Stefan Molyneux

You know, Catbert being the sort of the id, the conscience that could speak its mind because it was safe being a cat.

In other words, as long as you're a pet that's not domesticated, you can speak your mind.

And all of the various characters really burned themselves into my brain.

I remember being on a flight, and Scott as well, because he was a hilarious cartoonist, like one of the best that ever was.

And underappreciated, of course, as a comic writer, because most people know him from the comic strip, but his books were staggeringly good.

As a bit of a writer myself, I just admired just about every sentence.

when you write yourself like if you if you're a weightlifter and you see somebody lifting a great weight you feel it like you know because you've tried to do that same thing and seeing the leanness economy precision and focus of his prose and knowing as a writer that he probably sweated blood you know there's an old saying about writing it's easy you just

you just stare at a blank piece of paper until beads of blood form on your forehead knowing how much scott sweated over every sentence maybe it came easier to him but i think he talked about how he worked very hard to make it precise and hilarious i remember being on a business

trip with my brother um oh gosh this would have been 35 years ago and we were reading about individuals and uh it was uh hilarious and we we saw a reflection of all that we criticized in authority coming out from scott in such a benevolent way i mean even the pointy head boss has his own

charms and scott's obvious affection for the characters was was really a beautiful thing that we can love people and also love the absurdity that is within them means that we don't have this sort of ayn rand perfectionist mentality of who we have affection for um and i just found him to be a wonderful creative thinker and kind of a loki based chaos agent and sort of let me explain what that means that i i hope i won't monologue too long but

I came from sort of a strict boarding school, Anglo-Saxon, precision, semi-military, got to bounce a quarter off your bed, everything has to be perfect, which, you know, from a software standpoint, from a business process and coding standpoint, you need that kind of strictness.

and then into this sort of regimented life of you know reveille and morning marches in my mind comes this absolute madcap chaos agent uh who who smashes that in in very very healthy ways it's like that old you know everybody needs to bleed that's how the light gets in

and i found that scott's absolute irreverence without rage because a lot of people who are irreverent like you know the sex pistols you know they have this kind of rage to them but his absolute irreverence and his absolute skepticism absent rage and hostility was a beautiful thing and it got me a lot more you know that bell curve you need some order you need some chaos in this life

And he dragged me from sort of that one valley all the way to the, I think, where I sit now, which is hopefully a decent combination of that Aristotelian mean.

Not too much order, because then you're, you know, like the 6,000-year Chinese society that never evolved.

And not too much chaos, otherwise you can't plan and execute on anything.

And I think he kind of helped drag me to that middle point of sort of...

ordered creativity, because I think he was an obviously ridiculously disciplined fellow.

I mean, I would hear him talk about his day, and I would just feel like, what have I done with my time?

Getting up at four o'clock in the morning and voluminous notes for every show and organize this, and then I have this project, and I have this project, and I'm opening this business, and another...