This is just the monologue:


...What it's caused I would sort of say is some problems with people who were you know - I sort of fail to understand the drama of all this, but that could just be me. So there have been people who have been on the boards and I found them to be difficult and destructive and obstructive and toxic in one way or another and distracting and you know screwing up the conversation and retarding the progress and you know that's sort of my perspective and my opinion of what was going on and I think there was good reason. And so I hand out an "unvitation" right? I sort of say to people, "please don't come and post on this board anymore because you're not contributing to the conversation" and it's sort of my job to make sure the conversation moves forward. That's sort of what I'm committed to and I'm not going to let anything stand in that way...People who have left, um, I mean of course people leave of their own accord, it's been a completely voluntary situation. And the board is not Freedomain Radio. the board is not Freedomain Radio. Freedomain Radio is the books and podcasts and the back and forth that goes on sometimes in emails. The board is not Freedomain Radio. It's not even a core part of Freedomain Radio. It's a nice bit of lemon in the icing on the cake.The people who think they've messed that up and they've done something about the conversation fundamentally sort of miss the point. But people who leave get mad. They get mad and they don't call me up and talk to me about it, right? So when I say look there are problems and so on and then people can call me up and then - it's not like I'm hard to get ahold of. I sit in front of the computer 14 hours a day doing philosophy lately because it's been the book plus FDR - regular FDR. But they don't they don't call me up. They just kind of get mad, they go off and they sort of start spreading negative things and have negativity and so on. And so some board, I can't even remember the name of it, some board has gone up with a bunch of people who are no longer part of this conversation here. And I guess they are disliking me and what it is that I do and they're having problems and they feel that I'm, oh, a cult leader - the worst cult leader in the history of the planet, but - I am a cult leader and I am intolerant and I am censorious and you know all this kind of stuff. So I will tell you what I think is really going on and then we can drop it and move on to more pleasant topics. But this is a microcosm of the challenges we face in bringing the truth to the world, so it's worth spending a little bit of time on it. So, when two people end up with a conflict which is not resolvable within the framework of the relationship, then there's one of two possibilities: The first possibility is that one person is acting badly and the other person is acting well. The other possibility is that both people are acting badly. Right? Now, the people who have, who i've banned from the board have acted in a way subsequent to the banning that completely justified you know what it is that I did. Right? Because you know if you and I were to go out on a date...then we would sort of evaluate each other and if at some point we didn't decide that we were attracted to each other then we'd just not - you know, we just wouldn't go out any more. Right? And the mature response to somebody who doesn't want to go out with you is like "well yeah it stings a little but blah blah blah" but you sort of say OK well not to my taste, didn't work out, and then you move on. Right? What you don't do is put up a website and start trashing the person who didn't want to go out with you and calling them a slut and calling them crazy and - right? that's just a really sick response to a non-preference for a relationship. Right? Everybody's free to leave the board, people I'm sure come by and drop their - you know I don't send emails to the people who haven't logged in in 60 days saying "where the hell are you? You're supposed to be part of this community. Act like it." Of course not, right? People can leave. And I can ask them to leave. Right? It's a free and voluntary society and there are no unchosen positive obligations. So when a relationship deteriorates to the point where there's a break, where one person says like "I don't want to spend time with you any more, I don't want you to come to my house, I don't want you to come to my parties," or whatever, the person who's being rejected has to either say "we're both acting badly" or they have to say "I'm acting badly and the other person, Stef, is acting well," or...they say "Stef is acting badly and I am acting well." That's sort of the only three possibilities. We're both acting badly; we'll call him Bob is acting badly, or Stef is acting badly. Now, the people who I've banned have never said - have never called me up and said "Gee, you know, let's talk about it - it's not so bad or I didn't realize I was being so negative or so difficult" or whatever, right? I would have those conversations and I've offered those conversations to people before - I don't offer then now, but I did offer them to many people at the time of these sorts of problems. So here's what happens, is that basically Bob, Bob The Bannee, goes off and is embittered and does not say "I acted badly and Stef acted well." They don't say "we both acted badly." Or if they do then it's just a way of sort of dragging me down, too. They say "I acted really well and Stef acted really badly, Stef's a hypocrite, you know, he says 'oh we've got such an open society' and then he makes up these arbitrary rules and bans people and they get all mad. Mad mad mad at this kind of situation. Now, the problem with that approach, like if you leave a relationship or somebody dumps you, let's say, and you go sailing off into the sunset and you never have any particular contact with that person again, then you can, basically until the day you die, maintain an illusion that you acted well and the other person acted badly. Unfortunately though, if there's a board running and there are podcasts and there are books, then people have a glimpse into my state of mind and where I am as a human being. Now if I am a bad guy, right, because we have this equation, right? Rationality = virtue = happiness. Rationality = virtue = happiness. And it's as old as Socrates - this is nothing that's new or culty, it's the old equation. I think we're just taking it 12 steps further, so to speak. So, if you say "well Stef is a bad guy" then what you're saying is "Stef is irrational or hypocritical" or whatever, right? In which case, Stef is immoral or corrupt in some manner, in which case Stef, by definition, must be unhappy, right? So if you get dumped, then if you say "I acted well, the other person acted badly" then the way that you confirm that diagnosis is, you say "Is the person who dumped me happy or unhappy?" Now if they're happy, you have a problem. Because if you're dumped by a happy person, and reason = virtue = happiness, then you've been dumped by a rational person, which makes you an irrational person, and thus not a particularly good guy. Right? So that's the mythology that's set up. Stef is corrupt, Stef must be unhappy, Stef must, you know - pride goeth before a fall, it's all gone to his head, he's become crazy, the success, and blah blah blah. So the problem is that what happens is...that when I released "On Truth" and particularly when I released "UPB" which was this week, which was simultaneous to this particular flair-up - and I *knew* ahead of time that this book was gong to cause problems - the book is a sheer act of joy for me...


The book is something of course that I am staggeringly proud of, I'm unbelievably happy about - it's been 25 years - quarter century - in the making, and it's certainly the hardest thing that I've ever done. Right, so it is a very large achievement - I'm just beyond thrilled about it all. And I recorded a video and some audio that expressed that joy. And look, to be perfectly frank with everyone here, I have to step up to try to match the size of this book, if this makes any sense, right? The book is huge and although I can be a passionate guy, the passion that I can bring to bear on the conversation is something that the book demands more of than I am normally, you know, in my British tight-ass way, willing to or comfortable with giving. So I have to stretch myself - it's like you have to give birth to the book and then stretch yourself, to use a rather slippery metaphor. And so when I did the reading for the video and the audio of "On Truth" I was very passionate and I was hugely happy and radiant, right? I mean I'm just overjoyed. Sort of nothing can touch me this week. Doesn't matter that people get mad at me - I'm beyond thrilled with the achievement. So if you say "well Stef's irrational and corrupt and therefor he must be unhappy and I'm a good guy and he's a bad guy," and then you see somebody who's achieved something wonderful and is radiantly happy about it, that threatens your mythology that Stef is a bad guy and you are a good guy. Right? Because if reason = virtue = happiness, and somebody has achieved a great act of rationality and is wildly happy, then you can't maintain the fiction that Stef is irrational and weird and culty or whatever. It's not possible to maintain that fiction. So what do you do. Well, the first thing tat you're going to want to do if you get lost - or if this defense mechanism of putting Stef down is threatened, is you're going to want to get other people to reinforce your mythology. Right? People don't go to church on their own. The people who have false corrupt beliefs, they have to cling to each other in the way that scientists and rational philosophers don't. They have to cling, they have to get together, and they have to reinforce each other. Like social alcoholics, they have to get together. And so, when I became sort of - I revealed this great rationality, this great happiness, of my achievements of my last few months of work, then there was a sort of detonation in the mythology of "Stef is a bad guy and we're good guys." Right? the banned people, or whatever. And so what they have to do is they have to get together and pump each other's mythology up, right? In the same way that Christians will cling closer and closer together as science closes in. Right? And they have to get more and more hostile because the mythology is being threatened. So they have to all get together and pump each other up and get mad and get bitter and get hostile and get negative and so on. And their theory is only rescued if I'm unhappy, right? Their theory that I'm corrupt and I'm bad and they're good, right? So they have to be happy and I have to be unhappy. So of course the more happy I am the more irritated they get, the more angry they get, the more they feel that I'm faking it ever more and I'm - you know, this kind of stuff. So they then have to try and bring that happiness down, take it away. Right? And they do that by, you know, trying to grab people form the board, which they used my message system surreptitiously to bring people over to this other forum and crank them up full of anger and they sent them back with, you know, hostile and negative statements, and so on, and I could give a flying fuck. Seriously, even on the worst week it wouldn't bother me that much, but on this week for sure it doesn't matter. I feel sad, particularly when they manipulate and use people who are young and very vulnerable to sort of act out this mythology and this anger. I think that's very sad. In fact I think that's completely horrible. But that's the story in my view, and of course there's some proof, right? In term of the timing and so on, and of course this happened 6 months ago when I went full-time, which is when I sort of kicked up the dedication to philosophy thing quite a bit. Quite a notch. So I think that's sort of an explanation of sort of why it happened at this point and at this moment and why this particular group of people who have been banned, they sort of gather together and it intensified, they intensified their dislike because their mythology that Stef is irrational therefor corrupt therefor unhappy, took a body blow when I am clearly so overjoyed and have produced something that is so rational and I've think quite glorious. So it's one of the reasons why achievement is tough, right? It brings a lot of people who aren't so happy about achievement out of the woodwork, and that's par for the course, right? And fundamentally it doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter at all. The board is not core, and the board can always go to invitation only if too many annoying people hang out there. I mean that doesn't matter and I don't want people who are involved in the board to fall down into this trap called, you know, "This is not a time for celebration because we're mad at you," right? "We think it's a cult" or "we think it's a bad thing." And look, for anyone who's listening to this, if you want to come by and call this a cult, we are going to have problems, you and I. We are going to have problems. Alright, this is a very challenging conversation to keep moving forward, it is an essential and I think the most powerful conversation in the world to keep moving forward, and people who come over and start sowing dissent and it's a cult, and so on, cults are very specific entities with very specific characteristics, and we conform to *none* of them. Right? So if you're going to come over and call this a cult, I am going to react to you - I mean unless you found some magical proof, which case let me know and I'll try to make it less culty, right? - but if you come over and just say "wow, you know, it just seems kind of culty," well then you might as well just be calling my wife a whore. Because you're taking something that I treasure and producing a *sick* little ad hominem attack on it. Without reason, without basis, without honor. And I will not give you the resources to do that. You can spread your shit elsewhere, but don't come here and call it a cult unless you can make a damn good case. And then talk to me *like a man.* Don't leave snippy little bitchy emails surreptitiously using my message system to other people. You know I helped a lot of these people, I talked to them one on one, provide a lot of time and energy to try and help them work through some issues, and if they have problems with me, they should have the *balls* to call me up. And not do this petty bitchy grade 6 little crap of whisper campaigns and negativity. Anyway, that's particularly - that's all I really had to say about that unpleasant interlude during - I mean, but relative to what's been achieved this week in this conversation, I mean we've had a real culmination, I think, and I do thank everybody who has positively contributed to this, I mean I would not have been able to do it - I would not be able to do it without your intelligence, without your participation, without your financial generosity, without all of the beautiful things that come my way from this amazing listenership. And I could not have done that - this is a collective achievement and I think that we should all be amazingly proud of - and forgot the board issues, forget the negative people out there, forget those guttersnipes, forget the whiners, forget the complainers, forget them! Forget them. 100 years from now they'll remember this book, they won't remember "oh there were some snippy emails that went back and forth on a message system." Forget that stuff. Throw it aside. That's got to be for us like sunspots on the sun are to the naked eye: it doesn't matter at all, relative to what we as a community have achieved in the production of a rational proof of secular ethics. It's *amazing.* It's incredible. And everybody who's put good thoughts in, everybody, particularly those people who have donated, I just - I can't thank you enough for that gift to be able to do this. For the gift of having an audience. For the gift of having the resources to be able to work on this full-time. I *hope* that i have done you proud in terms of what I've produced, with your help but I just thank you so much for this opportunity. I think that we can be enormously proud of the gift that we've given a hurting world and I just wanted to be very open about my gratitude for that amazing and wonderful opportunity and trust that you give your time, money, and energy to some nutty guy in Canada in hopes that he can pull off something great. And I think that we have. And I think that we should all be enormously proud of that. Alright, so that's it for my emoting.