March 17, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:56:52
2932 FACT: People Just Don't Listen - Call In Show - March 14th, 2015
An in-depth discussion of the ‘An Atheist Apologizes to Christians’ show with thoughts and criticisms from a listener - including a callback to John Goodman’s powerful line from the movie Barton Fink: Because You Don’t Listen! Also included: Whose responsibility is it – the employers, employees or the recruiters - to find out whether or not the candidate is a good personality match for the team? How important is this personality factor in having a successful business?
Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio on the 14th of March, 2015.
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Alright, well up for us today is Kirk.
And Kirk didn't have one specific question, but he listened to the An Atheist Apologizes to Christians show and did have some general questions for Steph.
So go ahead, Kirk.
How are you doing tonight?
I'm well, how are you doing?
Doing well, doing well.
Yeah, I listened to the podcast and I just had quite a strong reaction.
And I think I guess...
Mostly for me it would be because I felt religion was so harmful to me growing up.
That, you know, it had me questioning whether I was actually processing reality right or was it almost in a sense of whether I was crazy or the rest of the world was crazy, including my parents.
So then I guess with one of the questions I had from the atheist podcast as the guys there, you know, in the Mormon Church, and going back from like podcast 70, like how to control the human soul, that, you know, describing it in a way as like telling a child that there is this God, but you just can't see them, is in a sense like smashing the child in the head.
And that's very much how I felt.
It was a little bit confusing, I guess, for me.
And I understand that guy's situation was tough.
I don't know.
I understand there was a situation that guy was in, but it didn't seem like it was also described about religion as how harmful it is to children, as far as that podcast.
And I felt like if I had listened to that podcast, For the first time, FDR, that I would have had a totally different reaction to it.
Sure.
I would hope so, yeah.
Yeah, that would make sense to me.
Sorry, did you want to go up?
Yeah, so do you feel like that is, or do you still feel like that?
Like, that telling a child that there is a God, although the child has no way to, you know, process that with his own capacities.
And often...
Within society of talking to others, you may even feel evil.
You know, one of the stats you had put out on a podcast was that atheists are trusted as much as rapists.
And that's another thing where I felt as going around as a child is like, you didn't want to say it.
You didn't want to talk about it.
You know, it's almost like you were scared in a sense.
You don't want people to think you were bad.
You know, you're not a bad person.
And I just...
I guess I wonder, do you still hold that belief that it is abusive to tell a child that?
It's harmful.
It's harmful to tell a child that gods exist without giving the child.
Obviously, there can't be any rational or empirical reasons behind it.
It's harmful.
To me, and this is sort of the case that I was making in the podcast, which I'll just go off briefly for those who haven't heard it.
So...
This was not a situation where the children could remain unharmed, right?
Now, in a situation where the children cannot remain unharmed, you obviously would choose to harm them the least, right?
Yes.
And if this man...
Well, first of all, if he were to...
You heard him at the beginning of the podcast.
And it was...
I mean, it was rough.
I mean, I let him talk for a long time because, I mean, the man had some...
He was carrying a heavy load, right?
He was burdened.
Burdened.
He wasn't eating.
He wasn't sleeping.
It was terrible, right?
And so he was not functioning well as a parent or as a partner or as a human being in that situation.
So the continuation of where he was was not good for anyone, right?
And if he decided to leave the church and his wife and children did not come with him, then he would have been divorced, right?
Yes.
And if he was divorced, well, that is terrible for children as a whole, right?
Thank you.
Not just the divorce and not just the grueling nature of it, not just the fact that the parents don't get along to the point where they're splitting up, but the depression, the anxiety, the financial cost.
I mean, it has a huge ripple effect on the family, right?
And this is why I asked him, you know, what's the conversation about hell?
Because If the conversation about hell is to the kids, you know, you think a sinful thought and the devils are waiting with pitchforks and cyanide and acid and whatever, right?
Then that's completely abusive.
It's completely abusive to threaten children with hell.
And we know that because if you were to threaten an adult with that kind of punishment, you would go to jail.
It would be illegal.
To threaten, to have a third party commit the kind of atrocities against an adult that hell is told towards children.
But there wasn't any of that in the household.
His wife was committed to peaceful parenting.
He was spreading peaceful parenting within his community.
And so to me, what were the options?
To have him go through the wrenching agony that goes on for years of a divorce.
To have, right?
And let's say that he gets a divorce and...
You know, the mom remarries.
And, you know, I'm sure the mom is a pretty nice person in a lot of ways, but we know statistically that if a non-biological parent comes, a non-biological caregiver comes into the picture, the children are more likely to be abused, like significantly more likely to be abused.
And so if he vanishes, right, it's the old compared to what?
Right, so if they say there's a god, yeah, that is harmful to children for sure.
And it's very harmful for children to say there's no God.
And it's very harmful to children to say that there's a government.
And it's very harmful to say to children, taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society.
And it's very harmful to children to justify imperialism according to just war theory.
It's very harmful for children to teach them that soldiers are heroes.
I mean, if we're going to go down the list of that which it is harmful to teach children, which is all conclusions and no methodology, then I don't know where you'd go.
This is sort of my question.
Where is he going to go?
Where is he going to go?
You know, Christopher Hitchens was a Marxist.
And then when Iraq, and he was Jewish, and then when Iraq, who was an enemy of Israel, was being threatened by America, he was very pro the Iraq war because, you see, he's very objective.
So, you know, who's teaching the kids things that are harmful?
Well, just about everyone.
So, in the conversation with the man, of course, yeah, teaching children that there's a God is harmful.
But what were the choices in the situation?
To continue with a partner who, although religious, was committed to peaceful parenting, Or to put through children through a grueling separation that would be metaphysical and epistemological in nature.
The separation wouldn't be, well, mom had an affair.
The separation wouldn't be, well, you know, there ain't no good guys, there ain't no bad guys, there's just you and me and we just disagree.
It would just be like, well, there's no God, and mom continues to want to believe in their God, and therefore, right?
And therefore, for the kids' point of view, atheism broke up our happy family, right?
And what's in the best interest of the child is generally what I have first and foremost in my thinking.
And I could not see how the children would benefit from A stepdad, a step girlfriend, a divorced family, a complete sundering of metaphysics and epistemology in their mindset.
And I just, I could not see how the kids could benefit, which is why I said, look, if you're a single man or even a married man without kids, my feedback might be different.
But in this situation, I felt, and I, you know, I still feel that way, that the children benefited the most from From the father staying committed to the family, staying married to the mom.
And I don't know what other options there is.
I mean, look, is it worse to be raised religious or to be raised socialist?
I believe it's worse to be raised socialist.
With the exception of hell, right?
I mean, hell and this omnipresent all-watching eye of God.
Judeo-Christian Sauron, right?
I mean, but if you're raised mildly religious, that to me is better than being raised staunch socialist.
And so if this guy had a disagreement with his wife about socialism versus capitalism...
I wouldn't feel comfortable in particular saying, well, you know, just toast to all family, ditch your kids, you know, get involved in a divorce and so on.
And yeah, I'm aware that there is the against me argument, but as I've always said about the against me argument, in other words, the status of supporting the use of violence against you, yeah, it's totally optional.
You don't have to use it, but it is a very real perspective.
So, it's not so much religion versus everything else.
What it is, is If I were to say that all marriages where one person is irrational should end, then the fallout on the kids would be intense and negative and not necessary.
Because as I've always said, it's healthier, more peaceful, more rational raising of children.
The less traumatized the children, the happier and more rational the future society will be.
And so I really try to avoid at least advocating situations where children end up significantly traumatized because that goes against, you know, we have to breed people capable of reasoning.
And that means as much peaceful parenting as possible.
And if that comes with a side order of Mormonism, well, if there was some place where he could go, you know, with his family where everybody was rational, I'd say go there.
But, you know, we're still trying to build that place.
Anyway, that's sort of my thoughts.
Yeah.
And I figured that was your thoughts.
And I still just kind of want to talk about it just because in the sense of people that are listening, I'm sure a lot of people felt like I did.
And to like clear that up, because it wasn't appropriate specifically.
To expressively say that to that guy during that time, you know, in such an emotional call.
And I also wanted to say, too, I really did feel for the guy, because you could tell he was in just a horrible situation.
I mean, do you know the kind of integrity it requires to produce that amount of suffering?
You know, right?
I mean, it takes an enormous amount of seriousness about philosophy.
To produce that degree of suffering.
And I could not help but respect the man for the agony that he was going through as a result of philosophical arguments.
Yeah, I mean, you know, one of the things I had posted on the forums was just talking about that.
I think back to my childhood, and I really felt like I never acknowledged it, that Just by holding on to that belief or just holding on to my and sense my sanity that, you know, no, I'm not.
I am processing this right.
And no one, you know, until I listened to FDR and then I went and I actually went to therapy.
And the therapist said to me, because I was talking about, you know, growing up and like the religion thing, and that was like such a big deal for me.
And she just said, that must have been really hard for you.
And I just broke down at that point.
It was like, no one's ever showed me any kind of sympathy or acknowledged that, hey, it may be tough that it feels like everyone that you know is saying the opposite of what you're saying or, you know, anything like that.
And so, you know, I just kind of wanted to clarify, you know, on that part of that it is really harmful because it did harm me, you know, without the threat of hell.
My mom would tell me, oh, you're going to go to heaven anyway.
I was like, that's not even what it says in the book.
So that's the one thing you can't do.
It's pretty much you can be a pedophile, a murderer, and take God in your heart and you can still go to heaven.
But you have to believe.
Right.
You have to.
Right.
And that is brutal.
Absolutely.
And Marxism is destructive to children.
And racism is harmful to children.
And, I mean, socialism is harmful to children.
And, you know, preaching blind multiculturalism, the value of blind multiculturalism without any empirical evidence is harmful to children.
And, I mean, the religion is what scarred you.
And I'm not going to tell you that you're wrong in any way, shape, or form.
But other people are harmed by other belief systems that are very difficult, very destructive.
I mean, if you're raised by a staunch Marxist or socialist, the barriers to your success are enormous.
You see, because all success is theft.
All riches are exploitation and theft.
And your capacity to reach your human potential when raised by socialists and Marxists is crippled.
It's crippled.
And the difference is that letting go of religion requires letting go of God, and then that's like the one linchpin, right?
That's the keystone to the art.
You pull that out, everything else starts to fall away.
Things aren't quite so easy with socialism and Marxism because there's not, well, if I stop believing in this, everything else falls away, right?
There's no central lawgiver in those.
It's a very complex and interlocking system of belief.
And so it is easier in many ways to give up religion than it is to give up socialism or Marxism.
Some people do it.
Tom Sowell, of course, did it in a very, I think, a very admirable way because he went full libertarian from there.
And Chris Hitchens did it, although ended up, I don't know where, he's probably still on the left, but he did not end up exactly over on the real freedom side.
But it is very hard to give up belief systems where there's not one central place if you pull that and everything else drains away.
Giving up, you know, religion is like, it's a bathtub full of belief.
You pull out the plug called God, it all drains away over time, right?
There's not that central plug.
I guess the central plug is the non-aggression principle, but that's not exactly well known or well understood in society.
So...
There are challenges to every irrational system that is inflicted on children.
I think the challenges with religion are more extreme when you're younger.
But the challenges with socialism...
And by socialism, I mean the Republican and Democrat Party.
I mean, they're both socialists.
And people, of course, are shocked by that.
It's like, but entitlement spending goes up under Republican administrations.
And there's no Republican out there.
Well, I mean, there's a few.
I shouldn't say that.
There's none.
I mean, but there's not any Republican platform that says, you know, we're going to roll back entitlements and get rid of the military-industrial complex.
I mean, Ron Paul, and to some degree, I think Ron Paul is more keen on the military-industrial complex, but...
To be raised a statist is very hard.
Is very hard.
Because there are a lot more atheists than there are anarchists.
And statism is so continually reinforced.
You know, being an anarchist these days is like being an atheist in the 16th century.
Or 15th century, probably closer.
So, you know, and I'm not trying to take away any of your...
The pain that religion caused you.
There's absolutely no doubt that religion caused you an enormous amount of pain.
And in particular...
The sadistic fetishism of hell is incredibly abusive towards children.
That which is illegal for you to threaten an adult with should be immoral at the very least for you to threaten a child with.
But I just sort of want to point out that, you know, where is he going to go, this guy?
Where can we go that we have these rational, objective, UPB-based philosophical systems?
Well, It's always earlier than you think because those of us who are well versed in these topics forget how far ahead we are because we mostly mix with people who think clearly and holding your nose and deep sea diving into muggle land is something that's always important to remember.
I do this if I'm out working at a Starbucks or something.
Then I will listen.
I'll take a break and I'll just listen to the conversations around me.
I'm not trying to eavesdrop and I'm not leaning over, but you know, people can be kind of loud.
And, you know, you get your secondhand statism just from listening to people discuss the news or the current events or anything like that.
It's just, that's what you need to absorb.
That's very tough to question or push back against.
So again, I'm not trying to diminish any of the pain that you suffered, but this guy, at least the religion is going to transmit some healthy values towards his children.
You know, as we talked about in the Truth About Sex presentation.
And, yeah, I disagree with the methodology of the transmission, but...
It's still a kind of inoculation against some destructive behaviors that have really undermined a lot of peace and security and stability in Western society.
So it's complicated.
You know, of course, and way back in the day, when I was going full tilt, boogie, hammer, Thor, hammer, Thor against religion, I mean, I was still pretty optimistic that, you know, the sort of the force of the arguments would convince a lot more people than they did.
What I wrote Against the Gods, I felt that was pretty clinchy.
Not just about agnosticism, but about religion as a whole.
And I thought that the explanation of God as the unconscious was subtle and powerful and sophisticated enough that it had the potential to sort of roll like a bowling ball through the five pins of fractional belief systems.
But it's always very easy to underestimate the degree to which people can ignore uncomfortable information.
I'm not very good at that.
I mean, I've got that sort of, probably like yourself, that Socratic gadfly.
It just bothers me.
You know, it nagged me forever about ethics, which is why I wrote Universally Preferable Behavior.
It nagged me forever about libertarianism, which is why I became an anarchist.
Just things that don't sit right, they just bother me.
And I eventually just, you know, I don't know if you've ever had that.
You ever have that where you're trying to go to sleep and you kind of have to pee?
You know, and you're like, ah, okay, but if I fall asleep, then I'm good, right?
Yeah.
But if I don't, like if I miss that window and then I have to get up and pee, like, so if I get up and pee, well, I got to do it in the dark, you know, because I don't want to turn on lights and have my brain think it's like noon, you know, in Death Valley or something.
So I don't want to get up because if I get up, maybe I won't get back to sleep.
But if I don't pee and I don't fall asleep, I'm just going to get up later and feel even more annoyed.
And that's the kind of, so that's the sort of situation that I made when something's bothering me.
Like it just kind of sits in my brain and it's like, eh, not answered, not answered, not answered, not answered.
But that's an unusual perspective.
Most people view new ideas as like a crock and coming up underneath their 18th century Pirates of the Caribbean sailing ship.
Like, oh God, I wish this thing would just go away because I can't fight it and it looks big enough to eat the whole ship.
And again, it's the...
The continual problem that I have, that I think a lot of people have.
Mistake the world for yourself.
And this all sounds like, oh boy, I wish if everyone was just as open to new ideas and information as I am.
I mean, I think I am pretty good that way.
But...
You know, I mean, there's positive things to be said for people's capacity to ignore counter-information.
It does create a certain amount of terrifying stability in society, which is not always for the best, so to speak, a rigidity, I guess, which gives continuity to social institutions and so on.
But I think we all, like, when somebody hits me with a new idea, I'm like, no way!
No way!
Like, I remember years ago, I was in the chatroom on Freedom Aid Radio, And someone was talking about the degree to which children were viewed as sexual objects throughout history.
And I was like, what?
What?
I never heard anything like that.
And he's like, oh yeah, man, you gotta go check out Psycho History.
And I'm like, oh, that can't be right.
And, you know, went and read and read and read.
And I'm like, wow, they've got some pretty good data here.
They make a pretty damn fine case.
And I don't find it offensive.
I don't find it problematic.
It's shocking and it's surprising, but good.
And that is not the case with a lot of people.
And I think that's because, of course, I've built my relationships or the relationships that I have in my life flourish in the presence of critical thought and curiosity and a willingness to accept new arguments, new ideas, new evidence.
But that's not what most people have.
What most people have are relationships that are incredibly fragile and which like one original thought lands like an atomic bomb on a house of cards.
And it's those relationships that they have, which I'm not sure I would even call relationships, but they're accidental biological proximities, I guess you could say.
Man, they get a new idea.
They get a new argument.
They get something that goes counter to people's prejudices.
I mean, and this can even be about stuff that is not wildly radical or, you know, like somebody could say, you know, I'm starting to have my doubts about this global warming catastrophe scenario because I think that Al Gore said that the world would be underwater by next month, 2015, or something like that.
And I'm just having some skepticism.
And man, people can just go nuts on you for that stuff.
I remember many years ago when I was dating a woman, a friend of hers had a newborn, but there was an older kid around.
I mentioned this story before.
And the parents were sitting down and explaining commercials.
The commercials, all they want to do is just sell stuff that's bad for you so they can make money and this, that, and the other, right?
And I just, you know, I don't have to get into the whole argument.
I just made a counter case.
You know, which is, it's free services provided and you pay with your time for commercials and if people would rather pay...
With money than with time, then that's what would be provided.
And, you know, not all this stuff is bad for you.
You know, this is a flying toy.
Not a flying toy.
How is that bad?
Well, you know, it's made with non-reproducible, non-renewable plastics, and it's come from this, and it's got dye, and so on.
It's like, well, but, you know, these things tend not to last too long for kids.
And, you know, I just provided some pretty mild counter-arguments to, you know, this all advertisers are horrible people.
Just prey on kids.
You know, like the guy who was talking about the other day, like, well, the food companies just want to sell you crap.
And it's like, well, no, people really like crap.
I mean, crap tastes fantastic.
And, you know, education would be better and it'd be nice if the food industry didn't regularly buy off the government to create profit-friendly food pyramids and crap like that.
But Just minor counter-arguments.
And I wasn't saying, oh, you're wrong.
Some advertisers are like that.
But, you know, in general, you do have to provide long-lasting value that's not harmful if you want to do well in the free market and so on.
And it's like, I could just, like the whole room, it was like a scene from Frozen.
Like it was just like what I was saying to them.
Was just so appalling.
So shocking.
And, you know, of course, I was never, ever allowed back in that house.
Apparently I was some probably funded by free market apologist who, you know, dreamt of nothing more than stepping up and down on the hands of Chinese workers until they turned into tentacles of jam or something.
And that was a pretty mild, it wasn't even that much of a disagreement.
I was just, you know, yeah, that's true.
But there's also this perspective as well.
And I'm pretty good at putting that stuff across.
I'm not like screaming at people or anything.
But it was just like, here's an argument that's counter to that which I believe.
And when people have, when they've invested their identities into cliches, The only counter-argument they have is being offended.
And the moment that you see someone who's offended, who's shocked, who's appalled, who's outraged, as a teacher, I can tell you that the moment they just get angry and are outraged and so on, You know, 99 times out of 100, it's just because they have no counter arguments, and you're threatening their identity and their relationships.
And so, yeah, I mean, I just sort of want to point out that this is the level that people are at, and I've had this a number of times.
Just put out some mild stuff about things.
And stuff that isn't even historically controversial.
And, I mean, people, they just go crazy.
And you just can't reason with crazy people.
I mean, you just can't.
So, that's the world that he's living in.
And to me, if this noble, I dare say, noble young man, As a wife who's willing to teach his children gently, then they're going to grow up non-traumatized or at least as little traumatized as possible under the situation.
If he gets divorced and there's step parents and step caregivers and new people moving in and floating around and financial ruin and emotional depression and anxiety and all that, I mean, God, I think it would be so much worse for the kids.
And so, yeah, anyway, that was my sort of general thought behind it.
And I could, you know, see that too.
Another part of the call, for me, was that you had made the statement that religion pushes back against the state.
And then there was talking as far as more religious people are conservative, right?
Do you remember saying that?
Yeah.
And so that was one of the things I was listening back to.
I think it was what?
1103.
Religion and Government.
And it was where you were making the case that it's like two sides and maybe they'll go back and forth, but basically it has to do with their being a vacuum in a sense of, you know, I know you were saying that to If religion goes away, a vacuum of power, then the government takes over.
But I feel like if the government also goes away, then the religious part will take over.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, no, I absolutely agree with that.
Okay.
Well, with two exceptions.
No, and the power vacuum does work both ways.
But you know the...
I mean, the way the statism...
Statism is in the later stages of a self-destructive addiction.
I mean, they're far beyond reason.
Far beyond any capacity for reason, facts, and evidence to slow down the progression towards the seppuku of the state-driven economy.
But we all know that when statism hits the wall, that's when the opportunity for growth And change can occur.
Human beings generally don't learn well through reason and evidence.
They learn brutally and tragically through unbelievable disasters.
And Christianity has already gone through that.
Because, as I talked about, this...
Equivalent of, I think it was 75 million Americans dying in the Thirty Years' War in Europe.
The unbelievable devastation from the Martin Luther-driven break in Christendom that occurred in the 16th century through to the 18th century.
Christianity has already gone through the kind of unbelievable catastrophe that That causes people to change, causes an entire culture to change.
And so there is some wisdom about the danger of the state in Christianity.
Now, so Christianity is in a way more advanced than statism because people think that statism is still this magic money box of infinite benevolence that anybody who opposes it can only do so out of some grinchy meanness to want to harm the poor or anything.
Those illusions still run thick and fast and furious.
But in the West, nobody suggests a theocracy anymore, right?
Nobody suggests, well, we need to have a state religion and we need to hound, persecute and imprison, if not kill, people who don't subscribe to that state religion or have them pay a special unbeliever tax or something like that.
Nobody puts that forward in the West anymore and that's because The West, through the unity of church and state and the religious wars that started after the breakup of Christendom in the 16th century, Christianity's already gone through.
It's hit rock bottom.
Which is where the separation of church and state came from.
And so there is a wisdom in Christianity that has yet to occur for statism.
And I sure as hell hope that the body count isn't as high for people to get some common sense about statism.
Odds are it's going to be pretty damn high because the amount of blood...
It's like people just need to write UPB in about a billion persons worth of blood.
I mean, it's tragic.
It is incredibly frustrating sometimes when you know exactly what can heal the world and people simply refuse to listen and accelerate their negative behavior.
If you've ever dealt with addicts at a personal level, you know what that's like.
And, you know, look at people like Whitney Houston.
She was a public drug addict for many, many years before finally succumbing to her addiction and dying.
Same thing with Amy Winehouse.
Of course, I think Justin Bieber has also recently decided to stop doing drugs and alcohol and thereby hopefully not doing as many ridiculous and foolhardy things.
And, gosh, who else?
Lindsay Lohan was making some pretty bad decisions on these substances and so on.
And, you know, I guess some people pull out and some people don't.
But statism is, you know, it's just massive.
Crazy.
We all want something for nothing.
And statism gives us the illusion that we can have it.
And there's almost no way It's like trying to talk people out of cashing in a winning lottery ticket.
Well, you know, you're just adding to the national debt.
Yeah, okay.
I'll take my chances, right?
I'm not adding to my national debt.
And so Christendom has with the Western.
I mean, obviously not in Islam.
There's no concept of secular.
There's no separation of church and state.
I mean, the church is the state, right?
That's what ISIS wants, is this historically proclaimed caliphate.
Of perfect Islamic law, which then goes to war against the Romans, which is why they're threatening to pick fights with Italy.
Not the case under Islam.
Not the case under other.
But Christendom has gone through that incredibly bloody experience.
And that's still part of our culture.
So it's absolutely true, yeah, where there's one power vacuum.
But this is why you raise kids without subjugating them to the power of parents and then they won't spend their whole lives as bowed backs waiting for a yoke to fall on them and begging for one if it's not there.
I'm sorry, just the modern-day equivalent of 95 million Americans died in Germany during that period.
And, of course, Islam would have gone through it as well, except for oil foreign policy, right?
Oil militarism and foreign policies.
Islam would already have...
I mean, the amount of contributions that Islamic scholars make to world culture compared to, obviously, highest concentration, I think, is among Jewish scholars...
But I think all of the Islamic countries translate as many books as Greece does every single year.
And so they would have gone through that collapse and that existential crisis of seeing a far more successful and wealthy and innovative culture.
Leave them in the Middle Ages, except that, of course, the thirst for oil, which is partly, of course, the fact that the Arab countries have a lot of oil, But also, of course, because domestic production of oil is sharply curtailed for environmental concerns, because apparently the environment for women in Islamic countries doesn't really matter, because there's an owl somewhere near oil.
But, um...
It's all being held back from the Islamic countries.
This, you know...
This absolutely tragic bath of bodies that people need to cleanse themselves of historical superstitions.
Yeah.
I, um, I, I don't know.
No, no, tell me.
I'm just telling you what I think.
It could be way off base.
It could be completely wrong.
And if I've reversed a position clearly, I definitely want to say that.
I don't want to sort of like, you know, I don't know if you've ever seen this, this old SNL sketch where William Shantner shows up at a Star Trek convention and after receiving a bunch of inane and kind of creepy, stalky questions from the audience, he's like, excuse me, have you ever kissed a woman?
Like, come on, guys.
It was a failed TV show from 30 years ago.
Get over it.
Get a life.
Grow up.
Move out of your parents' basements.
Go out into the world.
Kiss a girl.
Blah, blah, blah.
And he goes on this rant against them.
And then they basically yell at him and shake his contract.
And he's like, ah, all right, fine.
You will, of course, recognize that as my rendition of the evil Kirk from episode so-and-so.
You know, none of it's true.
I was just playing a character.
And that's his...
You know, so I don't want to sort of reverse...
Any position and have that surreptitious?
No, no, and I don't know if it's the reverse.
I guess it's just like, for me, the statement of religion pushes back against the state.
And when I'm, you know, I don't have, like, as far as the complete argument, I'm not saying, but from my point of view, when I, you're looking at, you know, whether it's statistics, like some of the stuff, like with, um, Whether they justify a war or want to go to war, and you start looking towards Christianity for that kind of stuff.
I see the Christians and voting in blocs and this kind of stuff as wanting to grab the levers of state power, not actually pushing against it.
Even with Mormonism, how many Mormons do you think got out to vote, or would you guess, for Mitt Romney?
And I would imagine that they were pretty active to try to get a hold of the state power.
And I guess that's kind of my point of view, and I don't know if that's like a solid argument, but just kind of...
Oh, look, I'm not saying that all religious people are anarcho-capitalists.
Absolutely.
Absolutely, completely and totally.
Of course, yeah.
Of course, yeah.
But they were voting for a conservative, and conservatism generally is...
More free market.
But socialist, you said that earlier though, right?
I said in general is more.
I didn't say is as a whole, right?
Or is in fundamentals.
Yeah.
Right?
So conservatism is supposed to be, or is in general, subscribes to the principle of conservatism of more free market and smaller government.
I mean, the fact is that they voted for Mitt Romney and not Obama, right?
Yeah, but I guess for my thing, it would be like, logically, that if both Republicans and Democrats were socialists, and then if you voted for Mitt Romney as a Republican, but also a socialist, then you would also be socialist, you know?
Right.
No, and I agree with you.
I'm not saying that there are some ideological differences between the two parties in practice.
Because they have to face voters who are raised for 12 years in a full government, fascist, communist system of public schooling.
And so, in my...
And again, you know, maybe this is just reading too much.
I don't know.
I don't think you can read too much Ann Coulter.
Maybe it's just reading too much Ann Coulter or, let's see, Jeff Levin or other people who are Christians.
But there does seem to be a very strong, you know...
Or maybe it's the Fox News thing or whatever...
Actually, I did watch one thing from Bill O'Reilly today, but I very rarely watch it.
But there just seems to be skepticism about the effectiveness of government combined with Christianity.
And of course, there are Christian socialists and there are people who are on the left who are very skeptical of government power, but there does seem to be a big sort of schism.
Which is sort of the European Christians seem to be smaller governments and other people tend to not be quite that way inclined.
Ideologically.
Now, of course, if you were to go to most Christians and say, we're getting rid of Social Security, they'd probably freak out just as much as anyone else, right?
But at least in the ideological perspective or in the abstract, they're more friendly to those things.
Alright, and then I'll just, I have one final thing, and I guess it has to do with, or this has to do with, you were talking about Christianity and the values that they hold.
And I, before I guess, kind of go, I guess, or I can go through their value, that you had said as, you know, self-discipline, honesty, virtue, truth, honor, dignity, discipline, community, and integrity.
And then, you know, going back to like your The book, The God of Atheists.
You know, the first virtue is always honesty.
And that's where I guess it's like for me is I have a hard time seeing or understanding or accepting or stating the fact that a Christian values honesty when they're not honest about the most fundamental truths.
Well, hang on, hang on.
When you say they're not honest about the most fundamental truths, I don't know.
I mean, I see pluses and minuses in both sides.
I mean, I don't want to interrupt you, but just very briefly.
So, for instance, Christians accept free will, whereas a lot of people on the left are kind of economic determinists.
In other words, well, the class that you're born into, and this, that, and the other, right?
It's the class you're gonna die in, and there is this kind of determinism that, from the Christian worldview, there's this argument that God doesn't give you more than you can handle.
He helps you handle what you get, right?
And so there's this idea that this egalitarianism of the soul means that opportunity is available to everyone.
Whereas on the left, especially the secular left, there's so much of a focus in the environment that it really does become a kind of economic determinism.
And so free will versus economic determinism, which is the most fundamental truth in terms of what's really going to affect your life, what really is going to give you choices and opportunities, In your life, you know, if someone said to me, sort of before I was born, and they said, well, you get free will and you get personal responsibility.
In other words, there's not a lot of excuses in Christianity because there's the egalitarianism of the soul and the idea that there is some rational order to the universe.
So there's a kind of Nietzschean thing in Christianity, which is, you know, well, it didn't kill you, therefore it made you stronger, and God is testing you, and he's strengthening you, and he's got something in store for you, and he's got a purpose for you, and blah, blah, blah.
And so there's not a lot of excuses.
Like, in Christianity, there's not much excuse to give up.
Because God has a plan for you.
And God doesn't give you more than you can handle.
And the design of the universe tends towards justice and the execution of the universe tends towards virtue.
And so there's not a lot of excuses.
Well, you were born poor.
Well, God just wanted to make you stronger.
God just wanted to have you understand poverty so that when you became successful and got rich, you could really help the poor.
So there's not a lot of can't win, don't try stuff in Christianity because there is this rational order of the universe and there's the egalitarianism of the equal souls across society.
Whereas, of course, on the left, there tends to be this economic determinism.
Well, this is where you grew up.
What chance did you have?
What chance did you have?
And I see this because, of course, whenever I talk about the fact that some people are poor by choice, people go insane.
I mean, the fact that you have a, I think it's between a 4% and 8% chance of ending up in poverty.
If you finish high school, don't get married before you're 21 and don't have a child out of wedlock.
It's almost impossible for you to end up in poverty.
And when I say that, people just like, they go mental.
Or when I say, well, you know, poor households, they work on average two people and two parents or two adults in a poor household work on average 15 hours a week and not because there aren't jobs because that's constant whether there's a recession or a boom going on.
Therefore, they're choosing to work less and therefore they end up with less money.
It's not everyone and some people are unfortunately and inadvertently poor.
But whenever I point out that poverty or what is called poverty these days, which is staggering wealth by any historical standard, but whenever I point out that some people choose Or make choices which result in them being poor, people go completely insane.
To my memory and to my knowledge, not one of those people who've gone mental, and there have been thousands of them over the years, not one of those people who've gone mental when I point out that sometimes some people are poor by choice, not one of those has ever been a Christian.
They're always socialists or leftists.
And again, I'm just sort of leaning on what the rant contains, so it's not scientific or anything.
But for the Christian to say, God has placed you in circumstances which your free will cannot possibly overcome to achieve success and virtue, would be oppositional to the entire belief system.
So if somebody said to me, okay, well you can believe that you're doomed to die where you're born, but you don't have to believe in God, or you can believe in a God and you can uncork all of your latent or potential capacities for success, I don't know.
I'm not sure which I choose. - Yeah, and I think, and I agree with that actually, that free will would be more important.
I think I misspoke there, because I said fundamental truth, and I think that's how we got on.
When you said the first virtue, that's what I was talking about, was always honesty.
What I meant is the fundamental value.
Honesty is the fundamental value.
And you're talking, and that's where I think it was, you know...
No, but you're focusing, sorry, but you're focusing on areas where the Christians are not honest.
As if, and saying, well, those are the fundamental virtues, or the fundamental values.
And I'm just saying, I'm saying, well, look, I mean, socialists or leftists or secularists are dishonest about other things, and I'm not sure which are the fundamental values.
I think you might be cherry-picking a bit.
Oh, so, no, I'm quoting from your book that says, the first value is always honesty.
So, usually, generally, whenever someone says first value, then that usually means it's, like, primary from...
Yeah, no, I get that.
And Christians are dishonest about some things, and secularists are dishonest about other things.
No, I'm not talking about whether they're dishonest or not.
I'm saying that they don't value honesty.
Like, so, if Scott the caller went to them and brought his honest feelings...
They're not going to value it, is what I'm saying.
And the same thing, there's secularists.
I'm sure there's communists.
They wouldn't value you bringing up, you know, how the free market actually enriches people.
They're not going to value that honesty either.
I'm not saying they value honesty.
But I just find that Christians do not value honesty.
No, no, no, come on.
That's, that's, that's, no, but that's, the saying is a blanket statement.
Because they believe in a deity, therefore they do not value honesty.
Oh, no, I wasn't saying they believe in a deity.
That is, that is too, that's painting with too broad a brush.
That's what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is, so do you believe, you believe that his wife values honesty?
The colors?
Yes, absolutely.
I'm not saying that she values honesty.
I'm not saying that she welcomes honesty that would go against her fundamental belief structures.
But yeah, she values honesty.
If she says, what time is it, and he gives her the wrong time, she'd probably be kind of bothered.
So you feel like that you can value honesty and then you can kind of cherry pick on where you value it and still value it?
Well, that's called the human race, man.
I mean, tell me, I mean, outside of this conversation, I'm not trying to create overly exclusionary biosphere here, but outside of this conversation, I mean, God!
I mean, the leftists yell at the Christians because the Christians are skeptical of evolution, right?
Because there's like, well, you can't be anti-science, right?
And then, you know, Bill Gates brings up IQ differences between the races, and everyone goes insane.
On the left!
It's like, well, wait a minute, isn't that science too?
I mean, as far as I understand it, that's science too!
And everyone on the left goes completely insane, and so, you know, pick your poison.
Well, and I guess that's where, for me, as far as when I came across Free Domain Radio and started listening to it, it was a point of that.
At the time, I was donating to Ron Paul.
I was like, oh, this is what's going to change things.
I hear your arguments, and that's where I feel like I'm someone that values honesty.
Good.
And that's why I say, so in this conversation, the fact that you're questioning what I put forward is fantastic.
I'm not offended.
I welcome it.
You know, people who disagree with me, what the hell?
I'm no bloody oracle, right?
So I think in this conversation, we can explore questions that are kind of taboo to a lot of people.
But I guess my...
Concern would be, it's so easy, Kirk, as you know, to project our early experiences onto the world, right?
And, you know, like 101 Dalmatians with Glenn Close should come with a trigger warning for people raised by German moms or something, you know?
Dad, why are you hiding under the couch in a fetal position whispering the lyrics to Sail the Moon for no particular reason?
Well, you know, it's getting close.
She's screaming at people.
And it's so easy to take those things and to project them out to people.
Similarly, Castle Wolfenstein.
The new order should come with trigger warnings for people raised by German moms.
Although at least you get to beat her up at the robot.
But anyway.
But, you know, most German women are perfectly nice.
It's just, you know, that was my mom.
And you wouldn't want to take your obvious anger towards your mom.
And by obvious, I don't mean wrong at all, right?
But fully honor and respect your experience.
And then say, she's the template for all Christians.
Right?
That would obviously be unjust to Christians, of whom there are people like your mom, people worse than your mom, and people better than your mom.
Well, and that's where I think...
I guess I'm trying to...
I'm trying to think of how I would apply this to myself, if I'm, like, checking with myself.
You know, and that's where I feel like Freedom Aid Radio has helped me the most, is giving me a framework to really...
Is not look outward, not look at laws or what the majority of people are thinking, but actually look at things with a rational perspective.
And so if I'm...
That I can value honesty.
And there's very few people...
Look, people who are not in the realm of philosophy, real philosophy and self-knowledge, Don't even know they're being dishonest, for the most part.
They don't even know that they're being dishonest, Kirk.
See, I don't know.
That's some things I don't know.
Maybe that's part of my problem.
I feel like, you know, and I think you've made the argument before that, too, is against agnosticism.
You know, in that God of Atheists books, it calls it agnostics.
Cowards, I think.
Agnosticism and cowardice is a chapter.
And it's the fear of others.
And they don't even know that they're being cowards.
They think they're being wise.
The cowardice is created in the identification.
People who support the welfare state, they genuinely think they're helping the poor.
Okay, so with that statement there, right?
Not all of them, but a lot of them.
Yeah, no, no.
But this is kind of where, I guess, that's where I feel confused, though, and if I'm trying to put anything.
But if I just say values and I don't apply it, so if I went to a status, that's where I'm saying, if I ask the status, do you value honesty or that truth or dignity, discipline, In a sense,
if I give them the out to say that, well, they really believe that, or they really believe that people are stuck in the class, and that kind of stuff, then it's like, it again, like, I guess for me, I feel, you know, hopeless, in a sense.
Well, and isn't that, I mean, the emotional driver behind this?
Behind this?
This conversation.
Yeah.
I'm always sniffing at the feelings behind the words, which is why I'm currently humping your leg.
And this is not to say that the conversation at its intellectual level is not fascinating, which it is for me, and I really appreciate all these topics.
But I think that there is, and I wrote when I was 17, we must bury ourselves in order to be resurrected.
There is a kind of death that we need to go through.
You know, to come at us Gandalf the White, right?
I mean, to come back, to return.
And there is a kind of spiritual death that occurs prior to the achievement of the true power of wisdom.
And I say that it's a multi-generational change.
And the reason that I say it's a multi-generational change, Kirk, is people don't listen.
People don't listen.
They just don't listen.
I don't mean you.
I mean, I'm keeping, you know, the calls in this show are fantastic.
I mean, but most people, they simply won't listen.
I mean, there's...
If you guys can...
Mike, if you can look this up.
John Goodman...
And John Turturro film, the Coen Brothers film, about some hotel or something like that, about some writer trapped in a hotel.
And John Goodman just says at one point, you just don't listen!
Because you don't listen!
And it really struck me.
It's not a great film or anything, although I do like the occasional Coen Brothers film, but just don't listen.
People just won't listen.
They don't listen.
Which is why it has to be multi-generational.
Look, If people listened, we could get it done tomorrow.
We could get a free society tomorrow.
Barton Fink.
Yeah, that's the name of the movie.
Barton Fink.
I mean, almost anything with John Goodman is worth watching.
But Barton Fink, just don't listen.
If people listen to reason, we could get it all done tomorrow, right?
Yeah.
You know, there's that scene from Apocalypse Now.
Where?
Marlon Brando's Mr.
Kurtz has a speech, something like, you know, we inoculated the children of the village and the enemy soldiers came in and they saw that we'd injected things into the children and when we came back we saw a pile of arms and they had cut the arms off the children.
Perfect, crystalline willpower.
We can't beat that.
We can't beat that.
They're willing to chop off arms of children because they've been infected with Yankee syringes.
I mean, the gods had to send a winged messenger, and hey, homies, we've got the internet.
It doesn't even need wings.
People can get it through Bluetooth in their car at the touch of a button.
That's where the truth is.
The truth is that fucking close.
The truth, the reason, the evidence, the arguments is that fucking close.
It's a click away.
It's a click away in the comfort of your car.
All the information, all the evidence, all the facts, all the truth, all the arguments that have been withheld from humanity for thousands and thousands of years by poets, priests, and politicians, all that truth is available for people instantaneously.
And if they simply decided to close their mouths and open their ears, we could get it done tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
We have a free society tomorrow.
Peaceful society tomorrow.
But people don't listen.
They don't listen.
And they not only won't listen, they find listening repulsive, immoral, wrong.
Like we are infecting them.
And they will cut off their own mental arms rather than take an inoculation of reason.
They will maim themselves rather than listen to the patient syllables of truth.
And we can cure the zombies but only genetically.
Only through generations.
Because you inject them and they'll cut off their own arms.
And I'm sorry to say all of this.
I really am.
And this is a perspective that has kind of grown in me.
And this has been, you know, this whole show has been just this massive experiment in what if the truth is available to people?
And listen, I get people's skepticism.
I'm not saying this is the only truth and I am the only one with the truth and it's the perfect truth or anything like that.
But come on.
We've got some pretty fucking great arguments here.
And we've got some great experts.
We've got some great data.
And we've got some great arguments.
And they're not that hard or complicated, these arguments.
And so this whole show, this whole conversation, Kirk, is a massive experiment in what if philosophy was just available to everyone all the time?
Real philosophy.
Philosophy.
Defined syllogistic philosophy.
Data-driven philosophy.
What if that was just available?
Not can we end the fad, but can we bring reason and evidence and virtue and truth to the people in our lives?
Can we bring peaceful parenting to the people in our lives?
This has been a whole experiment of what happens to humanity when the gatekeepers that keep philosophy at bay give way and the tsunami of reason and evidence can hit the shores of human culture.
What happens?
It's never ever occurred before in history.
It's never, ever occurred before in history.
And it never had the potential to occur before in history because technology wasn't available.
And what's happened?
Thank you.
Some fantastic stuff.
Some absolutely fantastic stuff.
And some absolutely appalling stuff.
Normal nonsense and lies that are spread about innovators and those who take stands against immorality.
Natural par for the course.
And much more gentle than is in general the case.
Throughout history.
But has there been any kind of big revolution?
No.
There has been, as I kind of predicted but hoped wasn't going to be the case, but there has been this, you know, just patient brick by brick.
You build your cathedrals brick by brick.
And the massive changes in all of our little lives is what turns the tide.
And it's slow.
And it's painful.
And it's probably just about right.
I think any faster you get too much of a backlash and any slower and you give up hope of anything changing.
I think it's going at just the right pace.
But the reality is that At least the case that I'm making, I'm not saying it's the reality, the case that I'm making, Kirk, is that you live in a world where people don't listen.
They don't listen to arguments, they don't listen to evidence.
It's just irrational, bigoted confirmation bias masquerading as truth.
And the amount of suffering that emerges from people's unwillingness to listen cannot be measured on any conceivable scale.
The free market should never have had to prove itself again after the 19th century.
Never.
Just look at the average income of the human species from like the Stone Age to the 19th century and it barely budges.
In the 19th century it just takes off.
Nobody should ever have to get out of bed in the morning and proclaim the values and virtues of free trade ever, ever again after the 19th century.
But we do.
Nobody should have to get out of bed every morning and say, I wonder how I can best confront the world not to hit their toddlers.
Nobody should have to do that.
But we do.
Because the majority of parents are still hitting their toddlers.
At least in the American study.
936 times a year.
Nobody should have to get out of bed and say, you don't have to spend time with people who abuse you.
But you do.
People don't listen.
You know, uh, Nobody rails against the women who bust up families because they're just dissatisfied.
You go, girl.
You develop your selfhood, your personhood.
You be Meryl Streep in Kramer vs.
Kramer.
You just go find yourself and be free of your husband and your children.
It's all in powers, right?
Even though there's, at least in that movie, there was no abuse going on.
But you say to adult children, you know, you don't have to see abusive parents.
Like the Joker, everybody loses their minds, right?
Because people don't listen.
And they don't make the most basic of inferences.
It's all just selfish manipulation under the guise of pseudo-moralizing outrage.
Now, I mean, if you've got arguments to the counter, maybe I'm just really crappy at getting people to listen.
I don't think I am.
Oh no, I agree with that.
And that's just something that needs to be accepted.
I mean, I've been working at accepting it, and it's much more relaxing.
More fun now in many ways than ever.
It's just kind of relaxing.
That can be more friendly to people because it's like, well, I know you're not going to change, so I'm not stressed about it.
I know it's a multi-generational change, so I'm in no hurry.
I'm just going to put my arguments out there and put my perspectives out there and try and make the best and most, you know, entertaining or intense or whatever emotionally open appeal that I can make to find, I say like-minded people, but just minded people.
I mean, anybody who's rational is going to end up somewhat like-minded.
And it's just so much more relaxing to recognize, to really get that it is a multi-generational Change.
We're not going to see the world we want in our lifetime.
Ah.
Good.
Because, you know, we don't want to say to people, you need to accept truth even if it's uncomfortable.
Like, there's no God.
There's no state.
Taxation is violence.
We don't want to say to other people, you need to accept truth even if it's uncomfortable to you.
In fact, especially if it's uncomfortable to you.
And then reject the truth that people don't listen.
The values must be practiced before being preached.
And it takes away the hurry to accept that it doesn't matter how long we stare at the acorn, it's going to grow when it grows.
Yeah.
And with the, you know, and understandings, I've heard you say that multiple times, the multi-generational change, and I don't know.
But also for me, listening to this show, and maybe the world's going to be a multi-generational change, but I know that listening to this show has had, like, such a huge impact on my life and, like, my family and I was doing stuff.
And just so people know, I think too, which I'm sure you've talked about that before too in your own life, that the change can be now for themselves if they want it.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
You know, the rich are why we have nice things.
That's true.
I mean, the rich people are the rich, right?
The rich are why we have nice things.
The reason being, the rich are willing to pay stupid money For like cell phones and cars and computers and all that kind of crap.
The rich are willing to pay stupid money for stuff.
It's not stupid to them, it's just stupid to all of us, right?
And they drive then, they increase the production cycle, they drive down the price, and you know, in a couple of years you'll get an Apple Watch for like eight bucks, right?
Yeah.
And so it's those who are willing to pay a ridiculous price for the new stuff, Everyone else gets it much cheaper.
But the same thing is true in ethics.
Those of us who are willing to take personal, professional, social, cultural hits.
Those of us who are willing to pay an absurd price for something new and valuable and true.
We drive down the price for everyone else.
We drive down the price.
For everyone else.
So if we don't do it, it's not going to happen.
Like if nobody buys the first computer that costs $20,000 or whatever they cost back in the day, if nobody buys the first Kleenex box-sized cell phone that you have to stand outside and point at the satellite in order to get it to work, which costs thousands of dollars, if nobody buys that, we don't get burners.
We don't get disposable cell phones that we can call and throw in the garbage, right?
So it's not like you just, even when I was thinking of the analogy of stare at the acorn, I'm going to stare.
We actually have to do it.
We have to shell out $10,000 for that first crappy cell phone so that everyone else gets the burner for $8.99.
Right?
Yeah.
That's an amazing analogy.
And the same thing.
So if we do it, then other people get to benefit.
Now, we'll still be shit on in the future for doing it.
I mean, people still hate the rich, even though we only have nice stuff because of rich people willing to pay for it, right?
But, I mean, it's just natural.
I mean, because when other people, and particularly because this is the kind of thing that anyone can do, right?
Not everyone had 10,000 bucks for the first cell phones, but everyone can live with integrity for the most part, I mean, above a certain sort of IQ level.
But, and the IQ level's not staggeringly high, but So everybody's going to benefit from those who break new grounds.
Like the first woman who wanted to leave her abusive husband was socially punished, the likes of which we could almost not imagine.
The first people to question the virtue and value of slavery were ostracized and punished and run out of town and beaten up, right?
The first people to oppose racism.
Race traitors and all that.
I mean, just, it's natural.
And everyone else is like, but if those people hadn't done it, because, you know, every progress needs its sacrifice.
Every progress needs its sacrifice.
And those of us willing to go through that door first, we get the bullets.
And then everyone else is like, hey, they're out of ammo.
We can just walk through down.
It's a tourist spot.
So, yeah, if we don't do it, it's not going to happen, right?
I mean, and this is, think of how many scientists were tortured, ostracized, and slaughtered for simply saying that the earth moves.
The Bible says it doesn't move.
And they say, well, you know, it kind of does.
That's pretty unimportant, and people were willing to kill and die for that, relative to, you know, what we're doing.
Here now, the church, the state, abusive families, I mean, what are we not taking on?
And the reality is that we, of course, look back and can't fundamentally believe what the hell was the Bible?
Why on earth were people getting killed over the Ptolemaic versus Copernican system of astronomy?
What?
Makes no sense.
But we can only say that because people were willing to do that, and every single one of those changes requires those kinds of sacrifices.
At least I can't think of one in history that didn't.
I completely agree with that.
I don't think I have anything else to, or I don't have anything else to talk about.
I might as well let somebody else talk, but thank you again for your time and And having me on.
You know, I feel better now and felt like, you know, things were talked about and hopefully it was helpful for others as well because I know there was a post as far as on the FDR boards about it.
Yeah, no, and I knew it would be troublesome for people and I certainly didn't want to backtrack over anything that I've said.
And as I said in that conversation, philosophically, Mike, if you can also get the show number...
But philosophically, I mean, nothing has changed because better arguments and evidence have not been provided.
So I certainly didn't want to be like, yeah, okay, I love me some Jesus now.
Correct.
I certainly didn't want that to be...
And for people who don't know what we're talking about, want to go and listen to this, the show number is 2927.
There's no scientific notation to that, right?
We're not into that yet.
I think that's coming.
An atheist apologizes to Christians.
All right.
Well, thanks, Kirk.
Always a pleasure chatting, and I really appreciate you bringing up this topic.
And look, I mean, it's a big topic, so if people want to call in about this again, or you do, please feel free to.
I don't want people to feel that I just took a complete left turn and am not willing to discuss or acknowledge it, but I leave it to the listenership to bring that issues and problems to my attention.
I was going to say one more thing.
Just having a thought as far as talking with you and whether you think that it would be valuable or it would be interesting for me to kind of hear your opinion.
Because as far as listening to FDR, I feel like I'm able to apply it in my life.
And then whereas I guess talking to you now, I feel like I'm not thinking as much about the world.
And I wonder how much it impacted you, you know, now that you have a daughter, and then as she's getting older, she's going into the world.
It's like, you know, that would be a bigger concern, if that made sense.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think of...
I mean, I'm not sure what else I could do to try and make the world a better place for my daughter, other than do what I'm doing.
Yeah.
And, um, so, so funny.
We, we have this, we play this game called The Impossible Question Game, which I've mentioned before, and it's, um, you know, um, how can something fall forever but never land, right?
And it's a puzzle, like riddles or whatever.
You're supposed to make them up, but not look them up.
So I just, what I gave her today was, how can something fall forever and never land?
A waterfall!
Yeah, it's falling.
What's always close but never arrives tomorrow.
You know, it's kind of riddles 101 sort of stuff.
So the other day, I said, what could be inside and outside at the same time?
A wall.
It wasn't what I was thinking of.
I was thinking like, you eat a cupcake, it's in your belly, you walk outside, it's now inside your belly but outside at the same time.
And she's like, no, not really, because it's still inside you.
And I'm like, you know what?
Your answer is much better than mine, because a wall, of course, inside and outside.
If it's a wall that's on the outside of the house, right?
It's inside and outside at the same time.
Great.
I mean, she humbles me.
Yeah, so, I mean, it certainly has an effect, for sure.
But knowing that I can't deliver...
I can deliver my daughter to the world To some degree, the way that I want, but I cannot deliver the world to my daughter the way that I want it to be.
That's just not going to happen.
I'm only one person.
All right.
Listen, I'm going to move on to the next call, but thank you so much for calling in, as always.
Thanks a lot, Stephen.
Bye.
Thanks.
Yeah, thank you very much, Kirk, for calling in.
And anyone else that does want to call in, feel free to shoot me an email.
We'll make that happen.
All right.
Mike, you've got to get that clip.
You do now listen clip.
Should I pull that clip?
I mean, it's actually in the preview.
Oh, okay.
If I remember rightly, but it was just, it just struck me like a, and of course, I mean, I don't know when the movie came out, 20, 25 years ago or something like that.
And I just remember that.
It just hit me like a thunderbolt.
You don't listen!
Anyway.
All right, I'll just place it in.
Because you don't listen!
Up next is Alex.
Alex wrote in and said, whose responsibility is it to find out whether or not the candidate is a good match for the team in terms of personality?
How important is this personality factor and what, if anything, can or should a person work to fit the team's personality preferences?
Hello.
What drives the question?
Can I say something quickly before I get into it?
Thank you Stefan, Mike and Stoyan.
This show is absolutely insane.
It's amazing and it changed my life so much.
I just like, I think it would be helpful if I just said that, specifically, it gave me what I like, kind of, I like to think of it as informed consent on life, kind of like, you know, a doctor gives a patient informed consent, you know, so they have all their options.
And I, you know, I really appreciate that, especially, you know, the ability to spot dysfunction and, you know, avoid it in society and people.
That's huge for me.
And a lot of this has a lot to do with my question, too.
Also, the ability to understand and identify where feelings and emotions are useful or problematic.
So, for example, arguing with somebody about politics and economics.
It's important to not rely on, you know, pathos or, you know, as a part of the argument, but it's important to understand their emotional reaction to what you're saying or something like that.
And then lastly, that you've allowed me to be a lot more honest with myself, and I didn't even know that was a problem.
So thank you so much for helping me with all of that, and this show is great.
So I just wanted to say that's why I strongly encourage everybody, all the listeners, to support the show, and that's why I am.
Well, thank you.
And in the spirit of taking things out of context, we're just going to take a couple of words out of your review and say, Free Domain Radio, it's completely insane.
So, we're just going to slice that little bit out because, you know, we're just self-destructive that way.
Put that front and center on the website.
It's completely bad!
Thank you, Alan.
Oh, yeah, of course.
So, having said that, I'd...
Kind of the purpose, the mentality behind this question was I really want to think of a way that I can help the show out with a question.
And I thought, well, you know, I heard a couple of comments or I saw them on YouTube and, you know, that, well, I would, you know, I would donate if I had a job or something.
And, you know, that's that's been a problem for me for a while.
And I'm sure there are a lot of other listeners who have that problem.
So, you know, maybe This personality aspect is a part of it, at least I think it has been for me.
So, yeah, that's kind of where I'm coming from.
That's kind of why it's important to me.
And then I have a couple of examples.
Where should I get started, do you think?
Your choice.
I am at your command.
Okay.
Well, the definition of personality that I think makes sense for this conversation would be the sum total of behavioral characteristics in an individual.
Actually, I took a personality test from a company in preparation for an interview.
It's part of their process.
They used the Myers-Briggs and I think Three other types of personality tests that I don't remember what they're called.
And in my case, the results were basically that I'm extremely analytical and that's kind of a lot of my strengths all revolve around analysis and not the creative person who starts with an idea and comes up with the great idea and not the person who makes the idea happen, but the one who It takes an idea, criticizes it, you know, and improves it.
And that's what they call a refiner.
So that's kind of generally, I guess, my professional personality label, if you will.
And I could go into more detail about that.
But I think my general problem is I've had a long history of getting jobs and then either losing them or quitting because either my personality isn't the right fit for my boss or the people there, and I just run into problems that make work impossible for me.
So I don't know if there's a general solution or if it's a case-by-case thing, but I think I kind of want to understand Maybe how I should deal with that better.
Does that make sense?
And is that a problem that you've had?
Have you ever thought about it in terms of personality when you reflect on your work history?
Oh, yeah.
No, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Do you know where it came from?
No, actually.
Do you think it came from psychologists?
Oh, probably not.
No, it really didn't.
So, it was developed during World War II by, obviously, these two women called Myers and Briggs, who were housewives.
And they really got into Carl Jung, like the early influential psychoanalyst.
I don't know what you'd call him.
And...
So, I mean, they were just a bunch of housewives who put together some test.
And that's not to say that if you're not a scientist, you can't make huge and valid contributions to science.
Of course you can, right?
But they were two untrained housewives who took the personality test from the works of Jung, who himself is not very scientific, right?
I mean, Jung is pretty influential in the middle of the century, but his ideas are largely scientifically completely untestable.
There's like no null hypothesis.
And there is a big problem.
Lots of companies use it, but it's quite telling that psychologists don't use it.
It's almost never used in the realm of psychology.
And...
I don't think it has been subject to a lot of empirical testing, if that makes sense.
Yes, and I was wondering that.
And so I would be careful about analyzing yourself or thinking that it says something about your personality to have this...
Test done, right?
Okay, so I'm just reading from a...
I will put the link to this.
This is a Voxcom article.
Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, who's written about the shortcomings of the Myers-Briggs test recently, he says, there's no evidence behind it.
The characteristics measured by the test have almost no predictive power on how happy you'll be in a situation, how you'll perform at your job, or how happy you'll be in your marriage.
The test claims that based on 93 questions, it can group all the people in the world into 16 different discrete types.
And in doing so, serve as a powerful framework for building better relationships, driving positive change, harnessing innovation, and achieving excellence.
And the test was developed in the 1940s based off the untested theories of an outdated analytical psychologist named Carl Jung, and is now thoroughly disregarded by the psychological community.
Even Jung warned that his personality types were just rough tendencies he'd observed rather than strict classifications.
Several analyses have shown the test is totally ineffective at predicting people's success in various jobs, and that about half of the people who take it twice get different results each time.
Sorry, I shouldn't say that.
You've probably heard people telling you that they're an ENFJ, or an INTP, or another one, this sort of stuff.
And...
So, you can read more of this, but it is...
I mean, even Jung said there's no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert or anything like that.
Its reproducibility is pretty bad.
And, you know, if half the people arrive at a different result the second time they take the test, we wouldn't accept that with IQ, right?
Virtually no major psychology journals have published research on the test and It's useful for entertainment, I guess, right?
But it has no scientific validity as far as I understand it.
And it was, again, nothing against housewives, but it was just made up by housewives based on Jung, who himself said that this couldn't really work.
And it all seems quite nonsensical.
So I don't think that...
I don't think that's the answer that companies are looking for.
But the interesting question then becomes, why are people spending money on something that doesn't work?
Right.
And what could work?
Yeah, especially because this company that I'm talking about in particular, it's the world's largest hedge fund.
I mean, the amount of money they invest into just hiring people and finding the right people is insane.
It's crazy.
And, I mean, right, and the Myers-Briggs, that's only one of four personality tests that they give somebody before they even have a shot at an interview.
One interview of, you know, probably several, so...
Oh, yeah, no, and the company that makes it makes, like, over $20 million a year, and, yeah, they're doing all right.
Yeah, so...
So, yeah, so the question becomes, A, why do companies use it, and B, what else could they use, right?
Right.
Well, um...
The reason I think that they use it is because they're not allowed to use what they should be using.
They're not allowed to use an IQ test.
In most, sorry, in America for sure, and Mike, if you could look up in other countries as well, it is against the law to hire based on IQ tests.
I don't know if you knew that.
No, I didn't.
That's really important.
I'm very glad you brought that up.
Yeah.
And that's the most foundational predictor of life success.
You give a kid an IQ test at 5 or 10 and it is going to be one of the strongest predictors of success over the course of his or her life.
It also is going to be one of the most stable marks or tests that you can give someone over the course of his or her life.
And so if you want to know whether people work well or not together, An IQ test would be one of the most obvious things to do.
I mean, it's scientifically validated.
It's been combed over by six million different statisticians and researchers.
It has been reviewed.
It gets updated based on the Flynn effect, which is the increase in IQ over time.
It's recalibrated.
I mean, that is a great, great test.
And it's highly, highly predictive.
I mean, again, if I had to give...
You know, if I only had to give one test, I'd give an IQ test.
But you're not allowed to.
Let me just give you a quote here.
One summary of the relationship between employment policy and IQ testing is provided by Murphy in 2002.
Cognitive ability tests represent the best single predictor of job performance, but also represent the predictor most likely to have substantial adverse impacts on employment opportunities for members of several racial and ethnic minority groups.
And, um, let's see here.
Though cognitive testing is generally inexpensive, reliable, and valid, U.S. employers risk expensive legal action if such testing produces disparate impact.
In practice, companies have responded with a variety of strategies from abandonment of cognitive testing to a maintenance of racial hiring quotas.
The latter derives from enforcement of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's four-fifths rule, which states that any group selection rate that is less than four-fifths of the highest rate will be regarded By the Federal Enforcement Agency's Evidence of Adverse Impact.
Okay, so this is a lot of hoo-ha that basically there's lots of data going back, I guess, since the beginning of World War II. Sorry, beginning of World War I, so at least American involvement.
So I guess almost 100 years.
Which says that there are...
And look, this is all argued and arguable, and so I'm just giving you the lay of the land as I've done before.
I don't have any particular conclusions.
I don't have the expertise in the field.
But there are IQ tests going back almost 100 years in America that put...
Asians at 105, 106.
Whites at 100.
And blacks at 85.
On average, right?
You can't judge any individual because it's a bell curve and all that.
But, you know, in general.
And so there are these two opposing...
And we just had Professor James Flynn on to talk about his arguments that the reason for these IQ disparities are largely cultural.
And there are other people such as...
Charles Murray, who argued that it has a substantial genetic component.
Who knows?
I mean, nobody knows for sure.
I certainly don't.
But what happens, of course, if all of this is true, if these IQ disparities and IQ testings are true, and, well, I mean, if you want more information on this, you can...
Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray wrote a book in the 90s called The Bell Curve.
You can look it up.
There's an abridged audiobook version of it on YouTube, but you can...
Check out in about an hour.
It's worth reviewing.
And after this book came out, there was a huge controversy and the American Psychological Association put a whole team together to scour all the data and they concluded that, well, yeah, okay.
This disparity does seem to occur and so on.
Again, the cause of it, nobody knows for sure.
Certainly a huge amount of time and energy and effort.
Head Start had a lot to do with closing this gap.
In achievement standards between various racial groups.
There was some initial success where the IQ gaps closed, but then they opened up again as people got older and so on.
It's still a huge problem and a huge challenge, and nobody knows exactly how to solve it.
And there are some people who argue that it's not even real.
But, nonetheless, you can't use IQ as your...
Because you're supposed to have equitable employment among the various races, and if you use the IQ test, then you're going to end up with...
As Google has found out, I think Google was just talking about this, that they have a huge number of Orientals, of Asians, Chinese engineers, and so on, and they have a smaller proportion of...
Of whites and then they have a smaller still proportion of blacks and it does actually map out to IQ averages and standards but it's a big problem.
So if you use an IQ test and then disproportionately fewer blacks get hired then you can end up with a huge problem.
Which is that minorities are failing them.
At least some minorities are failing them relative to whites.
IQ tests in the US were banned after the Civil Rights Act was passed.
Companies were administering IQ tests and minorities are failing them.
Some minorities are failing them relative to whites and IQ tests Griggs versus, this is a law case, Griggs versus Duke Power Company.
The Supreme Court in America decided that IQ tests must not be used in job admission tests, in spite of the fact that a vast amount of research shows that the IQ test is by far the best predictor of job performance.
So, Google submits its applicants to very rigorous intelligence testing, they just don't use the standard IQ test.
Now, as a hirer myself, we had problems with compatibility.
With people and I devised an intelligence test, not an IQ test, but I devised sort of an intelligence test which measured creativity and problem solving, inferences, rationality and so on.
And during the hiring process we had people fill out these tests and it wasn't conclusive or anything like that but it sort of gave us an indication of that and it sure helped.
People of a high IQ Tend to work fairly well together.
You know, this myth of the mad genius is just something invented by mediocre people to pretend that they've got something called stability which smart people don't have.
It's not really the case.
I mean, the smarter you are in general, the more educated you are, the more stable your marriage is and the more success you have.
And it's not fair.
It's not fair because if there is a genetic basis to intelligence within or between races or wherever, it sucks.
It sucks.
How terrible.
How terrible.
But, you know, it sucks that some people go bald.
It sucks that some people have perfect cheekbones.
It sucks that some people have soft teeth.
It sucks that some people are tall and some people are short.
It sucks that some people have body types that will never look good in a bikini.
It just, you know, there's lots of stuff that sucks in the world.
It just, you know, get a list and a pad of paper and you'll be writing until your hand falls off.
But smart people do tend to work well together.
Because smart people working with less intelligent people tend to end up feeling exploited and resentful and tend to pull back on their achievements and start looking for other work and so on.
So I don't know where this company is located and it doesn't really matter but my guess is that wherever they're located they have a problem in that they can't use tests that actually work.
But they have to use something.
And one of the reasons that people like to use tests in hiring is they can say, well, according to the test, right, they should have been compatible.
So it's not my fault.
And so people like to have tests, even if they're nonsense, because it takes the managers – it gets them off the hook for things – for people who don't work out.
Does that make any sense?
Yeah, it does.
And that's – yeah, this company, they're really – well – They have a unique culture and accountability is a big deal and puts a lot of stress.
So I could totally see that playing out as a significant factor in the hiring process.
And also, of course, companies like to standardize.
Oh, yeah.
Companies like to standardize and that way they don't have to give people bonuses, right?
They don't have to recognize excellence if they standardize, right?
Like if there's one hiring manager who's just fantastic at hiring people, Well, you want to really reward that guy, right?
Because he's saving your company millions and millions of dollars, right?
But if you standardize everything, you know, yeah, that was some crap.
But, you know, anyway, I mean, I don't want to sound like companies don't in sort of hot pursuit of excellence or whatever, but there's lots of reasons and problems.
So the question is then, well, why, what would people use instead?
Well, if they would use an IQ test, of course they would.
Of course they would.
And that would be number one because that's the one that's most scientifically validated and as far as I understand it, the most predictive of success and so on, right?
And that would be number one.
I don't know if it would be an IQ test exactly, but it would be something that measured reasoning and cognitive abilities and so on, right?
And that would be, you know, in the same way that You know, a lot of basketball coaches will kind of look at how tall you are.
It's not the only thing, but you know, they seem to be almost pretty tall.
So, that's number one.
And number two is that, well, ethics?
You know, I mean, just basic ethics.
And I don't know, Mike, if you can look this up, I don't know if there are ethics tests.
I mean, they're not that easy to administer, I would assume, because even bad people know what the right answer should be and all that.
But to me, a combination of IQ and ethics would be the best way to figure out.
But the idea that there are these various personality types that somehow need to Work together like you're basically assembling a team like a jigsaw puzzle and all the pieces have to fit.
I don't believe that for a second.
I don't believe that for a second.
And I don't believe...
I think that even culture doesn't matter that much.
I mean, I would...
I mean, we have a pretty multicultural team here, all from different countries.
And, you know, smart people...
I'd rather work with smart people I could barely understand their English than...
People of average intelligence who spoke perfect English.
I think that this idea that you've got to get people who mysteriously mesh together and you get synergy, I think that's just a sad, sad second place nonsense that arises when people aren't allowed to use intelligent means of selecting teams.
Right, yeah.
I was actually thinking...
Where's the evidence of this working out?
I've never heard a CEO or CFO or any top executive in a company say, well, I fit this role perfectly in my company and that allowed me to strive for success.
I never really heard that in an interview.
If you go through interviews of executives talking, they don't really talk about fitting a certain personality Type.
It's just, well, you know, I'm smart and...
Right?
Oh, no.
Imagine, like, I saw I made a movie many years ago, which you can find on YouTube, called...
I wrote and produced it.
I didn't direct it, but...
And I was in it very briefly, but...
Called After.
And do you think that when we did the auditions for the actress, do you think that we gave them personality tests?
Yeah.
Probably not.
No.
Do you know what we cared about?
Can you act?
Can you act?
I mean, if you're a director of a Broadway musical and people are auditioning to be in your musical, do you give them personality tests?
No, I wouldn't think so.
No.
Can you sing?
And are people willing to work with you?
Oh, right.
I mean, and even if people hate working with you, it might still be worthwhile, right?
But the idea that you give personality tests for these kinds of teams is just kind of silly.
Like, I mean, if you want to form a band, do you get together with a whole bunch of musicians and give them personality tests?
No.
Who can play really well and, you know, who's really committed and ambitious and driven?
I mean, if you look at a band like Queen, I mean, these guys have all got pretty stellar IQs.
Ah, Freddie.
Well, now he must, right?
But, I mean, you know, Brian May, the guitarist, was in the middle of working on his either master's or doctorate in astrophysics.
And he did eventually finish his doctorate in astrophysics.
And Roger Taylor, the drummer, was in dentistry.
You know, got to have an IQ of at least 120, I think, to get through dentistry.
And, you know, they're all very smart guys.
And they're one of the first musician groups to figure out that they really needed to take over their own management.
Because they just were getting ripped off and worked hard and did all the right and necessary things.
And, I mean, these are all smart guys.
And smart people tend to work pretty well together.
Because they know.
They know.
That short-term disagreements are as relevant to long-term goals as sunspots are to a suntan.
Right?
Yeah, we're going to disagree.
Yeah, we're going to have problems.
But the long-term goal of our success is much more important.
You know, the bandmates in Queen used to get into ferocious arguments over royalties back in the days of 45s.
You'd release a single on 45.
People didn't have any money.
It's like $1.50 for the 45 and like $8.50.
For the LP, when I was getting a buck a week in allowance, that meant something.
But, you know, I mean, the B-side of Bohemian Rhapsody was I'm In Love With My Car, which is a sort of joke song with terrible rhymes, as I've mentioned before.
Told my girl I'd have to forget her.
Rather get me a new carburettor.
I'm like, oh, really?
I guess that was pretty late at night.
And...
When somebody buys that, how many people are buying it for I'm In Love With My Car and saying, oh yeah, this operatic song on the other side is pretty good too.
But yeah, smart people work well together and hang in there together.
Especially when, of course, one of the key things about Queen is that they all wrote number one hits.
It wasn't sort of the Stuart Copeland, Andy Summers, Gordon Sumner sting combo of The Police where You know, Sting writes great songs and then the abortion on vinyl known as mother gets stuck into synchronicity and therefore you have to buy a tape as well so you can tape the album and get that horrible song out of your speakers.
Miss Gredenko was, I think, a Copeland number in Bombs Away and there was some not so bad stuff that he did, although his clerk...
Clark Kent's stuff was pretty terrible.
But yeah, when you have just sort of one person who's the leading light, it generally tends to be harder because then that person is like, okay, well, I can hire session musicians and don't have to split royalties.
And that's sort of what happened later on with the police.
Where I think Stuart Copeland hated Sting so much that he wrote, Fuck off, you cunt, on his drum set facing Sting.
He just really, really did not get along, which may have nothing to do with IQ, although I think Sting's pretty smart.
I mean, he was a teacher, I guess, originally.
But I actually saw Stuart Copeland give a speech once where he's actually a very smart and intelligent guy.
Music tangent alert.
Yes, Mike, it's a music tangent alert.
Come back, come back!
So, I think smart people just work well together.
And if you get smart people, then...
I mean, this myth, right?
So, this character Bones, you know, is like, I'm super smart and have no emotional skills whatsoever.
It does not seem to be the case.
It does not seem to be the case.
Because really smart...
I mean, she's smart and traumatized, right?
That's the problem.
She was an orphan and abandoned.
Her father was a murderer and stuff like that.
But there's this myth that smart people are kind of unstable.
And some of it, I mean, there does seem to be higher levels of neurosis in more intelligent subsections of the Jewish population.
Diaspora Jews and so on, Ashkenani Jews.
But in general, smart people are not paying the price for their intelligence By having no emotional stability or social skills.
Generally, because we have this horrible egalitarian school system, and I think now, even now, skipping grades is frowned upon.
What happens is smart people have to mix with the bovine herd and end up not having social skills with the bovine herd, which, you know, It's not that bad.
The fact that I don't speak fluent sheep doesn't mean that I have bad social skills.
It just means I don't like socializing with sheep very much.
And so this idea that, well, you've got really smart people and therefore you need somebody who's a really great manager to get them all to work well together and so on does not seem to be the case.
And again, returning to the evidence for that since it's an assertion without evidence is sort of useless.
But IQ is a great predictor of career success.
And you really can't have career success, for most people at least, if you don't have some capacity for social skills.
And of course, a lot of what people call social skills Is not social skills.
A lot of what people refer to as social skills, what they're actually referring to is make me feel comfortable with my own mediocrity, don't make me feel bad, don't make me feel pressured, don't make me feel upset.
You know, Steve Jobs was well known to be quite a slave master.
And Ilya Kazan was pretty rough on his actors, a famous director from the 1950s and 60s and 70s, I guess.
He directed Marlon Brando in Streetcar Named Desire.
Made a whole bunch of other films that were variously great.
And the only reason you've never heard of him, of course, is because he testified against, because he came out of a communist country And so he testified against those accused of communism in the McCarthy hearings.
Well, the HUAC hearings.
It was a congressional thing.
McCarthy was a senator.
It didn't really have anything to do with it.
And so if you sort of appeal, stroke the vanity of the masses, then they call those good social skills.
Whereas I would not call them.
I would say you're a good manipulator.
And you're willing to use your intelligence in the service of getting pennies from scoundrels, or the average.
And so I think that what you need in business is not good social skills, but good business skills.
And good business skills is a very complex and challenging arena.
You know, I mean, how much do you spend?
I mean, because all our CEOs get paid so much.
It's like, man, it's hard.
And I was never a CEO. I was a chief technical officer.
And I was a marketing director.
Ran an R&D team and did a lot of sales.
I mean, I had a lot of experience in various sections of business and was a core coder and all that.
Like knowing how much you spend on sales, how much you spend on marketing, how much you spend on R&D, knowing which customers to keep, which customers to fire.
I mean, these are all very complex decisions to make and people who can do it successfully at a global level.
It's not that, I mean, CEO pay has gone up because companies have gotten bigger because competition has gotten fiercer.
And, you know, people who can carry a movie, like who will open a movie, like you'll go and see it because Jennifer Lawrence is in it or because Kristen Stewart or Brad Pitt are in it.
I mean, those people are incredibly rare.
Incredibly rare.
I mean, think of how many millions of actors there are the world over and how many of them will people go and see just because that's the person, right?
Well, maybe 30, maybe 40.
So...
I think that high IQ people do work and play well with others but because of political correctness what's happened is you're simply not allowed to do the tests that would give you the most accurate results because there are certain groups in society that people fear would do poorly because of that and I mean,
I don't want to sound unsympathetic.
I don't.
But I was not treated...
I mean, I came from a single mom household.
I came from a dirt poor household.
I came from a very chaotic and abusive family household.
And no one ever said to me, ah, well, you see, we've got to change the standards for you.
Because, you know, I mean, a friend of mine, I was growing up with his...
Mom was a stay-at-home mom who worked part-time in a bookstore when he got older.
He lived in a nice house with a pool, a car, a cottage.
His father was a professor.
Really great family, wonderful family.
But he and I got mocked the same way.
So nobody cut me slack for my clear and obvious disadvantages, which are far more significant than, say, racial disparities, right?
The degree to which I started in life way back from the starting line was huge.
Far more significant than race.
And nobody even remotely suggested or thought of offering me some kind of different metric.
Some sort of affirmative trauma action or something like that.
And to suggest that, you'd have just been laughed at.
It would have been incomprehensible.
People would have said, well, you're just trying to get away with something.
Just work hard like everyone else does.
You know, I'm sorry, your home life is this way, if it even is, but we can't change the rules for everyone just based on what you report or what's happening or whatever, right?
And so, you know, the fact that nobody would ever have suggested to me, or for people like me, and there were people who had it even worse than I did, and they were still marked the same, and they were still failed the same.
They didn't get any breaks, no affirmative action for people with an adverse childhood experience score of nine.
So, given that I started off more disadvantaged than blacks or anything like that, statistically, I mean, just the single metric, single motherhood.
Although I get it, there's lots of blacks who come from single mother households as well.
But if you look at the fact that I started off more disadvantaged than any aggregated minority, and nobody suggested that I be measured in some sort of different metric, I didn't necessarily like it at the time, but it may have been very beneficial and probably was for me.
Because you then don't feel like you're on a softer scale.
You work your muscles.
You work to overcome.
You work to grow.
And this is what Tom Sowell says about...
Black economists, for what it's worth, says about affirmative action.
It's just horrible.
Horrible for blacks.
And the other thing, too...
You know, the most expensive...
And, you know, anytime you deny basic metrics and basic reality...
You simply postpone an exacerbative disaster...
Because the fact that you can't use an IQ test to get people into college, sorry, to get people into a job, to measure their potential efficacy at a job, because you can't use an IQ test for that, you now have to substitute.
Do you have a degree?
Do you have a bachelor's?
Because to get a bachelor's, you need an IQ of 110 to 115.
To get a master's, you need 120, 125, I think for...
PhD, higher than that, and so on, right?
Oh my god, it's so frustrating, yeah.
What do you mean?
I mean, holy, like, what I learned in college, yes, I had some really helpful professors who really were unusually good at providing feedback on my writing, and I responded probably unusually well to their criticism and improved better than most of my classmates.
But almost everybody I know who went to college and spent all that money and got the degree could have learned almost everything by just doing their own personal research and having some discipline.
And so this fucking degree that they have that employers are looking for, just because I don't have a degree in economics, disqualifies me from jobs that I probably could do because of the amount of research I'm doing on my own.
And they don't care.
Because there's no test...
No, no, they would.
They would care.
They would care if they could give you an IQ test.
Yeah.
Right?
That's...
Okay.
Because if you could give someone an IQ test that takes about half an hour or 40 minutes, they wouldn't need a four-year college degree.
Yeah.
Because I can almost guarantee you, I don't know if any differential studies have been made, but I can almost guarantee you that the IQ test is as certain...
As valid as a four-year college degree.
In fact, no, I can go one further.
I can guarantee you, I actually can guarantee you statistically, that it's a far better measure of competent people than a four-year college test.
Because a four-year college test is limited to those people who are either willing to take out the loans or can afford it in some other manner.
Whereas an IQ test, some kid off the street can take it.
Some kid who's just, you know that famous scene from, it's a pretty old film by now, Good Will Hunting?
Oh yeah.
He says, you just spent $180,000 on an education you could have got for a buck 95 in late fees from your local library.
Right.
Well, that's a very important statement.
I mean, did anyone who wanted to hire Matt Damon's character, did anyone say, well, you don't have a degree?
No.
They were begging him for work, practically.
Begging him?
Yeah.
Begging him.
I mean, Christ almighty.
Bill Gates never finished his degree.
Steve Jobs never finished his degree.
Albert Einstein was working in a patent office, for God's sakes, when he came up with the theories of relativity, right?
I mean, the idea that we need all this education is ridiculous.
It's simply because you can't do an IQ test.
And because you can't do an IQ test...
Massive amounts of talented poor people are kept out of the highest levels of business.
Because they have to put that college degree in.
Because they can't do an IQ test.
Which strips potential from the poor.
Because the poor then say, Well, fuck, I can't go and get a college degree.
I don't have the money.
And I'm not willing to take on that much debt.
It's terrifying.
Especially the smarter, poorer people.
Okay, what's the ROI on this?
What's the return on this college degree?
It's not great, right?
Right.
Or negative for a lot of degrees.
And so, it's brutal.
Of course, if you really wanted to help, I mean, let's talk about the blacks.
Let's say that this IQ, this sort of standard deviation, 15-point IQ gap is real.
Let's say it's real.
And whatever course, it doesn't matter.
Let's just say it's real.
Even under that metric, 20% of blacks are smarter than the average white.
So those blacks should be able to get into professional jobs through an IQ test.
That way they don't have to spend four years of college and be out hundreds of thousands of dollars in income opportunities and in deferred income and college fees and all that kind of stuff.
If you really want to help, anybody who's poor Just get rid of the restriction on IQ tests.
Because then the poor kids who are smart go to college.
You can't really study for an IQ test because it is really calibrated to measure analytical intelligence, if I remember rightly.
But you just go and get rid of it.
Just let employers use intelligence tests.
I mean, they're going to do it anyway.
Google does it anyway.
But to have them do a standardized one that's the most valid one That they can find and that's going to be the most you can do to help all the poor minorities around the world is to get rid of this ridiculous requirement for a college degree.
Give an IQ test because of course what's happening now is you've got this trillion dollar college debt bubble.
I think 30 or 40 percent of college loans are now considered unpayable.
I mean this is a financial catastrophe that's going to rival the housing crash.
All because political correctness says you can't use an IQ test.
Sorry, you were going to say?
Oh, yeah.
Just, it's...
The...
Oh, I'm just so fucking pissed off about all of this.
You know what?
You have a rant.
You take the next 10 minutes, you have a good old rant.
I'm sorry, it's just...
That's my share.
No, no, it...
No, take it.
I'm serious.
Go for it.
Okay, I just wanted to say, yeah, I mean, I've...
Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, listening to your show, hearing all of this about the economics...
Doing my own research on unemployment law to find out that I actually can't work overtime because the government won't fucking let me.
I can't even volunteer my own time because my employer is too afraid that I would turn around and, you know, sue them in a court like, you know, Wells Fargo in California did that.
There are all kinds of, you know, all these, you know, the Fair Standard Labor Act of 1938, like, they have all these exceptions for government employees, you know, because they're so special.
And, you know, There's this one particular employee who works at a prison in Albany.
There's an article.
She lied about her overtime hours and made like over $200,000 a year for like some kind of, I think it was a nurse job.
You know, all these.
So these government employees are using these laws to just You know make all this money at that the taxpayers are paying for and nobody can talk about it on LinkedIn or write an article because if they do then all these Democrat employers won't hire you So that's a problem like I can't even talk about all this research I'm doing to find out about my future and So like I'm just trying to find ways of you know getting ahead and I'm the government is just shutting
me down at every fucking turn and And, meanwhile, I have this GPA that's really good, that's above average.
I busted my ass.
You know, so many all-nighters.
I have two fucking diseases that I got in college from stress and all the caffeine and, you know, the expenses and everything.
And I'm still having trouble finding a fucking job.
And I had to deal with working in a goddamn restaurant with an asshole cook.
Asshole cooks...
I think this was in your show a while ago, not Asshole Cooks, but Latin American, kind of Mexican, Spanish, that ethnicity, there's something about their culture in which they identify masculinity as being synonymous with aggression.
At least that was my experience in this environment because that was kind of their background.
They thought I was gay and had no respect for me and they were putting me down, didn't listen to me or anything.
And then when I fucking flipped out and almost threw a plate at them, they listened to me.
So what I'm getting at with that is I can't find a fucking job with people who are as intelligent or hardworking as me.
And they fire me because I work too hard.
It makes them look bad, makes them look lazy.
You know, why do you want to, you know, do all this extra work?
Like, you know, what do you care?
And I just can't relate to any of these people and I just get a ton of shit for it.
And the government's shutting me down too without even, you know, and that's like at the impersonal level.
So I'm just calling in really to say like a lot of, you know, I'm kind of just wondering what you thought because I figured, you know what, you probably experienced some of this too.
I mean, you worked at restaurants and do you have a better way of dealing with it or how do you get past all this bullshit so that you can finally land that dream job, that career that just gets you in with smarter people?
Yeah, and I mean, I worked at a bunch of different restaurants.
I worked at a pizza hut.
I worked at a Swiss Chalet, I worked at a more upscale restaurant.
Well, in the restaurant environment, it's just the nature of the beast, right?
Yeah.
You're not going to find a lot of geniuses working in a restaurant.
I mean, it's just the way it is.
I mean, I'm carrying food from a kitchen to a table.
I am a robot with jokes.
And, I mean, it's something to move beyond.
I had pretty good relationships with the cooks.
In particular, and cooks have it pretty stressful and they're in their heat and all that, right?
But in the higher class restaurant that I worked in, it was a seafood restaurant.
There were just a bunch of Chinese guys in the kitchen and I liked them a lot.
They would sort of pick up these Chinese newspapers and I'd ask them what they were reading about and sit down and chat with them about what was going on in China and this was during the big transition time so they were all very interested and I was very interested too.
And I just remember the one guy, they were very mellow in a lot of ways, right?
I guess they escaped communism so, you know, the fact that orders were backing up wasn't so bad for them.
But I just remember the one guy who was like, no problem.
No problem.
You know, it's like, hey, I need my food.
No problem.
It's coming.
It's no problem.
And he's just, everything was really mellow.
And I really quite liked chatting with them.
And I always remember, even after my shift, I'd sit down with them and they'd sort of step me through what was going on in the Chinese newspapers.
And I really enjoyed that.
The guy who was in charge of the restaurant could, he was also oriental.
I don't think, I don't know if he was Chinese or not, but I think he could be a bit underhanded.
Like I had an early shift and I was doing a late A late meal with a bunch of rabble rousers.
And I was doing really good service.
I worked that table for like a couple of hours and that bill was like $900.
And I was expecting a really good tip and he's like, oh, they didn't give you any, they gave you no tip, my friend.
I'm so sorry because I had to leave because I had an early morning and he said, oh, I'll close off the table for you.
They were almost done.
And he's like, I didn't leave you a tip.
I'm like, hey, can I see the visa?
Oh, I threw it out.
I think he just took my tip.
Who knows, right?
But it's tough.
It's tough in restaurants.
I mean, a lot of people are just moving through.
And it is very repetitive, of course.
I mean, that's the big challenge with restaurants.
I do remember one guy came in.
It's like, oh, I just got really great.
And he came in with his girlfriend.
He's like, I just got really great news.
What is your most expensive...
Champagne.
And we had, I think, a Dom Perignon for like $750, which, you know, there's a lot of money now, back in the day.
Huge amount of money.
And he's like, I'll take it.
And I'm like, I couldn't imagine it.
I was living in a single room.
I had a bike.
I was living, my rent was $275 a month.
And that included all utilities and everything.
And I was living on maybe $600 a month.
And so this guy, like with one bottle, it was like five or six weeks of my entire income, was this guy just ordered in a bottle of champagne.
And I was like, don't finish it, don't finish it, because I just wanted to taste.
Anyway, he did.
Sorry, I'll get on my misadventures in restaurants, but...
But yeah, I would say that you're not going to generally find that kind of stuff in restaurants.
Because, I mean, people who are smart are just kind of moving through.
You know, one of the challenges with self-actualization, with the pursuit of self-knowledge and philosophy, it's kind of entrepreneur-robust.
You kind of get that, right?
Yeah.
It took me a while, but yeah, I didn't think of it at first like that.
But now that you mention it, that makes more sense.
Who are you going to work for?
Me, maybe.
But no, who are you going to work for?
Who's going to be your equal?
Yeah, I don't know.
That's really tough.
I mean, I keep thinking ahead like, you know, oh, for these really specific jobs in this industry.
But yeah, somebody, some department head in a company who specializes in whatever I end up focusing on.
It's kind of what I've been picturing.
But it's so hard to get there because it's so specific.
And if I get shut down in one area, then it's like, well, okay, I have to relearn everything for a completely other specific area.
Like, for example, compliance or technical writing.
They're very industry-specific.
So when I don't get the interview, it's like, oh, shit.
That's like the only company in my area.
Hiring for that, that doesn't require experience or something.
So...
Right.
What were the illnesses you got from...
Oh, gastroesophageal reflux disease and major depressive disorder.
Right, right.
I'm sorry about that.
Yeah.
Thank you.
But I mean, even when I get office jobs that, you know, temporary like data entry, like my boss, I had a boss who was obsessed with the movie Frozen, single mom, the whole company, like definitely just Democrats, socialists, you know, I could just tell.
And I just kind of something in the back of my mind, I just knew there was this kind of intolerance that it just kind of wasn't going to work out no matter how hard I tried.
And they ended up kind of Getting annoyed at me for wanting to do everything really well, so well that whenever I ask a clarifying question, it may be intimidating or something.
It's really frustrating climbing the ladder, you know?
Oh, heaven forbid you land in a unionized environment.
Ooh!
Ooh!
Hey, that's a pretty fast typing you got going on there.
Slow that down.
It's not a race.
Right.
Right.
And of course, I mean, that's just a lower IQ perspective.
You know, like, it really struck me when you said, like, you're working fast and people say, well, what do you care?
Right?
Like, that's just a lower IQ perspective.
Yeah.
Like, I remember once when I was doing business travel, there was a cab driver.
And the cab driver said, Here, I'll just give you a blank receipt.
You can write in whatever you want.
That's better for you, right?
We had a nice chat or whatever, and he was trying to be nice to me, right?
It was a $40 ride, but I could write in $80, right?
If I wanted, and then I could claim that as my expense and whatever, right?
Now, of course, I didn't do that.
Neither did I want to.
And I said, I guess, in a weird way, that's kind of nice, but It comes back to you, right?
I said, you don't like it when the price of things go up, right?
And he's like, well, no, of course not.
I'm like, well, but when you write out, you give these little blank things, you're adding to the costs of people doing business.
If people put in more money, like you maybe think you're being nice to them, and maybe they make a couple of bucks, but if a lot of people do this, the price of everything goes up.
And then you, you know, you make less than the people you're giving this little bonus to.
It's going to cost you more than you're giving to them.
Now, he got it, you know, to his credit or whatever, but, you know, just this idea, well, what do you care?
It's like, I don't know.
I like having a job here, and so if I do a good job, you know, if you act like you're the manager, A, that's the best way to become manager in the long run, and B, it's the best way you get job security.
It's like, what do you care?
Well, the money doesn't come magically from nowhere.
We have to provide good service and a good product, otherwise people aren't going to come back.
And so this what do you care is like, you know, why would I lift a finger to do a good job in this business?
Because you're taking money from them and that money has to come from people who appreciate what the business is doing.
So that's the kind of perspective where, yeah, if you're around people like that, what do you mean you want us to do a thorough job?
What do you mean you want good enough for government work?
Off it goes, right?
That's just not an environment that you're going to go nuts.
You're going to go nuts.
So it may be less stressful for you in the long run if you just try and, you know, instead of trying to get a job as a technical writer, try and sell your services as a technical writer.
That's an interesting idea.
And, I mean, the other thing I was kind of recently thinking about is just because they don't offer jobs for that industry in my area, Well, it doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, if I still continue to learn in that industry, something will come along.
Like, you know, if I kind of hold on to that knowledge, well, yeah, that could come in handy later.
You know, instead of bouncing around between, like, financial energy and, you know, if I make a commitment, then that'll just, it'll snowball and become more and more valuable so that when an opportunity does come along, Yeah, it might actually pay off, and that could be my ticket into the higher IQ world for that industry.
Yeah, I mean, what about open source projects?
Aren't they always looking for technical writers?
I mean, isn't that the big problem with open source is everyone wants to code and nobody wants to describe?
Oh, I don't know.
So far, I've been more in compliance.
I just kind of got started in finding out all the options for technical writing.
What's the open source business?
What's that?
Well, open source, not exactly a business, but there certainly can be income in it.
So, I mean, open source is where coders collaborate.
In general, it's collaboration.
It can be solo coders to produce a particular product or can even be an operating system like Linux or whatever.
And it's open source because anybody can review and modify the source code.
But documentation for these things is always a challenge, right?
And there are some companies that have commercialized open source, like Red Hat is a company that's commercialized open source Linux, or commercialized Linux as an operating system.
So it's, I think, got a full install with drivers.
I don't get exactly how it works, but...
So open source, where people have commercialized it, they can have documentation that they can pay to have produced.
The sound editor that I use called Audacity is an open source project and technical documentation.
Yeah, I'm familiar with Audacity.
I haven't used it in a while.
Okay, so that's an example.
And what you can do, of course, is you can just do documentation and ask for donations.
That could be a way that you don't have to get a job ahead of time, but it can work out fairly well, right?
I mean, I ask for donations.
That's how it works.
And I wouldn't have wanted to wait to get a job as a philosopher.
Start doing it and then ask for donations.
That can work out.
Okay, yeah.
That makes a lot of sense.
And I think that's a lot better than...
Doing all this legal, you know, case history and statute research and trying to, you know, post it because, you know, who's going to read that?
Like there's not really, I can't see anything in the market that would, you know, pay me for that because they're already lawyers and, you know, people doing that.
So if I want to write something, yeah, I mean, technical writing, there's a market for that.
And that's more logical.
And just be the best at it.
Yes.
You know, I mean, I know technical writing is a real skill.
It's a real skill.
And, you know, it can be developed into a really valuable talent.
I mean, if you look at...
I mean, for me, what I used to do is do technical writing for the software because I could write and I could write software.
So for the first couple of years of the business, I did all most of the technical writing and the help files and all that.
And...
I would get comments for years later because I'd try and make them funny, try to make them engaging, try to make them enjoyable.
You know, there was no market for comedy instructions until, you know, there was like these For Dummies books.
Oh, yeah.
Internet for Dummies and all that.
And, you know, some of them were kind of funny.
And, you know, there's ways of making it engaging.
I used to, I think the site is shut down now, but I used to enjoy reading a site many years ago called televisionwithoutpity.com.
Which had recaps of television shows, some of which I watched and some of which I didn't.
But I found the recaps were just really funny.
And some of them are actually quite insightful.
And people would just write these recaps.
I didn't even know this was a market.
And I can't remember how I stumbled across it.
I think I missed a show back in the day.
And this is before they were available online.
I'm like, oh, I wonder what happened.
I wonder if anyone's written about the show.
And I found this.
I used to read these and I actually used to advance text to speech, which is a program that you can get with some good AT&T natural voices to have them read.
I'd sort of have the computer read them to an mp3 file and then sort of go to sleep listening to recaps of like alias or things like that, which is actually some pretty funny stuff.
And I think those guys, I mean, they're honing their writing skills.
They took donations.
They, you know, add to their resume.
And they can say, well, you know, mine was the most read recap on this whole website and all this kind of stuff.
And it was, you know, it was a feather in their cap.
And you never know where this stuff is.
You just keep doing great stuff.
I mean, I know that sounds ridiculous.
You know, it's like dream paralysis is a huge challenge.
And, you know, I'm going to give a tiny rant here just because I still am highly ambivalent about all of this stuff.
Highly ambivalent about all of this stuff.
Because I've known enough people who've pissed away genuine things they could have done in pursuit of a dream that is not going to happen.
Not going to happen.
And on the other hand, I think if you pursue self-knowledge...
It gives you a creative and persistent edge over other people.
You know, persistence is...
You know, they're all saying that success is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.
It's kind of true.
I mean, the amount of time that I spend just doing stuff for the show that is not, you know, some inspired rant is considerable.
And so, you know, if you just stay dedicated to something, where to some degree it's in your control.
What I mean by that is, gosh, what was her name?
There was a woman, I listened to her autobiography.
She was an overweight actress who showed up in some law, Cameron something or other, she showed up in some law show with Dennis, anyway.
And she basically, she's like, nobody would hire me because I was fat.
And so what I did was I wrote my own one-woman show about being fat.
And I took that show on the, like, that's what I mean by you just keep doing great stuff.
You just keep doing great stuff.
And sooner or later, you'll just be better at it than other people.
There was a rant I read somewhere on the internet about, you know, You keep playing Candy Crush.
You keep playing Subway Surfer.
And I'll get really good at coding.
And I'll get really good at networking.
And I'll get really good at writing business plans.
And a lot of life is just about that stuff, that basic stuff.
Just keep doing what you're doing.
I was reading, for reasons I don't even want to bother getting into here, I was reading about Shania Twain.
Seriously, I was reading about Shania Twain.
And I was telling my daughter about Shania Twain.
She came up somehow.
And, I mean, that woman had it pretty rough.
That woman had it pretty rough.
She basically said she had to flee the town she grew up in.
Really rough life.
But she started singing in bars to get money for her family when she was eight years old.
And she sang at closing time because she was eight years old, right?
And apparently there are no laws in Dimmons or wherever the hell she was.
I think she was even further north than that at the time.
Wawa or something like that.
And so, I mean, she starts singing in bars at eight years of age.
And she starts writing songs when she's ten.
And then she does the magic 10,000 hours or whatever.
Or like, was it Katy Perry started off as a Christian singer and started writing songs when she was 8 or 9 or 10 or something like that and 15 years later, like clockwork, boom, you know, all of these songs come out of her that are some great songs she's got.
And you just start digging in and just keep doing great stuff and there's going to be all of this undertow Of everyone else out there who thinks there's this magic pixie dust called talent that, you know, well, Steph, how do you produce all these metaphors on the fly?
Well, I've been writing stories since I was six years old.
I've written 35 plays.
I've written eight novels or seven novels or whatever the hell it is.
I've written hundreds and hundreds of poems.
I did...
Improv in theater school.
I tried my hand at stand-up.
I was a debating champion.
I came in sixth or seventh in all of Canada the very first year I tried out.
I've been having debates with my friends.
I studied this stuff.
I have read.
I have this.
I have read a lot of great novels.
I have really, really worked.
So it's like, you know, out of nowhere, this guy has this wild ability to create analogies.
And it's like, No, it's not out of nowhere.
You know, strangely enough, after practicing guitar for 900,000 hours, Eric Clapton is weirdly and mysteriously a pretty good guitarist.
So, there are so many people who believe in this myth of talent.
And if you...
And I've got a whole show on this called Screw Talent.
So you can check it out if you want on YouTube or the podcast at fdrpodcast.com.
But there's all these people out there that are just not willing to do the work because they think it's magic.
It's magic.
And, you know, any grown woman who's into Frozen believes in magic.
Like this movie Cinderella coming out, right?
This is movie Cinderella.
Magic.
Your prince is going to come.
You just have to have the right sized foot.
You don't have to work for it.
You just have to have vagina.
Or whatever, right?
And you just wake up and you sit down and you do great stuff.
As great a stuff as you can do.
And some of it the world will like and some of it the world won't like.
And somebody wrote recently that they got a five pound bill in England and underneath at the bottom was written YouTube colon the story of your enslavement.
Which is Freedom Aid Radio's most popular video.
It's great.
We're on the currency, baby.
And other stuff you think is great.
Other people don't like as much.
Other stuff you don't think is that great.
Other people love it.
Paul McCartney hasn't written a hit song in, what, 35 years or something?
But that's fine.
But you wake up in the morning and you say, What great stuff can I do today?
And great stuff doesn't necessarily mean audience-facing.
It just means stuff that's interesting and exciting for you and that you care about.
Caring about what you do is everything.
Everything.
Caring about what you do.
Really being passionate about it.
And caring has something to do with your preferences, plus, I would argue, what's good for the world.
And if you make a piece of software easier and more fun to use for people, That's good for the world.
It doesn't all have to be, I did a tracheotomy on a dying otter.
You wake up in the morning and you find some way to do some great stuff.
And the great stuff for me, most of it is parenting, right?
And you just, how am I going to do some great stuff today?
I'm going to get this day once.
Only get this day once.
It doesn't mean you have to be a workaholic.
It doesn't mean you've got to be monomaniacal or obsessed.
This is all just words that people throw up so that you don't pursue excellence and shame them in your shadow.
Not that you're trying to shame them.
I'm trying to share what works in this world.
And I got this advice many, many years ago.
Many years ago, when I was still interested in being an actor.
I thought, well, do I want to be an actor or do I want to be a writer?
And a woman I knew at the time, she said, well, when you get home and you've got some spare time, what do you do?
She's like, oh, I sit down and write.
And she's like, well, isn't that your answer then?
I said, what do you mean?
She said, well, you're not...
You're not practicing monologues for your acting.
You're not working on your accents.
You're not working on dancing or sword fighting or any other things you might ever need as an actor.
You're not studying your Shakespeare.
You're not memorizing Hamlet for your big role, which you hope to get one day.
You come home and you write when you have the time, when you have the choice.
And that was empirical.
I'm an empiricist, right, fundamentally.
So I was like, oh, okay, so that's what I want to do.
And the writing practices the speaking, and the speaking informs the writing.
And so, for yourself, do the stuff that you're passionate about.
Do the stuff that works.
I mean, everywhere you go, there's someone who's built something.
I mean, you must think about this, right?
You're driving down the road, there's strip malls on either side.
Each one of those businesses is somebody taking their life savings in their hands and throwing it out on the free market to see what happens.
It always breaks my heart a little bit when I see a restaurant that's gone out of business.
And I always want to interview everyone.
It's crazy.
I do.
I do.
I want to interview everyone.
What happened?
When did the cash flow start to go south?
It might not work.
What steps did you try?
I'm just, I'm really curious what worked and what didn't work, what went right and what went wrong.
And even, like, you go to some tiny town, there'll be some festival, some fair, and there'll be these little stalls, and it's like, these are my coasters that I hand painted with dolphins, and here I am selling them.
This is my hand-blown glass forensic tubes or something.
Everyone's got something.
I made these scarves out of fish scales.
They care about it.
They do it.
They get involved and they just do it.
And they're entrepreneurs.
Maybe it's just beer and money.
I don't know.
Maybe it's not.
But find something that's of interest to you.
And something that the world needs.
Otherwise it's just pure selfishness, so to speak.
Or at least the world is potentially willing to pay for it.
But just try and do something that's interesting and excellent.
And you keep doing it for long enough.
And eventually you'll just be the only person left in the race and you win.
There's a line from a Black Eyed Peas song that says, But the race is not for the swift, but for who can endure it.
It's true.
You just keep running and lots of other people stop.
There's something shiny by the side of the road.
They hitchhike.
They trip.
They get a phone call.
And then you're the only person running and you've won.
And persistence is the key.
You just keep doing it.
And you stop for nothing and no one.
And you know that the siren song of stopping, of being distracted, that that siren song is the world that is afraid of whatever it is you want to do.
And it doesn't have to be philosophy.
But every time you persist, other people lose.
And so they don't want you to persist.
It's just natural competition.
But because they won't compete openly, they compete subtly through undermining.
And you don't know.
You start a podcast in your car about something you're passionate about.
Next thing you know, you're speaking to 30,000 people live and through the web in Amsterdam.
You're chatting with Joe Rogan.
You don't know.
You're on TV. You don't know.
But just keep doing what you're doing.
Lots of other people start a podcast, and do they keep doing it?
Or is there something good on TV? Well, that's your choice, right?
But at least know that just being an entrepreneur is just find something you care about, committing to excellence, and you just keep doing it.
You know, back in the day, This is just the commitment to excellence stuff, right?
Back in the day when Queen was doing Bohemian Rhapsody, they had to keep re-recording over the same tape that wrote computers back then.
And they basically stopped the song when every time they recorded something new, they lost something old.
Like the tape just basically was almost worn through.
Otherwise they would have just kept putting more layers in.
In a song called Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon, Freddie Mercury wanted an old-time Victrola sound, like a really old photograph sound.
I go off to work on Monday morning.
He wanted to sound like an old-time singer.
And there were no computer that you could apply these effects to.
So what they did was they put a set of headphones in a garbage can with a microphone.
And he sang so it came out of the headphones into the garbage can with the microphone in there and that sounded like an old-timey record.
How many things did they experiment?
To do that?
How many things did they experiment with?
Spend three weeks on one guitar solo for Killer Queen.
Three weeks.
One of the best guitarists in modern rock had to spend three weeks to get one 30 second guitar solo perfect.
I'm not that way inclined.
I'm a bit more into the live, raw, uncensored kind of stuff.
But there's something to be said for that kind of polishing.
But whatever it is, whether you do 20 songs in three weeks or one 30-second guitar solo, just do it.
Just do it.
And yes, there will be times where it's stressful and scary and You don't know how to pay bills and it's unnerving.
But that's called being alive.
That's called getting something done.
When Walt Disney was creating Walt Disney World, he had to buy up all this land.
And he had to buy it up in secret.
He had to create all these numbered companies.
And it was really difficult, because the moment anyone got wind of what he was trying to do, it would have been impossible.
Some reporter found out about it, had a confrontation, probably didn't sleep that whole week.
But that's just called getting something done.
And the world has big problems with people who get something done.
I mean, they like us, but they don't, right?
And the alternative is what?
You know, when this show, if donations are down, or this show is difficult, or it's like, how are we going to get this done, or how is this going to work?
Yeah, sometimes it's difficult.
I'll be honest with you.
Always try to be.
But the alternative is what?
I could still be a software executive, be making good coin.
Probably would have, may have been a CEO by now, may have gotten some big set of stock options or whatever, might have made a lot of money.
But there would have been stressors involved in that too, and there would have been challenges, and I think there would have been a growing sense of, I could be doing more.
I could have done that podcast about philosophy and parenting.
As opposed to, here's a great tool for business intelligence analytics, which there's nothing wrong with.
It's important.
I'm glad that people make and sell that kind of stuff.
But it sort of reminds me of this, I can't even remember his name, some golfer who was a manager at some manufacturing plant.
He was a pretty good golfer and he did alright when he was younger.
But he was making like 60 grand a year as some line manager at a manufacturing plant.
And his friends were all like, dude, you're such a good golfer.
I mean, go be a golfer.
And he's like, ah, you know, not a lot of people make a lot of money at golf.
Anyway, he finally gives it a shot, quits his job and makes a fortune.
And it's not like there's anything wrong with being a line manager at a manufacturing plant.
Stuff's got to get made.
It's got to get built.
It's got to get shipped.
But the world values...
I'm not saying it's right.
It's just the way it is.
The world values...
Golfing more than being a line manager.
It gets paid more.
You know, by that standard, things are completely fucked.
I think, was it Kim Kardashian?
Did she just sign some?
It's reported but disputed, but like a hundred million dollar deal or whatever.
I mean, I release a sex tape and all I get is...
Oh, Bill Clinton!
I read somewhere the other day that Bill Clinton is one of the most respected men in American politics these days.
That's a whole show unto itself.
This is another reason why I'm becoming more partial to Christians.
That would never happen in a Christian environment.
So, if you want to do technical writing, find some piece of software you care about that needs documentation.
Start doing it.
Tell them you'll do it.
It's free.
Put in a donation link.
And just keep doing great stuff.
Because the number of people who will really commit to continue doing great stuff are so few and far between that if you stick with it, you'll get the gold no matter what.
Yeah.
That makes a lot of sense.
And so much of what you just said was really, really true.
And with kind of my...
My drumming career, like, growing up.
And then, you know, I quit the band and it was a great decision.
I'm so glad I did for, you know, all the right reasons.
And, yeah, a lot of it had to do with the same reason why you made the decision to pursue philosophy and, you know, and to not rely on your novels getting published like, you know, like you wanted them to, you know, get made like...
I'm kind of having trouble wording it correctly, but you know what I mean?
Yeah.
Right.
Well, you follow the market.
You have to listen to the market.
Yes.
I mean, this is not a Cartesian brain in a tank experiment where will creates reality.
Right.
But I really had the belief with this conversation, with Free Domain Radio, I mean, I really had the belief that I mean, what else?
You know, it's like Angelina Jolie looking at Brad Pitt and saying, I'm sure there's a cuter, richer, more talented guy around.
I mean, I'll just do with him for now until someone better comes along, right?
I mean, they're married.
They have, like, you know, more kids than Madonna has penicillin shots or something.
Like, they have...
You know, some sort of stable family life that's working out and all that.
But she's not, you know, you don't move up from the most important thing you can do with your life.
And I'm not trying to say everyone's got to do what I do.
I mean, if you want to, great.
More competition would widen the marketplace.
But when you pursue self-knowledge and you become your own standard, working for other people, Will almost invariably involve compromise.
Unless those people, you know, Mike's lying.
Unless those people also have self-knowledge.
Whatever, right?
I mean, we're all on the same page as far as that goes.
But, you know, recognize the quality that you have infused yourself with.
And don't be like Bono trying to win a karaoke contest.
You'll just annoy people.
You should be headlining, right?
But it will give you a sense of control back over your own life.
Yeah.
And pursuing the development of a skill set can never do you harm, really, in the long run.
Right.
The only kind of fear I've had, and I think this is the one thing that's really kind of crippling me, and I'm in the process of getting over it, it's the fear that the industry that I'm learning about will suffer and all of a sudden everything that I just learned will...
You know, be way less valuable and it will be like a waste of time.
So, I don't think...
I think that's a bit more...
No, no, but that's the thing, is that the pursuit of excellence can't fail you.
Like, so...
Really?
No, the pursuit of excellence can't fail you.
So, the fact that I can have these conversations is intimately connected to the fact that I completed novels that were never published.
But the fact that I can have these conversations is intimately connected to the fact that I never really pursued a career as an actor, even though I trained for it.
Oh, right.
Okay, I get it.
That makes sense.
Go on.
For those who didn't, right?
Yeah, no, I... Right, the skills that you learned over the tremendous amount of time and effort that you spent writing those novels, all of the organizational...
You know, laying out the plot, I think that was your weakness.
But I mean, you know, the way of organizing your thoughts, like all of the mental processes for doing that kind of came in handy later on in life and helped you out in this show.
Probably, you know, with your career as a, what was it, CTO? CTO. Right?
CTO. So all of that commitment to excellence in the past and a lot of what you've done that may not have ended up being really financially successful, you applied it later.
Right.
Right.
I mean, it's the old argument that the couple of years that the Beatles spent playing eight hours or ten hours a day in Frankfurt or in Germany or wherever the hell they were in Germany.
Well, they didn't really get paid much for that.
It's like, well, they kind of did.
Just not at the time.
You know, people you know, well, I'll buy these stocks, put them in my 401k on my retirement plan, my RRSP. I'll cash them out later and they'll be worth more.
So we have no problem with money.
We recognize we do that stuff.
We defer with regards to money.
But The investment in excellence will always pay off.
It's impossible for it not to.
Because the better you become at something, the better you become at everything.
Because when you develop excellence in one area, you also recognize what you're not good at more clearly.
Right.
And you also become very clear on what other people are not good at, which saves you from bad bosses.
That's what I mean when I say the pursuit of excellence will always more than pay for itself.
Right.
Oh, and just something I remembered.
I think in a really old podcast, you mentioned that excellence can sometimes mean unpaid overtime.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I'm not talking about excellence like your manager says, give me work for free and I'll call it excellence.
I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about something that you care about that is generated and driven by your standards.
Right, right.
Not in compliance with somebody else's whatever, right?
Okay.
No, I understand that.
I was just making the connection because I found that podcast to be really helpful as well.
Yeah, because somebody who's using excellence to get unpaid labor from you It's not good at what they're doing.
Because, you know, only an idiot will keep doing that.
And smart people will roll their eyes, right?
So, the smart people are not going to respect him.
Right.
There's a scene in Office Space.
I've always remembered it.
I've mentioned it on the show before, but Jennifer Anderson plays a waiter, a waitress who's at some really peppy place.
She's supposed to wear a flare.
I don't know if you remember this.
Yeah.
Right.
So and the flare is, you know, the little funky buttons and zing zang statements and all that that she's got to wear on her apron.
Right.
And she's like, well, I put on.
He's like, where's where's your flare?
And she's like, well, you did complain I didn't have enough.
So I got a couple of buttons and I put them on.
And he's like, it's not enough.
You need more flare.
And of course, as Jennifer Anderson sometimes does, she plays the cynic.
right She just struck me.
I get this vibe from...
Oh, God, what's her name?
Julia...
The woman who was in Mona Lisa's Smile and...
You guys wouldn't know these films.
Richard Gere, Pretty Woman.
Julia, what's her name?
God Almighty.
She was just in Osange, Orange County.
All right, I'll look it up.
People aren't helping me at all.
Julia Roberts!
I didn't even need to finish looking it up.
Yeah, I always got that same kind of vibe of sort of depressed and angry.
But anyway.
But the manager is like...
He's not a good manager.
And that's the parallel to their bosses, right?
These guys' bosses.
The scene, of course, I remember.
A for a load letter.
What the fuck does that mean?
They trashed the printer.
Oh yeah, we've all been there.
Printers need like four priests, chicken entrails, just anyway.
Ooh, look, I'll get a wireless printer for the convenience because I love exercise.
I can go up to the wireless printer place.
Anyway, because he's like, you need flair.
And flair, if you have to order someone to have flair, it's not flair.
They're just buttons you're forcing someone to wear.
So that's a bad manager.
Because you want people who are into the flair stuff, not to press people you stick buttons on like chainmail.
And that's not someone you want to work for.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with the flair thing.
I mean, yeah, try and have people have a fun time at your restaurant.
And that's so cool.
So what's the difference in America?
I mean, people even in low-rent jobs seem genuinely happy to have you there.
Whereas in Canada, it's always like, you know I have a degree in art history, and I'm like, I'm just giving you these fries because I've got to eat.
But this is despicable that there's a society that makes me bring you greasy food when I should be analyzing.
Anyway, it's just different in America.
Like, hey, pleased to see you.
Want some grits?
Anyway...
So, if you really develop excellence, you get better at what you're developing, you recognize your limitations in other areas, and you also recognize when other people are bad at things.
And if the Jennifer Aniston character had been really good at something, she wouldn't be working there.
Because being really good at something, she would have recognized that the manager was a bad manager.
Who was only looking at the surface of things.
And therefore the restaurant was very unlikely to succeed.
Because he thought that if you pin positive buttons on people, or if you pin fun buttons on people, they become fun.
Which is retarded.
I mean, you said you were suffering from major depressive disorder.
Did anyone ever say to you, you know, the cure is flair.
Oh my god.
Here are some buttons.
Still better than SSRIs.
Yeah, right.
Right?
But nobody...
I mean, if someone said that to you, what you're missing, C, is buttons.
If only you had some buttons, you'd be a lot better.
This idea that he'll just pin buttons on her and she'll then become somebody who wants to have buttons, who wants to be positive.
Anyway.
I know, it's like pop culture reference, 101, but that's what the pursuit of...
Oh, it's called tchotchkes?
Oh, yeah, right.
So, yeah, I mean, that's what I mean when I say the pursuit of excellence will always pay off.
Just get good at something, and you'll naturally repel people who aren't good at stuff.
Yeah, that...
Sounds great.
It's like this shield.
Yeah.
It's like this shield to incompetence, just being good at something.
And the better you get at something, the quicker you'll get to your Elysium Fields, right?
To your paradise of competent people.
But you've got to really work to get good at something.
There's a story, it's a pretty good documentary called, I think it's called 50 Feet from Stardom about backup singers.
With a really great segment about, I think, how Let It Bleed was made by The Stones, this amazing backup singer.
And I think you can get it on Netflix.
And there is frustration for some of these singers, of course.
You know, one of them won a Grammy, and she said, oh, we took too long to make the album, and it just didn't come out in time, and she went back to being a backup singer.
And in it, there's a woman who was one of the backup singers for Ray Charles.
Ray Charles, of course, an amazing musical genius, in my opinion.
And she sang the wrong note in one of their, and of course there's like a 9,000 piece orchestra, screaming fans and so on, and she just sings the wrong note.
And what does Ray Charles do?
He stops the whole show.
He can hear that she sang the wrong note in this unbelievable cacophony of the sort of soul blues that he played, right?
Stops the whole show.
Pounds with one finger, the piano key with the right note.
And he's like, sing that note, that note.
And she laughed.
She says, hey, guess what I never did again?
Sang the wrong note, right?
He could hear all of that.
Frank Sinatra was the same way.
He would have like the full orchestra going.
He'd be singing at the top of his lungs.
And one little fucking oboe in the back would be a tiny bit off key.
Like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
I think we had a few strangers in here.
That's what he used to call bum notes.
And he could hear that.
And so because he was excellent at what he did, he could hear an oboe player who was making a tiny mistake in a full orchestra.
And because Ray Charles was excellent at what he did, in the whole cacophony of a live show, he could hear one backup singer's bum note.
And it's a human shield.
The faster you get competent, the less you have to deal with incompetent people.
That's the payoff.
Wow.
I really needed to hear that.
Thank you.
That's your jetpack out of the underworld, man.
That's all I could offer you.
Blood, toil, tears, and sweat.
Sorry, this is my Churchill.
Wow.
Okay.
Thank you.
I should...
Wow, that was unreal.
Thank you so much.
I don't know.
I think...
I don't want to take up any more time because it's been kind of a while.
But I really appreciate this conversation.
It's been tremendously helpful.
I got a lot out of it.
And I will continue to...
It's been a long show and all that, but...
Call back in.
Look, I've been meaning to do this whole series on entrepreneurship, so this is some of the things I've been thinking about over the last couple of months.
So this is not a bad trial run to see how interesting the topic is for people.
But yeah, listen man, if there's more that we can talk about, the great thing with these conversations is that hundreds of thousands of other people, if not millions, will benefit from it too.
Yeah, I will definitely keep that in mind, and I'll be sure to do that.
Alright.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for calling in, and again, feel free to call back in anytime.
These are very, very, very important issues.
You know, we can't free the world, as we've said a million times on this show, but we can free ourselves as much as humanly possible.
We can't free ourselves of hierarchy, but we can at least be happy slaves to our customers, as I am a happy slave to you.
So if you'd like to help out the show, freedomainradio.com slash donate.
It's your support that keeps these wheels in motion, that paves the way to the future we all want.
