Decoding the Gurus - Jordan Hall: Sensemaking, or the superficial pitter-patter on the neocortex?

Episode Date: September 11, 2021

This episode is about sense-making... if you are not sick of that term yet, trust us, you soon will be.To get things rolling, Matt and Chris launch the podcast with a pair of rants. Chris vents about the lab-leak theorists who plague his mentions and Matt gets triggered by US libertarian takes on the military dictatorship apparently taking over Australia. He needs to get his thoughts out there before the secret police come and drag him away.Then we get the point (relatively quickly this time - see, we're getting better!) and leap into a truly indulgent level of sense making meta dialogue. Matt and Chris talk about a conversation between David Fuller and Jordan Hall, who are themselves discussing another conversation that Jordan Hall had with someone called Brandon Hayes.Yes, in this episode, you'll be listening to a conversation about a conversation about a conversation. It's like a podcast version of Inception, including a large amount of ponderous and ambiguous dialogue - you'll have to dig deeper, engage your sense making muscles, and it'll maybe make sense once it's all over.Anyway, so Brandon Hayes is a 'Propertarian', which appears to be an anti-semitic, ethnonationalist 'philosophy' with fascist and eugenic elements created by an odd American man called Curt Doolittle, . Cool, cool... David Fuller is raising some very legitimate concerns, and pulling Jordan Hall up on what seemed to be a rather generous and pally interview he conducted with Brandon. But it's Jordan's responses that really sparked the interest of the duo. He responds and explains. Or does he? There's a lot of reflections on the co-participatory seeking of Truth, the importance of the conversational process, the transformative nature of challenging relationships, but no real interest in the actual content of what people believe and promote. In this framing, a conversation with an anti-semite who promotes a neo-fascistic ideology becomes primarily just a stepping stone on a spiritual journey of transformative self-growth.As Jordan says, the literal content is just the superficial pitter-patter on the neocortex. But he's interested in something deeper, ineffable. The language Jordan uses is a tour-de-force in guru-esque 'sensemaking'. In a linguistic sense, he's like the bastard lovechild of Jordan Peterson and Eric Weinstein. Anyway if that sounds good to you then tune in, check it out, and if you manage to stick it out all the way to the end you are rewarded by Chris and Matt mulling over the validity of a harsh one-star review.LinksInterview featured on the Episode on Rebel Wisdom: 'Sensemaking, Gatekeeping & the Propertarians, Jordan Hall'Very good and highly critical Medium Article on the topic by David Fuller

Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer, and we try our best to understand what they're talking about. I'm Matt Brown and with me again is Chris Kavanagh. Hey Chris. Hello Matt. What's this? I'm sorry I don't have a good anecdote or metaphor or parable to lead you in. I'm sorry I'm tapped out. That's actually good because that last parable was so deep that I've just spent the intervening weeks reflecting on it, looking at it from different angles. What could the cloak mean? And who is this wind character?

You know, there's so many different angles that you can look at from that. I'm frankly glad that you're not hitting me with another exquisitely crafted parable for which to overload my sense-making apparatus. Well, it's a good thing because you clearly haven't finished processing that one. I didn't think it would be that challenging. Yeah, keep thinking on it, Chris. The truth is there waiting for you to discover it. Yeah, like a beautiful wind blowing away an annoying sun. Oh, yeah. That metaphor works, Matt. Just you puzzle and think about that. What does that mean?

Has that ever happened in the world? Maybe, maybe. Well, in other news for me, it's very exciting. I passed a Twitter milestone, Chris. Last time I checked, I had cracked the 3 000 follower mark on twitter i remember those days back years ago yeah yeah the first thing i did obviously was to go and check your follow account to see whether i surpassed you yet and i found that you've got over 6 000 followers which i think everyone can agree, all reasonable people

would agree with me in saying that is total bullshit. Even me. Why do you have so many followers? As somebody suggested, I think there's probably at least 50% are just hate follows. You can probably pick them up yourself, Matt, if you just be more combative. I have to say, when you said the first thing I did, I don't know why, but it popped into my head that you were going to finish that sentence with was, I called my mother. Mom, you'll never guess what's happened today. I finally made

it. Forget the professorship. Forget the stunning success of the Cody the Gurus, which I regale you with weekly. I've hit 3,000 followers on Twitter. Mom, what do you think? What do you think of me now? Whenever I mention my online antics to my mom, she seems to worry that I'm going to get fired or that bad people on the internet will come and find me. Well, for legitimate concerns. Yes, your mom is wise beyond her years. I guess so.

She's a worrier. She doesn't have my devil may care attitude. And if I tweeted like you, you should be really worried. That's for sure. Just wait till Eric Weinstein comes and hunts you down with his crack legal team in Australia. You'll be regretting your laissez-faire attitude then when you're in the gulag for your mean tweets directed at him.

You called him a squid, Matt. You said his tweets were like a squid squirting ink all over the place. That's dehumanization, Matt. It's one step away from genocide. Chris, I looked into the law, and apparently it's not liable if you honestly believe it. So I think I'm safe with the squid ink analogy to Eric's tweets. Oh, it was an analogy.

Oh. He's literally a squid. Well, in a sense, isn't it almost like that just, there's the tweet, Sam. But we're not talking about the Weinsteins because we got that out of our system, Matt. We spoke with the psychologist, Dave Pizarro, and he helped us weed through the murky waters of Weinstein world. And we got fairly universal, positive feedback about that episode except

in some of the reviews that i'll read at the end of the podcast but i know they're not gone for good i know they're gone i've already seen tweets matt i know they're up to things but i'm just i'm not thinking about them just putting them out of my mind for the minute. Exactly. That's right. Move on. The best revenge is living well. That's not what Conan said. But I'm not going to say that, but what he actually said, because it may be construed as some people as a threat against their families and loved ones. So yeah, just Conan had a different opinion. That's all I will say about what is good in life. The other thing that we need to cover is some upcoming stuff that we have in the next few weeks. This will all be filtering out over time.

I'm going through a busy period at work, so we might expect some delays and whatnot. But we'll basically be on our fortnightly schedule as usual. And we're going to enter a season of self-help, a couple of episodes focusing on self-help type gurus from different areas, different disciplines. We're going to become better people. We are. Or we're going to tear down people who are trying to help others struggling with various issues it's one of those two one of those two yes yeah we're going to make ourselves feel more adequate by taking down anyone that dares to give advice to anyone else that's right just make fun of people who are trying to better themselves and optimize their personalities

because that's what they deserve, right? Yeah. According to the reviews we'll read later, that is what we're up to. We're going to look at people like Brené Brown, the psychologist who we both don't know very much about, except that she has TED Talks and lots of people have suggested it to us. Apparently quite well regarded, but it'll be interesting to see. We can look at people that are well regarded. We'll also look at the famed dietitian and philosopher Michaela Peterson. A little known figure, her father has some notoriety online. She is a woman in her own right, as I often tell you, Matt.

Peterson, Peterson, that name rings a bell. Where have I heard that name before? It does. It's some lemon flavor that's just, I don't know why I've got a taste of lemon in the back of my throat, an alchemical lemon. So Michaela Peterson, that interesting character, will also be taking a look at a little known figure, a fan favorite

at the same time, one Sam Harris, author, public intellectual, moral philosopher of some description. In any case, we did get feedback whenever we covered his short intro segment, which we did in the special episode, that we hadn't got the full grasp of what his app was about, and we were kind of challenged to make an effort. I thought we can introduce Matt, a phenomenological ethnographic component drawing on my anthropological background. We're going to take part in his app, right? Do a little bit of exploration for a month for 20 days or so just try it out see if we can wake up

yeah yeah it'll be lived experience and i've already started have you started chris i started i've meditated for like a total of 10 minutes which is a a big step for me. Yeah. And I'm feeling more intimately connected to Sam Harris than I have been. Whispering, sweet meditation, nothing's in my ear. So we'll update on that when we get to that. But look at this, we're being rigorous sense makers. We're doing things. We're being anthropological. Yeah.

There is another episode, though, Matt, that we might want to update people on because people may be saying wait a minute season of self-help wasn't there someone else that was supposed to be coming next before this episode and what happened there yes and that person is aaron robinowitz we're not covering him as a guru not yet, Aaron's not got big enough for us to take him down yeah, as long as he doesn't get ahead of his skis he's safe but he's joining us to help decode

the crossover episode between Sovereign Nations Michael O'Fallon and New Discourses and Internet Fuckwittery James Lindsay the two of them, their special crossover episode we're doing with Aaron, we've recorded and internet fuckwittery James Lindsay. The two of them, their special crossover episode,

we're doing with Aaron. We've recorded a big chunk of it. We're just not finished yet. It will be coming at some point. It'll probably interrupt the whole theme and you'll just have to live with that. It'll come when it's ready. It will. It will.

And we're also going to be talking to Julian Walker from Conspirator Alley as well. That kind of fits with the season of Self-Help because those guys are right into it. But we won't necessarily be talking about Self-Help with him. So it's going to be a bit random. Our fans know what we're like.

It fits with the theme of being a delayed project because we started talking to Julian like months ago and haven't finished recording with him. So we will get that out and much apologies to Julian. Very good. Any more housekeeping for us to take care of? No, we're done. And because we're not going to talk about the Weinsteins this week or any other gurus, we did agree that we could have a little bit, just a small condensed portion of the introduction for our own mini rants. This is exercising our demons,

getting it out of our system. Would you like to go first or shall I? I'll let you go first. Get it off your chest. Let it rip. Let it all out. I'm going to do it on here because I suspect to some extent, this is the audience that I need to be speaking to about this matter. As we've covered on the pod here, there is the topic of the lab leak, which has come up, which it's fair to say I have some critical opinions about the way that the lab leak community have promoted their theory about the likelihood of a lab leak origin for the coronavirus. It's quite an esoteric topic, really, but it still comes up now and then in the news and endlessly on my Twitter timeline.

So I've been invited to be at Yuri Dagan, as I mentioned on the Pizarro episode on Rebel Wisdom, which is topical because we're covering content from Rebel Wisdom this week. And I may keep that up, as I mentioned, because I quite enjoy interacting with Yuri. I think we could have a productive discussion. enjoy interacting with Yuri, I think we could have a productive discussion. However, there are a variety of people on Twitter and Reddit and various social media platforms that want to tag me into every fucking piece of news about the lab. Like every time some doughhead comes out with an article, some title saying lab leak now more likely or Fauci lied or something.

I get tagged in and people are like, oh, Chris, what do you think now? I mean it when I say, in general, I'm happy to not discuss the Lab League with people for like the next year to five years. And we can come back and look and see whose prayers were all askew and whatever, and we can judge it because that's how long it's going to take. It's going to be years, not months, until we find out the answers. And I don't want to get tagged in every fucking email drop from people. So that's my rap, Matt.

I'm done. So that's my wrap-up. I'm done. The thing that annoys you is the treatment of every little meaningless bit of information that comes along as this is the smoking gun. This is the smoking gun now. It just has that conspiratorial flavor of Hunter Biden or Hillary's emails or 9-11 or whatever. And it's tiring and it's boring. Matt, I'll tell you the thing. People didn't tag me in. They didn't tag me in. Two new review articles that came out that reviewed the evidence for the origins of the coronavirus, such as it

exists, did a very good job of it, thorough accounting of what evidence exists. And they took the arguments made in favor of the lab leak and addressed whether they're convincing or not. And the overall conclusion, surprise, was the same as it was before that there's a possibility that it could be a lab leak, but the majority of evidence points towards natural origin. And that's where the majority of researchers lie. Nobody highlights any into these articles i'll read the literature there there i'll do the thing but you don't need to tag me and when

they do tag me matt i then get my replies flooded by the fucking lab leak dregs who are like saying oh you don't want your filter bubble pierced and all this. Chris, there's this little button called mute thread. And let me tell you, it is your friend. Use it. All right. Well, I'll have my little rant. I'll try to keep it shorter than yours. And my little rant is the thing that's been all over my news feed.

Apparently, Australia is now subject to a repressive tyranny. We've got a military taking over, all our rights being taken away. It's like a boot stamping into our face again and again for all eternity. Or is it, Chris? This apparently is what's going on and it's been the very much hot take amongst Americans of the libertarian or right-wing variety or just anti-COVID, anti-lockdown stripe. And it covers the entire spectrum from Alex Jones to like half our gurus and people like Tim Pool, who's just the absolute worst. I think it's actually started with Fox News who kicked this whole thing off and then just the rest of the ecosystem picked it up.

Well, the least crazy or the most reasonable version I've heard of this take is from a guy called Conor Friedersdorf. He's a journalist and he's okay. He wrote in The Atlantic that Australia has traded away too much of our liberty with these draconian emergency restrictions. And it just really annoys me, Chris, all of these takes, because they portray absolutely no understanding of what's going on in Australia. What's happening is that they're projecting their own paranoid wet dreams onto us, which is really quite annoying. So for Americans who are listening to this,

let me just say that there's probably a lot of little details you don't know. One is that Australia hasn't had access to the vaccines until very recently. Uptake is really strong. There's very little vaccine hesitancy. And so we're increasing the vaccination rate really quickly. At the same time, Delta has come to town. So we pretty much got through the entire pandemic, almost scot-free with only 1,000 deaths total to COVID and very few infections. In my part of Australia, in Queensland, we had almost no lockdowns either. So we've had a blessed existence really. But the situation we find ourselves in now is that COVID is getting out of control. The travel restrictions that are mainly focused on

New South Wales and Sydney are not strict enough because it's not actually stopping Delta in its tracks. Unless we keep that up, unless we implement the travel restrictions, and yes, lockdowns are terrible. We hate them just as much as everyone else. But we're not stupid. And we realize that if we don't do that, then in a couple of months, the situation here will be like the situation in Florida or the situation in Texas or Alabama or places like that, where you've got a largely unvaccinated population and you've got Delta running right, and we don't actually have the level of hospital intensive care and so on that America has. And, yeah, we're trying to avoid those deaths. So there's a portion of the commentariat that see this

as like creeping fascism, as creeping repression, as if the main thing that our state primaries are dying to do is control us all with the military and passports and retinal scans and checkpoints and so on. It's just crazy. That is the last thing that any of them would want to do. Don't get me wrong. Australian politicians are just as incompetent as politicians anywhere in the world. But I can tell you what they don't want to do is implement some kind of Chinese authoritarian surveillance state. No, they're centre-right moderates. They had to be dragged to the lockdowns kicking and screaming. Really, what their instinct is, is to not do that. The idea that it's like a

trick, the thin edge of the wedge, that really what the government wants to do is implement all sorts of controls and this is an excuse to take away our liberties, that is conspiratorial nonsense. It's a temporary restriction that's supported by the large majority of Australians and it makes perfect sense given the situation that we're in. It's got a clear deadline and it's going to be in place until we can get 70% or 80% of the population vaccinated, at which point everyone in Australia will be looking forward to ending it as soon as we possibly can.

The thing that annoys me is, one, this sort of conspiratorial paranoia about the government dying to take away our freedoms and liberties that's not what the australian government wants to do right there there are a bunch of idiots but that's not their secret plan and the second thing that annoys me is that projection of your own ideological hang-ups onto us which it just doesn't fit your issues or not our issues. So deal with them at home. Okay, I'm done. I sympathize, but I really think it sounds like you're just trying to cope with the reality

that you're returning to your penal culinary roots. This all sounds like a coping mechanism. And you know what's going on. You've seen the videos and the images. You've seen your friends get dragged around kicking and screaming about their barbecues and shrimps. I've seen these videos being shared of Australian police tackling some guy in the street and holding them down, forcibly vaccinating them. And that's getting shared around. That's what's going on, Matt. Just be careful.

What's that noise? Oh, Matt, they're coming. They're there. They're wearing the broadcast. Remember my name, Chris. Remember my name. Yeah. So that's our little rant for this week about the things that have been

annoying us on the internet it will not be a recurring feature it's just there's been particularly annoying things this month absolutely shall we get to business chris speaking of annoying things no yeah it's time to turn to the gurus of the week. In this case, we have a pair of gurus or do we? We'll see how fair it is to describe them both in this sense. But it's content from Rebel Wisdom, which has come up recently. It's a channel or an outlet dedicated to providing sense-making in our fragmented media ecosystem. It's alternative media style thing. And the most recognizable face, and I think the founder of it, is David Fuller, who is

an ex-journalist from BBC and Channel 4 and mainstream journalism, but now focuses on the Rebel Wisdom channel. And he's recently been doing a lot of the coverage of the Dark Horse podcast and criticisms thereof. He is where Yuri Degin was hosted for the two-hour interview detailing the problems. He's also offered a bunch of articles that are highly critical of Brett. You've had a chat with him recently, haven't you? Yes, I did have an extended chat with him, which was ostensibly supposed to be about the live leak hypothesis, ironically, but we ended up kind of talking about other topics related to mainstream media and alternative media and conspiracy theorists and so on. I like David. I have my criticisms and disagreements of the way that he approaches things, but I think

within the alternative media ecosystem, he's one of the very few people that consistently asks critical questions of his guests. And we'll see this in the content that we're looking at today. I don't always agree with David, but I think he's a decent guy to put my bias cards up from. I came across Rebel Wisdom and David a while ago now. I think it might have even been you who recommended me some coverage of London Real and Brian Rose, the dodgy character that was running that.

The coverage there was good and interesting. That's a whole guru-esque scam cult thing in itself. I guess you'd say he's sort of part of this sort of sense-making sphere. It's kind of his brand is sense-making. And to be fair to David, he did in an interview recently make a kind of self-aware jab that he thinks people will be sick of hearing the word sense-making for too long. And he is correct on that point. I also think that the origins of the channel are that he produced a documentary around the Jordan Peterson phenomenon. And it was very well received. It was shared on Jordan Peterson's channel and so on as well. Well received by Jordan Peterson's fans, I should say, maybe more broadly.

It was generally positive and inclined towards him. And I would say, however, that David has been willing to put critical questions to Jordan and so on. And I think, as he's discussed in interviews, that that may have cost him the ability to access those figures. So he's an interesting character. And what's going on at the channel of Rebel Wisdom is also an interesting thing to look at. Although that's kind of related to what we're doing today, but we're not specifically focusing on that. No, that's right.

He's the interviewer. And who is he interviewing? So he is interviewing a person called Jordan Hall, who is another YouTuber, a smaller channel in the kind of sense making sphere. He's collaborated on Rebel Wisdom and he produces videos and essays and that kind of thing. They're having a conversation about Jordan having an interview or discussion with another guy who is a proprietarian called Brandon Hayes. So the context here, it's fucking Inception level, right? That's right. We're having a conversation about them having a conversation

about the conversation that one of them had with this other guy. Yeah, it's really clear what's going on. It's pretty meta. And we admit this is meta even for us. So let's go on the inception road trip. You have Jordan Hall, who on his channel interviews a guy called Brandon Hayes. Now, Brandon Hayes is a proprietarian. What's proprietarians? We're not going to go into deeply, but suffice to say, these are not good people. These are far-right,

anti-Semitic individuals who follow the philosophy of this weird guy called Curtis Doolittle. It sounds like a name that wouldn't exist, but in any case, we don't need to dive into his philosophy. Suffice to say, it's far-right, it's anti-Semitic, and it's shit. So Brandon Hayes is a follower of this, also an openly professed fascist. So this is the kind of person we're dealing with. Why Jordan Hall having a conversation with a guy who's an anti-Semitic fascist? There's obvious reasons that you might be concerned. So David, being a friend and collaborator of Jordan, wants to discuss some issues that he had with that interview where

he thinks he failed to properly contextualize why this guy is controversial or challenge him or that kind of thing. And they have a discussion on Rebel Wisdom about the interview that Jordan did. This video is not listed on Rebel Wisdom. It's embedded in a Medium article that David produced, but he didn't make the video publicly listed on the channel, presumably because they don't want that much attention drawn to the nature of the conversation. And you'll be able to see why as we go through it. That's what we're dealing with here. Does that make sense, Matt? It does make sense. And I think this context is important to be aware of. But as we'll see, it's not really necessary to get a full description of what

proprietarians are, or exactly what the deal is with this guy, Brandon Hayes. I mean, I think the only thing people need to know is that it's kind of serious stuff. It's a little bit dark. This guy did have a very polite, sense-making type conversation with Brandon Hayes. And David Fuller wants to ask him some critical questions about that decision.

You know, it's easy to understand what the issue is here, I think, Chris. And I think that's important. Yeah. One other point. There's a community called DMB. I'm not going to get into it, but this is another set of alternative sensemakers or so on which has involvement of the Weinsteins, because of course it does. If you remember, Brett had a big kick up during the election because he

was temporarily banned from Facebook. They restored it and said it was made an error, but he went for being silenced because of Unity 2020. And while the specifics of that event remain unclear, it could just have been an error or whatever, it's relevant context that this group called the Propertarians were at the same time, simultaneous to this, infiltrating a bunch of the Facebook groups for D&B, IDW types, and they were essentially trying to take them over and sway people into propertarian type ideas.

Then there was a kind of purging by Facebook of kicking out all these accounts and it involved a bunch of D&B accounts being temporarily banned and so on. It's likely, or it's possible at least, that those were related to those bannings. And notable that this event happened and there was very little coverage of it when it kind of fits very nicely the narrative that people have about the IDW or the alternative ecosystem being a gateway to fascism and far-right ideology. And on the one hand here, you have a group that's explicitly, that's what their aim is, and they're going into those groups and they're seemingly able to exist and gain moderator

positions or try to gain influence to some extent in those communities without being kicked out. So that fits what the kind of left-wing view would be. But I would note that people were detected and kicked out, and there's been a clear that's not what we're about. There are connections there, there are vulnerabilities, but there also does seem to be a distinction where people, that's not what they are signing up for necessarily with those groups

gotcha all important context so this is the serious issue at play let's get in there and see what this guy has got to say for himself probably a good clip to get started is just the framing of the interview and what the concern on the parts of David is for Jordan. I don't think anyone disagreed or thought that you shouldn't have talked to Brandon. But most, I'd say from my perspective, it was almost universal that the way the interview was done did not give the people watching any idea who Brandon was. And they felt that it was, I guess, the word that came back a few times was irresponsible. The impression I certainly got when I watched it was that you and Brandon were pretty much on the same page on most things and that you were essentially validating him as an individual within this wider space.

So I thought that's a good clip to highlight that David is pretty directly putting the criticisms towards him. Yeah, he's raising the concern. And I think there's a pretty salient point that it actually is reasonable to interview extremists and people with highly partisan views. An important thing if you're going to do that is that you should highlight that you're not endorsing their views or that you're giving them the chance to appear simply more reasonable than they are, right? Or that you're giving them the chance to appear simply more reasonable than they are, right?

There's a difference between doing an interview where you allow people to outline their worldview, even if it's a malignant, bigoted worldview. And you do that just to give them the kind of rope to hang themselves with. That's one thing. But it's different if someone has that kind of worldview and instead you discuss with them what their favorite movies are and then talk about philosophy. Yeah. And the context here is important too, which is that these groups do have this track record

of concealing the really hardcore red pill stuff, a bit like Scientologists do, and lead with stuff that's more palatable and present a more acceptable kind of face and worm their way in that way because they know very well that the harder edge of what they're pushing is going to cause a reaction. So, yeah, it's an important thing to do. And even someone like Louis Thoreau, when he's doing his, and he's a good example, yeah, he talks to and spends time with very unpleasant people like neo-Nazis, and he does humanize them in a very real way.

But at the same time, he doesn't endorse them and whitewash them, and he does actually make his disagreements with them pretty clear. What David Fuller here is pointing out is that's not what Jordan Hall did. Now, there's another clip before we get on to Jordan's response where he kind of highlights again the issue. This is later in the episode when Jordan has responded a couple of times, but I'll just play that

because I think it illustrates in a quite neat way where he sees the problem line. I see myself as a curator. I see that I have a lot less authoritative, I'm less of an epistemic authority than I think you are. And there's an interesting question here, because I don't know whether you've necessarily asked for that authority that I think you have. But a lot of people who are watching that interview, when I read the comments,

were not aware of who Brandon was. And they've come out with some impression that this guy is speaking the truth, that he's worth talking to, and that he has some ideas related to genetics that aren't entirely clear. And I don't think that most people have got an idea about what they actually believe and who the proprietarians really are. And I think, I mean, I don't want to kind of just scare quotes, anti-Semitism, scare quotes, all this stuff. But if you read a lot of what they talk about, it's third rail for a reason. It's dangerous for a reason. This is setting up the criticism, right? These are pretty straightforward critiques, is my point.

Yeah, that's right. That's the lesson to be drawn here. David Fuller, to his credit, challenges Jordan Hall here at the beginning quite clearly. What's interesting is Jordan Hall's responses, I think. Here comes one of them. This is responding to what his goal was in doing the interview. I did not come into that with a hoping to achieve. More like a, almost like a method, maybe a better way of putting it. And the method here was something like, did it feel like the conversation could be had? Did it feel like there was a way to hold the conversation that, hard to explain, wouldn't break? If that makes any sense.

Hmm. What do you think about that for an initial justification, Matt? Not wanting to break the conversation. Yeah. I'm not quite sure where he's going with that. Yeah. I like that clip because it basically highlights there's no goal, just a method.

There should be a goal when deciding who to speak with. If you have a method, you're still making these decisions about who you talk to and who you don't. So it just seems a way to sidestep the issue. Well, it reflects this real focus on where the conversation is the thing. The ability to engage with each other is kind of an end in itself.

But yeah, let's dig deeper, Chris. Yeah, and we'll get on to the sacred nature almost transferred to relationships and conversations. Here's another justification for why he would be willing to engage with this kind of character. The last piece was, did it feel that I noticed that there was something deeper that was actually asking me to share it? And the answer actually was fear. So I actually felt a felt sense of fear. I felt sense that there was something about sharing this

that would potentially be dangerous to me, to my, I don't know, my security or my well-being, something pretty primal. And I didn't want to spend too much time trying to make meaning out of it and to narrate that, but just to notice the feeling itself and then try to feel into what's the right way to respond to that feeling and of course you know the learning is to try to step into it not recklessly so hopefully it wasn't too reckless um but intentionally and so you know that's a a bit of a perspective on it. Well, that cleared things up. Yeah. That response is him explaining why he shared it.

Just before we discuss it, there's one more piece of context where he's giving his reasons for why he shared the conversation. So that was his final reason. These are some things he mentioned before. He had had a sort of nudging me to engage in conversation for a few months and it not felt right. And then there was a period where it suddenly felt yes. And by the way, it felt yes and quite likely one that should or at least could be shared. And so when I finished the conversation, I only reflected for a day because there's a lot of, I guess you might call it energy, before I decided that it did feel like something that was contained enough that sharing it would be useful. And then I did. what kinds of considerations, things like, did the tone feel like it was clean enough?

IE, it wouldn't be too confusing or too strong, maybe too intense. Did I feel like I broke with my own integrity is another big question for me. And I did not feel like that was the case. I felt like I was able to hold my integrity through the whole thing, which for me is more important than holding, for example, the precision of my thinking, which is a different issue. So he had a lot of feelings, Chris. He felt like he didn't break with his own integrity and he felt a lot of energy from the conversation.

I don't feel like I'm getting a clear answer to David Fuller's questions. I find this somewhat infuriating because what he describes here is like he kind of shifts the focus on the ability to have a conversation and then focusing on how it makes him feel to have this kind of discussion with someone. Like he says his concern is over whether it would be confusing and what the tone would be to people when sharing. and what the tone would be to people when sharing. Fundamentally, these are all, they're presented as if they're very deep, but in actual fact, they're quite superficial. If you're able to have an engaging chat with someone, but fundamentally, their goal is to promote a fascist ideology.

That's even why you're talking to them, because they are somebody that's pushing a particular ideology. And Jordan mentions in that that the guy was nudging him to interact for a number of months. That alone should be a potential warning sign. He relies on this kind of ineffable sense within himself of when it's reasonable to interact. But again, he's not talking about interacting, having a private conversation with someone. He's talking about recording a discussion

and releasing it to an audience. And the discussion where you have a poly chat with somebody who's promoting anti-Semitic fascism. Yeah, that's right. It's a real maneuver, isn't it? And I think what we should be focusing on throughout this in these clips is Yeah, that's right. It's a real maneuver, isn't it? And I think what we should be focusing on throughout this in these clips is the language that Jordan uses. And it's almost like he's leveraging that sort of corporate touchy-feely, I'm okay, you're okay, speak, talking about

energies and centering yourself and all of these personal reactions when, as you you say that's not the point david fuller is is asking him whether he was being responsible in basically providing a kind of an endorsement really for an anti-semitic fascist and talking about this stuff is is a way of avoiding the issue it seems yeah i think this is the killies heel of the kind of sense-making alternative ecosystem endeavor is that, like you say, with this use of jargon or pseudo-profound psychological mysticism language, it makes things sound much more deep and multi-layered when, in a lot of cases, it feels like a lot of that is being achieved by the use of profound language as opposed to the actual content being deeply challenging to grapple with. We've talked about with the Gwyneth Paltrow content and various other gurus as well,

that a lot of it fundamentally comes down to focusing on yourself, right? And how things impact you, not being the primary thing that matters. The Conspiratoriality guys covered this as well. I've got a couple of clips which speak to that part of basically seeing the chance to interact with a fascist guy as simply being a step on your spiritual journey towards yeah of growth of personal growth which yeah which like the issue should be clear but anyway let's listen to it the propositional level the kinds of things that people may or may not present themselves as believing is not the thing I'm interested in.

What I'm interested in is, as you said, I'm seeking truth. And to seek truth is to present yourself in a, what does Johnny V call it? Participatory. And to actually engage, how do I change? What actually changes in me as a consequence of this encounter? And to what degree is something changed in the consequence of the encounter? And if anybody chooses to participate in the encounter, does something change in them? Not what content finds itself landing on the surface of their neocortex, but rather, does anything actually shift or change that is meaningful? And perhaps not, and perhaps so. Good faith is a primary question here. That's an important thing for me.

Yeah. Yeah. Once again, another good example of elevating it immediately to this spiritual journey of self-growth where like two plants, you become entwined with the other and and interact and exchange energies and develop and grow and you have to remind yourself that he's talking to a fascist we're gonna be saying this a lot but like you say that's the fact that you have to keep grinding in this discussion because it floats away in jordan's monologue yeah yeah it does this didn't strike me so strongly the first time i heard it

but listening back to it i'm i'm just struck by this this use of this hippy dippy spiritual language which it accomplishes multiple goals a bit like eric weinstein it immediately bumps things up to a level of abstraction where anything is true and you have your own truth and who can say it's all very complicated. It also sidesteps very admirably any kind of criticisms of what you've said or whatever, because it was all steps on a journey that you were taking. Those were just the superficial patternings on the neocortex, right, from the deeper relationship. When people usually reserve this kind of language for some deep session that they had with a

therapist, not for a friendly conversation that they had with an anti-Semitic fascist. We're going to be saying this a lot. I say, I don't think we can possibly say enough because that's the issue. There's a lot of echoes of Jordan Peterson-esque rhetoric in this kind of conversation around relationships and the interactions between individuals and so on. I thought this clip, which follows on quite shortly from the last one we played, is a nice illustration of that. So in my personal experience, my ability to interact with him in a fashion where my integrity

is intact, and something, I learned something, like something changes in me that I feel is a growth and evolution. And I imagine, although of course, I do not know for sure, the same thing is happening on his side of the conversation, that there's something about the relationship that has a meaningfulness or a reality to it is the primary consideration. And I would suggest, by the way, that many of the questions that you are bringing up and that are coming up, if taken from that point of view, have a nutritive effect as Zach Stein's and soulment, you know, rather than a developmental question,

it's more of an insolvent question I think for everybody who challenged, you know, choose on them. The people who find his stuff to be like attractive and easy. All right, well, let's, let's put that to the test. find his stuff to be like attractive and easy. All right, well, let's put that to the test. Yeah, so I feel at multiple points, David Fuller might have said, what the fuck are you talking about? I don't understand a single word of what you just said.

Yeah, I think in some sense, this is David's Achilles heel because he is a spiritual guy. And he also has similar concerns and interests to Jordan. So Jordan's language to theirs sounds just like mystical psychobabble. I get that he's referencing real thinkers who have these deep ideas about these distinctions between insolvent and so on that he's discussing. But a lot of it feels deflectionary from the point, right? And here's a clip of David talking about mainstream media and gatekeeping. And I think it will highlight why he might be overly sympathetic towards Jordan and these kind of ideologies. I feel a sense of trepidation in this conversation because I know the kind of concerns that I've got, the kind of questions that I'm raising

are very easy for me to be seen in a kind of like blue church censoring kind of role in relation to this. And I want to kind of name that. And yeah, because I, I feel that what I'm really trying to wrestle with is in this, we know that the old gatekeeping doesn't work like this kind of like the blue church strategies of shaming of kind of saying these topics can be talked about these can't be, but I feel like we're in a new place where we're all gatekeepers in some way. And I'm wondering, what are our responsibilities in this space? Yeah, Chris, so just picking up your point there where I think David does have a bit of an Achilles heel in the sense, and he's not alone, Achilles heel in the sense and he's not alone in well it's been called civility porn where one there's a total reluctance to simply discount stuff and to say that isn't worth engaging with

what you're saying doesn't make sense there's this real tendency to always assume good faith there's this guy Jordan Hall is assuming good faith with the fascist. David Fuller is far less blameworthy, if at all here, but he's totally assuming good faith in Jordan Hall and just in giving him the benefit of the doubt and not sort of being a bit like a hard-nosed journalist, which he could be, which is to demand a direct answer and to not allow him to get away with this kind of obfuscation and avoiding questions. I think that's because they have an existing relationship and he isn't seeing his role exactly here as a hard-nosed journalist, but rather as somebody raising issues in a conversational manner with

a colleague. And I think you have to factor that in, but this is possibly a recurring critique of people within the alternative media ecosystem that a lot of it does prioritize relationships and friendships and, like you say, civility over potential harm that people are promoting. Now, I'll highlight here again that David is somebody that has been calling out someone who he regards as a friend in a very direct manner. But I actually think that's another illustration of how it has to be held important that when people are promoting anti-vaccine rhetoric or misinformation about ivermectin, or whether they're potentially leading their audiences towards anti-Semitic fascists without due warning, these are concerns

that need to be called out in strong terms. My issue is not even in terms of politics or causing harm and needing to call out fascists or whatever. I'm just concerned with the harm that's caused to clarity and decent communication, right? So, if I asked you, Chris, what did you do this morning? And you said, well, I felt my energies were intertwined and you gave me all this babble. And if I wanted to know what you're doing this morning, I demand you answer me plainly, I think there's a failure there. It's the kind of thing we see amongst most of our gurus. We see Russell Brand do it with his effervescent philosophizing and Jordan Peterson and Eric Weinstein. There's bumping any tangible,

This bumping any tangible, concrete question up to a level of spiritual transcendence, but at which point just words have no meaning anymore. I find that really irritating. And it's got nothing to do with the fact that the politics or censorship or anything like that. It's just a very unclear way to communicate. Well, on that subject, so I just want to drop a concept into your brain sphere, Matt. It comes up later in the conversation where they're talking about what can be created by having a relationship with someone. It's metaphysical, it's spiritual, it's a little bit sexy. Let me play this clip for you. Part of that is me. Part of that is him. Part of that is things beyond both of us, right? It's spiritual. It's a little bit sexy. Let me play this clip for you. Part of that is me.

Part of that is him. Part of that is things beyond both of us, right? It's the whole complex, the whole warm data milieu. I may be able to come into something like an integrous relationship with aspects of Brandon, right? Aspects of me can come into integrous relationship with aspects of him. And for the moment, it forms a new being, which is those aspects coming into relationship and exchanging perspectives and possibilities and tensions. And then perhaps coming back into relationship with the complex relationality that is me, right? I've got this mental image of a couple of snails mating where they kind of, you know how snails mate? It's not pretty. That's the image I had in my head

there, Chris. I didn't like it. I have to say, there's an art to metaphors and flowery prose. In actuality, what's being discussed here is having a conversation with someone. They're talking about the metaphysics of discussing someone's something. In a way, when you have a discussion, you create a new entity, which is the interrelationship of you making points and the other person making points. And then you each take a part of that conversation back and your soul is transformed. It's just a conversation, my friend. You just had a conversation with a fascist. A mystical enjoining of spirits.

And if you did with a fascist maybe you should be concerned like maybe if if you're finding yourself spiritually penetrated by an anti-semitic fascist there should be a concern there get yourself checked yeah get down to the metaphysical clinic afterwards and just just get things. That's all we're saying. But following shortly after that, if you thought that that was quite Peterson-esque or unnecessarily flowery, how about this one? Those are two sides of the same coin. Then that's a non-starter. That can't work. It wants to move faster than it can move or take on more than it can take. Being able to start where it can start and builds in from the interior out from the smallest and say, okay, we're still holding. Are we still holding? Are we still holding? And if it breaks, what happens then? If it breaks, is there a

predatory move that actually begins to break the integrity here? Dangerous, not good. If it breaks, is there an unconsciousness that tries to grab more here and do stuff here? Also not good. consciousness that tries to grab more here and do stuff here also not good and by the way the arrow goes that way too does it you know does it parasize parasitize or predate the integrity over here i would say something like that like something that actually has the capacity to disseminate a viral degradation of individual and collective integrity would be something to be very very like super careful of like keep it in in uh uh tight containers fuck me chris i mean i'm glad you brought him to our attention because even though he's not important in any numerical

sense he's like a distilled essence of what our gurus do. I mean, he makes Russell Brand seem sensible and clear and to the point, prosaic. He's really special. We've seen this in some of the other, dare I say, second tier or third tier gurus that we've seen. We haven't covered them on the podcast yet, but we've watched some of their videos. They're very loquacious. He can talk, right? It makes no fucking sense, but he can babble on for hours, I'm sure of it. And he's got lots of nice words and he strings them together very nicely. But it's like a GPT-3 artificial intelligence algorithm, which produces this utterly meaningless babble. Yeah, I'm just curious. Do you think it makes sense to some people or is it just me? No, I mean, in a Peterson-esque way, I can follow the flow of what he's arguing, especially

like when taken in the context of the conversation. of the conversation. But it does not negate in any way that he's still talking about the capacity to disseminate a viral degradation of individual collective integrity is something to be very careful of. But, Chris. I see your face, Matt. I quoted him.

That's a quote. That's a quote. That's a quote. But you're saying that that makes a certain degree of sense to you. And that's what I'm having trouble with. I'm saying it's using the maximum amount of words to make completely mundane points. It isn't complicated what he's saying. It just sounds complicated. The preceding question, which

precipitates those two clips that I just played, the sexy conversation clip and the integrity viral dissemination clip. This is the question that he's riffing off. What do you think are the, or

are there non-negotiable qualities that someone would need to show up with to be, like, what are we screening out with that boundary, I guess? What's the toxin? So it's interesting because it has to do with the notion of the relationship as being more fundamental. So there is, in fact, nothing that's non-negotiable in the abstract because we're not dealing with abstract relationships between individuals. We're dealing with real relationships where the relationship is always going

to be now a kind of an admixture, a bit of an alchemy. So the question is actually going to be more like what's going to be non-negotiable is circumstances where the encounter can't, in fact, achieve integrity in relationship. I'm sorry. I forgot there was a preamble to the two clips that I played. But like, Dima was trying to ask him, what's the boundaries, right, of the people that we're willing to have conversations with? And this is what you got.

Yeah. David is making what you got. Yeah. David is making sense to me. I understand David's questions. He's asking them. In kind of sense-making manner. Yes, he's couching them in the very polite sense-making manner. But what he really wants to say is, is there anyone so bad that you won't talk to them? In phrasing the questions or couching them like that,

it gives Jordan the opening to just seize upon the abstraction and fly away into the distance, into the stratosphere. The guru's sphere. I will say there are some questions David asked. This is, I think, in part a response to some of those answers by Jordan. What do you say next, right? So he often has to respond if Jordan has taken off into the psycho realm of mysticism. But there are points where he pushes him directly and you do get sort of direct answers. This is one after he asks him about the issues

of platforming and promoting somebody who is a proprietarian. This is what Jordan says. It's not my perspective that I was speaking with the proprietarians, right? I was speaking with this gentleman who sometimes is called Brandon Hayes. And by the way, sometimes it's called other things. And it's my experience that no human being could ever, even if they wanted to be nothing more than a particular ideology or organization. And I would imagine if you were to go in and actually have a conversation with say five or six people who spend a lot of time in the domain of

proprietarianism and maybe even considered themselves to be proprietarians, you would identify that there were a very, very large number of things over which they had very significant differences and some set of things over which they agreed. And even that's not particularly interesting to me. I play that to say that his argument is like the fact that this guy is a proprietarian is the least interesting aspect of him and you have to ask what is interesting you wouldn't be talking to him right if it wasn't for the fact that he's a proprietarian yeah well like he said before he's those sort of details that kind of content is just rain pitter-pattering off the surface of his neocortex. What he's concerned about is the process of engaging with

his energy at a level which is deeper and more meaningful than any of the actual content of his political or philosophical views. So yeah, what, if anything, is it about? Also, this kind of deflection to say, I dealing with a person not an ideology right i'm speaking with somebody who's an islamist or somebody who's a communist but i see them as a person so that's what i'm interested in their personality but nobody is saying to you that that person is not a person the issue isn't their personhood. The issue and the reason that you're being criticized is because of the ideology that they adhere to. And to act like that's an incidental factor to someone, maybe if their ideology is like jet ski instructor. But when your ideology is like an extreme ideology,

which is no longer in the 21st century, is very rare and is heavily bigoted and led to genocide half a century ago, it behooves you to treat that with the due respect that it deserves, right? And not the softball as this is an incidental factor. And I don't give a flying fuck if five proprietarians disagree with four proprietarians about the

appropriate way to deal with Jews. The fact that they all agree that we need to deal with the Jews, that's the problem with the proprietarians, right? And even if one of them wasn't so signed up that the Jews are the issue, maybe he's just a fascist. Oh, well, I still have an issue with him in that case, right? It's a rich tapestry, Chris. It's a rich tapestry.

They're not a monoculture. Look, that point is obvious. I'm really getting more and more interested in the style of language and these methods of deflection because I'm familiar with it. That's why. It's not like it's some new thing. But I haven't heard it coming from these kinds of people. I'm familiar with this language from boomers. Yeah, people my parents' age who lived through the 60s and the 70s and are kind of into spirituality and very progressive and open-minded and all that stuff. And they're nice people, right? They have nothing else in common with proprietarians or anything like that. But my one issue with them is that they do use this kind of language a lot.

one issue with them is that they do use this kind of language a lot you only need to go to some sort of like a staff meeting of a very progressive social worker type institution and you'll you'll find long discussions that use this kind of language and i just find it interesting that it's getting repurposed you know in a very different context here does that strike you like do you recognize this language chris from like another time yes although i think it's more reflecting on the kind of ken wilbur integrative philosophy kind of stuff it's a little bit new age type spirituality and self-development but hybridized with kind of modern politics and culture war content i think it owes more to that uber than to the boomer self-help or i i well i guess that is boomer self-help right yeah it's from a yeah it's from a long time ago yeah and but no i agree with you it is it's centered with spirituality and i

associate it with people that tend to be into that abstracted version of religion not quite new age it's a bit it's not it's a bit more sophisticated than that but i've just i just recognize this kind of language yeah there's a segment where the uneasy overlap between the realities of running a YouTube channel and releasing this interview that you've done and the narrative that Jordan wants to put that it's all about the individual relationship. So David puts this point to him. individual relationship. So David puts this point to him. It's more that if you're going to get controversial people on, I think it is part of the responsibility to sense-making to explain why they're controversial. And I understand the dilemma that you're expressing because it starts to become a sort of much more formal interview if you've got a set of questions. It's like, well, I need to ask him about this.

I need to ask him about this. I need to ask him about this. But I do think that a certain amount of that framing is necessary for the audience to understand who this person is. Again, you're framing as an audience. And if you're doing journalism with an audience, then you're probably right. But aren't you? I mean, it's one thing to have the conversation,

but you're choosing to put the conversation out, so you're then engaging an audience. You're then in an audience dynamic whether you want to be or not. Are you not? Yeah, obviously true. I disagree with this that it has to be confrontational or it has to be like an aggressive kind of gotcha-style journalism. You could just be direct and you can just talk

substantively about the issues at hand in a very clear kind of way. I'm not thinking of a journalistic type interview, but I'm just thinking of how good academics would have a robust debate with one another. They wouldn't be getting in touch with each other's energies and their feelings and looking to grow as people. They'd be looking to sort this out. Yeah. And like we discussed, there are plenty of examples of people discussing things with fascists where they don't endorse their worldview and they don't allow them to avoid the reasons that they're controversial. But it isn't done in like a Hectorine kind of Jeremy Paxman style. It could be done conversationally, and you could still make the content of the ideology clear.

And in Jordan's denial that he's concerned about an audience, well, let's hear him elaborate on that a little bit. I'm sharing my conversation and people can choose whether they want to engage with it. It's not the same thing. I don't have any desire, for example, to grow an audience. Think about how important that is. But once you've got an audience, then your ego is attached to the audience. I have no interest in that at all. Perhaps one of the virtues of this particular conversation is that those who relate to me in the orientation towards audience will simply move along. They'll have no interest in me. I find this very guru-esque, right?

And along the lines of what Jordan's saying is that he released this because he regards it as an interesting experiment or transformative conversation he's not releasing it in order to grow an audience attract an audience he's just putting it out there and what people take from it that's their choice i feel that that is just maybe he believes that maybe that's his internal, but he set up a YouTube channel, which he is sharing content on. And if that were the case, that it's really just about him and you don't need to make that available for other people, unless you want some sort of audience, unless you want some sort of engagement with the content, because for what other purpose would you put out an interview that you did with other people you do want people to engage with it and you do want

people to see it because if you don't want people to see it you just don't put it out yeah well chris this is that caveat emptor philosophy we've heard before haven't we for people who want to wash their hands of any kind of responsibility for what they say. And that's from Brett and Heather Weinstein, right? They'll say that, look, this is just us exploring ideas, thinking things through, but it's not our responsibility what people do with that. Yeah, it's a nice maneuver. It's one we've seen before, but... Yeah. And it actually, it puts the blame onto the audience right if they approach your material in the wrong way that's their fault really you're better off invite them you know

it does fit with this sort of libertarian type of thinking which is you know this is me doing my thing you do your thing you can if you engage with me or interact with me or whatever which funnily enough is kind of related to the propeterian philosophy as well. But it's underlying a lot of the gurus in this sphere where, yeah, it's a way of saying that you have absolutely no responsibility. You take no responsibility for anything. I think I have a clip of the audience being chastised if they show up in audience mode to Jordan's content? So audience, no, not interested. To the degree which somebody is showing up to me in an audience

mode, I prefer they not. And I would urge them to learn never to do that, actually. Audience is a bad mode. It's a bad rule to take. Collaborator, co-creator, challenger, sure. It's a bad rule to take. Collaborator, co-creator, challenger, sure. That's the kind of thing we're trying to build. It's a real shift. It's a hard shift, particularly if you've been trained that way. A community of co-creators.

This is the brave new world we're plunging bravely into, Chris. So how does this work that people who passively receive your content don't exist it's only people who are hyper engaged as and by co-collaborators i presume you'll be having them on your show to discuss their opinions and whatnot with everyone who consumes the content like it's just like you say it feels like it's deflecting responsibility to the fact that you do have an audience. And if you put content out, you have to consider things like editorial choices and who you're choosing to speak to, what you're choosing to say. Yeah. No, things like editorial choices, say promoting misinformation or platforming, none of that lands with these people. No.

It's like Teflon. performing none of that lands with with these people that it's no they're like and it isn't the responsibility of their audience because their audience didn't have the conversation with the anti-semite so it is on jordan and not on them especially if he didn't provide the context exactly okay let's move on to the next point so So the next point, Matt, where we're going, it's a little bit darker. We're going to Desperation Town, Population Me and You. If the clips already annoyed you. And they did. Steal yourself.

Like I say, we're going deeper on this crazy train. We may have highlighted once or twice that he's talking to an anti-Semitic fascist. Yes, that did come up. That did come up. It has. It has featured in our coverage of this. So far, the issue has been that there's an unearned layer of profundity slathered over the top of competition with such a character.

slavered over the top of conversation with such a character. But there's a little bit of a deeper and darker response in some of the stuff that Jordan said, which had me a little bit concerned. And David doesn't pick up on that in the interview. There's a couple of clips that speak to this. I'll build up there. It'll be like, you know scott adams revealed that he actually wants a totalitarian dictator at the end of it are you saying he's about to say something more substantive and we're not going to like it yes i am saying that um but he's going to say it in the same way that he said everything else so this might make it hard to discern, but I think it's there. So first of all, this is him setting the foundation for where he goes. This is the first clip to get things started. Let's actually fight over that. Most of these people tend to be bellicose, so fighting is their mode of exploration. The people who want to recoil from it,

interesting. Well, we're going to have to show on that too, because this isn't really the kind of thing, this world that we have to build from my perspective, where kind of the weak link heterogeneous weak tribes of the 21st century can't really hang together. We have to find some way of actually being able to achieve an active peace. And sometimes we're going to have to learn how to delve into things that are not pleasant or easy to do it. Then we may not be ready for it. Okay. Achieving a bellicose peace, getting a bit more robust to this, I don't know, violence that's coming from these sorts of groups. I don't know, violence that's coming from these sorts of groups. I don't know. Is that what he's saying?

I'm trying to figure it out. It sounds like he's saying we need to go to some dark places in order to build the bonds that we will need to come over the weak-ass bonds that the 21st century has given us with social media and the alienation and all those kind of things. So, there's just this hint of it that we need to do something substantial and there's a need to respond with something serious, but it's not quite clear what that is at this point in order to address the modern unsatisfactory 21st century society that we find ourselves living in.

Yeah, like I don't want to do fine readings and infer things that aren't meant. But when somebody is so nebulous and vague, it makes one a little bit suspicious about what is it you are actually getting at? Well, let's see if we can get some more clarity from Jordan. So here's where he goes from there. So we best engage with them now while we're relatively safe and try to find out what process might be able to be put in place that can take individuals who may actually be intrinsically moved into places of relative risk, like actually willing to talk about violence. Much more interesting than somebody who's so cowed by civilization that they can't actually muster the energy to fight for something. The people who are actually willing to openly talk about violence simultaneously are potentially the most dangerous, but also potentially the most useful to engage with because there are many people who are willing to engage in

violence and we're going to talk about it. So what do we do? How do we actually learn how to achieve active peace? it's a real challenge it's not going to be had by avoiding conversations or blocking people online a much deeper notion of seeking truth for example right but are the people who are embracing violence the best people to be engaging with? Do they have something special to offer? If so, what is it? Are they more admirable than people that are not willing to justify violence for their ideological motives? It sounds to me here that Jordan is presenting that people with passionate

views and extremists are fundamentally just more interesting people than those who might not be willing to endorse extreme ideologies. Well, the rest of us are cowed by civilization, you see, Chris. Yeah. So, there's kind of this admiration for anybody who's willing to step outside the box, regardless of the fact that in this case, stepping outside the box is endorsing an extreme far right worldview that, again, is trying to bring fascism back in the 21st century. What's admirable about that and the notion that we need to engage with those people, sure, in the sense that we have to be aware and we have to look at what attracts people to those kinds of ideologies. But what Jordan seems to be presenting here is not so much that, but rather that these people are the potential, if we can just co-opt them there'll be these important members of the new civilizations that we want to build no maybe not maybe they're people that need

to be managed because of their tendency to support violence or adopt extreme ideologies right like he appears to be saying that they have something special, a special energy to offer that us milquetoast, cowed by civilization people could use, a shot in the arm. Yeah. And okay, so there's a part where David talks to him about his phenomenological response to dealing with this Branton, his character character and essentially

saying that he finds him slippery. As we discussed, the proprietarians, part of their goal is to infiltrate groups and take over them. So this would make sense. And there's this point where Jordan has a kind of weird response to why he's not really concerned about how he feels or about his reaction to Brandon, his somatic reaction. So listen to this. What role does somatics play in sensemaking? Because for me, it's like, I guess an open question is what sense did you get in your body when you're interacting with brandon because for me i got a very strong um not pleasant sensation

well i'm not afraid of him as a person so at a fundamental level i am not afraid of him as a person. So at a fundamental level, I'm not afraid of him or even what he represents. If it turns out that, for example, there is an intent on their part to foster some sort of violent conflict, and it comes down to my having to kill him, that's just what happens. So my body isn't concerned with that. For people's bodies who do have that kind of a concern, I can imagine it might be very challenging. I mean, to be honest, I find them... I have no idea what's going on in your body. The question is about mine. Yeah. David is protesting that it's not a physical fear. And he basically goes on to say that he finds the whole group best represented by LARPing. I find Jordan's response to be very weird, especially the implication is that anyone that would object to Brandon, that they're fearful of him and him as a dominating figure, it would be willing to

take him out if it came down to a mad max style future he would have the ability and his body knows that so he doesn't fear him and you know it's like jordan peterson saying he's fundamentally aware that he can punch men when he disagrees with them it's just it a lot of it strikes me as like how many times have these people punched people over disagreement or had to kill someone who is trying to instill their like fascist right you know they're taught they go on to talk about larping but it's it feels to me that that response is larping itself totally totally loving yeah no i agree i've you've i've heard that before amongst a certain kind of male online person and yeah i don't think they have any freaking idea

what they're talking about and it's it's quite it's just stupid posturing isn't it to say i don't have any fear and he's also galaxy brained enough to be able to encompass the kind of challenge that a neo-Nazi would present to him psychically without it being bothered by it at all. If he has to kill him, he has to kill him. But, you know, he's cool either way. It's just, it's like 15-year- old boy stuff and not a very mature 15 year old boy either yeah i think part of the reason that so many of these clips have a kind of weird energy to them right to speak in the terms that are used in this discussion again there's this sort of use of therapeutic language like focusing on how did you somatically react

to this person? I don't hear that that is a part of the discussion because it does seem gut feelings are important, but it's the level of abstraction that it allows Jordan to go to is quite high. And that seems an issue to me. But we do get more of how this all fits into the worldview that Jordan has. And again, it's not good. So here's a clip which speaks to his kind of position on the modern society. I've not met anyone who isn't disconnected in truly meaningful ways. So the inquiry is something like, okay, where's the lack of wholesomeness? Where precisely can we find it? What does that show up as? Can I feel it in myself? Like, obviously, if something in you

is uneasy, then either you're feeling something in yourself that is like, oh, and I don't want to go there. Or it's, oh, there's a threat, right? That's pretty much it. That's the only way it can be uneasy. There's either a threat or there's a threat. There's a threat from the outside or a threat from the inside. That's what uneasiness means. And I don't feel particularly uneasy when I'm interacting with him.

Yeah. So, you're right. It is that therapeutic language. And it harkens back to that stuff at the beginning that we talked about, which is that there's this real focus on sort of personal reactions and personal feelings about the conversation as a kind of spiritual practice that one engages with collaboratively rather than any actual content of what you're talking about. I mean, I get very suspicious when I hear this kind of language. When someone is being this abstract and this obscure and using so many buzzwords, they're either an idiot and they don't know what they're talking about and they're blathering in order to just fill the space and sound like

they're talking about something. Or they're using it as a means to avoid giving a direct answer, like he was particularly at the beginning. Or maybe they're running cover and obfuscating for what is at base. I mean, you were saying he's actually making a very simple point, but sometimes they use that language to conceal the fact that they're making an ugly point. The ugly point here is that he thinks this guy is fine and quite likes aspects of his ideology. That's just my suspicions, but I'm suspicious when people talk like this. The part that stood out to me was the presentation of all people around him are disconnected humans.

It's just a variation on seeing people as the sheeple or the cogs in the machine. And again, looking for the people who stand out from that in whatever way that they're dissatisfied with the system. And this creates a specialness to them. It's a very appealing narrative to give to your audience. And like I promised, it goes further. So we get that concept introduced there about the disconnected people and how Danny kind of reiterated that he doesn't feel a threat from interacting with Brandon. He's willing to look into these dark places, just like a Brett Weinstein,

just like so many of them, or Jordan Peterson present themselves. But let's again see where these kind of thoughts take us in the grander narrative. Oh yeah, I remember that. This is different. And by the way, let me just put in a quickly jump out to a big frame. As far as I can tell, with maybe minuscule exceptions, we're all suffering from a 50,000 year catastrophe, which has dragged our souls across the pavement of civilization.

I've not met anyone who isn't disconnected in truly meaningful ways. So the inquiry is something like, okay, where's the lack of wholesomeness? Where precisely can we find it? What does that show up as? Can I feel it in myself? Like, obviously if something in you is uneasy, then either you're feeling something in yourself that is like, Oh, and I don't want to go there. Or it's, Oh, there's a threat, right? That's pretty much it. That's the only way it can be uneasy. There's either a threat or there's a threat. There's a threat from the outside or a

threat from the inside. That's what uneasiness means. And I don't feel particularly uneasy when I'm interacting with him. I have concern with the pace. Like he feels, it feels to me like he wants to go too fast and he wants to move to certain things too quickly. have concern with the pace. It feels to me like he wants to go too fast. He wants to move to certain things too quickly. Concern with the certainty, for sure. So, there were a lot of similar themes. But again, it's this language about souls being scraped over the pavement of civilization for 50,000 years. And his concern with Brandon, he claims that it isn't really what he's saying or what he represents, but things like the pace that he wants to go. So like, is that the pace of the

conversation? Is that the pace of his project for society? But my concern with about the Semitic fascist plan for society is not the pace that they want to go. It's the overall goal and the logic that got them to there. Well, yeah, maybe he just means that the fascist was just laying on the ideas so thick and fast. It was like too much for him to process so quickly. But yeah, you can't help but wonder what he's referring to. What are these certain things that he wants to accelerate towards too quickly that is slightly disturbing that's the problem with this level of of abstraction in that you just leave all of these blanks for people to fill in and a 50 000 year catastrophe dragging ourselves across the pavement i mean that kind of spiritual mumbo-jumbo is just crazy.

And it does, like what he's saying does remind me of weird-ass sort of power-type philosophies, like Nietzschean-type philosophies, which is kind of ultra-romantic in the sense of going back to a kind of primitive kind of power sort of level that society has kind of weakened us by reducing our natural energies. The whole thing's a bit creepy to me, to the extent that it makes any kind of sense whatsoever. Here's the money shot, Matt. So, here's the final part of this rant, which deals with the issue of him speaking to a woman, an unnamed woman who found value in the conversation. And here's one of the points that she picks out. And it sends Jordan off an elaborative rant about anger and its value.

So let's see what's in there. Well, I mean, one, of course, is anger. Anger is an angry man. Very fucking angry. Super angry. Like insanely Well, one, of course, is anger. Anger. He's an angry man. Very fucking angry. Super angry. Insanely angry. He's angry as people ought to be. As angry as I am. He is absolutely livid and unwilling to kill

himself, I think is a key thing here. Think about that. We're in a situation where the reality is really for most people, you're either going to kill yourself or you're going to fight. And we're not in a situation where simply not doing has any future to it. And if you go along with the civilization structures that we've inherited, you're imbibing toxicity through every pore. Your soul will be stripped mine to nothingness

and everything that you love and care for will be decimated. That's what's up. That's what we're facing. That's what we're in. Every food you eat will be some sort of horrible monstrosity of toxicity and genetic manipulation. Every medium that you absorb will be hyper manipulative and super salient. That's what the kind of passive base case is. And you know it. Everybody knows it. There's no way to avoid it. Your body feels it. But what do you do? You shut yourself down. Put your head down. You slump your

shoulders. Take a look at Gen Z. Look at their bodies. They're all like this. They're all slumped like this. So, what do you think, Matt? I think that was pretty fucking dark, Chris. Underneath that level of abstraction is something reasonably dark. He's this so what do you think matt i think that was pretty fucking dark chris you know underneath that level of abstraction is something reasonably dark he's continually making excuses for this guy he's saying he's angry yeah but he's just as angry as he ought to be and that you're in a situation where

you have to kill yourself or you have to fight so which is again saying okay yeah so actual violence is is clearly justified right and likewise not doing anything is just not an option you have to act again referencing that kind of noble savage idea where the rest of us are like these drone npc sheeple that have been fed this palaver by by the mainstream media in society and that you have to wake up, open your eyes and grasp hold of the will to power or some shit like that. I just don't like it. I don't like it at all. No, your reaction is, I think, justified because that comes at the end of the interview, and it helps contextualize a lot of the previous obfuscating comments.

It sounds like he's an angry dude. He sees modern society as fundamentally soul-destroying and the people around him as kind of NPCs, right? That's what it sounds like he's saying. That's what it sounds like he's saying. And that as a result, he has a sympathy for the anger that Brandon feels at society and so on. But like what he hasn't grappled with properly in all of his soul searching seems to be that essentially you're expressing sympathy for fascistic tendencies. Yes, it's wrapped up with this kind of self-improvement,

introspective jargon, but your vision of society is dark. You're offering apologetics for somebody like Brandon, who the whole point of the conversation comes back into focus, which is maybe it wasn't just a self-indulgent conversation. Maybe the reason that you're ending up having this conversation is because of some greater degree of sympathy than a normal person ought to have with somebody with that ideology, and you haven't properly grappled with it. Well, yeah, that's right. I think that there's a greater degree of sympathy there than he's letting on. That's the bit that's kind of annoying too, right? Which is that all of that obfuscatory talk is a way of supporting it, excusing it and agreeing with it without putting your cards on the table. and I haven't followed these right-wing characters anywhere as closely as some. I know enough to know that they do have this tendency

to cloak the ugliest aspects to it, like the really hardcore red pill stuff in these sort of like onion layer skins. The first one's very palatable and like speaks to feelings of alienation and just not feeling so great about everything. And then you gradually, level by level, you work your way into the full-blown. I'm generally a little bit suspicious of the whole gateway to the alt-right,

you know, that stuff. I tend to raise my eyebrow a bit about that. I think it's overused. But I think someone like this, both of them, both the guy that's in the interview and the guy he was talking to are at different levels of that pathway. Am I being overly suspicious here, Chris? I don't know Jordan's content enough to say whether we're being unfair overall to his project. It might just be that he has unexamined sympathies. He's so focused on the spiritual journey that he's ignoring the ideological affinities that it's pulling him into.

To counter that, I will say that there were a couple of interactions with David in the interview, and I know they're friends, right? I know they have a relationship. But as David mentioned earlier in the interview, Jordan is the person who comes across as more a traditional guru. He's got a good speaking voice. He sounds authoritative, deeply read. He can ramble off quite passionate, eloquent metaphors and descriptions. So first of all, this is him describing his experience with David raising this issue with him. So here's how he frames that. In fact, even just the fact that we're having this conversation, I think, is positive evidence.

As I said in our Voxers back and forth, I actually felt a bit of a provocation in the way that you were interacting. And I thought it was a good provocation, which maybe was even part of the event. Just to note, if you're saying to someone that you find their way of messaging you provocative, there's an implication there that you had an emotional reaction and that you may have found it unduly competitive or something like that. And there's another part where he's talking about his approach to the interview. Again, the context here to keep in mind is that David has a background as a journalist and often emphasizes the importance and the extent of like journalistic approaches

to things. But so listen to this. I'm not a journalist, nor do I care to be, nor do I, by the way, esteem the function. And I don't do interviews, nor do I care to. So it's not my thing. So if you're looking for that, and you're coming to the sorts of things that I do, you'll probably be disappointed. Are you searching for truth? Am I searching for truth? This is a very interesting question. I would say more like seeking.

And it's interesting just to notice like the difference in the qualities between those two. It's like the difference between a puzzle and a mystery. A journalist has a puzzle orientation towards truth. There is a truth. There is a set of facts that can be pinned down in a scientific methodology. Very Francis Bacon. We'll torture her until she tells us the truth.

That kind of a vibe. Whereas this is more the notion of a mystery. truth, that kind of a vibe. Whereas this is more in the notion of a mystery, the sense that there is a caring and a carefulness that unveils something that is more in the direction of a embodied livingness. The point I wanted to highlight with that clip was the initial disparaging of journalistic approaches. There's a way where that's valid, where, you know, like, maybe we would say, look, we're not journalists. When we do interview with people, we're just going to have a conversation in one level, just what Jordan is saying there. But another level, it's saying, nor do I esteem that function, a disparaging shot at journalists

and their petty concerns with things like uncovering the truth, where he's more interested in these deeper relationships and encounters that one might have. And this endless parsing of what's the distinction between seeking truth and searching for truth? And isn't that a fundamental distinction? Isn't that the more interesting thing? I can't help but think, no, it's not. It's just more interesting to you. think no it's not it's it's just more interesting to you and you think there's a it gives you a chance to wax poetic about how you're a deeper seeker than a mere journalist but yeah yeah

exactly he cares what he's saying because he's not saying anything it's wordplay and like you say an opportunity to wax lyrical about what a transcendent character that you are in looking for these deep transformative experiences that are operating on a level below the petty mundane of people like journalists. It is just such bollocks. It's like reading the worst student essay that I ever read. And it's like 6,000 words. And I get to the end of it and I feel upset. I don't like the world. I need to go for a long walk and take some long breaths.

And listening to some of these gurus has the same impact on me. I find it so irritating how seriously they take themselves and how that contrasts with how little I've got to say. They are good, as you say, very guru-esque in being good with words. Yeah, very much a smooth talker, nice timbre, very eloquent and fluid in his speaking. And that's the point. It's a performance. It's a performance in wordplay you know what on earth was he saying then apart from the fact that i'm in touch with deep mysteries unlike you unlike me yeah unlike you unlike david no i am but i'm saying unlike me because i think that's people can judge if this is me reading too much into things,

but this is how the conversation basically gets brought to a close. I mean, there's another interesting. By the way, I think we maybe have run out of time. I've got a call more or less now. So let's wrap it up. Okay. All right. Now, that happens.

You're on the skype call or whatever somebody has to take a meeting and they've got to be rude and and bump in but difference i i don't know what i just had a feeling right you know we've been in that situation together talking and one of us has to go i've never took that tone with somebody that i regard as a cool collaborator or whatever you want to take it right i. I would say something like, I'm really sorry. Like I said, I got to take the next call.

I'm sorry. We can pick it up another time. But, but here it's like, okay, sorry. No, David,

we're, we're going to end this night. Well, Chris, you see, this is how someone who's not a beta cuck ends their conversations. This is what I'm fessing up to. Like I'm,

I'm more apologetic. And and uh but yeah that's the sense i got that this is how an alpha dog is supposed to end the conversation right you don't ask permission you don't apologize you just say this is it i've you know we're done we're done we're done here yeah we've had the conversation we've done the mystic relationship encounter sense making ritual it's over it's finished david i'm off to my next sense making relationship you'll just have to ponder this mystical union on your own that's right i've sucked all the goodness out of this conversation that i'm gonna get i'm not gonna grow anymore with anybody talking to you i'm off to grow with someone else

yes yeah no look we may be reading too much into it but i do agree with you i've don't that's not generally how one ends conversations in a hurry yeah i think we've covered most of the things before we turn to something nice, one other thing that I'll just mention in passing is the people referenced in this conversation, again, primarily by Jordan, are he discusses like Ruben and his reaction to audiences and the Weinsteins and so on.

And he just speaks to the ecosystem. And I think David is aware of this, and he's been taking various steps to, he's been critical of the intellectual dark web and the insolute nature of it. I think that it's telling when there's people's references are James Lindsay and Dave Rubin or Mike Cernovich and so on. There's a certain flavor to the references that come to mind. And if you were so perceptive as Jordan presents himself as being, you think you might note that, the ecosystems that you exist within

and who your mind goes to when you want to draw examples. It's a minor point, but I just want to note it because it's so, these people always end up cross over with each other in the coming weeks every time we cover them. Jordan did already get a shout out from Eric Weinstein when he was doing his drop of all the people that you should follow. So, yeah. Yeah, of course he did.

He seems like someone who Eric would like. Yeah, his main criticism of Ruben was that Ruben is too beholden to his audience, in contrast to himself, of course, who doesn't care what other people think. Yeah, I think the excerpts he played there were pretty representative of the conversation to me if it felt like abstract insubstantial fluff with dark creepy overtones then yeah i think you've got a pretty good flavor of of what it was like but you know he was worth covering even though just in terms of his audience reach he's he's insignificant yeah he is interesting for me because i've i've heard other characters

who are not you know they're on the level of jordan peterson or or someone like that but they don't have books or anything but they've got lots of youtube videos and they seem to do this kind of free association spiel which yeah it's a thing it's a bit of a trend well yeah for me the reason this is interesting to cover is in part because of the nature of the conversation right it's very pretty serious issue that they're dealing with i as i've repeatedly said i think david has good instincts and then as on this he wrote a long article that's attached to it on Medium about this issue. And it details the proper Terrian movement. And it very clearly spells out David's critical perspective on it. He's direct about it, and it's a substantial article. So I think my feeling is that I'm almost

entirely in agreement with David on the objections that he has. But this conversation was interesting to me because when contrasted with the written article, this feels to me much more indulgent of Jordan's defense of the conversation. And that might be just the nature of having a conversation with someone versus a written critique. But I think it highlights some of the flaws in this kind of alternative sense-making framework. Yeah. That it allows for this kind of obfuscation and is somewhat pandering towards it. Well, when one values civility and good faith, when those are really high on your list of priorities, then those are good things. But a vulnerability of that is very easy to take

advantage of it. If you ask me a question that I don't want to give you a straight answer to, and I just obscure and prevaricate and bullshit, then if you're going to assume good faith on my part and you're going to exercise impeccable civility, then you're going to assume good faith on my part and you're going to exercise impeccable civility, then you're going to let me get away with it because you have to. So, yeah, I kind of apologize to him a little bit. He got swept up a bit in my general disdain for the other guy. But you're right. I did read that article and it was more pointed, pulled fewer punches than the conversation itself. Yeah, that's worth noting for people who are wanting to sense make in podcasts.

Yeah, we may, given the existing relationship with David, we may end up having him on as the first guru to offer or the first person covered on a guru episode that wants to offer a response. So let's see if he does or not. But in any case, let's try to end on a positive note. So this is my... No, you don't. Nothing to say. Well, I'm going to try because there's... I can't admire the ends that it's being put to, but this consistent fluency with metaphor and poetic description that the guru set have,

it continues to be a source of wonder for me. And I've got one more clip, Matt, that I think it just highlights that Jordan is kind of top tier in this ability to weave poetic narratives around the points that he wants to make. So listen to this. There was a thing that had a vital essence to it that eventually showed up as gatekeeper and probably many other things. Curators probably a subset or a subspecies of the same higher order thing. Many of which became corrupt, of course, and became exploited and gamed and whatnot as they tend to.

The inquiry of, okay, what is this new thing? What's the, how do we go back up into the most vital center and then come back down? Can't be gatekeeping. That implies things like gates. And of course, gates are around territories. And territories tend to be civilization. You know, cities, castles, protected things. But boundaries, hmm, different idea.

A boundary is a different idea than a gate. A gate has a strong enclosure that has only one specific opening, very narrow, very well guarded. And then there's some very simple process that allows things to come and go. A cell membrane is very different. Maybe that's a better metaphor. What does it mean to actually build a boundary, a membrane, that has the ability to selectively bring in the resources that are necessary and appropriate for the vital health of the interior while keeping the toxic components out and recognizing that we are no longer individuals? Beautiful. I see the listeners can't see it,

but I saw Matt's soul slowly creep from his body during that clip. But I love that there's a pontification on the nature of gates and gatekeepers and what they're protecting, moving on to the discussions of territories and i can't remember what the other thing is but then it just decides maybe maybe a salmambrium maybe that's a better one and like starts to discuss the ways that we could build that metaphor that's guru poetry yeah you're right i have to 10 out of 10 that's full marks for guru allegory and metaphor. Yeah, as I was listening to that, I was slowly head-butting my microphone.

And before, when you talked about the 50,000-year catastrophe that's dragged our souls across the pavement, I think I'd live that in the space of 20, 30 seconds. Matt, gates have one entrance and exit. You've never thought about that have you and how that relates to the concept of a gatekeeper so yeah and they're often made of wood i'd add just yeah and wood comes from trees and trees are old matt and the roots are deep yeah oh my god you've i mean jokes aside you have hit on something, isn't it? Which is that the wordplay, yeah? Like, you know, like what's in a word and what's the difference between a membrane and a gate?

And what's the best metaphor for what we should be doing? And what does a gate really do? Well, they're just fucking words, you know, like you've just taken, you take it. Yeah. Isn't that the thing? That's what exercises them them that's what makes them come alive this ground level superficial concerns about anti-semitism or fascists or whatever who cares about those mundane things let's stick in this airy fairy world of concepts and and what is

the exact terminology that matters what's the difference between a gate and a membrane yeah that's where the sense making happens that's the sweet stuff yeah and yeah so like this is jordan peterson too jordan peterson is never happier when he's talking about the key distinction between a gate and a membrane yeah so this guy is like eric weinstein andstein and Jordan Peterson had a bastard love child and he's now running rampant on YouTube. But certainly in terms of that sort of abstraction and obfuscation, he's right up there with Eric. And with that love of wordplay and poetic allegory and his deep ineffable truths,'s he's trey trey jordan

peterson so an interesting character but i can't say that i well that's i i think that counts as your positive thing i love he's a love child of eric weinstein and jordan peterson that's a compliment in his realm so there you go you we we drew it out of you with our final clip for today. So there we go, Matt. That's this conversation and Jordan Hall, I think, fully decoded. Wouldn't you say? We've done our portion, our allocation of sense-making for the day. We can be proud.

Give ourselves a pat on the back. Yes, yes. And speaking of pats on the back, Matt, it's come to our favourite segment, the feedback review segment. I do love this segment. I increasingly look forward to it. Yeah, well, I'm going to say that in my tendency to highlight negative

reviews, I feel like I'm creating an incentive, which is damaging to our brand. So, I just said it exists because the people who write positive reviews tend to not get as much focus. And I am going to do that again, because we've got quite an in-depth negative review on iTunes. So let me get started. It's by Poulain, the French word. And the title is cringeworthy, one star. It's not a promising start. No. is cringeworthy one star it's not a not not a promising start but no while i can't justify more than a single star here i'm glad i found the podcast it wouldn't feel out of place as a footnote in an introductory course on rhetoric and is legitimately hilarious and this doesn't sound like a one-star review i mean mean, come on. Like, legitimately hilarious. We should at least get two stars for that.

Well, wait until you find out what's funny, though. The theoretical premise of the show entails debunking and dunking on various gurus. But in practice, it ends up being more of a rambling duck test for partisan dishonesty, which is driven by the overt political bias coloring every point the hosts make. Okay? That would mean that our pointing out about the metaphorical language that Jordan Peterson uses, or in this episode

in particular, our concern with fascists and anti-Semites is just rank partisan dislike of the far right. This is what it's all about matt it's just a political project for us yeah i don't mind being thought of as a partisan against anti-semitic fascist you know i mean i don't think that's what he's drawing as but i agree i'm fine with that this review is gonna take a guru turn for the sinisfits

out there imagine a deep shade of snark mixed with whatever color the blue black shadow of the hill these guys insist on dying is sure to cast over their reputations as serious people down the line. Wow, that's a lot to take in. For the synesthetes, this is a criticism that's making use of colour

as a device? Yeah, it's a metaphor wrapped in an enigma buried in a membrane puzzle. A deep shade of snark mixed with the blue-black shadow of the hill that we are insisting on dying on. I don't know. It marks for poetic creativity anyway.

Yeah, but he doesn't say what color snark is. We have to imagine it. What are you imagining? That's because you're a sinner's feet. I'm imagining kind of like a mustard yellow. Yeah, and emotion is... No, I think Snark is more like a kind of purpley blue. Well, that's wrong, but nice try.

Anyway, I admire that he thinks that we are serious people who have reputations to be concerned with or will have down the line. See, that's it. He accidentally. Yeah, praising us. Little does he know. Yeah, we've already peaked. and knowingly uninformed hot takes that litter the podcast or the circle jerk then the near herculean efforts these two exert trying to sure up one another's commitments to uncharitably is the reach around what's right so in the new metaphor he's jumped off the like from the you

know the the blue purple hill of snark or whatever it is, and now he's going for sexual. We're in some deep pornography where there's a circle jerk, and then it's followed up by a reach around. These are sexual maneuvers, Matt, or sexual scenarios, I guess. Oh, I'm not even 100% sure what a reach around actually involves, but don't tell me. Can you imagine?

Do you want me to? It's like when you're giving somebody a hug and you pat them on the back, something like that. A very special kind of hug, Matt, that is, you know, when two people love each other very much, they might give each other a special kind of hug where one reaches around to a certain zone and tugs on something so that's that's the the thing that you want to imagine here i love that this is how he's

chosen to metaphorically represent our conversations forget about snails banging each other this is just it's direct this this is what a conversation in um The hosts gleefully pat each other on the rhetorical back as they ramble on about the disingenuous and sloppy thinking they constantly accuse their subjects of as if they aren't about to commit those very crimes against clear thinking in the same sentence.

And just to be clear in brackets, which they are pretty often. Right. Hey, listen, I'm going to look, I'm going to give some credit here because there's one there's one bit about this which is right what's that we do tend to agree with each other quite a bit we're kind of on the same page a fair bit aren't we we don't have that kind of debate kind of yeah because but the reason for that is because we're sensible humans sorry we're just fucking right look there's only a couple of way

different ways that you can say fascists are wrong and like and uh you know look i'm not saying all the people that we cover in fascist i'm just you know there was a fascist in this episode so it's on my mind but yeah sure we are ideologically aligned. We've already acknowledged that. But I just, the issue I think with this is more that it's from the Gad Saad school. Explain, right? You mentioned it's a rhetorical back. Like, don't even have the confidence to make the audience aware that when you say back, you don't mean physical back. It's a rhetorical back.

And then just to highlight when he's saying saying as if we aren't going to make those same errors and then just to make sure that people get it and in brackets and i'm saying they do make those errors he's over explaining the criticisms yeah like i was hoping for some some really nasty but precise and smartly presented dicks, but yeah, he's trying too hard, or she, I'm not sure, has not... It's too sad. Sorry, man. It's probably a mom. It's not finished,

Matt. It's got a sting in the tail. Well, it's shaping up for a one star. I'm going to review his review and I'm going to give it like... One star. Cringeworthy. Don't explain your jokes. Listen to this thing. it's a sad a factual and hilarious peek into the minds of the soaking twitterati that vibrates to the idw i did like that metaphor with the twitterati vibrating to the idw that's just pretty good i'm vibrating as you speak yeah yeah hilarious so that's where

hilarity comes from it's not our doing it's how you you listen to this podcast and you laugh you you laugh at the horror that is our lives that's that's where the joke comes so well look i'm gonna give it an extra star for the quivering, shaking. Vibrating to the Twitter ad. Vibrating. Vibrating. That's an – because I'm charitable and I'm even-handed, see? That's why I'm giving – I'm bigger than this person,

so I'm going to give that review two stars. Well, yeah, that is very big of you. I'll give it two as well just simply to agree with you. Yes, that's how we do things. And last, to wash the pulling taste out of our mouth, there's a review that's by LunaTheSwissCheeseButInVegan. Better name. That's a good name. Very, really good.

Five stars. This is more like it. You never knew how many gurus are out there, but you sure as hell know after listening to this podcast. The hosts are very funny. The Reddit thread smells like testosterone, but it's entertaining. I don't know what Reddit thread they mean. Maybe our subreddit smells like testosterone.

I think somebody did a poll and it was 70% male, so that might be explaining that, but I agree. We have no control over the membership of the subreddit so i'm not sure we can be blamed i individually approve everyone that applies but matt has no control but um yeah just like the rest of the podcast then yeah i keep the ratio 70 percent man that's that's the ratio I like, Matt. You know, that's a key thing. Testosterony enough. Yes.

Different opinions are available on the podcast. And I don't begrudge Pulain his negative review. I just, I take issue with some of his metaphorical language. That's all. We derive a certain amount of pleasure by hate listening to stuff that we don't like. And far be it from me to begrudge it from someone else to do the same to us. So all the best to you, Pauline. Yeah.

Have a reach around on us. I'll jerk you off when I see you. Look, Matt, there's an air of defensiveness when you get criticisms. That's right. There's always some truth buried down in the digs that people make. And I think it's perfectly valid to cop to that. But I will say, one thing that never lands with me is this point about, oh, aren't they just doing what the gurus do? If you can't tell the fucking difference between me and Eric Weinstein, your judgment is worth shit.

I'm not claiming I have, I deserve a Nobel prize or the people in my family. I'm I'm, I don't speak in these dense metaphors about alchemical lemons. There are things. And it's the part of the reason that the people that we look at are much more famous and much more influential than we are. There's plenty of things that you can criticize me in particular, but us for.

The one that we're just the same as the gurus. No, we're not. You're wrong. Again, no other options available. Just wrong. Yeah, I mean, the other aspect of the common criticism is that we're ideologically fixated now this is a common thing right that pretty much everybody accuses everybody of being ideologically sure fixated because it does appear like that doesn't it like whenever

somebody says something you don't like or don't agree with it definitely feels that they've yeah that they've got these blind spots and this tunnel vision going on and even if you don't quite like them and think that they're reasonably good otherwise that's a very natural instinct so but you know some people really are ideologically fixated and some people less so but um you know how does anyone ever tell? It seems like an unsolvable mystery to me. I think the distinction here is that I don't in any way think that my ideological perspective doesn't influence the things that I focus on or it doesn't tinge how I interpret things. It does. things. It does. There's a reason that we focus on or have focused more on figures within the IDW sphere, right? Because that's where my particular focus lies. And I know that material

better than in other cases. But the distinction, I think, which is important to draw is, like you said, that there's degrees to which that you indulge in bias and that you perceive yourself as to have transcended it or not. And there are steps that you can take to try to reduce it. And in no way are we perfect in removing our bias or not letting our politics influence how we assess things? But that's the point. We don't claim to be that. We do take consideration of it. We do heed feedback that we receive. But in some cases, it is that basically people want us to shit on someone that they don't like. and if it is the case that the material we cover isn't that bad then i'm sorry but that's the way the material was and maybe the

person actually is terrible but like in the material we covered they were not that bad well look a couple of things first of all like you said there's always going to be this kind of for want of a better word ideological assumptions that underlie things like for instance in this episode our assumption is that anti-semitic fascism is bad it's a bad thing we didn't we didn't justify that we didn't explain it we didn't make any arguments to sort of support that view we just take it as a given right because yeah and you yeah, and that's fair enough, right? You have to take a whole bunch of things as givens usually whenever you talk about anything, really,

because you can't go down all these sidetracks to sort of justify everything on first principles. That would be insane. So the best you could do is just put them up front, you know, and I think it's pretty obvious what we do there. I think for my part, in terms of my natural tendencies and preferences, I like clear expression. I like people being concrete and direct. And I acknowledge that I have a stronger preference for that than the average person.

I was joking the other day. I was remembering a time in high school when we were given a poem to analyze. And the poem was about these two farmers who would meet every season or something like that to repair the wall that adjoined their two farms. And they'd go again and they'd meet again the next season. Very beautiful poem. Apparently, it was an allegory for the barriers we build between each other and how we keep each other at arm's length. I just thought it was a poem about two farmers fixing a fence. So, I recognize that I'm not a poetic soul.

And that's all right. That's a limitation of humor, unlike me, who's deeply poetic in all aspects of my life but i i'll also the last thing i'll say about it is that in this episode in particular it's easy for us to say you know what right thinking person wouldn't agree with us that anti-semitic fascists are a problem like this is easy episode There's harder episodes where the having lean towards left wing liberal perspectives mean that we might go easier on somebody who's offering liberal takes on things and harder on somebody that's offering center right takes, right? And that's true. But fundamentally, I basically am saying that with us, as with all content that you consume, you factor in

where the people lie. Like I consume the fifth column content. I find things which they say annoying because I'm not an American libertarian, but I factor in where they're coming from, right? And their guests are often not in the same, the exact same political niche. Or there's other content that I consume where the people, the hosts are more progressive and that's sometimes annoying to me as well.

And in all cases, I just factor in, okay, so this is where they're coming from and I don't have to agree with it, right? And that's fine for me. And I feel that people can do the same with us. For some people, we're going to be too milquetoast. For some people, we're going to be too milquetoast. For some people, we're going to be too liberal. You just count that in when we're talking about things. It's not a requirement that you agree with all our takes to listen. No, no. And I don't think our

takes rely so much on the agreeing with all those assumptions could know you could conceivably be sympathetic to fascism right and still agree that the guy that we covered in this episode is too wishy-washy it's not not hardcore enough yeah no but you want to meet still like in terms of the way he expressed himself it was extremely obscure why not why not call a spade a spade? Likewise for Jordan Peterson, you know, you could be central right, you could be religious, you could have the same issues with, hang on, this is a non-secateur, hang on, you're using an analogy to, using it as a jumping off point to make a whole bunch of assertions that are only justified by a chance association of words. That's critical thinking.

Everyone can benefit from that. Hear, hear. Okay. With that, let's turn to our wonderful patrons who support the podcast and receive benefits such as the Gurometer Extra episode where we break down the scoring of the gurus that we cover. And also, we'll be receiving advertising-free versions of the podcast since we now have some advertiser content. If that ever happens, if that's the situation which continues, we'll see.

You will have ad-free versions. And there's a lot of various waffly things and content that we put up on the Patreon. So to thank a couple of the people who have taken that dive, the first three that I want to mention are three conspiracy theorists, a trio of conspiracy theorists, if you will. Rob Franks, Malik Ismail, and Evangeline Gargoula. Malik, Evangeline, and Rob. Thank you to all three. Very good.

Thank you very much. Every great idea starts with a minority of one. We are not going to advance conspiracy theories. We will advance conspiracy hypotheses. Okay. And next we have Adrian Barrett, who is a revolutionary thinker, Matt. He's on a different level than Adrian is. Not better, not worse, just different. Different, different. not better not worse just just different different different maybe you can spit out that hydrogenated thinking and let yourself feed off of your own thinking what you really are is an unbelievable thinker and researcher a thinker that the world doesn't know okay and and lastly i will give a shout out to two galaxy brained gurus these people matt they are on a different level a higher sphere they they barely interact with mere mortals like us

on the regular plane they're playing nine-dimensional chess in heaven with Einstein and Steve Jobs. Okay. Sorry. And those lucky people are Grammaticus Gore, who we know well, but you probably don't remember his username, and Josh Stutman. Josh and Grammaticus Gore. Thank you both. Thank you, you big galaxy green gurus.

That's big. You're sitting on one of the great scientific stories that I've ever heard. And you're so polite. And hey, wait a minute. Am I an expert? I kind of am. Yeah. I don't trust people at all. while since we heard his glorious chuckle yes no more no more subscribers at that level please we can't take it like i said we're gonna go into our

what do we call it our season of self-help in the next couple episodes and the iron robinowitz episode is coming up a bunch of interviews but matt where would people find us on these here interwebs should they wish to find out more or follow us on social media well on twitter you On Twitter, you can find us at guruspod. You can find Chris at C underscore Kavanagh and me at Arthur C Dent. So that's Twitter. You can send us an email at decodingthegurus at gmail.com. Yes. Very good. Keep going.

And how else? How else? We're on Facebook now. We're on Facebook. We're on Facebook. We are on Facebook. And we are on, I think, Instagram as well. And we have the Patreon. We're everywhere.

We're trying to cultivate our boomer, the boomer demographic. We feel like that's an underexploited demographic. So, yeah. Tell your mom and dad. Yeah. And we had someone kindly reach out and agreed to help us with the social media stuff as we asked for in the last one so save your emails and uh we'll i don't know whether he wants us to mention his name so i'll i'll ask him but you know who you are thank you

for your help and uh we appreciate it and yeah they reach, reach out to us on anything. If you want, link, tag me in the Lab League stuff on Twitter. Go ahead. It'll ride me up. Have your fun. Seriously. You'll experience the consequences if you do. But, yeah.

Chris seems unable to discover the mute thread button on Twitter. So he just has to respond. He's actually legally obliged to respond to every annoying tweet. So, you know. It is. It's in the fine print contract of the Code Indie Guru. So, Soma, that's us to end this non-rambly, non-tangential, full podcast.

Thank you very much. And grovel at the feet of your muscle master. I will. And I'm looking forward to becoming a better person and to grow and to transcend as I do it. Well, yeah. Penetrate the membrane, open the gates, break down the wall, and have a good day.

Drag myself over the pavement for 5 000 years yeah 50 000 all right ciao bye Thank you.