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Hello, everyone I am new to the message board, but I've been watching the YouTube videos for several months. I decided to come to the community to get right to the source. I am not in a financial position to donate right now, though I hope that will change. Stefan has said on several podcasts that he'd rather get a nice letter than a 'stinking' one-dollar donation! So, I'm writing to extend my thanks for the dose of philosophy. Before I get into the personal information, I'd like to make a request or a wish. To the best of my knowledge, Stefan has never debated with Slavoj Zizek and I'd dearly love to see that debate. I think it would be 'spirited', to say the least. I watch Zizek's videos on YouTube occasionally, and I think he's fun to listen to, but I disagree with most of Zizek's thinking. Okay, on to me. I am American, living in the town of Willmar, Minnesota. I've been married to Nancy for 26 years now, and we have one child, our son Drake who's now 21. I work an overnight shift in a shipping warehouse, and my wife is a payroll accountant for the same company. Recently, I earned my bachelor's degree online, and I went on to graduate school, also online, a year ago. My major is Humanities, with a focus on Creative Writing. I've decided that I want to be a writer, an urge that I've been playing with for years, and I realize that I chose the hardest and most expensive way possible to learn to write. In grad school, though, I had an important encounter. My school is very big on philosophy, starting in the course "Introduction to Graduate Humanities". With every class and semester, the focus on philosophy has deepened. I found myself so interested in the subject that I started gathering information beyond that which was included in class. I have started a list of philosophers to look into and it includes such names as Foucault, Derrida, Hume, Hegel, Adorno, Kant and so on. What I feel is that I've brushed up against a subject that will be of huge value to me as I go on in my life and my pursuit of meaningful subjects to write about. During this time, I watched a Slavoj Zizek video where he posed a rhetorical question; "What philosophers do we have in our current time?". I found Free Domain Radio as a result of that question. Also, through the podcasts, I've learned that Stefan and I have some similar experiences and enthusiasms: music, Dungeons & Dragons (which I still play very occasionally), and of course, writing novels. I also grew up in a deeply dysfunctional home, with a 'batshit crazy' mother. I don't feel that I can tackle philosophical subjects quite yet, but in my fantasy world (for writing about, not that I'm living in a fantasy!) there are some comments that I feel that I can make on what Stefan calls "The Blind Photocopier of History" and the 'death of statism'. Once again, a big thanks to Stefan for what he does. I look forward to conversations on these boards! Sincerely, Brad

As always, the philosopher in me is trying to figure out the building blocks to human existence. This time, I started thinking that "if only had I a group of trustees, which I could do things together with; then, we could probably solve just about any issue we put our minds and hands to." A sort of 'power in numbers' thing, only without becoming a mindless mass movement. Maybe the problem with human society is that our way of deciding to what extend each person and group are trust-worthy is just not correct? I'm not talking about having some centralized power deciding mechanism that declares who should be trusted with what. I mean that we just don't have the science of trust popular and based enough, so that we all could stop putting our trust in repeatedly corrupt & unreliable public representatives and misinforming media groups that broadcast, so called, news? I know that there is a lot of conversation about transparency and how it would solve this trust issue; but, I just don't see how that answers this problem. Transparency is one of those things that can mean too many things. Just because someone is being honest and transparent, doesn't mean that they should be trusted with anything. Do we need a well tested and ever-evolving scientific system of how trust can be applied successfully?