0:03 - Opening Thoughts
1:09 - Healthcare and Waiting Lists
1:33 - Structural Racism Funding
3:14 - Moral Dilemmas in Society
7:03 - Creativity and Originality
9:50 - The Birth of Ideas
14:31 - Exploring Corruption
16:41 - Curiosity as a Counter to Corruption
21:22 - The Role of Experience in Creativity
36:29 - The Alchemy of Writing
41:56 - Disgust as a Creative Force
49:50 - The Essence of Warning Characters
1:00:59 - The Chaos of Life and Literature
1:06:47 - The Value of Wisdom in Society
1:15:52 - Measuring Integrity vs. Metrics
1:20:38 - Closing Conversations
In this episode, I engage in an intimate dialogue with listeners, tackling a broad spectrum of philosophical questions, current events, and the intricate dance between creativity and life's challenges. We kick off the discussion reflecting on pressing issues, including the staggering healthcare wait times in Canada, highlighting a grim statistic where over 15,000 Canadians have died awaiting treatment. This leads us to contemplate the larger implications of our healthcare systems and societal structures that might simultaneously promote division and biases under the guise of addressing structural racism and racial justice.
As conversations unfold, I delve into moral complexities, shedding light on the burdens of moralism in contemporary dialogue. I dissect the difficulty in upholding moral standards while navigating the murky waters of hypocrisy that often plague public figures across the political spectrum. The conversation naturally transitions into a personal exploration of my creative processes, triggered by a listener's question about the origins of successful story ideas, prompting an in-depth analysis of character development and thematic exploration in my works, particularly in "The God of Atheists."
I share the evolution of character Gordon and the philosophical backdrop that informs my approach to storytelling. Notably, I address the significance of satire, originality, and the dual nature of creativity, where inspiration can emerge from both beauty and disgust. In discussing my writing journey, I underscore how curiosity can often be a more powerful antidote to corruption than virtue itself, urging aspiring creators to adopt a mindset of inquiry.
Listeners raise stimulating questions that allow me to revisit themes of artistic integrity, the moral responsibilities of characters within narratives, and the essence of warning narratives that serve as cautionary tales in literature. I expand upon how a lack of warning characters in modern storytelling diminishes the moral landscape of contemporary fiction, and I express a desire to bridge the gap between relatable moral struggles and the fantastical.
Towards the end, our dialogue shifts toward a candid contemplation of societal values and the commercialization of thought through public speaking. I engage with a listener about the high costs associated with prominent figures in philosophy and the implications of monetizing wisdom, encouraging a discourse on integrity over generational wealth. As the conversation winds down, I reiterate the importance of approaching life's complexities with a genuine curiosity that transcends mere ideological boundaries. This discourse encapsulates a journey through personal reflection, societal critique, and philosophical inquiry, fostering a deeper understanding of our responsibilities both as individuals and as members of a broader community.
[0:00] Good evening, everybody. Hope you're doing well. Got a little bit of time.
[0:03] Thought I'd have a little bit of a chat with you all. See if you have any questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems, criticisms, makeup tips, and cat litter box suggestions. So I'm, of course, all ears if everybody has or anybody has a yearning-burning preference to run your thoughts through the philosophy chatterbox brain. I'm thrilled to hear. You can just, of course, raise your hand. And we can chat. And welcome, welcome. Oh, James, just teasing me, saying, oh, I'm too busy to share with you tonight. And he's here. It could be James the bot. Always hard to tell. Always hard to tell, but yeah, happy to take your comments, questions, problems. And I'll just give a pause here, see if anybody's got something on their mind, you'll have solved every problem known to philosophy.
[1:10] I was just reading about how 15,474 Canadians died waiting for healthcare in 2023 to 2024. more. Nearly 75,000 waiting list deaths since 2018-19, covering a wide range of surgical and diagnostic services.
[1:34] Very, very interesting.
[1:40] Also was reading about how the National Institute of Health, currently funds over 400 projects at $350 million relating to structural racism.
[1:58] $691,000 of our health science funding well spent on Our Voices Matter, racial justice, activism, intervention to address structural racism and prevent depression in Black and Latin ex-youth. $350 million. So, I mean, racism is big business. Racism is not exactly an organic or sort of racialism, hysteria about racism and so on. Not exactly an organic thing. It is very, very paid for, and it's going to be very interesting to see what happens to race relations when racial division stops being funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, at least, probably, probably more over time. But it's far from astroturfed. It is, in fact, racism is, to a large degree, a government program. All right. Somebody wrote, this is interesting. Her berry on X. Easiest ways to make money. Men's lust. Women's desire for beauty. The health of the elderly. The education of children. Rich people's fear of loss. And Brokey's desire to get rich quickly. Very interesting. Very interesting.
[3:14] Now, I'm also doing mild flybys, although I think I lack my Old Testament moral outrage from back in the day, but I do, in fact, I'm still floating by the Ashley Sinclair issue. The idea of having a baby and making a fortune, isn't that wild? I try to put myself in the mindset of where that's a possible thing. Where if you are a woman, I guess young enough to have kids, reasonably attractive, if you are a woman, then you can get knocked up and you can make a fortune. Now, of course, if you happen to get knocked up by the world's $350 billion or whatever it is, richest man, that is something else. That is something else. And of course, the other big challenge as well, with regards to people who put themselves forwards as moralists, and people on the right and on the left, always put themselves forward as moralists. That's how you can identify what their political beliefs are, because they're putting themselves forward as moralists.
[4:33] Moralist is a tough gig man it's a tough gig because a moralist, has to live like we have to live by our own prescriptions and i suppose proscriptions as well but we have to live by our own standards it's really really tough to put yourself forward, as a moralist. This is right, that is right, the other is right. And then.
[5:04] You have to live by that. Which, like a rather confused whale, both sucks and blows at the same time. And there's, you know, there's good things in it. It's good to live morally and do the right thing. And I get all of that and so on. But it is, it's a tough gig. It's a tough gig. And a moralist should be judged by his or her actions rather than his or her statements.
[5:37] And of course, I think, or at least I would argue, that there are a lot of people who move into the moral space, and then act with rank hypocrisy in order to destroy, or undermine at least, people's faith and belief in morality. It's a very, very common thing. To sort of storm into a space, let's say a right-wing space, and talk about how evil the family courts are, how men should have the right to opt out. Since women have the right to opt out of parenthood with abortion and adoption and so on, or the morning after pill for that matter, since women have the right to opt out of parenthood, so thus also should meneth have the righteth to opt out of a parenthood. And this is an argument that's made on the right fairly continually. And of course, opposition to single motherhood, opposition to the alienation of children with regards to their parents, all that kind of stuff. So go in and be a moralist. And it's tough, man. I can tell you this, of course, I'm sure we all have the same experience as a whole, but I can tell you this from deep and vivid personal experience, it's a whole lot easier to, to talk about morality than it is to, oh, I don't know, actually be moral. A whole lot easier.
[7:03] So, we'll get back to that. I'll hold my horses because this is a show of dialogue. So, you have my friend, oh, Icon Lady. Icon Lady, you had raised your hand. All you have to do is unmute. And I'm all ears and I will return to right-wing hypocrisy after our regularly, well, unscheduled conversation. You just have to unmute?
[7:32] Yeah.
[7:33] Yes, how are you doing?
[7:35] Hello. I am great, thank you. Excited to ask this question.
[7:39] Excellent.
[7:39] Okay, so I just finished The God of Atheists, and Gordon is an awesome character, but how can we come up with an original idea like you or Gordon? Do you have any advice for honing into your creativity? Because you've created a lot of incredible work, like The God of Atheists or The President, and then Gordon and his great idea. But how can we do that rather than just being mere humble listeners of your show?
[8:06] Well, tell me a little bit about what you thought of the book and why you found Gordon in particular to be compelling.
[8:14] Okay, so I thought the book was amazing. It's kind of like, it's very much, I found it very much like The Fountainhead, but I would say it's a little less nihilistic than The Fountainhead or a little less green and dark. Um but i really really enjoyed it i read it in like three days i was thoroughly absorbed all the characters had an insane amount of depth and i it was just it shone the light on people but sorry my brain's not working it is 11 p.m right now um but wait come on you sound like you're in your 20s 11 p.m.
[8:54] Should be the start of your evening.
[8:58] I am an old i'm an old person sleep is important.
[9:02] Uh well you have a young voice i suppose your voice is the opposite of my hair uh it makes you sound younger okay uh all right is this was the god of atheists the first novel of mine that you have read.
[9:16] Uh no i read the present and i read real-time relationships. But I'd say RTR is definitely the best. But I like The God of Atheists because of all the ideas.
[9:31] Right, I appreciate that. I always try to compress as many sort of thought-provoking concepts, ideas, arguments, and insights into sort of every paragraph I try to get at least two, hopefully four. So I can tell you a little bit of the history of that book.
[9:50] Just so that you can understand how the creativity came about because that's i think your question is how to be more creative.
[9:58] Yeah and i have like a big idea like you or gordon because you weren't the god of atheists and like a lot of us are listeners of your show but i'm i don't know how many of people that listen to you actually then go out and create their own shows afterwards it's hopefully a fair few, but yeah.
[10:18] Right. So I won't sort of get into the details, but Canada has a sort of premier writing course. I submitted a bunch of writing samples and got into that, course. And I basically just had the story of Joanna at the beginning, which was the woman pushing 30s in her 30s with her standards collapsing and her, you know, obviously somewhat dissatisfying marriage or relationship with Alder. So I just had her and I was writing kind of feverishly trying to sort of explore this female character and her life.
[10:51] And I had a writing teacher. He's actually still alive. I checked him out the other day. I had a writing teacher, a fairly famous writer, who had, and I get this sometimes from people in the art world, like a visceral, poisonous, vitriolic hatred for this book. And he said he didn't even think it was any kind of book, and there was just no way that he could teach me, and it was some of the worst stuff he'd ever read. Like, really, not sort of, here's how you can reshape it, and so on. And I know I'm not a bad writer, but there's people who sometimes just react. And I've had this, I had this happen with a publisher with Just Poor, just reacted such vitriol. And this also happened at the theater school that I went to, just such vitriol and sort of anger. And I didn't really get it back in the day, but I sort of get it a little bit more now. So then I switched from a male writer to a female writer and it was fantastic she was really helpful really really loved the book and and recommended me to her agent and all kinds of good stuff and i thought i was away to the races.
[11:59] So i sort of wrote the first part with joanna or joanne in a sort of fever burst of creative exploration and then i got kind of stuck and i i knew that i wanted to pursue the theme of corruption as a whole because I had sort of recently emerged from a business situation which was pretty corrupt. So, I wanted to write a bunch of stories about corruption as a whole.
[12:29] And I wanted to write about corruption in the family. I wanted to write about corruption in business, in the music industry, and academia because these were things I had some experience with. Certainly, I'd been in the business world. I'd been in the academic world. And I don't know, I don't have much to do with the music world, but I've read a bunch of biographies of musicians and bands and so on, so I had some fair idea about it. And it really wasn't until I got the little boy, the character of Stephen the boy, and his curiosity and Socratic questioning of his parents, because I didn't want to write a book about corruption without any counterpoint.
[13:16] And so the boy who starts to question his parents and all of the unraveling that starts to happen from that is, to me, was very important. And so having experienced corruption in the academic world, having experienced corruption in the business world, having experienced corruption in the family, and of course in the educational system as a whole, whenever we have questions that are like the more intelligent and perceptive the questions, the more we're attacked. So for me, I wanted to show corruption and its source. And I also wanted to show the solution to corruption, or at least the counterweight to corruption. Now, I didn't want to show in the sort of Ayn Rand formula, there were these corrupt characters like Ellsworth Toohey and James Taggart and so on. There are just these characters that just corrupt. And then there's these characters that are just pure and shining. And that to me has never been particularly inspiring because like Howard Rourke and John Galt, they have to kind of be born that way.
[14:31] And I wanted to show how people can.
[14:37] Achieve some sort of integrity and how they can push back against corruption, but I needed the origin story, which was just a certain amount of curiosity on the part of the three kids, right? The boy and the two girls, and wanted to sort of see their path that way. So I don't like, in particular, look at something like, I mean, it's kind of goofy, but if you look at Superman, you see a story where Superman is the man of steel, and he just came from Krypton, and he landed like a meteor in Smallville, and he's just, you know, wonderful and perfect and strong. And that, to me, that doesn't give people any energy to fight. It's like saying, some people are just born with giant muscles, and some people are born just kind of anemic and chicken-chested and spindle-armed and so on, and there's no transition between the two of them. What I did want is to say, okay, so we're born kind of weak, but we can exercise and become stronger. And that's why there are these transition points. And certainly when you're young, if you have a fairly decent nature yourself, it's a little hard to sort of comprehend or process how much corruption there is in the world. And then if you do get it, it's easy to fall into despair. bear.
[15:58] So, I think, for me, the creativity comes from having a framework of encouragement, and saying, most people say, well, the opposite of evil is good. The opposite of evil Lex Luthor is good Superman, right? The opposite of the devil is Jesus or God. But, of course, we're not gods, and we're not from the planet Krypton. So, I wanted to make a case that the opposite of evil, or let's say the opposite of corruption, is not virtue. The opposite of corruption is curiosity.
[16:41] And, of course, that's not exactly my wild idea of originality, because that's Socrates. Socrates was just curious. Like, I mean, the oracle told me that I was the wisest man. I can't possibly be the wisest man. So let me go and cross-examine all these wise men to solve this paradox that the oracle cannot lie. The oracle said I was the wisest, but I know nothing. And so curiosity is the opposite of corruption. and curiosity brings on a kind of ferocity that even pure virtue does not. You know, just being in the position of asking questions and being curious about the motives and beliefs and processes of corrupt people. I mean, or finding out that they're corrupt through a series of questions.
[17:25] And of course, I slowly penetrated the corruption within my family of origin just by asking a whole series of questions, just being curious. And there's almost nothing more powerful against corruption than curiosity plus optimism. I wonder why people are doing what they're doing. I'm sure they have good motives, but I wonder why they're doing what they're doing. And so, for me, the creativity came out of a particular journey of mine, which is that studying virtue and trying to be virtuous in my life did not uncover corruption in the people around me. However, being kind of naive and curious and just asking questions, how does this fit together with that? Why was this decision made? This doesn't make sense compared to that. Help me understand. So, and this is again, Socrates' approach, right? Socrates is like, I mean, at least this is what he claimed, who knows what the actual truth was, but he claimed, well, I'm just curious, because the oracle said I was the wisest. I know nothing. The oracle cannot lie.
[18:34] So I need to find out what the facts are. And just sort of being, in a sense, naive, optimistic, and curious. Well, that engages you with evil in a way that's not combative. And thus, when the escalation occurs, the questioner, the person who's curious, can't be blamed for the escalation. I'm just asking questions. I just want to know. And to me, the idea that you can fight corruption by asking questions, by just being curious, right? I mean, so, the character, the grad student, right? The grad student is like, well, he's got Rudy is the more cynical one. But the grad student is like, well, I mean, academia is really into thought and reason and having an effect on the world and doing good research. And I've got this great idea. And of course, I pulled a lot of that stuff straight out of my own master's thesis and my own experience with academia while doing my master's thesis. and I.
[19:42] So, like, people are, if you're just naive and curious, there's great power in that. So, the grad student is like, hey, I've had this great idea. I've done the research. It seems to hold up. I'm going to be very enthusiastic about putting this out into academia. And then he gets all of this hostility. And it's just kind of baffling, right? Like, people said, oh, we need to have an honest conversation about race. And I'm like, okay, well, this topic seems to be like IQ and stuff seems to be kind of under-discussed. It also seems to be important because it could explain a lot. So then you have an honest conversation at the point, right? So I think from my own experience was just that the greatest power that you have against corruption is not virtue, but curiosity.
[20:29] And if you're just curious and in a sense optimistic, I'm sure there's a good answer for this, but blah, blah, blah, right? It's also a little bit of Columbo. So I'm sure there's a good answer. Just help me sort of understand, right? I mean, if somebody's embezzling from your company and you go in and like, why the hell are you stealing from me this, that, and the other, then you're automatically escalating and so on, right? But if you just go in and you say, ah, you know, I mean, you're my accountant. I'm just trying to figure out a couple of things here. If you could help me out, I don't understand how this number goes to this number and just curiosity and optimism and so on, I think that's the best way to approach corruption.
[21:13] And that was sort of the idea that I was focusing on.
[21:22] But you have to have gone through some sort of, I think, interesting process yourself in order to be creative in a work of art. I mean, of course, J.R.R. Tolkien went through World War I and then saw the darkening shadows of World War II and then wrote a lot of Lord of the Rings under the shadow of World War II, with the one ring, almost like weapons of mass destruction at the end, although I know that that really wasn't revealed until the very end of the war. But there were certainly weapons of mass destruction prior to, I mean, more people died in the firebombing of Dresden or Tokyo than in the atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So, I think you have to be doing interesting and creative things in your life, and I think that will give you the raw material for creativity, but.
[22:15] It's sort of like if you want to, this is an old criticism that Tom Wolfe had of writers. I think he was talking about John Irving or other people like that, and he was saying, John Irving? No, someone like that. Anyway, he was writing about how, you know, one American writer wrote this whole novel set in India, but he'd never been to India. And I think that perhaps Tom Wolfe had done a little bit too much research. He spent many, many years writing A Man in Full, even spent a huge amount of time in Japan for a section in the novel that ended up being cut anyway. Or you could say Ayn Rand spending five years working in an architect's office to prepare for the novel The Fountainhead or as part of that. So, I think you have to have some lived experience, of course.
[23:05] The programmer, of course, was a programmer in the business world, so I kind of understood all of that sort of stuff. But I think you kind of have to be doing interesting and creative things in your life as a whole, and then you can bring that stuff to fiction. But I don't think you can just invent it out of whole cloth itself, if that makes sense. So creativity comes in how you approach various challenges and problems in life. And if you do go through some interesting and creative things in solving problems in life, I think it gives you a pretty good framework for trying to solve these problems or trying to create interesting problems and solutions in fiction. Sorry for the long speech. I hope that makes some kind of sense. So what do you think?
[23:52] Yeah, the speech does make sense. And I think curiosity was definitely the main theme of your book or one of the main themes of the book. It was really, really amazing. But yeah, definitely. I think that probably might be the case maybe that a lot of people just don't have a lot going on in their lives. So they're not necessarily trying to create something. So maybe that's just the thing. Like Gordon kept trying to create something and thinking and he was like studying different ideas and thinking all the time same with Rudy so maybe that's just the case to simply it's not just some deep magic idea coming to you but also um well I was going to say Justin is an incredible character because he's like the character before like realizing because he was he like Justin was just so thought out as well all the characters were just so well done honestly but thank you for your answer but I guess do you have any things you would recommend doing in particular I guess to spark that as well.
[24:53] Yeah so yeah one of the things that's always frustrated me about literature, is it sucks in general it sucks at helping people solve problems in their actual lives, i mean i could go sort of on and on but you know great expectations how many of us end up being forced to help a criminal who later leaves us a huge sum of money interesting story fun story but it doesn't help you solve smack in your own life or how many of us you know are sold into a workhouse and then have to go free and end up being kidnapped by a sort of, a criminal-led street gang of urchin robbers and so on like it's an interesting story all of a twist. It's fine. It's entertaining, but it doesn't really help us do or solve much in our life. How many of us are taunted and tormented by a sociopathic wife to kill a king, as in Macbeth, doesn't really solve anything in our lives? Or how many of us want to murder a porn broker to test our moral theories, as in crime and punishment. And so, it's entertaining, it's interesting, it gives you goosebumps, it's exciting, it's a thrill ride. But...
[26:18] What does it really solve in most people's lives? And so, what I dislike, they're sort of the two poles of 20th century novels, arguably 19th century, but certainly 20th century novels. The two poles are naturalism and romanticism. Romanticism, I mean, Victor Hugo, of course, 19th century, but romanticism is sort of passionate, powerful ideals, and the Ayn Rand, the Victor Hugos, and so on, just sort of larger-than-life characters of Jean Valjean, or Howard Rourke, and so on. Passionate ideals that, again, don't really seem to help people solve many problems in their own lives, but are entertaining and engaging to read about. Now, naturalism was also referred to sort of the kitchen sink dramas. So, naturalism was an attempt to turn art into a kind of documentary. Is this how people really talk? Is this how people really behave? Is this how people really act?
[27:28] And so, you had abstract values in the pseudo form of people, or more accurate people in the absence of really any values whatsoever so this would be you know some of the soap operas coronation street and so on that there was all of this and i know that's not an awful but a show but in general you read about people's daily lives and it doesn't really seem to add up to too much or you read about these sort of grand souls that are born.
[28:00] Massively dimensioned, and yet their choices never seem to reflect your own choices. So people are either swept up in this grim domino tidal wave of naturalism and don't really get much say in their own lives, or...
[28:19] They have these big, grand issues like, yes, I have, Inspector Javert has been chasing me for 20 years. It's like, that's not really a thing that people deal with in their lives as a whole. And I guess the third category that emerged last quarter in particular of the 20th century, and that is, you know, just a pure propaganda piece. You know, this is the piece where the woman is hard done by this terrible man, and then she finds this sensitive.
[28:53] Shaggy-haired lover who is a sculptor downtown and just falls in love with her rather wrinkled butt, and she leaves her brute of a husband and ends up in this sensitive, wonderful romantic relationship with a wonderful person.
[29:11] This is sort of the sex in the city stuff or what was the one where the woman ends up leaving her husband after talking about the war and then ends up opening up a restaurant on the shores of the Mediterranean and having this wonderful life and so on. So this is just dangling the grass is greener on the other side of the offense to middle-aged women in order to leave their husband to destroy the value of marriage and accelerate the collapse of the birth rate. All of it is just, or sleeping with the enemy, or all of this kind of stuff, or even things like Fatal Attraction with Glenn Close and Michael Douglas, which is designed to scare the pants on guys by just saying, you know, here's all these terrible things that can happen. Here's how scary women are. Michael Douglas, I think in the 90s, made a whole career of hard done by men, hard put upon men. And so all of that propaganda stuff, which is just designed to set men and women against each other for purposes of destroying the family unit and so on. And this, of course, is also the brave and heroic single mother, trademark, who's just wonderful and perfect and does everything she can for her kids. Gina Davis did this quite a bit as well.
[30:24] And so it is just, that's just the revolutionary undermining stuff. Like, you know, every kid's movie for a certain amount of time, maybe it's still the case. I haven't watched kid movies in a while, but every kid's movie was, there are these wonderful farmland animals who get along and play and dance around the sun and the pollen and the bees do these little dances in the sky and everyone's happy and singing. And then this evil white capitalist overlord comes along and wants to, you know, pave paradise and put up a parking lot kind of thing and build them all in the woodland animals where they frolic and they all have to band together to fight the evil capitalist in a Rousseauian orgy of.
[31:06] Garden of Eden versus the dark satanic mills of the modern world. And all of this was just designed to make you hate capitalists and, you know, maybe white people and so on, right? So it was all that could just straight up propaganda stuff was kind of ridiculously common. So I really disliked just naturalism. Yeah, this is how people really are. It's like, why would I want to watch my neighbors?
[31:33] And the naturalism didn't have ways in which people could morally improve themselves. Although if there was an improvement to be had, it always had to do with in particular the woman leaving a grim and oppressive situation with a careless and thoughtless man. I mean, the Bridges of Madison County was a prime example of this, of course. I think it was Nicholas Sparks or someone who wrote the book and then Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streeper in the movie, and it was just appalling. Not as bad as Eat, Pray, Love, but it was just appalling. This woman is just, she's so hard done by, because she has these loud, obnoxious boys around her, and don't you know, they just, the door keeps slamming, and she doesn't say anything. She just gets sad and frustrated that the door keeps slamming, and then she has this absolutely perfect affair. The man becomes obsessed with her, but nobody gets hurt. She doesn't get an STD. She doesn't get an unwanted pregnancy. He doesn't become a stalker. The husband never finds out. He just loves her from a distance and pines for her at a distance, and nobody gets hurt, and is perfect bloodless.
[32:42] No-victim kind of affair. And this, of course, is promoting this kind of daydreaming outside the marriage. And of course, you have this very funny, esoteric, sophisticated, urban, cosmopolitan woman married to this insensate brute of a farmer. And of course, or whatever he was doing, some sort of farm thing. Then, of course, there's this gorgeous Clint Eastwood, sexy, sensuous photographer who just is great in bed, loves her to death. Nobody gets hurt. Nobody finds out. It's just perfect and wonderful. It's just rancid. I mean, absolutely rancid. And of course, you can't really publish art that promotes happy marriages these days. You can't show them.
[33:30] You can't promote them unless maybe it's, I don't know, biracial couples or something. So I disliked naturalism because there was no improvement, no moral improvement, but I also disliked romanticism because it was these sort of morally perfect demigods facing off, morally perfect and imperfect demigods facing off against each other in situations that normal, ordinary people never find themselves in. So either it's like well i can identify with this character but there's no moral improvement or there is moral improvement or moral combat but i can't possibly identify with this character thor comes travels through time and fights the federal reserve or something and it's like yeah but i'm not thor who travels through time so i wanted to write a book of morality.
[34:18] With ordinary people willing extraordinary morals so i didn't just want ordinary people where there's no morals, like kitchen sink dramas and naturalistic dramas. And I didn't want moral combat with gods versus gods. That to me has about as much realism as a Transformers battle in the movies. So I wanted to write a novel where people were facing the kind of corruption and challenges that we all face. And there was something they could do about it, but it was really tough and required a lot of curiosity and was scary and and so on and for me if I could get those two things together.
[35:06] If I could get those two things together, that here's moral challenges that we all face on a regular basis, you know, challenges, moral challenges at work, moral challenges in our relationships, moral challenges with regards to our parenting and peer pressure and so on.
[35:23] To neither be a moral idealist who's ineffective or a cynic who gets things done. I really wanted to write a book where morality could actually help people in situations they could recognize from their own lives, and yet not just have this sort of magical moral ability like Ayn Rand's characters or Jean Valjean, who's just amazing, despite the fact that he was decades in prison for stealing a loaf of bread. He was just wonderful and amazing and strong and noble. And, you know, it's just, yeah, okay. How does that help me in my daily life become better. So certainly I think all new art arises out of dissatisfaction, if not downright hatred to all existing art. I wrote novels because there was nothing to read that really moved me. I mean, I was moved by the romantic novels, but they were too distant from my life. And the lives that were more close to mine, there was no moral progress or challenge to overcome.
[36:30] So I wanted to try and put the two together, which was really quite a bit of fantastical.
[36:39] It's a kind of alchemy to try and mix all of these things together and not have it blow up in your face. But I mean, I remember I had a writing teacher when I was at the National Theatre School, and he sort of got my philosophical bent, and he and the head of the theatre school said that my writing assignment was to write The Trial and Death of Socrates as a play. And I spent a lot of time on it. And courtroom dramas are fun and interesting to write about. And I wrote it, and they hated it. It's just, again, this sort of passionate, virulent hatred that I understand is an antibody response to practical ethics. I understand that now, but I didn't understand it back then. Of course, I was 21 or whatever.
[37:29] And then my writing teacher wrote The Trial and Death of Socrates.
[37:36] And said it should be more like this and he gave it to me and I hated his work. I thought this is just terrible. This is petty. This has not got any of the grandeur. It certainly doesn't have any of the flashes of humor that I think is important for these kinds of things.
[37:51] And so, you know, he hated my writing. I hated his writing. And then he put on a play that he'd written and I went to go and see the play. I thought it was just terrible. And then he took me to my writing teacher took me to a French play, and I found it so repulsive, so nihilistic, so dark, so ugly, so spiritually venomous, that I remember I got up and left. I didn't even talk to my writing teacher, I just got up and left. And I remember walking home, I had a little walkman with me, and I put on the Honey Drippers Good Rockin' Midnight, and it just felt like a soul cleanse, just get rid of that horrible Gaelic negativity. And I mean, French culture is founded on exploitation, pedophilia, and child abuse. And I just was like, oh, I can't, like, I just can't. It's like, I went to remember going to see an Oprah Winfrey movie where the male character turned out to be a pedophile. And I was just like, nope, peace out. I'm tapping out. and it's not like I mean pedophiles are an interesting and powerful subject for stories I mean Sridhar Gailov in Crime and Punishment is very powerful and hideous but.
[39:07] Um, deep character. So it's not that it's just, everything is repulsive. Everything is ugly. And it's kind of what's going on with art at the moment is everything's just ugly. Everything's ugly. Uh, it all just in the final stages of collapse and programming you to have no culture that you want to defend. So you can be taken over. This is the asset that eats down the barriers so that your walls can be pushed in and you can be taken over.
[39:31] So yeah, I really wanted to write that. And I had the most amazing review. It was a PhD, a graduate student, PhD in literature, wrote the most amazing review I've ever seen of any book talking about this is finally the great Canadian novel. This is finally a coming of age moral story that is practical and powerful and the characters are vivid. The descriptions are wonderful, blah, blah, blah. And my writing teacher did help me with the descriptions because I was very much writing in my head. and she gave me advice like, you know, how about in the university, how about a woman walks across the quad with a red backpack on and things like that that just really help make things more grounded and vivid. And I've never seen a review like that. Turns out he actually had a PhD in literature and theology, and he loved the Christian implications of the novel when, of course, I was not pro-Christian back then at all, but he kind of got it. So I think you have to or creativity also comes out of disgust it comes out of just like a a virulent hatred for what is and a desire to replace you know if you have if you move in to an apartment.
[40:43] And the walls are painted some horrible color, then you'll go out. One of the first things you'll do is you'll go out and you'll buy paint and you'll repaint the room. Say, well, where does all that creativity come from? Where does all of that energy to go and find the right paint and pick the right paint that matches your furniture or matches the furniture? And it's because you hate the color of the wall. You hate it. And so you go out and do something new. You go out and paint something new. Go out and make something new. Go out and get something new. So a lot of people think that creativity is just this elevated positive thing that points towards, a new and beautiful thing and there is that aspect of it but i think people underestimate just how much creativity is driven by sort of hatred and contempt for what is in the art world already, and i think i very much wrote the god of atheists in contempt and recoil because i you know i was struggling in life like we all do with corruption and liars and cheats and all of that, sophists. And I remember reading a bunch of books and like, there's nothing here for me. There's nothing here that's going to help me.
[41:56] It's all extreme situations or I can identify with the people, but there are no morals.
[42:06] And so i really wanted to write something to fill the void in guidance that i was not receiving in any of the art that i looked at and that came out of a particular kind of hatred and contempt for art that was and of course i think that's why people had hatred and contempt for what i was creating was because it really i think they sensed that it came out of a hatred and contempt for what they had been uh creating if that makes sense so again long speech but i hope that But don't be afraid to let your creativity come out of, you know, pure bottomless hatred for what is.
[42:41] Thank you. I appreciate the answer, and I appreciate you speaking about the good of atheists as well. It's great to hear because, again, it's inspiring and moving, and I like your inspiring speeches a lot. I tend to steer away from the political kind of stuff and just the more typical media topics, because maybe it's the disgust that you're trying to invoke creativity in people.
[43:09] Sorry, maybe it's what?
[43:10] I find because you speak about a lot of like the world issues and you were just saying how disgust can spark creativity. But I tend to like prefer more of your like deep inspiring conversations rather than the media style ones. Like, but I guess maybe what people need to hit is the reality of the world to spark. Oh, we need to do something about it.
[43:34] Yes yes i think i i also want to we don't have too many warning characters anymore i remember there was an old movie i saw with the girl i was dating at the time scared the crap out of me i think it was called the good father with anthony hopkins and it's about a guy who's just volatile and aggressive and distant and and so on and ends up just you know completely isolated walling up his garden at the end. And that was like a real shot across the boughs and so on, that I really need to, you know, follow EM forces commandment to only connect, just find ways to connect with people and life will be better. But... We don't have too many warning characters anymore. And warning characters are, here's what happens if you take the wrong path. Here's what happens if you take the wrong approach, or you fail to take care of your own integrity, or you fail to be honest, and so on. And warning characters, to me, are very, very important in the world, so that you can read things and get goosed, right? So in my novel, The Present, there are a couple of warning characters, of course. The old aunt, Aunt Crystal, is a warning character of putting ambition ahead of relationships and vanity ahead of connection.
[45:02] And Arlo, it sounds like a kind of Greek cheese. So I remember my daughter, when I read her one of the chapters, she said, oh, a cheese boy is sad.
[45:11] So arlo of course is another that you can you can disconnect from the world out of fear of the future and thus render yourself impotent to change anything and the world will then overtake you of course um the character of rachel is a warning character and also the the her sister as well because the warning character is don't respond to power respond to vulnerability because she obeys her boss, but won't put, take her child out of daycare because the child has no power and her boss has power. So, I think warning characters are really, really important in literature, and we just don't have them really anymore. There are good guys and bad guys, but, and then you watch the good guys beat up on the bad guys, but there aren't warning characters about how to avoid becoming a bad guy because, you know, bad guys aren't just born, right? They're not doing this to pop into existence. And they don't just suddenly become evil. Corruption or evil is a step-by-step process.
[46:14] And trying to find ways to avoid that. And of course, Joanna is a warning character at the very beginning of the book, which is, here's what happens if you don't take care of your middle age. You're going to end up horrendously compromised and having to settle for a man you don't respect. And so on. Yeah, I think warning characters are very important. And, I mean, you could say that Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment is a warning character.
[46:46] But Dostoevsky's work was heavily focused on the dangers of rising nihilism, socialism, and communism. And, of course, he started out his life as a socialist and then was arrested and thrown in prison and spent, I think, eight months in pitch darkness so that you could, quote, confront your own conscience. And it was so dark and silent, even the guards who had felt on the bottom of their boots so you couldn't even hear them walking.
[47:10] And then he was dragged out. He was about to be shot. His sentence was commuted two years in Siberia at the last minute.
[47:17] And he found God, and he found Christianity, and he wrote a whole series of warning novels, The Devils, and of course, Crime and Punishment being the two major ones.
[47:27] But he wrote all of these novels, as did Turgenev with Fars and Sons, wrote all of these novels saying, you know, these nihilists, these socialists, they're very dangerous, they're very toxic, and so on. And yet, it was not enough to save Russia. Now, I'm not saying that my books will save the West. I think they've been quite ably countered. But I definitely wanted to give it the best shot I could with regards to literature, because I very much got this from Ayn Rand's novels. I mean, I'm not going to write a better anti-government, anti-corruption book than Atlas Shrugged, or even The Fountainhead. I'm not going to write something better than that. But those books were unable to solve the problem of power and politics and control of the economy. I remember shortly after Atlas Shrugged was published, a very young Leonard Peikoff was like, well, when people read this, all of these controls will be repealed within a year or two. And of course, that's not what happened. And is there any chance to prevent the bad things from coming through literature? And I really wanted to give my best shot at that. And then if bad things did come, at least I would have tried something different than the writers who came before me. And if there was a way to avoid or avert it so much, so much the better. So, all right. Do you have any other questions or comments?
[48:48] No, but I think that is what I love most about your novels, the ones I've read. The feeling you get at the end. I remember when I finished The Present, the feeling I got at the end, it was kind of like, it was before I did food and all of that good stuff. So the feeling I got that the end was just this sort of like abstract it's kind of like a disgust or just like this inspiration but it's not an inspiration in a happy way more like oh Fred you know you gotta get out and do something but it's like that feeling you invoke like the warning sign feeling was is probably one of the I'd say that is kind of like your book in the essence and that's why I love it so much.
[49:34] Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And for more of that, of course, my novel almost is very big about that, because I really wanted to point out how a lot of big things in the world happen out of the most rancid and deep-seated family conflicts, and that's very much.
[49:50] The scope of history has a lot to do with vengeance within families. I mean, I'm talking about the origins of war, and of course, everyone knows that the First World War was actually a family war. Almost everyone who was involved in charge of countries in the First World War, so the kings and queens and so on, were all related. It was a family battle, and family battles on the big stage are often wars. So anyway, I hope that helps. And if you wanted to tell me a little bit about your DFU, I'm sorry to hear that, but I certainly understand the impulse. Did you want to talk at all about that?
[50:24] Oh, it's great. I've got a private call with you tomorrow in two days. So that will be great there.
[50:31] All right. We'll do it then. And let's not have you spent money ahead of time. All right. Well, thanks. I appreciate that. It's great, great questions. And of course, I do love talking about my theories and practices of novel writing. And so I do. I do appreciate that. All right. If you have anybody else that has questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems, whatever is on your mind, you can just raise your hand. Mr. Nolan. Great. That's a great logo. All right. Go ahead, my friend. What's on your mind?
[51:05] Hey stefan good to talk to you you.
[51:08] Too man what's.
[51:09] Up this is a much less substantive and important question but um i imagine with your character arlo in the present i want to know what what happens to him are you are you writing another book on that.
[51:23] I had thought of that in terms of thinking about the next book so, I will talk about a guilty pleasure. And this is unabashed praise for the podcast. It's the only one I subscribe to. And the podcast is called Crime Junkies.
[51:52] I'm your host, Ashley Flowers, and I'm Brit, and it's these two women who are absolutely brilliant at explicating crimes. Now, I find crime interesting to listen to. I actually find it kind of relaxing to go to sleep to, for whatever reason. And one of the things that's really fascinating about crime stories is how many of them are unsolved. There were these characters, these, these, sorry, not characters, sorry, let me rephrase that. These three children in the 1960s in Australia called the Beaumont children, this is sort of back in a high trust society, they were, are young, are 11 and 5 and, I don't know, 7 or something like that. But anyway, they got on a bus and they went to go to the beach for the afternoon and they just disappeared. Never came back, never found. And I won't give you sort of the whole story because it's very long and involved. There is a suspect, but he died. And they would get these, the police would get these tips. Oh, oh, they're buried here, and here's the reason why, blah, blah, blah. And they'd go and dig up places and never found them and so on. And one of the problems I have with novels, and this is true of movies as well, is that you always know what happens to people.
[53:21] You always know what happens. So if you have, you know, five guys who go to war, you know, sort of, if you look at All Quiet on the Western Front was recently remade. And if you look at five guys go to war, you know what happens to each of them. But that's not how life is.
[53:43] I mean, there's literally the tomb of the unknown soldier, which is, I think, is a permanent fire going on it because you don't know what happens. I mean, crime, murders used to be solved at an 85% rate in America. Now, I think it's down to 50%. And it's not because the criminals are getting smarter, trust me. And so a lot of times in a situation of social dislocation and so on, I mean, if the economy collapses, you probably won't know what happens, to most of your friends and certainly extended family if they're not living in the same house and so on. And so you don't know what happens to people in a time of war, in a time of famine, in a time of chaos. I mean, imagine if you are in the civil war in America and you're fighting with your brother, and of course, you know, you get separated in the heat of battle, and then you get injured, you get taken to a hospital, and so on, you probably would never know what happened to your brother. I mean, if he was dead, right?
[54:54] I mean, he would just get blown up, you know, the crows would peck out his face, he would get buried in a mass grave, and, you know, maybe you could find out, maybe you couldn't. But, of course, in a chaos of a battlefield, people get killed, nobody knows who they are. I mean, think of the First World War, you know, people just get machine gunned and blown up with shells and they're still finding bodies in France. So what I was interested with that particular story was I didn't want to cheat because it's really easy to cheat as an author because the author is omniscient. I know what happened to Arlo. At least I could know because I could just invent it, right? And then I could say, well, Arlo went here, he did this, he met this person, and then, you know, and then he fell down a manhole and he was washed away in the sewer. And like, I could know, in a sense, exactly what happened to Arlo. But that's not how disasters work. In disasters, people just vanish. They just despawn, and you never know what happened to them. You know, there are stories of, there's one story of a guy who, you know, his car broke down, and he just wanted to walk to the gas station, which wasn't even that far away.
[56:19] And last time he was on his cell phone, he's like, oh, I think I took a bit of a wrong turn. It's kind of dark around here. He was never found. Nobody ever found him. Might as well have been beamed up by space aliens. So you know people very well, and then they just vanish in times of chaos. But that's also something that happens in life as well. I'm sure you've had it, or maybe you haven't, but I think most people have had it where you're very close to someone and it can be for years and then they move away.
[56:58] And that's about it you never really talk to them you never really see them again and and so on like I was just on on a call last night with some friends of ours, and they moved and we don't really have the chance to visit them and they don't really have the chance to visit us. We used to be sort of an hour, hour and a half away from each other. Now we're like a day's travel away from each other. And, you know, we'll probably stay in touch and touch base. But there are other people in my life. I mean, I've had a friend for 30 years, haven't talked to him in, gosh, I had a friend, I had a friend for 20 years, haven't talked to him in 20 years.
[57:43] And so there are people who just vanish. I mean, people I've worked with in this show before. We're super close, you know, we're in combat together, we're like band of brothers, battle-hardened mercenary veterans, and then we just part ways. For whatever reason, they get busy with their lives, I'm busy with my life, and we just never really touch base. So I really wanted to explore just what if I'm not an omniscient author and somebody vanishes.
[58:15] And you don't know what happened. And I think that to me is interesting because it's violating. I mean, if I was writing this from the first person perspective, right? Like I, you know, let's say the character was Rachel, right? Then I could get away with not knowing what happened to Arlo because Rachel may not know what happened to Arlo if she kind of takes off and then, right, he just despawns. But because I'm writing at third person Right he she they, Then I absolutely have The ability, To tell you What happened to Arlo Because Arlo cannot hide from the all seeing Sore on eye of the omniscient author But I wanted people to sympathize More, With Rachel and Rachel wouldn't know So I wasn't going to tell the audience something that Rachel didn't know, because that brings the audience closer in sympathy to Rachel. Does that make sense?
[59:24] Oh, no, that makes perfect sense. And I figured it was something like that. I just wanted to ask you, and I think the way you explained it was perfect. It reminds me of, I mean, I grew up in the 90s and my parents were obsessed with nancy grace and i remember natalie um holloway i think was the blonde girl that was missing i think, in aruba or something like this jump in a yeah, It could have been. I used to know all of these.
[59:51] Wait, sorry. Do you mean the little beauty queen pageant girl or was it someone else?
[59:56] No, I believe she was on like a spring break college trip with like some of her friends and she met some some other guy. I forgot his name. He was this attractive guy. I think he was from Holland or something. And he was suspected of, you know, murdering her, but I don't think they were ever able to pin it on him. Maybe they were. But what you just said kind of reminded me of that.
[1:00:16] Oh yeah there's uh there were two girls hiking and they were followed by some guy that even took pictures of him and then they vanished but the pictures were too blurry to find the guy so you literally have a picture of the guy who probably killed and and hid the bodies of these two girls, and uh boom just can't find him it's a bit too blurry and i mean my of course uh in in the first World War, I had many distant relatives who just vaporized on the battlefront. And then, of course, as I've talked about before, my grandmother was killed in Dresden and they only found the clasp of her purse. Now, of course, they kind of knew what happened to her because she was in one of the worst bombings in human history.
[1:01:00] But they were never able to find a body. And this was, of course, a huge, sorrowful problem in the World Wars is that people just vanished, uh missing presumed dead right missing presumed dead and and there's no closure you don't get a body and you never know what what happened to them and uh so in a i think it also communicated a general state of chaos because you know the fog of war and the fog of catastrophe, is really powerful like you know society collapses you're not going to know what happens to 95 of the people you knew.
[1:01:35] You just, they're just, you never, I mean, maybe if power is restored and so on, you can find them again and so on. But people just, they just vanish in times of chaos. And I thought if I give tidy endings to every character, that's not giving people a sense of the chaos and lack of knowledge that's going on, if that makes sense.
[1:01:53] That makes total sense and i'm glad you wrote it that way again it's just the curious part of me that was was wondering if you had like some subplot somewhere but i you know what i i like i like this this way a lot better thank you for taking the time oh.
[1:02:08] Thanks and i i really do i really do appreciate arlo as a character and you know arlo's hollowness and nihilism to me, is very much explained by his, you know, creepy semi-pedo parents, right? Because his parents are in this absolutely pristine condo with the most horrifying art in the world. And I don't know if you've ever seen this kind of stuff, but every now and then, I'm just a curious guy, right? Every now and then, if I'm driving along, particularly if I'm with my wife, we're sort of driving someplace And God help us, it's in that 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday thing, right? But we're driving along and it's like open house, right? And I like looking at houses. I just think it's kind of neat. And so I remember there was an open house and it was a really, really expensive house. You know, one of these places with these big giant hallways and wings that go off in either direction and it's open concept, so open concept, you could like land a helicopter if the roof was open, that kind of stuff, right? Of course, it's nothing that I would ever buy or anything like that. But anyway, so my wife and I went in and we were given this tour.
[1:03:32] And in a good chunk of the rooms was the creepiest, weirdest art. And I've seen some pretty creepy and weird art over the course of my years. Lord knows stuff was coming out of the Podesta emails that would just make your hair stand on end. But this stuff was just weird. You know, blank-eyed people with like weird German outfits, holding rubber gloves with dead dogs at their feet. like just like really weird, weird, semi-demonic stuff. And of course, the house was completely cleaned out of furniture. There was just this weird art on the walls. And it just was, I remember looking up the artist, it's like, just like gives you the shivers, right? I couldn't eat dinner in a place like that for fear of, you know, consuming half a mountain of human flesh or something like that. And so Arlo's really creepy parents, and the fact that even when they go away, he will only go into the house to flush the toilets and water the plants and gets out as soon as humidly possible. That means that, you know, terrible stuff happened to Arlo. And when really bad things happen to people, and they're physically beautiful, they're doomed. They're doomed. Because nobody cares about their inner life because they're so pretty.
[1:04:52] And the only chance you really have of overcoming trauma is to not be too pretty, because then people might take an interest in your inner life. But because he was so gorgeous, and he was so hauled out by his incredibly horrendous parents, and whatever horrible stuff. I mean, this is the kind of family that, you know, they pass kids around their rings, so to speak, right? So, he really didn't have much of a chance to have any kind of better life. And also, Arlo had such a hollow and empty inner life that he may have gone out into the world looking for death. A lot of people who have severe trauma and nobody's really taking any interest in their trauma. And certainly, Rachel didn't really show any interest in his inner life at all because he was so pretty. And Arlo may very well have gone out looking for death. It's a sadly common occurrence with people who've got a lot of trauma and nobody who really cares about that aspect of themselves so lordy lordy people are going to get me talking about my books this is a this is a a lengthy chat uh anything else.
[1:06:01] That you wanted to bring up or mention no i mean that was perfect i mean something that you said about um just going on these open house sort of tours with you know your wife sort of reminded me of what really um turned me off from jordan peterson many many years ago i remember watching a live stream of his and i believe it was um his house and just seeing some i was gonna say interesting but really ugly like communist art i mean that sort of just turned me off and it makes me think about michaela peterson and all these different things and her outcomes and stuff so yeah totally agree with you there yes.
[1:06:38] Well i think he said that he surrounded himself with soviet stuff to remind himself of the dangers of totalitarianism and so on.
[1:06:48] But Jordan Peterson knows a lot about how to save the world that he's not talking about. And I think that's a real shame. But again, I don't know if this is true, but there were reports on X that he was getting $300,000 plus for a speaking engagement. Honestly I just find that really gross I mean if you have wisdom and things of value to offer this world there should not be a big giant financial barrier.
[1:07:21] To giving people access to that wisdom to me like if Jordan Peterson of course, is a very strong intellect and a very learned and a great communicator in many ways and so the idea that Oh.
[1:07:38] He would charge, you know, at the price of a condo. Now, if this is true or not, again, I don't know if it's true or not, but this is what I read and I can't guarantee it. But if it is the case that he would charge $300,000, $400,000 to go and talk at a university. Now, of course, some of that's going to be security. So I get that the price of what are the reasons that less left-wing or maybe even more, I don't know if he would be classified as right, wing, but let's just say skeptical of the left wing. One of the reasons that you get attacked is so that your costs go up for your events. Venues are less likely to book you. And then you have to, I mean, when I was in Australia and we were getting a lot of threats, I had to pay for a lot of security. And that of course raises the price of things. And so I'm not saying that that's all his fault. But I mean, I think he has enough money. I mean, he's had a true number one bestselling books. He's obviously made a lot of money off his YouTube channel. He's got the Peterson Academy. He had the self-authoring program. I think, I think he's got enough money.
[1:08:51] And I'm not sure why he would need so much more if it comes at the expense of people receiving a message that's important, right? So I assume he would go to a university in order to give a speech that wasn't just something he'd said before. So it would have to be new information and something like that. And so why you would have that kind of barrier to entry, I'm not quite sure.
[1:09:16] Uh, but I guess, uh, maybe there are good reasons that I don't know about, or maybe the story is, is false implanted. So, uh, this is not, this is not a criticism of Jordan Peterson because I know, right? This is just, you know, in general, the principle to me is if you have important things of value in particular of moral import to say to the world, I don't think that you should have a very high barrier to entry. Now, of course he could say, well, but it's the university that's paying that, not the students and so on. But that's, that would be a bit facetious because the university has to pay that somehow. It's not like coming out of the personal pockets of the, the, the dean. So yeah, I don't, I don't quite understand that. But I think once you have a certain amount of money, you should really focus on getting as much good out. I mean, and this is something that Elon Musk is actually quite passionate about. And he was sort of saying the other day that like wealthy people should care more about America, because if America goes down, their wealth will vanish, or at least be severely curtailed. And if America goes down, where are they going to go?
[1:10:27] And this is why, obviously, Elon Musk is all in on trying to rescue the politics. And of course, he's got a very personal stake in it, because I think one of his children ended up going trans because I think he put them in a very, put the child at a very trendy school that I think promotes that kind of stuff. And I think he had issues with that, which whether you like it or don't like it, you can certainly understand a father because I think it wasn't just a trans thing, but I think his, his child disowned him and so on. And so, yeah, that's, so I think that's a man who's like, well, no, I'm not going to have a barrier to entry. I'm going to try and get as much wisdom. In fact, I'm going to spend my own money to try and save things. And.
[1:11:14] That's always a question I have with people as a whole, which is, okay, well, how much money is enough? How much money is enough? I try to have, you know, I ask for donations, of course, fredomain.com slash donate. If you'd like to help out the show, it's very gratefully appreciated. But I'm not jamming this full of ads. And I'm also trying to lower the barrier to entry as much as possible for people to get a hold of what I'm talking about. So maybe there's good explanations for all of that, but it just seems odd to me. Uh that very wealthy people are still charging a fortune to hear them and it's something i don't quite follow but maybe there's a reason for it that i don't particularly understand so, all right anything else my friend.
[1:12:03] No no thank you and and by the by um i was interested in looking into one of jordan peterson's speaking tours a few years ago and it was like three or four hundred a ticket and $50 for an art, an autograph. So, you know, that shut me off at that point when I was broke.
[1:12:18] So he was $50 for an autograph.
[1:12:20] That's right. Yeah.
[1:12:22] Really?
[1:12:23] Yes.
[1:12:25] Huh?
[1:12:27] Yeah. Everything you're saying is completely on the money. He's, you know, I'm not like, like yourself. I don't presume to know his intentions or anything like that, but I mean, it's, it's very expensive to hear him talk and to get an autograph from him. And yeah, he's a very rich guy.
[1:12:43] So, yeah, according to AI, as of September 2024, his speaking fee typically ranges from $200,000 to $300,000 for in-person events in the U.S..
[1:13:02] So, I, you know, I got to find, just my own particular thoughts, I just, I mean, I remember one of my best memories of what was a very vivid trip to Australia and New Zealand. Very vivid. I'm very glad that I did it. And one of my favorite memories was sitting with my daughter and we sold books. I mean, they were very cheap. I think they were at cost plus a buck or two for the fact that we had to get them shipped there. So we we sold my books and of course i met people and i signed them all for free the idea that i would say oh a signature is 50 bucks i mean that would just make me feel like some sort of cheap chiseling lunatic but i i just remember my daughter who was obviously quite young well i was quite young she was about 10 or 11 back then and and sitting with my daughter of who was very excited because for her it was like the middle of the night because we were so time zone flipped but meeting people chatting with them and i signed my books and my daughter signed, next to me i just i just have a great memory of that but to me the idea of charging 50 bucks for an autograph is um it's incomprehensible honestly it's incomprehensible um because i just want people to really get into philosophy and not make 50 bucks from a two-second scribble on a piece of paper but wow that's really something and i mean i don't know it has people have people estimated this uh net worth question or net worth issue i.
[1:14:31] Met i imagine and the guy's got he does pretty well for himself.
[1:14:36] Right and that is always the question is is you know how much how much is enough? I don't, I don't know. Let's see here. I wonder if, let's see. Let me do some live typing here. I don't know how accurate these things are, but. 8 million estimated. Again, who knows whether that's true or not. Some people said 89 million. I don't know about that. That seems a bit a bit high. It seems a bit high.
[1:15:17] 8 or 89.
[1:15:21] That's pretty funny. Jordan Peterson revealed he once earned $400,000 a month. That was Yahoo Finance. Yeah, I don't know, man. I mean, I'm sort of struck by, I mean, Napoleon said, like, you can only sleep in one bed. You can only eat one meal a night, right? You can only sleep under one roof.
[1:15:44] Yeah.
[1:15:44] And I don't know. It's an interesting question. I guess everybody has to ask that for themselves is how much is enough?
[1:15:53] And I'm very much like, okay, so every additional bit of money past a lot is worth less. So I don't know. And I suppose, I mean, maybe people get stuck into measuring, you know, it's really tough to measure what you do, particularly in the realm of philosophy, right? So if I were to say, well, I'm going to measure my income. Well, of course, income cratered after deplatforming. Does that mean I'm a worse philosopher? I don't think so. I'm going to measure my quality as a thinker by the number of people who are reading and listening. Well, of course, those numbers went down enormously after deplatforming. Does that mean I'm a worse philosopher? You know, it's really, it's tough to know how to judge things. And I mean, my approach has just been.
[1:16:44] How much great work do I think that I'm doing? How much interesting and useful and powerful and insightful and hopefully rational and empirical work am I doing? And I have to measure myself, not relative to dollars or eyeballs or anything like that, or live stream participants.
[1:17:07] Because, you know, I used to stream to, you know, 6,000 plus people and all of that kind of stuff. So obviously that's down a smidge, but does that mean that I'm, if it's gone down 95% or whatever, does that mean I'm only 5% as good a philosopher as I used to be? Well, I don't think that's, I don't think that's the case. So I just, I, you have to, for me, I have to find a way to measure my work independent of numbers beyond my control.
[1:17:35] I mean, deplatforming when like 90, 95% of people didn't follow me one website over, I didn't have control over how many people followed me. Obviously, I tried to do good work after I was deplatformed. And I think I personally think I've done some great stuff, but I don't have any control over that. So I try not to measure. I mean, I have to measure things. Otherwise, I'm just, you know, spinning in the wind. And it's easy to get self-indulgent if you don't have some sort of way of measuring what it is that you do. But for me, I try to measure what I'm doing relative to creativity and originality with regards to philosophy. Am I providing something new? Am I providing something insightful? Am I providing something actionable? And so on, right? I mean, I did a role play with a listener the other day in a call-in where he introduced me to his suicidal alter ego, and I took on the devil that was trying to take him down. That's new. I haven't done that before. The Bible series, the series that I'm doing on Bible verses. That's new for me. I did a great one today, I think. So, I have to find a way to measure what I do.
[1:18:46] Outside of any numerically objective metric that is beyond my control. And that's a tricky thing to do. That's a tricky thing to do, but I think the best work comes out of that. I mean, I'm sure, as you know, the most famous, one of the most famous painters in history, Vincent van Gogh, or as a Dutch girlfriend I once had told me robustly, it's Vincent van, Vincent van Herbal. And he sold only one painting.
[1:19:16] Over the course of his life. So he had to find a way to measure what he was doing independent of any material success. Whereas there was another writer who wrote what later became, I can't remember the name of it, a very famous comic novel, couldn't get it published, killed himself. Well, no more novels coming out of that versus, you know, someone like Stephen King, who puts child orgies in his books, which is completely repulsive. And of course, he sold about a zillion books and made a zillion dollars. So how do you measure the value of what you're doing independent of objective metrics beyond your control? Because if you get sucked into objective metrics, then you chase those metrics at the expense of your integrity. Like if I was chasing eyeballs and income, then I wouldn't have taken on the controversial stuff that he took on, which to me was very important, absolutely essential. And so, you know, if you're chasing numbers, it's real easy to let go of your integrity. But chasing integrity means you have to kind of let go of the numbers, if that makes any sense. So it's a big challenge. And I think 50 bucks for a signature is probably chasing the numbers a little bit too much, if that makes sense. I agree.
[1:20:37] Stef thank you for taking the time.
[1:20:39] You're welcome great questions i really really appreciate that thank you so much bye now all right well look at that bitcoin's down over seven thousand dollars i wonder why i wonder why i mean i don't i i'm like i'm like i have this minor like oh and then i honestly forget about it within a minute or so i'm really i'm really bad at, hanging on to any of this kind of stuff emotionally but all right everyone thank you so much for a lovely evening's conversation. I really do appreciate it. And of course, all the books we're talking about, you should absolutely check out. They're great, great stuff. And you can get those at freedomand.com slash books to support the show, freedomand.com slash donate. I appreciate that. And I promise not to charge you three to $400,000 for a speech. So have a beautiful evening, everyone. Thank you so much. Lots of love from up here, my friends. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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