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Jan. 2, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:46:22

3548 The Matrix Is Not An Argument - Call In Show - December 30th, 2016

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	Yo, yo, SB in the house.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Five great callers tonight.
	First caller by callers, I guess it was a couple who wanted to know, well, how can we be good and why be good without religion?
	And this actually took a not-too-left turn into the question, was Ayn Rand happiness?
	Can we justify...
	Morality on the basis of it makes us happy, it makes us feel good.
	The second caller wanted to know, can we define a collective good for human beings?
	And if we can, isn't that kind of collectivist in its essence?
	That's a great, great question.
	The third caller was trading in nice guy for ripped abs because he wanted female attention and wasn't really getting any when he was just a nice gentlemanly fellow and what the hell is going on that he's got to pose in his underwear to get female attention these days.
	I think we've all had that question at one time or another, and we had a great conversation about it.
	And the fourth caller wanted to talk about God, and we had, I think, a whole series of nodding arguments that I think were very instructive and helpful about this.
	And the fifth caller, yes, we saved the best for last.
	The fifth caller wanted to know what are my thoughts about making compromises in values and in principles and in life As a whole, and of course we all have to, if we live in this challenging universe, of course we all have to make these compromises.
	How can we do so?
	And know that we're not compromising too much.
	It's a great, great question.
	So I hope that you'll enjoy this most excellent show.
	Thanks of course so much to the listeners.
	Thanks of course to you so much, the callers and the donors in particular, for supporting what we do, this amazing work that we do.
	at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	Don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Stefan Molyneux.
	And please don't forget, if you've got some shopping to do, it's fdrurl.com slash Amazon.
	Alright, up next we have a couple, Nicholas and Victoria.
	This was written from the first person perspective of Victoria, and she said, Prior to my goddaughter's baptism, I was planning to formally leave the Catholic Church as I have become interested in Ayn Rand's objectivism.
	I feel conflicted that I have accepted this position while I do not align with Catholic beliefs, which leads me to wonder...
	How can one raise a child without relation to an entity, being raised a Catholic myself, while upholding objectivist values?
	That is from Victoria and Nicholas.
	Oh, hi guys.
	How are you doing?
	Good.
	How are you?
	Good.
	It sounds like the baptism kind of drove you from the church.
	I don't think that's the intended purpose of the ritual.
	How did Ayn Rand come into the equation?
	Well, I've been interested in her for a few years now, so I was interested in leaving the church at age 18, but just last year my cousin asked me to be the godmother for her daughter.
	Right, right.
	And is it around ethics, goodness, virtue, that's the basic question, around how do you raise children without God, is that right?
	Yes.
	Right.
	So is it in your mind that God is the standard by which virtue is achieved in the instruction of children, but you don't know how to achieve that standard without God, or is there something else?
	Yeah, so I was talking to my father about this, and he seemed to say that it's a good way to teach children ethics by using God And though he seems to be an atheist himself, so I was just not sure how a good way to raise kids without using that.
	Do you know any atheist parents?
	No.
	Right.
	And what aspects in particular of your own religious upbringing do you feel gave you the strongest centering in terms of ethics?
	I don't really feel like it has given me much.
	I mean, I went to the CCD Sunday School since first grade.
	I went to Catholic High School and now Catholic College.
	But I don't feel like I've gotten much out of that.
	I've gotten more of my own personal learning that I've gotten my ethics and virtues from.
	So why be good without God?
	What's your answer?
	Can you ask that again?
	Why be good without God?
	Okay.
	If you can't answer that for yourself, you certainly can't answer it for your children, right?
	Yeah.
	For the sake of your own happiness.
	Are you asking me?
	Yeah.
	For the sake of your own happiness.
	Okay, so virtue brings happiness.
	Is that right?
	Yes.
	And why?
	Why does virtue bring happiness?
	Because these are the questions kids are going to ask you either explicitly or implicitly, and that's why I'm curious what your answer will be.
	I am not sure.
	Right.
	Have you found that virtue brings happiness in your life?
	Yes.
	Alright, and how has virtue brought happiness in your life?
	Working hard, achieving good grades, Neither of those are virtuous, but let's keep trying.
	Okay.
	Neither of those things.
	Hitler worked hard, and there are very bad people who get very good grades, so let's keep trying.
	I mean, this sounds like something you'd want your parents...
	Well, virtue is good grades, and that's a very sort of parental thing, but what do you mean by virtue, and how does it brought you happiness?
	Pursuit of knowledge?
	Is that a virtue?
	Okay.
	Sadists pursue knowledge on how to hurt people.
	Torturists pursue knowledge on how to, right?
	You gotta give me something more than these generic non-moral categories.
	It's very, it's funny because, you know, you're talking about Catholicism.
	It's kind of a Protestant work ethic.
	Work makes you happy, so get out in the fields and work!
	So, what else?
	I don't know then.
	Nick, do you have anything to say?
	What was the question again?
	The question, Nick, was, well, if you agree that virtue brings happiness, how does virtue bring happiness, or how much happiness has virtue brought you?
	Virtues are things like dignity and morality, correct?
	I don't know.
	Dignity is sort of an aesthetic thing.
	People can have great dignity.
	You know, if you fall into mud, you can get up with great dignity, but I don't know that that's a particularly moral act.
	Well, speaking truth, being courageous in the face of evil, standing up against the immoralities of the world, living with integrity, being brave in the advancing of your morals, and so on, and putting up with the slings and arrows of an outrageous world that doesn't like to be told the truth 19 times out of 20.
	Those, I think, would be...
	And the pursuit of virtue when you know what you're doing, or the pursuit of the expansion of virtue or the good when you know what you're doing, I think those would have something to do with virtue.
	And, you know, a lot of times, the pursuit of virtue doesn't make you that happy in the moment, right?
	I've been saying this since the very beginning of the show.
	This can be a very difficult conversation to enter into, you know, regarding...
	Your relationship to friends, family, teachers, gods, and so on, right?
	So that's my question.
	The question is, why be good without God?
	Because kids are going to, I guess, ask that question explicitly or implicitly.
	And if you don't have an answer, that's going to really affect your parenting.
	Right.
	So can I tackle the question of why we go without God?
	Thank you.
	Yes.
	In my, like, thinking, what every human wants in the end is happiness.
	And to be good without God is not only to bring your own happiness, but to those you care about, to make them happy.
	So to be good without God is to make it so other people can be happy.
	Now, how has it been for you, Victoria, and or Nick, since you first discovered Ayn Rand's work, has your discovery of objectivism Made those around you happier or not?
	Or about the same?
	My father more happier and my mother, no.
	Why is that?
	My mother's Catholic and she does not like objectivism.
	But my dad is the one who showed it to me.
	So he likes it.
	Oh, your dad is interested in random.
	Okay.
	All right.
	And what does your mom say?
	That he's corrupted me and all that garbage.
	Really?
	Yes.
	Are they still married?
	Yes.
	What?
	They're still married?
	Your mom says that your father is corrupting you with objectivism.
	Does she mean this seriously?
	Like she's destroying your capacity to get to heaven and he's condemning you to hell?
	I mean, what does she mean by corruption?
	It's a very strong term.
	Um...
	Well, when I told her I was an atheist, she said that she felt like she had failed as a Catholic.
	Oh, so it became about her?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Well, that's unprecedented in the aisles of motherhood.
	You're the first person to ever...
	Mommy, I have this perspective.
	Oh, woe is me!
	And then what?
	Then I was reading Atlas Shrugged.
	She told me she didn't like what I was reading, but do whatever I want with my life.
	Oh, so it became about her, and then it became about passive aggression.
	It's like every mom is given this script.
	Make it about me, and then, fine, do what you like.
	I've done my best.
	Not every mom, but more than three, I think, would be that.
	Yeah, my mom hated Rain, too.
	She did.
	She was like, you know, she said once in a moment of peak...
	I felt that Ayn Rand replaced me as a mother.
	Maybe if you've been doing your job, mom.
	Yeah.
	So, wow.
	Does she really believe that your father is an atheist?
	Is that right?
	I think so.
	Well, he's into objectivism, isn't he?
	Yeah.
	Kind of an atheist position, right?
	He goes to church and he put me through Sunday school, which, I don't know, I've kind of wondered, because I listened to your recent show about Santa, and it made me wonder, like, if he really believed in objectivism, why did he put me through Sunday school?
	Oh, I think we both know the answer to that one, don't we?
	My mom.
	Yeah.
	Keep in peace in the family by sacrificing children.
	Ah.
	I'm trying to think of a single cliche, your parents don't represent you.
	Okay, so when it comes to, I actually asked my daughter this, why be good?
	How should I talk about this with people?
	How can they encourage children to be good?
	And you know what she said?
	She said, that's easy dad, just have them do everything you did.
	Not so easy.
	Not so easy all the time.
	But the hedonism approach to happiness, sorry, the hedonistic approach to philosophy, philosophy brings you happiness.
	I don't know that's gonna sit too well with children.
	Of course it depends what kind of social circle they're exposed to, right?
	I mean if your kids are around rational people who You know, listen to arguments, and they can be religious or not, but sort of reason and evidence-based people.
	Then I don't think that truth and philosophy and virtue and integrity and rationalism, I don't think that those things are going to be big problems.
	But, of course, if the children are around religious people who are like not open-minded, sort of Dr.
	Du Pesta, let's have a great conversation, religious, but who are Religious.
	It's going to be a problem for them, right?
	Because it's not like the topic doesn't come up with kids, it does.
	And what happens then?
	Are they going to feel that virtue and integrity and curiosity and scientific rationalism and empiricism, are they going to feel that this is a giant plus in their life?
	I would suspect.
	Not, in some cases, right?
	So if you say, well, kids, the reason you're virtuous is to make you happy, then when virtue leads to unhappiness, either you're wrong or they're not being virtuous because they're unhappy.
	Okay, yeah, I see.
	You see what I mean?
	You can't sell philosophy on hedonism because a lot of times philosophy is not massive amounts of fun, right?
	I agree.
	So, I just want to sort of knock that one off the table, because that's a false standard to give to kids about why be good.
	So, heroism.
	Virtue requires heroism.
	I think it kind of always has, and maybe, at least for the foreseeable future, it always will.
	So, why does Batman fight evil?
	Why does Superman fight evil?
	I mean, it's uncomfortable.
	It's difficult.
	They get hurt a lot.
	They run out of space on their utility belt.
	They fly into poles.
	People seem to have an endless supply of kryptonite, even though it blew up thousands of light years away.
	Somehow, about a third of the planet Krypton landed on Earth, and it's consistently used to fashion necklaces to weaken Superman in swimming pools with Gene Hackman's girlfriend.
	But...
	You need heroism for virtue.
	And why be heroic?
	Integrity?
	Maybe?
	See, you just grab it at random words.
	I hate to tell you.
	It's like, I hear there's this positive word associated with it, so I'm going to say this with a big giant question mark, right?
	No, it's a big question.
	I don't have any particularly ironclad answers.
	Why be heroic?
	There's a million things I could be doing with my life other than talking about philosophy.
	But why?
	Why be heroic?
	Oftentimes it doesn't pay.
	Oftentimes it can threaten your income.
	It can threaten your relationships.
	Why now?
	So this is the question, and trust me, it's not for the kids.
	You need to answer this for your own life as well.
	Otherwise you won't have staying power in the realm of virtue if you don't know.
	That's the old quote from Nietzsche that I've said many times.
	Give a person...
	A why, and he can bear almost any how.
	If you know why you're doing something, you can bear just about anything in the pursuit of that.
	The question is why.
	Now, reason equals virtue equals happiness, which is Nietzsche's formulation of the Socratic doctrine, or the idea that Aristotle says that the pursuit of excellence in virtue gives you a feeling of well-being and fulfillment and so on.
	Well, even in Aristotle's time, he'd seen Plato be murdered by the state, by the mob, by democracy.
	He had seen Plato be hounded out.
	Plato got involved in politics in Syracuse and ended up almost being sold into slavery.
	It was just this constant persecution of philosophers because society is constructed on a vast intersticky web of lies that are profitable for certain groups.
	And when you start to bring philosophy to it, it It brings the heat lamp to those spider webs and they start to fall apart and people freak out and attack you, which is sort of natural.
	Corrupt people survive.
	As Orwell said in Empire of Deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
	Or truth is revolutionary in an empire of lies.
	And so why be good?
	And it's a big question.
	I mean, I've taken a number of runs at it.
	Maybe you're masochistic and you like being good because you want to be hated.
	I don't know.
	But it can't just be sheer, you know, I'm virtuous for the joy of it because goodness, real goodness, acted goodness, goodness that actually impacts negatively the self-interest of evil people.
	You're not doing good unless evil people are negatively impacted by what you're doing, right?
	I mean, you can't be a successful...
	Cancer treatment if the cancer cells don't care whether you're there or not, right?
	They have to, like, be harmed by what it is you're doing.
	And so if you're not harming the interests of evil people, you're not doing any good.
	But if you are harming the interests of evil people, well, they're going to notice, right?
	And they're going to do what they can do in order to prevent you from harming their interests, which is, you know, going to cause some challenges in your life from time to time, right?
	So why mother?
	Why be good?
	I'm not sure.
	Which is scary.
	And I'm not trying to make you nihilistic.
	I'm just trying to sort of point out that these are difficult questions.
	Why?
	Why?
	And if you give children A moral perspective or standpoints or standards that cause them to run into conflict with their peers a lot of times.
	You do have to have an answer as to why.
	Why do they have trouble with some of the kids in their class or kids in their neighborhood or whatever.
	You do have to have, I think, some Reasonable kind of answer.
	And it's not the easiest thing in the world to come up with, right?
	Right.
	So in regards to my goddaughter, should I do as her parents wish and teach her the Catholic stuff or? should I do as her parents wish and teach her Or...
	I'm not sure.
	Okay.
	Well, I wouldn't participate in teaching a child something I didn't believe to be true.
	Yeah.
	I mean, you can certainly teach about Catholicism and about Christianity because it's so interwoven into our culture and into our lives.
	And it's a very, very important set of perspectives and ethics and motivations to understand.
	But teaching them that they're absolutely true when you don't believe so, I believe that even in the Christian world that would be called bearing false witness.
	That would be a sin.
	Okay, I see.
	I mean, you would be falsifying what you believe to be true to a child, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	That's not good, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	But you're also talking about if and when you guys have future children?
	Yes.
	Right.
	Right.
	Well, I can tell you some of my approaches and maybe they'll help.
	Is that a reasonable way to approach it?
	Yes, please.
	Alright, alright.
	So, first of all, you must always tell the truth to your children and keep your word to your children.
	Because the way that you transfer the virtue of honesty is you have children appreciate the virtue of honesty practiced in their life, right?
	So you make a commitment to your child, you move heaven and earth to keep that commitment to your child, you don't back down, you don't make excuses, you don't lie, you don't falsify, and of course you refuse to falsify your existence with regards to others as well, right?
	So if the child says, ooh, let's keep a secret from the other parent, you say, no, I'm not going to do that.
	Keep a secret from the other parent.
	The child then is on the receiving end of integrity, of honesty, of commitment, of all of these virtues, and appreciates the exercise of those virtues.
	So the first exposure they have to integrity and honesty and promise-keeping and commitment, the first exposure they have is a very positive one that they're on the receiving end and know that they can trust, right?
	So you model the behavior.
	That you wish your children to value.
	And the modeling of behavior on the part of parents is so ridiculously imprinting that it's almost impossible for the child to escape it.
	It sounds like I'm going to model virtue as a giant cage to your random id-based heart or whatever.
	But it is.
	Like, I mean, if you consistently refer to a chair as a chair, the child is just going to resolve that it's chair.
	And they're going to use that word and it's going to embed.
	And if you then try to change their mind later on, it's pretty tough.
	Like, There's an alternative spelling for the word jail, which is G-A-O-L. And Oscar Wilde wrote a poem called The Ballad of Reading Jail, but it was spelled G-A-O-L. And for a long time, I thought it was goal.
	I just, you know, and I knew it meant jail, but I just thought it was another way of pronouncing it.
	You know, now in my brain, I can't change it.
	I don't know if I'm like neuroplasticity is at an end.
	It's done.
	No more.
	And it's really, really tough to change that.
	And people have that with sexuality as well.
	Like the first sexual experience or sexual exposure they have will often imprint particular sexual ideas in their mind.
	And that's kind of like a duck with a balloon.
	So if the child is on the receiving end of virtue and appreciates and knows that they have That they receive an enormous benefit from that virtue, then it's going to be tough for that child to say, I don't want to exercise this virtue, right?
	So if you have a child and you keep your word to the child, tell the truth to the child, and the child benefits from you telling the truth, which of course they do, then if the child lies, then you can say, well, wait a minute, do you like it when I tell the truth?
	Yes.
	Right?
	Would you like it if I started lying?
	Well, no.
	Well, then...
	How can you lie to me, right?
	And you can start to imprint upon the child something which I think is an important perspective in ethics and something that I've been arguing for for many, many years and people on the right and nationalists and so on have finally picked up on it and are starting to act it, which is don't have higher standards than your opponents.
	Yeah.
	Don't.
	Don't, right?
	I mean, treat people the very best you can the first time you meet them after that.
	Treat them the way they treat you.
	So if the child says, basically, yeah, I want to reserve the right to lie, then say, okay, well, so do I. Right?
	So do I. And then they'll say, well, wait, I don't want that.
	I want you to tell me the truth, but I want to reserve the right to lie.
	In other words, they're preparing for a life in politics.
	But if you say, no, no, no.
	If we in this family have...
	The permission to not tell the truth if we don't want to, then okay fine, then I'll do it too.
	I'm not gonna have higher standards than you.
	If you lower your standards, I'm gonna lower my standards.
	I am not gonna, you know, that big lie that Hillary Clinton said, my good friend Michelle Obama, they go low, you go high.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Like blaming Russian hacking so you don't have to explain why you blew a billion dollars of money to lose against somebody with no experience in politics when you've got over three decades experience.
	Yeah.
	So, once the child realizes that you're not going to have higher standards than they have.
	And again, I'm not talking about when they're two or three or four or five, you know, maybe six or seven or eight, when they start to sort of really be able to conceptualize these kinds of things.
	And, um...
	No, it was yesterday.
	I went skiing with my daughter, and we were in the lineup.
	I can't remember the exact argument, but she said something like, boom, boom, boom.
	And she said, Dad, that's an argument.
	You're bound.
	And, you know, I can't, you know, if she makes a good argument, I'm bound, right?
	And if I make a good argument, she's bound.
	But you refuse to let the child have Lower standards than you.
	So you match them.
	You know, like those dials, you know, on, I guess it's the old school kind of recording studios.
	One dial, everything moves up and down at the same time.
	If the child wants to lower their standards, but if the child says, well, I don't have to keep my word to you, it's like, oh, okay, is that what we're doing?
	Like, we don't have to keep our word to each other?
	And just simply refuse to have Higher standards than your child.
	And they then, grumblingly and grudgingly perhaps, will recognize that if they...
	Benefit from a standard, then they must apply a standard.
	It also teaches them empathy, right?
	Which is that if they wouldn't like it, like if the child wouldn't like it if you lie, then of course you don't like it if the child lied.
	Like all these, you understand empathy, universality, all of these things.
	And you're just resolute about that.
	Like, no.
	I mean, every single time I have a contentious debate, right?
	Like the recent one I did, the Trump derangement syndrome triggered, right?
	And people are always like, well, you know, you went low, Steph.
	I mean, yeah, he was not such a nice guy, but you went low.
	It's like, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Absolutely.
	And I will next time too.
	And I will the time after that.
	You know, if I'm in a boxing ring, and we're supposed to be doing, you know, classical boxing, but some guy starts kickboxing, I'm going to start kickboxing.
	I'm not going to have higher standards than the people I'm in combat with.
	And this is what the right, after I've seen me saying this for 10 years publicly, this is what the right has finally absorbed, maybe through me, maybe through other people.
	The right has finally absorbed, do not have higher standards than the left.
	If they're going to do this, this, this and this, Do it back and just do it better and do it harder.
	So this aspect is important.
	If the child has a beneficial exposure and experience with virtue, then it's basic empathy and consideration to hold them to that standard in return.
	It's funny, you know.
	I don't know if it's a group thing or whatever, but in my experience, a lot of kids They can't do hypocrisy.
	They can't do hypocrisy.
	Like, if you have a child and they're benefiting from you keeping your word but they don't want to keep their word and you point out that this is hypocritical, they can't process it.
	Like, they're not...
	Post-moderate enough.
	They haven't been indoctrinated by Marxism and cultural relativism and all to hold two opposing thoughts simultaneously and think it's somehow just or justified.
	So when they're young, give them that integrity.
	Now, the why, why be virtuous?
	Well, I can't tell you the value of having Irrational people, non-virtuous people, anti-virtuous people in your life and having a great time being virtuous.
	I don't think it's possible.
	So I'm not going to talk about that.
	But my experience has been, if I want to say reason equals virtue equals happiness, then I better damn well have relationships in my life where that's true.
	In other words, I can't have people in my life.
	Who, when I am rational and virtuous, they get upset with me, they get angry at me, they yell at me, they get passive aggression, they withdraw, they huff, they puff, they slam drawers, they storm off, they don't return calls because I'm being good and virtuous.
	No!
	Bye-bye!
	You know, I'm not, right?
	So, at least for my daughter, she doesn't look at me and say, wow, I look at dad and it's really tortuous to be good.
	Because everyone in my life appreciates that and values that and respects that and I respect that in them as well.
	And that's, so that's, I keep talking about relationships.
	You know, if you're surrounded by people who are going to attack you and ridicule you and scorn you and abuse you or whatever for being virtuous and being good and having integrity, then of course your kid's going to look at you and say, well, Why be good?
	It just gets you into a lot of trouble and gets you into a lot of conflicts for no point.
	I just...
	I won't do it.
	So this is a choice that everyone has.
	You can't ask your children to have more integrity than you do.
	I mean, clearly that's ridiculous, right?
	It's like asking your three-year-old to have a greater vocabulary than you do, right?
	If that's the case, you probably shouldn't be the parent.
	But you can.
	So...
	If you really believe in virtue, if you really believe in integrity and honesty and rationality, then live those values.
	And if there are relationships in your life where you can't live those values, either get rid of those relationships.
	If you can reform them, reform them, great, but generally it's very hard.
	So get rid of those relationships or keep those relationships and drop the requirement for your children to live with integrity.
	Since you're not living with integrity, don't ask them to live with integrity.
	Right.
	So but don't try and claim that integrity is a high virtue, but then have people around you who attack you for your integrity and you still hang out with them and you still say you love them and you still buy them Christmas presents and all that.
	Then just say, OK, fine.
	I don't really want to live with that much integrity.
	So, kids, you don't have to either.
	Right.
	And that's to be perfectly valid and perfectly fair.
	Right.
	Why?
	what do you get out of Rand's arguments about why be good?
	Other than it gets you to bang a young and hot Nathaniel Brandon.
	I would say I just find everything she says so reasonable and logical and I can find it in my life.
	Whereas I've never really been on board with the whole God situation.
	So...
	Right.
	That's not what I'm asking though.
	What are her arguments as to why be good?
	Because, I mean, the characters in her novels certainly experience extraordinary amounts of suffering in pursuit of virtue, right?
	I mean you're right and And then they always just seem...
	The love of his life goes to marry the man he holds just about in the greatest contempt.
	And then they always end up so happy.
	Even though they've gone through all that.
	Because...
	Because they've held to their own values.
	And it didn't matter what anyone else said.
	Or did.
	But we certainly know.
	I mean, that's a novel, right?
	And we certainly do know.
	Well, I don't know if you know much about Ayn Rand's life, but do you think that she ended up happy?
	Yes.
	Why do you think that?
	Well, she was with the love of her life.
	And she was writing books about things she believed.
	Well, not really for the last 40 years of her life.
	About 30 years.
	She died in, I think, 82.
	Atlas Trugged, I think, was published in 1953.
	It's 30 years she didn't write a novel.
	She wrote a couple of short books, but...
	Why do you think she wasn't happy?
	It's hard to judge, but I think that the evidence points towards this reality, that the publication of Atlas Shrugged produced such that the publication of Atlas Shrugged produced such a virulent backlash against her and against her works that she was genuinely shocked and appalled
	at the state of the culture.
	Because, of course, she'd come from Soviet Russia to what she thought of was this glorious, free America.
	Mm-hmm.
	But of course, a lot of the, by the early 50s, in the mid-50s, a lot of the academics who had fled, the collectivist academics who had fled collectivism in Europe had embedded themselves in American universities and were teaching there and were a lot of in charge of the culture.
	And of course, for atheism, it was pretty rough for a lot of the Republicans.
	And I think it was Whitaker Chambers who did a pretty scathing review of Atlas Shrugged and I remember one of the reviews was, you know, you can almost hear Ayn Rand screaming, go, go to the gas chambers, go!
	You know, like it was literally insane relative to what she had written.
	And the power of Marxism, of communism, of socialism in American culture in the 1950s was astonishing.
	Astonishing.
	And there's a reason the 60s happened.
	Now Whitaker Chambers was a communist.
	He was an American writer and translator in particular.
	He was a communist and then realized as, and Kulder points out, that he was on the side of evil.
	And he switched sides and began to inform on communists.
	And when he decided to switch sides and to join conservatives in fighting communism, do you know what he said to his wife?
	He said, We are switching from the winning side to the losing side.
	Yeah.
	And the response to Atlas Shrugged was so appalling, so virulent, so vicious.
	It's like...
	I mean, it makes what the left tried to do to Donald Trump relatively tame.
	And of course, Donald Trump had a lot of supporters and defenders and so on, which was not the case with Ayn Rand.
	I think it really shocked her system, and I think she really began to understand that going from the Soviet Union to America was out of the frying pan and into the fire with regards to collectivism and irrationality, communism and so on.
	And I don't know if she ever recovered.
	I mean, She certainly was not able to write another book.
	Yeah.
	And the stories of her later on in life, you know, unkempt, unwashed, patting around in a sort of ratty old smelly bathrobe.
	And her husband had some significant issues with her.
	He had a drinking problem.
	And he was not the hero in her novels.
	He didn't really do anything.
	He was pretty.
	Good-looking guy.
	I mean, she met him on a set of a movie.
	He was a good-looking guy.
	But what did he do with his life?
	He made some assertive comments, right?
	And I think the Ellsworth Toohey saying to Howard Rock, what do you think of me?
	And Howard Rock saying, but I don't think of you.
	Yeah.
	I think that came from her husband.
	Later on in his life, he dabbled in a little bit of painting, but was heard to mutter how much he hated his wife and And so on.
	I don't know whether any of this is true or not.
	I mean, these are all reports and so on.
	But I remember being very shocked the first time I saw Ayn Rand.
	This was all hard stuff to do back in the day.
	It was hard stuff.
	It's not YouTube.
	Now you can just search her up on YouTube.
	But I think I saw her being interviewed on a talk show.
	Maybe it was Donahue or maybe it was someone else.
	And she looked kind of I don't have any proof.
	I can't enter into the woman's state of mind as a whole.
	But, you know, there was, of course, the addiction to cigarettes, the addiction to nicotine, which was substantial and ended up killing her.
	And there was the addiction to speed, right?
	And amphetamines, which went on for a long time, many decades.
	And that has an effect on one's state of mind.
	So, I don't know.
	I don't know.
	I'd like to think she was, but now I'm not sure.
	I'd like to think she was too, but I have to sort of be this ruthless empiricist guy.
	She was unfaithful to her husband.
	I mean, telling him that she's going to go have this affair with Nathaniel Brandon, and then they met up, I don't know, every week or twice a week or whatever, and everyone knew what was going on and so on.
	And Nathaniel Brandon's wife would have these panic attacks and would call and freak out and was very, I think, very disturbed.
	Maybe I'm just Victorian and old-fashioned, but I think if you enter into a monogamous relationship, you stay monogamous.
	You don't say, well, I want to stay married to you, but I really want to bang this guy and all that.
	I think that's gross.
	And the way that she acted when...
	Nathaniel Brandon basically said, sorry lady, you're 60.
	I feel like I'm draping myself over a grave here.
	And it's not like 60, you kind of have sex with people who are 60.
	I understand you're very young and all that.
	Looks a little closer to me now.
	But it's that she was a 60-year-old woman who sat for a living, smoked like a chimney, and never exercised.
	So she was not all kinds of You know, she wasn't...
	You know, if you go rushing dating sites, you know, not that I know much about them, but every now and then you'll see these ads, you know, like, Russian ladies want your green card.
	I mean, Russian ladies want you.
	And, you know, they all look like these, you know, ice princess Natasha on ice chicks.
	But this was not Ayn Rand at the age of 60.
	And, you know, Nathaniel Brandon, I think, wanted some kids.
	And, you know, those are some pretty dino eggs to be putting your tadpoles around.
	And...
	When, you know, she had this syllogism with the people around her, which is, you know, whoever is the most rational is the most deserving of love.
	I am the most rational, therefore, everyone should love me the most.
	And that is, I don't know, it's a little self-serving, to put it as nicely as possible, and When he broke up with her, you know, she just screamed at him that, you know, she cursed him with, you know, never being able to get another boner and, you know, she just like, I mean, it was crazy.
	But again, a brain, a very complex and powerful brain, to some degree pickled in speed for a couple of decades, well, you're not going to get a whole lot of self-knowledge and emotional calm and focus and empathy out of all of that, so...
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	I don't know if you've not seen her interviews later on in life, but they're worth checking out and just open your eyes, open your mind, open your heart and just see what you think.
	I don't know.
	There are lots of reports that she was not particularly happy and she certainly didn't do much.
	All of her characters are workaholics, but 1953 to 1982.
	It's quite a lot of time, really.
	And what did she really get up to?
	Not much.
	Not much.
	So I think she was really shocked and appalled by what happened with Atlas Shrugged.
	I don't know if she was able to reckon...
	She was someone...
	Who really, really believed that you give people good arguments and good evidence and they will change their minds.
	And that's not how the world works.
	Maybe it will one day.
	But it's not how the world works.
	We've got a whole presentation called The Death of Reason, which people should check out.
	Scott Adams talks about this as well.
	Just about everyone is engaged in mere confirmation bias and emotional defense of some imprinted position, whether it's social or biological even, I don't know.
	So she thought, I'm going to spend 13 years and break my brain into writing this book.
	Two years on John Galt's final speech, which is a magnificent piece of writing, as is Ragnar Dennis Galt's communication about money and a bunch of other speeches.
	So all of them half burned into my brain.
	Fantastic stuff.
	But I spent 13 years working on this book because she genuinely, I think, wanted to communicate some very powerful ideas.
	And...
	It fails.
	It fails.
	This is why when I started doing what I'm doing now, I spent a lot of time reading about and thinking about and talking about Ayn Rand because I'm not going to write a better novel than Atlas Shrugged.
	And if that fails, there must be something else.
	There must have been something that she missed.
	There must have been something that she missed.
	Otherwise, we have no hope.
	If she was the best we could do, if she was the best that rational philosophy could do, then we're doomed.
	We're doomed.
	Because if we can't do better than that and that failed, we can't succeed.
	So I learned a lot.
	Now she said that she didn't really understand psychology or self-knowledge or anything like that.
	That's not the way her brain seems to have been wired at all.
	And so she had to have missed something important if there's any chance of success.
	Maybe there is no chance of success.
	Maybe we just have to watch this whole wave crest and collapse like Rome did, like the Syrians did, like just about everything.
	Like the British Empire and so on.
	But I think that she did miss something important, which is childhood and parenting and self-knowledge, a focus on self-knowledge.
	And I don't know that it brought her great happiness.
	And the multiple addictions that she had, You could say sexual addictions, infidelity, speed, cigarettes.
	These are, I don't think that they're the marks of a really happy person.
	And that doesn't invalidate any of her philosophy at all, just so everyone understands.
	But you see, you said, Rebecca, that you have a need for Ayn Rand.
	You really want to think of her as happy.
	And I agree with you.
	Because we want to think that there's a reward.
	That if we live with integrity, there's going to be this reward.
	It's going to pay off.
	Well, anything that causes us to want to falsify reality is usually a very, very dangerous mechanism to play with.
	And if we have this idea that virtue is going to bring us happiness, I think it really, really tempts us to falsify reality.
	And also, then we have to If we follow rational philosophy, which is really the only philosophy there is, are we allowed to be unhappy?
	Are we allowed to feel despair?
	Well, aren't they kind of a sin then?
	You know, philosophy is supposed to make us so happy.
	Are we allowed to be unhappy?
	Or are we being bad at philosophy if we're unhappy?
	I don't know.
	I don't like something where there's an emotional content in the conclusion.
	You follow the truth and What happens, happens.
	Maybe it'll make you happy for a while.
	Maybe it'll make you depressed for a while.
	Maybe it'll make you really angry for a while.
	I've certainly gone through phases of ups and downs with regards to philosophy in my life.
	Nothing too extreme, but it's not always like, philosophy is the best thing ever.
	I couldn't be happier.
	So, I think emotional conclusions tend to make us play a part called, I'm happy because philosophy.
	I think we pursue truth, if that's our interest.
	We pursue truth.
	And part of the truth is we don't necessarily know how the pursuit of truth is going to make us feel.
	Because it's not up to us.
	We can pursue truth, but how the world reacts to how we pursue truth, that's up to the world.
	That's up to other people around us.
	It's not up to us.
	You can't control what other people say and do.
	You may have some influence over it through diplomacy or whatever it is, right?
	But how you present things.
	But I pursue truth and I speak the truth as best I can, but I can't control how people react to that and I can't always control how I react to how people react to that.
	So, part of the pursuit of truth It's the truth of how you feel about the pursuit of truth.
	I know that sounds like all kinds of Mobius Strippy, self-referential, or maybe even solipsistic, but when we're pursuing truth, part of the truth is we don't necessarily know how the truth is going to affect us emotionally, either in the short run or the long run.
	And staying curious and open to that possibility that philosophy might make us very miserable.
	And it might make us very miserable not for five minutes, not for five days, not for even five weeks or five months.
	It might make us really miserable.
	That does not invalidate philosophy.
	It simply means that we are surrounded by people who hate the truth.
	We're social animals, right?
	So if we pursue truth and we're surrounded by people who attack us for pursuing truth, then it's not the truth that's making us miserable.
	It's assholes who are making us miserable.
	The asshole proximity disorder, APD. That's sort of important.
	You know, it's not quite as important as the PTSD, which is the post- Trump.
	Stress disorder.
	But it is, you know, I don't think the pursuit of truth makes us miserable.
	But I think the pursuit of truth, when we're surrounded by people who hate the truth or hate us for pursuing it, well, that's going to make us miserable.
	But, you know, we don't rationally blame philosophy for the failings of those we've chosen to surround ourselves with.
	So I hope that helps to some degree.
	It did.
	Thank you.
	You're welcome.
	Well, I appreciate the call, and I'm looking forward to people's feedback on this one.
	It's a big topic, and I'm not going to claim to have all the answers, but I appreciate your call, guys.
	Have yourselves a great, great evening, and let's say, who's next?
	Okay, up next we have Peter.
	Peter wrote in and said, Is good addictive across human beings, and doesn't the assumption that it is underlie collectivist thinking?
	That's from Peter.
	This is one of these questions that I think might be great, but I don't know what you're saying, so feel free to crack this one open and let the light in.
	Can you hear me okay?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, well, first of all, let me rephrase.
	It's not addictive.
	The word is not addictive.
	The word was additive.
	So the question is, good additive across beans, and I can give you some examples to clarify that because that's a pretty abstract statement.
	So the question is, is good additive across human beings?
	Correct.
	Well, I'm going to say that that tweak has not illuminated much for me, so please feel free to break it out even further.
	Okay, sure.
	Obviously.
	Well, let me...
	I'll start a little...
	I'm sorry to interrupt you just as you started.
	No, go ahead.
	If you can back off the mic a little bit.
	Sure, I'm sorry.
	I got a good mic here, so I need your feedback about whether...
	Yeah, just give a little breathing room.
	Yeah, go ahead.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	I'm sorry, I'm also chuckling.
	It's your ability to pull in these words from out of nowhere, Steph, when you're talking to people.
	You mentioned the Mobius strip last time, and I just started laughing.
	I thought that was great.
	I like his music.
	Anyway, go on.
	Yeah, right.
	So, okay, the point here is that Let's say one person is experiencing three units of good.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	Dude, you're booming in my ear.
	I'm sorry.
	Either lower the volume or just step back from the mic a little bit because it's distorted as hell.
	I'd like to flip away, but I have a studio mic here.
	So is that better?
	Yeah.
	That's good.
	Thanks.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I'm...
	It comes from being a teacher, Steph.
	I talk loudly.
	Okay.
	Listen, and I want people to be able to hear what you're saying without going like, why is he yelling?
	So go ahead.
	Because I don't hear it that loudly.
	Thank you.
	Okay.
	So imagine one person is experiencing three units of good and another person is experiencing four units of good.
	Does it make sense to say that somewhere in the universe there are seven units of good?
	I think not.
	I don't know.
	Hang on.
	I don't know.
	What are three units of good and four units of good?
	Well, what are we measuring here?
	Well, okay.
	Let me try to make it even more concrete with a different example.
	This came about through a conversation I had with a professor friend, now deceased, and he presented it in the terms of evil.
	He said, for example, if you could...
	If you spare a million people say having a paper cut, it would be justifiable to put one person to death.
	What?
	In other words...
	So he really wasn't into practical, everyday kind of useful ethics.
	Is that a fair statement?
	But he thought...
	But see, the reason for bringing up this question, Steph, is because I think it underlies collectivist thinking.
	I think collectivists think that if you do a certain amount of good for one group of people...
	Even if a certain amount of harm is caused by another group of people, they do a sort of calculus that if the good outweighs the harm, it's justifiable.
	But that presumption assumes that you can add up good across different beings and come to some net amount of good or bad and justify your actions based on that.
	Well, it's, you know, Jewish mother's levels of psychotic control.
	To think that I know what is a unit of good or bad for another human being is megalomaniacal presumption that only the narcissistic personality structure, I think, could possibly pursue with any believability within itself, right?
	So I don't know what is the good for, you know, some guy in another state or another province and what is the bad.
	I have no idea.
	What I do want is for us to have a free society.
	So that people can pursue, right, the pursuit of happiness, right?
	People can pursue the good as they define it and maybe they'll find it or maybe they'll adjust it or maybe they'll find it and find George Michael style that they really don't like it at all, right?
	So I can't possibly quantify what is good and what is bad for other people because there are things like tough love, tough love which makes people feel really bad, right?
	For some time.
	Well, that is a unit of minus 50 or whatever.
	And, you know, maybe they'll have really good things on the other side of it.
	Or maybe they won't, right?
	Maybe it'll just get worse for them, right?
	So maybe someone's having a bad time or making bad decisions.
	You give them tough love.
	And they end up hating you and then running away from you.
	Make it even worse.
	I don't know.
	Can't possibly know, right?
	And there is, of course, no situation in which we could...
	Put a person to death to avoid a million paper cuts.
	This is what I mean.
	Like, I kind of hate these theoreticals because they sound like they're interesting and useful, but they're not because they're functionally and practically impossible.
	And I can't figure out and nobody can.
	This is the humility that people need to sort of get a handle on.
	I don't mean you.
	I'm just sort of in general, right?
	Nobody knows what is the good or bad for someone else fundamentally.
	Not to the point where we can use force to deliver it, right?
	I mean, a single mom is going to sit there and scream and say, well, we need resources because we don't have a man to take care of us.
	Okay, well, let's say that they don't get their resources.
	And then they freak out and they panic and they say, well, I got to go find a good man.
	And then they do whatever is necessary to go out and find a good man and they go find a good man.
	And then the kids are raised with a good stepdad and then resources and she's loved and she's got someone to cuddle with at night and talk about her day with and she's got someone to co-parent with.
	I don't know whether just shipping massive amounts of state welfare, I mean, forget the morals of it, the fact that it's violently redistributing money in society.
	I don't know if delivering massive amounts of welfare is good for the single mom or bad.
	Certainly she thinks it's good.
	In the moment, because, you know, that's generally what they vote for.
	Single moms vote for bigger government and more benefits.
	But is it good for them?
	I would argue no.
	I would argue it's terrible for them, because so many women are going to make terrible decisions about who to sleep with and who to have kids with, and then the money's going to run out, and then what are they going to do when their sexual market value is significantly negative, because they have lots of kids and they come with a big overhead and expense and so on.
	There's no one who can say what is good or bad.
	There's things in my life, this is probably true for you too, but there's things in my life, I've wanted them so much, I've wanted them so much, I've sacrificed so much, I pursued them, and I didn't get them.
	And at the time, and women too, I wanted this woman so much and couldn't get her to go out well.
	As it turns out, Yay for that!
	It's great!
	It's great that I didn't get what I so desperately wanted, what I so desperately worked to achieve in some areas when I was young.
	To be an actor, to be a novelist, or you know, a businessman of massive success.
	I did well as an actor, I did well as a novelist, and a writer.
	I mean, I wrote good books and I did well as a businessman, not, you know, I'm not retiring for 12 generations or anything well, but all of that helped prepare me for this.
	And this just kind of came along by accident and turned out to be what I'm entirely designed for.
	So even within my own life, what I thought was the good for me was not in fact the good for me or for the world as a whole.
	So this idea that we can add up units of pluses and minuses for other people can't It can't possibly happen.
	All that we can be is free.
	We can't be blocks and abacus and calculus of happiness and plus and minus because nobody knows that even within their own lives.
	So many people have said over the years and even to me directly, I thought it was the worst thing ever, it turned out to be the best thing ever.
	Or I thought it was the best thing ever, it turned out to be the worst thing ever.
	It's really hard for us to know, even within our own lives, what are the real pluses in our existence?
	What are the real minuses in our existence?
	That's why you have to live by principle.
	You can't live by consequences because we don't know.
	We don't know.
	Have won the lottery and said it was the worst thing ever for their lives, for their friendships, for their marriages.
	The worst thing ever.
	Of course, everybody's desperate to win the lottery.
	In the first day or week or month, they're euphoric.
	And then, well, you never know why anyone's spending time with you.
	And everybody wants a piece of you.
	And then you've got to manage this money.
	And you're inexperienced.
	So you may not attract the most experienced people to handle the money.
	And maybe you get ripped off.
	Or maybe money goes missing.
	And then you panic.
	Whoa!
	Just give me a 9 to 5, these people say.
	There's a guy in Canada, won the lottery, ended up becoming a drug addict.
	Now he's in jail, lost all his money, and he said, jail is much better for me than being free with money.
	We can't get the drugs in here.
	So...
	No, I agree with this, Steph.
	You can't add it up.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I agree that it's difficult to make these assessments within yourself, and therefore it's even more difficult to make these assessments about other people.
	It's impossible.
	It's not difficult.
	It's impossible.
	Right.
	But look at what the collectivist mindset...
	It depends, it seems to me, on this philosophy.
	They never announce it, they never say it explicitly, but implicitly they say, I know what's best for you.
	I know that if I create Obamacare and provide quote-unquote free healthcare for lots of people, the fact that millions of people lost their, or had their insurance premiums go up by thousands of dollars, that's okay.
	That's what people in government do.
	Do they not?
	Collectivism is the promise of a happy childhood.
	That's all it is.
	If you've grown up, you don't want to be managed.
	And you can't be tempted with free stuff if you've grown up.
	Because you know it's not free.
	But children who've had incomplete or unhappy or abandoned or daycared or neglected childhoods have a lot of pain.
	A lot of pain and a lot of anger.
	A lot of frustration.
	A lot of fear.
	A lot of emotional instability.
	So the question is why is being controlled and told what to do and why is being given stuff that you haven't earned and all of that, why is that tempting?
	Well, it's not tempting to anyone who's a genuine adult who's actually grown up.
	If you've had a bad childhood, you dealt with your childhood trauma and you're free to face the world in the present, in the moment as a true adult.
	So collectivism comes along and says, oh, had a shitty childhood?
	Okay, well, don't worry.
	We can make it all better for you.
	We can be the new parents.
	We can give you the resources.
	We can tell you what to do.
	We can manage you.
	We can control you.
	We can give you a place to live.
	We can give you food.
	We can give you medicine.
	We can give you money.
	We can give you resources.
	We can give you an education.
	All the things which parents are supposed to do.
	Now, if you had parents who actually did that stuff and did it well and were good parents and nice parents, you grew up.
	And then someone comes along and says, I can be a good parent to you.
	You say, thanks, no, I already have a good parent too, in fact, and great grandparents, great extended families, love my aunts and uncles.
	I don't need you to come along, right?
	I don't need you to come along because I had my childhood.
	It was a great childhood.
	I had great parents.
	Love them.
	They loved me.
	I'm grown up.
	I'm out there.
	I'm being free, being supported.
	I can own my own stuff.
	I don't want to take other people's stuff because you have the basic empathy of knowing that whatever the government is promising you is ripped out of somebody else's wallet.
	And that somebody else may not even be born, may not even be conceived of, may not even be, as the old saying goes, a gleam in their daddy's eye as yet.
	So you don't want to steal from other people.
	You don't want the government to steal on your behalf from other people if you have empathy in your grown-up human being.
	And you also know that you don't want to be stolen from.
	But if you are a broken, incomplete person whose childhood was terrible and who hasn't dealt with the goddamn thing and is running around, you have a big giant open wound Which the government can mine for resources.
	This is why the government is so fascinated and so compelled and so focused on producing broken people from bad childhoods.
	This is why no-fault divorce?
	Sure, that'll fuck up people's childhoods.
	Let's hand it out like candy.
	Oh, paying women to have children without fathers around?
	Well, that's going to screw up kids.
	Fantastic.
	That means we're going to have more kids who are going to grow up and who are going to want us to step into the role of parents because they had terrible parents and a bad childhood.
	Oh, let's put them in terrible schools.
	They have everyone traumatized.
	With the lowest common denominator bullying that goes on in these schools.
	Let's just make childhood terrible for everyone.
	And that way, children will grow up without ever becoming fully adults.
	And they will constantly be looking for a big sky daddy, whether it's some sort of religious aspect of things or more particular these days in terms of the state.
	Someone's going to come along and fix their childhood by being a good parent finally.
	But it doesn't work, of course.
	You know, I said this in my recent video on Carrie Fisher.
	You're never too old to have a happy childhood.
	Yes, you are.
	And collectivism is you're never too old to vote for a happy childhood.
	You are.
	You need to deal with that pain and not pretend that the government can replace what you should have had when you were young.
	It won't work.
	But it's such a part of American life.
	I mean, you can't...
	I teach at a university.
	You can't talk to people about the absence of the state.
	They just throw up their hands as if you're a lunatic.
	And, you know, you were talking in the last caller about the difficulties that people that pursue truth face in the world, the ups and downs that you've had personally and you've seen, and you talked about Ayn Rand and stuff.
	And, you know, here I teach at a state university.
	I love to talk to kids about some of these ideas, but...
	It just would be a lose-lose proposition, I think, for me to try to do...
	Do you think that you could very credibly talk to students about a small estate when you're paid by the state?
	No, I feel like a hypocrite, but here I teach at a state.
	It may be more than a feeling, my friend.
	Yeah.
	Why don't you go online?
	Why don't you talk to people and teach people online?
	You can make...
	Good money at this.
	Well, I teach math and I pursue that and I did.
	I taught at a private school for 13 years and was fired for not publishing anything when they went from being a, quote, college to a university.
	I don't know if you can teach math online or not.
	I think if you're good enough, a lot of people struggle with math.
	But if you're interested in smaller government and you're interested in making that case, there's a big market for that online and that market is getting bigger as the government gets bigger.
	So why not?
	I think so.
	Well, I pursue it.
	I'm struggling, but it pays the bills.
	You're so right, Steph.
	You get hooked onto it, and you have health insurance, and you have a salary, and you look and try to pursue other avenues.
	So you'd like the government to be smaller, and you'd like the government to spend less, just not spend any less on you.
	No, I'd be happy if the whole thing would go away tomorrow.
	I think I could do fine.
	But it can.
	It can for you.
	Right.
	It can.
	You can quit and you can earn your money as a teacher in the free market online.
	Well, I haven't been able to and I pursue those choices through various websites and there are not a lot of...
	I have a website.
	I try to find people but to match anywhere near my salary is not something I've been able to do at this point.
	Right.
	Right.
	And this is an example, of course, when the government pays people, then it owns them, right?
	I mean, your choices are ruled by your dependence on state money.
	Exactly.
	So, it may not be very great for you to talk about making the state smaller if you won't make it smaller by you.
	Right.
	And this is, look, I have...
	Friends in academia, so I've made this case to them either publicly or privately, repeatedly.
	And some of them are sort of in the transition phase, and I understand that and all that, but if you're into the free market, how about you be in the free market?
	That would be very inspiring, and that would be a very powerful thing.
	To do.
	And it would be very, I mean, you could do it and you could document the challenges and the rewards and all of that kind of stuff and that would really encourage a lot of other people to To follow suit.
	A lot of other people who are trapped in academia to follow suit.
	It's just one possibility, but it's something to mull over.
	No, it's a good possibility, and it's something I need probably more of a kick in the pants to pursue.
	But even within the academic community, Steph, it's so interesting to try to just confront people.
	For example, there's a A philosophy professor where I teach at UNLV who gave a seminar on voting last fall sometime and I intended, or actually it was last spring, I intended to attend but I wasn't able to.
	So I sent him an email after that and I said, can voting make an immoral act moral?
	Can voting make an immoral act moral?
	And I think you understand it.
	In other words, if an act would be deemed to be immoral...
	No, no, no.
	We're a smart audience.
	You don't need to explain it.
	Can voting make an immoral act moral?
	Go ahead.
	Right.
	No response.
	Sure.
	No response from a philosophy professor.
	Isn't that interesting?
	No, it's not interesting.
	It's completely predictable.
	Because he's a philosophy professor, which means he's addicted to state power, which means he's addicted to state money.
	And so the idea that he would not want to talk about the ethics of voting is, to me, not surprising at all.
	Or that he would like to talk about something relevant.
	Right?
	Not surprising at all.
	This is something I remember reading back in the day.
	This is decades ago.
	That...
	The American Philosophical Association met, a couple of hundred met in the 1960s.
	I can't remember.
	I think it was the mid to late 60s.
	A huge time of crisis in America.
	You've got the Vietnam War.
	You've got the hippie movement.
	You've got the Civil Rights Act.
	You've got blacks demanding more and volatility in the inner cities and riots.
	And you've got students...
	Waging sometimes very aggressive warfare against their own faculty.
	You'd think it would be a time when moral philosophy would be really important to focus on the issues.
	And they all met.
	300 academic philosophers met in New York.
	I can't remember the time.
	It was something like Do Downs Exist.
	Right?
	This was their big topic.
	And...
	No, it's...
	I mean, it's...
	I have far more respect for priests than academic philosophers because at least priests talk to people about what's important in their lives.
	At least priests try to help people ideally live a better life in the here and now.
	They give them advice on what's important and they would not refuse to answer a question like that.
	They would sit down and help you wrestle through it.
	Many priests would.
	But academic philosophers?
	No.
	I mean, what are they?
	I mean, there are a few.
	I mean, don't get me wrong, but in general, they're about as useful as tits on a ball.
	Yeah, but I guess I look at being in the trenches of leftism, which is what a university is, as an opportunity to at least expose people to Some just shed a little light on the door.
	For example, I teach math, so I can't...
	Sorry, but your argument is, can I take coerced state money and turn it to good?
	In other words, can I make an immoral act moral?
	Which is your question to the philosophy professor.
	It's no accident that you chose that question.
	Can voting make an immoral act moral?
	Well, can I take money coerced out of an unwilling citizenry and used to pay me exorbitantly, right?
	I know professors make a good deal of coin, at least after a certain period of time.
	So if I take the money coerced out of people unwillingly, And I then try to speak truth in a hostile environment.
	Does that make it okay?
	Does that make the money that is taken from people unwillingly by force and handed over to me?
	Can I then make it good by talking to leftists about the free market?
	Well, that's not actually my question.
	I was just saying that there are times when I'm given an opportunity to, at least by way of question, ask someone to thank.
	For example, a student mentioned in class one time, this is before class because I teach math and I don't spend time, obviously, Interrupting what I'm supposed to do.
	And she said something about being, thought it was unfair that she wasn't going to be hired for a job because she had a visible tattoo.
	And I just mentioned and I said, well, why do you think you have a right to have a job that somebody else expects you to have a particular kind of appearance?
	And she just looked at me and I didn't pursue it any further than that stuff.
	I just threw out the question just as a possibility that she might not encounter somebody asking that kind of question anywhere else.
	And that's why the government should pay you?
	No, no.
	I'm not justifying my existence in a university to do this.
	I'm just saying here I am and I'm looking for opportunities where I can ask students to think in ways that they might not otherwise be asked to think while I'm trying to figure out how to get out of this.
	Right.
	I certainly wish you luck getting out of it.
	I mean, it's tough, right?
	You know, particularly if you're not a spring chicken, right?
	I mean, it's a...
	I'm 60.
	I have a wife.
	I have a stepdaughter.
	Yeah, I've got people to support.
	And, you know, you can make all the arguments.
	Well, I should have gotten into this situation.
	I understand all that.
	But, you know, at this point in time, it's okay.
	What do I do to move in that direction is my question.
	And how many hours a week do you work on this job?
	25, 30.
	And you don't have to give me an exact figure, but are you over six figures?
	Oh, no.
	I make about mid-50s.
	I'm not a tenured professor.
	I'm not on tenure track.
	Mid-50s?
	Yep.
	Does your wife work?
	Yep.
	And you have one stepdaughter?
	Yep.
	Do you live in a gold palace?
	Do you drive a diamond hover car?
	I mean...
	You should have some flexibility, right?
	I mean, after taxes, it's not a lot of money, right?
	No, it's not, right.
	So why not work to build up some online income?
	Well, I'm pursuing that stuff, but it's hard.
	I mean, if you go to the major websites, higheredjobs.com and others, and you look for remote or online teaching, there are two or three, which I've already applied for.
	So I'm building my own website.
	Oh, you want someone else to give you a job?
	You don't want to be an entrepreneur, right?
	You want someone else to set up a structure where you get paid.
	They're not necessarily jobs.
	They're sort of an independent contracting, like somebody wants somebody to write something, math curriculum, or make videos or something like that for them.
	So you're a 1099 employee in that sense, or not an employee, but you do contract work for them.
	Do you know, I mean, I'm sorry, I don't understand this.
	And please, excuse me for being so blunt, and feel free to toss away anything that is not particularly relevant.
	But when I was, you know, when I wanted to pursue being a writer, I quit my job.
	I didn't have much money in the bank.
	I quit my job.
	And then, this is...
	15 years ago or 16 years ago.
	I got called up and people were saying, well, we want you to come in.
	Only work two or three days a week.
	We're going to pay you $150,000 a year.
	Wow.
	You can still do your writing.
	You can still do your writing.
	It's two or three days a week.
	$150,000 a year.
	Wow.
	And do you know what I said?
	No thanks.
	No thanks.
	And do you know why I said no thanks?
	No thanks.
	Go ahead.
	I'm listening.
	Because...
	You...
	You fight when you're cornered.
	You do your best when you have little choice.
	You swim fastest when you're being pursued by the shark of bankruptcy.
	You work.
	There's no doubt about it.
	You can't split your focus.
	When I quit...
	My last job before I went to Free Domain Radio full-time.
	They said, just come and work two or three days a week.
	You can still do this thing.
	And I said the same thing.
	No thank you.
	No thank you.
	I don't like to be one foot on the pier and one foot on the boat.
	Stand on the pier or get on the boat.
	But this split thing?
	Well, I'm doing this.
	Maybe I cut back a little bit on this.
	Maybe...
	No!
	No!
	Jump out of the plane and pull the cord.
	You know, like, I mean, you don't know what you're capable of until you go all in.
	You don't know what you're capable of until you go all in.
	So you say, I'm 60 years old.
	I don't have a lot of time.
	It's not like you're going to die at 62 or anything, but hopefully not.
	Right, no, as far as like energy and focus and, you know, Trump can quit his entire business and run for presidency.
	Was he 70?
	Come on.
	I mean, you can quit.
	I'm just saying you should, right?
	You do what you want, right?
	The reality is that you will have such focus and such dedication and such emphasis and such energy When you don't have a soft place to land, when you don't have that gooey cushion of, well, I don't really have to, and Netflix just released.
	So whatever it is, you know, like, I mean, go all in and make those kinds of decisions that you don't have a A plan B. Nothing says commitment like no plan B. If you didn't have this job and you had to make money, however it was going to be, You would find some way to get people's attention, to get people's interest.
	There are so many out there, so many people out there desperate to learn math.
	Maybe you're the guy who could crack that nut for them and really get them over their math phobia and find some way to communicate the glory and the beauty and the rationality of math to people.
	And if this was the only way you could eat, man, you would...
	Be so focused.
	There's an old saying, you know, there's nothing like the threat of an execution to sharpen the mind and its attention, whatever it is, you know, like you defend yourself in court or something, right?
	It is this hedge stuff, this, you know, I'll put my toe in over here and it doesn't work.
	At least I've never seen it work.
	Maybe it works or it doesn't seem to work.
	You know, like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs didn't say, well, you know, I'll I'll do some college and I'll do...
	No, they just quit college.
	Because that's how you get the resources and the focus to really succeed, to really, really make a go of it.
	There's nothing quite so energizing as rank terror.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Well, I think it makes a difference when you have people depending upon you as opposed to when you're single.
	I think Steve Jobs and Bill Gates both made those decisions when they were single and didn't have any...
	But how old is your stepdaughter?
	Sixteen.
	And your wife works?
	She's an immigrant and she has a master's degree and she makes $10 an hour.
	So she makes about 20% of our total income.
	Why does she make 10 bucks an hour with a master's degree?
	She's applied hundreds of places, Steph.
	It's tough.
	And how long have you been married for, if you don't mind me asking?
	No.
	Five, six years come March.
	And where's she from?
	Ukraine.
	Right.
	And your stepdaughter wants to go to college, right?
	Right.
	And she's very smart, does well.
	And of course, she's going to get reduced or free tuition with you being where you are, right?
	Yeah, but I don't want her to go where I go, where I teach, because I just don't think the instruction's that good.
	And how did you meet?
	I met her through a dating service called eHarmony.
	And was she in the Ukraine when you met her?
	Yes.
	And how old is she?
	She'll be 46 on the 7th of January.
	Oh, so quite a bit younger, of course, right?
	Yeah, 14, a little over 14 years, yeah.
	Well, when you were her age, her child was two.
	Right, right.
	Yeah, I met her in 2008.
	We got married 2011.
	My stepdaughter, her child, was just a week or two shy of nine, and she will be 17 in March.
	Right.
	But she's great.
	I wouldn't trade her or my stepdaughter for anything.
	That's the greatest thing that's happened to me, getting married at age almost 55, relatively late.
	I know you were, I think, somewhat, not as late as I was, but somewhat later than the general, and it's been great.
	No, I was in my 30s, mid-30s, early mid-30s when I got married.
	Right.
	And how old were you when you had your child?
	41?
	Okay.
	42?
	Something like that.
	Right.
	2008, so.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Well, yeah, I mean, that is a challenge, right?
	I mean, if you haven't achieved the kind of independence that you want and you take on an immigrant wife who makes 10 bucks an hour and her child, then obviously you're paying most of the bills for the child, right?
	Right.
	What happened to the woman's husband or the father of her child?
	Well, he lives in Ukraine.
	He's remarried.
	They got divorced, obviously.
	Maybe not obviously, but, you know, years before I met her.
	And she, I mean, I don't know what the laws or customs are there.
	I mean, he provides little or no child support.
	I wouldn't expect him to.
	When you do the currency exchange rate, I mean, what he earns, I don't even know what he earns, but it would be a pittance in U.S. dollars anyway.
	And I'm assuming that he doesn't really see his daughter very much.
	Well, correct.
	She's here now.
	We got married in 2011, and then she went back to Ukraine.
	I won't bore you with the details, but then it was a long process going through all the immigration process.
	It's a lot of paperwork.
	Doing the whole thing legally is quite a challenge, legally and bureaucratically.
	Anyway, both came over here in 2012, and then my stepdaughter's been back twice, basically for six or eight weeks in the summer.
	So she sees her father at that time when she goes back.
	So she's been back twice, and my wife has been back four or five times, I guess.
	Right.
	Right.
	And, I mean, you just couldn't find any local girls that were of interest to you?
	Not that's good or bad.
	I'm just curious.
	It's a lot of work to go through.
	No.
	Yeah.
	I, you know, I don't know.
	I had too high expectations for my looks or who knows what, but I, yeah, I dated a lot and through the years and met several women in the United States through eHarmony before I was matched with her.
	That's the way eHarmony works.
	You don't just find somebody's picture.
	They actually match you by some process.
	And then you go through various phases where you communicate and then you're exchanging emails and so forth.
	And so, yeah, it just worked out that I was that age when I was matched with her.
	Right, right.
	Right.
	Well, I can certainly understand if you've taken on another man's child and your wife doesn't earn much, though I guess she is helping to drive down wages for other people trying to make 10 bucks an hour, then it's going to be tough to make that leap into the free market, especially since you're paying for another man's child and he's not really paying much of anything, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Well, you know, I appreciate that elucidation of your circumstances and, you know, that certainly does put a new perspective on things.
	And, yeah, I mean, I guess you can keep trying to talk to people about their tattoos and, you know, maybe you can sort of start putting out feelers as you are, you know, you're already doing that as to what else.
	You might be able to achieve.
	I sympathize.
	Being into a smaller government while being dependent on government money, it is a big challenge.
	I sympathize with where things are.
	But I am going to move on to the next call, and I certainly do appreciate the sharing.
	Thanks so much for the question.
	You're welcome.
	All right, up next we have Camden.
	Camden wrote in and said, As a male in my prime, my body is pushing to attain sex.
	However, that is a major problem for me.
	I was raised as a respectful and virtuous person, so until now, I was doing the old-fashioned thing, being nice, polite, and thoughtful, not lowering my standards.
	This pretty much resulted in nothing but a few friendships.
	This was frustrating, and with my body driving me, I decided to try the other way.
	Posting pictures of my abs, etc.
	And literally thousand percent increase in traffic, conversation, etc., etc.
	My question is, why do I have to degrade myself in this way to even start to appeal to the opposite sex?
	Or, what is the reasoning behind that, do you think?
	Also, I know all these people talking to me are majorly broken themselves because they are searching for the people I am trying to emulate and are highly likely not to be relationship material.
	Why is it so hard to find decent people and is the majority of people so shallow and primal?
	That's from Camden.
	Well, hey Camden.
	So, abs!
	How did you get them?
	No, I'm just kidding.
	So is it really, it was like no interest and then you started flashing some, you know, Scott Adams style abs and you getting, you know, pinged like crazy?
	Pretty much.
	And what other messages, what kind of messages are you receiving?
	You know, like actual messages.
	I have an inbox now.
	Yes.
	What kind of comments, what kind of content of the messages are you getting?
	Flavours and ones.
	I'm sorry?
	Intriguing ones.
	Are you going to share any content or should I just move on to the next question?
	I don't think you're getting what I'm asking for.
	I think the main thing was I have potential dates and stuff that I can...
	Can pursue if I want to now.
	But it's like, why is it so hard to...
	Yeah.
	I mean, you seem kind of like a monosyllabic kind of guy, so I have this sort of urge to just dive in and talk.
	So I'll give you some thoughts about why this is happening.
	Women don't need nice guys anymore because the government gives them money.
	So women can indulge in shallow lusts, and they can look for abs, and they can look for guys who can buy them things or whatever.
	But they don't need a guy who's going to be a stable and steady and good provider.
	They don't need a guy who's going to be a stable and steady and good father because the government's going to give them all the money and resources that they want.
	You understand?
	The government now gives more money to women than the top 1% of people even 50 years ago could conceivably spend and achieve the goods that women can get a hold of these days.
	So there has been every woman becomes a princess and the government is her prince.
	Like it's Cinderella except we have to pick up the bill for the ridiculously impractical footwear.
	So women don't have to look for a quality They can look for high sexual market value just in terms of, you know, shallow, stupid stuff.
	Now, you say, ah, yes, well, men have always been interested in pretty girls.
	And it's like, well, yes, men have always been interested in pretty girls.
	But that's because men were providing the resources and women were providing the fertility, right?
	The man was buying the woman's eggs and the woman was selling her eggs.
	And this is the basic reality of why there's sexuality, why there's monogamous relationships, at least in the West.
	Women don't have to look for a nice guy, and nice guys are incredibly frustrated by this, and I can completely understand why.
	Because the sexual market value of men in a free market is based upon the resources they can acquire and bring to the family.
	And to acquire resources in a free market means you have to have some level of maturity and decency, and you've got to get up and go to work, and you've got to negotiate, and you get all the things that decent, reasonable, honest people like to get involved in.
	So women don't care about nice guys anymore on average because they used to have to grit their teeth and cross their legs and say, okay, he's tall, dark, and handsome.
	He's like Marlon Brando in The Wild One.
	He's got abs.
	He's really a hot alpha smoking guy.
	Cute and funny.
	But they'd have to say, no, no, but if he's way above me in terms of sexual market value, then he's just going to use me for sex and move on.
	I can't compete.
	And if he's a player, in other words, if he's really focused on being sexy and really focused on being hot and really good at chatting up women, well, that's because he does it a lot.
	And so a woman's going to try and sleep with this guy, or she's going to be able to sleep with him, but then he's just going to turf her and go on for someone new.
	So she might get the guy, she just can't keep the guy.
	Now, getting a guy but not keeping the guy used to be a big black mark against a woman's character, which is why virgins are so highly prized in the marriage market, because Virgins aren't most likely to divorce you and take half your nutsack and all of your stuff.
	Statistically, women who have no sexual partners before they get married are much more reliable wives.
	Their marriages last longer, much less likely to divorce.
	As you have more and more sexual partners, you're more and more likely to The woman's more likely to divorce you, or you're more likely to divorce her.
	That's the old saying, you can't turn a whore into a housewife.
	This used to be common knowledge.
	It's not anymore, because now apparently that's called slut-shaming, so calling a spade a spade is apparently prejudicial against garden implements.
	Why they don't need to...
	They can go after the bad boy.
	They can go after the tall, dark, and handsome.
	They can try and bag the alpha in terms of sexual market value at the moment, which is not an alpha provider, but an alpha looker, right?
	Which is why there are films like Magic Mike, right?
	Why women can do all of this silly stuff.
	Don't objectify me.
	What was this?
	Ariana Grande or whatever her name was?
	I don't like it when men objectify me and she's...
	You know, basically stripping on stage.
	Don't objectify me!
	You know, it's like me showing up in a Lamborghini with a solid gold suit saying, I hate people who judge me by my money.
	It's so shallow.
	It's like, maybe if you stop flaunting your money everywhere.
	But anyway.
	So, yeah.
	So the reality is, it's just a natural result that gender relations are a big, giant government program.
	As I talked about in the last show, masculinity and femininity are all big, giant government programs.
	And the government is screwing everything up.
	And so...
	That's why when you change from being a nice guy, nice guys have low sexual market value.
	They used to have high sexual market value.
	Because they would be the providers that women would need to be around when women were disabled with pregnancy and childbirth and being halfway decent mothers and actually breastfeeding their own children, not by slapping on some 2% skim milk four-bag feed mechanism, but actually being there with a boob in someone's face so the kid gets actual eye contact and skin contact and isn't just like an IV drip out of a plastic bag, just like mom.
	So nice guys used to have high sexual market value.
	Because sex is about children and women being disabled by having children and breastfeeding and having more children and breastfeeding needed a man who was going to stick around who wasn't going to get poached by some other woman.
	So if you go for a guy who's just too hot and too rich and too successful and too powerful, well, unless you're going to spend your entire time doing Shania Twain levels of exercise, they're going to get bagged by someone else and the other women are always going to be clamoring around.
	So a guy who was steady and reliable but not super attractive was, in fact, the best thing that you could do for your kids and all that kind of stuff.
	So now that...
	Women get their resources, if they want, they get their resources from the government.
	And the average woman with a couple of kids on welfare in the States gets the equivalent of over $65,000 worth of free resources, which is, you know, you have to earn $65,000 or more to get the same resources.
	So it's tough for a lot of men to compete with that.
	And so they don't need demand for resources anymore, so they can just indulge in shallow stupid lusts and then complain that they feel used and get really angry and invoke Title IX regulations and all this kind of crap.
	So that's, I think, the basic explanation as to why you're experiencing what you're experiencing.
	And I'm, of course, very, very sorry about that.
	I hear there are some nice ladies in the Ukraine.
	Similar value of the topic.
	Um...
	Do you happen to have any insight into silencing the primal brain and allowing the intellectual brain to have more control?
	You mean cracking the cock?
	Yeah.
	Have a regular sexual part of it that you love.
	It's sort of my big suggestion.
	This is what Socrates said when he was getting old.
	He said, you know, that finally sexual lust is leaving me and it's like having a demon banished from my brain.
	Or there's that old funny Seinfeld where...
	You know, when he stops thinking about sex.
	George Costanza, there's like nothing he can't do.
	So, no, get into a good sexual relationship with a woman you love.
	And it's, there's really, then you can focus on some things.
	Or get tennis elbow rubbing stuff out in the morning.
	I don't know.
	But that would be my suggestion.
	How you do that without getting involved in a long-term relationship with a sexual partner you love?
	I don't know.
	The, you know, why are men so?
	There's this picture of these, on the internet, this picture of these guys storming the beach at Normandy, you know, and they're all like 20-year-olds or whatever, and then there's that picture of that guy in the flannel pajamas with a cup of tea and the glasses.
	What happened to men?
	It's like, well, masculinity is now also a government program, which means that It's a disaster as a government program, right?
	So what drives male ambition is the more money you get, the better woman you get.
	Let's be honest, right?
	That's what drives a lot of male ambition, right?
	I mean, this is why labor-saving devices were invented for women before life-saving devices for men.
	This is why you got dishwashers and laundry and crap like that and all this kind of stuff, vacuum cleaners.
	But before, men even got filters for black lung in the coal mines or whatever.
	And So male ambition is somewhat driven by going out and getting resources.
	So it is lust for the highest quality woman you can get a hold of that builds civilization.
	And so why is civilization failing?
	Because the government is taking money from men and giving it to women.
	Therefore women don't have to earn it by being excellent.
	And whenever women or anyone doesn't have to earn anything, they just do a crappy job.
	It's DMV sexuality.
	That's basically what's going on.
	So normally, your sexual desire, your lusts would be channeled into huge amounts of ambition and wanting to gather as many resources and take risks and build things, you know, like civilization.
	But because the money is being ripped out of your hide and given to women who are generally terrible people as a whole, well...
	Your ambition is, right?
	This is why there are so many, you know, cucks and low-T people out there, you know, the high forehead, the glasses, the simpering mangina feminist face.
	It's because, I mean, why be ambitious?
	Well, what happens these days is if you're ambitious to make a lot of money, the government just takes more from you and gives it to terrible people.
	So, why bother?
	You know, why bother?
	Now, in the free market, you go out and you earn and you get a bunch of resources, well, then you can have your pick of higher quality.
	Women, or at least higher sexual market value women.
	And so that was a huge drive, right?
	I mean, you become the rock star to get the supermodel, so to speak, right?
	Although even Billy Joel didn't seem to like it after a while.
	But so you can't sublimate your sexual lusts into, or maybe it's tough for you to sublimate your sexual lusts into mad ambition for building things in the world because it doesn't get you the kind of reward that you'd want and this is one other aspect too that quality women are having a very tough time of it these days because as more and more women get educated and more and more women make more money women have a very tough time Dating
	down, right?
	We've got hypergamy.
	Women want to date men better educated, more accomplished, making more money with more of a future than they themselves are.
	That's just how women are wired.
	They want to date up.
	They want to have hypergamy.
	And so as women get more educated and as women become more successful and taller, let's not forget that too.
	Women are getting taller as far as I understand it.
	And so they want a man who's taller because women want to wear heels.
	And so they want a man who's taller and We're at least the same.
	But of course, as more and more women displace more and more men out of the university system, we've got now 60-65% in some universities of women taking non-STEM degrees where they can then graduate and complain that there aren't enough women in STEM degrees, but they get out and they can't find men who are more educated and taller and blah-de-blah-de-blah because there are so many women who are now so educated.
	This is one of the other reasons why women are just getting more and more miserable and So many are just drinking themselves to death these days, as we've sort of seen recently.
	If you follow my Twitter account, you'll know what we're talking about.
	But I would say, you know, go out and build something.
	Go out and take risks.
	Go out and build something great and grand and exciting and wonderful and powerful and magnificent and hopefully lucrative.
	And that will help with desire, I would say.
	Thank you very much, sir.
	You're welcome.
	I appreciate the call.
	And let's move on to the next caller.
	Alright, up next we have Joshua.
	Joshua wrote in and said, Why is it that God is impossible if the two main logical arguments proposed in your book, Against the Gods, can be shown to be inconsistent?
	And if there is no logical inconsistencies with God, why would it not be wise to be an agnostic?
	That's from Joshua.
	Hello, Joshua.
	How are you doing tonight?
	I'm doing fine.
	How are you doing?
	Well, it's a great name for a religious call.
	I really, really appreciate that.
	And not a bad name for half of a U2 album.
	But anyway, so you're talking about my free e-book available at freedomainradio.com slash free called Against the Gods?
	That's because a valley girl did the typesetting.
	So it's Against the Gods is what you're talking about.
	Is that right?
	Yes.
	The first two arguments that you made in the beginning of your book...
	Alright, give me the arguments, and please, please do tell me how they are incorrect.
	Alright, so anyway, first I want to say that I'm a big fan of your show, and that I've been listening to for quite a while.
	But yeah, as far as the arguments go, the – let me see.
	The first argument – let me see.
	What was it?
	It was the argument basically that a mind cannot be observed without matter, and therefore minds without matter cannot exist.
	It was pretty much the argument you were making.
	Something that is defined like unicorn or anything that is defined has its parameters.
	Minds, by definition, have matter as part of their parameters.
	Anyway, what I wanted to argue that that was incorrect...
	Sorry I worded it that way, just I wanted to have a discussion about it.
	No, that's fine.
	So my argument is that consciousness is an effect of matter, in the same way that we could say that gravity is an effect of mass, and you can't have gravity without mass, and you can't have consciousness without matter, right?
	And since God is immaterial consciousness, this would be an argument against the existence of a deity, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	And so basically, I wanted to make an argument that in this universe, in this world, We can see a situation that can occur in which that argument would be proposed, but we know that that argument would be wrong.
	And that would be any person that is in sort of a simulation.
	Like, for example, a person that was in a video game, let's say, their entire life.
	It is not inconceivable to imagine someone in a simulation that is pretty darn realistic.
	And you could Wait, sorry.
	I'm sorry.
	I need to understand the parameters of this thought experiment because sometimes we just vault into thought experiments and I don't know what the hell's going on.
	It's just maybe my limitation or whatever.
	So is this person born into a video game?
	Well, what I'm saying too is that you could...
	Well, there's multiple ways you could do this.
	You could either have, A, people that are designed in a video game that are conscious, or people that are born into the video game, or however you want to have the thought experiment go.
	No, no, no, no, I can't.
	I'm sorry, because if we're going to have a thought experiment, it needs to be...
	Something that I can understand, right?
	Okay.
	So forget the first one about you'd have AI in a, because we don't have artificial intelligence, and we can't have consciousness in machines as yet, and there's nothing imminent as far as that goes.
	So let's just talk about it.
	So you're saying a person would be born like you would slap a virtual reality helmet on a baby, trying to sort of figure out how that would work.
	Is that what you mean?
	Okay, yeah, that would work.
	Either way, what I'm trying to say is that a conscious...
	And then how would the baby be parented in this video game?
	Well, yeah, it'd be pretty much the Matrix.
	I guess this would be like a Matrix argument.
	And we're almost at the stage where we could, you know, it is viable to do this.
	And so anyway, what I'm saying to you is that a person...
	Wait, wait, wait.
	We're almost at the stage where it's viable...
	What I'm saying is that we have the technology...
	To have people in pods not be...
	Like have people in pods with electrodes attached to them so they can be used as batteries.
	I'm not sure.
	What do you mean?
	Like we're at the stage...
	Like this virtual reality, which I actually tried out at a mall the other day with a friend of mine.
	I was in Minecraft.
	It's pretty wild.
	I view that sort of...
	All I did was the Minecraft one.
	It's the only experiment they had.
	I think it was Oculus Rift.
	It was wild.
	I mean, really, I mean, I'm looking up to Lego clouds.
	I'm looking around and, you know, moving.
	And I was moving around with a joystick, I guess.
	I don't know if they, I'm sure there's some way you can do that.
	But of course, you can't move around that easily.
	But I got to tell you, I view that as crack.
	Like, hey, want to smoke some of this?
	I'm really not sure because I think that's a very bad idea because what if I really like it a lot?
	What if I really like it a lot?
	I think the virtual reality stuff could be really, really absorbing.
	And I love video games myself.
	So the idea of getting in there, I'm almost afraid to try it again because I could really, really see that taking up a big chunk of my time if I let it.
	And I do have a lot of stuff to get done.
	So it's almost like somebody says, hey, would you really like a debilitating addiction that you're going to like for a while, but it's going to turn you into a piece of potato?
	It's like, hmm.
	I think I'm going to have to say no.
	So I just want to sort of point that out that I tried it and it was really cool even though of course it was like the Minecraft Lego block world or whatever, right?
	Which apparently is crack for kids, too.
	But I'm sort of afraid to try something even more realistic because I could really see how it would be cool to get into it.
	And I just wanted to sort of point that out.
	But no, we're not anywhere close to the point where people can live in video games, right?
	I mean, you understand that, right?
	I mean, they could put something on, right?
	It's like saying we're close to going to Mars because Doom 2016 came out.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	But basically, my entire point was that a person in that world, like Minecraft world, whatever world, They could make the exact same argument that, oh, all minds are composed of blocks, for example, in Minecraft world.
	And you would not be able to refute that unless you were outside of the world.
	In fact, you know, scientists in the Minecraft world...
	Sure, sure you could.
	You rip off their virtual reality helmet and say, look, I'm not made of blocks, right?
	I mean, so sure you could.
	Why can't I say the same thing for God?
	Well, look, when you die, you know, you go over and you exist in this other dimension of reality or other...
	Whatever reality you want to call it.
	Because I said you would rip off the helmet and show somebody who's conscious that there would be a world around them not composed of blocks and there would be immediate sense, data, sense, evidence, empirical, testability, conform to the five senses, reason and evidence, data, that not everything is composed of blocks.
	But saying, oh no, after you die, I'll be proven right, is not an argument, right?
	But that's the exact same thing Christians are saying.
	They're saying once you die, you will be in a sense, you know, state where you will be able to sense these things, where you will be able to experience this other reality that they're talking about, which is heaven.
	That's their whole...
	That's the whole foundation.
	An assertion, an untestable assertion is not an argument.
	So if they say, well, after you die, we'll be right in ways we can't possibly explain to you now...
	It's not an argument.
	I mean, it's a statement and it's completely untestable.
	So from a philosophical standpoint, it's not even wrong.
	It's not a testable statement.
	It's not an empirical statement.
	It's not a rational statement.
	It's not a provable statement.
	It's just saying in some alternate dimension, that which does not exist by definition exists.
	That's not an argument.
	I mean, just try that in your math class, right?
	I mean, try this, right?
	Say to your kid, you know, the kid gets marked down because they say, you know, I don't know, two and two make five, right?
	And you just send it back and say, no, no, no.
	Because in an alternate dimension, after you die, you'll see that two and two make five, so you can't mark this wrong.
	Well, that wouldn't work, right?
	No teacher would accept that.
	That's true.
	That's true.
	All I'm saying is, like, you've seen the movie Matrix.
	I'm ignoring all those things about, you know, people being batteries and everything like that.
	Not only have I seen the movie Matrix, I've seen the decaying orbit of the sequels to Matrix, and I struggled right through to the end, just because, you know, it's for the show, it's for philosophy, I knew it was going to come up.
	And the first one, magnificent movie.
	And then, oh, anyway, what the hell?
	It's even worse in Star Wars, as far as it goes.
	But anyway, so, go ahead.
	But it's the exact same thing, where it's like, It was a process in which it was needed for him to rip off the virtual reality that held him into that system.
	What I'm saying to you is that why is it not possible?
	This is not like proving that God exists or anything.
	It's just showing that the argument that you proposed It has possible defeaters.
	And that's all I'm trying to show is that it is possible that...
	No.
	The Matrix is not an argument.
	Like, I'm sorry.
	You know, I mean, it's a great movie, but that's like saying orcs exist because I saw them in Lord of the Rings, right?
	I mean, it's not an argument.
	It's a piece of art.
	And it's a compelling and enjoyable and interesting piece of art.
	It's not an argument.
	And so you can't pull the Matrix card and expect to be taken seriously when it comes to sort of rigorous philosophical debates.
	Anything's possible because Keanu Reeves fell out of a pod.
	I'm sorry.
	We wouldn't need philosophy.
	We wouldn't need anything.
	You wouldn't need a business plan for investors.
	You'd say, okay, well maybe there's no market for what I want to sell and maybe the price is a billion dollars more than anyone wants to pay for it.
	But you should totally invest in me because of the matrix and maybe in some other dimension.
	You understand, right?
	No, no, I completely understand.
	You can't do it.
	Because that's just a get-out-of-jail-free card for everything.
	Well, maybe everything's an illusion.
	Maybe it's all a video game.
	Maybe it's all made up.
	Maybe in another land or another universe or another dimension.
	No, no, no.
	Philosophy is about this world, this dimension, this reality, empirical evidence, rationality.
	It's not about the magic card of something which allows my statement to suddenly become true.
	Alright, I kind of understand what you're saying.
	Well, let me just ask you this question.
	How can you, like, I already know the answer to this, but the thing is, how can you prove that this world is not a video game?
	Like, how can you not prove that we are not characters, like, how can you prove that this is not The Sims, and that we're just a very elaborate, you know, form of The Sims, and that we're just conscious entities in The Sims, but, you know, that, like...
	A person in Minecraft, if they are all they knew...
	I don't need to display.
	You understand?
	I don't need to lift a finger.
	I don't need to do a damn thing.
	If you want to make the case that this is all a big elaborate video game, then you have to make the case.
	Otherwise, I can just blow this argument away.
	I don't have to lift a finger.
	I don't have to engage with you.
	I don't have to do a damn thing.
	And so you are the one who, if you're going to make an extraordinary claim, like, well, Staff, you may think you're in reality, but you're in fact in a video game.
	It's like, okay, well, I'm happy to hear the case.
	And if you don't have a case, I don't have to lift a finger.
	It's false.
	Well, anyway, the only reason why I brought this up was just because you're making an argument that...
	Because we see minds are only made of matter, therefore this.
	Whereas I'm saying that logically that doesn't follow because there are universes where we know that it's not possible.
	But even in this universe, this universe, this world, we know that's not true.
	You know that consciousness is an effect of matter.
	And do you know how I know you know that?
	That's not a good argument for something.
	I know a lot of things.
	No, no, no.
	I'm about to make the argument.
	I've made a statement, now I'm going to support it.
	All right.
	So, my friend.
	If we had said to you tonight, right?
	And I appreciate you coming on the show at short notice.
	We had a cancellation.
	Who's back?
	But if you had come on the show tonight and said, so I get to talk to Steph, right?
	And they would say, no, you get to talk to a picture of Steph.
	What would you say?
	Well, that's very unfortunate.
	That's not fair, actually, I'd say.
	Well, you'd say no.
	Yeah, no.
	Unless you're insane.
	You'd say no.
	You'd say, well, you get to talk to a replica of Steph made out of papier-mâché, you know, Richard Dreyfuss style.
	Or made out of potatoes, mashed potatoes, Richard Dreyfuss style.
	Would you accept that?
	And we could go on and on.
	Would you accept any substitute other than talking to my brain through my mouth, right?
	Yeah, but like, gosh, this is one argument that was very interesting.
	It was the idea that...
	No, no, no, no.
	I'm not going off on another argument.
	I know you're a young man.
	I've got to get your focus.
	This is pertinent.
	Would you accept any conversation with any manifestation of me that wasn't my actual brain in the moment?
	Or if they were to say, well, you can have a conversation with a podcast Steph recorded last week.
	No.
	No.
	The only way that you're going to agree to have a conversation with me is if you're talking to my consciousness in my brain.
	If we'd said to you, I'm going to mail you a ping pong ball with Steph's consciousness in it and you can have a conversation with that, what would you say?
	Well, it has Steph's consciousness in it, so that works, right?
	You really would?
	Do you really think we'd be able to do that?
	Well, no.
	But what I'm saying to you is if you were able to get your consciousness into a ping pong ball and then you were able to talk to me...
	No, no, no.
	You know as well as I can.
	If only a crazy person would say, sure, I'd love to talk to Steph.
	Just mail me that ping pong ball and then have a nice conversation with Steph.
	You know, come on.
	All right, right.
	I got what you're saying.
	So you say, how do we know the consciousness is associated with the brain?
	And yet you will not accept anything but my brain to have a conversation with.
	So you know that my consciousness is entirely embedded in my brain because my brain is the only thing you want to talk to and you would accept no substitute whatsoever.
	Mm-hmm.
	That's not the problem with what I'm saying.
	What I'm saying to you is that humans...
	You seem very certain of that, Joshua.
	I think it is.
	You're absolutely right.
	Human consciousness is absolutely 100% associated with the human brain.
	That is all we know.
	We don't know anything else for certain.
	The only other things that we know are from...
	Wait, what do you mean we don't know anything else for certain?
	What do you mean?
	Are you getting all Cartesian on me?
	What do you mean?
	It's an inductive truth.
	I only know this because I've experienced it, but saying it for certain is impossible.
	I can only say that all the minds that I've experienced have had matter behind them.
	That's all I can say.
	Am I getting what you're saying?
	No, you can say it.
	No, this is not just an empirical truth, right?
	This is something we know for sure.
	And I know, I know.
	The only thing that's certain is white people are racist.
	I understand this post-modern thing, right?
	White males, I should say.
	And the only thing that's certain is that feminists hate conservative women while claiming to be pro-women.
	But outside of the certainties of political correctness, which I'm not saying you subscribe to, People have a very tough time with certainty these days.
	Certainty is like this soap in a tsunami.
	You state a certainty and people just get very, very anxious or nervous about it and frustrated and hostile towards the idea.
	But no, consciousness being an effect of matter is a certainty.
	Because...
	Go on.
	Matters.
	Well, consciousness is the results of, you know, biochemical, electrical processes.
	I don't know what the hell goes on in the brain.
	Like, I don't think anybody really does.
	But it is an effect of the interaction of matter.
	Because otherwise, we'd have an effect without a cause.
	We'd have consciousness without it.
	It's like you have gravity without the proximity of mass.
	Like, here's a bag of gravity.
	I mean, it doesn't make no sense, right?
	Or you'd have light without a light source.
	An effect has to have a cause.
	And we know for sure that consciousness is an effect of the interaction of matter.
	So saying we can have consciousness without matter is like saying we can have an effect without the direct cause of that effect.
	And that's not possible in any scenario, in any situation.
	I'm kind of disagreeing with the correlation there, because I just have a lot of reason to believe that that is not the case.
	There was an interesting argument I wanted to bring up while we were having this, which was the...
	I can't remember exactly...
	Wait, I have a lot of reasons to believe that's not the case?
	Yes.
	That's also not an argument.
	Feel free to share that with me.
	Anyway...
	It was an interesting argument.
	I don't know if I necessarily subscribed to it, but I just thought it would be an interesting conversation.
	No, no!
	That's not how philosophy works.
	This is not a magazine service.
	You don't subscribe to things.
	I make an argument.
	You either accept it or you refute it, but you don't get to say, well, I don't really subscribe to it.
	I don't really buy it.
	That's not how it works, right?
	You have to think about it.
	There's some arguments.
	You don't accept them on the spot.
	You can say that honestly and legitimately.
	You can say, I neither accept nor reject this argument.
	But I'm going to think about it.
	Sure, that's honest and that's valid.
	I got no problem with that.
	But you can't say, well, I got a whole bunch of reasons why I disagree, but I'm not going to share with them.
	But moving on!
	It's like, no, because then I'm not going to have a conversation with you because we're not going to get anywhere.
	I'm going to make a case and you're going to throw sand in my face and then you're going to try and drag me off to some new topic.
	It's like, no, no, no.
	I like to build buildings and building buildings means putting bricks on each other with mortar in between.
	And if we just throw in bricks randomly, we're not building anything and it's just a big waste of time.
	So we're either going to have a conversation where we establish some truths and maybe the truth is that you say to me, you say, Steph...
	That's a great argument.
	Oh, that's an interesting argument.
	I can't refute it, but I'm doubtful about it.
	So that's fine.
	That's an honest statement.
	Nobody has to agree or disagree with me in the moment.
	These are big topics that take some mulling over.
	But I'm not just going to jump from topic to topic after I make an argument because then we're not building something.
	I'm trying to build something here.
	A wall, you could say, against irrationality.
	But I'm not just going to throw bricks around and pretend that we're building anything.
	Okay.
	Well, anyway, this, uh, argument is the, uh, argument, uh, what's it called?
	Law of non, um, Okay, so you just completely missed the point and you're trying to drag me off into another thing now.
	So I'm going to actually move on to the next caller, but I really do appreciate the call in because I just said we need to build something and not just move to a new topic and you just immediately move to a new topic.
	So I'm afraid you're mostly output and not a lot of input at the moment, which I understand you're a young man, but I don't have time to throw bricks around.
	I'm interested in building something.
	Let's move on to the next caller.
	Alright, up next we have Desmond.
	Desmond wrote in and said, What are your thoughts about making compromises in values, principles, and life?
	Life is not always black and white, and I think it is wise to know when to stand at the white or the gray.
	Is my way of thinking dangerous and slippery?
	Do you have additional tips so that I do not fall into any traps?
	That's from Desmond.
	Oh, hey Desmond, how you doing tonight?
	Hi, I'm good and quite nervous.
	Alright, well, let me put you at ease by going, booga booga!
	No, kidding.
	Let me put you at ease.
	I'll just give you a sort of very brief...
	It's a great question, of course, and it's something we all wrestle with.
	I'll give you a sort of a brief one-two on my approach, and then we can take it from there.
	Sure.
	To me, and I've said this for years, but all is permitted...
	As long as we're honest.
	All is permitted.
	The moment you have to feel like you have to hide something from yourself, that's usually a good sign that your compromises are not right, are not doing the right thing.
	And so if you're honest with yourself about your compromises and you say, okay, well, ideally in some alternative universe or a perfect world, it would be great to do this.
	I'm going to do less of this or 50% of this.
	And you're honest about it with yourself.
	That to me is the best we can do.
	And it's pretty good.
	It's pretty good.
	Instincts are very important.
	You know, we have a second brain in and around our gut.
	It's got a lot of Crazy, thinky stuff.
	My gut instinct tells me, well, it's a real thing.
	It's like a real scientific thing.
	And the gut instinct is very, very important.
	And it's great at perceiving threat.
	And it's great at perceiving opportunity.
	And it is a seed of a lot of the emotions that we go through.
	It's not just the sort of conscious, certainly not just the neofrontal cortex, but the 8,000 times faster, unconscious, and the gut as well.
	We have a whole body set of antennae that help to try and guide us through life.
	And trust me, this antennae has been very well developed.
	In terms of figuring out the compromises between empirical reality and tribal bullshit.
	And we've all, you know, as a species we've had to navigate this for hundreds of thousands of years.
	We don't want to go too much into bullshit because then we lose the capacity to deal with objective reality and therefore we all starve to death.
	But at the same time if we only go with objective reality then tribal superstitions can bite us in the butt or women won't sleep with us and those genes die out.
	So this navigation you're talking about between sort of integrity and honesty and truth And tribal nonsense, we're very good at.
	It's sort of what we're adapted to do.
	And if we let our sort of minds and our bodies unite together to navigate this, we can do this with real adroitness.
	Sort of like Luke in the Millennium Falcon when he's got the blaster helmet down and he can sense the...
	I mean, we're really, really good at this.
	So, if you give enough honest information to all of your various sensors and navigators through reality and tribalism, you'll find an incredible ability to do it in a very positive and productive way.
	Neither surrendering to mere empirical reality and then Being stoned to death by the tribe or whatever it is, right?
	Or thrown in jail for whatever.
	Nor, at the same time, completely conforming and losing reality, which, of course, is what this show is kind of focused on.
	So to me, faced with a choice, my question is, well, if I'm perfectly honest, and I always aim to be perfectly honest with myself about this choice, and about the compromise I'm going to make, Will I be able to live with myself afterwards?
	Will I feel okay about it afterwards?
	Just be honest with yourself.
	And if you're honest with yourself, you're giving as much information.
	You lie to yourself.
	You're removing vital information from all of the various organs and instincts and thought processes and sense data that you need to make.
	Good decisions.
	Nobody can be a good pilot with a pirate patch on.
	You need that depth perception.
	You need good eyesight.
	So denying yourself information by lying to yourself or providing yourself with misinformation by giving yourself some sort of counter narrative.
	I remember there was this woman I dated when I was younger.
	Man, she was hot.
	I mean, lordy, lordy, lordy.
	You know, eggs would spontaneously poach when she walked by.
	And she was a nice person, but just not particularly interested in abstract ideas, concepts, philosophy.
	And of course, I was, always have been.
	So we dated for quite some time, and it was a nice relationship, a good relationship.
	But, you know, there was, you know, she didn't want to go to college, and it was, you know...
	Fine, fine.
	But every now and then she'd say something really smart and I'd grab onto it.
	She's going to be interested in this stuff.
	But she never was.
	It wasn't her thing and it's perfectly fine.
	She was a very lovely person and I enjoyed the relationship a lot.
	But what happened was the relationship went on longer than it should because I was giving myself counter information.
	Like, oh, she's going to be smart this way.
	She's going to be interested in this stuff.
	But she wasn't.
	Now, if I'd been really honest about myself, maybe I would have dated or maybe I wouldn't have, but I may not have spent as much time in what turned out to be a not productive relationship and it didn't lead to a lifelong kind of whatever, right?
	And we do this a lot, I think.
	Men in particular, if we find ourselves attracted to when we start inventing all these virtues for her out of, you know, lust and male, the general male insanity called falling in love, at least the falling in lust stuff.
	Whereas if we're just sort of ruthlessly honest with ourselves and say, okay, this is who the person is, this is the evidence of who they are, I'm not going to pretend that I can go in and hotwire, you know, the kind of brain I want and the kind of body I like, just accept the whole person as it is.
	Then I think we can make good decisions if we are ruthlessly honest with ourselves.
	Don't blind ourselves to things.
	Don't avoid topics.
	And for heaven's sakes, don't give yourself counter information.
	I think that's really important because that really screws things up.
	You know, I mean, if you're lost in the woods and your compass is for some reason backwards, well, you're just going to get even more lost.
	And so we need a good compass and that good compass is just a ruthless honesty.
	About our choices and our compromises.
	I mean, I've made compromises.
	You've made compromises.
	It is all...
	Natural.
	We all have to make compromises.
	If you're very honest about your compromises, say, I'm going to make this compromise, and here's why, and here's, you know, can you live with it?
	And you'll get a sense of whether you can live with it or not ahead of time.
	Then you can make good decisions that you don't look back and regret and say, oh man, I should have done this or I should have done that.
	I think that is the best approach for these kinds of compromises.
	Know you're going to have to make them.
	Don't attack yourself for making compromises or, you know, Not getting the perfect moral action across in every conceivable circumstance because we do have to survive in the world and that's, you know, getting mad at yourself for having to make compromises, like getting mad at yourself for not floating across the room because you can't, right?
	You have to live in the world that is.
	In the world that is, you have to make compromises.
	So...
	Just be honest with yourself, give yourself as much information as possible, and you'll find that your instincts will guide you, I think, very, very well.
	And the instincts, you know, we've lost this a lot in this sort of hyper-abstract world that we kind of live in, in some ways, in this perfectionism, right?
	The perfect is the enemy of the good.
	To look for heaven is to live in hell.
	It's a weapon used against us, right?
	This puritanism, this idea, well, you've got this non-aggression principle.
	Do you participate in anything that might have the slightest smack of aggression in it?
	Do you pay your taxes?
	Yes, of course I pay my taxes.
	And I do that because I want to have a life in the world, doing good in the world.
	And I'm not going to let a system I disagree with steal my freedom and my wife and my child.
	I mean, it's not the way it's going to be.
	And, ah, you see, well, you know, then you're supposed to be taken down.
	And it's kind of fundamentally hyper-religious in nature, you know.
	Are you as perfect as Jesus?
	No?
	Well, then you're a sinner!
	This is not how we want to live.
	Everyone's going to have to make compromises.
	Just be honest about them and refuse to judge yourself by a standard of perfection when no such standard is possible in the world that isn't and may never be possible in the world relative to our perfect ideals.
	Certainly things can get a lot better.
	But that has been my approach, and I do think that it has been very helpful and very productive in what it is that I'm doing.
	And the last thing I'll say, if you're comfortable with your own decisions, then you're going to be very hard.
	It's going to be very hard for anyone to criticize you.
	You know, I mean, I get criticisms all the time, all the time.
	And I'm comfortable with my own decisions.
	I know why I've made those decisions.
	I'm happy with those decisions.
	And I don't blame myself for the compromises that a bad system controlled and created by bad people is sort of forcing me to do.
	The fact that there's bad people out there who've made a bad system in many ways that requires compromise in order to survive, that's not my fault.
	I mean, why would I be blamed for that, right?
	I mean, so...
	If you are comfortable with your own decisions, you've given yourself full information and you've let your instincts process it, what I call the ecosystem, right?
	The ecosystem of the identity.
	We're not a single thing.
	We're a whole bunch of competing things within us.
	If you're comfortable with your decisions and your compromises, then you won't self-attack.
	And if you won't self-attack, it's very hard for other people to attack you.
	I mean, they'll continually try.
	Of course, right?
	Oh, Steph, you should have done this or this was terrible.
	I'm so disappointed.
	I'm taking my subscription and I'm going home, right?
	I mean, the reason why people bum out of this show, it just passes understanding.
	Please go and find a more consistent show with a perfect man-god of absolute integrity, please.
	And I'll join you.
	But if you're comfortable with what you do, you won't self-attack.
	If you won't self-attack, it's going to be very hard for other people to attack you, or at least they'll try, but it won't have any impact.
	And I think that's the best we can hope for in this world.
	I see.
	That's interesting when you said instincts, because I guess I count it as unconscious.
	The unconscious, right?
	Like the blink.
	So I have to rely on that.
	But that's where your happiness and unhappiness is going to come from.
	Happiness and unhappiness are feelings, and feelings do not result directly from rational thought.
	They come out of our body, they come out of our feelings, they come out of our unconscious, they come out of our gut.
	I see.
	Okay.
	Okay, so I guess we're in line because I have this, like, I don't know, like, I've listened to your show for five years, and, you know, at first, it's very hard to navigate, but at the end of the day, I think I quite have the confidence, yet I'm not sure that's why I'm calling you.
	So I guess we're in line right now.
	Like, I understand what you're saying about, like, instincts of the unconscious.
	Like, eventually, I think now I have the...
	The capacity to be comfortable with myself and navigate through this crazy society, I guess.
	If you want positive things from your emotional apparatus, if you want your emotional apparatus to deliver unto you happiness and peace of mind and contentment and courage, if you want good things from your emotions, then give your emotions a say.
	Give them the full information.
	Give them a chance to weigh in before You go and make a decision, right?
	Get the participation of your emotions in the decisions that you're going to make.
	Just act and then you expect your emotions to support you.
	I don't know if you've ever had someone in your life who just goes off and does stuff and then you have to sort of live with it or pay for it or whatever.
	It's really annoying.
	Let's talk about it before you go off and do stuff.
	It's the same thing with your emotions.
	Look at how you look to your emotions.
	Your emotions want to give you happiness, but you have to earn it.
	And your emotions will be happy to deliver unto you happiness and contentment and peace of mind and courage and all of that kind of stuff.
	But you have to listen to them ahead of time.
	Give them input into your decision-making process.
	What do you think of?
	Meditate on it.
	Think about it.
	Go into an isolation tank.
	Whatever you need to do to get your emotions to give you feedback on what you're thinking of doing.
	And then, if they give you the all clear, if they come back afterwards, you can at least challenge them and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on, you can't give me all this anxiety now.
	You had a chance to say ahead of time whether we should do this or not.
	And that is very important.
	If you want good things from your emotions, you have to give them a voice.
	If you want someone to love you, you have to listen to them.
	You have to give them a voice.
	You have to give them input.
	And if you want your emotions to love you, to give you all the positive things that emotions can give you, like happiness and all of that, you have to listen to them.
	You have to give them a voice.
	You have to give them a seat at your decision-making table.
	Because if you just act dictatorially, your emotions will respond like rebellious and surly serfs.
	They will simply sabotage and undermine you because they're frustrated At not having a voice.
	I see.
	That's very interesting, you know, about emotions.
	Like, recently I just downloaded an app called, like, the Mood Meter.
	I guess, like, so, like, you said that I should develop my emotions more.
	So, and if I do this, I'll be on the right track about, you know, making compromises, you said.
	Right.
	Your emotions are not dumb.
	They're older than you.
	And they were guiding us long before we had this neo-frontal cortex dictatorial system in place, right?
	The post-monkey beta expansion pack that sometimes feels buggy as hell.
	Our emotions were around a long time navigating these kinds of tricky things a lot longer and a lot older.
	I mean, they're all the way back to the lizard brain and beyond.
	So our emotions are older than we are.
	We grow out of our emotions and our instincts and our feelings.
	And so to not give them Sway is to remove one of the most elemental sources and really definitions of happiness that there is.
	Happiness is a feeling.
	It's not a thought.
	Now, I'm not saying that emotions and thoughts are completely unrelated.
	They're not.
	But it's not as simple as your thoughts program your feelings.
	Your feelings have a life of their own and predate our rational consciousness by hundreds of millions or more of years.
	And so to not Accept the value and the need to negotiate with your emotions, to not give them an equal say in your decision-making process is truly fatal to your happiness.
	Because you're then asking things older than you to give you all of their benefits while listening to none of their wisdom and that will never work out.
	I see.
	It's like, you know, if you're a real friend with someone and you've lent them money and then you come and say, oh yeah, I need to borrow some money, then most likely they will.
	But if there's some friend that you've never, you know, you've fallen out of touch, you know, and the last time they begged you to lend them money, you told them to go screw himself and, you know, you become arrogant and then you go and ask him for money, he's not going to give it to you.
	He's going to look at you resentfully because...
	You don't have a productive relationship.
	It's the same thing with emotions.
	You want the emotions to give you all of this happiness?
	Then give them a voice.
	Listen to them.
	They've got incredibly important things to tell you.
	And incredibly important and nimble patterns to help guide you through.
	And they're incredibly sensitive.
	As I said, the unconscious has been clocked in at over 8,000 times faster in processing than the conscious mind.
	And so if you feel uneasy, if you feel this, that, or the other, like...
	I'll also give you a sort of a tiny example.
	So...
	I have had...
	Temptations have been offered to me.
	The devil has manifested and offered me things.
	And one time, basically, when I was an aspiring playwright, a woman said that she was going to get my play produced on radio, but basically I had to date her.
	And another woman actually offered to get me my first novel published, but I kind of had to date her.
	And even before these offers were really manifest, you know, when the women were doing their thing, I never did, of course, take either of these offers or accept any of these dates, but I had an uneasy feeling about these women.
	I had, you know, not comfortable.
	We're scanning for danger all the time.
	You know, think of being a zebra in the savannah, right?
	You're looking for any kind of movement in that grass because if you miss it, boom.
	You know, you're a pate with a side of hoof.
	And so we're very good at figuring out these kinds of dangers and figuring out these kinds of situations.
	And, you know, if you've ever tried to catch an ant, you know they're very fast.
	So catch a damn fly!
	If you're not Barack Obama, you catch a damn fly.
	It's really hard.
	The eyes are constantly scanning.
	They know the danger and they're constantly getting away from everything that you try to do.
	So, you know, if the flies can do it and those instincts keep them alive, well, maybe we can do it and our instincts can help us navigate these treacherous pathways of compromise.
	And knowing these kinds of, feeling these kinds of unease, even back then, you can say to yourself, oh, well, I feel uneasy because I'm insecure.
	I feel uneasy because I'm afraid of success.
	I feel uneasy because, ha, right?
	It's like, no, I feel uneasy.
	I'm going to I accept that as a very important piece of information about this kind of interaction.
	And I've had this in the business world, I've had this in the podcasting world, I've had this in the art world, I've had this in a variety of places where You know, there's this word hinky, you know, it just feels just kind of something's not quite right.
	And if you want happiness, you've damn well got to listen to that.
	It doesn't mean that it rules you any more than you rule it.
	Don't let your emotions rule you.
	You negotiate with them, you listen to them, everyone gets a seat at the table.
	There's no dictatorship in the personality.
	Everyone gets a seat at the table.
	It's a negotiation of equals.
	And the reason why we don't have a free society is because people are dictatorial in their personalities and then they see the state and it mirrors the way they are with themselves.
	I am full of badness and I need conscious control to control my negative impulses.
	The statism is a state of mind first.
	It's a state of relationship to your emotions.
	And if everyone gets a seat at the table, you will be really surprised at how nimbly you can navigate these compromises and feel perfectly fine with them.
	I see.
	That's interesting.
	So, I know you're big on not telling people what to do, so basically I just need to trust myself.
	Is that what you're saying?
	Yeah, that's a kind of like, yeah, it's like love yourself.
	It's kind of a cliche.
	But because if I say you need to trust yourself, okay, well, what do you do tomorrow, right?
	Trust myself.
	I don't know how to achieve that.
	I mean, I like sort of more practical steps.
	I might as well just say, be happy.
	That's my, be happy.
	Don't worry.
	I mean, that's not much of anything.
	It's like, be healthy.
	Well, it's a little bit more to it than that.
	What sort of practical steps do I need to take?
	So, yeah.
	Do you have a situation of compromise that's currently floating around in your mind?
	Yeah, I have.
	That's why when I write to you, I have three different examples.
	I guess we can go through that.
	Let's take one.
	Just take the most important one or the one that's most challenging.
	Or the one you think might have the most negative effect on your happiness if you get it wrong.
	Sure, but before I go to that, again, So basically, I just have to trust myself and ask for advice like you.
	Is that how it works?
	Is that it?
	No, let's go to your example because you're not getting the abstractions and they are ridiculously abstract.
	So let's go to your situation of potential conflict.
	Okay, maybe I'll go to like about my dad.
	So in my example, I said I do not have the courage or the will to confront my dad with the truth about his bad parenting because I need to maintain a quote-unquote relationship where in the end I'll be inheriting his treasures.
	How about that?
	No, that's...
	So, do you mean by his treasures, you mean his money?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Like...
	Yeah, okay.
	So, you want to maintain a good relationship with the dad.
	You have some criticisms of his parenting.
	And one of the reasons you want to maintain a good relationship is because he's got money and he might not leave it to you in his will if he dies.
	Or you might not get it before he dies if you criticize him.
	Or like we...
	You know, argue and then he's not happy with me, you know, or he become more depressed, you know, like that.
	So I'm making that compromise.
	So I never talk to my dad about the past.
	I try to talk to my mom because, you know, she kind of...
	Yeah, I did talk about my mom about spanking and stuff, but about my dad, I never talked to him about any of his faults.
	Probably because he's like this Chinese conservative guy who's not open and honest about his stuff and he's like depressed and he's an alcoholic, you know?
	So with my dad, I never have the courage to like, you know, Talk things out, you know, about...
	Well, see, okay, here's the first thing.
	Is that you are already coming to a conclusion, my friend, about your faults and your flaws.
	You're saying, I don't have the courage.
	In other words, it's a vice.
	You lack a virtue called courage, and therefore you're doing something wrong by not talking to your father about these things.
	That's not listening to your emotions.
	That's jumping to a conclusion and condemning your actions based upon...
	A state of mind that you feel is lacking in you, which is called courage.
	And since courage is a virtue, if you lack it, then you must be cowardly, right?
	So that's not listening to your emotions.
	That's giving them a judgment already when we don't even know what the motivations are, whether they're good or bad.
	But I am.
	How do you know you lack courage?
	Maybe it's wise.
	I don't know.
	You've come to a very strong conclusion about why you're not doing these things with your father, having these conversations with your father.
	You're coming to a very strong conclusion.
	How do you know?
	I know I'm wise, but I also lack the courage.
	How do you know it's a lack of courage?
	How do I know it's a lack of courage?
	Because I should just talk it out, you know, like...
	Like you said, like...
	How do you know you should just talk it out?
	This is what I mean by listening to your...
	Your feelings are saying, we have a very strong resistance to talking to your father about the truth.
	And what you're doing is you're saying, well, bad feelings.
	We should.
	A good, courageous person would do it and your bad feelings because you don't want me to do it.
	You understand?
	This is not giving them a voice.
	This is not giving them a seat at the table.
	It's just condemning your feelings of resistance to talking to your father.
	Okay, if that's not good, what's the good one?
	You said how do you...
	No, no, no.
	The good is to listen.
	The good is to listen and be curious.
	Why?
	You don't want to talk to your father.
	Now, just saying it's cowardice, that's not being curious.
	That's having a judgment and a condemning judgment about your resistance.
	What if I go through the why and eventually that's my conclusion?
	Fine, fine.
	Okay.
	Fine.
	But you will have earned that, right?
	I mean, it's sort of like saying, okay, like imagine a dictatorship.
	Well, or like a good chunk of the world, right?
	The court system doesn't work on reasonable doubt.
	The court system doesn't work on evidence.
	The court system doesn't work on being able to confront your accuser.
	The court doesn't work on witnesses.
	It works on political correctness.
	It works on the whim of the dictator, right?
	And say, well, what does it matter if we have a trial or not?
	Because the person could be guilty in both situations, right?
	Like, well, no, the person's not guilty if you just condemn them without a trial because you don't know.
	It's a huge difference.
	I mean, if you were accused of some crime and they said, well, you could either have the justice listen to you for three minutes and then just decide your case or you could have a full trial with a legal defense, of course you'd take a full trial with a legal defense, right?
	It matters.
	The process matters.
	Just saying someone's guilty without a trial is an abuse of power, right?
	Okay.
	Say, well, let's say we go through the trial and then we find out the person really is guilty.
	Well, then you can punish them without Guilt.
	You can punish them without hypocrisy.
	You can, right?
	And you know that you have created a system which will protect you if you're unjustly accused or justly accused or whatever, right?
	Okay.
	So it matters.
	The process is really important.
	It's sort of like saying, well, I could get an iPad.
	I can either steal it or I can go and earn the money to buy it.
	It's like, either way, I end up with the iPad.
	What's the difference?
	Well, it really matters, right?
	It's like sex.
	I could just go have sex with a woman, whether she wants to or not.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, it matters.
	The whole ethical thing matters on the process.
	Okay.
	So, I... But, yeah, but...
	I'm quite lost there.
	But, okay, so, like, the process...
	No, no, just don't call yourself a coward when you don't know what your resistance is or why.
	Because it's an unjust statement.
	It's not fair to your emotions.
	Okay, so what should I do?
	Like, I've been through the process and then I know that I'm...
	No, no, no.
	Okay, let me...
	I know, it's tough.
	Okay, so let me sort of explain why I think this is important.
	Sure, sure, sure.
	How do you know it's you or your father that doesn't want you to talk to your father about these things?
	Because you would benefit, I assume, from talking to your father about these things, but your father...
	At least in the moment, would not.
	Is it fair to say that your father does not want you to talk about these things, but you do want to talk about these things?
	Yes.
	Right.
	So is it possible that it's not you who is the coward, but you are being sensitive to the cowardice in your father, who does not want you to bring up these things?
	No, I get that, too.
	I get that, too.
	I know that.
	No, you said, I'm a coward, or I lack courage.
	I see.
	This is a different thing.
	If your father desperately does not, if your father is desperately afraid of you bringing up these topics, then your resistance to these topics is your father in you being afraid of you talking about these things, and therefore it's not particularly your cowardice, it's your sensitivity to someone else's cowardice, potentially.
	Do you understand?
	Yes.
	I get that.
	Now that's a very different situation, right?
	I see.
	Okay.
	Because then you don't condemn yourself for being cowardly, and you may not even condemn your father for being cowardly, but at least you know with more accuracy the source of your emotions, which is, well, my father desperately does not want me to bring up these topics, therefore, if I have hesitation in bringing up these topics, it's not because I'm a coward, it's because I'm being sensitive to, rightly or wrongly, I'm being sensitive to my father's fear of me bringing up these topics.
	In other words, he implanted in me an avoidance of these topics because he wants to avoid these topics and he can't control me directly, therefore he's going to control me indirectly by implanting in me A hesitance or a reticence to bring up these topics with him.
	Okay, I get it.
	Okay, so what am I missing here for myself?
	I think for my self-reflection or my self-development, like what am I missing here right now?
	Is it just my way of thinking or...?
	No, no, it's just that you are jumping to conclusions...
	Okay.
	...about your emotions without being curious...
	Think about their source.
	Anybody who's condemned does not want to participate with you.
	Is that fair?
	They don't want to give you stuff.
	They don't want to help you.
	I mean, if you say to your friend, you're a total coward and an asshole.
	Hey, do you want to come and help me move?
	What's he going to say?
	You're a total coward and an asshole.
	You say to your friend, you're a total coward and an asshole.
	Hey, you want to kind of help me move?
	He's going to say, I hope he's going to say no.
	Yeah.
	He's not going to want to help you.
	So if you say to your emotions, well, you lack courage, you're a coward.
	Are they going to want to help you navigate this complex and challenging situation with your father?
	No, I guess.
	No, they're not.
	They're going to sit there, and they're going to be frustrated and upset, and you're no more going to get value and help out of them than you would having a friend help you move if you call them a coward.
	Okay.
	Yeah, sure, sure, sure.
	Now, does your mother want you to bring up these topics with your father?
	My mother is kind of stupid, to say the least.
	I mean, like, they just don't think philosophically, so it's hard.
	Yeah, I'm not talking philosophically, and I'm quite surprised.
	But anyway, I didn't ask about your mother's intelligence.
	I said they didn't ask about whether she's philosophical.
	I asked, does your mother want you to bring up these topics with your father?
	I don't even, I think she wants it, but she doesn't even think to there, I think.
	You know, like, You mean she has no preference, emotionally, whether you confront your father about his bad parenting, his drunkenness.
	She has no opinion on the subject.
	If you said, Mom, I'm going to go over and sit down with Dad and talk to him about him being an abusive alcoholic, and she'd be like, I'm easy either way.
	And she'd have no particular preference either way.
	I think so.
	She's more of like a carefree person where she tried to erase herself, so she really don't have any preference.
	Because my preference, the preference is like overwhelmed by my dad.
	So she developed that.
	Okay, so, sorry to interrupt, but so logically, if your father doesn't want you to bring up these topics, and I can certainly understand why, if your father doesn't want you to bring up these topics, and your mother Follows your father in what she feels.
	Then clearly, your mother would not want you to bring up these topics with your father.
	Because she would follow his emotional preference that you avoid these topics, right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	But I should break that, right?
	You should what?
	I should have break that.
	I'm not sure what you mean.
	You break that, did you mean?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, like, I should break that norm.
	Like...
	Okay, see, here's the thing, right?
	This is why you're having trouble.
	Because now you're back to, well, I should do this.
	We just came up with two big insights which you hadn't had before.
	Right?
	Number one, that...
	It's your father who doesn't want you to bring these topics up.
	And number two, that your mother is most likely following that in wanting you to avoid these topics.
	So you have two primary caregivers who both very much do not want you to bring up these topics.
	And now you're trying to jump into, well, I should break that then.
	I should jump into action.
	We've just spent 10 minutes asking the most fundamental questions about the source of your emotions.
	And you still haven't got the hang of saying, well, what's next?
	Or can I be curious about something else?
	But now you want to jump into more action.
	What should I do with these things?
	Well, you don't do anything with them just yet.
	You keep asking questions, right?
	Okay.
	Does that make sense?
	Sure.
	Has it been, oh, no, you're giving me your, now we've talked about your mom and here she is, right?
	You're giving me this passive aggression now.
	Okay, sure, right?
	Like, okay, well, no, no.
	I mean, you're participating or you're not, right?
	Don't give me this kind of half and half stuff, right?
	Has it been valuable in terms of truth and clarity To be curious about the source of your emotions so far?
	Sort of.
	Like, whatever you said, I think I get that too, you know?
	And like I said, eventually, I think I'm already at the conclusion because I think I've analyzed things, you know?
	Wait, you've never really taken this approach, but in 10 minutes you're already at the conclusion?
	You know that is completely not credible, right?
	Well, I just started learning how to play chess 10 minutes ago, but I'm already a grandmaster.
	No, like what you said, I think I understand.
	Tell me, does your father brag at all?
	My father likes to brag.
	I think I have that.
	Okay, so now I'm talking to your dad, right?
	See, now we're getting to the root.
	We're starting to talk about the emotional motivations about this reticence to talk to your father.
	I just talked to your mom with the passive aggression, and now I'm talking to your dad, who's a braggart, right?
	Hmm.
	Okay.
	So this is what I mean when I say you have not mastered this process, right?
	I have not mastered this.
	It takes a long time.
	It's called internal family systems therapy is one way of talking about it.
	And we've had Dr.
	Schwartz on to talk about this.
	But you understand that as I'm starting to look at the roots of your emotions, we're finding out that you're not there yet in these emotional aspects.
	Your parents are down here.
	Your internal alter egos, your alters they're called.
	Your parents are down in here.
	I'm talking to your parents who don't want you to talk about this stuff.
	But you think it's you who has this reticence.
	So you're fundamentally confusing your motives, yourselves, with your internalized parents.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes.
	And until you can separate you from your parents in your mind, it's tough to really have an identity and it's so easy to get paralyzed.
	Because you say, well, you say to yourself, somehow, I simultaneously do and don't want to talk about my father's drunkenness and abuses.
	I do and don't want to talk about these things with him.
	I desperately do want to talk about them because I want to be honest and I want to break through and I want to have reality.
	At the same time, I'm desperately avoidant and don't want to.
	So you feel split.
	You feel like, how can I have two opposite, completely opposite impulses?
	But when you break it down, you look at the sources and you're curious.
	What you find out is that you, 100%, all of you, do want to talk about these things with your father.
	But your father and your mother, I'm guessing, 100% don't want you to.
	So it's not like you're conflicted.
	It's that your parents don't want you to, and you do.
	And once you begin to understand that, I don't know what you do with all of this stuff.
	Other than you keep asking these questions until you get peace.
	Until you get integrity.
	Until you get the truth.
	Because the truth sets you free of contradictions.
	The truth sets you free of paralysis.
	The truth gives you who you really are outside of everyone else who's got their mental fishhooks in you.
	Wanting you to do what they want you to do and imagining that it's you.
	Because you think you do and don't want to talk to your father about these problems.
	But it's not true.
	You do want to talk, but she doesn't.
	And when you start to separate these two things, you start to actually have an identity because you know who is you and who is other people.
	What your interests are and what other people's interests are if they're in conflict.
	Listen.
	There are lots of people in the world who don't want me to talk about what I talk about.
	There are lots of people in the world, people like your father, who are listening to this conversation and getting really tense, really frustrated, really upset, and really don't want me to talk to you about this stuff.
	You understand?
	Yes.
	If I thought that all of that hostility to what I'm saying, all of that fear and anxiety about what I'm saying right here, right now to you, if I thought that was me, I'd say, wow, I'm strangely conflicted.
	I do and I don't want to talk about these things with this fine caller, right?
	It's not true.
	I do want to talk about them.
	But there are lots of people in the world who don't.
	Not just because of you, but because there's going to be millions of people listening to this.
	Some of whom, many of whom may have similar issues with their parents or with other people.
	And when I talk to them, or when they hear this conversation, their inner parents are going to be like, no, this is bad, turn it off, he doesn't know what he's talking about.
	Don't listen, right?
	Now, if I internalized that and thought that that's me, I mean, I don't want to talk about these things.
	I know I do want to talk about these things.
	These are important things to talk about.
	I don't like bullshit non-relationships.
	I mean, just, I don't.
	I want to have people in my life I can be honest with.
	Tell the truth to them.
	And there are other people who've done bad things in relationships.
	They don't want these bad things brought up.
	Of course not.
	I mean, I'm not equating this to pure criminality, but if a thief robs a house and then later finds out that there were big infrared cameras everywhere, he doesn't want that footage to get to the police.
	Of course not, because then he's going to be in trouble.
	His crimes will be revealed in a way that is going to cause him to be Punished, right?
	He doesn't want that, right?
	There's a reason why the mafia off the eyewitnesses, because they don't want the people to testify in court, right?
	Nobody likes for their wrongdoings to come to light.
	And so if you've been a bad parent, a drunken parent, an abusive parent, an absent parent, a neglectful parent, whatever, then of course you don't want your children to sit down with you.
	And say, when they've grown up, when they become adults, they sit down with you and say, you know, I've got some problems, I've got some complaints, and I think they're legitimate and I really want to talk about them.
	I understand.
	Now, the reality is, I think a lot of times it's the very best thing.
	I mean, I think in many cases it's the very best thing that can happen.
	You get it all out there, you talk about it, you laugh, you cry, you yell, whatever it's going to be.
	But at least there's some reality about history.
	Not everyone is sort of You know, when I think of these families with these secrets and these things you can't talk about, which are hugely influential on everyone, like alcoholism, like suicide attempts, like drug addiction, like criminality, like beatings, like whatever.
	What I see in my mind's eye is this big, beautiful, ornate table, you know, like Christmas or Thanksgiving.
	And this is wonderful feast laid out.
	Everyone's hungry.
	And everyone has their chairs facing away from the table.
	They've even got cutlery in their hands.
	They've got a nice napkin on their lap.
	Everyone is facing away from the table.
	Turn around, face each other, talk and listen.
	Because there's nothing without the truth in a relationship.
	There's just avoidance.
	It's nothing.
	It's worse than nothing.
	It's a negative.
	It's an avoidance.
	There's nothing lonelier than being in an anti-relationship, like a relationship where not only can you not be yourself, but you have to be someone completely the opposite of who you are and what you think and what you experience.
	That's really tragic.
	And to me, it's worth taking the steps to speak the truth and break through.
	Because that's the only chance.
	I believe the relationship has.
	Doesn't mean it's always going to work.
	I tried this repeatedly.
	I was not able to have it work.
	It wasn't up to me finally.
	It was up to other people.
	All I can do is be honest.
	I can't control how other people are going to react to that.
	But if it does work, it's fantastic.
	In other words, if you have the breakthrough, you have that connection.
	You have this, like I was reading this story years ago about this woman whose father was dying and he never hugged her, never touched her really, her whole life.
	And she worked with him for weeks while he was dying, just hug and hug, and eventually he just melted and gave her a hug.
	That's something.
	That's something.
	It doesn't mean that it's going to work, but it is worth trying.
	It is worth trying.
	For me, it was worth trying.
	I'm still immensely happy and proud that I had those conversations with people.
	It is worth trying.
	Because if it fails, or it succeeds, either way, you're free.
	Okay.
	Um, I, um, yeah, sure, sure, sure, sure.
	I get what you're saying.
	So what I'm missing is...
	I get why you're saying everything.
	Now we're back to your mom, right?
	Who's helpless and absent.
	Now you're giving me this helpless thing, right?
	Can you summarize this?
	What I'm missing?
	No, no, no.
	There is no summary.
	It's a process.
	Summarize science for me.
	Well, no.
	Science is a process.
	It's a process of being curious about yourself and curious about the sources of your emotions and not Accepting empty condemnations as anything other than bigotry against the self.
	We all have to live with ourselves and our feelings for the rest of our natural born days.
	And we can either just sit here, lock up our feelings, cage our feelings, condemn our feelings, condemn ourselves.
	It's pointless and it's stupid and it's a huge waste of time and energy and life.
	But another thing we can do is be curious about the sources.
	Of our feelings and allow them to inform our decisions.
	Now, for yourself, right, you've not, obviously, I don't think you've had good models about how to deal with this sort of stuff and how to be curious about things in yourself.
	So my suggestion would be, and I make this suggestion regularly, so I'm not singling you out for anything, but my suggestion would be, my friend, That talk therapy is fantastic and can really help you begin to work with and connect with your feelings.
	Separate mine from my father's or my mother's.
	Yes, to work to differentiate.
	My mother will always be within me.
	But that doesn't mean that I have to accept her as Some sort of self-generated aspect of my personality.
	There's the I who is authentic and natural and how I was born and then there's stuff that was done to me.
	Like if you've got a scar, there's your arm and your arm has a scar.
	And of course the whole purpose of all of this is scars don't transfer to the next generation and that's sort of the allegorical way of sort of working with this as well.
	But you have yourself and you have a scar.
	And you don't say, if you were stabbed by some random guy, you don't look at that scar and say, wow, I must really, really into self-harm.
	You recognize that this is something that was inflicted on you by someone else.
	It's part of you.
	Your scar is never going away.
	But it was not self-inflicted, and it's not organic to who you are.
	It was an impact from someone outside that you need to differentiate.
	So you don't blame yourself for your scar, and you don't pretend that you don't have a scar, which may also be hazardous.
	So therapy, I think, could be fantastic at this, and it would be my suggestion.
	You'd go online and find good therapists in your neighborhood.
	And I've got a whole podcast about this, how to find a great therapist.
	Just sort of my thoughts on it, which I think could be helpful.
	But...
	Those would be my suggestions because, yeah, it is a challenge, you know?
	I mean, the fact that, you know, my daughter is now telling me what I'm saying is not an argument, and the fact that she's making great arguments and saying I'm bound by them, well, I don't think there's any doubt that we know where that's coming from, and I'm sort of pleased and happy, but I think that's going to give her a strong inoculation.
	Against the world's craziness for her whole life.
	So those would be my suggestions.
	I mean, I'm not a therapist and I'm just some guy on the internet telling you things that I think can feel.
	But if you get involved with a real professional and it's a one-on-one relationship, I think that can be fantastic.
	Sure, sure.
	Okay, that's good.
	And if I could tie it to the compromise thing, so like, I just...
	Can you tie it to the compromise thing?
	Or is it a separate thing?
	Well, you have conflicting impulses with regards to your father to talk to him and to avoid talking to him.
	You have a desire to talk to him and you have a fear of talking to him.
	So you're going to have to find a way to negotiate that.
	And you're going to have to find a way to have that conversation knowing what is in your interest and what is in his interest and not confusing other people for yourself.
	And I don't know any other way to do that than through sort of rigorous self-knowledge.
	And one of the best ways of pursuing that is to...
	It's to do therapy.
	It's to get involved.
	And the therapy is more than just people in the room.
	It's an hour a week or whatever.
	I mean, there's journaling.
	There's lots of stuff that you do.
	Above and beyond and outside of all of that, that is part of the whole process.
	You know, like meeting with the nutritionist doesn't change your diet, right?
	It just gives you pointers and then you have to go change your diet.
	So it's a whole lifelong thing that you get involved in with therapy that is very powerful and very positive.
	You have opposing impulses within yourself and you're going to have to find some way to either relinquish the desire to talk to your father about these things and be at peace with that decision or to find a way to talk with your father about these things against your resistance or his embedded resistance within you and be at peace with that decision.
	So there is going to have to be some way of overcoming this paralyzing tension of wanting to and fearing it.
	How you negotiate that is to find the real desire that lies underneath all of this, which is, I think, our thirst for truth and honesty and authenticity in the world.
	So those are my suggestions.
	I hope that you'll let us know how it goes with you.
	And I really want to thank everyone so much for calling in tonight.
	It's such a deep and great pleasure.
	Please check out our year-end video, 2016, the year-end wrap-up.
	You will be, I think, shocked and surprised and very excited by this.
	What's happened to the show this year?
	It really is amazing, and I want to thank everyone so much for all of that.
	And please do check out me on Twitter, at Stefan Molyneux, at Stefan Molyneux.
	And don't forget, don't forget, don't forget.
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	It's just not possible.
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	And please help us out to continue to do what we're doing and grow even more.
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	Have a great, great night.
	Happy New Year, everyone.

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