0:03 - Introduction to the Conversation
0:38 - Technical Difficulties
12:23 - Reflections on War and History
12:41 - The Impact of Historical Trauma
13:49 - Writing Process and Challenges
16:04 - Exploring Depth in Storytelling
18:07 - Creative Exploration in Writing
19:55 - Transition to Audience Questions
20:21 - Therapy vs. Philosophy
21:39 - Understanding Models of the Mind
22:54 - The Role of Values in Therapy
27:09 - Universal Truths vs. Personal Truths
32:50 - The Nature of Victimhood
35:32 - The Concept of Schemas
37:00 - Historical Context of Truth
40:44 - Social Mobility and Self-Perception
46:45 - Mindset and Modern Psychology
48:38 - Philosophy vs. Psychology
52:56 - The Allure of Conflict
57:55 - The Dynamics of Sibling Rivalry
1:04:56 - The Moral Dimension of Violence
1:13:18 - The Illusion of Fiction
1:24:56 - Truth's Dual Nature
1:30:22 - Truth and Its Challenges
In this extensive discussion, Stefan delves into the philosophical nuances of creativity, writing, and the complexity of human relationships, particularly in the context of sibling dynamics and societal conflicts. The conversation begins with Stefan expressing gratitude toward the donors who support his work, while navigating some technical hiccups with his equipment. He outlines his approach to writing, emphasizing a desire to explore new ideas and avoid redundancy in his materials, particularly as he embarks on writing a new book. He reflects on the creative process, sharing personal anecdotes about his previous novels, including historical and philosophical narratives that explore themes of war, societal structures, and human psychology.
Stefan transitions into a more profound exploration of the perpetual conflicts within familial relationships, particularly sibling rivalry, and speculates on the motivations behind these dynamics. He suggests that parents' unresolved issues often manifest in the conflicts between their children, probing the psychological implications of this behavior. He invites callers to share their thoughts, creating an interactive atmosphere that reveals both personal experiences and broader societal insights. One caller brings forth the idea that parents may feel compelled to instigate conflicts to maintain their own sense of authority, creating a cycle of rivalry that is difficult to break.
Throughout the discussion, Stefan emphasizes the role of perception in shaping individual experiences of conflict and victimhood. He contrasts psychology's focus on personal truths with philosophy's aim toward universal truths, arguing that personal experiences can distort one's worldview and lead to detrimental patterns. He encourages a shift in mindset, advocating for the idea that one's self-image need not be permanently shaped by past experiences, especially in today's society of greater social mobility.
Further into the conversation, the dialogue shifts toward the societal fascination with conflict and violence as depicted in media. Stefan and callers explore the psychological satisfaction derived from narratives that feature underdogs overcoming adversity, likening these tales to the moral frameworks people construct around violence and justice. The discussion delves into why audiences are captivated by fictional fights and rivalries, connecting these themes to deeper societal injustices and the human experience.
Stefan concludes with a rich reflection on the nature of truth and the complexities it introduces into personal and societal relationships. He acknowledges that the pursuit of truth often brings new challenges and sufferings, while also being essential for personal liberation. This nuanced take encourages listeners to recognize the delicate balance between experiencing hardship in the pursuit of truth and the potential for growth and clarity that follows. Throughout the lecture, Stefan's engaging narrative style combines philosophical inquiry with personal storytelling, provoking thought and conversation among his audience.
[0:00] All right. I think we're on.
[0:03] Thank you for your patience. Sorry, it was a couple of minutes late. It's a little bit of a maze to get to the premium style over here on Telegram. But of course, thank you so much for dropping by today. And of course, in particular, thank you so much for your support of Freedomain and this meaty philosophical conversation. I really, really do appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And.
[0:38] I moved my head briefly and the headset went crazy. All right. Hang on a sec. There we go. Oh, so technical. All right.
[0:50] There we go. All right. so uh this is of course a big thank you to the donors to you who help out so much and keep, things chugging and alive thank you so so much and also of course it is your show, so i'm here to answer any questions that you have respond to any criticisms whatever you like. If you would like to ask a question, make a comment, challenge, denigrate, whatever's on your mind. I have been working quite a bit on the new book, which is very interesting. Every time I write a new book, I try not to have written anything I've written before. I try not to write anything that I've written before. And that keeps it interesting, keeps it spicy. But, of course, the big challenge is, I really don't know what the hell I'm doing. You know, I mean, there are writers, of course, there are a lot of writers who, you know, kind of write the same thing over and over again. And, I mean, nothing particularly wrong with that, but it would not work for me. I have a sort of strong preference, I suppose.
[2:17] To making sure that I stay interested in whatever it is that I'm doing. And I am a little bit of a, I don't know, I mean, maybe I would say the ADHD stuff. I don't think I have never even remotely categorized myself in that context. You know, people just say ADHD because they're usually not smart enough to keep smart kids engaged, in particular smart boys engaged attention deficit is i can't keep you interested, i just can't keep you interested and that's pretty challenging so i have to keep myself interested in what i'm doing and that means trying to find new ways of doing things and when i look at sort of the novels that i've written i started off with historical novels because when I was younger, I didn't particularly like the modern world. I still have a pretty ambivalent relationship to the modern world as a whole. Oh, and by the way, I'll keep my eyes peeled on the call list here. So if you have a question or a comment or something you want to talk about, please feel free to raise your hand.
[3:33] And I would be happy to interrupt what I'm saying in order to respond to what you say. So I'll just keep my eyes going here, but I'll talk a little bit about my approach to writing. Whether you find that interesting or not, I think we all have these sort of creative challenges in life. It could be in the business world. It could be in relationships. How do you keep things interesting and moving in relationships?
[3:56] And sort of when I think about the novels, I started definitely with historical novels. My very first novel was called The Jealous, well, no, no, my very first novel was called By the Light of an Alien Sun, it's a science fiction novel, and then I wrote a novel that I got about probably two-thirds of the way through and ran out of steam, which was about boarding school.
[4:20] And then, and then, and then I wrote a novel, which was my first real novel called The Jealous War. It's the first one that I finished. And then I wrote Revolutions. And of course, The Jealous War and Revolutions were both historical novels. One was First World War novel. And the other, of course, was a sort of late 19th century novel set in Russia about a very fascinating historical character revolutionary called Sergei Nachayev. And his mentor, Alexander Horsin, and these were all historical novels because I really wanted to write novels of ideas, of philosophy, of depth and power, of that kind of stuff, and, dear Lord, I mean, maybe it's because time washes away the detritus and leaves you with the gold, right? That is not a gold panner, right? So the reason why you pan gold is because gold is generally heavier than other elements. Because gold is heavier than other elements tends to sink to the bottom, and using that property is why gold panning is a thing, why gold panning works.
[5:28] And I suppose if you look back in the past, all the trashy, inconsequential, frothy stuff is gone, and you're left with the stuff that has, you know, hopefully some deeper meaning and power. And so I found that by going into the past, I was able to extract more depth and meaning from the world that was, because in the world that is, depth and meaning seem to be largely absent, to put it as nicely as humanly possible, significantly absent, elementally absent. And, of course, they were two very different environments.
[6:12] The Western Front and World War I, very different environment from the intellectual battles in mid-late 19th century Russia. And then, and then, and then, I wrote The God of Atheists, which was a modern comedy.
[6:30] Where it is from the young that the depth and power come. The basic principle or the idea is that the old older people teach the young kids to ask questions to think be skeptical and then they think that they'll turn that on the world as a whole and then it turns out that they turn that curiosity and skepticism on their own parents which is both funny and uncomfortable for everyone involved and then I wrote almost And that actually came up almost as a big, big old 340,000 word. Basically, it's three novels are set in England and Germany and France and other places in Europe, throughout First World War all the way through to the opening days, the Second World War. And that actually came out of listening to an audiobook that was the life of Churchill. And I found that I was, and I still feel that even now, it's like a quarter century since I wrote the book, I think it's my best book in many ways, but the war, my God.
[7:50] I mean, I started with the First World War, and then in some ways hit my peak with the Second World War.
[8:00] Because i feel you know i'm just sort of thinking about this many years later and i don't know if you guys have war stories of course if you're american you would have the vietnam war perhaps with an older grandfather even left over from now probably not by this point you'd have to be very all for the Korean War. But I feel like, for me, the two wars of the 20th century, did not end. Never quite ended. Which is why I think, when I dip into that history, it has so much power for me now. And I've been thinking about this more and more lately as I get further and further away from my childhood. I mean, of course, you know, the goal is hopefully that you get some kind of...
[8:56] Clarity on your childhood. Particularly if you've had a rough childhood. I'm sort of very aware of the passage of time. I've seen those, those lines of your life, you know, you make it to 80. Well, I'm 59 this year. So, you know, three quarters through on average. And so my childhood was 40 plus years ago, 50 in some ways. And so hopefully you get some sort of clarity. And I've been reading about what happened to the population of Germany, at the closing months and really in the half decade after the Second World War. And, you know, in particular, the ravages of the Russian troops who came pouring in from the east. And they had massive rage and hatred of the Germans because, of course, the Russians had suffered so much on the eastern front.
[10:16] And what they did to the population. Girls from the age of 8 to 80 were women, were relentlessly raped. And there's these sort of haunting videos of German women, you know, half dead, dragging themselves along the street, starved. The occupation of Germany, in the sort of late stage of the Second World War and after the Second World War was savage. Now, again, we can say, ah, yes, but they were Nazis who started war. And it's like, well, not the eight-year-olds, right? Not the eight-year-old, whatever you want to say about the collective guilt of the Germans. It was not everyone's fault who was punished. And, you know, of course, thinking of my own mother, born in 37, right? So she would have been eight at the end of the war.
[11:18] And if I look at my mother's sort of disordered personality and chaos, and I won't sort of get into all of the details that reinforce this perception or belief, but I mean, I imagine that she was, like most females in Germany, treated in staggeringly brutal ways, that, the war destroyed her. And then her destruction created a giant tombstone domino that fell down and almost destroyed me. And when I sort of look at that kind of history and I say, okay, well, if I was in a country, if I was a female and I was in a country that had been bombed end to end where there was absolutely no rule of law, and the most savage, orc-type, enraged beasts were roaming the land, raping everything in sight, for a long time.
[12:23] You know, I grew up in a fairly stable world, but my home was chaotic, and of course, both my mother's home and the world was chaotic and evil, almost beyond comprehension.
[12:41] And what happened in the West, the First World War, of course, boom, the Great Thirteen Year Great Depression, Second World War, what happened in the West, you know, it still has me, for sure. And I think I've done a pretty good job of shielding the next generation, at least to my family, from all of that, but very real phenomenon, a very real thing. So I remember when I was listening to the Churchill biography, I found myself just, just broken down by that savage 20th century European history. I mean, I think in many ways, the West, Europe, Western Europe has been dead man walking since, since the fifties.
[13:35] It's such a collective shock and horror that it really can't be processed. Some stuff you can process. I mean, a lot of stuff you can process, but not everything. Not everything.
[13:49] So, I did huge amounts of research. I took 18 months off, actually, to write The God of Atheists, and to write almost, and it was very good for me. Hopefully, if you read the books, and I've gotten some very good feedback on those, but hopefully if you read the books, you'll agree that the books have, significant merit in and of themselves, but it certainly was powerful for me.
[14:17] And then, of course, I didn't write because I was doing my non-fiction, my sort of works on philosophy and relationships and so on, documentaries and so on, and then I got back into fiction, a couple of years ago when I wrote The Future, And then, and I have to thank somebody who reminded me of an idea I put out many years ago on the show where I was talking about a president who was cryogenically frozen and woke up in a free society. How would he be treated? How would he be viewed? And somebody reminded me of that. And I was like, you know what? That would be a nice break or a change. I constantly need to plow new ground in a way. To keep my juices flowing, to keep my intellectual juices flowing. I can't do repetition. I mean, it's not even like I don't want to, like I can't, my brain just won't give me anything.
[15:22] So then I wrote the present, which is the story of the slow collapse of the current civilization, well, slow and then rapid. And now I'm working on a new book, which is a story told in reverse. So it's interesting, challenging, exciting. And I'm really quite pleased at how the analogies and metaphors are flowing. Because in the future, my novel the future, and in my novel the present, analogies and metaphors were not central or core to the story.
[16:05] Certainly the present, by its sort of very nature, a snapshot of the world that is.
[16:14] Is naturalistic, except for Oliver's dream, which is naturalistic in a way, of course, but fantastical in the storytelling. But this one, I want to allow myself to have lucid dreams of people's thoughts and actions. I want to go deeper into character and deeper into history so that people's decisions at the surface are informed. Because, you know, most people that you meet, you see their surface actions. it's kind of like an iceberg right you know like 90 of it is underwater so i wanted to explore the depths and then show how the depths produce the surface choices and people's lack of knowledge of the depths is why their surface choices tend to be so chaotic but that means i have to allow myself and it's hard to fight this because you know it's always too too much metaphor too many metaphors, too many analogies and too much depth. And it's like, but I haven't tried something like this before. And because I haven't tried something like this before, I get a lot of creativity. Whatever I have tried before, I get little creativity.
[17:39] But whatever is new is fertile. I can't even go back to old styles. You know how you leave a, hey, here's an analogy. You know how you leave a farmer's field, you leave it fallow, you let it lie to recover so the nutrients can return. I can't even do that. I am an inveterate explorer. I have to go to new ground. I can only plant crops in ground that I'm clearing for the first time.
[18:08] All i can get all i can do and so i feel um like an idiot i feel i feel incompetent because it's something new but out of that feeling of flailing around i think comes something sort of very fresh for me at least so i'm really am enjoying working on the new book and i i thank you of course it means a little bit less in terms of our shows i did a couple of hours this morning and it's slower than usual. I mean, I remember when I was working on almost, I would sort of obsessively and perhaps a little pathetically keep track of my word count during the day. And I remember sometimes writing three, four, five, six. I remember one 7,200 word day. This is back when I was typing by hand and I'm trying that again. I haven't typed a book by hand in many, many years, probably 20 years or more. And I'm trying that again. Rather than dictating it, trying by hand. And that's, I find, a very interesting process as well. And I think it does actually help with the analogies because typing by hand slows things down a little bit to the point where the ideas accumulate behind my eyeballs. Whereas if I just dictate, the ideas accumulate and I speak them out right away, they don't accumulate and get richer and deeper. So I think slowing down the production speed is actually quite helpful in terms of making the book richer and deeper.
[19:34] So, I appreciate your support and I appreciate your patience. I think this is going to be a very good and interesting story when it's done. And I can't wait to share parts of it as I move forward and go ahead. So, I have that thought.
[19:55] I a bunch of other thoughts as you can well imagine but again i'm here for you and if you have any questions comments issues challenges you can raise your hand, And I'd be happy to hear your thoughts. Just take a moment for that in case maybe you're at work.
[20:15] Hey, Stef. It's so odd.
[20:16] Hey, how are you doing?
[20:18] I'm well. How are you?
[20:19] I'm well. Thank you.
[20:21] So I have a psychological question for you, a psychiatry question for you. I know that from before you are someone who is very pro-therapy, which I appreciate. And in my sessions with clients, I do a lot of Socratic questioning and I do a lot of philosophical reasoning with them. And the lines have started to get kind of blurred for me between what is psych and what is philosophy. And so I kind of just want to know from you, maybe just to kind of give me a new perspective and new shift that I'm kind of searching for and seeking for. Is there still a difference for you between someone who seeks therapy um versus someone who goes to a philosophical understanding um and if so what that difference is and why someone would need therapy over philosophy um and do you still feel uh that psychology has its place considering how much the field has gone downhill right.
[21:27] Right um i don't mean to be the rude guy who's answering a question with a question, but I'm sure that you have some model of the mind that you are attempting to help your clients with.
[21:40] And I was just curious. I mean, if you want to talk about that, we can, or if you would find it interesting, but I would be curious what your model of the mind is for the way that you approach your clients. What is it that you're trying to get them to, or what would you define as a reasonably healthy state? We can't sort of be purely healthy because we live in a bit of an asylum, but what is your model of the mind and what is it that you're trying to achieve?
[22:09] Well, I'm very client-centered. So despite maybe not agreeing with what a client comes into the therapy room for, I still provide for them what it is they're seeking when they come into therapy. And my modality that I normally work with is cognitive behavioral therapy. I really try to help people understand that their feelings can shift when we base our understanding on reality and perception makes a huge difference. And so I really try to get them to look at things very reality-based and what's actually in front of them versus what they kind of interpret life to be. And then I take in, like I said, I take in whatever their goals are for treatment.
[22:54] And I always play the devil's advocate because I want them to be able to understand what their values are and what their beliefs are are on a strong foundation and a lot of times i feel like clients come in and they loosely say these words on what they believe but they don't actually have a foundation that they built these beliefs from and so i work a lot on what their value system is and really make sure that they actually truly walk in those values so that they're not being hypocritical um that they're basically walking in harmony between their behaviors and their actual beliefs um so that is generally the framework in which i work from um and i and i feel that it has a lot to do more honestly with philosophy than it does with psychiatry and so sometimes i even get skewed on like wait am i actually doing psychology is that still a field or am i really helping them determine what their philosophy in life is that makes sense.
[23:55] Yeah beautifully expressed beautifully put i appreciate that thank you so yeah i mean a lot of i'm certainly no expert on on cognitive behavioral therapy but it would seem to me along with this sort of adlerian approach that there's a fair amount of socratic reasoning in it right um i'm anxious well anxious about what well i'm anxious that um my wife is going to leave me okay what evidence is there that your wife is unhappy well she looks at me funny from time to time have you talked to her about it so somebody has a belief i'm anxious because i think my wife's going to leave me and you start probing for evidence and of course if there is evidence well why do you think your wife's going to leave me oh she moved out yesterday it's like okay well and that's not it's not paranoid right i mean she does sound like she's at least um considering leaving in a permanent fashion so it is trying to figure out uh the the truth or the empirical evidence for people's perceptions. And again, I'm sorry to have butchered whatever I've butchered, but is that somewhat close?
[25:01] Pretty much so. Yes.
[25:04] Or somebody says, I have a lump in my shoulder. It's cancer, right? And it's like, okay, well, what are the odds of it being a cancer? Have you talked to a specialist? Have you had a biopsy? Could it just be a lipoma? Like whatever it is, right? It's sort of well known that medical students go through a belief that they have every illness that they're studying and so on and i remember i had a i was i had a colonoscopy uh last year and i looked up the facts and if i probably got this wrong but it was like i don't know like four percent of colonoscopies reveal something uh bad right so that's like less than one in 20 so you know you're probably okay. I don't have any family history and I eat pretty well and all of that. So, what is the worst case scenario? Okay, well, that's the worst case scenario. What are the odds of the worst case scenario coming true? And have you got the information that you need? So trying to empower people with action to find out the odds of what's going on is important and so it was a fascinating question and i i don't want to jump in if you have more to add in in this sort of probing of this relationship so if there's something that you wanted to add i'd be certainly happy to to hear it.
[26:25] No this that's it i mean you you understand exactly what it is that i kind of do and help people understand and make sure that they're very um, logical in their approach to life and and that they're not creating more stress and anxiety and and trauma uh from just overthinking and ruminating in their own thoughts and so yes i bring them down to um a normal baseline whatever you you determine normal to be um but i try to bring them down to a calmer baseline and then and build from there and decide like okay now that we understand what reality is and what's actually in front of you, now let's really determine what's wrong with you. Why are you actually seeking therapy?
[27:09] Right. Okay. Okay. And so philosophy as a whole, this is, again, just sort of feeling my way forward through the topic, and it's a really great topic. It's a really do appreciate the question. But philosophy as a whole is based upon that which is universal, right? And this is sort of the modern distinction, right? So, in the past, it was largely the truth. And now, in the modern world, the truth has been abandoned for my truth. And my truth is a paradox. It's kind of a paradoxical thing. So, there is no my universal truth. Right? There is no my universal truth. So if somebody says, I've been bullied my whole life, if somebody says, I've been bullied my whole life. Now, that is not a universal truth. That is not a syllogistical deductive or inductive reasoning proof of anything. It's simply saying, I've been bullied my whole life. A bullying is a judgment. A bullying is a power relationship. And bullying is, to some degree, a feeling.
[28:25] So philosophy doesn't have much to say to someone who says, I've been bullied my whole life. Now, if you say, what is the definition of a bully? How would you establish that bullying has occurred? What would be the moral remedies for bullying? And so on, right? Those would be universal philosophical and moral questions. When somebody says, I've been bullied my whole life, What they're really saying is, I feel that I've been bullied my whole life. And that feeling is very real to them. I mean, I'm sure you know this infinitely better than I do, but it's very real. And it does tend to become, unfortunately, as you know, like anxiety, a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you're anxious about everything that's tough on your system, because you've got cortisol and adrenal floods all the time, I mean, it can suppress your immune system as far as I understand. I'm sort of no expert, but that's sort of my understanding. So worry can create its own problems. Anxiety can create its own problems. And a feeling of being bullied can create its own problems. Because if you feel like, I've been bullied my whole life, then in new interactions, you're either overly compliant or overly aggressive.
[29:50] And of course i mean i grew up in in a environment of you know some fairly significant extremes it really wasn't until i was in my sort of early to mid-teens that i sort of met people who had a balanced approach to life or who were able to approach sort of new relationships with, you know generalized benevolence and confidence and so on and it was really really important for me to meet those people because if somebody feels oh my god i've been bullied my whole life then, you know, they get a new boss and they're going to expect to be bullied. And what that means is they're going to be.
[30:25] Overly reactive you can't tell me what to do and difficult and all of that because they're just never going to get bullied again in which case things don't go particularly well, or you know they kind of signal submission and they signal oh you don't have to give me credit for my work and it's fine if you ask me to work all weekend and I'll do whatever and I'll like and then they become overly compliant and since most people do what they can get away with right I mean, most people don't have an inner sense of ethics and integrity. Most people do what they can get away with. And so if you behave as a victim, or this person behaves as a victim, most people will end up exploiting them. I mean, some people will say, well, gee, just because this guy obviously has an issue with victimhood, that doesn't mean that he should be the one that I asked to work all weekend. Right but if if for most bosses or most people if you have an employee who's going to be like yeah yeah i'm fine working all weekend uh then that's the person you'll assign to work all weekend because the other people will sort of be annoyed and upset if you ask them to work all weekend and they they won't so that you just go to the person who's the most compliant, and so if you if somebody is a they feel like a victim they in a sense provoke or.
[31:50] Summon exploitation and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy or if they say uh i'm i'm a victim, uh and then they're overly difficult and fight back with their boss on everything because they just don't want to be victimized and can't sort of find that middle ground then you know maybe they end up getting fired and then they say oh well you know of course i'm a victim the one time i stand up for myself i end up getting fired right so then maybe they go back to compliance sort of swing between these two extremes.
[32:19] So, if I were to delineate it, I would say that philosophy is about universal truths, and, Psychology would be more about truth that feel universal, but might not be.
[32:44] Very well put. Yeah, I can see that. And the trick, sorry.
[32:49] No, you go ahead.
[32:50] And and the trick for me is most times not always but most times they feel like their quote-unquote their truth is the truth and and getting them to recognize that no it's actually this little bubble that you've created for yourself and the the truth is actually more liberating and more freeing than you can imagine and if we can adapt to the truth you can find some freedom for yourself and your truth and it's very difficult to get them to to look beyond their little bubble that they live in yeah.
[33:26] Yeah or maybe yeah yeah that's fantastic and i think i would go a little further than that and say that my truth by its definition, is non-universalizable boy that's a new word it cannot be universalized so if somebody says, I've been a victim my whole life. Everybody pushes me around and bullies me. Well, that's not universal. I mean, everyone can't be a victim because if everyone's a victim, who's doing the pushing around or the bullying? So by that very definition, you are dividing humanity into two different classes of people, the victims and the bullies. And And... So philosophically, it's not UPP compliant, right? So the person says, I've been pushed around my whole life.
[34:20] Then that's not philosophical because it can't be universalized because you have to have at least one bully for every victim. I guess you can have one bully for multiple victims if it's online and so on, but it can't be universalized. So then I suppose from a psychology standpoint, I would imagine the question is something like okay not everyone is a victim but you feel like a victim why now they can say look human beings it's it's predator it's a predator prey relationship it's a win-lose relationship you're either a victim or a bully and i don't want to be a bully okay but then then you say of course well are there people in the world who are neither victims nor bullies and i mean i think people as a whole would have to say well yes right i mean not everyone could be a victim or i mean you'd really have to distort society as a whole to say everyone is either a victim or a bully so okay so there's three classes of people right victims bullies and those who are neither i mean i'm not sure it's sort of defining by a negative not for neither victims nor bullies right and.
[35:33] Then the question is why and for me the fascinating question this is part of the call-in shows is what is the genesis of worldviews or or views of the self sorry not worldviews views of the self yes and we.
[35:53] Call them we call those schemas what is your schema.
[35:55] Your schema and now does schema sort of map power relationships or does is it sort of a a view of human nature or Or what is schemas? What's the definition there?
[36:06] I guess schemas would be more how you view the world through your eyes. So through basically a filter that you've put in front of your eyes because of your life experiences and what you've gone through, you have created a schema, a worldview for yourself based upon the experiences you've gone through.
[36:27] Okay.
[36:28] So that's kind of what we call schemas. It's like, oh, okay, well, you have a schema of, like, I'm looking through the schema of always being the victim, or I'm looking through a schema of always being the bully, or I'm, everyone's racist towards me, everyone hates my race. So there's this schema that you've created because of your experience, and that's how you see the worldview.
[36:48] Right. Okay. Okay.
[36:50] Basically a filter.
[36:53] And, of course, the challenge of philosophy is to say that your personal experiences do not equal universal truths.
[37:00] Correct.
[37:01] But, of course, throughout most of human history, and you could argue even now, universal truths were not really available to people, so you kind of had to go with personal truths. I mean, you're growing up in some, I don't know, pretty savage Aztec tribe, and you say, you know, I think that these child-murdering priests are probably not the most moral people among us.
[37:20] Um well then you're you're gonna end up next on the stone altar of somebody digging your heart out with their bare hands right so it was pretty hard to get any kind of universal truth i mean we saw this of course in the jesus and and socrates and plato and aristotle and you know you name it right galileo so personal truths it is and and of course uh if you were a victim and the significant proportions of people in society throughout almost all of human history were actual slaves, right? And for a slave to say, I've been a victim my whole life, I mean, can't really argue with that from a lived experience standpoint. And it's the same thing with the caste system in India where you can't change your caste so you know if you're the at the bottom you say well i've been treated as a i've been bullied and been victimized my whole life and as has my entire family and the caste that i live in well it's kind of hard to argue with that because it's literally codified into the entire social structure if you're a serf in some 19th century russian estate or some.
[38:38] 17th century or 16th century English manner. If you're a serf and, you know, you'll get put to death for catching one of the king's or the lord's rabbits as a poacher, and you say, well, I've been put down and victimized my whole life. Well, yeah, that's kind of true. And you really didn't have a chance to change your state.
[38:59] And Dr. Sowell has actually a really great book, actually, on 19th century slavery in America, where he was talking about the numbers of slaves who were actually able to escape slavery if they had really good ideas or were good entrepreneurs or whatever. They were actually able to sort of buy their way out and escape. But for the most part, that was not something that was available to slaves, right? So they would be, they're born and die slaves, their children would be slaves, and they weren't exactly expecting this most ancient of human evil institutions to be slaves. Done away with by the uh the british over the course of the 19th century so at least for the most part it's still some slavery around in the world so you couldn't really change.
[39:43] So you would have a sort of brand of your status in society you know kind of go hissing into your skin at birth born a serf born a slave born a king born a lord and even of course in the middle ages in a lot of places in europe you had to follow your father's profession right that's why you have last names like smith for blacksmith a baker and so on right farmer you had to follow your father's profession and you could only apprentice within that profession you could only perform that profession and so your self-image or what was branded into you in terms of your social status you couldn't change it and wanting to change it was dangerous it was dangerous to your happiness it was dangerous to your reproductive choices and if you actually did try it it could be very dangerous to your life as a whole.
[40:45] So people's self-image, I think, is in general.
[40:52] Was developed in a permanent fashion in order to survive political and economic restrictions that they were born into. The sort of social mobility of the modern world, would be incomprehensible to people in the past. The sort of churn rate, you know, like 40% of people go from the poor to the middle class, and then a certain percentage of those fall back down into poverty, and some people get to the rich, but then the rich crumble and it falls apart. I I mean, I sort of look at the history of my family in just the last 100, 150 years, at least on my father's side. I know less about my mother's side. I don't speak German, but yeah, from aristocrats, right, to 19th century, owned a lot of land in Ireland. And we trace our way all the way back to the Norman invasion of 1066, which is why we have a French last name in an Irish countryside.
[41:45] And like a you know 900 years of of land ownership and and all of that and fairly high intellectual hobnobbing and philosophy and and psychology and all these things and, you know then of course the first world war we've been involved in wars before but first world war you know massive sections of the male side of the family got wiped out second world war there was more this produced probably uh significant uh addictions in, my grandfather who sold off a bunch of his land to feed his addictions and then, people set sail for academia and uh and then of course i grew up at the bottom of society single mother household and i've managed to claw my way out of that and so so this kind of You know, I sort of look at 900 years of relative stability, and then over the last 100, 110 years, 111 years that it's gone, just oscillated like crazy. Just oscillated like crazy. and this mobility is incomprehensible and I think this mobility has largely given rise.
[43:03] To the practice of psychology because in the past, if you were a slave, I mean, imagine that you were a psychologist in sort of ancient Greece and some guy comes to you and says, well, I've been a slave, I was born a slave, my children are born slaves, they'll die as slaves. And I just feel like I feel depressed about being a slave. I mean, what are you going to say?
[43:32] Well, you're going to have to figure a way to reconcile it with it. Right? In the same way, you know, if some patient comes to you and says, you know, I'm tortured and obsessed with thoughts of death. It's like, well, I understand that. That is the human condition. That is life as a whole.
[43:55] And you're going to have to find a way to reconcile with the fact that you're mortal because there is no escape from that i was just reading the other day that people who got, cryogenically frozen pretty early on they basically just turned into a bunch of thick good protein slop at the bottom of the containers and of course there's nothing left at all of them, right? So even that goal or hope to escape death, at least for the early adopters, did not work very well, or it didn't work at all. So in the past, where there was very little social mobility, you couldn't say to a slave, well, you're not really being bullied. It's like, well, yeah, you are. You're a slave. You have no choice over your day. You have no choice over your occupation. You have no choice over your activities. And maybe you could say, you know, try to get the moments of relative freedom while you can when you're at home with your wife you know in the same way that solzhenitsyn used to talk about under stalin that a husband and wife could have some freedom of speech as long as they were at home and whispering under the covers of their their bed then you could have some freedom of speech but other than that no not not really at all.
[45:10] So, I think the social mobility aspect of the world, at least in the West.
[45:20] Gives rise to the fact that the hissing brand of status and self-perception that's pushed into you or branded into you when you're a kid doesn't have to be how your whole life goes. For most of human history, if you were a victim, if you were born into sort of the victim classes.
[45:42] Well, you were a victim and you really couldn't get out of it. Couldn't escape it. Maybe you could, I mean, when the new world opened up, that's why a lot of people fled, right? And the new world opened up, people could flee and take that horrible six-week voyage with significant mortality rates just for the opportunity of not being a slave. Get your couple of acres, get your mule, get your livestock, and you can live relatively free. And so you could change things, but you had to, I mean, basically had to risk death on a horrendous voyage and get exposed to an entire new continent's worth of pathogens and germs and so on. It was a smallpox. Yeah, yeah. The natives gave the Europeans syphilis and the Europeans gave the native smallpox. And you just had to go that way. But now, of course, you can change your status by changing your mindset without having to leave the country and do a horrible six-week journey with a significant mortality rate.
[46:45] You're not stuck in some bottom caste system in India. And so I think because changing your mindset can change your environment, psychology now has value, but I'm not sure that in the past too much it would have. And I think that the rise of psychology in a sort of modern form did coincide with the rise of social mobility in mid-late 19th century, that you could go from poor to bourgeois and, you know, from bourgeois to nouveau riche even. And so in the past, sticking with your perceived mindset or sticking with your branded mindset was your only chance for survival.
[47:36] And now it's become a limiting factor now if you perceive yourself as a victim, again in the past if you were a slave couldn't couldn't do anything about it, but now if you perceive yourself as a victim that becomes a self-fulfilling and self-limiting prophecy the breaking of that mindset can liberate you from the mindset whereas in the past if you were a slave breaking the mindset of slave would probably just get you killed or, you know, tortured or beaten up or punished in some horrible fashion. So... I think now because changing your mind can change your life whereas in the past changing your mind could not change your life and in fact would probably just shorten it or make it worse in many ways but I think now changing your mindset uh your schemas right changing your schemas can change your life and I think that's a really it's a wild and remarkable thing that has happened in the modern world or the relatively modern world.
[48:38] So I think that philosophy is about universal truths and permanent truths, and psychology is about beliefs that feel universal and permanent, but can be changed. Does that make sense?
[48:56] Excellent. Thank you, Stefan.
[48:58] You're very welcome. I appreciate it.
[48:59] That's exactly what I needed to hear, so I appreciate it.
[49:02] Good good yeah i appreciate sometimes the great questions give some pretty good answers and i think that was the case for that all right let me just scan through the list here of the people thank you again for joining and thank you again for supporting the show if you haven't recently or haven't in a while freedom.com slash donate to help out the show we still have oh one more day one more day we have one more day for the month and if you could help out the show freedom.com slash donate. I would deeply, humbly and gratefully accept and appreciate your support. Freedomain.com slash donate. All right. So if you just want to raise your hand, if you have anything to ask or to add, or, you know, could be something that you've heard today in the conversation, I would love to hear from you. I certainly have other topics. So I'll just give you a moment here. See if anybody here, you could all be listening at work for all I know. I just can't talk. just can't talk, so I was in conversation with someone the other day, and I was talking about sibling conflicts.
[50:17] And an idea came to me, I won't run it past you, fine ladies and gentlemen, and see what you think. But an idea came to me, which, it was a sibling conflict that was goaded and provoked by, I guess in this case it was the grandmother. other. I won't sort of get into details. It doesn't particularly matter. But I was thinking about this with regards to sibling conflicts. Oh, and you know what? Let me just dip into the chat here for a sec. Let me just dip into a chat here for a sec. So hit me with a why if you've had significant sibling conflicts. I certainly have. I certainly have.
[51:10] Yes. There's Mr. J. Yes, Mr. L. Yes, F. Yes, H. H. Yes, Mr. C. Okay. All right. I appreciate that. Thank you. I appreciate that. Okay. If in-laws count, then yes. Okay. mom i guess what's that brother-in-law yes okay and just to gauge um what proportion of the, listenership this is so hit me with an n if you i know everybody has conflicts from time to time so i'm talking about sort of fairly significant sibling conflicts hit me hit conflicts hit me with an n if you've not had significant or long-lasting sibling conflicts chronic i guess chronic sibling conflicts. I just want to see what proportion of the relationship I would be talking to or about.
[52:09] All right, few people have not. That's good to hear. I assume you have siblings. Doesn't count if you don't have siblings. Okay, so let's see here. Yeah, about two-thirds of you, yeah, about two-thirds of you have had significant conflicts And it's funny because I think this is from a Dr. Phil episode from many years ago, but about 50% of sibling relationships are classified as abusive, like technically, sort of psychologically abusive. They wouldn't be by the terms of what we talk about here, but just sort of in general psychological terms. So, all right. All right.
[52:57] So I wanted to talk about, sorry somebody else had a chat here every family in the first five books of Moses were dysfunctional right right so I wanted to talk about.
[53:19] People love watching conflict. They love, love, love, love, love watching conflict. They love watching fights. I mean, sports, of course, boxing, MMA, martial arts, the octagon, was that MMA? Something like that. But, you know, think of all the action movies that people love. Like tom cruise has these particularly takes half a week or more to record he has this you know unbelievably brutal uh fight scenes i think must be kind of funny for tom cruise like who has these, incredibly difficult shoots like the sort of mission impossible stuff or whatever right he's hanging off airplanes and and all this kind of stuff and and i think in one he wanted to do this this jump that he ended up shattering his ankle about and all of that so he's always wanted to do these stunts and those stunts and i mean when he gets a movie like i don't know tropic thunder where he plays les grossman it's actually terrifyingly funny and jerry mcguire and what was he magnolia as well where he has something where he doesn't have to you know spend three days jumping through a plate glass. It must be kind of nice. It must be kind of nice. But, yeah, people love watching, love watching fights. They love watching fights.
[54:49] And I wonder if that translates as to why parents or family members as a whole, why they so often you, seem to provoke sibling conflicts. I wonder if it's just this Roman Colosseum. You know, they have dog fights, they have cock fights, they have gladiator fights. I mean, you sort of go on. People just love watching fights. And I was just wondering if that is part of why parents seem to do almost everything they can sometimes. Yeah, are you not entertained? Yeah, that's right. are you not entertained people love watching fights, I mean people love watching fights so much that you know sort of in the old wrestling, scenarios which seems you know kind of faked and I think we're pretty faked, they don't care they don't care they'll suspend disbelief right they don't particularly care that it's not particularly real they don't care cheer it on nonetheless less and i remember um before i did the first before i did my first appearance on joe rogan, joe invited my then producer myself to go and watch.
[56:12] Mma mixed martial arts and i you know i don't mind in particular watching fight scenes i tend to fast forward through them these days because you know i'm getting older life's getting shorter and I don't particularly care to to watch the sort of back and forth you know you just want to see how it ends right and you know the other thing too is that I mean I've seen I've seen so many fight scenes over the course of my life that they just become less and less interesting as time I mean there's less and less new stuff right there's no particular you know it's just they have to sort of aim for the people who are not as experienced in watching these things as I am right? So, you know, the, uh, the guy, he looks like he's about to be beaten by the bad guy and then someone behind the bad guy shoots him. Or, you know, he's going to let the, he's going to not kill the bad guy, but then the bad guy, this was kind of actually pretty fun, pretty hilariously parodied in the Minecraft movie, but good guy defeats the bad guy. He's not, he's not going to kill the bad guy but then the bad guy has a secret weapon and he's going to shoot the good guy the good guy turns around and finally kills the bad guy but it's self-defense so it's okay it's okay.
[57:31] And so you know you see these things enough and it becomes pretty tough to be excited by the newness of it all so to speak so.
[57:43] I think.
[57:46] Now somebody says ah I know a person who likes fake wrestling he also seems to find conflict in his life.
[57:55] So I wonder if some, you know, obviously not wholly stable parents end up creating some of these cage mash issues with their kids to watch them fight. And tell me what you guys think. You can type this in, or of course, if you want to chat. Why do you think people love to watch fights so much. I remember when I was a kid, my mother used to go out and she didn't want us to watch TV. So she would lock the TV in her bedroom. And my brother and I very cleverly would climb on the outside of our apartment building, go along a pretty narrow ledge and then climb into her window right so this is this this was back in the early 70s right mid 70s so this is long before air conditioning so everybody just left their windows open all the time and so we would squeeze our way into the uh my mom's bedroom we'd watch tv and then we would we would do as much as we thought we could uh safely and then we would climb out through a window we'd climb along the ledge on the outside of our apartment building. I can't believe people didn't see this or say something, but whatever, right? And we would then go back into our room.
[59:23] And I remember one night we turned on the TV and this is back, I mean, there really were only effectively two channels. There was BBC One. Technically, there was BBC Two, but they never played anything of interest. I remember there was a really high stakes or high stress, sweating up a British lip, rapid fire, game question game show called mastermind and i remember the entire country would shut down whenever there was a bond movie on but there was itv came along i think a little little later and itv was more fun but there was nothing particular a particular to watch the the entertainment options when i was a kid were so ridiculously low uh we had no choice but to go out.
[1:00:09] No choice. We just roamed the neighborhood. And of course, you know, I mean, it's kind of tough for kids these days, right? Because when I was a kid, I was just at the tail end of the baby boom and we lived on this estate with a bunch of other apartment buildings and you could go out.
[1:00:24] Anytime, pretty much day or night, you could go out and there would be like five to 10 kids at least and usually more that you could just play with. You'd figure out some game, you could roam around the woods, you could explore, you could, if somebody had a soccer ball, you could play. Even if they didn't, you could play a game of war with sticks and tennis balls or whatever you could find. And so there was always the glorious anarchy of self-organized, spontaneous games. And, you know, if six, seven, eight-year-olds can do it, then societies. I mean, I think this is the basis for my sort of thoughts about volunteerism or anarcho-capitalism, which was, well, if kids can spontaneously self-organize, create their own rules, enforce their own games, no supervision, no plan, no, I mean, we didn't even have a soccer field or a pitch that we could work on. So we just sort of created our own boundaries. And we would build, you know lean-tos and forts and so on in the woods and all of this was spontaneously self-organized so if kids can do it then society can do it as a whole sorry paul yeah i'll give you i'll open it up in just a sec.
[1:01:42] So anyway sorry back to uh the point of the story lord knows i do have fiction brain at the moment so back to the point of the story uh i remember my brother and i climbed into my mother's, room, turned on the TV, and we watched a boxing match. And of course, there was a boxing match in England and all of that. And I remember just being kind of grossed out. I still remember the sort of vague gray patches of blood on the highly pixelated TV screen. You know, we were lucky to have a 12-inch black and white TV. We used to try and watch Wimbledon, but you couldn't really see what was going on. The ball was just a vague blur. But, and I remember, I must have been probably seven. No, no, wait, hang on. So I was at boarding school from six to eight, and I spent a lot of time at boarding school. I remember one really sad and lonely Christmas there with a couple other kids and one poor teacher who drew the short straw, I guess. And we were there all Christmas. I have no idea, of course, where my parents were. Or my brother, for that matter.
[1:02:51] So probably it was about eight. I think it was just after boarding school. So it was about eight when we watched this boxing match. And I just remember thinking it was just kind of gross and unpleasant. Gross and unpleasant. Just watching guys pound each other. And I've never seen a boxing match since. The only thing I saw was Joe's invitation to mixed martial arts.
[1:03:15] And yeah, it was very, very surreal. we're like i don't know why you'd want to watch people have their faces disassembled in real time, but uh i do think it's a real people love to watch conflict and i guess maybe parents um enjoy you know they pick a favorite they're sort of ridiculously unfair you know they they um give unbound or you know if if you have uh you know you have a kid already you bring home a baby then you know the best way to provoke conflict between the siblings or have the siblings not like each other is to pour ridiculous amounts of energy into the new baby and ignore the needs or reject the needs or push away the needs of the older sibling or siblings and the older sibling or siblings will just end up resenting the baby and hating the baby and feeling ripped off by the baby and and it just sets up this whole conflict scenario and of course you know i mean it's pretty obvious to say you know you have a kid already and you bring home a baby then you should you know, introduce it gently and help the older kid understand and make sure you don't take everything away from the older kid for the sake of the baby and all of that. But it's just, it's so easy to just create these conflicts, just be unfair and lopsided. And a lot of parents seem to do that kind of stuff. And I think it's really quite tragic. All right, Paul, you wanted to sound off if you wanted to, let me see if I can find you here. Yeah, do you want to unmute? I'm happy to hear your thoughts on this.
[1:04:43] Yeah, thanks, Stefan. Talking about the fights and why we like to see them, I don't think it's so hard to understand. I mean, consider any fights we see, we're talking about wrestling and things that are highly contrived.
[1:04:56] Even though that's just theater, there's always this idea that one's a good guy and one's a bad guy. And consider many things we talk about on the show people we grow up with hypocrisy we grow up seeing people in power get away with things that normal people can't get away with and then look at the context you know conversely about fictional violence that it's always some underdog who in real life would never be able to beat up the bad guy you know we see like the karate kid or, any anyone some small little small fry who is just a dedication and then some moral, righteousness takes on someone who's much more experienced in fighting and violence and we want to see it's at least one context we get to see a good guy beat up a bad guy because in our real experience you know if we perceive ourselves as good guys the bad guys are always much more powerful and so it is just a moral outrage and that we get a certain satisfaction it's the same sort of thing people watch like court shows like judge judy and that you deal with jerks all the time our whole lives it's nice for once to see these jerks get a dressing down and talking to things you never see so it's it's not a novel well it is a novelty factor it's something we don't understand there's this moral element to it and i think that's what it really comes down to.
[1:06:11] Like so and this is to some degree the the christian view right that the last become first the first become last the underdogs end up on top and the people on top end up in hell right so what what Nietzsche referred to, I mean, a little unjustly, but not entirely inaccurately, is this resentment, right? That sort of drives a lot of morality that we just want to see bad guys get punished. We can't do it ourselves. It doesn't happen usually under the legal system, but we can at least watch it in the octagon. Is it something like that?
[1:06:43] Well, there's something like that. And notice too, I think the Americans understand it better. There's always a much more moral element to it. Now, like I live in Europe and we've got this idea. We sort of think the Americans are really prudish because sex on TV is much more prudish about that. Something will be restricted if there's a bit of nudity. Whereas in Europe, there could be complete frontal nudity and it'll be PG at worst. But on the other hand, if there's a gun or a violence or anything like that, that'll be restricted in Europe while it's more liberal in America. But I think we're the ones who got it wrong. Because consider whenever there's sex on TV or in movies, it's almost always between a pair that's not married. There's no consequences about pregnancy, disease, or even any emotional consequences. Whereas violent films, it's usually in the end, some good guy kicked in the arse of some bad guy. No matter how evil he was you're so a bit of a satisfaction because it's it's a good guy it's good defeats evil and so i think there is a moral lesson maybe not not to use violence but when to use violence is uh much more positive on the american side than it is over here.
[1:07:50] Well i mean i hear what you're saying of course but it is still largely a fantasy i mean oh.
[1:07:57] It's all fantasy it's all fantasy but we're talking about what is it that we like why.
[1:08:00] Do we like.
[1:08:00] Seeing things like this.
[1:08:01] It's a.
[1:08:02] Pleasant fiction but it is a fiction i acknowledge that.
[1:08:04] Well certainly as leftism takes over more and more of the legal system this is something that solzhenitsyn wrote about, with regards to the the soviet system the communist system was that uh the the guy the guy who stabs you is is is a victim of the economy or circumstances or a bad you know bad upbringing or something like that so he's the victim but if you protect yourself against somebody who's trying to stab you with a knife well then you're the bad guy and you get punished right and this is sort of the right the daniel penny stuff the carl rittenhouse stuff and all of that that self-defense is consistently being undermined so i i think it gives people a sense of release that good guys can use violence uh and and.
[1:08:52] They're praised or rewarded or at least approved of for it. But in general, it seems to me that bad guys can use a lot of violence and good guys, well, they usually get at least threatened, if not downright punished for any use of violence. So maybe this is sort of an escapism fantasy where good guys, because, you know, it's like this meme, you know, that people say violence is never a solution for anything. And then you know sort of frantically flipping through the history book oh hang on wait a minute oh no hang on it just seems to be um that does that certainly is how a lot of questions in in history have been quote resolved is through you know massive amounts of uh of of violence so um it's it's you know good guys and bad guys good that good guys can use violence and be praised for it uh especially in the realm of self-defense um is becomes i think becomes less true over time.
[1:09:55] And i mean there's certainly places in america like in florida um what did they did some guy shot at a cop or shot a cop and then they emptied like 40 bullets into the guy and then the reporter said to the police chief well why did you put 40 bullets into him and he's like well because we ran out of bullets otherwise there'd be more and and i think in in florida and as opposed to say california in florida you know if if somebody breaks into your house i mean i think as a whole i'm not saying this is true everywhere but i think as a whole the philosophy is well uh if you end up with a bunch of holes in you get your lead to cillin right if you end up with a bunch of holes in you because you broke into some guy's house well the moral of the story is don't break into, into people's houses, right? So, yeah, I mean, the idea that, and this is sort of the...
[1:10:48] You know, the young fellow who stabbed the guy, Metcalf, right? I mean, this is self-defense, is it, right? Do bad guys using violence or good guys using violence do better? And I think, in general, over history, you can see it's often the bad guys using violence who do a whole lot better. But I think people do like that fantasy that the good guys using violence are going to just get praised and applauded and all of that. And it doesn't really seem to be the case, right? I mean, so for instance, um, in the draft scenario, the, the guys who get drafted, who use violence in service of the state, those guys are, you know, heroic and they get medals and ticket tape parades and so on. But the people who avoid the draft for whatever reason are, you know, called cowards and bad and all of that. Right. Even though in some ways the draft is equivalent to, or even worse than slavery because you had a much higher survival rate under slavery than you did under, um, most modern wars.
[1:11:48] And so, you know, obviously a slave who escapes, you know, there's, there's all of these underground railroad stuff and all the people who helped the slaves escape, uh, are, you know, now in the modern sentiment. And I understand that. And I appreciate that. I don't disagree with it, but you know, the people who helped slaves escape and get to Canada or wherever they could go or to the North, they were considered heroic, right? And a lot of people on the left right there, oh, you know, the people who helped the slaves escape are great. But, you know, Donald Trump has a bone spur and can't be drafted and suddenly he's a coward, right? And so, you know, avoiding slavery, getting escaping from slavery is heroic and noble and good, but avoiding, you know, what is arguably, you know, in some ways equivalent to or sometimes worse than slavery, which is the draft, well, that's just cowardly and bad, right? So there's It's just all these bizarre standards that people have. But sorry, are you going to say?
[1:12:39] Well, it demonstrates that the reality is far more nuanced than what we see in the fiction things as well. I mean, I'm not excusing people who do resort to violence, wrong or evil, but there is a reason that they became that way. And even the good side, the good people, of course, in films are completely without flaw, at least in action films. They don't really develop these characters as much as people. They're completely without flaw. And the bad guys, it's always Autobots versus Decepticon. I mean, you're old enough to understand my analogy there. Oh, that's a transformer thing? Yeah, that's right. So there's always very good guys and very bad guys, and then they fight, and the good guy wins.
[1:13:19] And yeah, that's the fiction, but that's what we like to watch because that's pleasing to us. But it's exactly as you say. It's far more nuanced. The same actions can be considered good or bad, depending on the context. Yeah, so that was my take on it anyway, Stefan. so thank you very much.
[1:13:36] I appreciate it and that's one of the big things that's going on online at the moment is some people attempting to bring nuance to world war ii god help them and it's not going very well but uh that's you know just evidence i think of more censorship and split some questions you can't ask some questions you can't ask unless you have a completely prescripted answer all right uh sorry let me just check if other people wanted to sound off or sound in, you can just raise your hand. I've got another little bit of time before I'm actually going to go out with some friends tonight and do trivia. Do trivia. I am a very unbalanced trivia player. Um, some things I'm virtually undefeatable, uh, and other things, um, American sports history. No idea. No idea. Yes, you can certainly have the mic. Just unmute yourself, and I'd be happy to let you go for it.
[1:14:37] Hey, Stef. So, on the topic of sibling conflict, I think we sort of drifted into fighting. But back onto the topic of sibling conflict, is it as simple as the parents...
[1:14:51] We didn't drift into fighting. My entire thesis was that people like to watch fighting, and maybe that's what parents are doing, provoking conflict among siblings. i don't want to sound i don't want to sound too disorganized it can happen don't get me wrong but just maybe not right today but go ahead my mistake that's fine um.
[1:15:06] Well i mean so parents aren't like putting their kids in cage matches would be my uh retort so.
[1:15:14] Well but hang on i mean the kids the kids usually can't leave the home correct yeah right and they're provoking conflict so i mean it's not it's not exactly an octagon but it's not the entire opposite either yeah.
[1:15:25] Yeah sorry i was envisioning more like physical combat um is it as simple as the parents live in eternal conflict and they can't solve it so it makes them feel better about their lot by pushing that onto their children or pushing those feelings into other people.
[1:15:44] I see so so like if the parents this is to go back to our earlier uh therapists uh issue around schemas right so if the schema is, human beings have conflict human beings fight all the time then if the siblings don't fight, that challenge is that schema of the parents is it something like that i'm sorry i'm not trying to put words in your mouth i just want to make sure i understand where you're going.
[1:16:06] No that's it like the parents would feel uncomfortable in a sense if if their kids were getting along but they were fighting with their spouse or fighting with their i don't know colleagues or friends or just always in conflict with people.
[1:16:20] Well, and they would lose their moral authority. If the kids at the age of, say, three and five could figure out how to get along, but the parents in their 30s or 40s can't figure out how to get along, then the parents would lose their moral authority.
[1:16:36] Right right so to maintain their authority they therefore have to put the kids into conflict uh otherwise their kids just stop listening to them don't take them seriously what.
[1:16:46] What birds am i hearing.
[1:16:47] Oh sorry i'm working outside no.
[1:16:50] You don't have to apologize i love hearing birds i'm just curious what uh what you what what am i hearing.
[1:16:55] I actually have no idea there's birds everywhere oh.
[1:16:59] Okay you're not an ornithologist dude.
[1:17:01] No all.
[1:17:04] Right and did you uh do you have siblings.
[1:17:06] Yes yes i have uh four siblings two half siblings and.
[1:17:11] How was your guys relationship growing up.
[1:17:14] Uh pretty bad i mean i got picked on like my my oldest brother who is the half brother, is nine years older than me and he would turn my older brother who was 15 months older than me against me so i'd pick on me and you know call me names and all that kind of stuff and then when it came to my younger brother who's four years younger than me i could never be right so it was like if i had an issue with my older brother well he's older so defer to him if i have an issue with my younger brother well i'm older so i need to take responsibility right.
[1:17:49] Right okay okay and has things thought at all over your adult life.
[1:17:54] Yeah things i've thought a little bit because i have applied vulnerability and honesty with my younger brother because we had built up like huge amounts of resentment towards each other and you know obviously that's my parents fault and so that's my that's been my attitude recently and things have thought a bit but, it's sort of like there's so much scar tissue I don't think it's ever going to become a close relationship mm-hmm.
[1:18:24] Right. Okay. Excellent.
[1:18:27] But we were always in conflict and, you know, they, my parents could never solve it. So I definitely resonate with that chronic conflict with your siblings.
[1:18:36] Right. Right. And that just becomes a fixed way of being. And it's just like a language that you speak that you can't undo.
[1:18:42] Yeah.
[1:18:44] Okay. Is there more that you wanted to add? I appreciate your, your input.
[1:18:48] No, that's it. Thanks, Stef.
[1:18:49] All right. Thanks, man. All right. So what else people say? Somebody says our house became peaceful when our parents were away, us kids left each other alone we even negotiated screen time and how much money we would pay each other to bring us chips and soda drinks from the grocery store ah yes my brother's was i'll time you i'll time i'll time you to see how quickly you can go to the store and back.
[1:19:16] I'm so eager to please I still am a little bit alright.
[1:19:23] Chris says people might enjoy watching conflict in order to take their attention away from their inner conflicts or conflicts in their personal lives yeah I think that's quite true, and very insightful thank you somebody writes I like action movies and I think it comes out of my experience as being the oldest, but i was never strong physically i argued with my mom every day my siblings hated me for it, i was also bullied at school and rejected i'm sorry about that action movies always been felt like the underdog winning for me yeah yeah for sure for sure yeah i mean i remember um there was a movie called my bodyguard about a kid being bullied who hires a big kid um really giant kid i just remember the line uh you can't smoke it's gonna stunt your growth the kid was like six foot three or something like that. Yeah, this idea that the underdog is going to have his day. This is the big appeal, of course, of Back to the Future, right? Back to the Future is you've got the Crispin Glover nerdy character. And the Crispin Glover character has that fork in the road. He uses violence to protect the girl from the potential rapist, or the guy who looks like he's going to rape her. I think it's pretty strongly implied. and he uses violence to protect and then his whole life changes.
[1:20:48] I mean, it's a fun movie, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to belittle sort of Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd classic. It's a fun movie for sure and very cleverly put together. But philosophically, it's an absolute mess. The idea that you punch one person and your whole life changes, that it just comes down to one particular individual choice and that is your whole life. And if you just punch that one bully, then that bully ends up waxing your car and you end up being a very successful novelist. And if you don't punch that one bully, then you end up as a sort of lost in space, turbo nerd for the rest of your life. It really does blame the victim, right? I mean, the Crispin Glover character was abused and neglected at home. And that lays some pretty serious train tracks down in your brain and you can't just jump them by you know planting your fists in the face of a a bully or a sort of criminal right it's uh, it is a lovely fantasy it's like the fantasy that uh this is sort of the uh, goodwill hunting fantasy right so the the fantasy which was actually not girl interrupted was very different because girl interrupted there was no big secret that she had to reveal so the um.
[1:22:14] The fantasy in Good Will Hunting and Ordinary People and a bunch of other sort of psychological movies, the fantasy is you are dysfunctional because you have a secret. And then you reveal that secret, you tell that secret, you cry, you throw yourself on the ground, you have a big emotional, you know.
[1:22:36] Space laser orgasm of suffering. And then uh it's all released from you and you're back to normal and uh even though, the matt damon character in goodwill hunting well will i guess uh he grew up in a horribly abused violent and neglected household and became a masochist in some ways because of it right sort of my dad would say you choose what i'm going to beat with you i choose the wrench because fuck you, right? That's sort of the, he becomes a very tough, almost a masochist, like, I'll take more pain because I hate you so much. But the idea that you then, you know, it's not your fault and you have this big cry and you're all the way better. You're just fixed. This is the idea that it's damned up, right? You've got this suffering, it's damned up behind this wall of lies and you reveal the truth uh you accept the truth and then all of the suffering is released and instead of you having this big sort of locked up dam of suffering it spreads out across the landscape and and waters the crops and and the fish swim and the birds fly and everything's wonderful and beautiful after that and everything's fixed right i gotta go see about a girl son of a bitch he stole my Yeah.
[1:23:55] And that's, I mean, I don't think that's, I don't think that's true. I mean, it definitely is better to accept the truth and it definitely is better to not take responsibility for the, what you did, what was done to you as a child. You don't take responsibility for that and all of that, but, and it is better to grieve and go through all that sadness and deal with all of that. That definitely is better, better for sure, but it doesn't fix everything. It does not fix everything to get to the truth.
[1:24:33] I mean, I don't want to sound overly blackpilled, but I've been sort of thinking about this lately, people, there is this belief, but if you get to the truth, then your suffering ends. It wasn't your fault, it wasn't your fault, I know, I know, it wasn't your fault, you get to the truth, you get to the truth, but your suffering ends.
[1:24:57] Releases the dam, waters the dry fields, the desert becomes green, and the pressure is relieved and you're fine. No. Unfortunately, it would be nice to live in a world where that could happen. And of course, I've written about that world in my novel, The Future, which you should really check out at freedomain.com slash books. It's free. But I mean, maybe.
[1:25:22] Maybe you guys can tell me what you think. I'm certainly happy to hear what you think. But in general, when you get to the truth, yes it does solve some suffering it does solve some suffering, when you get to the truth it solves some suffering, but it inflicts new suffering.
[1:25:49] Right so you get to the truth about your society okay now i understand i understand how it works why it does what it does, and so on. But now, there's new suffering in that you have a knowledge of the truth that other people don't have, and will often consider you a bad person for being in possession of that truth. I mean, to take a sort of simple example, if you, once you understand the truth about the wage gap, right, 76 cents on the dollar is like, no, if you normalize for education career choices and age women end up actually making a couple of pennies extra than men on the dollar right and it has been illegal since i think 1965 for women to be paid less than men for jobs of the same value i mean i know that's somewhat subjective but um this sort of disparate impact stuff is a pretty big deal i think trump just did another, EO against it, whether that'll last or not, probably not. But, um, so let's say, you know, the truth about the wage gap, right? That the wage gap is the result of choices and predilections between men and women, right? Women tend to go into.
[1:27:07] Lower paid fields. They tend to work less hard than men. They take time off to have children, which is not any kind of fault. It's kind of why we're all here. But once you know the truth about the wage gap, then you have solved the problem, if you're a male, of feeling guilty. Ah, we undervalue and underpay women. Gee, that's terrible, right? So once you understand the truth about the wage gap, you've solved the problem. You no longer feel guilty or that there's this you know horrible shakedown operation from the patriarchy to make sure that women are underpaid right so you solved a problem yay good we like solving problems and of course if you're a woman and you understand that the wage gap is the result of choices and predilections then you're no longer going to feel exploited resentful angry bitter yeah right so so we got to the truth that's just the one example of you know a thousand or two that we could we could talk about so uh hey i understand the wage gap so i can effectively argue against it i've got the data i can prove what, what's going on so i say ah good yay got to the truth and so uh getting to the truth.
[1:28:24] Has solved problems and reduced suffering. But then you've just switched your suffering because now you're in possession of the truth about the wage gap. And so every time the wage gap comes up, you suffer. Right? You suffer. And you suffer in one of two ways. You either say, no, the wage gap is not real. It's a result of choices and predilections, right?
[1:28:52] And they say, oh, well, but women are programmed to get out of STEM. It's like, no, but when women get more choices in the economy, they tend to choose more traditionally female occupations, right? So it's like in Pakistan or India, there's a lot more female computer programmers than there are in the West where women have much more choice about where they're going to end up making their daily bread from. So no, it's not. It's not a thing. So then you either get into these arguments with people who are turbo normies and will be very volatile and landmined and then you get attacked and blah, blah, blah. Right? Scorned and sexist. So, or you have to bite your tongue and shut up and let foolishness and falsehood rule the conversation. Right?
[1:29:44] So, the truth. It has this wonderful knack of solving problems and causing problems. Now, of course, in a society where people are taught well and peaceful parenting and well-educated, then this would not be nearly as much, if at all, as an issue, but it certainly is an issue now. And I think everyone in this conversation, and I hope you guys don't mind if I release this to the general population, as a sort of, I don't think we talked about anything particularly personal here, but.
[1:30:23] It is it is not an easy road we're all in possession of truths that are difficult for society or almost impossible for society to handle right, and And...
[1:30:46] It solved some problems, for sure. Being in possession of the truth solves some problems, for sure. But it sure as heck causes other problems, for sure. So, I mean, don't get me wrong. I'd rather have the truth and deal with whatever comes sliding out of that. I'd rather have the truth and then sort of navigate my way going forward from there. Because falsehoods are internalized, but social life is chosen, right? So Jack says, truth that includes a solution is fantastic, truth that just leaves you in nihilism is painful, but there is no truth that includes a solution, at the moment, in the world that is, right, because when you're in possession of the truth, you are then in opposition, to the NPC turbonomy programming, and you have to sort of narrow your circle your social circle to people who are willing to accept the truth even if it's difficult, even if it's painful you have to narrow your social circle to people who are willing to accept the truth, it doesn't mean your truth but willing to sort of pursue an objective methodology for determining truth from falsehood, so
[1:32:12] So, I mean, I, of course, in the, I mean, I earned it painfully, but, you know, I'm in the slightly more advantageous position than a lot of people in that, you know, as a guy who does, philosophy online, I don't, I mean, I have you as bosses, right? My lovely listeners, and in particular, my lovely supporters. And thank you again, humbly, deeply, gratefully, freedomate.com slash donate if it's been a while, but, I don't have that kind of boss scenario. I don't have, you know, massive ways of extended family that I have to pacify and appease and all this kind of stuff, right?
[1:32:55] So I do have the choice to have a social circle, which is kind of what I have, where the truth is valued and respected and good. And I don't have any particular tension in bringing forward even things that are, you know, kind of controversial or whatever. But if I've got good reasons and evidence behind it, people are like, oh, that's interesting, you know, could be a good perspective, I'm willing to research that, so, and but for a lot of people, of course, and for a lot of my life, that really wasn't the case, or wasn't the situation, so.
[1:33:25] I don't know, man, the truth, the truth, the truth, the truth, ah, get to the truth, and you'll be happy, right, only the truth can set you free, and it's like, but the truth is, it's worth it, Don't get me wrong. I'm a philosophy guy, right? The truth is worth it. But the truth does not solve problems. Only the truth solves problems and creates problems and provokes sometimes the kind of change that is pretty hard to navigate and manage. So, all right, well, I'll stop here and I really do appreciate what great conversations you guys provide to be some absolutely delightful brain tickles, and I really do appreciate that. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. Really do appreciate that. And of course, if you want to join in these kinds of donor chats, please, you can do that at fdrurl.com slash locals. And you can also do that at subscribestar.com slash freedom and you just get a whack load and a half of some truly magnificent donor bonuses. You can go to premium.freedomand.com to have a preview of those. Those donor bonuses are just fantastic. So I hope that you will take advantage of those. And I will talk to you guys tomorrow.
[1:34:43] And don't forget, of course, if you want to book a call-in show, public or private, it is your choice. You can do so at freedomand.com slash books. No, no, that's a lie. I was thinking about doing the books thing after freedomand.com slash call and check out the books at freedomand.com slash books. Thank you guys for your kind words and I appreciate your support and I will talk to you soon. Take care. Bye-bye.
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