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Flash Livestream 2 November 2024

In this episode, I examine the interplay between privilege and identity, particularly in the context of the upcoming US elections. Using my novel "Just Poor" as a backdrop, I discuss the burdens of inherited privilege through the experiences of characters Lawrence and Mary.

I challenge listeners to reflect on the distinction between earned and unearned attributes, emphasizing the importance of grounding self-worth in moral choices rather than societal status. Through personal anecdotes, I highlight the significance of lasting legacies over material possessions and urge a deeper understanding of how privilege shapes our actions and relationships.

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Transcript
00:00:00Hey everybody, Siphano Milneu. It is the second of November 2024. What is that? A couple days before
00:00:09the US election? I don't know, man. If it wasn't for the squirrel, Kamala might have had it,
00:00:15but the squirrel might change it. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It's hard to say.
00:00:20It's hard to say. My guess is that it's going to be unresolved for quite some time.
00:00:24It's going to be unresolved for quite some time. You know, there's a certain amount of
00:00:29quote bad behavior that a system can handle, and when the bad behavior becomes greater than the
00:00:34system can handle, you get massive constipation of potential justice. So, we shall see. We shall
00:00:42see. It's a ride much more fun to observe than as in the past participate in, I suppose you could
00:00:49say. I'll just talk a little bit before we take your questions, if indeed questions you have, but
00:00:56I got a question about my novel Just Poor. Now, don't worry if you haven't read the novel. This
00:01:02will still be of great deep and visceral interest to you, so don't worry about that. Don't worry
00:01:07about that. But in my novel Just Poor, which is about the conflict between the earned and the
00:01:16unearned, there's a lord, an aristocrat named Lawrence Carvey, and he has a dream
00:01:28about lying in a bed of twisted skeletons. And somebody was asking me, what does his dream mean?
00:01:35Well, I'll tell you that his dream means that the power, privilege, prestige, intelligence,
00:01:44and even to some degree his good looks, were inherited from prior ancestors. So, there's a
00:01:52mirror of the abused orphan Mary in Lady Lydia, which is a love interest of Lawrence's. Spoiler
00:02:00or two here. So, Lawrence is born into privilege and travels all of Europe learning about the
00:02:10latest farming techniques and methods, and then magnanimously comes back and tries to improve
00:02:16the farming yields. This takes place in the late 18th century. I'm always interested in writing
00:02:22about what happens before the big events. The big events are already written about. So, I wanted to
00:02:27write about what was happening before the Russian Revolution. So, I wrote a novel called Revolutions.
00:02:31I wanted to write about what was happening before the Industrial Revolution. So, I wrote Just Poor.
00:02:37I wanted to write what happens before social collapse. So, I wrote my novel called The Present.
00:02:46And Lawrence is a child of privilege. Now, for those of you who don't know my particular
00:02:55background, I'm both Lawrence and Mary in a way, right? So, Mary's a very intelligent
00:03:03child, born into, you know, really horrendous circumstances.
00:03:07And Lawrence is a child of privilege. Now, my family ancestry is of significant privilege,
00:03:18but I was born into, I mean, near poverty, a single mother household, and so on, right?
00:03:26And, you know, if it wasn't for the internet, my thoughts and life would largely have passed
00:03:31unnoticed, because there is a real war against individualists and pro-free market writers and
00:03:40thinkers in the art world and in the publishing world. So, I was not able to gain any traction,
00:03:46and my books were massively praised as, like, wonderful and fantastic and got the best reviews
00:03:50known to man. But I couldn't get any traction, because the purpose of art is not the exploration
00:03:58of the human condition. The purpose of art in the modern world is the pushing of ideology.
00:04:05And I'm really interested in sort of deep questions of the human condition,
00:04:10not the pushing of class and race baiting and gender baiting socialist sociopathy.
00:04:20So, Lawrence has a nightmare that he's lying on a bed of twisted skeletons.
00:04:25So, what that means is that he's birthed from, like, he comes from a lineage, right?
00:04:38The bed of twisted skeletons is your ancestors, and they are twisted to some degree.
00:04:47And he is unable to recognize how much of his identity is inherited versus how much
00:04:55of his identity is earned. And honestly, this is a huge question. You know,
00:05:01I don't know if you remember back in the day, there was, I guess, a fair amount of controversy,
00:05:05because President Obama would say to an entrepreneur, well, you know, you owe society
00:05:11stuff, because, man, you didn't build that alone. You didn't build that alone. You used public roads,
00:05:19you went to government schools, you, you know, you've used all of these social goods,
00:05:24and the people you hire are all trained by the government and all of that. So,
00:05:28you didn't build that on your own. And I was talking about this in the show last night,
00:05:34how much of your identity is what you've actually earned? How much of your identity
00:05:41is what you have actually earned? How much of you is yours, right? That's a really foundational
00:05:48question, and it's a very liberating question. You know, how much of you is yours?
00:05:55Well, you didn't inherit, you didn't earn your height, you didn't earn your race,
00:05:59you didn't earn your sex, you didn't earn your looks or lack thereof, you didn't earn
00:06:05your parents, you didn't earn your neighborhood, you didn't earn where you were born, you didn't
00:06:10earn your language skill, like the language you learned and so on. And this list goes on and on.
00:06:21And, you know, we all know the injustices of these things.
00:06:25That fools are born into privilege, and the brilliant are born into obscurity, and vice
00:06:31versa, of course, right? How much of you is yours? So, vanity and guilt often go hand in hand. What
00:06:42I mean by that is, let's say that you take as yours that which you did not earn. You take as
00:06:55your pride that which you didn't earn. Let's say you have, I don't know, great hair, you've got
00:07:03naturally straight teeth, and you have a chad jawline, and you're tall, you're naturally lean,
00:07:12and all of that. Well, that's just an accident of birth, right? That's just an accident of genetics.
00:07:18Let's say that your parents are very wealthy. Well, again, accident of birth,
00:07:27and you are lucky. I mean, I remember, of course, as you know, I got my first job when I was 10,
00:07:33and there were times in high school I worked three jobs. And my friend, good friend,
00:07:41had a nice, his father was a professor, his mother was a homemaker, they had a lovely house,
00:07:47they had a pool, they had a cottage, and he got to spend his summers reading von Mises by the pool.
00:07:59Pretty, pretty nice life, honestly.
00:08:06He didn't earn his privilege, and I didn't earn my destitution.
00:08:10Now, the more you discard that which you did not earn as a measure of your value,
00:08:18the more humble you become. And that's a good thing.
00:08:25I have invented maybe 20 or 30 terms over the course of my career as a philosopher,
00:08:30but the remaining 20 to 30,000 words that I use were all evolved from society as a whole.
00:08:40They're all evolved from society as a whole.
00:08:46So, since I say I'm going to ruthlessly discard that which I did not earn,
00:08:56some appalling and beautiful things arise from that shedding of vanity, and what gets shed is guilt.
00:09:05So, if I say, well, I did not earn my height, I did not earn the fact that I have blue eyes,
00:09:10or a relatively strong jawline, or a nicely shaped head, or, you know,
00:09:15pretty decent physical health and all that, I didn't, I mean, I've earned to some degree the
00:09:18health stuff, but, because I try to eat reasonably well and exercise and so on, so I've earned some
00:09:24of that, but, you know, the sort of raw materials I'm working with, my IQ, I mean, this is part of
00:09:31the humbling thing about studying IQ, is you realize that, of course, you know, by our late
00:09:36teens, it's 80% genetic, and still 20% to work with is not bad at all, but I did not earn most
00:09:44of my brain. What I choose to do with the gifts that I have is a different matter. You don't earn
00:09:49your singing voice, but you can choose which songs to sing. So, I'm going to say, well, I did not
00:09:59So, when you say I'm going to put up a relentless barrier between my self-esteem and the unearned,
00:10:13I'm going to put up a relentless barrier, a firewall, a Chinese wall, between
00:10:19my sense of self-worth and that which I did not earn, and I will not
00:10:24strip mine the accidental and the unearned for the sake of my personal virtue.
00:10:29Right, like the women who are born beautiful,
00:10:34you're great figures, good fat distribution, great cheekbones, like whatever, great hair,
00:10:38women who are born beautiful take pride in that accidental inheritance.
00:10:46And that's not healthy, it's not accurate, it's not true, it's not right, and it's certainly not
00:10:51good. It's certainly not good. Self-worth can only really be based on virtue, and virtue cannot be
00:11:01based on accident. But if you say, I am not going to take any self-esteem from
00:11:16qualities I did not earn, then there's a great liberation from history,
00:11:22which is really the path of Lawrence throughout the course of the novel.
00:11:32And this is why what happens with Lydia happens with Lydia, because Lydia cannot give
00:11:37up the vanity of the unearned, and Lawrence can, Lawrence does.
00:11:51So, if you look around at your life,
00:11:58the flip side of not taking vanity in the accidental, ah, are you ready? It's a beautiful
00:12:06thing, man. It's a beautiful thing. The flip side of not taking vanity in the accidental
00:12:15is not taking shame or guilt in the accidental.
00:12:24In other words, to refuse to novelize your life.
00:12:31I remember there being a controversy about Ayn Rand's play, Night of January 22nd, where
00:12:36the moral cripple is in a wheelchair. They say, well, that's not right.
00:12:40You can't say that people who are in a wheelchair are morally crippled.
00:12:45It's a very interesting argument.
00:12:50In art, at least how it used to be, in art,
00:12:54well, I guess it still is, it's just that the definitions have changed. In art,
00:12:59the bad people, the bad people get punished, and the good people get rewarded.
00:13:06You always know how it goes that the hero mows down, you know, a thousand guys,
00:13:14you know, Blackhawk down style. The hero mows down a thousand guys,
00:13:18and you barely see them falling off their horses or fading out in the background,
00:13:22and you barely see them falling off their horses or fading out in the background.
00:13:24But then the hero receives an injury that allows him to have magnificent speeches,
00:13:30and people cradle him, and here, tell my wife I love her, and you know, all of this kind of stuff.
00:13:36The hero gets a special lingering moving death,
00:13:39but the enemies die in anonymous stickman ragdoll shakedowns.
00:13:51In life, it's very easy to fictionalize your life, and to say
00:13:57that, and you can see this, of course, in art as a whole, really starting from
00:14:03the 80s onwards. It's a bit of a Bill Murray thing, right? But the 80s onwards in particular,
00:14:10it was the rich, preppy, Ted McGinley kids are assholes.
00:14:18And the shy, nerdy, whatever, losers are actually, you know, great people,
00:14:23and wonderful treasures of humanity, and this, that, and the other, right?
00:14:29So, the sort of healthy, athletic, frat boys, revenge of the nerd stuff, right? They're all
00:14:38wonderful, and sorry, they're all terrible, terrible people, and vain, and so on, right?
00:14:45And this is the sort of rage against the, you know, relatively healthy,
00:14:49relatively successful, relatively competent people.
00:14:55And this kind of stuff has had no small, in my view, has had no small effect on
00:15:02stoking the resentments of school shooters,
00:15:04although it's not a major component. There are other components, of course.
00:15:08So, if you are born to a bad family, as I was certainly born to a bad family, if you're born
00:15:20to a bad family, then it's very easy to feel that there's something wrong with you, that fate or
00:15:29the gods are punishing you for something that you did wrong. And this is not just a theory,
00:15:38or an art standard, this is explicitly talked about in things like Buddhist reincarnation,
00:15:46right? That if you're reincarnated in a bad family, it's because you did something bad
00:15:52in a prior life. Or, you know, this completely deranged conjecture that you choose your
00:15:59parents, right? That, you know, before you were born, you chose your parents, and you chose your
00:16:05parents in order for them to teach you something, and you are a participant, a sort of willing,
00:16:13freewill, chosen participant in the environment you chose to be born into. And of course,
00:16:21with God, you know, God will put you in a particular family, because he could put you
00:16:25anywhere, right? God puts you in a particular family in order to sharpen your soul, to
00:16:33strengthen your virtues, to make you a better person, to put you through the trial by fire,
00:16:38like, you know, basic training in the army is supposed to make you a better soldier and give
00:16:42you a higher chance of survival. So, yeah, you just, you're put in with a bad family,
00:16:49and that's a moral lesson, and maybe you were bad in a past life, or maybe you are being given
00:16:56trials because you have something extra special or wonderful. But what happens is, of course,
00:17:03in order to hollow you out and remove your free will, society will praise you for the unearned
00:17:09and blame you for the unearned. And both of those come in equal measure, and rejecting one
00:17:15one really necessarily requires rejecting the other.
00:17:21So, society, if you come from a, and I remember there were, I remember in particular two very
00:17:28wealthy kids in my high school, they both got red Corvettes on their 16th birthdays, and I remember
00:17:37I wrote a play and we rehearsed it at one of these guys' houses that just went on and on and on
00:17:42forever and ever, amen. And so, they got a lot of praise because they always had the latest and
00:17:49trendiest clothes, they had the coolest cars, they had the best gel, and so on, right?
00:17:58So, society gave those kids a lot of praise for the unearned, and society also put a lot of blame
00:18:07to the kids who were unlucky. So, by praising those, you know, they praised the good-looking
00:18:16kids, they praised the athletic kids, and look, I mean, athleticism for sure, being athletic takes
00:18:21a lot of work, a lot of dedication, it's not like you just... But, however, having the coordination,
00:18:26not having to have, say, two to three extra jobs,
00:18:30gives you the time to practice and to learn, you have to have, yeah, the reflexes, the fast-fire
00:18:36muscles, and so on, the healthy food that you get at home, parents who are interested and able to
00:18:41pay for and subsidize. Like, I remember a friend of mine who was really good at hockey,
00:18:46but his, you know, his single mom just really couldn't afford to keep it going.
00:18:51Whereas, another guy I know, who I worked with in the business world, his son was really good
00:18:57at hockey, you know, seemed like he poured half his entire income into flying this kid around to
00:19:02various places to play hockey games, and so on, right? So, when you see society praise people for
00:19:09that which they did not earn, and you see society blame the kids who are unlucky, and you see
00:19:17society blame kids for that which they did not choose, these two sides of the same coin, and it's
00:19:27really hard to pull these apart and gain actual free will. So, the tall, good-looking guys didn't
00:19:40earn their height and bone structure. The kids who have clear skin versus the kids who have
00:19:48acne. I mean, there's a small amount of lifestyle stuff you can do with regards to acne,
00:19:54some medications, but, you know, it is, to some degree, luck of the draw.
00:20:03And it's really, it's fundamentally satanic to praise people for the unearned and to blame
00:20:08people for what they did not choose. And we do this with marks, of course, all the time.
00:20:15Marks are not so much a reflection of a child's willingness to work hard
00:20:22or intelligence or skill. Marks are, to a large degree, an evaluation
00:20:30of the environment that the parents create or oppose. I could not study at home. I would sometimes
00:20:41go to the library and study there, but I could not study at home. Things were too loud, they were too
00:20:46chaotic, my mother had men over, it was just unpleasant and difficult and so on. And, you know,
00:20:52I had a lot of bad food when I was a kid or was short of food and so on, so my mother was like
00:20:57up all night smoking and typing and sometimes in my room so I couldn't get much sleep.
00:21:03And smoky, you know, kind of gross stuff. So I, and my mother didn't even know what grade I was in,
00:21:12right? So she didn't help me with my homework, there was no possibility of anything like that.
00:21:17Whereas, of course, I would hear my friends, so yeah, my parents sat down with me and helped me
00:21:21with this homework for two hours last night and, you know, really made sure I knew the stuff before
00:21:24my test. So it's really the parents who are getting tested or evaluated, not so much the kids.
00:21:32Because I remember, of course, you know, and I've said this before, right, there was the constant
00:21:35thing I was told as a kid, you know, if effort matched ability, you'd be an A+. Like, I was just
00:21:42lazy. Nobody said, well, gee, and actually my school knew that I had a job, at least one,
00:21:49because I'd actually negotiated with the school. I had to be at the daycare I worked at
00:21:54from 3.30, right? I'd work 3.30 to 6.30. So I'd have to get to the daycare by 3.30,
00:21:59but the daycare was a half hour, it was two buses away, right? So I negotiated with the school
00:22:06to leave at three o'clock. I mean, so they knew that for sure, right?
00:22:14So, and that was, yeah, I think, I know it was 15. I know I was 15 when I got that job,
00:22:21because I got the job and then found out I had to be 16 and kept it down low. So,
00:22:28if effort matched ability, you'd be an A+. Well, the ability is innate. The effort, I mean,
00:22:36I don't know if I'll, I mean, maybe when I was an entrepreneur, but I don't know there are many
00:22:40times in my life that I've worked harder than when I was a kid. You know, a couple of jobs,
00:22:47dealing with crazy people at home, financial, you know, always skating on the edge of the cliff
00:22:53financially and so on. Man, it was a lot of work. So, yeah, the idea that I just was sitting home
00:23:00and giving my thumb up my ass, doodling for no purpose, rather than doing all the schoolwork,
00:23:06you know, it just, it was crazy, right? So, I don't want to make this overly about me,
00:23:11but I'm hoping to sort of connect with you through this, you know, maybe some shared experiences.
00:23:18Taking pride in the unearned leaves you vulnerable to being shamed for the unchosen.
00:23:25Taking pride in the unearned opens up the gateway to being shamed for the unchosen.
00:23:32So, I have really worked hard to not take personal pride in that which I did not earn.
00:23:38I mean, I'll take pride in some things. I'll take pride in some moral courage,
00:23:41in some moral standards, in some, you know, mental toughness and standing up for
00:23:46what I know to be true and not backing down. I mean, some of those things I will certainly
00:23:50take pride in and I should, but other things I want that I did not earn, right? So,
00:23:59the way out of shame for your origins, if you had, you know, low status origins, right? The
00:24:07way out of shame for your origins is to just take neither pride in the unearned nor shame
00:24:18in the unchosen. I, of course, did not choose my family. I did not choose
00:24:26the countries I was yoinked to at various times. Basically, England, South Africa, Ireland and
00:24:32Canada. I didn't choose those places. I have choice now, of course, right? But I didn't choose
00:24:38them back then. I didn't choose the financial necessity of having to work. I didn't choose any
00:24:45of that. And so, if you can find ways to avoid pride in the unearned, you can also detach from
00:25:00shame in the unchosen. I just happened to be born into a very difficult environment
00:25:07that I worked every wit I had to survive and escape.
00:25:14If I was born at the bottom of a well and I had to spend
00:25:20many years climbing out, I'm not going to say that I was at the bottom of the well
00:25:26for some personal bad choice or karma or fate or enmity of the gods or anything like that.
00:25:40It was, I mean, I wouldn't even say it was bad luck.
00:25:46I mean, it's one of these annoying, it is what it is, tautologies. It wasn't even bad luck.
00:25:50Because it's not luck.
00:25:58And this is the interaction
00:26:02between Lawrence and one of the female farmhands, one of the milkmaids.
00:26:11Lawrence comes back and talks about all of the wonderful travels he had in Europe
00:26:14and one of the farm girls says, I wish I got to go to Europe.
00:26:28And Lawrence says, well, you play your cards right, you just might.
00:26:33And that's too much for Mary.
00:26:37He says, did you play your cards right? Is that how you got to
00:26:41Europe? You just played your card right, so you just played the hand better.
00:26:46She just got bad cards. Oh, you both got the same cards, she played badly,
00:26:50you played well, that's how you got to go to Europe. It's a fundamental question.
00:26:55It's a fundamental question. What can you genuinely take pride or shame in?
00:27:03What can you genuinely take pride or shame in? And the answer is really only, fundamentally,
00:27:10moral choices. What can you take pride or shame in? Well, you can take pride or shame
00:27:16in moral choices. And that's it. Now, as a kid, did you have moral choices? Nope.
00:27:27No, you did not. You did not have moral choices.
00:27:33You were just surviving whatever heaven or hell sent shit storm or sunny sky environment you
00:27:40happen to be born into. And I'll just use the term luck, although I know it's
00:27:50inaccurate to some degree, but it's probably the closest.
00:27:56Some are born lucky, and some are born unlucky.
00:28:02And some people will say that the reason that I or others escaped the fate, I don't want to
00:28:09talk for others, I just want to talk for myself, right? So how did I escape the fate? How did I
00:28:14end up from, and somebody asked me this in a show the other day, how did you avoid all the negative
00:28:21emotions or experiences from your kid? Well, of course, I accepted and absorbed them.
00:28:25But how did I get out? How did I go from poverty-laden single mother household to,
00:28:32I mean, a fair degree of professional success, a very happy marriage. How did they go from
00:28:36having a very violent and insane mother to a peaceful, reasonable parenting with my wife and I,
00:28:43between my wife and I? How did I do it? Well, the answer is that I refused to take pride
00:28:56in the unowned, which means I escaped shame for the unchosen. I recognized that my circumstances
00:29:07were unchosen by me, it was an accident of circumstances that I had to surmount.
00:29:14But I could not get out of the shame of my childhood by pursuing the vanity of the accidental
00:29:24gifts I was given. That's a trap. To go from shame to vanity and leaping over
00:29:34rational self-worth is a great temptation.
00:29:40To say, well, I'm not going to take shame in the accidental and therefore you survive or try to
00:29:46survive by taking pride in the accidental, your positive qualities. I won't take shame for my
00:29:51accidental bad circumstances. But the way to escape that is not then to take pride in the
00:30:00unowned. Your intelligence, your various gifts, your skills, your abilities, your height, your
00:30:06looks, your whatever, right? And to focus only on having pride in positive moral choices.
00:30:17But that, of course, that generates a lot of enmity, because we live in this, I mean,
00:30:22this fallen world, right? I mean, certainly in the modern world, right? It's a fallen world
00:30:28where people are tempted by the devil to escape shame through vanity and hatred.
00:30:40And it does seem to be true. This is where, honestly, I know this sounds odd, but this is
00:30:44where the Marxist and I find some common cause in that it does seem to be true that those who are
00:30:53born blessed in their circumstances seem to have little to no empathy to those born cursed in their
00:31:01circumstances. I don't recall any of my friends who had good families or good home circumstances,
00:31:13I don't remember any of them saying, man, you've got it rough.
00:31:22Man, I can't believe you have to work all these jobs just to pay the rent. I can't,
00:31:25like this is bound to be rough, right? I mean, of course, it didn't come from, I was out of the
00:31:30religion, I was out of the religious world at this point, but it certainly didn't come from
00:31:34the teachers. It didn't come from extended family on either my mother's or my father's side.
00:31:41It didn't come from friends, it didn't come from friends' parents. And honestly, that is
00:31:51annoying and it's one of the reasons why resentment revolutions occur. I talk about this,
00:31:58of course, if you've listened to my 11 plus hour presentation on the French Revolution,
00:32:03which is available for donors, freedomain.com,
00:32:07slash donate. And you know what, let's make that for November. If you donate,
00:32:12I'll send you the French Revolution. If you donate, normally it's for subscribers,
00:32:15but anyone who donates in November, I will send you a copy of the French Revolution.
00:32:19And you really should listen to this, that if we leave people behind,
00:32:23if we leave people behind, if those who understand the poor, the traumatized, the violated, the abused
00:32:33and the broken, because we went through the same thing, and we get out and we don't circle back,
00:32:38then we are creating this massive tide of resentment that is going to take down society.
00:32:46And one of the reasons we don't go back is that we forget, of course, what a narrow escape it
00:32:54generally is. And we tend to take pride and say, well, if I can get out, you can get out. But I
00:33:01happen to have a particular spot of brilliance in my brain about principles, but I didn't even earn
00:33:06principles. But I didn't even earn that. I didn't even earn that.
00:33:18My facility with analogies, my facility with long-form arguments and discussions,
00:33:23my facility with debating, my wit, I didn't earn these things.
00:33:28But I can take pride in the use I have put my gifts to, the directions I have
00:33:38pointed my unearned gifts. I can take pride in that. I did not use them for
00:33:43personal power, personal aggrandizement. I did not use them for vanity.
00:33:47For the most part, I mean, I don't know what it would be to be perfect in these things,
00:33:50but for the most part, I have humbly tried to use my unearned gifts for the benefit of
00:33:55mankind as a whole. And I'm very much an honorary analogy of a Marine, right? The Marines don't
00:34:05leave anyone behind on the battlefield. And of course, as you know, I escaped massive cycles
00:34:11of dysfunction and could have spent the rest of my life around highly functional people, but I
00:34:17have spent my life circling back to bind the wounds of the broken, because that's what should
00:34:33have happened with me, and it's tough to complain about something that didn't happen to you and
00:34:37then refuse to provide it to other people. I have spent, I mean, there are thousands of
00:34:45conversations over the course of what I've done, and I have spent decades saying that nobody
00:34:58who wants to be rescued need be left behind. Nobody who wants to be rescued needs to be left
00:35:07behind. And you've heard me, of course, doing my very absolute level best to rescue as many people
00:35:11as possible, and not just the people I'm talking to directly, but all the people whose generosity
00:35:16of spirit has allowed the conversations to become public, so that you can see resuscitation and
00:35:24rescue over the course of these conversations. And I do that, of course, because it's the right
00:35:31thing to do, because it's a great use of my skills, because it gives me satisfaction and pride in how
00:35:36I've spent my life. But there's a very practical aspect as well, is that the more people who get
00:35:40left behind, the more backlash there is against those who've escaped.
00:35:48You know, how angry do you get if you're trapped in an unjust prison and your cellmate breaks out
00:35:54without telling you how or why, leaves you behind and goes on to live a wonderful life?
00:36:01Well, there's a lot of anger in that, and I'm not even disagreeing with that anger,
00:36:05but there is a lot of anger. The more people you leave behind, the more backlash there is
00:36:09against those who have escaped. And there's even more backlash against those who have escaped than
00:36:14those who were never in prison to begin with. So, that's what came out of my novel Revolutions, was
00:36:22don't leave people behind. When you get out, don't leave people behind.
00:36:28And one of the ways we do get out is we don't take any shame in the accidents of our birth.
00:36:36I take no shame in the fact that I was raised by a crazy, violent parent.
00:36:47Why on earth would I take any shame for that? But that means that
00:36:51if I'm not going to take any shame for that which I did not choose, I also can't take
00:36:56any vanity over that which I did not choose. I did not choose my race, my sex, my height,
00:37:03my intelligence. For the most part, I did not choose my eye color,
00:37:08my looks. I did not choose my physique, although obviously I've worked on it for quite a bit.
00:37:16I mean, all you have to do is remember all the people
00:37:21who had really bad luck, all the kids who had really bad luck, worse luck than me.
00:37:25There are many, of course. I've talked to countless people who had worse childhoods than me by any
00:37:29objective metric. I remember my brother was in the back seat of a car with a good friend of his
00:37:37when he was very little, and his friend opened the door, stepped out into traffic, and got killed.
00:37:44My best friend, when I first moved to Canada, just did not wake up one morning,
00:37:47turned out he had a congenital heart defect.
00:37:49I knew a couple of kids, who I was varying degrees of close with, who died.
00:37:55I had a friend with Crohn's disease. He did not ask for that. Intense suffering.
00:38:08There was a kid in my boarding school who tried to do a flip into the pool, which we all had
00:38:15which we all did. He just slipped, smashed his head, and was permanently disabled.
00:38:25There was a teenager in my apartment building, who did the same stupid stuff,
00:38:31crossing bridges at night, but got hit by a train and lost both his legs.
00:38:36Just lucky. I was just luckier than them.
00:38:44So, stripping down yourself to that which chooses, and that which is capable of virtue.
00:38:54I will never take a shred of dishonor for what I have done.
00:38:59I will never take a shred of dishonor for what I was born into.
00:39:09And I will never take a shred of praise for accidental gifts.
00:39:16The fact that my ancestors happened to marry and have children with a bunch of smart people,
00:39:24which eventually produced a bunch of smart kids. I'm one of them.
00:39:28I didn't earn that.
00:39:36Good-looking people didn't earn their looks.
00:39:41Talented singers did not earn their voices.
00:39:47Even people who were like literally talented guitarists, right?
00:39:50So, if you've ever known someone who's become obsessed with a musical instrument,
00:39:54right, they pick it up, and usually the guitarists have those long spider fingers and so on,
00:39:58they have natural pitch, which is unearned,
00:40:01and they have a natural thirst and desire and love to master the instrument, right?
00:40:07There's that story of the Beatles trooping around from house to house learning new chords
00:40:10from various musicians. They loved it. They loved it.
00:40:18Eric Wolfson from Alan Parsons Project just happened to sit down noodling on the piano,
00:40:26obsessed about it. I think Owen Benjamin taught himself piano as well.
00:40:30He's a very talented keyboardist.
00:40:32And even just that love for it, when I first started reading philosophy,
00:40:36like my heart opened up like a volcano. I didn't choose that.
00:40:42I didn't even choose what I happened to love outside of virtue in my life.
00:40:47When I first started reading philosophy, I felt I had come home, or there was a bomb shelter,
00:40:58from the mad ordinance of mysticism,
00:41:04anti-rationality and dysfunction in not just my personal familial, but also my school
00:41:08and to some degree religious environment.
00:41:11And I found refuge and joy in philosophy that was unbidden in my heart.
00:41:24I didn't have the idea, oh man, I'm going to love philosophy.
00:41:28I should really seek it out. It was like, well, through Rush, the band, through a friend of mine,
00:41:34get to Ayn Rand, through Ayn Rand, through a portal into philosophy as a whole, loved it.
00:41:41Loved it.
00:41:46I didn't choose even my love of philosophy.
00:41:54We think that the great guitarist chooses to become a great guitarist.
00:42:00But the instrument plays him with dopamine as much as he plays the instrument.
00:42:05He masters things, he gets great pleasure, right?
00:42:06I got my first real strict six string at the five and dime, played it to my fingers bled.
00:42:14That's how much Brian Adams loved guitar.
00:42:17I think it was he who wrote that song from the ever mature 19 forever album.
00:42:27You have to strip down your self-worth to the bare forked willed virtues
00:42:34that you choose, particularly in opposition.
00:42:39The controversial truths that I have spoken, and because of the state, it is so profitable to lie,
00:42:46that the truth is viewed as a thefty predator. The truth is viewed as
00:42:54a bunch of crows in the cornfield,
00:42:56or poison in the well of coerced resources.
00:43:05So I can take pride in that. I can take pride in
00:43:11rejecting the shame of the past, which opens me up to true pride and joy in the present.
00:43:18I can choose all of that. I have chosen all of that, and I can take pride in that, and I do.
00:43:22But not anything else.
00:43:25Taking pride in the unearned is accepting shame for the unchosen.
00:43:30As soon as you say that which is accidentally positive about me
00:43:39is praiseworthy, then you also say that which is accidentally negative about me is blameworthy.
00:43:45No. It is a mystical view of the universe to say that you should be praised
00:43:52or blamed for things outside your control.
00:43:57That is a form of mysticism. If you are born with a congenital issue,
00:44:05some medical issue that you were born with, that is not a punishment for a prior life.
00:44:11It is not a gauntlet thrown down by a god to strengthen your willpower and resolve.
00:44:16It's just a bad freaking luck.
00:44:23But I myself, I found it quite challenging to get out of that mind view
00:44:27that we live in a novel where pluses and minuses are accidental, right?
00:44:34As pluses and minuses that are accidental are praiseworthy and blameworthy.
00:44:43Because we like to think, and this is part of the magical thinking, right?
00:44:48We like to think that the good guy sprays bullets and shoots everyone,
00:44:53but the bad guy shoot at him and miss every time because of his virtue.
00:44:59And of course, that's a way of destroying young men into war
00:45:02by not giving them any sense of the odds that they're actually facing,
00:45:06which is that you're facing an energy as tough and smart as you, for the most part,
00:45:10who wants to survive and kill you.
00:45:13Why was that old line, as much as you want to survive and kill him?
00:45:16Was it Patton? Was it Patton?
00:45:18Entire purpose of war is not to die for your country,
00:45:22but to make sure the other son of a bitch dies for his.
00:45:25So, on this last sunny Saturday afternoon in the year of our thought, 2024,
00:45:37first of all, read the novel Just Poor, justpoornovel.com.
00:45:40You can listen to it.
00:45:44You can read it.
00:45:45It's a great book and goes into all of this in more detail,
00:45:50and I wrote it in my 20s.
00:45:51I've been wrestling with this stuff for well over 30 years,
00:45:56but that's the gift I want to give you.
00:45:57It's the vanity I want to deflate in you,
00:46:01and as the vanity deflates in you, the burdens of the past lift and fly away also.
00:46:10As I deflate the vanity in you, so do I also lift away the burdens of the past.
00:46:18The vanity in you, so do I also lift away the burdens
00:46:25that the flip side of vanity places upon your soul, the weights.
00:46:32If you take pride in the unearned, you take shame in the unchosen,
00:46:36and the two of them have to go away together.
00:46:39All right, so that's the major point that I wanted to get across today,
00:46:49and I appreciate your time and care and thoughts and attention
00:46:54in letting me speak along these lines.
00:46:59I am, of course, thrilled to hear questions, comments, criticisms, arguments, disagreements.
00:47:04Maybe even a tiny smidge of praise would not go entirely down the wrong pipe.
00:47:10So I am eager and happy to hear what you have to say.
00:47:15If anything, you may, of course, just want to absorb
00:47:18what it is that I have been talking about for this last 50 minutes,
00:47:23but if you do have something to ask or say, I'm happy to hear.
00:47:28Let me just check the interface here.
00:47:32Yes, I'd see.
00:47:35Are you still around?
00:47:36I know I talked a lot, but let me know if you're still around
00:47:38and have something or anything you'd like to say.
00:47:41Yes, I'm still around.
00:47:42Can you hear me okay?
00:47:45Yes, did you hear me?
00:47:45Go ahead.
00:47:48No, I did not, but I'll go ahead anyway.
00:47:52What are your thoughts about the outward facade there sometimes is?
00:47:56For example, the Menendez brothers would outwardly have seemed to have their lives
00:48:01pretty much perfect, but upon closer examination, it turned out to be a little bit different.
00:48:08What are your thoughts about that?
00:48:10Can you be a bit more specific?
00:48:12That's very general.
00:48:15That some people, for example, the Menendez brothers, who seem to have
00:48:23a very well taken care of life, have an absolute hell behind closed doors.
00:48:29And I could come up with an example of a working class family,
00:48:34and both parents decided to raise their child peacefully,
00:48:39and who would maybe have less financial wealth,
00:48:47and maybe a small house somewhere in the suburbs,
00:48:51but who behind closed doors would have a great relationship,
00:48:56including with their children.
00:48:58And maybe his career would not be going as well as one would hope.
00:49:05But society would look at those people completely different
00:49:10than it would look at the Menendez family.
00:49:12What are your thoughts about that?
00:49:13Oh, I see.
00:49:14I think I understand.
00:49:15So, status as a whole is a marker for people who don't like themselves.
00:49:25So, if you don't have legitimate moral pride in your life and your choices,
00:49:31if you don't have that, then you go for status in order to impress people.
00:49:37Like, a woman who has excessive makeup and so on is a woman who does not like herself.
00:49:44A man who, you know, the Ferrari and the Bugatti and the watch and the Rolex and so on,
00:49:53is a man who does not particularly like himself or feel that he's worthy of moral praise.
00:50:01Or pride for his choices.
00:50:03And so, it's an attempt to overwhelm you with shallow, shiny, stupid trinkets,
00:50:11rather than let you perceive the quality of the soul
00:50:15that is manifested through the virtuous choices in life.
00:50:19And so, people who present themselves as superior in gaudy, flashy,
00:50:26trashy, nouveau riche kinds of ways are people who are saying,
00:50:29I don't have any particular pride in my moral choices,
00:50:32but I'm hoping to impress you with inconsequential trinkets.
00:50:37And money these days is very rarely earned in truly honorable ways.
00:50:45Because there's so much government interference and control and so on that
00:50:49it's pretty tough to make your money in truly honorable ways.
00:50:55And so, I find the people who flash a lot of status stuff to be,
00:51:03I mean, to me it's a cry for help.
00:51:05It is a cry for, please help me find a way to like myself more and to have more genuine pride
00:51:13so that I don't need to flash some particular status display at you.
00:51:19So, I think, I mean, and of course, if you look at the Menendez brothers,
00:51:26they obviously had deep issues with themselves that were inflicted by their
00:51:31horrendously abusive parents.
00:51:34And so, when they got a hold of money, what's the first thing they did?
00:51:40Well, they went out and dropped $700,000 plus on shiny status-based trinkets, right?
00:51:49They got very expensive watches and very expensive cars and very expensive apartments
00:51:54and so on.
00:51:56And those, of course, do not add to the moral qualities.
00:52:01And again, they're young men.
00:52:03And I remember having these conversations with a friend of mine who, his one parent
00:52:09died and he got a lot of inheritance.
00:52:11And I was like, you should save this.
00:52:13You should, he just wanted to go out.
00:52:14He bought like a Jeep.
00:52:15He bought a very expensive computer.
00:52:16Like all things that just depreciate in value and so on.
00:52:20And so, I dislike, almost viscerally, I dislike the status braggers and those who really,
00:52:33really want you to be very impressed by their money and their stuff.
00:52:41I mean, the real legacy we leave in life is the good that we do, not the stuff that we
00:52:46buy.
00:52:46The real, the only quality legacy we leave in the world is the good that we do, not the
00:52:51stuff that we buy.
00:52:54And if you've ever been, I've been once or twice with people to help clean out, usually
00:52:59a dead parent's apartment.
00:53:03And it's a really depressing thing.
00:53:09It's a really, I mean, I was using a mug that my daughter made for me when she was very
00:53:14little.
00:53:14When she was very little, she went to a pottery class and made me a mug with the word dad
00:53:19on the side and it's sort of multicolored and so on.
00:53:21Now, of course, that means a lot to me.
00:53:25And it'll mean a lot to her.
00:53:27But obviously, at some point, you know, it's just going to be this kind of half ugly mug
00:53:31with the word dad on the side.
00:53:32And if you were to leave it by the road, nobody would sit there and say, wow, what a beautiful
00:53:36thing.
00:53:36I really want this, right?
00:53:37It has meaning only because of the affection and history that's infused in it.
00:53:42The thing itself is not worthwhile of itself, but it is worthwhile because of the sentimental
00:53:49associations.
00:53:50And we invest a lot into stuff, right?
00:53:55We invest a lot into stuff.
00:53:56I mean, it's always been incomprehensible to me that parents get mad at their kids for
00:54:02dropping plates.
00:54:04I mean, everyone drops plates from time to time and it doesn't matter.
00:54:10So, I mean, many years ago, I talked about, on a show in Free Domain, I talked about how
00:54:17I was playing Let's Fly to Mars or some spaceship game with a friend of mine when I was like,
00:54:22I don't know, five years old or something like that.
00:54:24And I had a cup of water that I put on a dresser.
00:54:30I think it was a dresser, not a nightstand.
00:54:32It was a dresser.
00:54:33And when my mother came home, she lifted up the cup and there was a little white ring,
00:54:39you know, like a little moisture.
00:54:40And I was five years old.
00:54:41I didn't understand any of this and so on, right?
00:54:45And my mother was very violent and sort of beat me up because I had put a little white
00:54:51ring on a cabinet.
00:54:56Now, of course, over the next couple of days, and maybe my mother did something to it.
00:54:59I don't really know much about this stuff because I'm not a doctor.
00:55:02I don't really know much about this stuff because I use coasters.
00:55:04But my mother, like the ring was gone, right?
00:55:07After a while, there was no ring.
00:55:15There's no ring on the cabinet.
00:55:18And yet, I, you know, 53, like more than a half century later, I remember the beating.
00:55:26So, my mother has her furniture, but she doesn't have me.
00:55:38I'm trying to, and I was trying to remember this because I think I said in the past,
00:55:42I was thinking about this in more detail, and I think it was a cabinet, and I don't
00:55:46think the cabinet made it over to, I think she just sold it, right?
00:55:50I don't think it made it over to Canada.
00:55:51She still has some pretty nice night tables, but I don't think, I think it was a cabinet.
00:55:58It's hard to remember because I was so short.
00:55:59I just remember reaching up to put my cup up there, but I was so short.
00:56:03I mean, I might have had to reach up a little or reach over to just do a nightstand, but
00:56:07I mean, so it doesn't really matter, but the point is that I still remember the violence,
00:56:12which, you know, helped detach me from my mother.
00:56:15But the cabinet is long gone, or even if she still has it, the stain is long gone, or the
00:56:23white rig.
00:56:26So, if you've ever been in a situation where people are, and I watched this video not too
00:56:30long ago, of a cleaner who was like, okay, these two old people died, or the only old
00:56:36person left died, and there's all of this boxes of stuff and photos, and it just goes
00:56:42to the dump, because there's no kids to give it to, and nobody cares.
00:56:50I mean, imagine if you live in an apartment building, and someone dies in the next apartment,
00:56:57I mean, do you want any of their junk?
00:57:01You want any of their old photos?
00:57:02Well, no.
00:57:05The value vanishes with the people.
00:57:07So, because the value of things vanishes with the people, always invest in people, not
00:57:13things, because investments in people is what lasts.
00:57:18Investments in things decays.
00:57:23So, people who invest in things over others, over people, and particularly their children,
00:57:35are foolish, and it's vain, and to the untutored eye, you know, the woman who's made money
00:57:47in OnlyFans giving you a tour of her apartment, I mean, everything looks shiny, clean, and
00:57:55nice, however, it is, in fact, a graveyard of pair bonding, and a graveyard and a mausoleum
00:58:04of her capacity to fall in love, and it is a graveyard, mausoleum, and body and limb
00:58:12littered battlefield of her capacity to be a good wife and mother.
00:58:21She's traded her soul for money and anonymous orgasms.
00:58:26That is not a plus.
00:58:30That is not a good deal.
00:58:32I understand that it's tempting when you're young, and I mean, I'm not, obviously, I'm
00:58:36not saying I'm above any of this kind of stuff.
00:58:38I mean, when the boys I knew got their red Corvettes from their dad on their 16th birthday,
00:58:48I mean, I would have loved to have had a red Corvette on my 16th birthday.
00:58:52That would have been great.
00:58:52I wouldn't have had to wait until I was in my 20s to even get a driver's license, or
00:59:00in my 30s, really, or late 20s to get a car.
00:59:02So I envied this stuff.
00:59:05I envied my friend who had the nice house, and I envied my friend, some of my friends
00:59:10had cases of pop in the basement, and I never had any pop, and I was envious of my friends
00:59:16who had cars.
00:59:17There was a friend of mine who was a very short-term drinking partner, and a couple
00:59:23of weekends I got drunk as a teenager, and he had, he lived in a house with this, he
00:59:28had an upstairs bedroom with this lovely sloping roof, so cozy, so nice, and I was like, man,
00:59:33lovely, right?
00:59:35Envied that, too.
00:59:35I had a lot of envy.
00:59:37But as I age, I realize, of course, that all the stuff, and the meaning of the stuff, I
00:59:46mean, maybe it'll be a little different for me if I end up some sort of historical figure,
00:59:50but for most people, you know, you don't, your kids don't want your stuff, all the photos,
00:59:58like, you know, think of how many photos you have on your hard drive, okay?
01:00:02You probably have thousands of photos on your hard drive.
01:00:05You probably have thousands of photos on your hard drive, right?
01:00:08You've posted things, and you've posted, you know, maybe, it's one thing you have photos
01:00:12in a drawer, right?
01:00:12It's another thing if you have photos in a hard drive.
01:00:18I guess you could post them now, and maybe that gives you a little bit of status, but
01:00:23what's going to happen to all your stuff when you're dead?
01:00:27It's a really important question in life.
01:00:29What's going to happen to all your stuff when you're dead, right?
01:00:33You've got a whole bunch of cell phones, half-dead cell phones in a drawer.
01:00:36What's going to happen?
01:00:37Well, they're just going to get thrown out.
01:00:40You've got a whole bunch of journals.
01:00:42I mean, maybe if you have kids, they'll hold on to them, but at some point, they're probably
01:00:45just going to get tossed.
01:00:46No one's really going to read them.
01:00:47If you don't have kids, in particular, all your stuff is a total dead end.
01:00:54It's like those, if you watch this, there's videos online of these companies that go and
01:01:03pick up and clean up old apartments, like in Japan, right?
01:01:11There's some woman whose daughter may be hundreds of miles away.
01:01:14Oh, what do you want to do with your mom's stuff?
01:01:16I don't know.
01:01:16Just throw it.
01:01:17I don't want it.
01:01:18All the stuff you accumulate, all the stuff that matters.
01:01:21I still remember a great sweater.
01:01:26My brother and I used to go to Goodwill, or there used to be these fairs or bazaars of
01:01:31clothing downtown.
01:01:32We'd root through, and occasionally, you'd just get some amazing stuff.
01:01:35There was a beautiful sweater.
01:01:41I borrowed the sweater to go on a date.
01:01:42I happened to be out walking.
01:01:43There was no warning of rain, but I got rained on.
01:01:45My brother was enraged that I had gotten his sweater wet, although I laid it out to dry.
01:01:50He was enraged that I'd got his sweater wet.
01:01:54Can't lend you anything.
01:01:55I can't lend you anything nice.
01:01:56You wreck everything.
01:01:57You know, just kind of, I don't know, stupid, crazy, and hysterical stuff.
01:02:03Now, my brother, I don't know, he probably, I'm certain he doesn't have that sweater anymore,
01:02:08right, because it was 40 years ago, and he doesn't have me either.
01:02:13That wasn't just because of that.
01:02:15It was an accumulation of things, of course, right?
01:02:17So, yeah, people who choose stuff over people, I don't get it.
01:02:25I don't understand it.
01:02:27It's a fetish.
01:02:28It's as weird a fetish as, I don't know, wanting to have sex with a tree or something,
01:02:32like Thaddeus Russell style, right?
01:02:34So, I don't understand it.
01:02:37I think it's very tragic.
01:02:38I think it's very sad.
01:02:39And don't get me wrong, I like nice stuff.
01:02:41I really do.
01:02:46But choosing stuff over people, ah, man, wretched.
01:02:51Hopefully that wasn't too long an answer.
01:02:52If there's anything that you wanted to add to what I said, or if there's anything you disagree
01:02:57or if there's anything that anybody else wants to bring up, I'm certainly happy to hear.
01:03:03Yeah, just look around.
01:03:07All the stuff you've accumulated, all the stuff you've stored, right?
01:03:11What's going to happen to it?
01:03:13What's going to happen to it?
01:03:16People are just going to come in and toss it all out.
01:03:18And what does it mean to you that all the stuff you've accumulated is going to get tossed
01:03:22out when you get old?
01:03:23What is it going to mean to you?
01:03:26What does it mean to you with regards to your accumulation of stuff, knowing, especially
01:03:32if you don't have kids, right?
01:03:33Knowing, ah, maybe you're married, right?
01:03:35Maybe you're married, you don't have kids.
01:03:36Okay.
01:03:38So what happens when the last person in the photograph is dead?
01:03:42Well, the photograph is just dead pixels.
01:03:46It's just dead pixels.
01:03:50All right, any other last questions or comments?
01:03:52And I appreciate that one.
01:03:53It's a very, very good one.
01:03:54It's a very, very good question.
01:03:56I've never been that much into stuff.
01:03:59I like it.
01:04:00I'm not anti-stuff.
01:04:01I'm certainly not a minimalist, but not stuff at the expense of people.
01:04:06No way, no how, no way.
01:04:08No thank you.
01:04:11All right, I'll do a go in once, go in twice.
01:04:15If you want to just raise your hand, I appreciate everyone dropping by today.
01:04:18Don't forget, of course, freedomand.com slash donate.
01:04:21Everybody who donates will get a copy of the French Revolution presentation this month
01:04:26of November.
01:04:27And yeah, to my friends in the States, I don't know, man, whatever happens this week,
01:04:35you might want to keep your head on a bit of a swivel.
01:04:36It could be some quite exciting stuff going down.
01:04:38And I don't want anyone to get into trouble or to get hurt, of course.
01:04:45All right.
01:04:45Well, thanks, everyone, so much for dropping by today.
01:04:47A real pleasure to chat.
01:04:48I hope that these kind of conversations are helpful.
01:04:51Thank you for the compliment, Dana.
01:04:53I appreciate that.
01:04:53I'm glad it was helpful for you as well.
01:04:55And I will see you guys tomorrow at 11 a.m.
01:04:58And have yourself a lovely, lovely afternoon.
01:05:02And freedomand.com slash donate to help out the show.
01:05:05Very much appreciated.
01:05:06Lots of love from up here.
01:05:07I'll talk to you soon.