Sept. 24, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
07:55
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| Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux. | |
| Hope you're doing well. So for those of you who don't know, I was born at the tanger age of zero. | |
| This day, September 24th, 1966, in a very small town I'm in the middle of Southern Ireland. | |
| And I guess like everybody now that I'm in my 50s, I turn 52 today. | |
| There is that moment of time freeze, ejection to the stratosphere of perspective and a look at the broad tapestry of life. | |
| Out of the hurly-burly of, you know, what it is for most of us who are involved in any kind of larger movement or larger goal. | |
| Your day kind of feels like you're shot out of a cannon. | |
| You try and grab to do items off the list during the day, and at the end you just kind of slam into your bed and fall asleep. | |
| So, in the chaos and busyness of the everyday, You don't really have a lot of time for a perspective. | |
| And the perspective that I do have, I try to apply to sort of larger world events and so on. | |
| But, you know, it's Monday morning on my birthday. | |
| I am 52. And there is, of course, inevitably that desire to zoom out and have a look at your life. | |
| And the reason I'm telling you all of this is because you are a foundational part of my life. | |
| Without you, I'm nothing. | |
| At least as far as being any kind of public thinker goes. | |
| And so on my birthday, you know, there are some cultures where on your birthday you give the world a gift. | |
| And I have, I believe, given the world for 12 years straight, a public gift of clarity, of contention, of consistency, of logic, reason, and evidence of philosophy, really, as a whole. | |
| And so I have nothing but enormous gratitude, affection, love, and undying appreciation for everyone out there who has helped, dare I say conspired, to make this conversation, this philosophical conversation, the largest and most powerful the world has ever seen. | |
| I am so enormously grateful for everyone who has looked at the videos, listened to the podcast. | |
| You can do that at fdrpodcasts.com. | |
| I am so enormously grateful to everyone who's taken the risk of sharing contentious ideas with the world, who has linked to what it is that I do, who's shared my books. | |
| You've come to see my speeches and so on. | |
| I know it's a hard thing. | |
| It's a hard thing to do. | |
| And I hugely appreciate everyone who has done that because that has made the show what it is. | |
| We're cruising up to 600 million views and downloads. | |
| That is... A world-changing tsunami of reason and evidence. | |
| And let us hope it only washes the anti-rational, historical, and anti-empirical structures of history away and reveals a future where we can think and reason together as one species. | |
| So thank you, everyone. | |
| I just can't even tell you what a privilege, what an honor, what a deeply moving experience it is. | |
| You know, I do these call-in shows every We speak to sometimes up to half a dozen people about deep philosophical issues in their minds, in their hearts, in their lives, sometimes in their loins. | |
| And the honesty and the openness with which people approach these topics has always just been astounding, powerful, and humbling to me. | |
| It is a reminder in my own life to remember to be as honest as humanly possible as I always strive to. | |
| To be and to do. | |
| So thank you. Thank you for these 12 years of astounding impact and change. | |
| And thank you for supporting the show in any and every way that you do. | |
| It can be, of course, financial support. | |
| I do take donations. At freedomainradio.com slash donate. | |
| But just talking about the ideas, sharing the videos, has so much to do with helping to spread philosophy. | |
| And I just am so grateful. | |
| And on this day, my birthday, I wanted to give you guys a present. | |
| So I have been working for quite some time. | |
| On a book called Essential Philosophy, and this book is me pouring heart, mind, and soul of my philosophical conversations of the last 35 years into one powerful, dense, and concentrated format. | |
| And the book deals with the essential questions of philosophy, the validity of the senses, do we live in a simulation, what is free will, and how do you define and defend it, what is the basis of secular ethics, what is the relationship of atheism to Christianity. | |
| There are so many Questions that I go into and I think answer with great humor and engagement in this book. | |
| I'm calling it Essential Philosophy. | |
| And in mulling it over, I just finished recording the audiobook. | |
| Also, the audiobook includes a number of Socratic-style dialogues on how to debate these issues. | |
| And I did just finish recording the audiobook. | |
| And my last book, The Art of the Argument, which you can of course get at theartoftheargument.com, did well. | |
| And... I'm going to give this one away for free. | |
| I'm going to give this book, which is the concentration and culmination of my philosophical thinking for 35 years, I'm going to just give it away because the world needs more philosophy, which is why I don't charge for my shows. | |
| I ask for, again, donations, freedomainradio.com slash donate. | |
| But the book is going to be yours because I want you to be able to share it. | |
| I want you to be able to give it to people. | |
| And when people hear about, I don't know, internet philosophers or whatever, what I might call the self-described philosopher. | |
| Of course, the first thing you learn in philosophy if you study Aristotle is we are what we repeatedly do. | |
| I repeatedly do philosophy. | |
| Therefore, I am a philosopher. | |
| You know, when I repeatedly did computer programming, I was a computer programmer. | |
| Anyway. So the first thing that you learn is that the credibility lies not in the paperwork, but in the arguments, the quality of the arguments and the research. | |
| And I want you to be able to share what it is that I've learned without people's cynicism of, oh, he just wants to make a buck or whatever it is, right? | |
| To just have people regard the arguments and the ideas. | |
| I believe these are not only life-saving arguments and ideas, but culture and civilization-saving arguments and ideas. | |
| And I've worked very hard on the book, and I'm enormously pleased with how It's come out and that it's not technical, but it is very sophisticated, which is always the sweet spot that I am trying to aim for. | |
| So look for that in the coming weeks. | |
| I am going to put the book out in as many different and as wider formats as humanly possible, and I really strongly urge you to read it, to engage with it, to debate it, to call into the show about it. | |
| I really want to Get an argument going beyond the level of contemporary culture, contemporary politics, contemporary arguments, and go to the very deepest root, a nature of metaphysics or the nature of reality, epistemology, the study of knowledge, ethics, the study of virtue, and really engage the world in these most essential topics, because if we get those right, Then everything else, I believe, will over time fall into place. | |
| So thank you, everyone, again, so much. | |
| If you want to help out the show, freedomainradio.com slash donate. | |
| Look for that book in the couple of weeks to come. | |
| I'm enormously proud of it. | |
| I think you're really going to love this book. | |
| And I wish you a very, very happy week. | |
| All my very best to you, my friends. |
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