Who Gets To Decide What A Good Life Looks Like

Life can feel like it’s been chopped into rival zones: work, church, school, online, each one demanding you declare a side. We’re two friends who don’t fit the usual pairing a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist and we keep testing a simple question: can you stay close without surrendering your convictions?

We start by revisiting Stoicism, and why the modern “neo-Stoic” wave can be both useful and incomplete. Once you bring Logos back into the picture, classical Stoicism stops being mere grit and becomes a framework for meaning, virtue, and endurance when life gets brutal. From there, we pull on the thread of political labels and how “neocon” and “neolib” often operate as pejoratives that hide more than they reveal. We talk incentives, think tanks, bureaucracy, and the way power can keep the language of freedom while swapping in something else.

Then we get honest about why Atlas Shrugged can make you furious: a “free market” that isn’t free, regulation that protects insiders, and people benefiting from work they tried to block. A Steinbeck story about Junius Maltby sharpens the dilemma even more who gets to decide the right way to live, and when does “help” become harm? We end by circling back to community, inclusion, boundaries, and a Stoic challenge we’re trying to practice: letting the hardest obstacle become the path to growth.

Subscribe for more conversations like this, share the show with a friend you disagree with, and leave a review. What belief or label has kept you from seeing the person in front of you?

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https://livingoncommonground.buzzsprout.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Does it feel like every part of your life is divided? Every scenario, every environment, your church, your school, your work, your friends, left, right, conservative, liberal, religious, secular. It seems you always have to take a side. This is a conversation between a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist who happen to be great friends. Welcome to Living on Common Ground. Do you think if we met today, we would still be friends? I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 0:35

But we're friends now.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

A mom is known as a mom because they are living in a dog. Man, so well, we want a few games. Y'all fools think that's something? Man, that ain't nothing, y'all. And you know what else? We ain't nothing either. Yeah, we came together in camp. Cool. But then we're right back here, and the world tells us that they don't want us to be together. We fall apart like we ain't a damn bit of nothing, man.

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SPEAKER_02 1:17

How you doing? Well, because what I was gonna say is uh that I uh am not I was listening to the today our recording and I am not an expert.

SPEAKER_04 1:28

Oh, I love the way that we just come in halfway through a conversation.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

I was gonna try to set it up. I do it. This is for Jordan. I do it like Nick Miller, sitting down and pretending like we're in the middle of a conversation.

SPEAKER_04 1:40

Well, it would this time though, we're not pretending. We've already talked for about 15 minutes about something else. Um real quick. Can I make one clarification? Do whatever you want. You're the other half of the podcast. Here's my want they sometimes you are the podcast. I know that there are people that look that listen just to hear you.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

You say that over and over, and that's not true.

SPEAKER_04 2:00

It's they tell me.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Oh, well, yes, it is true. Anyway, um, I uh there were there were several at least a couple of things in the last um episode where I was like, oh, I was wrong about that. I misspoke on that. I shouldn't have said that. The one thing that I can think of right now is um Cato never got a triumph. Oh, yeah, I'm sure that I'm sure that our I'm sure that people were listening to that and be like, pfft and I wasn't even thinking of Cato when I said that. I was thinking of Crassus and also Crassus never got a triumph. So I don't know what I should have said Pompey, because Pompey got a triumph. Yes, that'd be a great example.

SPEAKER_04 2:39

And um wasn't Pompey Let's see, I'm trying to think of a contemporary Stoic, that would have been um Seneca at the time. Was it? Did Seneca live during Caesar? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah, Seneca actually is a contemporary of Paul. They would have been Seneca'd be just a little bit older than the Apostle Paul.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

Okay, but well wait a sec then. I uh that's interesting, the um the time period, because Paul would have lived um under Tiberius, right? He was cre he was he was killed by um Nero. Okay. Yeah, oh that's right, because um Jesus um you know how all the story's written, Jesus is born under Tiberius. Um so that's for anybody who doesn't know, Tiberius was the adopted son of Augustus, who was um uh Octavian.

SPEAKER_03 3:42

Who was the adopted son of Julius Caesar?

SPEAKER_02 3:44

Adopted son of Julius Caesar, yeah. So it's the beginning of the Julian Caesar The Julian Claudia Claudia Claudia? Claudia is it Julian Claudian? Anyway.

SPEAKER_04 3:53

Sorry, everyone, mostly my wife, all of the historians listening. Um yeah, so because yeah, so you've got Seneca, because Seneca's brother was the governor who released Paul at one of his trials. Oh, okay. Sorry. Yeah, it's uh I just think that that it's fascinating to me to look at the overlap that takes place there theologically. It is. So um a couple things real quick, little housekeeping things. This is actually uh being aired, and I have been in the woods now for four days. So fantastic. Hopefully, this is coming out, and I'm Bigfoot hadn't gotten me.

SPEAKER_02 4:31

It hadn't gotten me, right? It's not Bigfoot opera.

SPEAKER_04 4:33

It's so funny because everyone is worried about bears. And I don't know what you're worried about. I have a whistle, so I'll be fine. It's black bears out here anyway, right?

SPEAKER_02 4:41

There's no brown bears.

SPEAKER_04 4:42

Who cares? Yeah. I mean, what's the worst that happens?

SPEAKER_02 4:44

They're a big dog punch them in the face and they'll whine and run away. There's nothing.

SPEAKER_04 4:49

This big dog. Anyway, no, I'm not worried about it at all. But other people have been worried about it. Yeah. Um, so I'd be worried about lions out here, mountain lions. Yeah, probably not where I'm gonna be.

SPEAKER_02 5:00

Cougars.

SPEAKER_04 5:01

Possibly.

SPEAKER_02 5:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:02

Yeah. But for the most part, things I mostly worry about cougars when I'm in Franklin. I what?

SPEAKER_02 5:09

Anyway, go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 5:11

Um the that was horrible. I'm a little punchy today. That's okay. And then um next week, we are uh we're doing a blast from the past, and uh we are gonna be airing. Again, then I'll be wrapping up my being close to wrapping up my two weeks on the trail. But um, we're gonna be replaying the conversation that we had with Peter Enns. So if you missed it the first time, uh it's we're just we're just replaying it because uh a lot of people really enjoyed that, and uh and so we thought we'd share it one more time.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

That'll be good. And we still have not rescheduled yet.

SPEAKER_04 5:45

No, we'll do that when I get back from the week.

SPEAKER_02 5:47

Our uh yeah, our live event. Yeah, but we will.

SPEAKER_04 5:49

We it the only way that it the live event is um fun is if there's actually people there. And so otherwise it's just another podcast recording just in a different location.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

I want plenty of time for as many people as possible to tell me that I'm full of crap.

SPEAKER_04 6:06

Yeah, we need and then we'll have a microphone there, and you get to speak into the microphone and you get to challenge uh Lucas. I I prefer not to be challenged at all in my positions. Yep. So um anyway. So, okay. Last time we were talking and we started talking about neo-things, right? And I and I like I use the phrase neo-stoicism. And just a real I enjoy neostoicism. And what I mean by that, I don't even know if it's a real term. It's a term that I use to describe people like Ryan Holliday, who have really sort of uh brought stoicism back to the forefront. It never really went away. Like you can look at some historical figures, and and I don't know if they would say that they subscribed to the philosophy of stoicism, but they definitely had stoic characteristics. Right. And the term stoic has remained part of our vocabulary for a long time.

SPEAKER_02 6:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:56

And um, however, one of the things that I talked about is the reason that I delineate and I say, well, there's neo-stoicism and classic stoicism, is because I believe that the the there's a key difference, and that is the um the inclusion of the idea of logos or logos, depending on how you want to pronounce it. It doesn't really matter how you pronounce it, it's the same thing. And um, and so for neo-stoics, it's more about uh you you could almost find the book in a self-help section if you're going into a Barnes and Noble or something like that. Uh, where classical stoicism, philosophy, yes, but you could almost find it in a theology section as well, because of the concept of logos. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:44

And so for me, I actually am uh more of a fan of what you would call neo-stoicism. You prefer neo and I see and I prefer classic stoicism.

SPEAKER_04 7:52

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because I think that it's so I think that the logos is such an important part of um of stoic.

SPEAKER_02 7:58

I think it's a good delineation. Yeah. I think that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_04 8:01

I appreciate that. Real quick, and I was thinking about this this morning because that's I was thinking about it. I don't have to explain why. Um and uh and I was thinking about this delineation that I make. And I I I wrote a um I wrote a uh story about um it's on the sub stack, it's called the fourth witness, and I'm I'm getting through it right now. But in there, there's a character, and she really struggles with her philosophy class that she's taking on Stoicism. And um, because she's trying to live the way she's being taught Stoicism, but her world continues to just sort of crumble around her. And so she has this real, really horrible um dilemma, this real horrible thing that she's facing. And there's and Stoicism, as neostoicism, doesn't provide her what she actually needs in order to make it through that difficult situation. And that's where I think neo-stoicism falls apart a little bit. Well, it doesn't fall apart. There's a lot of great things about it. And I really do appreciate Ryan Holiday and all the work he's doing in particular. However, um the idea of being able to align yourself with the logos, which is like why you have the four virtues and the three disciplines and all that, um, I think I think gives you a greater uh perspective on how to um endure how to remain committed to stoicism even in the most dire of circumstances. Um if it's just about, you know, a stiff upper lip and you know, you're bigger than this m e even the greatest stoic can crumble under severe um distress. Sure. So anyway, that's a lot I mean I just spent a lot of time explaining why I do sort of delineate between the two. But you were talking about um something that I found very interesting. You were using some term some neo, and it was because of the the uh reel that we watched that I wasn't really that familiar with. And so do you remember what they were?

SPEAKER_02 10:19

You're not familiar with the uh the term neocon? No, not not really. Really? Okay, interesting.

SPEAKER_03 10:25

Uh-uh.

SPEAKER_02 10:27

So I mean I I have holes in my uh yeah, I just um no, uh the reason I say interesting is because I just from uh in my world experience in my um like young, especially young adulthood. I mean, I heard that term thrown around all the time. Usually in a pejorative, that's usually almost all makes it a pejorative.

SPEAKER_04 10:52

So almost always I'm more familiar with Comic-Con.

SPEAKER_02 10:55

Nobody's gonna um there there's less people who use the term Comic-Con in a pejorative way. Oh, absolutely. Uh it's I I shouldn't maybe even say it's always used in a pejorative way. Um neocon. Neocon. Neocon and Neolib. They're I mean, I don't know that I think it's like it's I think it's like Puritan. Nobody's gonna call themselves, you know, the Puritans didn't call themselves Puritans. There that was a pejorative, right? Um I think most of these labels that we know people by, I think they most of the time are that could be fun.

SPEAKER_04 11:30

Let's talk about pejoratives. Sure. Well, I'm part of the United Methodist tradition, and Methodist was actually a pejorative that they just decided to own. And um, which takes some of the sting out of it when you're just like, fine, yeah, we're Methodists.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

Well, like, okay, so um one week we were talking about the um populari and the optimates in uh Roman culture. Um, those were both pejoratives. They wouldn't have called themselves that initially. I'm not sure if at some point the populari actually took that on. Um most of the time people don't uh use the term uh populist uh nowadays to um to mean like for themselves. Most of the time that's a pejorative, I think. Or at least it's a descriptor that's used to like you wouldn't use it for yourself kind of thing. I think most of the time.

SPEAKER_04 12:26

All right, so so uh nearly the roundheads. Oh, I can I mean we can just run through things like what are the round heads?

SPEAKER_02 12:36

The roundheads were um that was during the um English Revolution. Um they were kind of they were kind of proto, almost proto-socialists, kind of. Um no, wait, no, no, no, I'm sorry. The roundheads, the roundheads were the other ones, the levelers. It was the levelers and the roundheads. The levelers were the proto-socialists. They were like the kind of revolutionaries in that um in that rev uh in the in the initial stages. I've got nearly right.

SPEAKER_04 13:09

Levelers makes that completely makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

Roundheads had to do with the um the hairstyle that um the like uh kind of remnant aristocratic um parliament had.

SPEAKER_04 13:24

Oh, now you got me thinking about um Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, uh-huh. Which has got me furious at the moment.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

Good. You texted me, you said that um I'm pissed off. It's shrugged, it's pissed you off, and I was like, finally. Yeah. Um, why? Why did it piss you off? Okay. What piss you off about it?

SPEAKER_04 13:44

Um I do want to get back, I do want to get my mind around the neo lib neocon here for a minute. I mean, it kind of got an idea.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

I'm just not an expert at it. I can tell you, I can give you a brief summation, but I'm gonna go.

SPEAKER_04 13:54

Give me the brief summation, and then I then we're gonna jump into Atlas Shrugged, because I do want to talk about that. I think that that might have to be our conversation.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Neocons. Um they were exchang this is why I know about them, is why I heard about them all the time, is because late nineties all the way through the early aughts and into actually maybe even late 80s through the 90s. They are, as far as I'm concerned, the reason we had the global war on terror. They really, really, really, really wanted it. Um they were uh all over the global war on terror. You can kind of think of it this way. They're all um real neocons are all like former Trotsky socialists. Um uh you can kind of think of it this way. They are very happy on an on the economic side to be pretty pretty far to the left, like like centralized economic systems. Um, and they will be uh on on the in the social wars, in the cultural wars, they're gonna be on what you would consider the right. So on the right socially, on the left, this is really, really oversimplification, on the left economically. Okay. Neo libs are kind of almost almost the opposite. They'll give you any social thing you want as long as you don't touch the money. So they come across looking like they're they align with Democrats, yes, but they align with Republicans too. They come across looking like they're on the left, but what they really want is make sure you don't touch my the economic systems that I have. Right. So they're the they're the funding behind um a lot of the the pushes that happen in our in our government. The neocons really align themselves uh strongly with the um military-industrial complex. So the the neocons were really aligned with like Lockheed and the Council for uh what is it called? The Council for Free Europe or Council for the Free Middle East or something like that. They they would they develop that Lockheed Martin and um uh you know Boeing and all all of these companies, their execs would it's just amazing when you start looking at it by the way. You should Google this stuff. They they will form these committees. The committee, the council will be like a think tank that is advising the policymakers. So it looks like they're just they're just these they're getting advice from these like really smart people who have formed these councils that have ideas about how the world should look. And then you look at who makes up the council, and it's like the CEO of Lockheed Martin, the CEO of Boeing, the CEO of Cargyle, the CEO, you know, like the it's the these are the people that staff it. Um whereas the neo libs are they're like again, it's super overs oversimplification, but the way I think of it is like um the neocons are like uh we want the world to look this certain way. We will um give you all of the financial giveaways. We don't really have a whole lot of principles on the financial side. And the neo libs are like, we'll give you what we'll give you rainbow everything as long as you don't touch our money. Right. So like uh the Occupy Wall Street thing that happened after 2008, you saw very quickly after that all of the top financial um firms, the huge all the banks all started adopting all of these what would be considered leftist social agendas. Okay. And it was like here, here, look at this stuff, guys. Stop coming at our money. Right. Right? That's that's kind of the way that I think about it.

unknown 18:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

So it's kind of flipped in terms of what it what I think the majority of the populace thinks. Right. Anyway. Is that fun?

SPEAKER_04 18:10

Yeah. No, that's helpful.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

Um and I am not an expert in the world.

SPEAKER_04 18:15

I just so I you know, I'm familiar with like the concepts, but I never heard the terms, interestingly enough.

SPEAKER_02 18:21

I mean, you gotta remember, I'm a 20-year-old in 2002. I'm a in, you know, 2002 in college listening to Rush Limbaugh and Tom Sullivan and and Sean Hannity. This is the type of young person I was. I was fighting them like the plague. Well, this is the I'm my point is like I was uh politics, socialist, all of this, this kind of soft science stuff, this was my sports. It's all I I would listen to it constantly. I would think about it. So I just like marinated in all these terms. But I will say I didn't really at that during that time, I had I would have had no idea what a neocon actually was, even though I was hearing it all the time. Um but like Scott Horton is really good on this and um like explains it really well, and Daryl Cooper talks about it also. Anyway.

SPEAKER_04 19:18

Okay. No, that's helpful. All right. So swinging back around.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

Yeah, why uh why is Atlas Drug mad at you?

SPEAKER_04 19:26

Um mad at me? No. Why are you? Yeah, okay. So um so let's see, you've got Reared in Steel, right? Yeah, and you have um the uh John Galt line has been created. Yeah. And by Dagny, Dag, what's her is that her name? Yeah, Dagney. Um, and I can't remember her last name right now. But her brother's so long since I've got to be. Her brother Tom, Thomas is the one that really pisses me off. Okay. Because he's a moron. He's an idiot. Okay. And um he's in charge of this railroad. Uh-huh. And you've got this whole conglomerate, and this is where the Neo stuff like starts popping into my head the way you're describing it. And they're trying, like, they're basically the way I've now I'm only a third of the way through the book. But what it seems to me, first of all, I would put this probably in the category of a 1984 or an Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

SPEAKER_02 20:24

That's exactly it's an allegory.

SPEAKER_04 20:26

Yeah, and it's completely like a uh um dystopian type of thing for me. I don't think that there's been some great war. Uh, but I just I just got through the I'm I'm in the part right now where they have discovered the new the engine that never was developed. Okay. That could take static electricity and use it to generate an engine, and that would have like made fossil fuels and all like you don't need any of that stuff, right? And it would have just revolutionized everything. And um and it seems to me, like the characters in the book haven't figured this out yet, but it seems to me like that whole project was killed by the conglomerate that determines what can and cannot actually be used in the market and how it can be used in the market. And so they're trying to operate as if they have a free market, but the free market is so regulated that it's not a free market. It's a farce. And it's and it's making me really angry because um I'm like, well, Rearden should get to do what he wants with this the this uh the steel that he has developed. It's his and and um and she should be allowed to do whatever she she trusted, she trusted Reardon enough to use his steel to build her railroad. And people trusted them enough to invest in it because they they believed in it. And now all of the people who have fought against it this entire time. Time are benefiting from the work, and they're actually suffering because of the way that the conglomerate is organized and running actually the entire economy. That really bothered me. It just and it's and the irony doesn't like I the does not escape me. Um because I I am probably close I'm probably closer to a leveler. Sure. Right when it comes to things. However, I also now like as it's so funny because embarrassingly, as you're describing a neo-lib, I think that might be some of me, like there might be some truth in that in me.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

Like, you know, um, I mean there's truth in all of us, but right.

SPEAKER_04 22:45

And um, but I feel like if you're willing to work hard and you you you come up with ideas and stuff like that, that there should be no problem with you being rewarded with it. And the way I'm reading the book is that we're actually rewarding sloth. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 23:03

While using the vocabulary of free markets. Yeah, which is insane. That is just I mean, this is why people will start to read Ayn Rand. This is why Rand Paulis is named Rand. He's named after Ayn Rand. This is why people will some people, some people, that he who has ears to hear hear, uh will start to read Ayn Rand and go, oh, and become kind of sometimes kind of cultish about her. Because in the same way that people become cultish about like Orwell or Huxley, because you start to read it and you go, there's something about this that cuts through and you go, I see this all the time. And you're describing it in a way that makes it so easy to see. But I go out in my world and I see this all the time. Why do I have to get a license to cut somebody's hair in California? Why do you have to have a license? And why is it, why do you have to go through school in order to get the license? Because you know why? Because the the people who were already there create the regulations in order to keep you out. That's why.

SPEAKER_04 24:24

Have you ever read Um Julian Julius? Ju shoot. Um it's it's a short story at the end of The Red Pony by um your favorite communist, um John Steinbeck.

SPEAKER_02 24:43

No, I haven't.

SPEAKER_04 24:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 24:45

Um I can't remember the name. Junius Junius? Junius.

SPEAKER_04 24:51

I think it's first.

SPEAKER_02 24:52

I won't tell anyone if you're wrong.

SPEAKER_04 24:54

Anyway, I can't okay. So it's a great short story. It's very short. That's why they've got to include it at the end of another book, right? Because they're it like it it it's less, it's less than 30 pages. Yeah. Anyway, it's so good because and I think it I think it connects to this conversation that we're having. Um, it's about a guy who's an accountant in San Francisco, and he decides to um take a vacation. And so he heads down into the valley where Salinas is at the top of that valley. What valley is that? Anyway, it doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_02 25:27

Um well, it's Salinas Monterey, it's that's what Steinbeck always wrote about. Salinas Monterey. Right.

SPEAKER_04 25:32

So Monterey's on the coast, though, and so Salinas is in the top of the valley. Yeah, Salinas is like half an hour away from the road. So if you go over the mountains, then you're on the coast, but this is inside. So anyway, he goes down there for vacation. And uh, and while he's there, he um he stays at a uh a ranch that is owned by a widow, and she has uh she has two children, and he ends up he stays there because she leases or she lets a room. Yeah. And uh and so he stays there, and he's staying there for a while, and people start to talk about this widow who's letting a room to a guy, and rumors start to happen. So they decide to get married, as you know, one would obviously do. And so they get married, and he is becoming to this place where he's like, I'm emotionally disconnected. And um, she she dies, and the two children die during this pandemic. This this uh that happens. But they have a child, the two of them have a child together, and the child gets brought up. Well, the guy is super like he doesn't he cannot run a ranch, he doesn't know how a farm, he doesn't know any of that. But he lives here and he becomes just like lazy and he tells these great stories, and he and he just he just they they live like peasants, and then um and he hires a guy to come work the ranch for him, but the guy just starts hanging out with him, and so the three of them, the two of them raise this little boy, and he's just like this little Hellion. But he's super smart because he's all he's doing is hanging out and hearing stories, and he's learning about the world, and he's you know, all of these things, he's experiencing things, and he gets to the age where they have to send him off to school and he goes to school. And then, and this is where I think it connects, kind of what we're talking about here, then what happens is the school board sees this child and they evaluate the child based on his appearance, and they decide that he actually needs clothes and that he shouldn't be raised this way because it's not good for the boy. Yeah. And so they start getting involved. And one of the teachers, she realizes this is going to be a problem, and so she tries to stop them. She's like, please do not give him clothes. He doesn't know he's poor. And they're like, But it's getting to be winter, he needs to have shoes. Even though he's lived his whole life without shoes, he needs to have shoes. And so she begs them, please don't do this. And they bring the boy in, and they and now the boy has also become like one of the most popular kids in his little class because all the kids like to go over there and play the games because the dads play the games with, you know, sure and all that. And and um, like at one point the teacher goes over there and she's like, Are you Mr. Maltby? That's it. Maltby. Um, so Juni Junius Maltby is the name of the story. And she goes, Are you Mr. Maltby? Yay. And um, and and he's like, Yeah. And uh he goes, Well, no, actually, I'm 300 Indians right now. And this is so-and-so, but well, actually, right now he's the president because all the boys are going to rescue the president from being burned by 300 Indians at the stake. You know, and so they they just like they're just that kind of people, and yeah, and it's great. So, anyway, they give the boy uh two new shirts, a new pair of uh of uh um bibballs and shoes. And all of a sudden the boy realizes he's poor and he runs away. And then the the school board decides that they've offended him, but what they really need to do is talk to the dad and let the dad know that you can't raise a child this way, that this is not good for the child to be, to be poor. And so the book ends with them miserable, heading to San Francisco so he can find a job as an accountant. And the reason I, in my mind, it connected, it's because who gets to determine what's the right way that we should live? Who gets who gets to decide the regulations that we should have? Um and at some point, are we actually doing more harm than we're doing? I think that's the point of his book, Steinbeck's point, is that you do more harm than good.

SPEAKER_02 29:32

Well, that question is really interesting because my first response is that has an answer. And the answer is your culture, your tribe gets to determine it. And if you go back far enough, it would have been clear. If I grow up in a village that has 50 people, and there's a village over there that has 50 people, we all kind of know I don't have to, nobody's setting policy about what the correct way is to raise a kid. Doesn't mean every kid was raised well. And it was very clear, sometimes they're not raised well. And you know what happens? Uh a few of the dads go over and make sure that dad knows that he was doing wrong, right? And that's vigilante justice. Yeah, that is. And yes, there were problems with that. But my point is to your question, who gets to decide? The your kind of tribal culture gets to decide. That's you're a part of this and the overused word community. But it's true. However, now we have a situation where all of those kind of what I would call sacred, ancient, precognitive roles that the village had, that the tribe had, they've all been outsourced to the state and to bureaucracy and to policy. And you have to have policy. When you are operating in a state, you have to have policy. And you have to have bureaucracy. You've got, if you've got this is if you're driving down the road and you're gonna see two people in the next two miles and you know that, and that's how it always is, every day for 20 years, you don't need road laws. Do whatever you want, right? If you want to turn across a double yellow line, that who it would be stupid to go down to where it's not a double yellow line. You're not gonna see anybody. But if you have that same road and now you have 30,000 people in that town, you're, you're gonna, you have, you can't have 30,000 people in that same town and not have policies and rules and regulations and bureaucracy. Right. And so it's reasonable to understand how that develops. And also, this is why Thomas Sowell says there's no such thing as progress, only trade-offs, because you get trade-offs. You get a trade-off. It's not inherently better to have the bureaucracy and the school board and the outsourced sacred rights into the hands of the state. It's just a trade-off, and you get something with it. Maybe in maybe you get average public health increasing. But hidden in there is a lot of individual health that decreases. Right.

SPEAKER_04 32:22

So here's here's my thinking. Um I do, I really enjoy- I don't have an answer for that. I really do enjoy those kind of books, uh, which is interesting because they also at the same time piss me off. Yeah. Right. So I'm enjoying I the interesting thing. Have you gotten to the big crash yet? The big accident? Okay. No. I know it's a spoiler, but it's fine. It's taken me a long time to read this book because I read it. So in the beginning I was reading it and then I'd get bored.

SPEAKER_03 32:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:48

Now I'm reading it and I got to set it down because I get angry. Yeah. And so I've set it down right now. And um she uh um sh the the main, the female protagonist is is working really hard to try to find the engineer that designed this this particular engine. And um, and it seems to me like Reardon is kind of Reardon's just kind of accepting that this is all going on. But now he just has made a stand against the government and said, I will not sell you my steel. And they're like, Well, you have to.

SPEAKER_02 33:24

Right, you have to. We have to have regulations.

SPEAKER_04 33:27

Yeah, and he's like, why?

SPEAKER_02 33:29

Because policy. Shrug, shrug, shrug.

SPEAKER_04 33:31

Yep, that's exactly what they do. And and he says, Well, what then so if if it's just gonna end with you throwing me in prison, then throw me in prison. And then like, why would you say that? Right. He's like, Well, isn't that what you're implying? Yeah. But why would you say it? Right. Right? Yeah, oh my God. So anyway, okay Taxes are theft. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. The the problem that I had with the Junus Maltbee, Junius Maltbee story, is we we feel the need that if you're not quite living the way that we have social expectations to live, that it must be wrong and we have to fix it. That's one thing. Right? That's kind of the that's the thing. We can't if we can't understand it, it must be wrong. All right. Uh the thing about 1984 and uh Brave New World and now Atlas Shrugged is that the thing I think that's bothering me, that that seems to um cause me some anxiety with these books, is they're using the culture that the acceptable culture, but they're changing it.

SPEAKER_03 34:48

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 34:49

And at the same time, they're not. Right? So like in 1984, it's we have to keep a war going. Sure. Right? We have to keep that going so that we can keep you distracted, and at the same time, then we'll control you with the information you're getting and and all that kind of stuff, right? Which then again, that connects back to um amusing ourselves to death. I think I think that there's some of that in there. But the amusing ourselves to death, again, they talk about 1984 and they talk about Aldous Huxley. That really comes out in Brave New World. We're just going to entertain you and you'll be distracted by all the blinky little lights and all that kind of stuff. And and and we just hand that over and we do that. And yes, you can read, you can see both of those things are happening right now in this in our world today. That's what we do. Um and then this one's bothering me because it, like you were saying earlier, they they continue to use the same language, but it doesn't mean the same thing anymore. In fact, it actually has no meaning whatsoever. You can talk about free market, but there is no free market in Atlas Shrugged. Just at least at this point, it does not exist. And you talk about a crash, it's inevitable. Like what they're doing is going to destroy a free market, pretending like it's a free market. I guess the reason that all of the so all of those things bother me, because like if you if you're in a society and all of a sudden they change it, we've gotten to the point right now where you're just kind of screwed. Like if the if the United States all of a sudden decides that that we're gonna go the way that Ann Ron that Anne Ryan Ayn Rand describes, then um there's nothing we can do about it.

SPEAKER_03 36:36

You just gotta kind of suck it up and take it.

SPEAKER_04 36:39

That's frustrating to me. Um and the other reason that I'm really interested in all these things is because if we are trying to, and I say we because you're part of this, trying to create a community like the one we keep talking about, it these are things that like you have to kind of consider. Um we can't, what are the implications when you're trying to create community? What are the implications to take away from these kind of books? Uh, to to what are the implications that we can take away? What are things that we can take away? How do we apply like our understanding now of neocon and neo-lib and levelers and you know all of the all of the pejorative labels that we want to throw on it, uh, all the all the different ways that we use those? What are some things that we can take away as we're trying to build a community where everyone isn't just welcome, but everyone belongs? What is that what is what does it actually look like? And how do you do that in such a way without stamping or stomping on someone else's ability to be?

SPEAKER_03 37:47

Am I becoming a um My mind just went completely shut down. Um why did that happen to me? Because I'm 54?

SPEAKER_04 38:04

Next year I this year I qualify for AARP. This year I can Yeah, this year I'm 55 and AARP, here I come.

SPEAKER_03 38:12

Um am I a uh libertarian? Am I becoming a libertarian? Is that what's happening to me?

SPEAKER_04 38:23

I and did I just use it as a pejorative?

SPEAKER_02 38:26

I you know, I I don't know how it relates to uh That was a little bit of a rant, by the way. I don't know how it relates to a uh a smaller community.

SPEAKER_03 38:38

Um I mean I I do keep thinking about The Matrix.

SPEAKER_02 38:50

I think about the Matrix every day. Um I do keep thinking about uh it was one of the Peters that we spoke to who said that I think it was the first Peter that we spoke to. Rollins. Rollins, who said that uh We probably need to get him back on. I love that. Uh who said that uh there really is no way to have um a community that is um that's accepting for everyone. There's not any way that that in order to have the community, you have to, this is this, this was his thing, that you you have to have um some way to know that you're inside and not outside. And there's gonna be some people that you're not gonna want in there.

SPEAKER_04 39:34

Yeah, but I think there's a difference between want and accepting.

SPEAKER_02 39:38

That's fine, but there's gonna be some people that okay, fine. I'll use your terminology. There's gonna be some people you're not gonna accept. There's gonna be some people that the group's not gonna accept.

SPEAKER_04 39:48

You know, I was thinking about this when I was giving the presentation in Cincinnati and I and I'm going through the model that I created and all that kind of stuff. And and at the end, um I start talking about how the um you if you're sort of that middle person, that that centrist, uh, the moderate, the uh um, you know, both sides view you as the enemy. But the trick is if you are holding on to an ideal, then the other person doesn't have to be the enemy. If it's a if it's about identifying what you're for, not what you're against, it's about identifying your values, then what you're actually doing is you're trying to present your values, not take down an enemy. But here's the thing. And I've been trying to honestly give this some thought. At the end, in the model, the way it works is that the the last man, quote unquote, man standing in the model, as I begin to take it back apart, so it builds. I don't think you've ever seen this. The model builds until you end up with um basically uh a binary. And and then I build it back out to where it's a it's a prism, right, of all these different uh great, great diversity. But at the end, the last thing to come down is the fundamentalists. Um and and again, fundamentalism is not the beliefs that you hold, it's how you hold your beliefs. But at the end of the day, does that make what I would what I would argue, and I and this is where it becomes um I could be I could be accused of just semantics here, and I and I realize this. And this is where I'm trying to think this through.

SPEAKER_03 41:38

It's not the person who holds their beliefs in a fundamental way that I have the problem with. It's the it's the fundamentalism. So it's not so it it's it becomes the enemy is the I don't even like using the word enemy because I'm such a softy, I'm such a levelist.

SPEAKER_04 42:05

Um but the enemy becomes a position, not a person. But the fact of the matter is people hold that position.

SPEAKER_02 42:13

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_04 42:14

That's the that's the struggle.

SPEAKER_02 42:16

Okay, let me wrap it uh all the way back to a beginning point that you were talking about with the Stoicism. One of the principles of Stoicism is that the obstacle is always the path, right? Yep. The the print one of the principles that Jordan Peterson's always talking about, it's a Jungian principle that um that the devil the devil, the the dragon, well, you can say the devil. Sure. The devil hoards the gold. The dragon hoards the gold. The thing that is the most difficult is where you get the most reward. That's better said when it when you're talking about going inward to yourself. But if you think about uh the obstacle is always the path, the most difficult type of person to find common ground for somebody like yourself who wants to be accepting to all people would be the one who specifically says, I will not find common ground with you, right?

SPEAKER_04 43:14

That goes back to our before I hit the record button.

SPEAKER_02 43:18

So what I'm saying is, I've been trying myself. This is me. I've been trying to have uh to repeat a mantra every morning for the last week or so of um something along the lines of like, thank you for the chef, thank you for a challenging life, thank you for the challenge, thank you for the thank you for the stress, thank you for the thank you for the stress that I feel. Thank you for the, you know, like just try to be gr grateful for the the thing I don't want to be grateful for and try to turn it back around. Thank you, you know, for that. And so I wonder if it's such a wonderful opportunity if you encounter. Someone who is the most challenging in that respect. What a wonderful opportunity to try to find a way again. And maybe this doesn't work this time. That doesn't, you know, maybe that means that I got to go do bench press again and again and again. And what a wonderful opportunity to try to work this out. Maybe. Maybe that's a good because I think the question that you're talking about with the community thing, how do we structure this? I think my own personal belief is that the trap that you can fall into is trying to find the perfect way to think about it in your mind and hold that in your mind at all times. And that's how we're going to do it. And then, oh, we're not perfect yet. So we'll keep, you know what I mean? Like if we just had the exact perfect way of looking at it. But but maybe you know, you just you keep pushing in a direction and then you realize you're too far, and then you push the other direction.

SPEAKER_04 44:57

So maybe the perfect for for our purposes here, the perfect community is the imperfect community where we where we relate to each other perfectly.

unknown 45:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 45:09

Okay. How's that? Yeah. No, you know what I mean? Like, um, we give thanks. I think you're absolutely right. In in in a community of inclusion of all persons, we give thanks for the diversity that we experience because it forces us to continue to uh grow in our acceptance of diversity.

SPEAKER_03 45:34

The the the reward comes through the struggle. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:40

Mm-hmm. Yeah. It still does I I agree with that. I think that's our common ground when we're looking at this. I think. Um it still doesn't solve my dilemma of what do you do when the community that you're a part of shifts without uh the vast majority of people agreeing to the shift.

SPEAKER_02 45:58

Well, I would say your expectation should be that it will do exactly that regularly.

SPEAKER_04 46:06

It's so disappointing.

SPEAKER_02 46:07

That is just how life is, I think.

SPEAKER_04 46:09

Right. So I am a uh um I'm also I guess a bit of a traditionalist in that sense. Of course. Right? We all are. Mm-hmm. In that um, if we have certain agreed upon ways of conducting ourselves as a community, uh and it seems to be working.

SPEAKER_02 46:29

We should not change it unless we should not tear down the fence until we know exactly why it's there. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04 46:36

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So if we say that we're a free market. Anyway, we're welcome. The other thing, too, is you know, we're watching right now what's going on in Iran and the um the the Strait of uh Hormuz. Yeah, Hormuz. I was gonna say that and I thought, no, that doesn't sound right. Um it it it brought to mind the book um um the end of globalization. Yeah. Or the or deglobalization or whatever the the name of the book was. Uh that's this is just the beginning.

SPEAKER_03 47:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:20

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 47:20

And um I have a lot of thoughts on that that I will not record.

SPEAKER_04 47:25

All right. Yeah, that's the reason that we didn't record the first 15 minutes of this conversation, because I'm the one that's responsible for hitting start and record, and I didn't want uh to record what I was talking about. All right. Well, I hope that everyone um is having had a great Easter. Have a great Easter. Eat lots of had a great Easter, Lucas. This comes out, this comes out next week. So all right, thanks. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 47:52

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