0:00 - Introduction to Mental Health
2:42 - Bitcoin: The Future of Currency
4:30 - Credentialism and Homeschooling
13:38 - The Nature of Education
14:18 - Ideology and Common Sense
16:14 - Philosophy and Reality
17:45 - Camus and Existentialism
23:21 - The Absurdity of Life
27:29 - The Flaws of Philosophers
In this episode, I tackle a range of thought-provoking topics inspired by questions from listeners and recent discussions surrounding mental health, personal agency, and societal norms. Specifically, I examine whether bipolar disorder can be addressed through personal responsibility and agency. While I am not a mental health professional, I challenge the conventional views on mental illness by suggesting that our understanding of its biochemical underpinnings is still evolving.
I delve into the philosophy of the mind, emphasizing how we must align our beliefs with empirical evidence and the principles governing the material world. The discussion emphasizes the importance of reason, reality, and the capacity to accept corrections in the face of new data as fundamental to achieving mental health. Essentially, the brain's function is to extract principles from objective realities, and maintaining mental well-being hinges on recognizing and adhering to these principles.
Transitioning to the current landscape of cryptocurrency, I argue passionately that Bitcoin represents a pivotal opportunity for financial freedom. The alternative—a future dominated by centralized digital currencies—would create a totalitarian structure where government control over individual purchases entrenches power and limits personal liberty. I firmly believe that the choice is stark: either Bitcoin thrives, or humanity faces grave consequences.
The discourse then shifts to the controversial topic of homeschooling. I question the validity of claims that parents lack the qualifications to educate their children, countering that no one knows a child better than their parents. I critique the so-called credentialism that often undermines parental authority and suggest that anonymous bureaucrats are ill-equipped to provide quality education compared to those who have a deep, intuitive understanding of their child's needs.
Further in the discussion, I critique modern ideologies that oppose natural human instincts and common sense, categorizing them as a form of socio-political control. These ideologies demand adherence to abstract theories that often contradict human experience. In this context, I explore the implications of philosophers' work, particularly those like Camus, who have historically approached life's meaning, morality, and purpose through a lens that can sometimes seem detached from common human experiences.
I share insights on notable philosophers like Camus and Sartre, dissecting their personal lives and philosophies while asserting that one's personal integrity and lived experience significantly color philosophical discourse. This leads to a broader critique of contemporary philosophical trends that seem to dismiss foundational moral principles, such as the universal rejection of murder and theft.
Throughout the episode, I emphasize the importance of a grounded understanding of reality, reason, and morality in shaping our judgments and actions in both personal and societal frameworks. As we wrap up, I underscore the value of family, direct education, and the necessity of engaging with life honestly and authentically, reflecting on our shared human condition.
The episode serves as a profound exploration of mental health, financial autonomy, personal education, and moral philosophy, encouraging listeners to question the constructs that shape our understanding of these aspects of life.
[0:00] Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well. Some great questions from Facebook.
[0:06] Can bipolar be fixed with personal agency and responsibility? Now, I, of course, no doctor. I ain't no doctor with degree. No psychologist, no psychiatrist. Just amateur nonsense opinion. But I don't think that the biochemical basis of some mental illnesses have really been strictly determined. Determined so i would look at and i did a whole show on mental illness uh myth theories of mental illness in the past you can find it at fdrpodcast.com but in general what i would say is that our brain is there to process reason facts reality and the empirical evidence of our senses and the world is objective and predictable and rational like the the material world is objective empirical predictable rational consistent and therefore we are aligned with the purpose of our brains exactly and specifically to the degree that our brains follow the principles of material reality do we accept the evidence of our senses do we accept the need for reason do we accept empiricism? Are we willing to overthrow theory in the face of actual evidence? Are we willing to be corrected by the facts of reality and the strictness of reason? If that is the case, we have the greatest capacity for mental health.
[1:33] The body has particular purposes, and if we follow that which is best for the body, that which the body is designed for, we are most likely to have physical health. Of course, there can be bad luck exceptions, and it's the same thing with the mind. The purpose of the mind is to process and extract principles from the sense data that comes into us from objective, empirical, universal, rational, predictable, and consistent reality. So, we found our beliefs on reason, we accept the evidence of the senses, and we discipline our minds to follow the strictness, because we have imagination, which is a good thing. We can deny immediate empirical reason. In fact, we do it every night in our dreams. So, we have the capacity for imagination, which is wonderful. Animals, in a sense, don't really have much option to not follow their instincts, but we do. And that's great. Imagination is a wonderful thing. Imagination should be tempered by rational and objective principles as a whole.
[2:31] So, whatever is going on in people's minds that is dysfunctional, we have to look and say, okay, if something is called a mental illness, what is mental health?
[2:42] And it's always a big problem is okay what is mental health it can't just be conformity to society as the old saying goes it is not a mark of mental health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society so what is mental health mental health is having a principles within our mind which is part of reality our mind is our brain is part of reality it's having principles in our mind that follow the reality that gave us birth and sustains our existence so principles within the mind that follow the objectivity rationality and universality of the properties of matter and energy, allowing our foundational beliefs in a sense to be a shadow cast by the statue called absolute reality that is our best chance for mental health in my humble opinion all right, where is bitcoin headed to five years ten years.
[3:33] Well, I've said this from the very beginning, it's Bitcoin or bust. We either get Bitcoin or we end up with creepy totalitarian social credit CBDCs. CBDCs, sorry. I had a little aneurysm there. We're good. We're back from the dyslexia. So we either get Bitcoin, which is a private and universalized and decentralized currency, or we end up with the government in control of everything we buy and therefore we will enter into a totalitarian phase that I remember reading once that somebody theorized that the government in 1984 lasted for 9,000 years. Would not seem to me. So to me, it's like Bitcoin either wins or humanity loses. That's really all there is to it, which is one of the reasons I've been talking about it so fervently and positively and essentially and with great necessity for lo these many years.
[4:31] So i obviously can't tell you in any detail where bitcoin is heading to but if bitcoin doesn't win humanity loses probably forever so all right you are not qualified to homeschool your kids, yeah this is something that went on exa recently you're not qualified to homeschool your kids um.
[4:52] There is this funny thing where the new sort of modern gatekeepers are the people layered in the Scrabble bag acronym of supposed credentialism, right? So this is, well, if you don't have a PhD in climate science, you can't talk about it. So they're all just gatekeeping, right? All it is is saying, well, I have not been taught how to determine truth from falsehood, right from wrong, good from evil, facts from fantasy, information from disinformation or malinformation, both, by the way, Soviet terms invented by the NKVD to crush dissidents and questions of the virtues of communism.
[5:34] But credentialism is the new mystery religion, right? I've talked about with regards to science. Credentialism is the new mystery religion. So in a mystery religion, you have to submit your questions to the priest, they go into closed areas, have bizarre rituals you're never allowed to figure out, and come back with an answer that you're not allowed to question. And it is terrible. It is really beyond terrible. It is a new, white-suited, horn-rimmed glasses, pocket protector cult of infallible priests whose methodologies you can never question, right? So, for instance, with regards to global warming, there's all of this modeling stuff, right? That they model the temperature in 100 years. Of course, if the government cared about the future, we wouldn't have a national debt, so the idea that they care about the future is obviously laughable. That's just a basic intelligence test. but um so everyone understands that um.
[6:44] Imagine a business case, like a business case scenario, right? Like I've done this, you present a business case to investors, and they'll give you $100 million, right? They'll give you $100 million if your business case shows a profit in 50 years.
[7:03] No, let's say 100 years, because the climate stuff goes out 100 years, right? So this is just, again, it's just a basic intelligence test, right? So if you go to a bunch of businessmen and you say, I'll give you $100 million, but you need to give me a completely unverifiable business case wherein you make a profit, this business makes a profit in 100 years. When, you know, everyone's dead and all of that, right? right now if you have hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs around the world i mean millions of entrepreneurs around the world just say hundreds of thousands you have hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs around the world and you put it out there that you will give an entrepreneur a hundred billion dollars with no oversight no need to make any short-term profits no need for any of their predictions to come true in the short run but you'll give them a hundred million dollars if they come up with a business model that shows significant profit 100 years in the future. Now, this whole process has been going on for decades, since really the 1970s. None of anybody's predictions have come true yet, right? None of anybody's predictions have come true. But if you think that out of hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs, there isn't a single one who would come up with a model that predicted profit 100 years in the future in order to get hundred million dollars in the here and now, I'd like to introduce you to a species of bald biped called human beings because clearly you haven't met any of us yet.
[8:31] It's corrupt beyond words, it's ridiculous beyond words, And anybody who would believe it, it's incomprehensible. It's like they've never met a human being. Like they've never met, like they're the writers for Emily in Paris or Megalopolis. Like you've never met a human being in your life.
[8:50] So that's all. So, you know, this kind of stuff, I mean, it's like the projections that the government puts out for various things. You know, if you were good at projecting economic facts, you would go and make a billion, billion dollars in the stock market. You wouldn't be mucking away in some fluorescent Excel sheet government corner office, putting politically crafted fantasies together in the guise of economic projections, right? You would actually, if you knew where the economy was going, the last place you'd be looking for is the government. But it's pretty funny. It's like somebody who says, well, I know exactly who's going to win the Super Bowl. And I have for the last 50 or 40 years or 30 years, however long the term has been used. Somebody who says, yeah, I know exactly who's going to win the Super Bowl, man. It's like, well, why are you working in a little corner office, putting it out on a block? Why don't you go and bet on the Super Bowl legally and make a zillion dollars? I don't know. It's just kind of funny. So this idea that you're not qualified to homeschool your kids. So who is? Who is qualified to school your kids?
[10:02] Who is qualified to homeschool your kids? Politically motivated bureaucrats a thousand miles away who don't even know your child and are responding to the endless demands of the teachers' unions? You know, like forever and ever, just a little example, forever and ever, amen. men. Everyone has known that the best way to remove the Sartorian existentialist horror of school is to allow kids to sleep in, right? Just let them sleep in. They need more sleep, let them sleep in, and then they won't be exhausted and irritated and distracted, right? How much of ADHD, or what's called ADHD, is just lack of sleep, because teenagers need a huge amount of sleep, especially boys. So forever, the recommendation has been to start school later, But they can't. Do you know why? Do you know why? At least the reason they get. You know, we have contracts with our school drivers, the bus drivers. The bus drivers. The bus drivers.
[11:07] It's hard to think of a more incompetent group of people whose job is somewhat more essential for the economy than bus drivers. We're late. We got lost. We dropped your kid off too early. We dropped your kid off too late. We're sick. We're unavailable. We don't have any discipline. We can't control the kids. Anyway. So, yeah, so who is competent to school your children? Strangers with a political agenda who are very easily taken over by special interest groups to promote bizarre, toxic, anti-human ideologies? Who is? Compared to what? So you're not qualified to homeschool your kids. Like, okay, so you don't have the requisite scrabble bag of acronyms after your name. But what you do have is a deep knowledge of your child's preferences and personality and a deep love, affection, and care for your child. So it's saying that anonymous strangers 1,000 miles away are better at understanding and raising your kid than you, the loving parent, and you also understand your kid at a deep psychological level, right? Because your kid is birthed from you and your wife, you and your husband, which means that since almost every aspect of personality is influenced by genetics, you understand and know your kid pretty well I think the wasp is trying to mate with my camera. Fascinating. You just keep doing that and don't give me another hole.
[12:36] So, the idea that some anonymous stranger in a government bureaucracy is better at raising your kid, because that's what educating your kid is, raising your kid, right? So, an anonymous stranger with a bag full of highly politically corrupted credentials is better at raising your kid than you, who have a deep and visceral understanding of your kid, because your kid is like you and your kid is like the woman or the man that you love and so on. Because of all of that, you're just not qualified.
[13:06] What a bizarre thing it is to say to a parent, you are not qualified to raise your own child. But politically motivated strangers following the demands of greedy public sector unions, well, that's the ticket, man. man, that's what you need to do. That's how on earth did we ever evolve as a species with parents raising their own children? It's incomprehensible. That's just so bizarre to me. I mean, who's good at raising your kid?
[13:38] And education, you know, education is conversation for the most part. Like, I don't know how people homeschool as a whole, but education is conversation. You sit there, you drive and you say, oh, there's a for sale sign for a business. Let's talk about how a business gets bought and sold. That's interesting. I find that interesting. My daughter does, too. The leaves are falling. Let's talk about the cycle of the seasons and the earth. Like, you just have conversations. And that's how knowledge gets transferred, right? That's how knowledge was transferred for almost all of human history. Did a pretty good job, I would say. I mean, we did get to the top of the old food chain, and we do have the biggest brains in the known universe. So, not too terrible.
[14:18] No. So all that is natural is opposed, right? That is the modern...
[14:27] World. All that is natural is opposed. Ideology is a humiliation ritual by which you oppose everything that is natural. Everything that is natural is opposed. And that's just, it's a gaslighting humiliation ritual. So that which is common sense, that's with natural, that which we evolve with, all of it has to be opposed. And if you've ever been in an abusive relationship, you know that one of the demands of the abuser is one of the ways in which you get ground down and abused is you have to deny the evidence of your senses. You have to deny common sense. You have to deny that which is obvious. Like they literally hold up a red ball and this is 1984, right? How many fingers am I holding up? It's just whatever the party says. So one of the humiliation rituals is you must deny the evidence of your senses and you must deny all that is natural. So if you accept that which is natural and you promote that which is natural, then you lose power over people, right? It's kind of bright. It's kind of bright. So you lose power over people when you allow them to accept the evidence of their senses and build their knowledge up from then because then they.
[15:36] Then they have a methodology of knowledge that doesn't require outside authority, right? And the whole purpose of what I do in philosophy is to give you a methodology for determining truth from falsehood, right from wrong, which does not rely on an external authority, in the same way that Bitcoin is a way of storing and transmitting value and information without relying on an external authority. I mean, I am a voluntarist, which is no rulers, right? Because when you have rulers, you don't have any rules, right? If someone can just arbitrarily change the rules of chess, yes, there are no rules of chess. There's only the whim of the ruler. So you either get rules or you have rulers. You can't, the antonyms, rulers and rules are the exact opposite.
[16:14] And it's the same thing with credentialism, that you have to submit that which is obvious and clear to you because some stranger is waving a piece of paper that says I'm right and you're wrong. That's just completely bizarre to me. Like why on earth would I listen to someone who thinks they're right, right? You know, who thinks they're right because they jumped through a bunch of hoops and followed a bunch of rules in a completely corrupt organization like a university. It's just completely bizarre to me. It's like somebody saying to me, well, you see, murder is moral because I have this doctorate. And it's like, I really, I don't care about your doctorate. You're just like, it's just speaking nonsense. All right.
[16:56] Rand or Mises? I would say that I've read more Rand than Mises. I really love the Mises explosion or detonation of the price calculation problem and so on, which is great. But there, you know, Rand is more of a philosopher and Mises, of course, is an economist. So I don't think it's an either or. Stef, have you ever read the myth of Sisyphus? Just wondering what your thoughts are of Albert Camus' philosophy.
[17:24] So, I mean, Albert, Albert, Albert Camus was born to a mother who was both deaf and illiterate. Right? So, a deaf mother can't talk to you. In general, right? Because they just make those sort of odd sounds, right?
[17:45] So his father was killed in the First World War. I don't think he ever knew him. And his mother was deaf and illiterate. So that's going to have a huge effect. You know, I remember dating a girl when I was a young man, and she had a very vivid imagination and had very, very great difficulty really focusing on other people. But the imagination was fantastic, right? And it turns out, for the first six or seven years of her life, her parents didn't notice that her vision was atrociously bad. So she really couldn't see anything, so she went and retreated to the world of the mind, which sort of makes sense. And let's see here, just sort of quickly.
[18:30] When Albert Camus was a young man, he married a woman named Simone E. She had an addiction to morphine, because she apparently had menstrual cramps and turned to morphine. So he wanted her to beat her addiction, so he married her. And then it turned out that he found out that his wife, oddly named he, his wife was having sex with her doctor, I assume, in return for the morphine, and so he divorced her. So, I mean, everybody makes mistakes Getting married to a rampant drug addict Who's sleeping with her doctor With the assume to get a hold of the drug That's pretty, pretty bad I mean, it's sort of a male fantasy That my love can fix a pretty woman With a massive dysfunction, So, he joined the Communist Party So he was a totalitarian asshole, Now, of course, he's like Well, no, no, no I'm a libertarian socialist socialist, I'm an anarcho-syndicalist, and so on. It's like, no, don't care. Don't care. Look, here's the thing when it comes to philosophers. Oh, my God. Philosophy is really bounded by don't try to be too fucking clever. Just don't try to be too clever. Don't try to be too clever. Right? So let me tell you what I mean.
[19:56] So if you're a physicist, and you come up with a brand of physics that denies people the ability to catch a ball that's thrown at them, then you're an overcomplicating asshole.
[20:10] Right? You are asking people to deny their actual abilities and the reality of their life in exchange for your view of physics. Right? Now, and I'm not talking about like, okay, it's kind of weird that you gain mass as you approach the speed of light, but that's all, that's not people's thing. If you can't explain how people can throw and catch a ball, your physics is bullshit. It's just yapping, it's just noise. It's distracting, destructive noise. If you can't explain to people, how they can catch a ball, and base your physics on that, I don't care what you have to say about anything else.
[20:48] So, people and all moral systems around the world oppose rape, theft, assault, and murder. Rape, theft, assault, and murder. Rape, theft, assault, and murder. And fraud, you know, rape, theft, assault, and murder. Everybody teaches that to their kids. Don't hit, don't steal. All systems around the world recognize property rights. You say, ah, but communism doesn't. it's like what communism does it only says that the government should control all the property so the people in the government have all the property rights right so rape theft assault murder property rights every moral system what we teach her so if your ethical system can't explain that, it's masturbatory ooky-cookie embarrassing pathetic irrelevant stupid weird twisted Horrifying Destructive bullshit If you can't explain that If you can't explain the opposition To rape, theft, assault and murder, And concomitant property rights I don't care what you have to say I don't care what you have to say about anything else, Right, because if your Theory of physics says Human beings can't catch balls, Right, you know it's the old joke about It's kind of a joke, right How physicists say that bees can't fly So that's kind of a joke, right, because bees can fly Physicists say they can't, but they can.
[22:06] So I can't tell you, like, I have a visceral, bone marrow, acidic tongue loathing for philosophers who come up with, like, suicide is man's only fundamental question. It is the absurdity of life. Right? Okay, but most people don't find life absurd, and most people don't want to kill themselves. Okay, if I was raised by an illiterate deaf mother, my father got blown up in a war, I married a woman with a drug addiction who then cheated on me with her doctor to get the drugs, probably. Yeah, I could understand that you'd be kind of depressed, but don't confuse your fucked up choices for human beings' general reality, right? I don't try and base physics on my nightly dreams, and I don't try and tell people that whatever difficulties I've had in my life is somehow the human condition. You know, it is the human condition. It is something like that, right? Sorry, I lost the page here. What else? Camus could not keep it in his pants. And it was a Spanish-born actress, Maria Casares.
[23:21] One of his, let's see here. Oh, yeah, he married some other woman, I think.
[23:33] And his wife, I think it was his wife, She had a mental breakdown after he had all these affairs and needed hospitalization in the early 1950s. And it read a Camus who felt guilty, withdrew from public life and was slightly depressed for some time. Yeah, I have, I'm screwing so many bimbos or I guess Dubovia, but that's a different matter. Um but i banged so many women that my wife had a mental breakdown and ended up in a psychiatric hospital yeah i think i feel slightly depressed so the absurdity of life and the fact that it inevitably ends in death is his big thing well your life is absurd mine isn't, of course he was anti-christian it's almost inevitable um he wrote there is only really one serious philosophical question and that is suicide suicide yeah yeah emo emo prince i get it man you're really all kind of the crow dark and it's just suicide yeah suicide Suicide.
[24:45] Camus followed Sartre's definition of the absurd. That which is meaningless. Thus man's existence is absurd because his contingency finds no external justification. I don't know. Don't drive women insane and put them in asylums because you can't keep it in your pants. Don't marry drug addicts and don't be a communist. You know, these things are okay, you know, reasonable. So all I want from philosophers and thinkers as a whole is...
[25:19] Just, you know, start with the nature of reality, what is real, start with the nature of knowledge, what is true, move to the nature of morality, what is moral, what is right, and then, you know, talk about social organization and consistency with these three things.
[25:35] It's really, it's not that complicated. I mean, it's not that easy to do. I mean, this is what I did almost 20 years ago with my Introduction to Philosophy series. You should really check it out. It's a 17-part introduction to philosophy series that go through that whole uh process but uh yeah don't don't go against humanity's lived in general experience uh don't try and be uh weird and and clever and it's suicide it's like the number of people who want to kill themselves is is quite low so the fact that you're feeling suicidal because you're a rampaging asshole who sleeps around and drives his wife to madness and so on, right? And the fact that you support communism and violence, right? So the fact that you're an asshole and you have no self-control, you have the self-control of your average coke-addicted rabbit or Sigmund Freud, two sides of the same coin. So just because you're an asshole who has no self-control and tragically was raised by a deaf mother who couldn't really communicate with you and you have a sort of sad and tragic life of suffering pain as a child, which I sympathize with, and then inflicting endless pain on people as an adult and you can't say anything that's sensible and useful to the average person.
[26:59] Why would I have any respect for any of that? It's just a bunch of bafflegab, polysyllabic, French existentialist depressed noise. Why would I listen to philosophy from a man who probably cheated on his garden gnome? It's like, my gosh. I mean, most of the French intellectuals, a lot of them signed a, hey, let's legalize child sexual assault. That's all repulsive and vile beyond words.
[27:29] Ah, there's a bunch of pillages and abuses us and vile vile human beings like why would i listen to to any of them i mean it's like a diet book by a fat guy i mean it's all just ridiculous like why would you bother examining the morality of somebody who lived a life like that i mean it's uh it's beyond repulsive and and vile and it's but it's just a sort of subsonic call out to all the other depressed weirdos to get together and pretend they're being deep when all they're doing is exploiting everything with a the pulse and some of the things that don't even have a pulse. So. It's like Foucault, like Foucault, the absolute monster, just vile, vile human being on every conceivable level. I'm not even going to talk about the crimes that he committed because it's absolutely monstrous beyond words. But that's, of course, the world, right? Like you have these pseudo-moralists who justify every atrocity known to man and God and Satan in particular, and they're lionized and taught. And here I am in the woods. All right. Have yourself a wonderful day. Thank you for these great questions. Lots of love from up here. I'll I'll talk to you soon, my friends. Bye.
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