0:06 - Election Day Thoughts
8:47 - Shedding Vanity and Guilt
11:50 - Life's Accidental Gifts
19:36 - Praise and Blame in Society
25:40 - The Illusion of Choice
36:48 - Rejecting Shame and Vanity
39:36 - The Value of Human Connection
46:00 - The Gift of Letting Go
57:39 - Choosing People Over Things
1:03:06 - The Fate of Our Possessions
In this episode, I delve into the complex interplay between privilege and identity, highlighting how our inherited traits and circumstances shape our lives in ways we often overlook. As the backdrop of the upcoming US elections looms, I reflect on how societal behavior can create a muddled environment where justice feels perpetually out of reach. This prompts me to connect this idea to my literary work, particularly my novel "Just Poor," which explores themes of earned versus unearned privilege through the characters Lawrence and Mary.
Lawrence, born into aristocratic wealth, dreams of power and prestige, yet his journey reveals the often unseen burdens of inherited privilege. His experience reflects a broader philosophical question: how much of our identity is truly earned versus inherited? This question becomes even more poignant in light of modern discussions about ownership and accountability—an echo of President Obama's controversial statement about the contributions of society to individual success. I've always been intrigued by this contentious debate and what it reveals about personal responsibility and success.
As I weave through my own story of growing up in near poverty despite a lineage of privilege, I challenge the notion that identity or worth can be derived from factors beyond our control, such as race, family background, or innate abilities. These reflections lead me to examine how we often conflate pride in our achievements with attributes we did not earn, a dangerous trap that can lead to guilt or shame for things outside our influence.
The conversation then shifts to the broader societal implications of recognizing the distinction between earned virtues and inherited traits. I discuss how vanity and guilt often coexist, leading us to falsely derive value from the accidental instead of grounding our self-worth in our moral choices. The dialogue emphasizes the importance of discarding unearned pride, as it opens the door to authentic self-esteem rooted in what we can genuinely claim as ours—our character and choices.
Through examples from my own life and the lives of others, I expound upon the dangers of valuing status over substance. In my view, society's fixation on tangible assets and appearances often leads to superficial judgments that overlook the more substantive moral legacies we leave behind. The case of the Menendez brothers serves as a cautionary tale about how appearances can both deceive and mask deeper issues—showing that real worth cannot be measured by material possessions or social standing.
As I tackle the ramifications of these discussions during the Q&A segment, I urge listeners to contemplate what will happen to their accumulated possessions once they are gone. The reflections hint at a significant realization: the meaning we assign to our relationships is where our true value lies, rather than in the things we've collected. This focus on transient assets versus lasting legacies shapes personal and societal narratives in profound ways.
By the end of the episode, I stress the importance of not only recognizing our privileges but also understanding how they influence our actions and relationships. As I encourage listeners to turn inward and consider their own lives, I also touch on the responsibility we all hold to bridge gaps for those who have been left behind, be it through privilege or circumstance. In navigating this tense but vital territory, I aim to inspire a deeper understanding and appreciation of the complexities of identity, morality, and societal structures.
[0:00] Hey everybody, it is the 2nd of November 2024.
[0:06] What is that? A couple days before the US election? I don't know, man. If it wasn't for the squirrel, Kamala might have had it, but the squirrel might change it. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It's hard to say. It's hard to say. My guess is that it's going to be unresolved for quite some time. It's going to be unresolved for quite some time. You know, there's a certain amount of, quote, bad behavior that a system can handle, and when the bad behavior becomes greater than the system can handle, you get massive constipation of potential justice. So, we shall see. We shall see. It's a ride much more fun to observe than, as in the past, participate in, I suppose you could say. I'll just talk a little bit before we take your questions, if indeed questions you have, but I got a question about my novel Just Poor. Now, don't worry if you haven't read the novel. This will still be of great deep and visceral interest to you, so don't worry about that. Don't worry about that. But in my novel Just Poor, which is about the conflict between the earned and the unearned, there's a lord, an aristocrat, named Lawrence Carvey.
[1:24] And he has a dream about lying in a bed of twisted skeletons and somebody was asking me what does his dream mean well I'll tell you that his dream means, that the power, privilege, prestige intelligence and even to some degree his good looks were inherited from prior ancestors, So there's a mirror of the abused orphan Mary in Lady Lydia, which is a love interest of Lawrence's. Spoiler or two here, so...
[2:03] So Lawrence is born into privilege, and travels all of Europe learning about the latest farming techniques and methods, and then magnanimously comes back and tries to improve the farming yields of this as it takes place in the late 18th century. I'm always interested in writing about what happens before the big events. The big events are already written about, so I wanted to write about what was happening before the Russian Revolution. So I wrote a novel called Revolutions. I wanted to write about what was happening before the Industrial Revolution, so I wrote to Jaspora. I wanted to write what happens before social collapse, so I wrote my novel called The Present. And Lawrence is a child of privilege. Now, for those of you who don't know my particular background, I'm both Lawrence and Mary, in a way, right? So Mary's very very intelligent child, born into, you know, really horrendous circumstances.
[3:08] And Lawrence is a child of privilege. Now, my family ancestry is of significant privilege, but I was born into, I mean, near poverty, a single mother household, and so on, right? And, you know, if it wasn't for the internet, my thoughts and life would largely have passed, unnoticed, because there is a real wall against individualists and pro-free market writers and thinkers in the art world and in the publishing world. So I was not able to gain any traction. My books were massively praised as wonderful and fantastic and got the best reviews known to man, but I couldn't get any traction because the purpose of art is not the exploration of the human condition, the purpose of art in the modern world, is the pushing of ideology. And I'm really interested in sort of deep questions of the human condition, not the pushing of class and race baiting and gender baiting socialist sociopathy.
[4:20] So, Lawrence has a nightmare that he's lying on a bed of twisted skeletons. So what that means is that he's birthed from, he comes from a lineage, right? The bed of twisted skeletons is your ancestors. And they are twisted to some degree.
[4:48] And he is unable to recognize how much of his identity is inherited versus how much of his identity is earned. And honestly, this is a huge question. You know, I don't know if you remember back in the day, there was, I guess, a fair amount of controversy because President Obama would say to an entrepreneur, well, you know, you owe society stuff because, man, you didn't build that alone. You didn't build that alone. you used public roads, you went to government schools, you used all of these social goods, and the people you hire are all trained by the government and all of that. So you didn't build that on your own. And I was talking about this in the show last night. How much of your identity is what you've actually earned? How much of your identity is what you have actually earned? How much of you is yours right that's that's it's a really foundational question and it's a very liberating question you know how much of you is yours well you didn't inherit you didn't earn your height you didn't earn your race you didn't earn your sex you didn't earn your looks or lack thereof you didn't earn your parents you didn't earn your neighborhood you didn't earn where you were born, you didn't earn your language skill, like the language you learned and so on.
[6:17] And the list goes on and on. And, you know, we all know the injustices of these things. That fools are born into privilege, and the brilliant are born into obscurity, and vice versa, of course, right? How much of you is yours?
[6:37] So, vanity and guilt often go hand in hand. What I mean by that is, let's say that you take as yours that which you did not earn. You take as your pride that which you didn't earn. Let's say you have, I don't know, great hair, you know, you've got naturally straight teeth, and you have a chat jawline and, you know, you've got, you're tall, you're naturally lean and all of that. Well, that's just an accident of birth, right? That's just an accident of genetics. Let's say that your parents are very wealthy. Well, again, accident of birth and you are lucky. I mean, I remember, of course, as you know, I got my first job when I was 10 and there were times in high school, I worked three jobs, and my friend, good friend, he had a nice, his father was a professor, his mother was a homemaker, they had a lovely house, they had a pool, they had a cottage, and he got to spend his summers reading Von Mises by the pool.
[8:00] Pretty nice life honestly, he didn't earn his privilege and I didn't earn my destitution, now the more you discard that which you did not earn as a measure of your value the more humble you become and that's a good thing, I have invented maybe 20 or 30 terms over the course of my career as a philosopher, but the remaining 20,000 to 30,000 words that I use were all evolved from society as a whole. All evolved from society as a whole.
[8:48] So, since I say I'm going to ruthlessly discard that which I did not earn, some appalling and beautiful things arise from that shedding of vanity and what gets shed is guilt, So if I say, well, I did not earn my height, I did not earn the fact that I have blue eyes or a relatively strong jawline or a nicely shaped head or, you know, pretty decent physical health and all of that, I didn't, I mean, I've earned to some degree the health stuff, but because I try to eat reasonably well and exercise and so on. So I've earned some of that, but, you know, the sort of raw materials I'm working with, my IQ, I mean, this is part of the humbling thing about studying IQ, is you realize that, of course, you know, by our late teens, it's 80% genetic, and still 20% to work with is not bad at all, but I did not earn most of my brain. What I choose to do with the gifts that I have is a different matter. You don't earn your singing voice, but you can choose which songs to sing.
[10:01] So, when you say, I'm going to put up a relentless barrier between my self-esteem and the unearned, I'm going to put up a relentless barrier a firewall, a Chinese wall between, my sense of self-worth and that which I did not earn and I will not strip mine the accidental and the unearned for the sake of my personal virtue like women who are born beautiful, great figures, good fat distribution great cheekbones, like whatever, great hair women who are born beautiful take pride in that accidental inheritance. And that's not healthy. It's not accurate. It's not true. It's not right. And it's certainly not good. It's certainly not good. Self-worth can only really be based on virtue. And virtue cannot be based on accident.
[11:08] But if you say I am not going to take any self-esteem from qualities I did not earn, then there's a great liberation from history which is really the path of, of Lawrence throughout the course of the novel, and this is why what happens with Lydia happens with Lydia because Lydia cannot give up the vanity of the unearned. And Lawrence can. Lawrence does.
[11:50] So, if you look around at your life, the flip side of not taking vanity in the accidental, ah, are you ready? It's a beautiful thing, man. It's a beautiful thing. The flip side of not taking vanity in the accidental, is not taking shame or guilt in the accidental. In other words, to refuse to novelize your life. I remember there being a controversy about Ayn Rand's play, Night of January 22nd, where the moral cripple is in a wheelchair. They say, well, that's not right. You can't say that people who are in a wheelchair are morally crippled. It's a very interesting argument.
[12:50] In art, at least how it used to be, in art, well, I guess it still is. It's just that the definitions have changed. In art, the bad people, the bad people get punished and the good people get rewarded. You always know how it goes that the hero mows down you know a thousand guys you know black hawk down style the hero mows down a thousand guys and you barely see them falling off their horses or fading out in the background but then the hero receives an injury that allows him to have magnificent speeches and people cradle him and here tell my wife i love her and you know all of this kind of stuff, right? The hero gets a special lingering, moving death, but the enemies die in anonymous stickman ragdoll shakedowns. And...
[13:51] In life, it's very easy to fictionalize your life and to say that, and you can see this, of course, in art as a whole, really starting from the 80s onwards, it's a bit of a Bill Murray thing, right? But the 80s onwards in particular, it was the rich, preppy, Ted McGinley kids are assholes. And the shy, nerdy, whatever, losers are actually great people and wonderful treasures of humanity and this, that, and the other, right? So the sort of healthy, athletic, frat boys, revenge of the nerd stuff, right? They're all wonderful and, sorry, they're all terrible, terrible people and vain and so on, right? And this is the sort of rage against the relatively healthy, relatively successful, relatively competent people. And this kind of stuff has had no small, in my view, has had no small effect on stoking the resentments of school shooters, although it's not a major component. There are other components, of course. so.
[15:12] If you are born, to a bad family as I was certainly born to a bad family if you're born to a bad family then, it's very easy to feel that there's something wrong with you that fate or the gods are punishing you for something that you did wrong And this is not just a theory or an art standard. This is explicitly talked about in things like Buddhist reincarnation, right? That if you're reincarnated in a bad family, it's because you did something bad in a prior life. Or, you know, this completely deranged conjecture that you choose your parents, right? That, you know, before you were born, you chose your parents, and you chose your parents in order for them to teach you something, and you are a participant, a sort of willing, free-will chosen participant.
[16:18] In the environment you chose to be born into. And, of course, with God, you know, God will put you in a particular family, because he could put you anywhere, right? God puts you in a particular family.
[16:30] In order to sharpen your soul, to strengthen your virtues, to make you a better person, to put you through the trial by fire, like basic training in the army is supposed to make you a better soldier and give you a higher chance of survival. So, yeah, you're put in with a bad family, and that's a moral lesson, and maybe you were bad in a past life, or maybe you are being given trials because you have something extra special or wonderful. But what happens is, of course, in order to hollow you out and remove your free will, society will praise you for the unearned and blame you for the unearned. And both of those come in equal measure. And rejecting one really necessarily requires rejecting the other. So society, if you come from a—and I remember in particular two very wealthy kids in my high school. They both got red Corvettes on their 16th birthdays, and I remember I wrote a play, and we rehearsed it at one of these guys' houses that just went on and on and on, forever and ever, amen. And so they got a lot of praise, because they always had the latest and trendiest clothes, they had the coolest cars, they had the best gel, and so on, right?
[17:58] So, society gave those kids a lot of praise for the unearned, and society also put a lot of blame to the kids who were unlucky. So, by praising those, you know, they praised the good-looking kids, they praised the athletic kids, and look, I mean, athleticism, for sure, being athletic takes a lot of work, a lot of dedication. It's not like you just, but however, having the coordination, not having to have, say, two to three extra jobs gives you the time to practice and to learn. You have to have, yeah, the reflexes, the fast fire muscles, and so on, the healthy food that you get at home. Parents who are interested and able to pay for and subsidize. I remember a friend of mine who was really good at hockey, but his single mom just really couldn't afford to keep it going. Whereas another guy I know who I worked with in the business world, his son was really good at hockey, you know, seems like poured half his entire income into flying this kid around to various places to play hockey games and so on, right?
[19:12] So when you see society praise people for that which they did not earn, and you see society blame kids for that which they did not choose, These two sides are the same coin, and it's really hard to pull these apart and gain actual free will.
[19:37] So, the tall, good-looking guys didn't earn their height and bone structure. The kids who have clear skin versus the kids who have acne. I mean, there's a small amount of lifestyle stuff you can do with regards to acne. some medications, but, you know, it is to some degree lack of the draw. And it's really, it's fundamentally satanic to praise people for the unearned and to blame people for what they did not choose. And we do this with Marx, of course, all the time. Marx are not so much a reflection of a child's willingness to work hard or intelligence or skill, Marks are, to a large degree.
[20:29] An evaluation of the environment that the parents create or oppose. I could not study at home. I would sometimes go to the library and study there, but I could not study at home. Things were too loud. They were too chaotic. My mother had men over. It was just unpleasant and difficult and so on. And you know, I had a lot of bad food when I was a kid or was short of food and so on. So my mother was like an up all night smoking and typing and sometimes in my room. So I couldn't get much sleep and smoky, you know, kind of gross stuff.
[21:08] So I and my mother didn't even know what grade I was in. Right. So she didn't help me with my homework. There was no possibility of anything like that. Whereas, of course, I would hear my friends. So, yeah, my parents sat down with me and helped me with this homework for two hours last night. and, you know, really made sure I knew this stuff before my test. So it's really the parents who are getting tested or evaluated, not so much the kids. Because I remember, of course, you know, and I've said this before, right? It was the constant thing I was told as a kid, you know, if effort matched ability, you'd be an A+. Like I was just lazy. Nobody said, well, and actually my school knew that I had a job, at least one, because I'd actually negotiated with the school. I had to be at the daycare I worked at from 3.30, right? I'd worked 3.30 to 6.30. So I'd have to get to the daycare by 3.30, but the daycare was a half hour. It was two buses away, right? So I negotiated with the school to leave at 3 o'clock. I mean, so they knew that for sure.
[22:14] So, and that was, yeah, I think, I know it was 15. I know I was 15 when I got that job. Because I got the job and then found out I had to be 16 and kept it on the down low. So, if effort matched ability, you'd be an A+. Well, the ability is innate. The effort, I mean, I don't know if I'll, I mean, maybe when I was an entrepreneur, but I don't know there are many times in my life that I've worked harder than when I was a kid. You know, a couple of jobs, dealing with crazy people at home, financial, you know, always skating on the edge of the cliff financially and so on. Man, it was a lot of work. So the idea that I just was sitting home and with my thumb up my ass, doodling for no purpose, rather than doing all the schoolwork, you know, it just, it was crazy, right? So, I don't want to make this overly about me, but I'm hoping to sort of connect with you through this, you know, maybe some shared experiences.
[23:18] Taking pride in the unearned leaves you vulnerable to being shamed for the unchosen. Taking pride in the unearned opens up the gateway to being shamed for the unchosen. So i have really worked hard to not take personal pride in that which i did not earn i mean i'll take pride in some things i'll take pride in some moral courage in some moral standards in some you know mental toughness and uh standing up for what i know to be true and not backing down i mean some of those things i i will certainly take pride in and i should but other things i want that i did not earn, right? So the way out of shame for your origins, if you had, you know, low status origins, right? The way out of shame for your origins is.
[24:13] Is to just take neither pride in the unearned nor shame in the unchosen. I, of course, did not choose my family. I did not choose the countries I was yoinked to at various times. Basically, England, South Africa, Ireland, and Canada. I didn't choose those places. I have choice now, of course, right? But I didn't choose them back then. I didn't choose the financial necessity of having to work I didn't choose any of that, and so if you can find ways to avoid pride in the unearned you can also detach from shame in the unchosen, I just happened to be born into a very difficult environment, that I worked every wit I had to survive and escape. If I was born at the bottom of a well and I had to spend, many years climbing out, I'm not going to say that I was at the bottom of the well for some, personal bad choice or karma or fate or enmity of the gods or anything like that.
[25:41] It was I mean I wouldn't even say it was bad luck I mean it's one of these annoying it is what it is tautologies it wasn't even bad luck, because it's not luck, And this is the interaction between Lawrence and one of the female farmhands, one of the milkmaids. Lawrence comes back and talks about all of the wonderful travels he had in Europe.
[26:21] And one of the farm girls says, oh, I wish I got to go to Europe. And Lauren says, well, you play your cards right, you just might. And that's too much for Mary. She says, did you play your cards right? Is that how you got to Europe? You just played your card right, so you just played the hand better? She just got bad cards? Oh, you both got the same card. She played badly, you played well, that's how you got to go to Europe? It's a fundamental question. It's a fundamental question. What can you genuinely take pride or shame in? What can you genuinely take pride or shame in? And the answer is really only fundamentally moral choices. What can you take pride or shame in? Well, you can take pride or shame in moral choices. And that's it. Now, as a kid, did you have moral choices? Nope. No, you did not. You did not have moral choices. You were just surviving whatever heaven or hell sent shitstorm or sunny sky environment you happened to be born into.
[27:46] And I'll just use the term luck, although I know it's inaccurate to some degree, but it's probably the closest.
[27:55] Some are born lucky, and some are born unlucky. And some people will say that the reason that I or others escaped the fate, I want to talk for others, I just talk for myself, right? So how did I escape the fate? Like, how did I end up from, and somebody asked me this in a show the other day, how did you avoid all the negative emotions or experiences from your kid? Well, of course, I accepted and absorbed them, but how did I get out? How did I go from, you know, poverty-laden single mother household to, I mean, a fair degree of professional success, a very happy marriage? How did I go from having a very violent and insane mother to a peaceful, reasonable parenting with my wife and I? Between my wife and I, how did I do it? Well, the answer is that I refused to take pride in the honor and, which means I escaped shame for the unchosen. I recognized that my circumstances were unchosen by me. It was an accident of circumstances that I had to surmount. But I could not get out of the shame of my childhood.
[29:20] By pursuing the vanity of the accidental gifts I was given. That's a trap. To go from shame to vanity and leaping over rational self-worth is a great temptation.
[29:39] To say, well, I'm not going to take shame in the accidental, and therefore you survive or try to survive by taking pride in the accidental, your positive qualities. I won't take shame for my accidental bad circumstances. But the way to escape that is not then to take pride in the unearned. Your intelligence, your various gifts, your skills, your abilities, your height, your looks, your whatever, right? And to focus only on having pride in positive moral choices. But that, of course, that generates a lot of enmity because we live in this, I mean, this fallen world, right? I mean, certainly in the modern world, right? It's a fallen world where people are tempted by the devil to escape shame through vanity.
[30:38] And hatred. And it does seem to be true, this is where, honestly, I know this sounds odd, but this is where the Marxists and I find some common cause, in that it does seem to be true that those who are born blessed in their circumstances, seem to have little to no empathy to those born cursed in their circumstances. I don't recall any of my friends who had good families or good home circumstances. I don't remember any of them saying, man, you've got it rough.
[31:22] Man, I can't believe you have to work all these jobs just to pay the rent. I can't, like, this is about to be rough, right? I mean, of course, it didn't come from, I was out of the religion, I was out of the religious world at this point, but it certainly didn't come from the teachers, it didn't come from extended family on either my mother's or my father's side. It did not come from friends, it didn't come from friends' parents. And honestly, that is annoying. That is annoying, and it's one of the reasons why resentment revolutions occur. I talk about this, of course, if you've listened to my 11-plus-hour presentation on the French Revolution, which is available for donors, freedomain.com, slash donate, and you know what, let's make that for November. If you donate, I'll send you the French Revolution, if you donate. Normally it's for subscribers, but anyone who donates in November, I will send you a copy of the French Revolution. And you really should listen to this. That if we leave people behind, if we leave people behind, if those who understand the poor, the traumatized, the violated, the abused, and the broken, because we went through the same thing, and we get out and we don't circle back, then we create we are creating this massive tide of resentment that is going to take down society.
[32:48] And one of the reasons we don't go back is that, we forget of course what a narrow escape it generally is and we tend to take pride and say well if i can get out you can get out but i happen to have a particular spot of brilliance in my brain about principles, but I didn't even earn that. I didn't even earn that.
[33:17] My facility with analogies, my facility with long-form arguments and discussions, my facility with debating, my wit, didn't earn these things. I can take pride in the use I have put my gifts to the directions I have pointed my unearned gifts I can take pride in that I did not use them for personal power personal aggrandizement I did not use them for vanity, for the most part I mean I don't know what it would be to be perfect in these things but for the most part I have humbly tried to use my unearned gifts for the benefit of mankind as a whole and I'm very much an honorary analogy of a marine, right? The marines don't leave anyone behind on the battlefield. And of course, as you know, I escaped massive cycles of dysfunction and could have spent the rest of my life around highly functional people. But I...
[34:21] Have spent my life circling back to bind the wounds of the broken. Because that's what should have happened with me, and it's tough to complain about something that didn't happen to you and then refuse to provide it to other people. I have spent, I mean, there are thousands of conversations over the course of what I've done, and I have spent decades, saying that nobody who wants to be rescued need be left behind. Nobody who wants to be rescued needs to be left behind. And you've heard me, of course, doing my very absolute level best to rescue as many people as possible, and not just the people I'm talking to directly but all the people whose generosity of spirit has allowed the conversations to become public, so that you can see resuscitation and rescue, over the course of these conversations. And I do that, of course, because it's the right thing to do, because it's a great use of my skills, because it gives me satisfaction and pride in how I've spent my life. But there's a very practical aspect as well, is that the more people who get left behind, the more backlash there is against those who've escaped.
[35:48] You know, how angry do you get if you're trapped in an unjust prison and your cellmate breaks out without telling you how or why, leaves you behind and goes on to live a wonderful life? Well, there's a lot of anger in that. And I'm not even disagreeing with that anger. But there is a lot of anger. The more people you leave behind, the more backlash there is against those who have escaped. And there's even more backlash against those who have escaped than those who were never in prison to begin with. So, that's what came out of my novel Revolutions, was don't leave people behind. When you get out, don't leave people behind. And one of the ways we do get out is we don't take any shame in the accidents of our birth. I take no shame in the fact that I was raised by a crazy, violent parent.
[36:49] Why on earth would I take any shame for that? But that means that if I'm not going to take any shame for that which I did not choose, I also can't take any vanity over that which I did not choose. I did not choose my race, my sex, my height, my intelligence, for the most part. I did not choose my eye color, my looks. I did not choose my physique, although obviously I've worked on it for quite a bit. But, I mean, all you have to do is remember all the people, who had really bad luck, all the kids who had really bad luck, worse luck than me. There are many, of course, I've talked to countless people who had worse childhoods than me by any objective metric. I remember my brother was in the back seat of a car with a good friend of his when he was very little, and his friend opened the door, stepped out into traffic, and got killed. My best friend, when I first moved to Canada, just did not wake up one morning. Turned out he had a congenital heart defect.
[37:54] I knew a couple of kids who I was varying degrees of close with who died. I had a friend with Crohn's disease. He did not ask for that. Intense suffering. There was a kid in my boarding school who tried to do a flip into the pool which we all did he just slipped bashed his head and was permanently disabled, there was a teenager in my apartment building who did the same stupid stuff crossing bridges at night but got hit by a train and lost both his legs. Just lucky. I was just luckier than them.
[38:51] So stripping down yourself to that which chooses and that which is capable of virtue. I will never take a shred of dishonor for what I was born into. And I will never take a shred of praise for accidental gifts. The fact that my ancestors happened to marry and have children with a bunch of smart people, which eventually produced a bunch of smart kids, I'm one of them, I didn't earn that.
[39:36] Good-looking people didn't earn their looks. Talented singers did not earn their voices.
[39:46] Even people who were like literally talented guitarists, right? So if you've ever known someone who's become obsessed with a musical instrument, right, they pick it up, and usually the guitarists have those long spider fingers and so on. They have natural pitch, which is unearned, and they have a natural thirst and desire and love to master the instrument. There's that story of the Beatles trooping around from house to house, learning new chords from various musicians. They loved it. They loved it. Eric Wolfson from Alan Parsons Project just happened to sit down, noodling on the piano, loved it, obsessed about it. I think Owen Benjamin taught himself piano as well. He's a very talented keyboardist. And even just that love for it, when I first started reading philosophy, my heart opened up like a volcano. I didn't choose that. I didn't even choose what I happened to love outside of virtue in my life. When I first started reading philosophy, I felt I had come home, or there was a bomb shelter, from the mad ordinance of mysticism, anti-rationality and dysfunction in not just my personal familial, but also my school and to some degree religious environment.
[41:16] I found refuge and joy in philosophy that was unbidden in my heart. I didn't have the idea, oh man, I'm going to love philosophy. I should really seek it out. It was like, well, through Rush, the band, through a friend of mine, get to Ayn Rand, through Ayn Rand, through a portal, into philosophy as a whole. Loved it. Loved it. I didn't choose even my love of philosophy. We think that the great guitarist chooses to become a great guitarist. But the instrument plays him with dopamine as much as he plays the instrument. He masters things so you get great pleasure, right? Got my first real strict six-string at the five-and-dime, played it till my fingers bled. That's how much Brian Adams loved guitar, I think it was he who wrote that song. From the ever-mature 19th Forever album. You have to strip down your self-worth to the bare-forked-willed virtues that you choose, particularly in opposition.
[42:40] The controversial truths that I have spoken, and because of the state it is so profitable to lie, that the truth is viewed as a thefty predator. The truth is viewed as a bunch of crows in the cornfield. Or poison in the well of coerced resources. So I can take pride in that. I can take pride in, rejecting the shame of the past which opens me up to true pride and joy in the present. I can choose all of that. I have chosen all of that and I can take pride in that and I do. But not anything else. Taking pride in the unearned is accepting shame for the unchosen. As soon as you say that, which is accidentally positive about me is praiseworthy, then you also say that which is accidentally negative about me is blameworthy. No. It is a mystical view of the universe to say that you should be praised or blamed for things outside your control. That is a form of mysticism. If you are born with a congenital issue.
[44:05] Some medical issue that you were born with, that is not a punishment for a prior life. It is not a gauntlet thrown down by a God to strengthen your willpower and resolve. It's just a bad freaking luck.
[44:22] But I myself, I found it quite challenging to get out of that mind view that we live in a novel where pluses and minuses are accidental, right? Pluses and minuses that are accidental are praiseworthy and blameworthy. Because we like to think, and this is part of the magical thinking, right? We like to think that the good guy sprays bullets and shoots everyone, but the bad guys shoot at him and miss every time because of his virtue. And of course, that's a way of destroying young men into war by not giving them any sense of the odds that they're actually facing, which is that you're facing an energy as tough and smart as you, for the most part, who wants to survive and kill you. Was that old line, as much as you want to survive and kill him, was it Patton? Was it Patton? Entire purpose of war is not to die for your country, but to make sure the other son of a bitch dies for his.
[45:29] So, on this last sunny Saturday afternoon, in the year of our thought, 2024, first of all, read the novel Just Poor, justpoornovel.com. You can listen to it. You can read it. It's a great book. And goes into all of this in more detail, and I wrote it in my 20s. I've been wrestling with this stuff for well over 30 years.
[46:01] But that's the gift I want to give you that's the vanity I want to deflate in you and as the vanity deflates in you the burdens of the past lift and fly away also, as I deflate the vanity in you so do I also lift away the burdens that the flip side of vanity places upon your soul the weights, if you take pride in the unearned you take shame in the unchosen and the two of them have to go away together.
[46:43] Alright so that's the major point that I wanted to get across today and I appreciate your time and care and thoughts and attention in letting me speak along these lines, i am of course thrilled to hear questions comments criticisms arguments disagreements, maybe even a tiny smidge of praise would not go entirely down the wrong pipe so i am, eager and happy to hear what you have to say if anything you may of course just want to absorb what it is that i have been talking about for this last 50 minutes but if you do have something to ask or say i'm happy to hear let me just check the interface here yes i'd see are you still around i know i talked a lot but let me know if you're still around and have something or anything you'd like to say.
[47:40] Yes i'm still around can you hear me okay.
[47:43] Yes did you hear me go ahead.
[47:47] No, I did not, but I'll go ahead anyway. What are your thoughts about the outward facade there sometimes is? For example, the Menendez brothers would outwardly have seemed to have their life pretty much perfect, but upon closer examination, it turned out to be a little bit different. What are your thoughts about that?
[48:10] Can you be a bit more specific? That's very general.
[48:13] Um that some people for example the benendus brothers who seem to have um a very well taken care of life have an absolute hell behind closed doors and i could come up with an example of a working-class family and both parents decided to raise their child peacefully and who would maybe have less financial wealth and maybe a small house somewhere in the suburbs, but who behind closed doors would have a great relationship, including with their children. And maybe his career would not be going as well as one would hope. But society would look at those people completely different than it would look at the Menendez family. What are your thoughts about that?
[49:13] Oh, I see. I think I understand. So status as a whole is a marker for people who don't like themselves.
[49:24] So if you don't have legitimate moral pride in your life and your choices, if you don't have that, then you go for status in order to impress people. Like a woman who has excessive makeup and so on is a woman who does not like herself. A man who, you know, the Ferrari and the Bugatti and the watch and the, you know, the Rolex and so on is a man who does not particularly like himself or feel that he's worthy of moral praise or pride for his choices. And so it's an attempt to overwhelm you with shallow, shiny, stupid trinkets, rather than let you perceive the quality of the soul that is manifested through the virtuous choices in life. And so people who present themselves as superior in gaudy, flashy, trashy, nouveau riche kinds of ways are people who are saying, I don't have any particular pride in my moral choices, but I'm hoping to impress you with inconsequential trinkets. And money these days is very rarely earned in truly honorable ways.
[50:44] Because, I mean, there's so much government interference and control and so on that it's pretty tough to make your money in truly honorable ways. And so I find the people who flash a lot of status stuff to be, I mean, to me, it's a cry for help. It is a cry for, please help me find a way to like myself more and to have more genuine pride so that I don't need to flash some particular status display at you. So I think, I mean, and of course, if you look at the Menendez brothers.
[51:25] They obviously had deep issues with themselves that were inflicted by their horrendously abusive parents. And so, when they got a hold of money, what's the first thing they did? Well, they went out and dropped $700,000 plus on shiny status-based trinkets, right? They got very expensive watches and very expensive cars and very expensive apartments and so on. And those, of course, do not add to the moral qualities. And again, they're young men. And I remember having these conversations with a friend of mine who, his one parent died and he got a lot of inheritance. And I was like, you should save this. You should, like, he just wanted to go out. He bought, like, a Jeep. He bought a very expensive computer. Like, all things that just depreciate in value and so on. And so I dislike, almost viscerally, I dislike the status braggers. And those who really, really want you to be very impressed by their money and their stuff. I mean, the real legacy we leave in life is the good that we do, not the stuff that we buy. The only quality legacy we leave in the world is the good that we do, not the stuff that we buy.
[52:55] And if you've ever been, I've been once or twice, with people to help clean out, usually, a dead parent's apartment.
[53:05] And it's a really depressing thing. I mean, I was using a mug that my daughter made for me when she was very little. She went to a pottery class and made me a mug with the word dad on the side, and it's sort of multicolored and so on. Now, of course, that means a lot to me. And it'll mean a lot to her. But obviously, at some point, you know, it's just going to be this kind of half-ugly mug with the word dad on the side. And if you were to leave it by the road, nobody would sit there and say, wow, what a beautiful thing. I really want this, right? It has meaning only because of the affection and history that's infused in it. The thing itself is not worthwhile of itself, but it is worthwhile because of the sentimental associations. And we invest a lot into stuff, right? We invest a lot into stuff. I mean, it's always been incomprehensible to me that parents get mad at their kids for dropping plates. I mean, everyone drops plates from time to time, and it doesn't matter. So, I mean, many years ago, I talked about, on a show in Free Domain, I talked about how I was playing Let's Fly to Mars or some spaceship game with a friend of mine when I was like, I don't know, five years old or something like that. And I had a cup of water that I put on a dresser.
[54:31] I think it was a dresser, not a nightstand. It was a dresser. And when my mother came home, she lifted up the cup and there was a little white ring, you know, like a little moisture. I was five years old. I didn't understand any of this and so on, right? And my mother was very violent and sort of beat me up because I had put a little white ring on a cabinet. Now, of course, over the next couple of days, and maybe my mother did something to it, I don't really know much about this stuff because I use coasters, but my mother, like the ring was gone, right? After a while, there was no ring. There's no ring on the cabinet. And yet I, you know, 53, like more than a half century later, I remember the beating. So my mother has her furniture, but she doesn't have me.
[55:38] I'm trying to, and I was trying to remember this because I think I said in the past, I was thinking about this in more detail, and I think it was a cabinet, and I don't think the cabinet made it over to, I think she just sold it, right? I don't think it made it over to Canada. She still has some pretty nice night tables, but I don't think, I think it was a cabinet. It's hard to remember because I was so short. I just remember reaching up to put my cup up there, but I was so short. I mean, I might have had to reach up a little or reach over to just do a nightstand. But I mean, so it doesn't really matter. But the point is that I still remember the violence, which, you know, helped detach me from my mother. But the cabinet is long gone. Or even if she still has it, the stain is long gone, or the white rig.
[56:27] So, if you've ever been in a situation where people are, and I watched this video not too long ago, of a cleaner who was like, okay, these two old people died or the only old person left died and there's all of this boxes of stuff and photos and it just goes to the dump because there's no kids to give it to, and nobody cares. I mean, imagine if you live in an apartment building and someone dies in the next apartment, I mean, do you want any of their junk? You want any of their old photos? Well, no. The value vanishes with the people. So because the value of things vanishes with the people, always invest in people, not things. Because investments in people is what lasts. Investments in things decays.
[57:25] So... People who invest in things over others, over people, and particularly their children, are foolish, and it's vain.
[57:40] And to the untutored eye, you know, the woman who's made money in OnlyFans giving you a tour of her apartment, I mean, everything looks shiny, clean, and nice. However, it is, in fact, a graveyard of pair bonding, and a graveyard and a mausoleum of her capacity to fall in love. And it is a grave blood, mausoleum, and body and limb-littered battlefield of her capacity to be a good wife and mother. She's traded her soul for money and anonymous orgasms.
[58:29] That is not a plus. That is not a good deal. I understand that it's tempting when you're young. And I mean, I'm not, obviously, I'm not saying I'm above any of this kind of stuff. I mean, when the boys I knew got their red Corvettes from their dad on their 16th birthday, I mean, I would have loved to have had a red Corvette on my 16th birthday. I wouldn't have had to wait until I was in my 20s to even get a driver's license, or in my 30s, really, or late 20s to get a car. So I envied this stuff. I envied my friend who had the nice house. I envied my friend. Some of my friends had cases of pop in the basement, and I never had any pop. I was envious of my friends who had cars. There was a friend of mine who was a very short-term drinking partner in the couple of weekends I got drunk as a teenager. And he had, he lived in a house with this, he had an upstairs bedroom with this lovely sloping roof, so cozy, so nice. And I was like, man, lovely, right? I envied that too, I had a lot of envy.
[59:39] But as I age, I realize, of course, that all the stuff and the meaning of the stuff, I mean, maybe it'll be a little different for me if I end up some sort of historical figure, but for most people, you know, you don't, your kids don't want your stuff. All the photos, like, you know, think of how many photos you have on your hard drive. Okay. You probably have thousands of photos on your hard drive. Right? You've posted things and you've posted, you know, maybe it's one thing you have photos in a drawer, right? It's another thing if you have photos in a hard drive. I guess you could post them now and maybe that gives you a little bit of status, but what's going to happen to all your stuff when you're dead? It's a really important question in life. What's going to happen to all your stuff when you're dead, right? You've got a whole bunch of cell phones, half-dead cell phones in a drawer. What's going to happen? Well, they're just going to get thrown out. You've got a whole bunch of journals. I mean, maybe if you have kids, they'll hold on to them, but at some point, they're probably just going to get tossed. No one's really going to read them. If you don't have kids, in particular, all your stuff is a total dead end.
[1:00:54] It's like those, if you watch this, there's videos online of these companies that go and pick up and clean up old apartments. Like in Japan, right? And, you know, there's some woman who's, there's some daughter maybe hundreds of miles away. Oh, what do you want to do with your mom's stuff? I don't know, just throw it. I don't want it. All the stuff you accumulate, all the stuff that matters. You know, I still remember a great sweater. My brother and I used to go to Goodwill, or there used to be these fairs or bazaars of clothing downtown. And we'd route through, and occasionally you just get some amazing stuff. And there was a beautiful sweater. and.
[1:01:40] Um, I borrowed the sweater to go on a date. I happened to be out walking. There was no warning of rain, but I got rained on. And my brother was enraged that I had gotten his sweater wet. Although I laid it out to dry. He was enraged that my sweater, that I'd got his sweater wet. I can't lend you anything. I can't lend you anything nice. Like you wreck everything, you know, just kind of, I don't know, stupid, crazy and hysterical stuff. And, um, now my, my, my brother, I don't know. He probably, I'm certain he doesn't have that sweater anymore. Right. Because it was 40 years ago. And it doesn't have me either. That wasn't just because of that. It was an accumulation of things, of course, right? So yeah, people who choose stuff over people, I don't get it. I don't understand it. It's a fetish. It's as weird a fetish as, I don't know, wanting to have sex with a tree or something, like Thaddeus Russell style, right? So I don't understand it. I think it's very tragic. I think it's very sad. And don't get me wrong. I like nice stuff, I really do. But choosing stuff over people, ah, man, wretched. Hopefully that wasn't too long an answer. If there's anything that you wanted to add to what I said, or if there's anything you disagree, or if there's anything that anybody else wants to bring up, I'm certainly happy to hear.
[1:03:06] Yeah, just look around. All the stuff you've accumulated, all the stuff you've stored, right? What's going to happen to it? What's going to happen to it? People are just going to come in and toss it all out. And what does it mean to you that all the stuff you've accumulated is going to get tossed out when you get old? What is it going to mean to you? What does it mean to you with regards to your accumulation of stuff? Knowing, especially if you don't have kids, right? Knowing, maybe you're married, right? Maybe you're married, you don't have kids. okay so what happens when the last person in the photograph is dead well the photograph is just dead pixels it's just dead pixels.
[1:03:50] All right any other last questions or comments and i appreciate that one it's very very good one it's a very very good question i've never been that much into stuff i i like it i don't have any i'm not like anti-stuff i'm certainly not a minimalist but uh not not stuff at the expense of people. No way, no how, no way. No thank you. All right, so I'll do a going once, going twice. If you want to just raise your hand, I appreciate everyone dropping by today. Don't forget, of course, freedoman.com slash donate. Everybody who donates will get a copy of the French Revolution presentation this month of November. And yeah, to my friends in the States, well, I don't know, man, whatever happens, This week, you might want to keep your head on a bit of a swivel. It could be some quite exciting stuff going down. And I don't want anyone to get into trouble or to get hurt, of course. All right. Well, thanks, everyone, so much for dropping by today. A real pleasure to chat. I hope that these kind of conversations are helpful. Thank you for the compliment, Dana. I appreciate that. I'm glad it was helpful for you as well. And I will see you guys tomorrow at 11 a.m. And have yourself a lovely, lovely afternoon. And freedomaine.com to help out the show. Very much appreciated. Lots of love from up here. I'll talk to you soon.
Support the show, using a variety of donation methods
Support the show
