just about every day and there's no single person alive who knows what is legal and what is illegal but ignorance of the law is no excuse.
	Do they want people to become entrepreneurs?
	Shit no.
	They don't want people to become entrepreneurs because they get a huge amount of money from big corporations.
	Not from little entrepreneurs living in their car and struggling to grow.
	They want people to go and work for a big giant corporation so that corporation can give lots of money to the politicians.
	Also it's a hell of a lot easier to tax people when they're in a corporation than when they're being entrepreneurs with all these write-offs.
	That makes sense.
	So, I mean, do they want you to know about the economy?
	Do they want you to know that currency used to be based on gold?
	Do they want you to know that they can print money at will?
	Do they want you to know that in Canada, when you go to a bank to borrow money from a house, the bank just creates that money and gives it to you like they've earned it and given it to you?
	They just make that shit up.
	The money is all imaginary type, whatever you want, into your own bank account.
	You try doing that, you go to jail for counterfeiting.
	It's how the entire fucking financial system of the Western world works.
	I feel like that's why we talk a lot about economics and politics, yet we seem to have no understanding of it, is because we have no idea how much money is really being created.
	And for those who don't know, there's a good internet movie about this called Oh Canada, Our Bought and Sold Outland.
	And...
	Yeah, I mean, if people had, like, 5% knowledge of how the economic system works, there probably would be rioting in the streets, which is why it's studiously kept away from the general population, and anybody who talks about it is considered to be a freak.
	All the governments have to do is keep the truth away from you long enough so that when it finally shows up, it freaks you out, and you recoil.
	It's like the Matrix, right?
	All they have to do is keep the reality that you are a battery.
	Oh, spoiler!
	All they have to do is keep the reality from the battery away from you long enough and you fall out of that battery vat.
	You're like, this is freaking me out!
	Right?
	So they just have to keep you in that amniotic sack of propaganda long enough that any kind of truth comes across like a javelin through the eyeball.
	So the government has an incentive to make you economically productive and easy to tax and dependent on authority and afraid of people in authority, which government schools do to a T, but they don't want to teach you how to think.
	They don't want to teach you to be independent.
	They don't want to teach you what ethics is.
	They don't want you to absorb the lesson of kindergarten, which is don't push, don't steal, because that's what they do all the time, right?
	They pay your taxes or go to fucking jail.
	That's all they got.
	Pay your taxes or we'll shoot your ass up.
	It's just a big giant gun wrapped in a flag aimed at your kids.
	That's all it is.
	All it is.
	And when people hear that, it has to feel alien and bizarre enough that they can reject it emotionally without ever evaluating it intellectually, right?
	It has to be like It's a strange analogy, but it has to be like racism.
	Like it just has to be, oh my god, that person said, huh?
	That's so appalling, I could just reject it emotionally.
	I don't even have to say anything.
	Right?
	And it's this basic rules for radicals.
	It's the basic left-wing.
	What they do is they just keep hurling shit at you and hurling shit at you and hurling shit at you.
	And people say like, oh, that guy...
	He's got shit on him, so I don't have to think about anything he does, right?
	I mean, and so, he likes Ayn Rand.
	Oh, my God!
	Well, I can reject everything now because Ayn Rand was an idiot, right?
	And so, all that they have to do is keep the truth at bay at you long enough that when the truth shows up, it just feels preposterous.
	The truth shows up for most people in the world after years and years of government education...
	Like the rights of Aztec warriors from the 8th century.
	Like, whoa, that's some freaky shit they're doing.
	I can't believe anybody ever believed that.
	So, no, the idea that the governments have a very strong incentive to well-educate in the trivium sense, in even the Khan Academy sense, in the free domain radio sense, to truly educate people on how to think.
	And when you, you know, you keep listening to the show, and I invite you, six months, man, I'm telling you, Julian, six months, come back and listen.
	To the beginning of this show.
	And you will understand what I mean when I say, you as yet, and I mean this with all sympathy and affection, you as yet have no idea how to process a rational argument and rebut it.
	And again, I'm not saying this in any hostile way.
	I'm incredibly thrilled that you're learning it.
	I didn't know it either until I got into philosophy because it's all kept at bay from you.
	How to think.
	How to rebut.
	You've been trained to listen to political speeches and try and get involved in the political process.
	I mean, voting like protests, if they actually achieved any real change, they'd be made illegal too.
	There's just a way for people to blow off steam and pretend like they're doing something and keep them away from dangerous thoughts like thinking.
	But that aggravates me a lot.
	I'm very aware of that.
	I didn't vote last time because the writing where I'm registered, where I grew up, it votes something like 78% liberal every single time.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	And you want, look, you want, last thing I'll say before we move on, but you want 51% of people to come out and protest something.
	The only protests that really matter are those that reduce government power.
	Everything else is bullshit.
	It's just, uh, who gets to mug who?
	That's all it is.
	Who holds who down while who goes through their wallet and pulls out the remaining gold tooth they have in the back?
	That's all voting is.
	The only thing that substantially matters is that which reduces the amount of violence in society, reduces the laws, the taxes, the regulations, and so on.
	Well, you just have to look at public choice theory.
	You can read Brian Kaplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter.
	It never happens.
	Because let's say I want to get a protest, man.
	We're going to cut taxes by 20%.
	20%, man!
	20%.
	In other words, we're going to take Canadian taxes to about 1996.
	Remember it was a huge homicidal wasteland in 1996 because taxes were 20% low?
	Oh my God, it was horrendous.
	They let Mel Gibson out of rehab unattended.
	It was that kind of insane a place.
	Sugar tits.
	But let's say I wanted to do that.
	Well...
	Who am I going to get to come out and protest?
	Right?
	A vast majority of taxes are paid by a minority of people.
	Because it's progressive income tax.
	Is that true?
	Is that really true?
	I think it's in the States.
	I mean, the States is not too dissimilar from Canada, but...
	Like, the top 1% of people pay, like, 20% of the taxes or something.
	I mean, because it's progressive income tax, because Karl Marx thought it was a great idea, so we, as anti-communists, said, great job, Karl!
	But then what percentage of the wealth?
	We'll get the numbers in just a sec, but...
	But don't you think it should be equal to the amount of wealth, not equal, but proportionate to the amount of wealth they get, comparing it to how proportionate it is for middle-class people?
	No, the whole point of progressive income tax is the more you make, the more you pay, right?
	That's what I mean.
	So shouldn't it be more directly related than it is right now?
	Oh man, Julian, you are so deep in the matrix, I don't even know what to say.
	I've been telling you the whole time that the government is violence, and you're saying, but shouldn't the violence be more distributed?
	No, no, that's not what I said.
	That's not what I said.
	What I'm saying is that if the top 1% pay 20% of the taxes but earn 80% of the wealth, whereas the middle class pay half their money in taxes, which contributes to the rest, then shouldn't the rich be paying half?
	I'm not going to argue whether it should or shouldn't be that way, but what I'm saying is that a huge amount of taxes are paid by a pretty tiny minority of people.
	Because you're talking about, let's get the percentage of people to 51% to protest something, right?
	But the problem is 51% of people will never protest to get 20% of taxes cut.
	Because in Canada, I don't know what, like a third of them work for the government?
	Do people in the government want government income to go down?
	It's true.
	No.
	But I feel like the huge wealth inequality, what's the word, the gap between the rich and the poor, especially in the States, will lead to some kind of revolution.
	It won't It'll last forever if that country sustains itself.
	Okay, little man.
	All right.
	So the top 40% of wage earners in America pay 106% of the taxes.
	The bottom 40% pay negative 9%.
	As in the government spends more money on them?
	Well, the government doesn't have any money.
	The government takes money, keeps it for itself, and dribbles a little bit down the coffin lid to the underclass.
	But...
	So the people who are working for the government are not going to protest and say, let's reduce the government income because they know that's going to negatively affect their job, right?
	They might not get as big a wage increase.
	They might not get as much pension.
	They might get fired, right?
	So they're not going to come out and protest in general, right?
	Yeah.
	What about the people who are on welfare?
	Are they going to want government income to go down?
	No, but some of them might recognize that there's a huge problem and they might recognize that it pertains to them and their situation.
	Well, some, yeah, but how many...
	Look, if you have the capacity to have that kind of foresight, you don't end up on welfare to begin with.
	I guess.
	Right?
	I mean, everybody knows that welfare is a complete dead-end situation, which is really tough to get out of.
	So anybody with any brains doesn't end up on welfare in the first place.
	I mean, in general, right?
	I mean, whatever, right?
	Some people get hit by a truck or something like that on the job or something.
	But it's like, well, you know, these poor women with single kids, it's like, look...
	Everybody knows that if you're a reasonably decent and responsible human being, you don't have children you can't afford to feed.
	Right?
	Because you care about children, and you want them to have a decent life, so you don't have children.
	One of the most age-old realities of not just biology but human society is don't have children you can't afford to feed.
	So the people on welfare, yeah, there may be a few people who are far-seeing and intelligent enough to defer their own current gratification for the sake of longer-term goals and gains, but those people are almost never on welfare to begin with.
	Because it's an idiot's job to go on welfare.
	It's a dead-end street.
	So why do people go on welfare in general?
	Because they're idiots.
	And because they don't have that much to lose, because on the free market they wouldn't make that much money anyway.
	It's not a bad deal, right?
	The top 5%, I assume this is America, yeah, the top 5% earned 31.7% of the nation's adjusted gross income but paid almost 60% of federal individual income taxes.
	So you got the top 5% paying almost 60% of federal income taxes.
	So people on welfare, are people in the military going to be real keen on government spending getting cut?
	Of course not.
	So people on welfare, people in the military, people who work for the government, what about people who've retired?
	Yeah, you're right.
	You've definitely convinced me that protesting is not the way, but I would love your insight into what ways I can apply myself.
	And I'm already forgetting that option in terms of raising awareness.
	The top 1% of taxpayers pay more in federal income taxes than the bottom 90%.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	So how do you do it?
	Well, I mean, it's a big long thing, but you focus on the non-aggression principle in your own life.
	You don't initiate violence against anyone.
	You talk to people who are parents saying, don't hit, don't spank, don't yell.
	The most common violation of the non-aggression principle is not government, but parenting.
	The most common violation of the non-aggression principle is not government, but parenting.
	Of course.
	And so you can work on that.
	Talk to people who are your peers and say, listen, were you spanked?
	Do you plan on spanking?
	If you do, here's some facts, you know?
	And that way, well, they become parents with the information that you can provide them.
	And it's much better to get that information before people become parents because it's a hell of a lot easier to not develop a bad habit than to try and change a bad habit that you've already inflicted on others, right?
	It's a lot easier to not take heroin in the first place than it is to try and quit heroin after a 10-year addiction, right?
	So, talk to people about parenting.
	Talk to people about the non-aggression principle in their own life.
	Remind people that the moment somebody shows aggression or violence in their life that they should either try and change that relationship with that person or not have a relationship with that person if they continue to use violence or to support the use of violence.
	There's so much you can do as the bringer of light, wisdom and truth and virtue in your personal life to help people be better human beings, be vaguely decent human beings.
	And that is where you can have a true and real effect.
	Look, you can go and pound your head against the brick wall of satanic statist indifference if you want.
	All you're going to get is a headache and a trickle down the concrete.
	But if you actually work to convince people to not hit their kids, to be peaceful in their relationships, to shun evildoers and embrace the virtuous among us, you can be a true force for change in the only world you have an effect in, which is the world that's around you, in your environment, in your vicinity.
	We can't deal with these structures that are invented to oppress us.
	We simply can't.
	What we can do is dissolve the structures that give those bigger structures strength in our personal relationships.
	I do plan on having more of an impact than just the world around me.
	That's part of why I'm in journalism now, is to try and gain an audience.
	Right.
	Good.
	Because I believe in so much of what you say.
	Basically, all of it, to every extent.
	Yeah, look, I mean, you write great stuff out there.
	I mean, the number of places I've smuggled in, don't spank your kids in my shows.
	Seriously, I mean...
	I've noticed.
	Yeah, I mean, it's not even subtle, right?
	But I will try to talk about don't hit your kids, don't aggress against your kids, hear the effects of doing it in everything from Zimmerman to Ferguson to foreign policy, you name it, right?
	I mean, so yeah, if you can work that stuff in, fantastic.
	All right.
	because Let's move on to the next follow.
	Thank you so much for your time.
	Thank you so much for calling in.
	A very helpful conversation, I hope.
	Thank you.
	Have a good night.
	Take care.
	The top 1% of households pay too little in taxes.
	That's the opinion of 55% of people surveyed recently.
	More women, 61% than men, held that view.
	Hey, give me blacks and Hispanics.
	No, give me blacks and Hispanics on...
	Because, you know, I talk about the Freedom Club, right?
	Give me blacks and Hispanics on the government is really good at solving problems.
	We need the government to solve our problems.
	All right, while Mike is working on that...
	And massaging his heart.
	Let's start off with the next call.
	All right.
	Dan is up next, and he wrote in and said, how does introversion play into me being tired of people's demands while trying to overcome self-imposed isolation?
	Well, I'll tell you more.
	Oh, hi.
	I've been listening to your show for about, I don't know, three or four months now.
	I've been spreading it around to people who want to hear about it.
	So, yeah.
	And I'm looking to donate bitcoins, actually.
	Bye.
	Thank you very much.
	I appreciate it.
	You know what I like most about that sentence?
	It's the letter S. Mike, did you hear Bitcoin?
	Or did you hear bitcoins?
	Wait, that's more of a Z. But no, I just appreciate that.
	Whatever you can do to help out is hugely appreciated.
	For those who don't know, it's FDRURL.com slash donate.
	But please go on with your questions.
	So, what prompted me to actually seek out and talk to you was...
	My last relationship basically turned sour and rocky and made me just realize that I was generally tired of people's demands.
	Now, I think it was your show that you talked about dopamine receptors and I ended up actually looking into it.
	It was the In a Realm of the Hungry Ghost book you recommended to read.
	I actually read that book.
	So yeah, I've been learning a lot.
	So what prompted me to talk to you is basically reaching out to an unbiased point of view that can just help me, guide me.
	But because I think, if I'm not mistaken, Mike, I reached out back in the end of August or something.
	Yeah, no, beginning of August, actually.
	So since then, I actually sought out therapy.
	Good for you, man.
	Yeah.
	And that actually helped me realize a lot of things.
	One of the things that actually plays into my introversion is not being seen as a child.
	But that has nothing to do with standard stuff.
	My parents got divorced.
	My sister died.
	My mother became a ghost.
	I was suddenly grown up at the age of 12.
	Never been a child.
	Then at the age of 16, I became a refugee.
	So yeah, things just kept rolling from there.
	A refugee from where?
	From Yugoslavia.
	Oh, right.
	Yeah.
	So, yeah, things just kept rolling from there.
	But the therapist I went to, she actually specializes in therapy for men.
	And it was actually very helpful.
	So, yeah.
	So, my thing is the way I saw it when I was a kid, the way I saw it to...
	Correct not being seen was engage in a lot of conversation with my friends that I basically lost when I came to Canada and when the Civil War broke out.
	So even though the Civil War breaks out, we go to refugee camp, you make friends, and you engage in talking.
	And that was the one thing I realized is when I talked to my therapist, when I left the first session, it felt like somebody just stuck your hand in my forehead and squeezed.
	So then I heard you talking, then I went looking for dopamine receptors, and lo and behold, they're all in the frontal lobe.
	So, good conversation is basically what kept saving me through my whole life.
	So, I wanted to reach out to you and just, you know, talk one-on-one.
	But another point I wanted to make is the Robin Williams video you made was actually quite touching.
	I never shed a tear for celebrity, but I could actually relate to Robin Williams' kind of struggle with the way he was feeling sad, happy, sad, happy, all this stuff.
	And the way you explained it actually was quite touching.
	Thank you.
	So, I'm not even sure if my question will apply, but I just wanted to say in relation to the Robin Williams video, you said one thing about him, indiscriminate placement of a penis, if I remember correctly.
	And I think I've been guilty of that too.
	So, you know, get stuck with a girl at a time and then just feel guilty about leaving because it wasn't working out for me and I just wait until she breaks up with me.
	And the therapies actually helped me realize all that stuff.
	Right.
	Well, I mean, there is a huge amount of propaganda in the war between the sexes that has really gone on since the 60s.
	There's a huge amount of propaganda that tells men, well, we'll put up with you for reasons that we can't even explain, but we'll put up with you.
	I mean, how many times you see this in sitcoms and movies, you know, the wife is right, the husband is an idiot, and she just puts up with him.
	Every Rogers commercial?
	Why?
	I'm sorry?
	Every Rogers commercial?
	Yeah, that's right.
	I don't know what those bastards have against men.
	Maybe look into your tech squad.
	there's probably not a lot of clitoris answering the phones but Mike is attempting to figure that out physiologically We will not be turning the camera around anytime soon.
	I've never seen anyone quite that flexible.
	I don't even know why he's married now.
	But yeah, so there's a huge amount of propaganda which is, look men, I guess you are barely tolerated pets.
	And the reason for that is so that men don't have demands.
	Men don't push their luck.
	Men are hanging by a thread on the exasperated last string of kindness that their woman can nobly generate in their presence.
	So it's just a way of having men Not have needs and not express their needs.
	There's a huge amount of propaganda that is designed to make men feel unvalued.
	Now the way it used to work, I mean it's kind of come and gone all the way back and forth throughout history.
	The way it used to work was that men are horny And women don't really like sex, right?
	That's how women raised their value in relationships before.
	Because if women really like sex and men really like sex, then the granting of sexual access by either party cancels each other out, right?
	That makes sense, yes.
	But if women, you know, the phrase in the 19th century in England was, ladies, you must lie back and think of England.
	When your man wishes to defile you with his vile seed, remember that England needs people with monocles to stride across the world and keep the darkies at bay.
	We are needed to flog all the young children coming into boarding schools.
	Yeah, what, what?
	The British are needed to sail the seas and end slavery.
	Actually, that was a pretty good one.
	The British are coming.
	The British are coming.
	Oh, from which angle we dare not speak.
	Because, you know, the people who are the most repressed in public are the ones who really get some seriously Martian freak on in private.
	That's very true.
	It's very true.
	All the chicks with tattoos like it missionary, but all the librarians like it with a goat somewhere in the vicinity.
	Remind me not to date the librarian.
	Date the librarian, particularly if you're a goat.
	Anyway, but the...
	So the way it used to work was it was like, well, men really like sex.
	Women are really indifferent to it.
	And therefore, men have to bring stuff to the relationship extra because they're making women do something distasteful that's, you know, yuck.
	You know, I guess you have to get it out of your system and I guess I'll lie back and think of the queen or something like that.
	So men would have to bring extra paycheck to the home, right?
	Yeah, men have to then, you know, do a lot of, you know, because we're going to defile these poor virgins with our unholy seed.
	And of course, now another way, of course, that women's value was raised was in the religious opposition to masturbation, right?
	You know, masturbation is pretty intense competition for the vagina, right?
	If you're not allowed to masturbate, then the value of the vagina is bid up pretty high, right?
	I've never thought of it that way, but actually that's an interesting angle, yeah.
	Yeah, people talk about collusion.
	Well, you know, it's terrible when these companies collude to drive out competition.
	It's like, hello!
	Hello, these hands!
	They can't compete pretty well!
	with the vagina and so the collusion of women and religious leaders and so on to eliminate Masturbation at a moral go-to-fucking-hell level.
	You'll burn in hell forever.
	You'll go blind.
	Doctors also got in on it too, right?
	I mean, you get epilepsy, blindness, an incredibly good tennis grip for masturbation.
	Wait, one of those was not...
	I can't remember.
	Anyway, something to do with a goat.
	So if you say to men, you go to hell for masturbating, and women don't really like sex, then men feel desperate.
	And the value...
	Like, they say there's a war of the sexes, and the war of the sexes fundamentally comes down to who brings more to the table, right?
	And if you can convince men that women don't really need them, don't really want them, don't really like them that much, then men feel desperate.
	Right?
	Like, if you feel like you can get fired at any time and you're not really needed and not really wanted and you're just kind of put up, people just kind of put up with you, how strongly are you going to push for a raise and for better working conditions?
	Not at all.
	Not at all.
	You'll be like, well, I'm just happy to have a paycheck, sir.
	Right?
	I mean, what's the old line, one of the most famous lines from 19th century literature?
	Oliver Twist.
	Right?
	In Charles Dickens' great novel.
	Can I have some more?
	What?
	Well, that was such a revolution.
	That line is so famous.
	It's such a huge revolution for a child to ask for more.
	Because what was the old standard?
	Was it children should be seen and not heard?
	And, you know, children are just a nuisance and children are just a regrettable byproduct of unholy male lusts and female defilement and All that sort of crap, right?
	Yeah, which makes you wonder, how the hell have we ended up in there and still perpetuate as a species?
	Well...
	Women do.
	Of course, women do.
	It's all a front, right?
	Women like sex as much as men like sex, right?
	So it's all just a bunch of nonsense, but men fall for it, right?
	Now, this stuff was pretty hard To maintain.
	Pretty hard to maintain.
	But anyway, this was all pretty hard to maintain when women needed men, otherwise they would starve to death, right?
	Because the general path of women, as is true for a lot of female mammals, well, women, of course, have no particular season in heat.
	They're in heat...
	Every time they hear this show, I believe, that's pretty much...
	I mean, I'm no biologist, but as far as I understand it, that's how it works.
	But women have no season for being in heat.
	So women basically from the age of, I don't know, like early medieval times, like 14 to 30, when they generally died of tooth decay, they were just pregnant the whole time.
	And when they're pregnant, and when they're breastfeeding, and when they're having another baby, right after they start breastfeeding, they can get some work done, but not a lot.
	And so they need the vast majority of resources to be brought to them by men, right?
	And so it was pretty hard for women to say, oh, men, they're such silly fools, but we put up with them for reasons we don't even know why.
	I guess there's funny little creatures that amuse us in some ways.
	Oh, they have these unholy lusts that I suppose we can put up with those too, as long as I put a picture of Queen Victoria over my bed.
	Right?
	So there's no way that women could...
	It's like, well, without him, I'm dead.
	Dead, I tell you.
	And if he leaves me, if he leaves me, and I have five children, well, no man is going to marry me.
	Do you know, I mean, let me tell you a very, very brief story.
	There's a phenomenon in Canada, which is huge, and it's happened in other places too.
	I know a little bit more about it in Canada.
	So, this was really occurring in the post-war period.
	The post-First World War period.
	There were these group, massive, massive, massive group of children sent over from England to Canada, where they would be fostered by people in Canada and basically put to work like farm animals.
	And they're called home children.
	And did you know 10% of Canadians of European stock are descended from these kids?
	And why were the kids sent over?
	The kids were sent over in general because something happened to the dad.
	And often it was industrial accidents or whatever.
	Something would happen to the dad.
	And this is when they had like eight or nine kids.
	Wow.
	And the mom would try and keep it together, but generally it would not happen.
	And then the mom would sign the kids away to be in an orphanage, otherwise they would starve to death.
	And then oftentimes the orphanage would just sell them to people in Canada and they'd get shipped over.
	And they were serfs, they were slaves.
	That sounds very familiar.
	Yeah, and that's what happens in a society, certainly early industrial society relative to the wealth that we have now, but that's what happens when the man leaves or the man dies or something happens to the income.
	Women are really in a terrible situation.
	And some of that, of course, I hugely sympathize with, of course, right?
	But then the mom's got to give up the kids.
	They got to sell the kids.
	It's terrible stuff.
	And it's incredibly prevalent.
	And you won't hear, I went through a master's degree in history.
	I took entire courses on Canadian history.
	This is 10% of the goddamn population came from these people and you'll never hear about them.
	And why won't you ever hear about them?
	Because it reinforces masculine value.
	This is what happens If the men aren't around.
	And then this idea that men are just kind of homely, leg-humping animals you put up with for reasons you can't figure out.
	We're just not...
	I mean, this is what happens when the families are destroyed.
	The kids get sold into virtual slavery and blah, blah, blah, right?
	So, I just want to point out, when you're talking about your relationship, you're grateful to be there.
	Oh, my God, there's a woman who will...
	Make the Y for me, you know?
	It's like, oh, I'm so grateful.
	I'm so happy.
	I found someone to put up with me and my body odor and my scratching.
	Oh, my God, I'm so grateful.
	Right?
	This is the pitiful whining beggary that men have been propagandized into.
	And the only reason that this can happen fundamentally in the modern world is because of the welfare state.
	And by the welfare state, I'm not just talking about welfare.
	I'm talking about a whole bunch of shit.
	I'm talking about alimony, child support, the family court system.
	I'm talking about old age pensions, social security, health care, all the stuff that women used to be dependent on men to provide them with.
	Well, now the government, they were under the government.
	And they're, hey, give me the stuff.
	I want to have kids, but I don't want to be dependent on no man.
	Give me the stuff.
	Come on!
	It's just kind of interesting.
	When my parents got divorced, my mom was the single mother, and the government over there was not helping at all.
	So she had to work, we had to grow up, we had to go to school, all this stuff, like my sister and I. So yeah, it's quite a different world between Eastern European countries and Canada, for that matter.
	It's sad that the ex-communist countries are somewhat more free market.
	And, of course, it takes people a while to adjust to that.
	And this is why women can indulge in stupid, shallow, asshole-worshipping lusts.
	Not all women, of course, but, you know, I'm just talking about general trends here.
	Because in the past, when that Marlon Brando and his young days, wild ones, shifty, good-looking...
	Bum comes around, women are like, yeah, he's sexy, but, uh, can't have kids with the guy.
	Can't do it.
	I can't do it.
	I mean, there's this great line in The Wild One with Marlon Brando, who, when he was young, was like a complete hunkasaurus.
	He was the Brad Pitt of his day.
	And, um, unfortunately, Brad Pitt sort of turns into the Hindenburg prior to the fire explosion.
	That's sort of later, Marlon Brando.
	But yeah, he goes up to the bar and he says, uh, Bartender says, or someone says to him, what are you rebelling against anyway?
	Brando says, what do you got?
	It's a great line.
	It doesn't matter.
	I just rebelled.
	What do you got?
	And it's not a great movie, but there's great bits in it.
	And so, yeah, Marlon Brando comes up and, God, he's sexy, he's magnetic, he's lizard-like, he's got abs, he's charismatic, and women are like, oh, I can't do it, man.
	I mean, the schlub next door who's going to be an accountant, he's not as sexually exciting, he's not like alpha dominant sexy brute, but he's going to stick around and he's going to be a provider.
	And men can't earn the kind of looks that Brando has, but they sure can earn an accounting degree.
	And so male responsibility has dissolved along with the welfare state as well, which is why female sexual irresponsibility has become so prevalent.
	And to some degree, of course, male sexual responsibility has become so prevalent.
	And the whole thing has just shut down any kind of historical focus on refining the sexual urge itself.
	To the benefit of civilization and culture.
	Men and women are born sexually wild with a reproductive strategy somewhat akin to a frog at a windstorm, which is, you know, spray and pray, right?
	Like me in Titanfall.
	And...
	Stun!
	Sorry.
	I played with him once.
	Anyway.
	But, you know, I couldn't stand the sound of him crying.
	So, wait, one of us was crying.
	I can't remember.
	Mike, you're not listening.
	Okay.
	So, there's a spray and pray.
	And the whole point of that is to focus that wild sexual energy of the teenage years into the foundation of the family, which is the foundation of a free and voluntary society.
	And...
	That's all completely gone by the wayside.
	And as a result, because we got rid of the big rules, we now have an infinity of tiny, stupid, annoying clusterfuck rules that nobody can possibly live by.
	So, and I don't want to sort of completely eclipse your question, but I think it's really fundamental to understand that a woman who is worth dating will never leave you in doubt as to the value of men.
	I'm going to say that again.
	A woman who is worth dating will never leave you in doubt as to the value of men.
	She will not make jokes.
	She will not put men down.
	She will not treat men in a negative light.
	She will not roll her eyes.
	She will not talk about men as boys or I've got three children or, you know, when she has two and a boyfriend or something like that.
	The moment, and I fight this fight.
	I do.
	I fight this fight.
	I'm around other parents a lot.
	Some kid was saying, well, why is he doing that?
	And then the mom said, oh, he's just a boy.
	I'm like, hey, hey, come on.
	Come on.
	Don't tell me that women wanted to get out of the stereotypes of girls and you're saying, oh, he's acting that way because he's a boy, right?
	And she's like, all right, fine, right?
	What you say makes sense, but I'm going to throw you a curveball and I'm just going to basically say I'm never going to date a feminist, which is my last relationship was a feminist girl.
	And one thing that threw me off completely, and this is my mind.
	I grew up in a socialist country, right?
	The transition was more towards capitalism before the Civil War.
	I come to Canada.
	I learn all about the capitalism because I immerse myself in it.
	Because it is a capitalistic, consumerist society that we live in.
	So, you know, you just sink or swim to make a living.
	And when people start explaining to me in one of the circles, friends, whatever, patriarchy.
	I just came out and said, well, that's capitalism.
	How is that patriarchy?
	I was really lost by that one.
	And that did not go really well with people I was talking to.
	So I kind of kept quiet after that.
	But that's one of the things that kind of throws me off is that people want to take the words off the table.
	And I'm going a bit off on a tangent here.
	Sorry, which words off the table?
	Well, the other day downtown, there was this...
	Take any words that are hurtful off the table and then replace them with other words that are less hurtful.
	Oh, no, no, no.
	No, no, no.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	Yes.
	Only for some people.
	Yeah, okay.
	Do you not think that the word patriarchy can be a little hurtful to men?
	Oh yeah, oh yeah.
	But that's okay, right?
	That's right.
	Because we're such a patriarchy that people can just insult us with impunity.
	That's how powerful we are.
	And God forbid you disapprove or something.
	There's an old saying that says, if you ever want to know who's really in charge, look at who you can't criticize.
	That's true.
	The moment you say patriarchy, it is a self-detonating argument.
	Because if men really were in charge, there's no fucking way that the word patriarchy would even exist.
	That's right.
	So, it's like...
	Don't get me started on that shit.
	Taking words off the table is completely stupid because if you take a word like...
	Oh shit, I don't know.
	What are they taking to get away?
	Oh, R word as they call it, or retarded.
	They're taking that away and they say replacing word with disability.
	It means the same thing.
	You're not being less disrespectful.
	It's still you implying the same thing using different words.
	Oh, and it's, you know, because people get upset with me about this stuff.
	But the reality is that I was, I mean, before retarded, it was mongoloid.
	That's right.
	And then mongoloid was really bad, and so it was retarded.
	And now retarded is really bad, and now it's disabled.
	And soon disabled, and then disabled became bad, and then it's differently abled.
	Yes, and now I'm thinking I can use the word water to describe anything to make you feel like shit.
	It's the intent that matters, not the words.
	It's this magical belief that if you change the word, you change the reality.
	You don't.
	Why do I always say, well, I've got to refer to blacks as African-Americans.
	It's like two-thirds of blacks would rather be called blacks than African-Americans.
	And then I asked one of my black friends, what do you think about the words person of color?
	He goes, I don't want to hear that shit.
	That says color.
	Fuck that.
	Yeah, and it blows my mind.
	What the fuck am I, translucent?
	That's right.
	I have a color?
	It's pink and spotty!
	I'm a speckled egg with fuzz!
	But when you ask people of color, what do you think of that?
	I don't want to hear the word color.
	That makes me different.
	It makes me stand out in the society.
	All-inclusive societies are not the ones that use the words as weapons.
	If you ask me.
	Not the ones that...
	I'm respecting everybody but the out group.
	You know what I mean?
	And that just drives me nuts.
	And whenever somebody uses stuff like this and there's no common sense of what they're talking about, I just walk away, otherwise I'm going to blow up.
	So, yeah.
	But this, like I said, I went to therapy.
	Death helped me significantly dig into the past, dig into my head.
	But then, I'm dyslexic.
	And I was actually diagnosed dyslexic, illogical, not illogical, illogical.
	And I think my doctor made up a word, dysgraphic.
	I see things in a mirror.
	The way I see things is if you were to take the two hands full of sand, throw them up in the air and freeze the time, my brain keeps working in the background and I connect the dots without even thinking.
	Like subconscious level, I'll connect the dots, I'll come to a conclusion.
	If you ask me how I came to the conclusion, I can't tell you.
	But when you work out a question, oh, that's the correct conclusion.
	And it's actually helping my job with analysis and all that sort of stuff.
	But I don't even know where I was going with this.
	Yeah, I'm afraid we may have lost the thread here.
	So listen, I mean, when it comes to dating, you know, I mean, feminism is one of these words that...
	To me, a real feminist...
	And this is what people will never quote me on.
	To me, a real feminist is one who works as hard as humanly possible to empower women to make the world a better place.
	That's right.
	And what that means, of course, is...
	Opposing a lot of what is commonly called feminism.
	And so to me, as I've always said, in this show, women are part of the cycle of violence, and women can talk to women in a way that men can't at the moment, because men have been somewhat excluded from the discourse on gender because we're considered to be patriarchal offenders of all that is noble and righteous and holy.
	And we all know this.
	We all know that if somebody says the welfare state is bad for black people, if a black person says it, people are like, whew, good!
	Because now we're in a post-racial society, right?
	So women need to talk to other women about hitting children and yelling at children and intimidating children and so on, right?
	Yes, of course we need to keep talking to men about that.
	And I do in this show.
	But women need to be empowered to make the world a better place by talking to other women about women's role in the cycle of violence.
	That means the cycle of violence with kids, the cycle of violence with boyfriends, husbands, and so on, right?
	That to me is empowerment.
	Look, you can do something other than nag men.
	Because I don't feel that nagging is really empowering.
	I don't feel that pretending you're helpless and having men ride over the hill to your rescue is really very powerful.
	Oh, like Emma Watson encouraging every single guy in the world to become a white knight?
	She for he.
	I'm tiny, white, and vulnerable.
	I'm about to cry.
	Help me.
	This is a woman who posed for lingerie ads when she was 14.
	That's not right.
	And then I was sexualized when I was 14.
	This is a woman who got paid twice her male co-star in a film written by a woman complaining about being oppressed.
	Anyway, that's...
	Picking on the hypocrisies of Pretty Actress is really not a very fun sport.
	It's like playing Breathing.
	I'm winning.
	You just do it.
	But no, so empowerment is, and this is what I do with libertarians too.
	I'm an annoying empowerment gadfly.
	It's what I did with the first caller.
	I'm an annoying empowerment.
	What can you do?
	And that's because I'm an Aristotelian.
	And Aristotle said, practical virtue is all that counts.
	Practically do something.
	Do some shit that makes the world a better place.
	What do you think?
	Let's do something.
	Let's not just think, let's not protest, let's be empirical about what works and what doesn't, but let's just fucking do something.
	And doing something is not begging.
	When you politically protest, you're begging.
	When you make speeches to the UN hoping men can save you, you're begging.
	Quit fucking begging and go do something, is what I want to say.
	If you're into the non-aggression principle, do some shit in your life.
	Confront status with their support of evil.
	Help them to understand it is evil.
	Be patient, explain, explain, explain, but then do something.
	For women.
	You want to help with the cycle of violence?
	You want the world to be a less violent place?
	Fine.
	Let's say that men are 80% responsible for the cycle of violence.
	I don't think it's true.
	Let's say that's true.
	Hey, you know what?
	Women have been complaining for about 200 years that men need to be less violent.
	They're still complaining, which means do something different.
	Look in the fucking mirror.
	Libertarians, we need a smaller government.
	We need a smaller government.
	We need less violence in society.
	It's been going on for hundreds of years.
	Do something different.
	Talk about the family rather than the state.
	Since the state is a shadow and effect of the family anyway, you'll actually be doing something.
	But when I push people from complaints and whining on what used to be called civil rights and now is called snivel rights...
	When I push people into actually doing something because I'm an Aristotelian, do something!
	Stop whining!
	Stop complaining!
	Stop begging!
	Do something!
	Put something on the line!
	Make it real!
	Don't make ethics a fucking hobby!
	That is an insult to everything that is good about the world and necessary for the world to improve.
	People freak the fuck out!
	Wait, wait, wait!
	I'm sorry!
	I was just talking.
	I'm sorry.
	I don't.
	No, no, no.
	You see, I was just saying I was tough.
	I was just saying I could take on Mike Tyson.
	Don't put me in the ring.
	You bastard.
	You evil guy.
	Don't call me out on all the bullshit I've been spouting my whole life.
	Don't make me actually do something.
	Oh, God.
	I'm just a fraud.
	It's called the Internet Tough Guy, isn't it?
	Internet tough guy is an ethical hand puppet of inconsequentiality.
	There you go.
	I've always found it easier to work the system from within than to actually take it head on.
	I don't know what that means.
	I've always found it easier to work the system from within.
	What are you, my ass bacteria?
	No, that would be probiotics.
	No, no, just do something.
	You want to reduce the amount of violence in the world?
	Talk to people about peaceful parenting.
	There you go!
	Convince five people in your whole goddamn life and you've done way more than any amount of political activism.
	Just women.
	Hey, go talk to other women about being peaceful parents.
	They won't listen to men because we're just annoying puppies.
	But women, go talk to each other.
	And you know what?
	The fact that women get really angry at me when I say go talk to other women about peaceful parenting is much more of an indictment of women than even the most fervent imaginary female hatred coming out of me could possibly be.
	People think I hate women.
	No, no, no, no.
	I think I hate women.
	Women know women and they don't even want to talk to them about any kind of virtue.
	Go talk to other women about not hitting their kids.
	Oh, no.
	No, no, no.
	You see, I'm a woman.
	I know what other women are like.
	I don't have anything to do with that.
	Thank you very much.
	Well, that's pretty damning about women.
	I don't go nearly that far.
	I'm still optimistic that we will find women to go and talk to other women about not hitting their children.
	Not screaming at their children, negotiating with their children.
	I still think we can find women to go and do that.
	But women are like, oh, don't make me do that.
	Oh my God, don't make me do that.
	It's like, well, aren't you then saying that women are just evil sadist trolls who like hitting their kids?
	I don't think that's true.
	But I'm waiting for women to prove me otherwise by having a big movement and being empowered.
	Oh, ladies, don't you want to be empowered?
	Good.
	Look, evil, bold, patriarchal misogynist has given you the ticket to empowerment, ladies.
	Go and do it.
	You can really change the world.
	What?
	Oh, I just hate women.
	Okay.
	So not so much with the empowerment then, more with the snivel rights.
	Okay.
	Got it.
	I guess I'll just have to talk to men then.
	Oh no, I can't talk to men because men are into libertarianism.
	I'll talk to my hand puppets!
	We'll free the world!
	What do you think, Heidi?
	Alright, listen, Matt, I've got to get on to the next caller, otherwise I'm not going to finish, but sorry about all those things.
	I appreciate you talking to me.
	It was great.
	Alright, up next is Bob.
	And Bob wrote in and said, My life is tormented by social anxiety, shame, and my dependent yet distant relationship with my parents.
	I suspect the root of my issues lie in my childhood.
	So why do I feel so much tension and ambiguousness about confronting my parents for answers?
	Thanks for the call.
	Great question.
	What do you think happened in your childhood?
	Do you hear me all right?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	A lot of different things, actually.
	You want me to start with my early history?
	Let's pretend that I'm your parents, and what would you want to say to them that would be confrontational?
	Okay.
	Firstly, I would ask them why they sent me to kindergarten and preschool when my mom was a stay-at-home mom.
	Hmm.
	And secondly, I would ask them why they didn't do anything when my brother hated me and tormented me my whole childhood.
	And how did your brother's hatred manifest?
	He would tease me and bully me and he would shame me for...
	He would shame me for...
	All kinds of bodily things.
	I have written down a list of things I can remember him shaming me about my whole childhood.
	Do you mind reading them?
	Okay, first of all, I remember really well him shaming me for speaking loudly when I was wearing headsets.
	And He would shame me for silly things like turning my head when I was playing video games.
	For turning your head?
	What does that mean?
	Imagine you're steering a car and you're kind of turning your head with the car and he would point out how useless that was and how I lack control over my body.
	Oh, okay, so you turn your head when you're turning the car in the game?
	Yeah.
	And he would mock you for that.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	And he would mock me for all the kinds of music I liked.
	Right.
	And I get the feeling that he gets some pleasure from criticizing me.
	Right.
	Right.
	But he wasn't violent, if I understand rightly.
	No, he just refused to spend any time with me when I was a kid, and I really wanted to spend time with him.
	And it seems to me...
	Wait, why did you want to spend time with him?
	I'm not saying you shouldn't have, I'm just, you know, this guy was mean to me and...
	Yeah, I'm not sure.
	It...
	It's from when I was born.
	I can tell you one story.
	When I was born, my brother, he was so angry that he had to be picked up by his aunt, and he would scream in his car, in her car, until he passed out from being angry.
	And you know that wasn't because you were born, right?
	Yeah.
	I'm not sure about the details.
	No, no, come on.
	If I drop a barbell on my toe, I'm in pain because the barbell fell on my toe, right?
	Yeah.
	Your brother did not scream because you were born.
	Because I, listen, I'm around a lot of kids, have been around a lot of kids, I worked in a daycare, and I saw kids who hugged their siblings, who showed them stuff, who took care of them, both male and female on both sides.
	I saw very positive sibling relationships.
	Now, I do know that 50%, an estimated 50% of sibling relationships are outright abusive, which is tragic on every level.
	But it was not because you were born that your brother acted in that way.
	Yeah, I figured it had something to do with sharing my parents' attention or maybe the way...
	No, no, no, no, because otherwise that would be common to everyone.
	Yeah, sure.
	So no, it was not that way.
	One other thought I had was that it had something to do with how he was prepared for it.
	Yeah, it may have had something to do with that.
	It probably went a little deeper than that.
	Do you know what your brother's relationship was like with your mother before you came along?
	Oh, no.
	Why did you say, oh?
	What do you think?
	Yeah.
	Because I've tried to figure it out.
	I've been thinking about it, but I don't know.
	Well, the best way to figure it out is what was your relationship with your mother like when you were very, very young?
	I don't think I can remember anything from that young.
	I think the earliest memory I have is like three years old, maybe.
	All right.
	Yeah.
	Do you think that your mother knows you very well?
	In other words, could she answer basic questionnaires, your favorite books, your favorite movies, your favorite colors, your favorite music, your favorite type of person, your hobbies, your interests?
	Could she answer those kinds of questions?
	No.
	I don't think she could even start.
	I mean, she violently opposes anything I like or anything I prefer.
	Okay, so, because this opposition to identity is similar to what your brother was doing, right?
	Okay.
	Wait, is that true?
	Okay, like, I'm answering, I'm sort of, it seems to me.
	I'm just wondering if you could elaborate.
	What do you mean opposition to identity?
	So, there are things in life that we pursue and learn and with difficulty.
	But there are things in life that land in us like a comet that blows up a cloud of butterflies and rainbows.
	In other words, the first time we see something or hear something or experience something, we love it.
	Without knowing why, we are just receptive to certain things.
	And people who achieve excellence in any particular field tend to be those who receive particular stimuli like a happy joy-joy cannonball straight to the chest.
	So, for instance, I mean, when I first started reading philosophy, God, it was incredible.
	I was so starved for any conversations of consequence in my environment that the moment I could commune with the ghosts of people thousands of years dead, I was overjoyed.
	I found more life in the graveyard of the long-dead library than Than I did in the supposedly living people all around me in the apartment building I grew up in.
	I thought humanity is in these letters from the grave, not in these inconsequential anti-existence ghosts that tragically surround me.
	So when I first started reading about philosophy and Being taught how to think and learning how to think.
	That came through Rand, it came through Plato, it came through Aristotle, it came through Nietzsche, it came through Locke, came through Hume, August, St.
	Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Cicero.
	These are people who said things that had material, had weight, had depth, had consequence, had importance, had utility.
	I felt more in common with ink than blood.
	I had more in common with ink than with blood.
	The same thing has happened to me with music, with writers, with other things in my life that I have just responded to Not like you start a fire, you know, you rub the sticks together.
	If you were in Boy Scouts, like you rub the sticks together, you start a fire.
	It takes forever.
	It's hard work.
	Your hands get sore.
	Your eyes sting.
	That's hard work.
	But I was more like paper with a lighter.
	The lighter, right?
	The stuff that we respond to so powerfully...
	So instinctively, so unconsciously, is our true self.
	Okay.
	So the stuff that you loved, the stuff that made you passionate, when I first started programming computers, I loved it!
	Here was structure, here was reason, here was a place where the efficacy of the mind was the entire physics of the universe.
	It's an incredible playground for rationality and intuition programming.
	Loved it.
	I programmed for 20 years.
	Loved it.
	I'd love to still do it.
	Just there are more programmers than philosophers.
	So the things that we respond to, the things that speak to us, And bring up, you know, if you yell against a rock far away, you'll get an echo back, but the echo is weaker than your voice.
	But there are some things that speak to us that amplify our hearts louder than even the source.
	That is identity.
	That's how you map who you are.
	It's based upon the bounce back of your passions.
	And that which the world evokes in you, which over time you can then learn to evoke in the world, as it has been for me with philosophy.
	And so the things that you were passionate about, the things that you were instinctive about, the things that spoke to you, the things that you responded to, That was your identity.
	That's who you are.
	And it's not the same for everyone.
	Everyone is a snowflake.
	We're all different in the things that we respond to.
	And the way to get the world to respond to you is to first respond to the world and map yourself like bats flying through a cave with the sonar of that which makes you excited and that which...
	It brings sustainable enthusiasm from your heart like the rain brings out the grass.
	And so the things that you were passionate about was who you were.
	Now, the way that you attempt to slaughter a human identity is to instinctively, sadistically, and endlessly oppose all spontaneous manifestations of enthusiasm.
	To make you self-conscious of yourself.
	To give you a cynical distance between your passions and your self-observation.
	So when I observe myself, I say, wow, this really makes me excited.
	This happens with songs, with movies, with other podcasters, with actors.
	I'm really excited by what this person is doing.
	I'm going to listen to that and pursue it until...
	until...
	And some passions have flared and faded away and others have flared and gotten stronger.
	I will never tire of philosophy because there is no end to the pursuit of truth.
	It's like saying, well, science is done.
	There's nothing else to learn.
	Never gonna happen.
	Yeah.
	And so if people can make you look at yourself and your passions In a negative and cynical manner, if they can make your instinctual enthusiasms ridiculous to you, they are soul murderers.
	And that's what I mean when I say the opposition of identity is foundational to the sadistic disassemblers of authenticity and potential.
	Okay.
	I see what you mean now, that he learned rejection when he was born, and then he had to do it to me.
	No, he didn't have to do it to you.
	Well, he chose to.
	It's neither had to nor chose to.
	He was a child, which means he has a growing sense of responsibility.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	It's not...
	Well, it was inevitable, and it's not like it was 100% free choice, because he sure as hell didn't choose your parents, right?
	Sure.
	And the important thing, of course, is that we don't know what he chose and what he didn't and what was environment and what was...
	But we do know that you as a child would experience it as willed behavior, right?
	Yeah.
	And so the part of you that I would suggest has to emotionally process what your brother did is the part of you that experienced it as willed behavior, in other words, that got upset about it.
	Like, if I don't put on sunscreen and I get a sunburn, I'm annoyed, but I don't go and yell at the sun, right?
	Yeah.
	You son of a bitch!
	don't you know I'm Irish?
	Because the sun is not wielding my sunburn, right?
	And Yeah.
	And children understand that.
	They don't go yell at the sun, right?
	Yeah.
	So, do you want me to continue with the story?
	Yeah, please do.
	Okay, so when I got to elementary school, I was bullied by other kids in my class and in other classes.
	And what happened was I had told my parents about it, but I had begged them not to involve the school.
	And they involved the school anyways.
	And I had to go in with my mother and talk with some teachers.
	And I begged my parents to move me to another school, which was closer.
	But you touched on this in an earlier podcast.
	My mother refused to let me go to another school because she had a justice complex.
	She was talking about this justice complex.
	What is that?
	She was talking about how it was the school's responsibility to make sure I was okay.
	Oh, okay.
	So she felt that it would be an unjust and ignomious retreat for you to go to another school, like that would be bad, right?
	Yeah.
	So it was to satisfy her sense of justice that she didn't do that, which was necessary to keep you safe.
	Yeah, and that's sort of a common theme that's played out with my mother.
	And so I was pretty angry at my parents.
	But they would guilt me by telling me how difficult it was for them to hear that I had been bullied in school.
	It was difficult for them to hear that you had been bullied?
	Yeah.
	You get how insane that is, right?
	Yeah, I got it.
	It was your podcast this summer about why you were bullied.
	It was that one that made me look into my childhood experience.
	My daughter stubbed her toe today.
	I did not say to her that it hurt me that she told me.
	Yeah.
	Saying that would be mental to me.
	Like I said, I'm incredibly sorry.
	What happened?
	How are you?
	Let's check the toe.
	Can you move it?
	You know, is it still hurting?
	I kept saying.
	But the idea of saying, it really upsets me that you told me you stubbed your toe.
	Yeah.
	My God.
	So what happened next was that I continued to be bullied at school and it got even worse because I had told on them.
	And I made a decision that I couldn't solve my problems anymore by telling my parents.
	So I started to gradually stop talking to them.
	Because it had been really humiliating for me to be bullied at school and then come home and have parents lecture me about how not to be bullied and ask me if I was okay.
	Well, and also you'd ask them to not tell the school and they promptly went out and told the school, right?
	Yeah.
	And that made it worse for you?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, because I mean...
	Even if you somehow have a belief that the school is going to do the right thing or the good thing, you still have a responsibility to see if that actually happened or not, right?
	Yeah.
	Did the school fix the problem?
	Are you still being bullied?
	Well, if the school didn't fix the problem and you're still being bullied, then you need to do something different, right?
	Yeah.
	But then it became your fault, right?
	If the school didn't fix it, well, it must be your fault, right?
	Yeah, it all got turned on me.
	Yeah, what are you doing to provoke them?
	Why don't you just try and stay away from them?
	Find some other friends, join an activity, do something different, go to the other end of the playground, don't provoke them, don't make eye contact, don't do this, don't do that, right?
	Yeah, and then I had to juggle what happened at home as well.
	Try not to alarm my parents.
	Yeah.
	How was your day?
	Fine.
	It was fine.
	No bullying at all.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I can't remember if there's a significant proportion of kids who avoid telling their parents about any problems because their perception is their parents just make it worse.
	Yeah.
	And that's exactly how I felt when I was a kid.
	Well, I think it was, as the song says, more than a feeling, right?
	Yeah, it was true.
	It was true.
	I mean, you had empirical evidence.
	Mom, Dad, I'll tell you this.
	There's one thing you can't do.
	You cannot go to the school.
	Okay, now we're going to the school.
	Thanks, Dad.
	Thanks, Mom.
	That's great.
	Yeah, and I remember my mom telling me, She couldn't let me switch to another school because I would just be bullied there as well.
	And she would tell me stories about how the kids at the other school would be even meaner.
	How the hell did she know that?
	Yeah, I think she was just covering for her own issues because she's done similar things in the past.
	You mean bullying?
	She was a bully?
	No, no, because she has trouble accepting that the world isn't fair.
	Oh, my God.
	No, no, no.
	I'm sorry.
	That just has the stink of Stockholm Syndrome bullshit so high that I think birds are falling out of the sky.
	Okay.
	What?
	She has trouble accepting the world is not fair?
	Well, she doesn't want to know that the world isn't fair.
	She wants everybody else...
	Okay, let's go with this theory.
	Okay, so how do you know that?
	What do you think?
	What's the evidence for this?
	Okay, when I was younger and I was going to start kindergarten, I couldn't start kindergarten that was close because I'd been born too late in the year.
	And my mother would be outraged at this because she would scream and yell and Over the fact that the government was so inconsiderate.
	Wait, so she screamed and yelled because she had to spend more time with you?
	Yeah.
	You said she was a stay-at-home mom, right?
	Yep.
	Actually, she really wasn't.
	Yeah, I know.
	Because if she's sending you to school all day, it takes a little bit of the mom thing out of the equation, right?
	Yeah.
	So she was screaming and yelling because she couldn't send you to the government daycare as quickly as she wanted, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I don't think that's a problem with the world being unfair.
	Yeah.
	What do you think it is?
	Oh, I think I'll hold off on that.
	I think I'm going to gather more information so that if I'm going to go off...
	I always like to go off fully cocked.
	I don't like to go off half-cocked.
	I like a full magazine in the cockiness.
	So I'm going to gather a little bit more.
	Just a smidge.
	Before I decide to take the safety off.
	So, okay.
	So there's one example of where you think that your mother may have trouble with the unfairness of the world.
	What else?
	Well, I don't have much more on the elementary school, but...
	Well, I do have some...
	Well, when I started high school...
	I started to have social anxiety and I started to become depressed and lose motivation.
	And where does the phrase social anxiety come from?
	You mean what it is?
	No, why do you use that phrase social anxiety?
	Let me put it to you this way.
	If I was left behind on a scuba trip and was in some open water scenario and had to spend the night with sharks rubbing around my legs, would I say, man, I really had some shark anxiety?
	Yeah.
	I mean, when I was in elementary school, all my friends were pretty mean to me.
	Okay.
	Why would you use the word friends?
	Because that's what I thought they were at the time.
	Okay, dude, I understand that.
	And at one point I thought there might have been a Santa Claus.
	That doesn't mean that I refer to him now as a potential entity.
	Sure.
	So I started thinking about this recently, and It seems like those people did the same to me that my brother did.
	They would put me down and humiliate me.
	Right.
	And do you remember how that would happen at school?
	It was mostly because I was the most enthusiastic.
	So that would sort of set them off.
	Right.
	Yeah, now I get it.
	Yeah, enthusiasm is like the red cape for the zombie bulls of social deadness.
	Yeah.
	You ever want to know what people are really like in this world?
	Just be happy.
	Be happy, be enthusiastic, and you will find out the true nature of Of the people around you.
	Yeah, and I remember conversations I used to have with myself about how I should keep my head down and be less enthusiastic.
	And I would feel guilty when I had caught the...
	Gotta hide.
	Gotta hide the joy, man.
	Gotta hide the joy.
	The joy is like this giant trace back to the source Batman searchlight that draws all the Nazgul to the very throat of your happiness.
	I know a new woman, very happily married, great guy, great woman.
	And I said to her once, I said, you know, you're not really hanging out that much with your female friends anymore.
	And she's like, yeah, well, so, okay.
	It's true.
	I don't really spend that much time with them anymore because generally, you know, when you're a married woman, you hang around a lot with other married women.
	It's just the way it works out, you know, more in common.
	And you tend to be in the suburbs and you're not downtown and tend to hang out more with...
	With other women.
	And she said, I love my husband so much.
	I mean, he is the greatest guy.
	And, you know, he's funny, he's warm, he's friendly, he's successful.
	He didn't make a lot of money, but he was very successful in the art that he did.
	And I admire his moral courage.
	He takes his real stance and all that.
	And she said, you know, I get together with these other women and I always do a bitch about their husbands.
	Ah, he's so lazy.
	Ah, he doesn't do this.
	Ah, he doesn't do that.
	I can't believe it.
	He doesn't do this.
	He doesn't listen.
	He's lazy.
	He's gaining weight.
	Ah, he's just in front of TV. He doesn't do much beer.
	He doesn't eat the right food.
	Too much red meat.
	Ah, right?
	Just basically, it's like a flight with the witches of Eastwick with a barf bag made of their husband's souls and a rough flight, too.
	And she's like, you know, and they kind of, you know, they all bitch at their husbands.
	Then they kind of turn, swivel their heads, and look at me.
	And I don't know.
	I mean, I feel like, what, I'm supposed to make up faults about my husband now?
	I love him.
	In fact, the more time I spend around you people, the more I appreciate my husband.
	You're just making me love him even more.
	It's called...
	A stitch and bitch.
	You know, you get together and you sew and you bitch about life and you bitch about your man and you bitch about the patriarchy and you bitch about your opportunities and you bitch about your wage disparities and you bitch about this and you bitch about that.
	And try interrupting that flow of deep vomit tsunami that washes people away.
	And try being somebody enthusiastically in love with the love of your life around other people.
	And she said, yeah, I mean, she said, like, I can't take it.
	I can't take the conformity of having a bitch about someone I love.
	I won't do it.
	I won't do it!
	And part of me wants to say to these women, this is what the woman said, she said, part of me wants to say to these women, why did you choose him then?
	Yeah.
	So, do you want me to go on?
	Yeah, go ahead.
	Okay, so after I got out of high school, which I barely managed to finish, I had become really depressed and I felt burned out.
	And I tried to talk to my parents and tell them that I wasn't sure what I wanted to do the next year after high school.
	But they kind of forced me to go to this folk high school for one year.
	What was it called?
	The thing you went to?
	A boarding school?
	Yeah, I think maybe it's a little bit like that.
	You have different courses, but it's not like you get a diploma or anything.
	It's just something people do one year after high school when they're not sure what to do.
	And I tried to not do it because I really didn't want to and I wasn't sure what to do.
	But my parents were really insistent and they told me that one year without doing anything after high school would be a disaster and they would catastrophize and all that.
	I'm sorry, that last bit, they said it would be a disaster and what?
	And they catastrophized.
	Oh, right.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	So I ended up going, but I had a really hard time.
	I was really isolated and depressed and stuff.
	So I ended up dropping out after three months.
	And after that I was even more depressed and I started to avoid anything social.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	So after that experience, it took me a really long time to get back.
	And I was really depressed and felt like a failure.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	But weren't you told that you were a failure?
	By.
	By your family?
	In what way do you mean?
	Well, did your family think that you were very successful, that you had the potential for success, or if there were impediments to your success, that it may have something to do with how you were raised and they would try and work to help overcome that stuff?
	Or did they think that basically it was all your fault and things weren't working out because you were doing things wrong?
	Well, that's a bit strange because my parents usually tell me that I have a lot of capability but then they will criticize anything I want and anything I do and they will blame me for everything and they won't take any responsibility for anything they've done wrong.
	So yeah, you're right.
	I saw Dr.
	Phil the other day and I'm I don't really watch it, but I was just having some breakfast and flipped on the TV. And because there's nothing I like better than flat scream, Ebola screaming.
	But I just happened to...
	Robin, I think his wife's name is.
	Now, okay, she does look like a sort of ornate ostrich egg with hair because she's had, I think, a lot of work done and so on.
	But she seems to have a really good heart.
	His wife.
	I don't know much about her.
	I don't...
	But she seems to have a very good, unsensitive heart.
	And there was some messed up family on there.
	And he surprised his wife.
	He held up some pictures of his son's...
	Jay, I think his name is.
	His son's 35th birthday.
	And his mother was giving him a book.
	And they both had smiles on their face and give a good hug.
	And...
	She seems like a really open-hearted and sensitive and caring mom, right?
	So I say that not knowing much about her.
	So she said that...
	He asked her, you know, what did you say when you gave this book to our son?
	And she said...
	She teared up and she said, I'm giving you this book because it's a blank book.
	I want you to write down your thoughts because I think your thoughts are really brilliant.
	I've always said this to you that you're really brilliant.
	I really, really want you to write down your thoughts.
	I don't want them to pass through your head and not be recorded.
	They're really brilliant.
	That moved me.
	Credit where credit is due.
	I thought that was a beautiful moment to share.
	It's a very private moment and so on, but it was a beautiful moment to share.
	And she was, you know, sensitive and vulnerable, and she obviously really loves her son.
	And I think the youngest son is some sort of rock and roll guitarist, which is fine, obviously, but the oldest son runs a book publishing company, if I remember rightly.
	I think he's published one or two Dr.
	Phil's books.
	Anyway, so...
	That, to me, was a lovely thing to see.
	I just, you know, all cynicism aside, yes, it's Dr.
	Phil, blah, blah, blah, but I thought that was just a beautiful moment to hear about in someone's family, that she genuinely did think that her son was brilliant, and they've obviously done some things right, to put it mildly.
	And...
	Sabotaging a child, let me tell you something, and you know this better than I do.
	Let me tell you something.
	Sabotaging a child is just about the easiest thing in the world.
	Breaking a child is just about the easiest thing in the world.
	Children aren't like, if you grab a chicken egg and you wrap your hand evenly around it, it's very hard to break, because that's the way the tension of the egg hangs together.
	But if you take a finger and poke it down the top, you can break it with almost no effort.
	Breaking a child is a very easy thing to do.
	It takes time, but once you start down that road, Once you break that child, the repair by the parent is like trying to undo an omelet and putting the raw egg back into the egg.
	I don't think it really works.
	And to break a child, there's no better way, in my opinion, to break a child than to seem to be enthusiastic about that child's potential while undermining any emotional habits that might support its achievement. to break a child than to seem to be enthusiastic
	My mother was very enthusiastic about a lot of the stuff that I did.
	She really helped with my writing.
	I remember the very first novel I wrote called The Jealous War.
	About the First World War, she gave me the German that the soldiers spoke, and she helped me, and she liked it, and she was enthusiastic about it.
	So I get that enthusiasm can totally coincide with sabotage.
	In fact, enthusiasm in a terrible way is kind of an essential element of sabotage.
	Because if you are too openly...
	Destructive, then the child rebels.
	The child identifies the source of the problem.
	Like, the best abusers are real sweethearts at times and very enthusiastic and very positive and very helpful, very complimentary, very supportive.
	Because that way, it distracts their victims from identifying the source of the problem.
	And so the fact that your parents say, well, you have a lot of capabilities, and then they undermine and criticize and this and that and the other.
	Well, that's not unimportant.
	I'm not saying it's the answer.
	I'm not saying that that's what they're doing.
	I don't know your parents, and I've barely heard much about them.
	But I'm saying that the enthusiasm is not incompatible with undermining.
	Someone.
	You know, there's a...
	I saw once a Dancing with the Stars audition.
	I've never watched a show.
	I can't even remember for the life of me while I was watching it.
	I watched a Dancing with the Stars audition where the dancer was a guy in his late 20s, probably.
	And he was absolutely terrible.
	And he was dressed terribly.
	And he was just awful.
	And his mother...
	Was wildly enthusiastic about his capacities as a dancer.
	And he was just awful.
	And the judges were literally like, what are you doing here?
	I mean, have you ever seen this show?
	Have you ever seen a real dancer?
	Have you ever taken a dance lesson?
	What are you doing here?
	And the mother was like, oh, you don't understand.
	He's a genius.
	You can't see the beautiful work that he's doing.
	And I was like, oh, I guess that's why you're here.
	Because you are...
	A humiliation receptacle for your mother's delusions.
	And she was obviously very enthusiastic about him.
	But enthusiasm...
	What does it mean?
	Enthusiasm...
	In terms of helping someone is fine if you give them the practical steps by which they can achieve success.
	But just being enthusiastic or supporting someone without giving them any practical steps and then in the next breath undermining everything you've tried to build up is just a weird, disorienting, macabre dance.
	It's like saying, I really need you to leave this hotel.
	At a run!
	Go take on the world!
	And then you push a button that makes the revolving door just keep going round and round and round and round.
	So I can understand why you'd be nervous about talking to your parents about these things.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	They might.
	They might listen.
	They might help.
	But they also might undermine and that might be very painful, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, I got more examples of arguing and how they argue with me and undermine me.
	Go ahead.
	To sort of illuminate.
	But do you think I could tell one more story?
	I remembered one story recently from when I was very young.
	I hadn't remembered that for years.
	Is it okay?
	Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
	Well, I think I was around three or four years old.
	And I remembered recently that my mother used to threaten me to give me away to child services whenever I acted out.
	Gosh.
	And I remember one time we were going somewhere on a road trip or something.
	And my mother...
	I didn't want to go.
	And my mother got really angry and she pretended she was on the phone with child services and told me they were coming to pick me up.
	Oh my god.
	Yeah.
	So she literally went through a whole pantomime of...
	Convincing you with a disconnected phone, convincing you that she had called what to you were basically police and the police were going to come and take you away from her forever?
	Yeah, that was sort of her pitch.
	That is so morally vile.
	That is so psycho.
	I think that may have been the information I was looking for.
	How old were you at this time?
	I think I was around three.
	Three?
	Yeah.
	Maybe four.
	I'm not sure.
	Wow.
	Man, I am so sorry.
	I am so sorry.
	What a terrifying...
	Horrendous, vile and destructive experience to go through.
	I'm so incredibly sorry that your mother would, in such an evil manner, go through the pantomime of sending you out into the dark with strangers, never to return, because you disagreed with something.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I wouldn't call social anxiety the right phrase for a legitimate fear of being rejected and abandoned by the only caregiver you had.
	Yeah.
	So, I couldn't even remember this until a few weeks ago.
	Right.
	yeah so who knows who knows what she said to your brother Yeah.
	I'm sure she made the same threat to your brother.
	He's older, right?
	Yeah, of course he is, right?
	So, I'm sure she made the same threat to your brother.
	You better get along well with your new sibling, or it's off to the foster home to you.
	Huh.
	So, of course, if he feels angry, he's going to get hysterical.
	Because he has issues with you, for whatever, not you, as an individual, but he may have been threatened with something like that.
	I'm sure he was, right?
	This is not something they just invent for the second time around, right?
	I'm not sure.
	I mean, it would make sense, but yeah.
	I mean, a child, I believe, Experiences the threat of maternal abandonment as a death threat.
	Like I will choke you until your lungs expire and you die.
	I will put you in the oven and bake you until your eyeballs explode and your spine melts and you die.
	Yeah.
	Bye.
	So, do you want me to...
	I made some notes about what happens when I argue with my parents and sort of different things I've remembered from my childhood.
	Well, I feel like we're just kind of blowing past some pretty significant stuff here.
	About threatening, yeah.
	What was your emotional experience or thoughts or feelings When your mother was going through this elaborate pantomime of casting you out into the dark with strangers.
	I remember I thought it was real and I remember I was really panicked and I was trying to see what I could get away with and then she started saying that she had already called them and pretending she was on the phone with them and I remember crying and And she held it together for some time as well.
	She continued the charade, right?
	As if it were true and believed it.
	Yes, even after I told her that I would do what she wanted, she told me that it was too late for a little bit because I guess she wanted to build up commitment.
	So that I would commit to it and then she would pull the plug.
	What was your feeling when this was going on?
	When you believed this was about to happen?
	The knock was about to come at the door and you were about to get taken away into some...
	I thought I would be raised in a foster home or something.
	No, no, no!
	What did you feel?
	I felt panicked and sad.
	And what do you feel when you're talking about it now?
	Wow.
	It feels pretty foreign.
	Foreign is not a feeling?
	I don't feel a lot.
	I feel a little bit Well, I think, because I'm feeling what you are not feeling, which is the common pattern, but I think that it would probably not be a great idea, in my opinion, I'm just speaking, of course, as some guy on the internet, but I don't think it would be a great idea, Bob, for you to talk to your family without having some connection to these emotions.
	Okay, I see.
	Because otherwise you won't have any...
	You'd be like trying to box in zero gravity when the other person has full gravity.
	You just hit and float and fly, not rooted, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, this is joyful, grim, evil, sadistic, psychotic, ugly, vicious, destructive, soul-breaking behavior on the part of your mother.
	Yeah.
	And knowing the degree to which your mother would manipulate and terrify a three-year-old for the sake of winning some conflict means that you can't have an existence, you can't have thoughts, you can't have disagreements, you can't have feelings.
	And she knew that it would freak you out and make you panic.
	And...
	The word is hysterical.
	It would make you hysterical.
	You would do anything to stay in that environment rather than, as your childhood self would experience, be basically cast out to die in the woods.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	And if you can't connect to those feelings, I think it would not be very...
	You can't bring enough of your true self to the conversation with your parents to, I think, even be there.
	Yeah.
	So I've been reading John Bradshaw.
	I started his book Homecoming.
	Yeah.
	And I've been trying to connect to this.
	And I've been successful in connecting to some things, but then other days I'm not successful at all.
	You haven't done therapy, I'm going to assume, right?
	No, I haven't.
	Okay, I would certainly suggest that.
	Yeah.
	So, do you think it's...
	Do you think I should just try to avoid my family as much as possible until I have...
	I wouldn't think about your family at the moment.
	I would think about yourself.
	Because the moment you and your family, in my opinion, are in a win-lose situation.
	Your family comes into your head and you vanish.
	You hide.
	You disappear.
	You ghost.
	You take the one-way cannon shot to the ghost nation and you hide in the non-existence, right?
	Yeah.
	So when your family comes into your head and you start thinking about, should I do this, should I do that, confront or not, you vanish.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I can't find you.
	I've got pretty good eyes.
	Yeah.
	So the more you think about the family, that is a way of continuing your incorporality, your lack of existence, right?
	So the more that you think about your family, the more you vanish yourself, right?
	Yeah, I see.
	So if you just say, look, I'm not going to think about my family for a week or two at least, I'm just going to think about myself and my experiences, right?
	Yeah.
	Then that's the way I think of, right, when the inner family comes up in your head, your youthful experiences, your childhood experience have to vanish, right?
	Because the reason I say that it's sadistic what your mother did is because she knew it was going to be terrifying to you.
	Yeah.
	And therefore, what happens is your emotional reality becomes dangerous to you because...
	Abusive people use it to hurt you, right?
	As I said before, you say to the torturer, man, it really hurts when you do that.
	What's the torturers like?
	Well, thank you, right?
	I also remember that aspect of my childhood having to hide things from my mother because I knew she would bring it up later to discredit me or to get what she wanted.
	It was always that.
	Right.
	So where identity is torture, where vulnerability is a target, where openness is a gap in the armor, the Shiv comes through.
	then you can't have Expressed emotions, and if you can't have expressed emotions, the most efficient way to do that is to just not have emotions at all.
	Yeah, and that's where I'm stuck.
	So, okay.
	So, listen, man, I would say that this is a job for, you know, a therapist, an enlightened witness, somebody who sympathizes, somebody who gets it, somebody who is not willing to give the mealy-mouthed excuses that seem to be Like dust in the wind for abusers.
	Everybody just spits out all these mealy-mouthed excuses either because they are abusers or they're frightened of them.
	If you want to know the prevalence of child abuse in the world, just look at all the people who invent excuses for these people.
	And if you have a therapist who gets it, who understands it and who can Be there in a sympathetic manner where your emotions are not going to be a danger to you, but are going to be a source of strength to you, which is very much the opposite of what you grew up with, and I think that is the best way for you to reconnect with that stuff.
	Okay.
	Well, thank you, Stefan.
	You're very welcome.
	I hope that you let us know how it goes, Bob, and I'm incredibly sorry.
	For what you experienced.
	Thank you.
	That gives me a really terrifying portrait and explains everything that you were talking about earlier in so much detail.
	Well, thanks for that, because I've been sort of confused about why I've been feeling this way.
	Or not feeling this way, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, look, you grew up in an environment where authentic feelings were often at odds With the interests of those in power, right?
	Yes.
	There is no...
	People around me have no inconvenient emotions, right?
	I mean, Mike, we've worked together for a long time now.
	I mean, have I ever said, well, you shouldn't be feeling that?
	No.
	You're off the air.
	No.
	No, you have not.
	No, I mean, there's times when my daughter, my wife, my friends, I mean, God, times when I have inconvenient emotions, but there are no fundamentally inconvenient emotions.
	All emotions are physiological expressions of value judgments.
	Those value judgments can be conscious or subconscious, but they're just information.
	Is there inconvenient pain in the body?
	No.
	Well, I guess all pain is inconvenient, but it's pretty damn necessary.
	You don't want to live a life without the capacity to experience pain or you won't know what the hell is going on in your body.
	And having emotions that are inconvenient to those in power is fundamental to the moral progress of mankind.
	All progress That is philosophical, that is foundational, that is fundamental, that is moral.
	All progress is inconvenient to those in power, because power calcifies and hardens over existing prejudices, and ethics blows aside prejudice and unseats those in power.
	All moral progress is inconvenient to those in power, both from a personal and a moral standpoint, if they're exercising power.
	And I want All my daughter's feelings.
	I want all my wife's feelings.
	All my friends' feelings.
	I want all my feelings.
	Because if I don't have feelings, I can't have consequence.
	If I don't have feelings, I can't have purpose.
	If I don't have feelings, I can't have courage.
	Because I'll have nothing to be courageous for and no gold to sacrifice anything for.
	A lack of feelings indicates a continual desire to merely survive the moment.
	And a lifetime spent surviving the moments is a lifetime of inconsequential self-ghosting for the sake of abusers who aren't even in the room anymore and who have no power over you anyway.
	Don't aim to survive the moment.
	That's for mice with hawks around.
	That's for bunnies under the shadows of eagles.
	That is not for free sovereign Human souls which can sharpen themselves to true sword brightness of virtue on adversity.
	Don't be a mammal at the feet of dinosaurs looking to just not get squished.
	Have some sex and make it back down a hole.
	Aim to be bigger.
	Aim to be greater.
	Aim to be deeper.
	Aim to have some power, some consequence, some substance, some influence.
	Without great passion, there is no great purpose.
	Without great purpose, there is no moral improvement.
	Without moral improvement, we'd still be picking nits out of each other's asses, throwing shit when we were offended, and trying to mount an unconscious female ape.
	So to not have feelings is to barely exist in the present and be completely invisible to the future.
	Feelings are the fuel that drives and motivates the achievement of anything of import in this world.
	And the greatest moral progress that we need has to come from the greatest and deepest and most moral Of experiences, which means processing and accepting the evil and the good that was done unto us and the evil and the good that we've done unto others.
	You can recite a song or you can sing passionately.
	And the only way to connect with the deepest hopes and dreams of mankind, which is how to motivate them to have a better future, is to be in connection with your own greatest and deepest hopes and desires.
	What we connect with most deeply within us echoes like a giant bell across the whole human landscape.
	If you set a big enough bomb off underground, you feel it all over the world.
	But you have to go deep.
	You have to go deep for that to happen.
	Connect all the way down.
	Philosophy is a plumb line down, down to the lizard brain, down to the spine, down to the very festering bacteria that process our food.
	We connect at that deeper level, we connect wide to others.
	Connect at a merely intellectual level, you will connect with other intellectuals and you'll all talk and make words and write blogs and make posts.
	But connect at a very deep and visceral level, you connect with everyone who has those feelings.
	And you'll even connect with people who don't have those feelings.
	This guy, this Bob, great guy.
	He connects with this show, though he does not yet connect with himself much, in my opinion.
	Yeah.
	But you connect with this show, right?
	When we talk about feelings here, you get it at some level, right?
	Yeah.
	I feel like this show saved me by showing me what the problem was.
	I'm thrilled.
	I'm thrilled.
	I'm thrilled, thrilled, thrilled.
	Thank you so much for sharing that.
	That moves me enormously.
	It makes...
	It all worthwhile.
	But to deny our deepest feelings is to deny that which connects us with everybody else or with most other people.
	And that, I think, is why they're worth accepting and pursuing.
	If you want to have a life that has love and permanence in it, then the deeper your feelings, the more constant your affections.
	The deeper your feelings, the more constantly your loyalties, both to others and to that which is best within yourself and to the principles of That I think we all hold dear, and rightly so.
	A life without feeling is the life of a slave.
	You know those butlers, those English butlers who can't really have any feelings, they just have to be these automatons, with the one Michael Caine exception.
	But the life of a slave is the life of unfeeling conformity to the will of the master.
	And I think that the life of a slave is the life of surviving every moment with no long-term plans and no sense and no thought and no goal and no desire for anything other than the survival of the moment.
	And I'm not sure that is really the life of a human being.
	Dare to have desires inconvenient to others.
	Dare to To have dreams that overturn the world.
	Because the only world that can be overturned by a dream is a nightmare world.
	Dare to be a light that exposes evil.
	All light exposes evil.
	The reason that evil people attack the virtuous is that it's one or the other.
	If the virtue in the human soul grows...
	The evil, the predators, the intraspecies exploiters are all revealed and all lose out.
	There's a reason the tiger has stripes just like the grass because it camouflages, it hides.
	That way it gets close to its prey before it pounces and eats.
	Virtue takes away the grass that hides the tigers and you see them far away.
	You see where they are.
	You can avoid them.
	It is the deep passion for virtue that strips away the camouflage of evil.
	They hate it.
	Of course they do.
	It ain't so much fun when the rabbit has a gun.
	And virtuous people have been the haunted and the hunted throughout history.
	No more!
	Fuck that.
	I, for one, am sick and tired of good people being mealy-mouthed.
	I'm not talking about you, Bob.
	I'm sick and tired of virtue having to appease.
	I'm sick and tired of good people having to turn around and turn themselves into liquid or ghosts or gas or something to just fit into the crazy bullshit of immorality that so runs the world as a whole.
	I am so sick of Of hearing virtuous people make apologies for evildoers.
	I am so sick and tired of good people having to bow and bend and scrape and apologize for the tiny scraps of light they managed to snatch from the everlasting interstellar dark of this fucking planet.
	I think there are enough of us now.
	I think we found each other in these deep human threads of the internet.
	I think there are enough of us now that we don't have to hide.
	We don't have to live in the sewers.
	We don't have to live in the vents.
	We don't have to live in hiding.
	We don't have to scurry.
	We are no longer the tiny mammals at the feet of the ancient dinosaurs.
	We are now bigger than the lizard kings of history.
	We can, now that we found each other, now that we know, Now that we have reason behind us, now that we have evidence, now that we have emotional connection and therapy and love and trust and self and identity and authenticity.
	Now that we no longer have to be ghosts in the halls of the dead.
	We can throw wide these curtains, blow wide these ancient light-defying ceilings.
	And bring light to this.
	And yes, it will cause the vampires to turn to dust and scurry and turn into bats, which some fucker in Africa is still likely to eat.
	But there are enough of us now.
	We can stop, stand our ground, turn the fuck around, and open fire with light.
	I love the phrase lightning.
	Because it has two meanings.
	Obviously, it is the fork of electrical energy between the clouds and the ground.
	Lightning also means a lightning of your load.
	Pray.
	It requires hiding.
	Hiding requires energy.
	There's two ways to hide when you're a prey.
	One, under incredibly heavy armor that you've got to drag around on your ass, like a turtle or a tortoise, or the spines of a porcupine.
	That's heavy shit.
	Or, you gotta be like a salamander, watching the whole time, darting, moving, keeping, go under the rocks, shit, something, move, move, run, run, hide, hide.
	That shit is exhausting.
	I don't want to drag around armor anymore, and I sure as shit don't want to spend the rest of my life hiding under fucking rocks.
	No, no, no.
	Yes, virtuous people throughout history have always been outnumbered by the evil and the indifferent who serve them.
	There's a king, the king is fuck all without an army.
	There has always been the evildoers and the indifferent and the conformists who serve them.
	And they have always outnumbered the good men and women of this world.
	But we have a place to take a stand.
	I was going to say we have our Alamo, but it's not really how we want things to end.
	Custer's last stand of virtue, join me!
	We have enough now.
	We can stop, stand our ground, and turn around.
	And say to the evildoers, fuck you, who put you in charge?
	Who the fuck put you people in charge?
	You manipulative, squid-faced, ink-spurting, human-strangling, sucker-faced psychos.
	Who the fuck put you in charge?
	History and fear and blood.
	That's it.
	History, fear, and blood.
	We stand, we turn, we open our minds, we open the searchlight of our mouths and drive this shit back with the power of language and light and clarity and reason and evidence and truth!
	That little fucking cannon that so long has lain with its fuse unlit in this world.
	Fire!
	Yeah, I think it's time for that.
	Stefan Molyneux, Free Domain Radio.

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