I think I’m beginning to understand the whole notion behind voluntary relationships. I may even be close to breaking the hold the myth of family has over my own life.

The following quote is from a podcast by Stefan Molyneux in a series called FreeDomain Radio. In it, he discusses many topics, but the central theme is that of personal freedom. I’ve been catching up on the podcasts from the beginning of the series, of which there are almost 850 at the time of this writing, and each one averages about 40 minutes in length. While there certainly are developments along the way, this podcast series is the result of decades of study and introspection on Stefan’s part. While that doesn’t mean that what he says is true, the theories he puts forward seem to be empirically verifiable.

I can have a beautiful relationship with my wonderful wife and be perfectly happy while paying taxes. I cannot have a beautiful relationship with my wonderful wife if I am in touch and see and allow to infiltrate into my life my corrupt family. Paying taxes doesn’t destroy my capacity to love and to be loved and to experience joy and to experience real freedom. Paying taxes doesn’t do that! Having corrupt people in your life does that. Kills your capacity to love. Kills you capacity for self-respect, for self-esteem. For honor. For dignity. For looking in the mirror and feeling proud about who you are. Paying taxes doesn’t diminish that! See, that’s coercion! I don’t surrender a shred of my self esteem to people who point guns at me! Yeah, fuck, take the money. I don’t care. I don’t care! Take the fucking money and leave me alone. Right? But family stuff is voluntary, so you’re morally culpable for surrendering your moral integrity to your family. You have a choice! Your family’s not going to shoot you! Ah, government will shoot you, so pay the goddamn taxes, who gives a shit? You still get love, you still get freedom; you still get podcasting; you still get reading books; you still get great debates; you get everything that you want. You just gotta pay off some assholes with guns.”

- FDR450: Libertopia (51:56-53:27)

The way that this speaks to me is that I used to be very irritated with the predation of the government. It’s not that I don’t think that it is evil any longer, but there’s absolutely nothing I can do to control it. What I do have control over, however, are the relationships that I maintain in my life.

I might talk about how I got to where I am at some point, but I think that I should take a little more time in thinking and discussing these issues in private/semi-private environs (which is perhaps in contrast with what I’ve done in some of my more recent livejournal posts). It’s not that I don’t want to share this with the world… but I think that if I’m going to talk about it, perhaps I had better be living it.

There are things that I should have done years ago–things that I knew I needed to do–but I didn’t have the ego strength or the philosophical tools to do them. I am much closer now, but this sort of thing takes time. It’s not a race, except for the realization that every day I spend not having had it done is another day of my life that is gone. However, this is so important that I ought to make sure that, when I do it, I know I’m doing it right and for the right reasons. I do think that I am very close.