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March 8, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:26:33
2928 Irrational Optimism as Vanity - Call In Show - March 6th, 2015
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Stefan Mullen from Freedom Aid Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
Hope you will check out our new presentation on sex, mating, family, and how to avoid being lunch for a praying mantis.
So, a nice letter we got.
Somebody wrote in and said, just wanted to say thank you again.
I've only been listening for six months and my perspective is radically changing.
Your efforts has really made me see that I was using libertarianism as an excuse to be angry.
Yes, I intellectually agreed with the arguments for peace and freedom, but somewhere along the line I was corrupting that process to the point where I was no longer participating in a productive conversation.
Well, I think we've all been there.
I was attacking anyone who disagreed and it It was so that I would feel better about myself while going through extremely hard times.
You have helped me realize fully that I was not being objective or honest with myself.
I was being self-righteous and self-destructive.
I am finally regaining confidence and I am motivated to seek therapy.
I found it so poetic and beautiful and triumphant that one man's example can resound Through wires across an entire planet and make such a fundamental change in perspective.
In saying that, I hope that this email will give back just a little bit of the emotional satisfaction you've helped me to find.
Now that's, I mean, what can I tell you?
It's a wonderful and moving, tender, courageous, and fundamentally ethical and philosophical letter.
So thank you so much.
Please, of course, keep me coming.
Keep me honest with your positive and negative feedback.
I always look forward to hearing that.
From you.
And thanks again.
That's a lovely, lovely message.
And I really, really appreciate it.
All right, Mr.
Mike, who do we have on first?
All right.
Well, up first today is Robert.
Robert wrote in and said, a repeated pattern in my life has been the pursuit of a certain goal, the attainment of that goal, and then disappointment.
Once I have what I want, I find out that it doesn't really make me happy and I'm back to square one.
What are your thoughts on this kind of pattern?
And is this something you've experienced yourself?
Yeah, I think there's a certain type of people who tend to achieve something and then feel dissatisfied with that achievement.
And that tends to be, there's a phrase for it, homo sapiens.
It's all of us who feel that way.
And so you're not alone in that.
Was it Martina Navratilova, the tennis star, or someone who said, the thrill of victory lasts about 15 minutes.
And when you have achieved some great goal, then your body sort of resets itself and says, okay...
We're now going to take that for granted.
And what we're going to do is move the goalpost.
This is why the moving goalpost is sometimes such an annoying thing to experience intellectually in a debate.
Because it happens to us all the time.
There's a reason why, you know, we didn't just like, Oog has fire.
We will never need anything else.
Like, Oog has fire.
Fire warm.
Fire nice.
Fire cooks things.
Fire boring.
Must find something else.
And that is a basic reality that human consciousness, I believe, progresses through a series of triumphs and dissatisfactions.
I think it was Leonardo da Vinci, one of the most accomplished human beings in all of world history.
I mean, what he achieved in just about every field he put his mind to is nothing short of staggering.
And...
I read, actually, I read a book which was a collection of his sister's letters when she was in a convent.
And he also, I mean, he had terrible lung problems.
And anyway, an amazing, staggeringly gifted and hardworking human being.
And he said at the end of his life, or close to the end of his life, he said, I regret that I have made so little use or such little use of the gifts that God saw fit to grace me with.
So even though he achieved every conceivable thing that you could imagine in any field anybody would go down in history, and he did this in multiple fields, he's like, eh, I could have done better.
You suck, Da Vinci!
This is like a morning mantra or something like that.
Apparently his...
His inner alter ego was Stifler.
But yeah, it's natural.
It's natural.
We are goaded on by the sweet taste of success, which we believe will last a lifetime.
And then, you know, half an hour after we reach that milestone, it's like, I mean, let's move on to the next thing.
Is that bad?
I mean, I don't know.
Yeah.
But it seems to be kind of inescapable.
Now, that's not to say that we can't achieve greater peace of mind and self-satisfaction and so on, self-knowledge and all of that is important.
But to me, thinking that a success is going to leave you content for the rest of your life It's sort of like saying, well, this next meal is going to be the best meal I've ever tasted, so I'm never going to be hungry again.
It's like, nope, it's great to have a better meal rather than a bad meal, but you are going to consume it, you're going to use it up, and you're going to need to eat again.
The best water I ever tasted, I'll never be thirsty again.
Oh, actually, wait about an hour, you'll probably be thirsty again.
So, I don't think that that's inevitable, like the dominoes of dissatisfaction.
We don't have to surf them all the way into the black hole of the grave, but I think that to expect a kind of satisfaction that is going to last long beyond an achievement, I think is not realistic.
Does that make any sense to you?
Sure, I agree with everything that you said and more, and would add that the...
That wasn't my exact question.
There was a piece that was missing that was more personal to it than that.
And what I meant to say is that when I find a passion and I pursue it doggedly, let's say, and then discover that it isn't what I thought it would be, for example, I was a singer and a musician through the 80s, and I thought, hey, all you have to do is be really good, and everything will work out.
Well, that wasn't true, and it has a lot to do with the people that you know, and the cliques that you hang with, and being lucky, and having the right connections, and having all these other things.
I had an impoverished map of the world in relationship to what I thought it was really like, and this is a pattern that I've repeated Throughout my life.
I mean, I thought I wanted to be Bruce Lee for a while, didn't we all?
And then I took a lot of martial arts classes and found out, well, you know, the people who are really good at martial arts actually like to hurt people.
And so I'm going to dump that.
I don't want to be beating people up.
And so then I get into IT, and I self-teach, and I get into back in the dot-com era.
All of us were getting in by our bootstraps, and it was a lot of fun.
We were hanging out on IRC and BBSs, and we were playing with Linux and All that stuff, and I thought, well, I'll self-teach myself up, and I'll be fine, and everybody will want my services, and that sounds good.
And so then I get into the dot-com social circles, and I find out that it's saturated, not completely, but it has a known tendency for a lot of abusive managers and immaturity, and you'll be...
I'll be dealing with a senior manager that's wearing a kilt with purple hair, who's got a plastic medieval sword on his belt, wearing flip-flops telling me something I don't even understand.
So that was really frustrating.
And then going on and on, even my current love and passion even has a lot of the same characteristics.
I think I finally found what I want to do again.
And so...
I just think, hey, I've just got to get the skill.
People want it.
I can sell it.
Everything's going to be fine.
But no.
But no.
I feel like Charlie Brown when Lucy keeps pulling the ball away from him and he keeps on trying over and over again.
Right.
Okay.
Okay.
Is there more that you wanted to add to that?
Well, I just wanted to provide examples.
There's a subtle difference.
I mean, I agree with what you said before.
But the difference here is personal, and it has to do with, I think, probably an impoverished map of the world of really understanding the difference between about what I think reality in life is in work and business and what actually is.
Right.
Now, you have an adverse childhood experience score of 9, right?
That's correct.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What are the effects that you think that has had on your, as you say, impoverished map?
Well, I could write a book on it, and it's not funny.
But within the context of this conversation, I think because I moved around so much and I didn't have a chance to form trust relationships with peers, it took me a long time to figure out the unspoken Rules of socialization because I never really did socialize successfully within my peer groups.
I didn't have any support at home.
They basically raised me like a potted plant.
Here's some food.
Here's some water.
Of course we love you.
You live here, don't you?
That's about all you're going to get out of my folks.
It did create a lot of gaps in my social understanding of things and my ability to To see things clearly.
Right.
So with the new information, I'm just wondering what the specific question is that I could take a swing at for you.
Oh, sure.
You know, I mean, maybe it's naivety.
It's back to what we talked about a long time ago, but it's I think it's just me, or at least my programming.
But what is it that keeps me picking or choosing or being attracted to these things that I really like to do and then having the ball pull out from under me like Lucy and Charlie Brown?
So why is there a repeat of childhood?
Did you spend some time in your childhood trying to reach out to your parents, trying to hope that your parents would connect with you in a positive manner?
You know, it was so chill that it never occurred to me that that was something that anybody did.
And even to this day, I have to self-erase completely with my surviving dad.
You know, it's pointless.
So, the only people that I've been able to connect to is, of course, my girlfriend, who's brilliant.
I love you, Stefan!
If that was, in fact, your girlfriend and not a chillingly realistic hand puppet, hi back.
Are you a chillingly realistic hand puppet?
No, I'm pretty sure that I'm a human.
Okay.
Excellent.
She's only about two feet tall, but I'm just kidding.
All right.
I'm an elf.
So, it's been very difficult to even find.
I've been very fortunate to have...
Some friends in the past that I've been able to resonate with and talk to and connect with.
But one of them has recently passed away, so I just have one now.
All right, so let's talk about your dad then.
Because most of the people that you've talked about as having problems with since the big hair band days of the 80s are met, I would assume, right?
Yes.
So you have to self-erase around your dad.
What does that mean?
What happens?
We don't have conversations.
He's religious, and he lives in his own kind of Jesus, Andy Griffith show, Thought Bubble.
He grew up in a rural area, and he was the king of the football team, and he went into the Air Force.
The only conversations we've ever been able to have are How's fishing?
Have you accepted Jesus Christ yet?
Because you're going to go to hell and pass the potato chips.
We never get anywhere with anything.
If it is raised, he'll just change the subject.
The last time I saw my father was just a couple of months ago, and I hadn't seen him in many years.
We just sat down for lunch, and it was just like talking to strangers.
It was pointless.
Right, okay.
And are there other people in your life who were like that at all at the moment, or was it just basically the echoes of dead?
Oh, I don't have anybody else in my life that I have to self-erase around now.
I'm taking good care of that.
Right.
See, the challenge is that, like Robert, so the challenge is that we're trying to deal with a very emotional topic here, but you're not emotional, right?
Right.
Well, I'm getting kind of like a script, like I have the feeling that you've said this stuff a bunch of times before.
And I'm not criticizing, I'm just pointing out that if we're going to try and deal with an emotional topic, if you're not emotionally open, we can't really get anywhere, right?
Well, sure, sure, you know.
I'm feeling a really strong sense of sadness and heaviness and futility.
Are you in your 50s at the moment?
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
So...
What happens if you've got another 30 years on the planet and this doesn't change?
Like, I'm trying to get to the emotional driver that's underneath all this.
Like, nothing changes for the next...
You can't break out.
You can't break through.
You can't achieve.
You can't succeed.
And the ring of ourselves between you and paradise is just unbroken.
Yeah, it's so discouraging and crushing and...
And futile and pointless.
Like you just say, I feel like I'm just stuck in a social quicksand.
It just takes my breath away.
I've been fighting like hell, working on myself and improving my relationships around me.
But right now, I've just got a very small crew of people that I can't even talk to.
But thinking about that in the future is just...
I can't even breathe.
Yeah, I mean, for the most part, change occurs within us when the alternative to change is not getting out of bed in the morning, right?
Mm-hmm.
Exactly.
Like, I don't want to get out of bed and face my day, and I can't imagine wanting to get out of bed and face my day.
That's usually the time when we change.
I mean, without self-knowledge, without therapy, like, in the absence of this knowledge, right?
That's right.
And I feel that way often.
Right.
Right.
And you're a big boy, so I'm going to be blunt, but I think that's because of vanity.
Okay, that's interesting.
I don't mind at all.
Go on.
So, in your description, there was other people Who were the problem?
And the impoverished map of the world is your parents, right?
Right.
But there's no you in that.
There's no self-ownership as far as what you did, right?
So you've probably heard about this idea in self-knowledge called secondary gains.
And secondary gains are the things that you get paid under the table even while you claim you're losing money over the table, right?
Sure.
Yeah.
Right.
So, secondary gains.
When we say, basically, that the world is too irrational and people are too mean and the managers are all assholes and I was given an impoverished map of the world, these are, while I completely sympathize with the childhood, and if you were in your 20s, we'd be having a different kind of conversation, but in your 50s, it's a bit more urgent, right?
Yes, it is.
And by the time you're in your 50s, you should have reclaimed self-ownership vis-a-vis your childhood, in my humble opinion.
Sure.
So, I think that in a situation of conflict, we have a basic tendency, if you're very intellectual, and I hope you don't mind if I share the IQ that you mentioned.
You said that when you were tested as a kid, you had an IQ of 156.
Yeah, and they thought that I was lying.
They beat me for it.
Now, do you see what you just did?
I don't see what you see now.
Well, I was just talking about the IQ, and you immediately started blaming other people, and obviously if they'd said they'd beat you for your IQ test.
Yes.
Well, my parents punished me because they did not believe that it could be possible that I had to be lying, and so they forced the school to test me again.
And then what happened when you tested again and got similar scores?
Well, then the counselors at school were elated and were astonished and were embarrassed that my parents had me test again.
And then they talked to them about putting me in a special school and then my parents just got even more violent.
Right.
And that is, of course, tragic.
So with a very high IQ, the question then becomes, why has success eluded you?
Yes.
I didn't know it's because I don't understand something.
No, see, the language that you use is, because you're a very smart fellow, Robert, the language that you use is so subtle, right?
And does not contact at all the thesis of secondary gains, which I'm going to still work and try and get behind and push.
You said, because I don't understand something, right?
Yes.
Okay, so for how long, Robert, have you thought that you might not understand something?
My entire life.
Okay, okay, good, good.
So, I moved to Japan, and I want to become a salesman in Japan.
I'm in Japan for 40 years, or 30 years, and I'm just failing as a salesman.
And people say, well, why are you failing as a salesman?
I say, well, I guess...
I guess I just don't know Japanese.
What would you think if you heard me say that?
Well, if you knew that you didn't know Japanese, you'd think you'd probably want to learn Japanese.
Right.
And so, yes.
And so what I'm asking...
So what's the knowledge that's missing for you about people?
Yes.
That's what I'm asking you, because I don't know.
You don't know.
Got an IQ of 156, and you don't know.
How long have you listened to this show for?
Oh, you would be shocked how many gigabytes I've downloaded for all of you guys.
I would not be shocked.
I see the server reports.
I'm not shocked, and I appreciate that.
Okay, so with an IQ of 156, there's something between you and knowing what you need to know.
And I would argue that that thing is vanity, right?
When we feel we have great potential and other people, if we feel we have great potential, but we feel that other people are blocking us from our success, there's a secondary gain in that, right?
Do you know what that is?
Well, you don't have to take responsibility for it.
Well, you can hang on to the idea of your specialness, and you can say that the reason it's never manifested itself in the world, to my satisfaction, is because other people won't let it.
I didn't have the right context, you said, in the music.
I didn't hang in the right cliques.
I didn't write...
Right.
Well, you know, if that's true, I'm probably completely unaware of it, consciously.
It never occurred to me any time in my life that I was...
Special.
It just occurred to me that I was weird.
Dude, come on.
You emailed us and you said, I was tested as a kid with an IQ of 156.
Yes.
That's huge IQ, right?
Mike, if you can look up somewhere, that's like less than 1% of the population, probably a tenth of a percent of the population, right?
Yes, that's correct.
And so the first thing that you present to us is, I'm special.
And then you come on the call here and you say, well, it's never occurred to me that I might be special, right?
Well, sure, but I don't, I don't, it's, for some strange reason, there's a disconnect there because it...
Oh, dude, stop telling me, Robert, stop telling me there's a disconnect there.
I know there's a disconnect there.
That's what I'm trying to talk about right now.
Yes, okay, thank you.
Okay, you're telling me stuff that you're telling me again and again and again.
Thank you.
All right.
If we externalize the reasons for our failure, We gain relief from ego diminishment.
We gain relief from the puncturing of vanity.
Yes.
Right?
You have achieved successes in your life that lots of people would envy.
And you were in a band, you're a singer, songwriter, musician, right?
You did IT in the dot-com boom.
You know, you're obviously not calling me from a cardboard box.
And so you have achieved success, but there's a part of you that feels that the success you should have achieved should have been much greater, right?
That's really accurate, yeah.
Okay, so you do deep down feel that you're special, and the medals that you deserve were not given to you, unjustly, right?
I'm going to go ahead and...
And just accept that and feel that.
Because there's a part of me that knows that's true.
There's that part of me that just wants to say that's bullshit.
But I'm just going to listen to both sides.
Your IQ places you 1 in 10,581 people.
You're in the top 99.9905490555%.
Right?
Not to mention your musical talent, your singing voice, right?
You are an exceptional human being.
So what the fuck is my problem?
Okay, but that's what we're talking about, right?
Right.
That's what we're talking about.
If you're a race car driver and you think you should win every race, but you don't...
You can say, well, I don't get the right car.
I didn't have the right gas.
I didn't have the right pit crew.
It wasn't the right time.
I hadn't had any sleep because my neighbors were allowed.
Well, whatever, right?
But you know deep down that you are an exceptional human being.
And you look around and say, well, where's the treasure that comes from my exceptionalness, right?
Aha!
Contacts.
Mean people.
Mad bosses in kilts.
Those are the people who've kept me.
From my success.
Yeah, I'm completely full of shit in some area.
That's why I called you.
No, no, no.
Stop going extreme to extreme.
I really need you to interrupt your automatic responses because they're going to weary me and annoy the shit out of me after a while.
Because you leap in with language to constantly derail the conversation by jumping to conclusions rather than experience what we're talking about.
All right?
And that's the curse of the intellectual.
And I'm not...
It's not like I don't know anything about this.
I'm not the dullest...
But you don't want your intellect to ride your emotions like the jolly green giant squishing a Shetland pony, right?
So this automatic response that you have to derail things is annoying because we're not able to have a communication that's honest and open.
If you're, you know, if you're like Jedi guy with the sword and you view me as an army of robots with lasers, right?
Oh, man.
Your opinion is so valuable to you.
I mean, I'm just, I'm really going to just focus on my breath and just really be present.
Just breathe and listen.
And please understand, Robert, I might be entirely wrong.
Just so you know, I'm just, I'm just telling you what I think.
I don't, you know, I don't have a Vulcan mind melder.
I don't have a brain scanner.
I'm not a psychologist.
I'm just telling you what I think, right?
Sure.
So, is your girlfriend willing to take the mic?
Sure.
It's funny.
What?
Would you like to talk to Stefan?
Sure.
Stefan, hey.
How are you?
I'm pretty good.
All right.
Beautiful Bob is going to work on his breathing, and I just wanted to get a couple of thoughts from you, if that's all right.
Um, yeah, about what?
Just anything?
The man of the hour!
I don't know if you've been listening at all, or is this all a mystery to you?
Um, it's been difficult for me to hear what's going on.
All right, so your Bob, your Bob is in the top 99.990549055.
5% of the population when it comes to intelligence, right?
According to his childhood IQ test, which clocked him at 156.
Yes.
I mean, that is a seriously overclocked CPU, right?
And let me ask you this.
If he were able to utilize all of his actionable potential, all of the things that he's capable of, if he was able to put all four wheels on tarmac, What do you think he could achieve?
A lot.
Geez.
I mean, I don't know.
I don't know.
I mean, a lot of things.
Enough that he would be satisfied with things, at least to some degree?
Well, yeah.
I mean, he would basically be able to achieve all of his goals, I think.
And what do you think would happen to your relationship if he were to get all four spinning tires on the ground?
Well, I suppose it'd become, what, I don't know, a lot easier.
Just, I don't know, life would be easier.
How so?
How so?
Oh, how so?
Well, we'd have more money, that's for sure.
We'd probably have more space, too.
That would be really useful.
Yeah, things are kind of tight right now, so, you know.
And how long have you guys been a couple?
Oh, let's see, since like 2012.
And what was it that attracted you to Robert in the first place?
Other than his giant D-cup frontal lobes, but go on.
Yeah, no, his mind, yeah, it's...
Quite a thing.
His personality, his bluntness, his honesty, his ability and willingness to help me with my issues.
You know, stuff like that.
And if we put his intelligence at 10 out of 10, which seems to be statistically the case, where would you put yours?
Oh, well, yeah, I'm up in the same category.
I'm within, like, my most recent tests showed that I'm within, like, the less, the upper 2,000th percentile, at least.
So, yeah.
Oh, of intelligence?
Okay.
Yeah.
And do you feel the same sort of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with what you've been able to achieve with the gifts you've been provided?
Very, very much not satisfied with my own life.
Because a whole bunch of other things, lots of trauma and stuff in my life and gaslighting and fun things like that, which listening to a lot of your show has really helped me to process.
So thanks for that, by the way.
You're welcome.
But yeah, I've just been dealing with more and more crap.
I'm in the process of completely disconnecting myself from horrible, abusive people.
That's what I've been doing my entire life.
Even though I didn't even really get a grade school education, I did get a college degree.
Um, so, I mean, I know I can do stuff, but, like, you know, I want to go to a university and actually study to be a neuroscientist.
I'm actually interested in doing that, because brains, you know, I'm very interested in it.
I think that's supposed to be followed by...
Right!
And, um, are you in a similar age...
Range to Robert?
Actually, no.
I'm quite a bit younger, which is, you know...
Which, I guess, you know, is handy for me, I guess.
I mean, I haven't...
I mean, I've only had 33 years of horribleness happening to me, but I think, you know...
I'm at a turning point in my life, so hopefully I'll have the entire rest of my life ahead of me just fighting on ahead, basically.
And do you guys self-medicate at all?
I mean, obviously Bob's childhood was wretched and yours sounds rough and wretched too.
Do you guys self-medicate with drugs or alcohol at all?
Well, he doesn't, but I do like the weed.
But it helps in other ways, too.
Now, it's a Friday night.
I don't mean to jump to conclusions, but is there a half-eaten bag of Doritos anywhere in the vicinity?
No.
I don't eat junk food, so at least I have that down.
Right, okay.
All right.
Was there anything you wanted to ask me?
Gosh.
I don't know.
I can't really think of anything at the moment.
Okay.
If you can toss me back Bob's Melod app frame, I would appreciate it.
No problem.
Thanks, Stefan.
No problem.
All right.
Questions or questions?
Or Rant, which this is your buffet that you get to choose.
I'm going to just jump through the phone and accuse you of calling me names.
No, I really like where you're coming from on secondary game.
This is going to give me some traction.
I mean, there's...
And I'm going to do a lot of...
I'm going to really consider what you had to say.
I don't believe it, but I'm getting so much resistance emotionally from it that's probably a good sign.
Okay, so tell me the emotional resistance to it.
I feel like I'm watching a dance but being distracted by the language ticker tape below.
So what's the emotional response that you're getting to what I'm saying?
Yeah.
I'm too good at language for my own good.
It's just like, I'm thinking, well, how dare he say that?
I mean, he doesn't even realize that all these people have been mean to me, and he doesn't realize the depth of how horrible it's been.
And then another part of me is like, yeah, but, you know, maybe he's right.
Yes, because you want to use your suffering to dominate, right?
To be in the right, to be correct, to be self-righteous, to be, it was other people, I did my best.
To take responsibility out of the equation for you, right?
Sure, sure.
And that's a natural tendency.
Almost all of us, everyone I've met has that tendency.
I do, you do.
And everyone has that tendency.
When things go wrong, you know, we plan to let the, you know, we put up the shields, right?
It's like, ah, the consequences, responsibility can't touch me.
It was everybody else, right?
Oh, yeah.
And that arises out of punishment.
I don't think that's inhuman nature.
It's just because we get punished as children.
You know, it's like saying, hey, you want to lick this live electrical wire?
I really don't, right?
I don't want to have anything to do with it.
And if taking responsibility means getting punished, who dropped that plate?
I cannot tell a lie.
It was I. You know, out comes the paddle and down come the pants.
So you are punished for self-ownership.
You are punished for responsibility.
You are punished for being the owner and agent of your own destiny.
And so when self-ownership equals punishment, then we abandon the self.
We abandon ego.
We have to.
It's not like it's tempting and I succumb to that temptation.
No.
I mean, it's aversive training.
Self-ownership means punishment.
But without self-ownership, we cannot enjoy what we have created because Whenever we say, other people are responsible for my lack of success, we cannot ever say that I am responsible for my success.
Right.
You can't have both principles at play in the same personality for long.
Well, the part of me that's not participating in that bullshit is just simply asking How do I become crystal clear aware of what my part in all this is?
Because I know that you're right.
Bob, you don't have a part in all of this.
You know, if I write a novel, I don't say, which part did I write?
You don't have a part in all this, this being your life, your success, your failures, your choices.
You don't have a party in it.
It's all you.
Yeah.
Now, this doesn't...
And again, with all due respect, and I won't keep repeating this, but just understand, if you'd come from a different family, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
So I fully understand that.
Sympathize.
A-C-E of nine is brutal.
You're raised in a fucking gulag, and I really, really sympathize with that.
But...
That's decades ago.
Now.
And...
To face down the demon of self-abdication is the great task of anyone who aspires to heroism.
To face down the great demon of self-abdication is the great task of anyone who aspires to heroism.
Because when you say, I am responsible for my life, and I am responsible for everyone who is in my life, And I am responsible for every business relationship that I'm in.
And I am responsible for where I live.
And I am responsible for how much money I have or don't have.
And I am responsible for who I'm throwing my balls and penis at.
I am responsible for all of it.
All of it.
When you give yourself no out, I am responsible for all of it.
That is all for me.
Well-rubbered all-weather tires hitting the ground.
I am responsible for all of it.
You had shitty bosses.
I guarantee you, Robert, that when you went into that interview and you talked to those people for the first time, their dysfunction was shining like some giant strobe-like, flashlight, searchlight, lighthouse in your face.
Absolutely.
And you're like, well...
Let's roll the dice.
Let's give it a shot.
Maybe they'll change, right?
Yes.
I had a job interview once where the guy was talking about how a bunch of Chinese guys shot through his window.
I'm like, okay.
So if I go forward with this, can I really blame him?
Right up front.
Went on a date once.
I was set up.
Went on a date once.
The woman was like, we had a coffee, right?
And the woman was like, okay man, listen, great chat.
You're great.
Love to see you again.
Do you mind getting the coffee?
Like I'm broke because like the last guy I went out with like ran up $17,000 in credit card bills and I'm totally underwater trying to pay them off.
I'm like, hmm, I wonder if I should go forward with this or not.
I was in a multi-year relationship where we fought on our second date.
Now that's a dedication to not getting along.
That is just, man, I am really committed to not getting along with you.
And I'm not going to let you not get along with anyone else, only with me.
I could go on and on.
But when you look at it, the bandmates that you chose, you knew in the music industry, let's say that you're right, that you needed particular contacts, you needed this, you needed that.
Let's just say you're right.
Let's say you're right.
But you didn't do it, did you?
No.
You didn't do it.
You made the choice to not do that.
I know if I go and hang with this clique, I'll be successful.
I'm not going to go and hang with this clique.
My success was taken from me.
No, it wasn't.
It wasn't because when you tell me the reasons why you weren't successful, you're telling me that you chose to not be successful.
Right?
You know, all I had to do to win that running contest was practice running.
It was weird that I didn't win the contest.
But you just told me why you didn't.
All I had to do was is a confession that you didn't and chose not to.
Did you see what I'm saying?
Oh, I feel it.
You get it, right?
100% self-ownership.
And that's freedom.
That's the only goddamn freedom that this benighted planet is ever going to give you is 100% self-ownership.
Don't cede a goddamn thing to excuses.
I gave this apology to Christians the other night in the show and I could feel that weasel part of me rising up, slithering up like a glass spider up my spine saying, no, no, start to make excuses.
That will make you seem more...
No!
No, no, no, no.
100% self-ownership.
100%.
Well, you didn't know the information before.
No, because I say to people, the information is easily available.
If you're talking about a subject, you don't have the information, and you don't openly say you don't, you're just theorizing, then you are responsible.
So I'm responsible.
I'm responsible.
100%.
I do a good show.
Great.
I do a bad show.
100% responsible.
Even in these call-in shows where there's the...
I don't know what the call is going to say, right?
100% responsible.
100%.
And if you give up any of that percentage, the past wins.
Did you have any control when you were a child?
Fuck no.
Fuck no.
Did you have any authority?
Could you make anything happen when you were a child?
Worse than that.
Yeah.
You were a...
A dooku in a water spout, right?
You were a fart in a windstorm, right?
You're just hanging on trying to get it, right?
So you know what 100% no self-ownership looks like, right?
That's what history was for you as a child, right?
Yeah.
So the opposite of childhood, and you know, when you have a shitty childhood, Robert, you kind of have a weird negative.
I mean, you're old enough to know what negatives are, right?
Nobody knows.
What?
I don't know.
What is a negative when I shoot upside down with my cell phone?
But you know what a negative is?
It's how you used to develop film back in the day.
A friend of mine was a...
Oh, sure, yeah.
...was a photographer, right?
So it's like...
And if you're a really good photographer, you can hold that negative up to the light and you can see the picture as it's going to turn out, right?
Well, welcome to the incredible benefits of a shitty childhood.
You have been trained in everything that is the opposite of happiness.
You have been trained in everything that is the opposite of success.
You are controlled, encapsulated, imprisoned in the anti-factory of perfection, right?
Yes.
It's like that old Seinfeld joke, you know, if every single one of my instincts is wrong, then if I do the opposite, it will be great.
Yes.
And that is genius because you know everything not to do.
Did your parents ever take ownership for their own aggression or did they blame others?
Was it your fault that they got mad?
It was always my fault.
Always.
And also everyone else.
So you see, you've got a perfect multi-decade example of what happens when you don't take self-ownership.
When you blame your children of all things.
Your children of all things.
Of all the people in your life to blame, the children are like the least comprehensible.
But of course, they're the only people that you have power over or your parents had power over, so it's natural.
So you have, like, you're like someone who's like, my parents smoked three packs a day and then they sneezed three lungs out of each orifice and died.
It's like, well, you know what not to do now, don't you?
Right?
So if you look at the example of your parents, that's almost no self-ownership.
That's just being a pinball in your emotional reactions and blaming everyone else, right?
So you know what that is, what that looks like.
And how horrifying and ghastly and unfree it is.
Because there's no choice in that.
That is being dominated by reactive, defensive, bullshit non-emotions.
Passions.
There's no freedom in that.
Somebody who doesn't take ownership for his temper, who continually justifies his temper by blaming anyone who provokes him, that person is never going to be free.
Something's going to happen that pisses him off.
He has no capacity to restrain his emotions because he has no self-ownership.
There's no interception between stimulus and response.
He's less than a robot.
At least a robot You can take the batteries out.
You can turn the damn thing off, right?
And so you know what it looks like to not have self-ownership.
You have that imprint.
You have that example.
And you will be amazed, Robert, when you listen back to this conversation at how little self-ownership you accepted in telling me about your life.
I hope to be amazed.
You will be amazed.
Because now that I'm hopefully making this clear, that's called breaking with the past.
Breaking with the past doesn't mean you abandon it.
It means that you recognize that you can navigate perfectly by the map as long as you realize that it's completely upside down and inside out.
Right?
I mean, if you have a map that's upside down and you know it's upside down, it works fine!
Right?
And so if your childhood was horrifying and abysmal, which of course it was, then do the opposite.
I grew up with people who took no ownership for their emotions and punished other people who ever tried to ascribe ownership to them at all.
Even a tiny shred of ownership.
A tiny shred of ownership would result in a massive amount of attack.
And this is why your conversations with your dad devolve to dissociated abstractions and nice weather for this time of year.
Because that's the only way that you can avoid any kind of conversations about self-ownership.
If you look at your father, you see the living death Of blaming others.
The empty heart of pure projection.
Where your locus of control, your sense of who runs your life, is not in you.
It's in God.
It's in your boss.
It's in the band.
It's in the people who didn't give you the right promotion.
It's in the people who didn't give you what you deserved.
That was the problem.
And that is vanity.
Because vanity is Saying that I am going to shield myself from the consequences of 100% self-ownership.
I'm going to shield myself from that by putting ownership onto other people.
And then I get an out to blame them when things don't work out.
Are there shitty people in the world?
Absolutely.
But who's responsible for those shitty people in your life?
You are.
100%.
Because, and this is not to say if you had a bad childhood, of course, absolutely, but you had a bad childhood because people didn't exercise self-ownership, but they blamed you.
You can't punish someone for something that you have done, and so you have to think that your child has done something bad in order to punish the child, but that's taking no ownership for your anger and your desire to punish.
Right?
So, if you grow up I'm sorry, that sounds wrong.
I don't mean grow up, like in the past.
Like if you grow up as a child, if you grow up, Robert, seeing what happens when people don't exercise self-ownership, you should run screaming to the other extreme, which is the only sensible reality, that you do own 100% of your choices.
And you even own your choice to not own your choices.
You're smart.
I get it, right?
You understand that.
You own your decision to not be a successful musician who stops at nothing to get what he wants.
When I was younger, I wrote novels.
I wrote poems.
I wrote plays.
I was a philosopher.
Give me a break.
Who wants that gig?
And I wrote great stuff.
My novels are great.
And I could not get any purchase in that industry.
I could not get any purchase in that industry.
After I wrote, I was in a writing class.
And I got the most amazing review of the novel that I produced in that writing class.
I had a first writing teacher who thought my writing was just terrible.
And then I had another teacher who was more helpful.
And I had an agent who...
I had people who wanted like this.
And it was literally a guy with a PhD in literature said, the novel I've written, this is what we've been waiting for.
He said, this is the great Canadian novel.
This is the one we've been waiting for to put Canada on the literary map.
So I went to work as a software executive.
And every time the phone rang, I was like, I guess I'm going to quit.
Right?
It's a great Canadian novel.
I guess I'm quitting right now.
Phone would ring.
I'm sorry, we have a problem with the bill from last night.
Can you come out and have a look?
Oh.
Okay.
But then I'm quitting.
When the next call comes through from the agent who wants to give me X amount of dollars for the great Canadian novel.
And I tried with other agents and nothing happened.
And I wrote another novel and nothing happened.
And I tried another.
And I tried again.
And then a friend of a friend was an agent and she thought, oh, this is no good, right?
Whatever, right?
I mean, just tried and tried and tried.
And I was 100% responsible for all of that.
Thank you.
Right?
And the great lack of responsibility, there's two poles to the lack of responsibility.
The first is projection, where all negative things that happen to you are caused by other people, which gets you off the hook.
And also, unfortunately, you see, that's what they want you to think.
Because that allows them to give you the Simon the Box of Repetition Compulsion.
That's a reference to a section of the free book, Real-Time Relationships at freedomainradio.com.
Bad people in your life, in a weird way, don't want you to take self-ownership.
Because when you take self-ownership, you say, well, if there are bad people in my life, I'm completely responsible for that.
So what am I going to do about it?
Right?
My relationships with dysfunctional people ended when I accepted 100% responsibility.
100% responsibility.
This person, this man, this woman, this whoever, they're in my life.
I am 100% responsible for that person being in my life.
I pick up the phone.
I go over.
I have them come over.
We talk.
We email.
I am 100% responsible.
That's the freedom to make choices.
So, on the one pole, there is projection where you say other people are the causes of my emotions.
And on the other pole, which is I think probably closer to where you have been, on the other pole is irrational and anti-empirical optimism.
Right?
The next boss, the next person, the next agent, the next gig, the next career, the next friend, the next, that next one.
That's going to break the cycle.
It's the irrational optimism.
That bleeds away our capacity for clear-eyed self-ownership.
Looking at the patterns of the world, looking at the reality of life, looking at everything we've absorbed, everything we know, everything we've learned, and saying, what are the odds, empirically, of the next person, of the next gig, of the next job, unless something I do changes...
What are the odds of something outside me changing if I don't change?
The irrational optimism, when you let go of that, that's when you face despair.
That's when you give up the illusions that somehow some positive updraft and momentum of a better world is going to get you to where you want to be, right?
To where you feel you deserve to be.
When I finally got...
Oh, God, it was just...
So long and so hard, but when I finally got that having optimism around dysfunctional people in my life was an abdication of self-ownership, cross your fingers!
Oh, say that again.
It's not a philosophy, right?
Especially when...
Say that again.
Yeah, say that again.
I've got to hear that.
The cross your fingers or the before part?
Just before.
When you finally got...
When I finally got that having irrational optimism around the dysfunctional people in my life was an abdication of self-ownership.
Because irrational optimism is to say that things will get better so I don't really have to make any changes.
And anything which diminishes your capacity to make changes is an abdication of self-ownership.
Everything.
Which lulls you into a false sense of security.
Everything which dazes and disorients you and spins you around and says, oh, it's going to get better.
It's going to be fine.
This irrational optimism.
When I finally got that no one was going to come along and publish my books, it wasn't going to happen.
It wasn't going to happen.
And it only...
Look, I wrote my first novel when I was 11.
By the time I was in my 30s, right, with only 30 years, early 40s, whenever the hell it was, I'm like, it's that old Nathaniel Brandon line, right?
No one is coming to save you.
No one is coming to save you.
You have to do it yourself.
And people say to Nathaniel Brandon, well, you came.
And he said, yes, but I came to tell you that no one is coming.
Right?
Because the reality is, this sounds so cynical, but it's not.
I'm telling you, it's not.
The reality is, nobody gives a shit about your dreams and goals.
They don't give a shit about your dreams and goals because they're too busy trying to manipulate other people into giving them what they want.
Right.
I mean, you like this show.
I think you like me, but you don't wake up every morning and saying, what does Stephanie do this morning?
I hope he's doing well.
I hope he's having a fun day.
Maybe I can find some way to make his day even better, right?
It's not bad.
It's just the hell of it.
I spend about 10 seconds a day on that.
Well, I think that's 10 seconds more than most.
Right?
So nobody was coming.
Now, I mean, in hindsight, yes, I get it all.
The writing is great.
The characters are great.
The plot is good.
The plot's not my strong point.
But it's too radical.
It's too radical for people.
And it wasn't even that it was capitalistic or anything like that.
It was just too radical for people.
And if you want to know why, you can pick up these novels there.
I think for a donation, yeah, in the gold section of the donator section, you get the God of Atheists audiobook for free and all that.
But anyway, so...
It wasn't going to happen.
It wasn't going to happen.
Because Ilya Kazan didn't care about whether Marlon Brando was happy.
He cared that Marlon Brando would make his film great.
Right?
It's a streetcar named Desire.
And...
That, I mean, you can say, well, it's selfish, and there are people who, you know, are sort of outside this paradigm, but they're very rare.
But recognizing that people weren't like, well, I'm going to stand firm, and I'm going to publish the great Canadian novel, no matter how radical, no matter how crazy, no matter whatever, it's not going to happen.
I mean, there are a few, few, few tiny people like the The guy who got the fountain, he got on the same day, he got the Fountainhead and Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, of which two more diametrically opposed works of literature could scarcely be imagined.
And he was like, his publishing house was like, no, we're not publishing the Fountainhead.
Who cares about architects?
And he's like, well, I do.
And if you don't publish it, I'm quitting.
Well, he took a stand.
He took a stand.
It's incredibly rare.
I mean, if you wait for that, it's like, my retirement plan is I'm gonna not even buy a lottery ticket, I'm gonna find one, and it's gonna win.
I mean, is it possible?
Yes, it is.
But that's like saying, well, I'm not gonna get my cancer treated because spontaneous remission plus prayer.
Like, nope!
I don't think that's a wise plan.
So, this is what I'm sort of trying to say, that if you have this optimism, Bad people around you want you to be optimistic about them so they don't have to get better.
Optimism about dysfunctional people is enablement.
It's subsidizing their shittiness with your smiles.
Okay, for the last 20 years it's been pretty shitty being around this person, but let's have lunch!
So, what I'm talking about is You are a hundred percent responsible for your life.
And you are a hundred percent responsible for all, all, all, all, all of the self-abdications.
If the king gets off the throne, the throne is empty, but the king chose to leave.
And the great news about that is you can choose to resume your seat in the self.
Nobody was responsible for For me, getting what I consider important out into the world.
Nobody was responsible but me.
And we're brought and raised to be so dependent.
I'm going to pray to God to get me what I want.
I'm going to write to my politician to get what I want.
I'm going to wait for an opportunity to land in my doorstep.
I'm going to wait.
I'm going to wait.
I'm going to hope.
I'm going to...
Oh, right?
All of that.
And...
That's just a paralysis.
It's a paralysis.
And you, I think, are at the end of the road of that paralysis, which is why you're calling in today.
You want to own yourself.
You want to own everything about your life.
Because otherwise, you've been given this great gift.
You kept it at a mean distance.
And when you die, it goes.
Right.
All right.
Revolutions.
Sorry, just minor...
Pitch.
Revolutions, which is my novel about the Russian Revolution as a PDF. The God of Atheists as a PDF and audiobook.
Sign up for 20 bucks a month and almost as a PDF in the first 22 chapters as an audiobook is available in the silver section, which is like 10 bucks a month at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
So yeah, you can get them real cheap and they're great, great books.
Sorry, Robert, go ahead.
That was wonderful, and you made me feel, I love that phrase, very uncomfortable.
No, you didn't.
But I really liked how you came across, because it never occurred to me, well, there it goes again, that it could be vanity.
But the way you framed the vanity was not what I thought it would be.
Oh yeah, irrational optimism is a wild species of vanity.
It's the idea that hope can change personalities.
I mean, it's grandiosity in the extreme.
If I think really well of people, if I act really well around them, I'll change who they are.
Because I am Thor, master of dimension.
I can change personalities with my brain, with my good behavior.
I can carve new channels in neural pathways.
Neuroplasticity is my domain!
Domain!
Domain!
I mean, this is not how it works, right?
It's like speaking, if I work out, you'll get muscles.
That's insane, right?
We get that, but it's kind of grandiosity and vanity to it.
Wow.
I really like that it had never occurred to me.
And bad people love to provoke that grandiosity in us so they don't have to change.
I'm going to give you hope so I don't have to change.
I'm going to paralyze you with optimism so I don't have to grow up.
Well, thank you, Steph.
Thanks so much.
And everyone helps with that too, right?
Sorry to interrupt.
Everyone helps you with that.
Because they're like, he means well.
He's doing the best he can with what he's got.
Everybody tries to stimulate this paralytic hope in you.
Next time it'll be better.
You know?
Just keep loving him.
He'll learn, right?
Everybody just likes to provoke this hope in you.
Don't worry.
The bus is coming.
There's no need to walk.
It's coming.
It'll be right here.
Don't worry.
It's a little late.
Why would you want to walk?
And then after a while, you've invested so much goddamn time in waiting for the bus, you can't even stand the idea of walking anymore.
Then you have the gambler's fallacy.
You know, I've invested this much in my shoes.
Fallacy of some costs.
Absolutely.
And all dysfunctional people have to do is get you to invest a certain amount and then you step over the fulcrum and you're stuck unless you really get jolted by something.
And intelligence is the great temptation because you are smarter than your average bearer.
You're smarter than more than 10,000 of the random people around you.
And there is this idea that, you know, hey, I'm smart.
That's like having giant tits.
People should just buy me drinks.
Right?
It's the way we think, right?
I'm smart.
So, I don't know.
Where's my gold?
Yeah, well, that's not valuable to anybody.
Where's the conveyor belt of great shit that should be falling into my frontal lobes?
Hey, brains!
Brains!
Need a giant...
A giant, well-mechanoed wonder bra to hold these frontal lobes up.
Come on!
I'm shaking them here.
Shaking them out loose.
Shaking them loose.
Come on, baby!
Give me the gold!
Pay for the brains!
Pay for the brains!
Hello!
Echo!
Does it count?
It really doesn't, right?
No, because it's not valuable.
It's got a lot of resentment, right?
Because brains ain't eggs, baby.
But yeah, it's not valuable to anybody unless you find a way of making it valuable to somebody else.
It doesn't mean anything, you know?
Oh, there's some optimism for you.
How well do people...
I say, Robert, how well do people react to your intelligence?
Well, as long as I keep it hidden, they like me.
No, no, no, no.
You tape down the boobs, you don't get the boobs.
No, it depends on the person, you know.
I mean, it depends on a lot of things.
But let's put it this way.
My girlfriend says, notice that either people really like me or they really hate me.
Well, if you think intelligence is vanity, Try mediocrity.
Now that's vanity, right?
And we know this is the Dunning-Kruger effect, right?
The people who are average think they're way better than what they are, right?
And it's just astounding the number of comments just that this show receives, the number of comments that this show receives that are unbelievably retarded and put forward with astounding self-confidence.
Astounding self-confidence.
Like, I've studied this for 30 years or more.
My God, it's been like, yes, this year I will have studied philosophy for 33 years off and on, and mostly on.
And people, like, confidently stride up and just give me the most unbelievably stupid shit.
With the most astounding confidence.
Well, it is true that you've been studying this field for 33 years, but I just watched a video that was seven minutes long, and let me give you the answer.
I read your YouTube comments.
Well, if that hasn't broken your optimism, there's nothing like YouTube comments to take a baseball bat to the crystal vases of our optimism.
And it really is amazing.
And that's because from the inside of everyone's head, they're great and special.
And when you actually go up against someone who's competent and confident, it's really tough.
Look, I recognize all of that.
Like, when I have someone like James Flynn on, I mean, what the hell am I going to say to this guy about the study of intelligence?
Because I'm good at a few things, and what that helps me to understand is I'm really bad at everything else.
Really bad at everything else.
And what am I going to spend a couple of days reading some books about And then somehow have a conversation of equals with a guy who's been a professor since, you know, Methuselah was in diapers.
No, it's not going to happen.
I mean, I'm just going to like, hey, you know, talk to my audience, you smart guy, because, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But in order to respect other people's competence, you have to first be competent at something yourself.
And that is just the reality of the world that we live in, that there aren't enough People who are good at anything.
To recognize and allow people to know when someone's good at something.
And this is particularly true, I mean, in the realm of philosophy and economics and politics, just all over the place, right?
So, yeah, I mean, so when you, if you bring genuine competence to a particular area of endeavor, Then, particularly when it's one that's actionable by individuals, right?
I mean, it's very humiliating for people to realize that they've been living the wrong way ethically for their whole lives.
And that's very tough.
It's different than, I don't know...
The degree to which the Flynn effect is raising their intelligence or whether it's peaked.
And it's all interesting stuff and it's important to know and all that.
But it doesn't really change much about individuals and how they live and who they're surrounded by and what they do with their lives and what legacy they're going to leave behind and what is their imprint on the moral character of the species.
But when you get to something like the non-aggression principle or UPB or really down in the guts, down in the heart, down in the spine of the spine of the world...
Man, I mean, you might as well be dousing people in water and plugging their toes into a 240-volt socket.
I mean, they're just like, whoa, whoa, whoa!
What do you mean there's facts in the realm of ethics?
What do you mean I can't just go with momentum in old books?
Come on!
And so your intelligence is a challenge to people, which is why you have this shield called optimism.
Because if you're optimistic about people, then you don't end up threatening their sense of identity by reminding them that there's no such thing as a country.
The gods don't exist.
Oh, I really have a good time with that one.
So, yeah, if you let your intelligence blaze forward, you will realize very quickly that human beings have an incredibly ambivalent relationship with intelligence.
Everybody wants the fruits of the smart people, but nobody wants the ego challenges of being around real intelligence, or very few people do.
So, yeah, I think that vanity would be my diagnosis, for want of a better word, but I would definitely look at the degree to which You are not accepting the facts of reality.
And the only reason we reject the facts of reality and the empirical evidence of our experiences is because of vanity.
Wow.
Well, thanks, Steph.
That was really interesting.
And I really am going to take it to heart what you had to say.
And I can really feel the Legos moving around inside of my skull.
Well, great.
I really appreciate that.
And do let us know how it goes.
Thanks, mate.
And I'll see you online.
All right.
Take care, man.
All right.
Thank you, Robert.
Well, up next is Tracy.
Tracy wrote in and said, given the truth about the Dalai Lama show, is it just the one so-called Buddhist, the Dalai Lama, or other specific Buddhists that Stefan finds fault with?
Or is it Buddhism in general?
If he has objections to Buddhism generally, restricting the discussion to the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, which he mentioned in the podcast, and is the heart of Buddhism, what specifically does he object to?
Hello, Tracy.
Hello, Stefan.
How are you doing?
I'm well.
How are you doing?
Good.
I just wanted to mention that no one told me that it was the old abused gifted guy show tonight, so...
Oh, dear.
Tell me more.
No, I'm good with that.
So we can answer the question then.
All right.
Let's assume that you are okay with that and we're not going to come back to it.
Your question is, do I have any specific objections or what are my specific objections to Buddhism?
Well, are there objections to Buddhism or is it just the Dalai Lama that you're, you know, basically upset with or criticizing?
You have a pretty manipulative use of language, if you don't mind me saying so.
I could be wrong.
Okay, I'm willing to hear that.
Go ahead.
Yeah, just because you're sort of personalizing my objections.
You know, you have a problem with, or you have a criticism of, or it's just this individual you basically don't like and all that.
But this is a show about philosophy, right?
So it's not a question of what I like or don't like.
The question is, are the...
Metaphysical, epistemological, ethical propositions put forward in a rational, testable, empirical manner.
Okay, fair enough.
Can I change my question a little bit then?
Yeah.
So, and correct me if I'm wrong, it seemed to me that the show about the Dalai Lama was pointing out failures in his morality.
Would that be a fair statement?
Well, it was a show on many layers.
Okay.
I certainly did talk about the challenges of Buddhism.
Buddhism is not a philosophy.
A philosophy isn't just things that work for you in your life or larger principles that you can subjugate yourself to or self-mastery or even self-knowledge.
These are not philosophical principles.
You know, a beaver can build a dam that stands.
That doesn't make the beaver an engineer or a scientist.
Okay.
Right?
So it's not, you know, structures that things live in.
It's a bird's nest.
It doesn't mean that you're an architect.
And so the fact that there are principles, the fact that there are arguments that are put forward and so on, there's nothing to do with philosophy.
So my major criticism is that people think that it's a philosophy, but it's not.
I actually agree with you on that point.
It is a practice or it is a methodology that No, it's not a methodology.
It's a series of irrational assertions.
Okay, which one is irrational?
With positive sounding adjectives that are put forward to make people feel warm and cozy and subjugate themselves to a priestly class that fastens itself like a vampire bat on the jugular of the hard-working people of Tibet and other places.
So it's not a methodology.
A methodology is something that is falsifiable and reproducible and like scientific method, that's a methodology.
But I don't see how making assertions, like for instance, that there's an essence of life that survives birth and is reincarnated.
I mean, that is an astounding assertion to make.
And there's no proof for it whatsoever and no evidence for it whatsoever.
And it's made with the utmost confidence.
And that's why it is not in the Four Noble Truths or the Eightfold Path, which is the heart of Buddhism.
And I think that you could pretty much ignore the whole reincarnation thing because it's not a present moment sort of thing you can do anything about.
It's just speculative and not really very useful in order to try to make your mind happier.
Okay.
So let's do the Four Noble Truths.
Okay.
Okay.
The truth of suffering.
So is that the argument that everything which is alive experiences suffering?
Well, I think it's a little...
Let me put my take on this.
Suffering is something...
Wait, wait.
No, no.
See, already we're not in the realm of philosophy anymore.
Your take on it?
What does that mean?
Well, I wouldn't describe it the way you did.
I would say that suffering is something that you can see directly in your own mind if it exists at this moment.
So it's not something you have to speculate about.
So like the soul, for example, would be something that you would need to speculate about.
But at this very moment, we can look in our own minds and we can determine if there is suffering and how much there is or what is the cause of it as well.
Okay, so I'm not sure how the fact that human beings suffer is a noble truth.
I mean, I think it's factual, sure.
I stub my toe, I'm suffering.
I mean, I'm anxious, I'm suffering, and so on, right?
Okay, but you would agree then that that first noble truth is certainly a truth?
Yes, it is a true statement to say that human beings can suffer and do suffer.
Well, probably animals, but we can also look at it directly.
It's a directly observable empirical fact, as opposed to a soul, for example, which is not.
It's really an observation because it's a principle.
It's like saying human beings are mammals, and that's the essence of my philosophy.
It's like, well, it may be true, but it's not a principle.
It's not a universalization thing, right?
Human beings don't all suffer all the time, and certainly don't all suffer all the time for the same reasons, right?
Yes, they do.
That's the second noble truth.
Everyone suffers because of craving and clinging.
That is the cause of suffering.
Alright, so if I stub my toe, I'm suffering.
And I don't mean to trivialize it, I'm just trying to understand the bounds of the theory.
So if I stub my toe, I'm suffering.
Is it not the damage to my toe and my nerve endings that are causing my suffering?
Well, that's excellent.
I'm actually glad you went to that one because that's one of the harder questions to answer in terms of this particular concept because pain—let me just sort of describe it this way.
A significant component of pain, I think you could probably say 80% of pain, is emotional.
The physical sensation that we experience is not really all that difficult.
The problem is that there's actually a fear reaction because there's a fear of damage to the body.
And it's very deep.
It's a very, very deep reaction.
And it's based on fear.
It's a clinging to not wanting to lose functionality in the body.
Okay, but I mean, if somebody has a migraine, we don't imagine that the migraine is going to cause the head to explode, but it is extraordinary suffering, right?
Well, a migraine, I would say, is also a signal from your body that's saying that there's something wrong in the body, and then the mind reacts by, you know, being upset about that because we don't want to lose, you know, we think there's something wrong with our brain, our head, or whatever.
I mean, it's usually vascular, I think, in terms of migraines.
I'm not a doctor, but there's something that the body is signaling that is wrong, that is a potential loss of arthritis.
Alright, so how about arthritis?
I think that's the same thing.
So there's a signal from the body.
Are you saying that arthritis is psychological in origin?
It's somatic?
No, no, no.
I'm sorry.
It's difficult to explain.
You get a pain signal, right?
So you get a pain signal in your brain from either arthritis or you get it from vascular problems, which I think are the cause of migraines.
Or if you stub your toe because there's some pain receptor in your toe that's saying something has gone wrong.
All of those things are the same in that regard.
And the reason that you have a reaction to that is because you don't want to experience the loss of damage, right?
No, no, no, no, no.
The reason that you experience that is because the pain centers in your brain are activated by the nervous system.
Because even animals that we would not imagine have any kind of consciousness avoid that which is unpleasant and pursue that which is pleasant, right?
Right.
Sure.
Maybe I could describe something a little...
I don't think I'm getting this across well.
No, no, no.
I don't think that's the problem.
I don't think that's the problem.
Because we're having a debate here, right?
Sure.
And if when I put something back, which is a counter to your point, saying that you're not explaining it well is kind of annoying and a little condescending, in fact.
I assume that you're trying to explain it the best way that you can, which either means that you're not good at explaining it, or I'm not very smart.
Right?
I don't mean to be confrontational.
I'm just sort of pointing it out that I find it annoying, and this happens more with Buddhists than with other people.
I find it annoying when a Buddhist puts forward an argument, I put forward a counterargument, and then they say, well, it's tough to explain, and I'm maybe not explaining it very well.
It's like, shouldn't you know how to do this if you're a Buddhist?
How to explain these things?
And just because I'm putting something back that's a counterargument, I don't think you get to fog me with, well, it's hard to understand, right?
Okay, fair enough.
So when I was saying that I wasn't explaining it well, I was putting the onus on me that I wasn't doing a very good job of explaining it.
No, but if you don't know how to explain it well, then you need to go and practice about how to explain it well, and we'll have the conversation another time.
Well, I guess I can't argue with that.
Yeah, and listen, I'm very happy to have the conversation, but...
You know, if someone comes up with, like if I'm arguing UPB and someone comes up with an objection, and it happens a lot, right?
If someone comes up with an objection to UPB or something, if I just say, well, I guess I'm not explaining it that well or it's really hard to understand or whatever, but I don't actually deal with their objection, you understand that would be kind of evasive, right?
Did I not deal with your objection?
No.
No.
You've said a couple of times now, well, it's hard to explain and I may not be doing a great job of explaining it.
In other words, somehow my objection can be overcome with a different explanation.
But that's not actually listening to my objection and processing it, right?
If you say, well, the cause of suffering is your thoughts in the mind, and I say, well, that's certainly true sometimes, and cognitive behavioral therapy would be very much along those lines, if I understand it correctly, that it is irrational, negative, destructive thoughts that will produce things like anxiety and stress and irrational anger and so on.
So there certainly is reality to the argument that suffering within the mind can be caused by our perspectives within the mind, but that's not the case for all suffering.
Alright, I'm actually going to say that it is, and the reason I'm going to say that, I wasn't actually going to bring this up.
It is possible to turn off pain, and I can do that.
So it is possible to literally not experience pain.
So when I went in for neck surgery, the anesthesia was kind of like a scam, right?
I wouldn't say it's a scam.
It's a difficult ability to develop.
It takes a lot of practice.
It's very difficult to do.
I'm just trying to understand it.
Your claim is that you could have something like unanesthetized adult circumcision?
And there would be no elevation in your heart rate, no release of adrenaline or cortisol or anything like that.
It would be as if you were having a nap.
Well, there are different degrees of ability to do this.
I have had my teeth drilled without Novocaine.
I would say that there was probably, I don't know, I wasn't hooked up to any machinery, there was probably an elevated response to that.
And that's because, you know, basically pain is, you know, it's a very attention-grabbing thing.
And, you know, the more intense the pain is, the more it grabs your attention.
I think that's the point.
That's the point of pain, is to tell you to do something different than what you're doing.
If your hand's in the fire, your point of pain is to take it out.
Sure, I agree with that, but in the sense when you're undergoing, you know, like I'm getting my teeth drilled, I'm voluntarily doing that because, you know, I see some other gain from that.
So I don't necessarily want to experience the pain, but I don't want to not be in the situation that's causing the pain.
Okay, so is your argument then that all suffering is a choice?
I wouldn't say it's a choice completely because it requires, like I said, it requires a certain amount of practice and training.
It's not a choice to be able to run a marathon right now.
I would have to train in order to be able to do that, so I can't choose right now to run a marathon.
I can choose to ignore certain levels of pain.
So, you know, I can sit for two or three hours without pain, and that's normally excruciating.
And, you know, the way that—I mean, I can go into the mechanism by which I do that, but the point is that I can move my perception to something other than the pain, stick it on something that—keep my perception on something that is other than the pain.
It's usually a meditation object.
I'm sorry to interrupt you.
And the reason I have to interrupt you is that, look, I mean, I just don't have any verification for what you're saying.
If there are scientific studies that show that people who study Buddhism can be hooked up to machines and machines, If they're getting dental work done or something like that and they're drilling right through the nerve and they show no elevated pain responses, please send them in.
I would be fascinated to read that sort of stuff.
But it's confusing to me because the Dalai Lama was trained by being whipped.
Yeah, you know, I think that...
How would I say this?
Whipping certainly is not a part of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, right?
I mean, obviously there's something wrong.
So they would be anti-Buddhists then?
It seems that way to me.
You know, I know that would cause a lot of consternation, but it seems to me, you know, if you say you're a weightlifter and you don't lift weights, you're not a weightlifter.
Right?
Right.
So if you're not following the Buddhist path, you're...
I'm sorry.
No?
Right.
Okay, well listen, because we're kind of stuck at the beginning here, and I certainly would be fascinated if there was a way of being able to control all pain using only mental discipline, I would be honestly fascinated to read about that.
So let's put a bookmark on the conversation.
If you can send in the studies that show this kind of stuff, because this is an empirical claim that's being made, it's not a philosophical claim, so it cannot be evaluated rationally.
But if you could send in the studies to us, I would love to talk more about it and to learn more about how this has occurred because of course I mean if people are making extraordinary claims they should be very keen to submit themselves to the evidence and of course I think I would imagine that we wouldn't want to be inflicting suffering on people needlessly to test their pain responses but there are situations wherein people as you say they're going to go get their teeth drilled they and if there is a way and the people who make these claims of course would want to
prove it as as Clearly and openly and scientifically as possible.
So if you could send those studies in, I would be beyond fascinated to read about them.
And maybe we could pick this up after the empirical challenges if your claims are dealt with.
Okay, so I'm going to put forward what evidence would count.
I mean, the problem that I see with this is that it is possible that the body could have a physical response to pain.
In other words, there would be elevated cortisol levels or whatever would be measurable.
And that doesn't necessarily mean that it would be experienced.
Well, you know, but at some point, you have to have some proof for something, right?
And if people can say anything they want, right?
I mean, if the physiological response to pain is identical to a Buddhist and a non-Buddhist, and if the pain centers are lighting up and this and that and the other, yeah, people can say whatever they want.
But if there's no physiological change, like if I say, oh, mental discipline can have you eat nothing but candy and you'll never get any cavities...
And then I get what can show up in the x-rays, there's lots of cavities, and I can say, well, they aren't cavities to me.
Well, it doesn't really, like, my perception then becomes a little bit dubious.
And I certainly wouldn't want to hang an entire empirical foundation to the first or the second, I guess, of the noble truths of Buddhism on someone's claim rather than something that could be empirically proven.
But, of course, if they could...
And look, I'm not saying that mental attitudes have nothing to do with physical pain.
I mean, I get that there's things that people can do to manage pain that is not directly medication-based, but it would be a pretty key thing to establish, because that is, you know, the idea that all pain is, in a sense, a choice.
It's a wild claim to hear, and wild claims don't.
Not bad, right?
It could be a perfectly fine twist.
I mean, it's not like this is the only wild claim this show has ever entertained or even made.
But, you know, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and subjective reporting in defiance of physiological responses would be pretty dubious to me.
But if you could look those up and pass those along, I'd be thrilled to look into it more.
But I don't think we can go much further if the foundation of the philosophy is empirical and we don't have any empirical evidence on hand to To establish that then we can't really go much further until that's dealt with.
Well, I think that the only proof that can come from that is actually the proof that comes from doing it.
So unfortunately, these things are basically like, let's provide an analogy.
So if I'm passing you walking on a road, we're going in opposite directions, and I say to you that there is a barn two miles down the road, I can't prove that to you.
You're going to have to go down there and look and see, right?
So what I'm saying is...
No, no, but what we're talking about here is subject to empirical verification.
Yes, and if you were to sit and meditate and do these things, you could yourself find this out.
No, no, no, no, no, come on, come on.
I think so.
You don't say to people, oh yeah, it's really complex, it's really tough to do, you've got to spend years of study and then you'll understand.
Right.
That's not how things work when you're facing a skeptic.
Believe and act as if it's true and you'll know, right?
I mean, that's not how things work.
If you're making a claim that certain people have the capacity to not experience physical pain no matter what the duress, or all pain is a choice, Saying, well, I'm not going to test any of that, but if you study in this monastery for five years, you'll get it.
People were like, ah, who's got time?
Right?
I mean, everybody's claim could be made about everything.
You know, maybe if you cut your balls off, you do go and join that comet.
I mean, but I'm going to keep my fellows close to my pockets, right?
Well, so everybody could make any kind of claim that they want.
And then if you say, I'm skeptical about it, they say, well, if you spend five years studying, you know, 12 hours a day, then you'll learn it.
It's like, no, that's not how these things work, right?
Yeah, but Stefan, you picked the very hardest thing.
You know, I mean, that's a very hard thing to do, but you can still see some benefits, as you were saying.
Wait, wait, wait.
I'm sorry to interrupt you again.
What do you mean I picked the very hardest thing?
Well, physical pain is very hard.
That is a very difficult thing to be able to ignore.
It says here, we started going through the Four Noble Truths, right?
Yes.
And all people suffer, and the cause of suffering is in the mind.
I didn't go to the index and start at the back.
This is the two basic things.
How am I picking these things?
No, no, no.
I mean, picking pain.
So there's simpler forms, there's easier forms of suffering than physical pain.
What is easier?
Well, I mean, as you were mentioning, you know, there are things in your mind that you can change in order to reduce your suffering that are not the physical pain.
Those are easier things to deal with than physical.
Physical pain takes a lot of training to do something about.
No, no, I get that.
I get that.
But why, if you're skeptical about a belief system, why wouldn't you start with the hardest example?
Because you wouldn't start running a marathon right off the bat either.
This is not a matter of training.
This is a show about philosophy.
This is not a sports show.
So if people come to me and they say, if I put forward this theory of ethics, universally preferable behavior, am I going to ask people to just give me the easy examples?
No, I want the toughest examples, right?
Yeah, and this is, like I said, this is something that's training, and I think you were also saying that it was not a philosophy, and I was saying it was more of a practice.
So it is something you have to train for, and it's easier to see evidence of this going on in terms of a reduction of suffering for things that are not physical pain, because physical pain is very hard.
It takes a lot of training to be able to deal with that.
All right.
There's an example of a young boy named Isaac who was born with a congenital insensitivity to pain.
Yes.
The disorder means he almost never feels pain even if he breaks a bone.
And this happens, of course, with people who have...
This is my Thomas Covenant, Stephen R. Donaldson medical knowledge.
But if you have leprosy, of course, you go numb and you have to do what's called a VSE, a visual search of extremities to make sure you haven't injured yourself.
Because he doesn't feel injuries.
His parents are teaching him how to identify them to stay healthy.
He said the toddler years were an absolute nightmare.
He would just drop to the ground and smack his face on the table.
He thought the fall was fun.
He's dunked his hand in hot coffee without flinching.
He once placed his palm on a working oven burner without shedding a tear.
And we don't consider that an ideal, right?
Oh, completely agree.
You would not want to be in a state where you could never experience physical pain.
That would definitely be a problem.
So you'd want to feel it and then stop it?
Yes.
Maybe or maybe not.
But yes, to have a choice to do that obviously would be better than not.
Well, I don't know.
I mean, I think that the accumulated wisdom of the body with regards to self-protection is the result of billions of years of evolution, and pain is designed to have you not do stuff that is bad for you.
I agree.
- Most of the time that's true. - Saying well, we just have to interfere with the natural processes of the body and will away pain is, it's sort of like antibody in a way.
I mean, I'm glad that my body gives me indications of discomfort or, you know, if I'm feeling nauseous, I don't, like if I've eaten something bad many, many years ago, I had a Pierogies that basically I think have been scraped out of the back of someone's bin lining in a fridge.
I had these pierogies and I ate them like 20 minutes later and I'm feeling nauseous and throwing up.
I wouldn't want to overcome that suffering.
I'd want to throw it up to get the scrap out of my body.
Anyway, I mean, look, we're way off in terms of what philosophy would mean, but I've got to move on to the next caller.
I do appreciate the call and I don't want this to be the end of the conversation, but I would like some You know, empirical claims of extraordinary nature are going to require some proof.
I can't just go on the say-so of people who's, not you, but the people whose self-interest is quite considerable.
Like, we can master pain and we can teach you to it.
Just give us, you know, your children and some money.
So, if you could dig some of that stuff up and pass it forward, I'd appreciate that.
But I will have to move on.
At one point, I'm going to get to the end of these callers.
But I really do appreciate the call.
Okay, sure.
Thanks, Tracy.
Bye.
Alright, up next is Rafi.
He wrote in and said, We've been trying to find abundance, reduce or end poverty, and better distribute the wealth within the monetary system.
I feel there is no solution for a fair distribution of money.
Is there a solution?
I'm presently working on building a money-free world, no barter, no trade, also known as the gift economy or resource-based economy.
What are Stefan's thoughts on this?
Hello, hello.
Hi there, Stefan.
How are you doing, Rafi?
I'm doing excellent.
How did you get interested in this topic to begin with?
Good question.
I had sold my business in a big city, Montreal, not too far away from you.
And I installed myself in a village about an hour away.
And a year later, I'm not sure exactly what happened, I just clicked and I said, what the hell am I doing here?
What's the reason?
First of all, I sold a business in Montreal, which I was doing still not bad.
And I found myself in a smaller village, nicer people, more calm, more relaxed, more friendly, but operating in exactly the same way as I've always been, which is for 21 years.
Which is putting prices, putting specials, negotiating, bargaining, giving discounts, charging by hour and something inside me said this is not right.
There has to be a better way than that.
Than the way that everybody is operating.
What bothered me most in this way of traditional way of doing business is the lack of connection that I had with the customers.
Then I started going deeper in the philosophy of my way of thinking and I said why don't I charge I'm a shoe repairer.
I fix shoes, boots, handbags, everything.
So why don't I charge my daughter to fix her boots?
Why is it free for her?
Why is it free for friends, for family, for loved ones?
And I charge to strangers, to customers, as we call it.
And I stayed with this way of thinking.
Then I wanted to find a way to respond, to fulfill the thing that was missing in my life, the thing that wasn't right, that didn't feel right anymore.
So I had the idea of putting my costs on the items.
I felt by doing that I would create a better relation, a more connected relation with everybody else besides my loved ones.
I would show them that I'm open-hearted and I want to Basically, my idea was to eliminate bargaining and putting specials and the customer would decide what price they're willing to pay and to learn also at the same time to gain confidence between humanity, between me and others.
I had the idea that I didn't do it.
I stayed with the idea for about a year.
So about a year and a half ago, I dove and I started putting my cost on every single item.
And for the repair part, if the price is too expensive, I tell my customers to give me whatever they want, I'll still do the job.
And it's been a year and a half now and I've transferred my life.
In the mornings when I wake up, I no longer think about the bottom line.
I just want to live the experience that I have to live.
That day.
And it's been an ongoing thing.
At the moment, I'm in two different movements of creating a free world, which is the free world charter and Ubuntu contributionism.
And I'm very excited about this direction in my life.
I have never been this excited and clear about where I'm headed and the way I see the future.
And I would like to have your thoughts on this.
Well, I like it.
I mean, I think it's great.
I mean, I'm not going to sit there and say everything needs to have a price tag while handing out podcasts like Candy and asking for donations.
I mean, I run on a gift economy.
I mean, there's a little bit of freemium, you know, like you get a couple of bonus podcasts and books if you subscribe or donate.
But...
You know the vast majority of people consume without donating and Even those who do donate not everyone but even those who do donate often donate less than what I asked for which is 50 cents a show which I think is pretty pretty reasonable and I give away the books for free and I have conversations the people I've never charged anyone for my time to have conversations even if it never becomes a show and And so I steadfastly refuse to put a price stamp
on it.
And of course, the church is run the same way.
I mean, you don't get a little cross stamp when you go into the club and you've got to pay a cover fee.
I mean, you donate what you feel is worthwhile.
I mean, some people, you know, some religions do have sort of suggested donations.
I think there are membership fees for synagogues.
But a lot of the really important stuff...
In the world is not priced.
As you say, you don't charge your daughter for fixing her shoes.
If you go and take care of someone else's kids, you might charge money, but you don't charge your own kids money for taking care of them.
So, Wikipedia, of course, is largely a volunteer organization that accepts donations and has become, I think, one of the top destinations in the web.
And the degree to which ads are costs is debatable.
You know, time is money, but, you know, even on Facebook and with Adblocker and stuff like that, you can manage this sort of stuff a lot.
The degree to which ads are prices, it's sort of debatable.
But if you look at your day, I mean, you can very easily go through a day or a couple of days without paying for anything directly.
You know, sort of in the moment, pay for your rent or whatever and so on, right?
But a lot of the most important stuff in life does not have a price tag on it.
I mean, things still cost money.
I mean, if nobody paid you for anything, you would not be able to survive, at least in the sort of current environment.
But I really like the idea and the degree to which we can measure quality through the gift economy.
You know, I've always sort of thought that movies would be better if you paid afterwards what you thought the movie would be worth.
Right now, I know you can pay to go in and I think within like half an hour or whatever you can Leave and get your money back.
That's pretty rare.
A lot of people are just like, well, it's comfortable.
I bought popcorn.
Maybe it'll get better.
There's that optimism.
No self-control.
And I like the degree to which things could be made.
And after the fact, gift economy.
You know, does that still involve money?
I think it would involve something.
But of course, what I talk about in terms of money is cryptocurrency.
currency and so on, which would not have much to do with existing currencies as they're known.
So I think the tipping after the fact, and this could just be because I was a waiter for so long.
And if I got the tip before I was serving the meal, I doubt it would have improved the quality of my service knowing that I got the tip afterwards, made me, you know, make jokes and chat with people if that's what they wanted and so on, right?
Let me make one thing clearer, Stefan.
When I talk about gift economy, I don't have in mind an alternative monetary system.
I'm talking about totally gifting everything.
Life would be free.
Everything will be free.
No, no, no.
Hang on.
Don't start using the free word unless you're running for office.
Things aren't free.
Almost everything takes resources to produce, right?
You can't just wave around free because that's unfair.
Because then it's saying that somehow people are stealing when they're charging.
You say everything takes resources to build.
Yes, but money is not a resource.
Why is money not a resource?
Because money is not real.
It's invented.
It's a belief.
It's a religion.
We don't need money to build...
A house.
We need materials.
We need resources.
Money never builds anything.
Do you follow me?
Well, I mean, saying you just threw a whole bunch of stuff in there, right?
Money is, ideally, right, it's supposed to be a way of measuring apples and oranges.
And so it's a way of measuring human preferences, human desires, human needs.
And it's a way of allowing people to trade If they don't have what the other person directly needs, right?
So if I want eggs and you want milk and I have milk and you have eggs, we can trade, right?
That's the same as money.
No, that's not the same as money.
That's direct trade.
Money is...
Let me explain.
Sorry, go ahead.
You want to say something while I was in the middle of saying something, so go ahead.
Well, I could say...
I'll mention it after.
That's an important point.
No, no, go ahead.
Get your thought out.
I also include trading and bartering as the same as the monetary system because if you're trading eggs, the egg becomes the monetary system.
So it's also an alternative way of trading.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
If you're saying that direct trade is money, then you can't say you want to get rid of money or money is a religion because that would be part of what your system would be, would be trade, right?
The way I phrase it, it's a non-accountable trade.
No, no, no.
Don't start giving me new language.
I've got a problem already, and that could be my lack of understanding.
You said you want a society without money, but that would involve trade, but then you say that trade is a form of money.
No, that wouldn't involve trade.
So there'd be no trade?
Gift economy is not trade.
Gift economy is just giving.
We just give away our services.
And we expect that others will eventually give when we need it.
So it's not a trade.
It's not a direct trade.
That's why I call it non-accountable trading.
Let's say you give me something.
If you give me a dozen eggs, I'm not going to keep track.
I owe you.
Something in return with the same value as a dozen eggs.
That's trading.
That's bartering.
The gift economy is not about that.
You're going to give me the dozen eggs and whenever you need something from anybody, either me or somebody else, you'll get it for free.
So we're not going to calculate how much you gave, how much you receive.
Just like we do with family members.
If I buy a pair of jeans for my kid, I'm not going to tell her, okay, you owe me a pair of jeans in the future or the same value to it.
That's not trading.
That's gift economy.
You have to get the definitions right.
Gift economy is about giving, not trading.
Giving away.
Okay, I think I understand.
I mean, family analogies don't work too well.
Right?
They don't work too well.
I mean...
Why not?
Because I don't change your diapers because you're an adult.
I change my own kids' diapers because they're helpless and dependent and not...
Not independent, right?
They can't go do their own thing.
So if I don't feed my two-year-old, my two-year-old starves to death, right?
Okay.
Yeah, but if my daughter is 18 now and I'm not changing her diapers anymore, I'm still giving away my stuff.
Well, are you saying that you will treat your 20-year-old daughter exactly the same as when she was two?
In regards of giving away stuff, yes, exactly the same.
I would still repair her boots as if she was two years old for free.
I wouldn't even think twice of charging her.
That's exactly how I wish.
But she's your genes, right?
I mean, this is what genetics does.
This is what kinship does.
It's that you want to put resources into – this is how evolution works, right?
You want to pour resources into the genetics that are closest to yours, right?
I agree.
That's a good point.
And that's the answer that I came with initially when I asked myself, how come I don't charge my daughter?
I charge customers.
Genes, right?
That's an obvious answer.
But that still doesn't answer though, Stefan, because it does answer the questioning.
But let's go deeper on the answer.
When you say genes, what is genes exactly?
Is it because I feel more connection biologically to my child?
Right?
That's partially part of the answer also.
So if we dig even deeper, what happens if we evolve and we become more conscious and the oneness, we feel more connected with the universe, with people, with strangers.
You feel really the connection through the heart.
So by doing that, are we increasing the level of connection with others?
You feel connected with others way more than the average Joe does.
So are we towards connecting with each other just like we are connected to our kids or our friends?
The gene argument doesn't stand because how come I don't charge my good neighbor or my best friend?
I don't charge them either.
There's no genes involved there.
How come I don't charge them?
What's your explanation there?
Well, they're proximate to you.
You have a personal relationship.
But here's one of the things that money provides that is, I think, of real value.
Which is, money is a way of restraining the near endless number of human desires.
So I'll give you sort of an example.
My daughter has her own money.
You know, she does chores.
She gets an allowance.
So, you know, she's used to wanting us to buy things for her.
And the great thing about this now is she can buy them for herself, right?
So...
She wanted two packages of crayons the other day.
And she was like, Dad, I want you to buy me two packs of crayons or whatever.
It's perfectly fine.
We talk about this kind of stuff.
And...
What I did say was, I said, well, you don't have to ask me, because you have your own money.
And she's like, oh, right.
And then she started to say, ooh, that's kind of expensive, right?
Because now she's spending her own money, rather than my money.
In other words, it was not free to her.
Now it cost her something, so she began to limit what she wanted.
And that's one of the things that Money does.
Is it limits?
We have to make choices, right?
I mean, if I have X amount of dollars and I have a near infinity of things that I'd like to have or could have, I have to allocate and it limits my consumption, which of course is good for the environment and lets me help me prioritize and so on.
It's one thing that's important.
The other thing, too, and this is an ancient economic problem, which is that if you need surgery and, you know, you can give the surgeon some eggs, I guess, but maybe he's already got eggs.
Maybe he doesn't want more eggs.
And so you have to find someone who has something that the surgeon wants.
And I know we're talking about a gift economy, like you just give a bunch of stuff and then you go to the surgeon and say, operate on me for free and so on.
And that the problem with all of that is the stuff that is free gets over consumed.
The moment you reduce the price of something to zero, it gets over consumed and you end up with huge shortages.
The third thing that's important, and this is not to say that this can't work.
I mean, if you want to get together with people and give this a shot, I think it's fantastic as an experiment.
But the third thing is, how do you know without money if what you're doing is actually valuable to people?
And this sounds like it's materialistic, but it's really not.
So if I give you a painting that I did, you're probably going to take it, right?
It's free, right?
So if I just keep doing paintings and handing out paintings, and I never charge anyone any money for them, I don't actually know if people like what I have or really care about what I have.
I mean, they may say all these kinds of nice things, right?
Here's a tape of me singing Ave Maria.
Okay.
Or here's an MP3. Fine, you know.
But I don't know if I'm actually applying myself to that which is most useful and valuable and important to others if they're not bidding for me.
And this is sort of underappreciated.
I don't mean by you.
Maybe it's well appreciated and thought of by you.
But...
How do I know if what I'm doing is of the greatest service and value to others without price?
So if I open a restaurant and everything's free, people will come through and eat and so on.
But if I charge and then people never come, it means that they don't really want my restaurant that much.
And that is...
So as far as...
Not knowing whether what you're doing is valuable or not.
Money gives you these incredible signals.
You know, so if petroleum engineers are, there's a shortage of them, then of course the price of petroleum engineers goes up, the salary of engineers goes up, and then more people will become engineers because that, and they drive the price down.
So that is a signal.
The price signals are saying, this is important to people.
This really matters.
People really want this.
And from that standpoint, I'll stop in a sec, but from that standpoint, it really is important to recognize, if I'd been handing out my novels, then I would still be a novelist.
But the market gave me stronger indications that philosophy was more important and more valuable to people than my fiction writing was.
Let's go point by point.
Let's take the overconsumption theory that you mentioned.
I call this the money mindset.
I've had this conversation with maybe a few hundred people for the last year and a half.
So I'm used to the...
That's why I call it money mindset.
We try to take the idea, the...
The new lifestyle which the money-free world will bring and the new mindset.
And since we're not still in that mindset, we integrate the money world with the new money world and we try to jam it together and we say, it won't work.
Yeah, it won't work because we're still in the money mindset.
So the overconsumption thing, just think about it, Stefan.
I mean, you're a super smart guy.
A world where everybody I mean, the whole world will be working for free.
And first of all, overconsumption is usually – I mean, we don't overeat.
I mean, obviously, we don't overeat healthy.
We eat whatever the body needs naturally.
Wait, wait.
Are you saying – hang on, hang on.
Hang on.
Are you saying people aren't fat?
Yeah, people are fat in the money world because in the money world, food producers produce food not for health reasons but to make money.
So when money is out, what's the incentive for the person to make junk food?
What is the incentive?
There's no more incentive anymore.
So that's going to go out the window.
Who's going to work to make people unhealthy when there's no money involved, when it's a gift economy?
Yeah, the question then becomes who's going to get food to anyone, right?
Well, that's another point.
We'll go to that first of all.
But for the overconsumption thing, just removing money will be also removing a bunch of stuff that the money world has brought to humanity.
Overconsumption is one of the factors.
I'm just going to throw out my way of thinking and I won't go deep in it because I could talk just about this for half an hour.
You said the value of something.
I'm sorry, but it is materialistic.
Again, it's a money mindset.
We've been taught from birth that money has value.
And everything we do, we get rewarded with money.
So, I mean, it's almost in my blood, this way of thinking.
And it's been many, many generations we function this way.
Money does not bring value.
It does, but it brings false value.
It brings artificial value.
Real value will come in the free world.
And how will we know what's valuable or what's not valuable?
What is appreciated or what's not appreciated?
We'll know through our relations.
We don't have relations anymore.
We're not connected with each other.
Everything is through money.
Everything costs something, as we say.
And our whole focus, our whole How do you call it?
Point of reference is with money.
To know value.
I mean, it's a very true and also a very sad statement.
And that's one of the reasons why I'm working so hard to go outside of the money system.
Okay, so let me just understand that.
Because, I mean, that's...
In a small community, I mean, I think you're entirely right.
I think a smaller community would work on a gift basis.
I mean, if you look at how the Amish put up their barns, everyone gets together and...
They put together a barn, and they don't charge each other for it.
It's just, you know, I'll do this for you, you do this for me, whatever, right?
Neighbors are like, oh, you're away, I'll pick up your mail, and then, oh, I'm not going to charge you for any bill, right?
So where there is localized community, I think that's exactly how things work, and there's nothing wrong with that, but that's reciprocal, and it's with people you know, and it's arm's length relationships, and that, I think, works out very nicely.
My question is, how am I going to get bananas in Toronto?
How are you getting it now?
Well, I buy them.
They organize everything to get the bananas from South America, Central America, wherever they're grown.
They send them up here in order to get the money and I value bananas more than whatever else I could spend that money on and I defer or don't spend whatever else I would spend on to spend the money on the bananas and that's why they organized to get the bananas to me.
Well, you buy them, but it's not your money that's the people who are working on producing the bananas and the shipping, delivery, and the stores who are selling it.
Up to that point, it's not money who's doing all that work.
It's probably the belief of making money and the value behind money is motivating people.
But the motivation that people will have to produce, at least the essential needs, will not be money anymore.
No, no, no, no.
You're not understanding my question.
So I divided our relationships into local proximal relationships.
And then the reason I chose bananas is that there's nobody up here who can grow bananas, right?
I understand, yeah.
So why would somebody in South America send me bananas?
Well, that's exactly what I was saying.
The same people who are producing the banana and shipping it here with the motivations of money will not be motivated with money anymore.
They will become humanitarian.
No, but there's a limited number of bananas.
How are they going to know who to ship them to?
Order, just like we do now.
So I would just go and order bananas?
Not you personally.
In each community, in each region, there will be people in charge of food.
So they will take care of the distribution of bananas.
Each person will order bananas.
Just like stores.
We call it stores now.
There will be distribution centers.
Let's say we call it that way.
No, no.
You're just putting words in and you're saying it's going to be exactly the same but with no money.
But what I'm pointing out is that there are Close relationships, because you keep saying, well, my daughter and my neighbors, absolutely, and I agree with you about all of that, but those are close proximal relationships of reciprocity, which I don't have with some guy who is picking bananas in Chile.
So the question is, why is the guy in Chile going to send me bananas?
Well, you say that you don't have the connection with the guy in Chile.
First of all, maybe because you don't know him.
He doesn't know you.
He's far away from you.
I can't know that many people.
Yeah, I know.
But do we have to know people to feel loving towards them?
Do we have to know them personally?
I mean, they are human beings.
They have the same needs and same fears as us and same dreams.
Everybody wants to be happy.
So how close does somebody have to be physically for me to love and feel connected to that person?
You follow me?
Yeah, but basically you're substituting an economic question of rational allocation with a Hallmark card saying, kumbaya, we all love each other.
But the problem is, even if the guy in Chile who's growing the bananas loves everyone, how is he going to know who to send his bananas to?
He can't send a banana to everyone in the world, right?
Well, like I said before, people in charge of community distribution centers will call them and get the order in for free.
And everyone's going to say, we want bananas, and there won't be enough.
Yes.
If there's not enough, then they won't have...
No, no, there's not going to be enough.
All human desires are infinite.
All resources are finite.
Now, you can tweak that and say, well, people won't want more bananas than...
Than they want or whatever.
But people throw out, like a quarter of Americans spending on food just gets thrown out.
It's insane.
And this is when people are spending their own money.
If it's free, like this is when people are spending their own money, they still throw out a quarter of what they buy.
Horrible.
And what you're saying is if it becomes free, then people will only get exactly what they need.
But that seems, that's never happened before.
The moment you lower the price of something, the demand goes up.
And that's not just, I mean, that happens with rats.
And rats have no concept of money.
That happens with monkeys.
I mean, this is biological.
We all want more resources because we don't know when there's going to be famine.
This is just how our bodies have evolved, how our desires.
And you can say, well, I want a different kind of species, but I think that's starting to look like a Soviet new man argument, which doesn't really work out that well.
But the question is, how is the guy going to know who to send his bananas to?
Because everyone's going to want them and he doesn't have enough.
Okay, the question is not that how is it going to know.
How is it going to know is people will call and get the order.
The question is if there's not enough, what will we do, right?
There's not enough.
There won't be enough.
Okay, there won't be enough.
There's not enough bananas for everybody.
First of all, one solution would be to reduce the orders.
But before we come to that conclusion, can't we produce more bananas?
There's not enough.
I'm asking a general question.
It's not fundamentally about bananas.
I understand.
There won't be enough for everyone.
Everybody would rather drive a Lamborghini than a Pinto.
Most people, right?
Yes.
And everybody would rather have some high-end tablet than some junky whatever, right?
And if the swimming pool was free, how many people would want a swimming pool?
Well, a lot more.
And so even if we could keep people's desires to exactly what it is now when they're spending their own money and their desires are restrained by their own money, even if we could somehow remove money, make everything free and not increase people's demands, there still wouldn't be enough bananas for everyone.
And so just saying, well, we'll make more of them is magical thinking because everyone who then goes to start making more bananas is taking away from something else.
Then they're not growing cocoa or corn or whatever it is that they're growing.
So you can't just sort of magically increase everything to infinity.
Otherwise, we're in some Star Trek universe where economics are no longer necessary.
Let me allow me to deviate the questioning before coming to this question.
I mean, when we talk about It's a proposition of a new world, of any new proposition that involves big changes.
Our first instinct is how are we going to do this?
How are we going to do that?
Is it doable?
Is it good?
Does it solve anything?
Does it solve enough?
Before we come to the questioning of the new proposal, why don't we question the system we have at the moment?
You can't possibly be accusing me of not questioning the system that we have at the moment.
I mean, I'm an anarchist for having sex, right?
Let me throw out this question before we come to the new world solutions.
First of all, do you think that within a monetary system or any type of system, monetary system, do you think there's a solution that we will eliminate poverty completely on the planet?
I don't see how that could possibly be a goal that would be moral.
It's not a goal that will be moral?
What do you mean?
Well, I don't see how eliminating poverty would be a moral goal.
I don't see how it could be a moral goal.
It's immoral?
It would be an immoral goal to eliminate poverty.
Explain.
Well, I mean, what about monks?
You know, what about people who are really minimalist?
They want to grow their own food.
They want to build their own houses.
They don't want to accumulate stuff.
I wouldn't want to go in and give them stuff that they don't want, which would have to be taken from other people.
I mean, I don't think that the elimination of poverty would be even remotely moral because some people choose to live poor for whatever reason.
This is their approach to life.
And I mean, I'm not going to tell them that they're wrong and they have to change.
I'm not talking about monks.
I don't see monks dying of hunger.
I'm talking about poverty as poor families in the world.
There are billions.
Oh, you mean like completely starving to death stuff?
Yeah, starving to death or just having one meal every two days.
That stuff could all be solved in 6 to 12 months.
Easy peasy, nice and easy.
Within the monetary system.
Well, not in a government monetary system, and not with governments, but if we wanted to, very, very briefly, if we got rid of governments, we got rid of borders, we got rid of foreign aid, we got rid of agricultural subsidies, we got rid of all of the barriers to trade and productivity in this world, there would be no starving people within 6 to 12 months, if that, if that.
I agree with you, but there's a big but here.
Do you see that ever happening?
Yeah, of course I do.
I mean, I'm not faking it in this show.
It's not smoke and mirrors.
Yes, it can happen.
And the way that it happens is, you know, we raise children well, they outgrow restrictive hierarchies, and they view government as an anachronism, and we We bring down these barriers through reason, evidence, argument, and peaceful parenting.
So you think the controllers of today will ever let us take back our power?
No, because it's a multi-generational change.
I mean, the controllers of today, you know, if this were to suddenly be a giant movement tomorrow, we would see repression, the likes of which we have not seen since the middle of the last century.
So no, it would not.
The rule is today.
I mean, it's like any new paradigm generally requires the old paradigm to literally die off.
It's like new scientific paradigms require adherence to the old scientific paradigm to get old, retire and die.
Well, I'm glad I asked this question.
I think this is pinpointing where our difference is with people who see money or alternative money as solutions.
I don't see it that way.
I mean, obviously in a perfect world, in the best of circumstances and good distribution and all you mentioned, yes, there is a solution within the monetary system for everybody.
When I talk about solution, I'm talking about everybody, not for some people, but for the whole planet.
But I don't see that happening ever.
As long as money exists, money is a tool of control.
I'm sure you know this.
And we are controlled with money.
And we are manipulated with our fears.
We fear the lack of money.
So many of us do whatever it takes.
I mean, from murder to business manipulation, advertisement, you know, to get in the customers, to steal customers from our neighbors, from our competitors.
And money encourages competition.
No, listen, look, I mean, I don't want you to...
I mean, you're preaching to the choir here.
If by money you mean fiat currency run by governments, God, yeah, it's horrendous.
I mean, it's a living cancer snaking through the brain and soul of the species.
I mean, you and I will be brothers in arms against this terrifying and terrible system of central banking and fiat currency.
But, you know, the thing is that in a free society, like in a stateless society, your approach is...
perfectly viable.
And if you want to convince people and if you want to make the case and if you want to, through the success of your approach, draw more and more people into your system, as long as it's voluntary, I mean, this is my argument back to the resource-based economy people.
It's like, as long as it's voluntary.
Yes.
Then, you know, more power to you.
I'd love to be proven wrong.
I don't see, you know, the calculation problem identified by von Mises, like, almost 100 years ago now, that without prices, there's just no way to rationally allocate or efficiently allocate resources of any kind, which results in unbelievable wastage and so on.
So I don't think that problem can just snap your fingers and economists have been working on that thing forever and nobody's cracked it yet.
So I think that prices are necessary.
I don't want to force you to use money.
Or cryptocurrencies or whatever it's going to be in the future.
I don't want to force you to use it.
At the same time, of course, I would expect the same respect in return that if I choose to trade with people through a common medium of currency that I would be free to do that and let the very best system win in the marketplace of ideas.
So as far as, you know, I don't have to convince you to use money because in a free society you're free not to.
You don't have to convince me to avoid money because in a free society you're free to Avoid or use money as you see fit.
In the cryptocurrency, do you see us competing with each other, just like we do now?
Well, sure, because there are finite resources.
So in your economy, or whatever, in the gift-based economy, which is not really an economy, but in the gift-based economy, you will be bidding for bananas, right?
And in the currency economy, I will be bidding for bananas.
And if your system is more efficient and gets the job done better, the bananas will flow towards you.
And if my, quote, system is better, then they'll flow towards me and that will work out one way or another.
So, because resources are finite, you know, there will be an accumulation or a movement of goods and services towards one area or another.
Maybe they'll somehow be split equally and so on.
And, you know, if we could get to, you know, I mean, if money could be eliminated as a medium of exchange and everything be hugely efficient, then...
That would be an overhead that would be reduced.
I just don't think that's possible.
But the great news is you can like jazz and I can like soul and we can both get along because the music store has more than one shelf, right?
Well, resources being finite, that could be argued.
And even if it was true that there are many solutions besides implementing a system that encourages competition instead of cooperation.
Just because it's finite doesn't mean, okay, we stop everything, let's compete now to get that.
For me, there's not much love and connection involved in that.
And I want to be headed in my procedure, in my everyday decision.
Yeah, but you see, you're not understanding what I'm saying, Rafi, is that as long as in your world I'm free to use currency, just as in my world you're free not to, we don't have much to disagree about.
No, of course you will be.
But since we're having this discussion to clear up some facts, one of the facts I would like to throw out is that the system that encourages competition, at the same time, that will mean it discourages cooperation, at least at some level, right?
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, not at all.
No, no, the vast majority of the free market is cooperation.
Just think of how many people need to cooperate to produce a tablet or a pencil or a car or a ship or a guitar pick.
The number of people who have to cooperate to produce almost any good and service that you can imagine is incredibly huge.
You know, there's a famous, it's Lawrence Reed, I think he wrote iPencil.
It's a famous, you can have a read of it.
He basically is saying nobody knows how to make a pencil.
A pencil which you can get for a nickel or a dime.
Nobody knows how to make a pencil.
You know, the graphite has to be mined and the wood has to be cut and treated and the paint and the little gold ring with the eraser and I mean nobody knows how to make a pencil.
And that's one of the simplest and most ancient of implements that you can get for a nickel or a dime.
And nobody knows how to make it.
The amount of cooperation it takes just to produce a pencil is truly staggering.
And the amount of competition in a free market is relatively minor compared to the amount of cooperation because you can't compete without a massive amount of cooperation in order to produce whatever it is that you're competing for.
Well, you're talking about limited cooperation.
I'm talking about worldwide cooperation, everybody with everybody else.
For example, in my cobbler shop, if there were to be another shop opening up next to me or in the same village, would I be in cooperation or in competition with that shop?
Obviously, I would be competing.
I would probably have to offer better services.
I already do the maximum anyway, but I probably have to be careful with my pricings.
No, it would not be.
You see, you've got this binary approach, which the free market doesn't really support.
So, for instance, in Toronto, there's two streets that intersect, Yonge and College.
And if you go west on Yonge and College, at least you used to, it's been a while since I've been there.
But if you go west on College, you come across a huge number of computer stores.
And they're mostly mom and pop outfits.
I don't know if there's any big box stores there, but all these mom and pop outfits, you go in and they have like, I don't know, back in the day, EVGA cards, which used to be a big deal or so on.
How many colors?
256?
I'm blind.
And they all move there.
And they all move into the same neighborhood.
Now, why did they do that?
I mean, you'd think that if it was some brutal competition, you'd want to move away from all of the other.
Computer stores, but they don't.
They all try to move together.
Why do you think that is?
Because money's there.
People go there to get that product, that service.
That's where people go.
That's where the money is.
That's where they go.
Because they cooperate.
Because they all go there to draw people in who want to buy something.
And then they, oh, of course, maybe they'll only buy from one store, or maybe they'll buy one thing from another store, and another thing from another store, or whatever.
But that's a huge amount of cooperation.
They compete in the end, but they cooperate, all cooperating together to bring the maximum number of customers who are interested in computers to the same place.
Yeah, it's called coopetition.
I don't know.
You can look it up and there's lots of economists who talk about this kind of stuff.
I understand.
I mean, in the shopping center, in a mall, I used to be in a mall for 21 years.
I understood the fact that there's like five other stores offering the same products as me.
In a way, we're also cooperating because since there are a multitude of choices, customers will come in that location Rather than going to another mall where there's only one choice, one store offering.
So I see the cooperation there.
It's an involuntary and limited cooperation.
That's not the cooperation I'm talking about.
I'm talking about not competing at all, at any level.
Right, but then you just run into the reality that resources are finite and you can't get everything to everyone and it's going to have to be prioritized somehow.
It's either going to be prioritized by price Or it's going to be prioritized by some sort of central planning, which is going to inevitably be coercive.
And that's where this love and share and free dissolves into a horror show of central planning and coercion, as has happened with communism, as has happened with fascism, as has happened with some of the left anarchism that occurred in Spain in the 1930s.
So if you keep saying, well, we could just have everything for free, You know, I think that that's not going to be quite enough to take away the natural reality and restrictions of the fact that resources are finite.
And they're going to have to be prioritized somehow.
And the market does a great job of prioritizing them.
And it's not...
That everything, some people buy stuff so that they can give it away for free, right?
So some people go and buy a bunch of food so that they can open a food bank and share it with everyone.
So it's not like it means that.
But again, I don't want to continue anymore on this simply because we don't have any fundamental disagreement.
You have a form of social organization.
That you find compelling and in a free society, you know, more power to you.
And I am skeptical about it, but there's really no reason for us to have any disagreement.
I mean, in the realm of non-coercive endeavors, empiricism usually wins, right?
So if your system is great and productive and fantastic and everyone's happy, people will gravitate towards that system and it will end up dominating, right?
And if it's not, if it doesn't work, then people will gravitate back to prices and we'll see, as they say, the proof is in the pudding.
So I don't think there's any reason for you to convince me or for me to convince you any more than it would be for me to say, you should buy this kind of food and you to say, well, you should buy this kind of food because we feel free to exercise our choices in a free society.
But we both share the same enemy at the moment, which is a god-awful central planning government system.
We're on the same team, that's for sure.
One last point before you go to the next caller.
Talking about limited resources, it's not my strong point to argue that point.
I think it's very arguable if we are limited or not.
One example I'd like to give you before I leave you, you talked about having everybody would want pools.
That's a good example, swimming pools.
I'm sorry, everybody would want what?
Swimming pools in their houses, right?
I mean, not everybody, but many people would order swimming pools in the free world because everybody likes swimming pools.
So what would happen in a free society is that the people who are...
Who do that job, who are qualified to build swimming pools, they would say, hold on a second, there's no way I could provide 50% or 75% of the houses with swimming pools.
First of all, we don't have the resources, the material probably to build that many, and we don't have the manpower to do that.
So what would happen in that case is we would...
We would create community swimming pools.
Not one, but maybe 10, 20, or 50 community swimming pools.
Instead of building thousands, we'll build 50 really nice high-tech swimming pools in which everybody can go and swim.
And then we have the resources to do that.
So there are solutions.
But see, that's exactly what a monetary system would do.
Because the monetary system would say, okay, it's going to be $30,000 for you to have your own swimming pool, but you can get membership at a community swimming pool for $100 a year.
And people would say, oh, well, it's too expensive for me to build that.
So again, if that's the rational thing to do, the price system in a free society would handle that as well.
But I'm going to move on, and thank you so much for your call.
It's always stimulating to look at alternatives to what is, and I certainly have always enjoyed that process.
I mean, I've got...
Free books at freedomainradio.com slash free.
There's practical anarchy, everyday anarchy.
There's lots of ways of thinking about what could happen in a free society.
And, you know, the gift economy is...
A very noble and foundational part of the economy as it stands.
I read a book, this is probably seven or eight years ago, on the free economy and how big it is.
It's huge, the economy of things that you don't pay for, at least certainly through cash.
It's absolutely enormous.
It's one of the top 15 economies in the world, if I remember rightly.
So it's definitely underexplored and underappreciated, and I would love to see just how far It could go.
So we're certainly on the same page as that.
Now, as far as, you know, things that aren't free, well, that would be my otter, bladder, wax, mustache, and semi-pirate goatee treatments.
Massively expensive, of course, but I need that lush foliage wherever I can get it these days because, you know, you go to the hairdresser when you're over 40, at least in my state, and it's like, well, I can't do much about the top, but would you mind trimming the ears?
And the nose.
And the neckbeard on the back.
And...
You know, whatever else is growing that shouldn't be.
But yeah, so if you could help us out at freedomainradio.com slash donate, we'd really, really appreciate it.
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Have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful week.
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