Episode 1: "Ain't nothin' wrong, ain't nothin' right, and still I sit and lie awake all night"

Episode 2: Freedom, Boundaries and the Problem of Utopia

Freedom. Confidence. Belonging. Responsibility. And a few ideas that need to meet reality.

You can believe in America without believing there is one ideal kind of American.

Volume Eight of Intend to Relate brings the project’s questions about sovereign individuals into relationships with groups, institutions, movements, and nations. What is an “I”? What makes a “we”? Who gets to speak for it? And what happens to the individual when a collective announces what must be done to “them”?

The opening season arrives earlier than planned because of a particular encounter: advocacy for the forced removal of American citizens on racial grounds, including the taking of their property without compensation. The proposal raises moral questions immediately. It also invites practical examination of what its proponents expect to accomplish, how they imagine accomplishing it, and what they would destroy along the way.

Welcome to the dipshittery season.

These first two episodes introduce the terrain. Some ideas receive an initial explanation; others are planted for later development through history, probability, game theory, and confrontational logic. The larger undertaking is affirmative: exploring American idealism, the conditions that support individual freedom, and the possibility of intentionally relating to our future.

1. Confidence Has a History

Episode One carries the project’s Heuristics of Confidence into the national setting. An individual encounters the present with an inherited past: institutions, accumulated knowledge, relationships, circumstances, and possibilities that were not created from scratch that morning.

The proposition introduced here is that America makes an enormous contribution to an American’s baseline confidence. A person’s ability to plan, transact, hold property, and pursue a future depends in part on the surrounding structure.

That raises difficult questions. How do national conditions compare with ancestry and other circumstances of birth? What distinguishes acknowledging an inherited advantage or danger from asserting superiority? And how sovereign are we when confidence coexists with a disturbance we cannot explain?

The Sublime passage in Episode One opens that last question. Confidence, competition, and unexplained unease can inhabit the same person. The framework must be able to encounter that person in the world as it exists.

2. America as an Intentional Relationship

The natural, business or transactional, and divine domains provide another way into the discussion. In this episode’s framing, America’s legal and institutional arrangements make cooperation possible beyond the immediate contest of force. Its aspirations also point toward something higher and better.

The founding becomes a relational question: people with different interests negotiated arrangements for living and acting together. Agreements, institutions, communication, revision, and continuity give an entity a life beyond its first moment of alignment.

Episode One draws on the project’s “orgasm to entity, entity to void, void to constellation of care” framework to consider that national story. America also relates to its future self. The question for a sovereign individual follows naturally: what is your dream, and how are you arranging your life toward it?

3. Rights Do Not Require Agreement

Episode Two clarifies what “American idealism” means in this discussion: commitment to individual liberty, due process, equal protection, property, and freedom of speech. It is an affirmation of principles, with no claim that the speaker is an ideal person.

That commitment is tested when the other person holds a belief we reject. The episode acknowledges personal prejudice and expressly recognizes the rights of people advocating objectionable positions within lawful limits.

The immediate appeal is directed toward behavior, strategy, and consequences. What are you proposing to do? What rights would your proposal violate? What would it cost you and other people? These questions do not require first securing agreement on every underlying belief.

4. The Collective Promise and the Individual Price

A movement may promise a future for “us,” while asking particular people to pay for it now.

Episode Two addresses younger participants directly: your statements, associations, and activities can become part of the record that follows you into future opportunities. Before investing your individual future, examine the promised collective destination and the likelihood of getting there.

This is an invitation to apply the project’s reality testing to a political wager. Who bears the cost? Who receives the benefit? What makes the outcome plausible? And what happens to your own life if the promise never arrives?

5. Removal Does Not Settle the Boundary Question

The proposed racial utopia also faces a problem of boundaries. Removing one designated group does not establish that everyone remaining will share interests, identities, or aims. New lines can be drawn.

The European examples and the Acadian/Cajun discussion introduce this challenge. Shared placement in a broad racial category has not prevented conflict, exclusion, or displacement. The season will return to the history and the reasoning in greater depth.

The associated practical challenge is simple: put the proposed policies, procedures, and logistics in writing. A claim about the future becomes more available for examination when its means are specified.

Where the Season Goes Next

The coming inquiry develops “I, We, Them”; the sources and limits of confidence; probability and strategic incentives; the consequences of participation; and the boundary problem. Actual comments and proposals will supply further encounters to examine.

The listener retains judgment throughout. These episodes invite questions, disagreement, and further thought as the argument develops.

Show Notes & Chapters

Times below follow the supplied YouTube transcripts and restart for each episode.

Episode 1

  • 00:00 — Introducing Volume Eight: To America
  • 01:13 — Forced removal and the immediate catalyst
  • 03:00 — American idealism and baseline confidence
  • 04:46 — Sublime, confidence, and unexplained disturbance
  • 06:04 — Sovereignty and the ontology of self
  • 06:42 — Confrontational logic and inherited conditions
  • 08:33 — The natural, business, and divine domains
  • 10:20 — America as an entity and its relationship with the future
  • 12:23 — Outro banter and acoustic performance

Episode 2

  • 00:00 — Clarifying American idealism
  • 01:31 — Individual liberties and the bounds of lawful advocacy
  • 02:52 — Personal prejudice and respecting others’ rights
  • 04:12 — Digital footprints and future opportunities
  • 05:15 — Individual interests and collective promises
  • 06:24 — The boundary problem and Acadian/Cajun history
  • 07:48 — Practical proposals and utopian thinking
  • 08:49 — Equal rights and closing reflections

References & Further Reading

These sources provide background for the historical, legal, and philosophical references in the episodes. The Heuristics of Confidence, the three-domain framework, and the entity model are being developed within Intend to Relate; the sources below do not purport to establish every proposition advanced in the discussion.

  1. U.S. Constitution, Amendments I, V, and XIV. National Archives: Bill of Rights and Amendments 11–27. Freedom of speech and religion, due process, just compensation, and equal protection.
  2. Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969). Case overview and excerpts. A central authority on the distinction between protected advocacy and incitement to imminent lawless action.
  3. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), Chapter XIII. Full text. Source of the description of life in the state of nature invoked in Episode One.
  4. U.S. Senate, “Constitution of the United States.” Historical introduction. Background on constitutional continuity and the longevity of the written charter.
  5. National Park Service, “From Acadian to Cajun.” Historical overview. The deportation beginning in 1755, Acadian dispersal, and subsequent settlement in Louisiana.
  6. William James, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907), Lecture II. Full text. Further reading on the pragmatic method and the practical consequences of ideas.
  7. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Security Executive Agent Directive 5; Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, “Trust Decision (Adjudications).” SEAD 5 and adjudication overview. Publicly available social-media information in personnel security investigations and individualized assessment of eligibility.

A Few Clarifications to the Spoken Discussion

  • Acadian history: the displacement involved deportation by ship to multiple destinations and later migrations, including to Louisiana; the episode’s shorthand about a march across the continent is inaccurate.
  • Constitutional longevity: the precise reference is to the endurance of the United States’ written constitutional system, rather than a claim that it is the oldest nation.
  • Future opportunities: the security-investigation sources establish procedures for considering relevant information, not inevitable disqualification or a guarantee that every online statement remains retrievable forever.
  • Philosophical terminology: “American idealism” here primarily describes commitment to ideals. The brief remarks about German idealism and pragmatism are not intended as a complete account of their origins or historical relationship.

Episode Transcripts

Reading transcripts prepared from the supplied automated YouTube transcripts, with paragraphing and evident transcription errors corrected. These have not been independently checked against the audio. Substantive claims remain as spoken; see the clarifications above. The musical outro is identified rather than transcribed.

Episode 1

0:00 | Introduction to Volume 8: ‘To America’

Welcome to the first episode of volume 8 to America an intend to relate podcast. Intend to Relate is an ongoing early stage project looking at human relationships mainly from the perspective of sovereign individuals. Intend to relate has a very broad and long-term plan of the philosophical ground it intends to cover. At present, its main focus has been on individual personal relationships and then some consideration of kind of meta relationships such as the artist creator with the audience. Now, there's also the beginning stages of relationships with things like violence and deception in the context of personal relationships. There's a much broader canon ahead which would include the present volume 8 to America.

1:13 | Addressing Extreme Racism and Forced Removal

However, we encountered a a form of racism being advocated that unfortunately required a response. However, it also fits in to certain things we're talking about, so it made them more timely. This form of racism would be the forced removal of groups from America without compensation, even in a hypothetical cooperative game framework. In other words, there's no fighting about it. is simply a negotiation between the groups and the group seeking removal even in that cooperative game did not even consider that they would ever baseline compensate. That admission means that it is by definition overwhelmingly clearly admittedly evil and in that stated admission would as soon as it had any traction and actual risk calculus of occurring would itself simply destroy the integrity of the American financial and business and legal system.

the Americans that wouldn't even be removed at that point could no longer trust the system, let alone foreign individuals. Now, this baseline stupidity of both being evil and speaking about it as though it's somehow something that you could advocate for without being called evil and not even realizing some of the basic effects beyond the impossibility, your ability to do it is why we were so kind of insulting in calling them dipshits. We aren't getting into the full explanation of that dipshittery in this episode, but that's why we that's why we accelerated moving to this particular first season of to America.

3:00 | Core Mission and America-Based Confidence

To America is actually intended to be a very pro-America podcast. We are American idealists and what we were going to cover into America to be clear is is effectively both pro-America and then a few things from a civil libertarian perspective to some extent we want to see encouraged. Now, so when we say that we've started because of this racism issue, it was very important to clarify that this particular type of racism, forced removal presents this very interesting set of arguments as well as tools. Some of our tools come into play. Now, in this podcast, unlike the earlier podcast, we're going to be moving faster and doing shorter episodes. In volume one, To Him, we introduced a concept and toolkit related to confidence, heuristics of confidence.

And one of those is addressing the baseline confidence that an individual can have simply by being in the present moment and feeling or embodying the momentum of the entirety of the past. That's a very elementary form or formulation of what we're actually talking about. Obviously you build concepts up here. We have to directly now accelerate a little bit further. The premise which we will develop is that in fact an American's heuristic of confidence based upon the past is fundamentally a attribution to their country. In other words, the overwhelming source of an individual American's confidence baseline confidence is America.

4:46 | Analyzing Sublime Lyrics and Anxiety

So, now let's look back at some of the racism related issues we're going to be addressing. This episode began with some verses from a song called DJs covered uh originally by Sublime. And I want to focus on this beautiful melody verse where he says, "Ain't nothing wrong, ain't nothing right, and still I sit and lie awake at night." When I hear that ain't nothing wrong, ain't nothing right. No reason. And still I sit and lie awake at night. Yet I am suffering anxiety not at rest. I am disturbed by something that I can't identify. Now let's step back to those ver lyrics a little bit a few verses before and it's clear that this individual is confident.

He feels like he is the best of these, you know, DJs, these singers, you know what what they're talking about. And also, he's acknowledging a very competitive environment. Now, I don't think they're actually talking about gunplay, but there is a competitive environment. However, he feels himself to have a level of confidence in this competitive environment. And now he's encountering a disturbance without reason. Right?

6:04 | Relational Independence and Ontology of Self

The Declaration of Relational Independence. I authored that. I'm quite proud of it. But I am not a simpleton. What is a sovereign individual? If you are having disturbances without reason, are you sovereign? We are also going to look at issues of ontology. What is a we? What am I? Think of this. I I spoke of Americanborn individuals having a baseline of confidence tied to America. Is am I saying that's because you're part of the we? Am I saying something else?

6:42 | Confrontational Logic and Real-World Heuristics

Well, if I'm saying something like that, why can't a racist say, "Well, I should have a baseline level of confidence cuz I'm part of this group or that group." Well, in some of the earlier podcasts, in to her, into him, we discussed confrontational logic and in to him we've discussed reality testing and intervals of confidence. And the fact is some of the results of applying confrontational logic to ourselves is that sometimes we have to accept and hear things that may not feel good to some people. For example, when we get down to breaking that heuristics of confidence down, yes, nation state obviously is a big one as we've discussed, but hey, in that model, if we're trying to determine base state confidence, let's say the day a baby is born, well, genetics, ancestry, that is right there with nation state.

Call a spade a spade. Let's say Rwanda. If you were born into a certain minority group in Rwanda at a certain period of time on a certain bad day, unfortunately, you may not have objectively the same base level of confidence. This framework is not intended for a dream world. This framework is intended for a world that exists in three domains as we think about it. the natural, the business and transactional world, and the divine. Life in the natural only in the natural is short, nasty, and brutish under one formulation philosophically to bring it all together.

8:33 | America as Business and Divine Aspiration

A question. Would you agree with me that more than anything comparing the natural, the business, and the divine, the United States of America is all business? Thank God for that as opposed to the natural. In fact, when the United States of America was much more in the natural, I don't think it was very good with respect to the topic of the day. America also aspires to the divine. That is the divine. That intention towards something higher and better. And thank God that the United States of America itself, the entity is intentionally relating to its future self. And it has been, think about before the United States existed, you know, a little bit before 1776.

And you had these these guys from these different colonies in this flux legally, and they start discussing their arrangements by which they may what? have a relationship. They were negotiating complex relationship agreements and I guarantee you they had preferences between people and different aims. This structure and logic embedded in the early stage relational uh structures of value systems and agreements and feedback loops and communication. This is the same thing that higher entities use. And in fact, the reason we advocate it for individuals is because the most effective entities such as the United States of America embody these exact technologies, principles, and approaches.

10:20 | Entity Framework and National Resilience

In season two of the Intend to Relate podcast, we did some introductory uh episodes through our orgasm to entity, entity to void, void to constellation of care model. Imagine the United States and that early win of the Revolutionary War as our little founding orgasm, right? And they started uh scheduling their conventions and then they had an organization and pretty soon, you know, Washington's first president, they have an entity. There was some uh disorganization uh lost the translation along the way. You know, there was a civil war and uh they kept it together. The entity has made it. That entity made it. If you're following the logic, this racism with expulsion concept is a void.

It is without a doubt people trying to drag this nation into the void. I have a huge amount of confidence in the United States of America. A lot of people don't realize this, but actually if you look at nations as entities, legal entities, constitutional rule-of-law-based entities, the United States is is the if oldest if maybe second, something like that. The United States relationship agreement is so powerful for a reason. I believe in it. I have a huge amount of confidence in it. And that same magic and architecture and law and philosophy. Well, you're sovereign. What's your dream? American dream. Great. But what's yours? I fucking love America.

God bless America. That's it for today. Y'all be good to each other intentionally.

12:23 | Outro Banter and Acoustic Performance

[The episode continues with outro banter and an acoustic performance. Please refer to the original recording.]

Episode 2

0:00 | Episode Overview and Clarifying American Idealism

Welcome back to volume 8 to America, a podcast by intend to relate. This is our second episode and we're picking up on the issue that at hand of racism in America in the form of seeking an ethnational state of white people involving the forced displacement and taking of property without compensation of other American citizens based upon race. In these first few episodes, I may go through some topics kind of sprinkling them like seeds and other times I may go in deep and this this episode is going to be a bit similar. First, I want to address a clarification from the first episode which came up in a comment and that is regarding idealism. And this also relates to the critical principles that will frame this entire discussion.

I referenced identifying as an American idealist. In this context, that does not mean that I am an ideal American. By no means am I an ideal person of any kind. Further, the way I view America is there is no ideal American. This is an individualistic country. There is no ideal one of all of us. In any case, idealism here meant really a more of a non-philosophically technical view of idealism in which I believe wholeheartedly in American legal principles such as individual rights, due process of law, equal protection. Idealism also originating in German idealism has a a cognitive a mental spiritual component. And yes, I would say there you know I do see something very spiritual in the ideas that give rise to what we are talking about.

But here for this conversation really I was saying that I believe in these principles.

1:31 | Individual Liberties, Free Speech, and Boundaries of the Law

Now in this context the sovereign context let me be very clear some fundamental principles here are individual liberties rights property equal protection of law due process of law freedom of speech. These are some of the the core rights that we have as sovereign individuals in the United States of America and I honor and uphold those. So these groups or and individuals who believe in racist ideas and even are advocating for policies. The strong word there is policies towards those ends as horrible as an ethno national state based upon race to the extent that they aren't going beyond the bounds of the law. That is individual freedom. I do not speak against that.

I am not saying that they can't do that. In fact, I believe that in many respects they can. But there are limits. I am not here speaking to try to convince someone who identifies or believes in a racist uh way of viewing things to change the racist belief. I am here speaking to certain behaviors, strategies and dipshittery that can cause horrible outcomes for the person believing it as well as others as well as to advocate for certain ways of thinking and seeing that I think could change the tenor of the conversation when it comes to this idea that I heard of forced disposition and taking of property which I as an idealistic believer in these sovereign principles immediately reject.

2:52 | Acknowledging Religious Prejudice

Further, I will now make an admission as to my own prejudice. While I am a minority, we'll get into some specifics and some interesting insight from that in later episodes. But here, I am a minority. I don't have a racial prejudice, but I will identify one prejudice that is clear and comes out all the time in me in debate and conversation. Uh, and that is I don't believe in Islam. I think it's a false religion. I would never want Sharia law in the United States. And I do recognize in myself a prejudice against Islam. That's not the race, not brown people. I mean, as a minority, that'd be pretty bad for me to have a race-based prejudice, but I'm honest here.

I do not believe in that religion. I believe there's a lot of very bad things associated with it. And that is who I've been for a very long time. It's not going to change. There are degrees and a spectrum of gravity to these various positions we can have as well as context. But I am now about to speak with the hope of persuading one part of the demographic, this group of of, you know, these believers in this racist ideology. Before I do that, I want to remind you what have I said so far. First of all, I have admitted that I have my own prejudices that many people upon hearing this will now judge me. But I own it. I own it. I do not deny that I have a prejudice.

I have acknowledged your individual rights. I've affirmed that I do not dispute your rights to have these beliefs to assert policies that you want to be to some extent loud and proud about. Right? I have acknowledged that I'm an idealistic American in the sense of I believe in these principles as I understand them.

4:12 | Digital Footprints and Consequences for Young Americans

So, as far as I'm concerned, up to that extent, we're on the same team, America, and we are heading into the same future as as young or middle-aged Americans. And that future, well, it will not forget you. We'll deal with the probabilities and game theories, but it's never going to be a good outcome. It's never going to win. But be loud and proud. Say it online. Organize. Produce all that data. Let it continue to be gathered while the AI and the systems for aggregating that data for running intelligence and background on people will just get better and better. It'll never be forgotten. and you as a younger American in that environment saying these things, you have the most to lose because you're never going to get the outcome you think you will.

But maybe you want a security clearance one day. Maybe other opportunities you would have had just by exercising this freedom of speech to that degree at this period of time and moving into this future will impact your future. We're going to get into that stuff and some more detail about things like ser security clearances and the risks and all the talking and the writing and the planning, but we're not there in that this episode. I wanted to go ahead and show that I do appeal to you young guys. I'm not telling you not to believe this way. I'm telling you that you're not going to get good outcomes and you got to think about your own future.

5:15 | Individualism vs. Collectivist Delusions

Now, as an American, in principle, idealistically, I focus on my individual interests. What I'm appealing to there underlying that is this philosophy of collectivism versus individualism. This racist movement is just like almost like a communism. It's willing to sacrifice individual soldiers, individual conscripts along the way to some higher idealized end which no one will ever truly see for a collective which does not even exist. So what I am saying is I'm advocating for at least you younger guys with more to lose to have that thought in your mind about the future and the things you're saying and doing and how they may lead to bad outcomes individually for a collective end which is unrealistic.

Again, again, we'll get into detail, game theory, gaming those situations out, probability, looking at the writings and the planning that these organizations do currently. We're going to look at some of that stuff and what can happen and what they do to avoid it happening and how that impacts efficacy and what that reveals about the realism of the entire endeavor. Because if you put all your hopes and dreams in something that doesn't even ground itself in the real, in the effective, you're banking on a delusion. You're banking your individual interests on a delusion.

6:24 | The Boundary Problem and Historical Displacement

Now, one last seed to plant, conceptual seed in this episode. Another issue came up in uh the comments, which I'm glad we having some discussion. You know, it's the there was the issue of let's just say someone advocating or appearing to advocate for along these the position along these lines and then referencing having a Cajun ancestry. We'll do an explainer. I'm not going to go into it right now. There'll be a separate little explainer on some of these things. But the, you know, the Cajuns, there's a history there of the Acadians, uh, the British government confiscated their property, forced them to other, uh, made the march, you know, across the continent, and they became the settlers there in Louisiana, that area, they gave rise to the Cajun.

They were the Acadians. That was once again, that was a European group on another European group taking property, forcing them to relocate, no compensation, death. Horrible. One of the worst uh, crimes against humanity of that time period according to the historians. My point here is this. The boundary problem and the argument against utopia from history, the boundary problem. Every time you remove one boundary, minority boundary, you immediately create another. In other words, you always have a distribution, a bell curve, you're always going to have majority minority. Once you go after one, you create your new ethnostate. Well, you just came up with another.

Similarly, when has Europe, when is the homeland of the whites ever been some white utopia? Never ever has there been anything close to a white utopia in Europe or anywhere else. Look at just the UK, such a small land mass, the Scottish and the Irish, the Brit or the English. Do you think they were at peace as whites?

7:48 | Pragmatic Policy vs. Utopian Thinking

You know, the more philosophical, you know, 19th century American actual idealists, you know, if I understand correctly, they were replaced, you know, or or subsumed so much somewhat by the pragmatists and pragmatism is still with us today. So I speaking as an American pragmatist I see utopian thinking without pragmatic consideration grounded in the practical realities of the world. The racists however who do draft policy statements with legislative proposals showing a practical pragmatic understanding of the the procedures and the realities of moving forward even if it's just some zoning law or whatever. I will show some respect to them. They are within their rights.

They are showing a pragmatic approach to some belief system that they have. That's the proper way. I ask the utopian, remove the other races by force. I ask you to put your policy and your logistics and your plans in writing. Publish them publicly. We'll talk about that later. The policy, if you're going to approach it with pragmatic, actual policy totally different. I may disagree with it. You have the right to do it. That's the respectful, proper American way to do it.

8:49 | Navigating Both Sides and Final Thoughts

Both sides in this debate, to the extent that they ever hear this, may strongly dislike me. On the one hand, obviously the racists, they hear a minority with, you know, my beliefs against them. Maybe they don't like me no matter what I say. And then someone who's maybe a little bit more liberal and anti-racist is very frustrated with the fact that I'm not just telling them that they have no right to do any of this or say any of this. Well, no, because neither of those are correct. For the first, to the racist, fuck yourself. I'm awesome. You suck. To the person who does not respect the equal rights all the way around, you are almost agreeing in principle with your opposition.

We must not do that. We must hold the line, the ideal with that. This was volume eight, To America an intend to relate podcast. Until next time, be good to each other intentionally.

The Declaration of Relational Independence; Heuristics of Confidence; reality testing and confidence intervals; confrontational logic; natural, business, and divine domains; entity formation and the void; relating to the future self; individual sovereignty; “I, We, Them.”

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About Intend to Relate

Intend to Relate is a philosophical and educational project developing tools, language, and practices for more intentional relationships. Its books, podcasts, and creative work explore how sovereign individuals encounter themselves, one another, and the larger entities in which they participate.

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