The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 32 | Arthur Brooks | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Episode Date: April 13, 2019

Glenn is joined by Arthur Brooks, a New York Times bestselling author of 11 books with topics like the Role of Government, Fairness, Economic Opportunity, Happiness, and the morality of Free Enterprise. Interestingly enough, Arthur Brooks spent 12 years of his life being a professional French Hornist playing with the Annapolis Brass Quintet as well as City Orchestra of Barcelona. He later went to teach Economics and Social Entrepreneurship at Syracuse University and has since then been serving as the President of the American Enterprise Institute, which is a nationally recognized think tank based in Washington, D.C., where he leads a community of scholars and supporters that are committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity, and strengthening free enterprise for all Americans. He is actually about to leave that role as he will transition to a new role at Harvard where he will be a Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is going to be a podcast you will want to listen to all the way to the end. For 12 years, our guest was a professional French hornist, which I don't even know if that's what you call it. He's a guy who played the French horn. Is that a hornist? Because it sounds bad. Anyway, he was with the Annapolis Brass Quintet, then at City Orchestra of Barcelona. Then he was a professor of French horn. After that, he worked as a professor at Syracuse University, where he taught economics.

and social entrepreneurship. I guess the horn thing didn't work out. Currently, he is the president of the American Enterprise Institute, but he is leaving that position this summer, and he's going to begin teaching at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. His latest book is Love Your Enemy, how decent people can save America from the culture of contempt.

It came out in early March. It's a bestseller on the USA Today and New York Times list. He's also a columnist for The Washington Post, host of the podcast, The Arthur Brooks Show, bestselling author of 11 books on topics including the role of government, fairness, economic opportunity, happiness, and the morality of free enterprise. Don't miss a minute of this episode with Arthur Brooks. Happened to us. Who are we today?

We're the Americans we always were, but it's a hard time. It's a hard time because after a financial crisis and all the stresses and strains, the belief that people in Washington, people who are in charge have left us behind, we get a dignity gap. There's a lot of despair when you travel around this country and that despair is metastasized into something really dangerous, which is contempt. The belief that somebody who disagrees with you is utterly worthless. us, the populism in Washington, the despair in the country, the fact that economic growth has largely been focused on just the top 20% of the income distribution, this is kind of made a nasty mix of circumstances and ecosystem that's really dangerous, has now put in social media and anonymity.

All this together has created this environment that we see today where we're still Americans. We're just not our best selves. Are we misjudging each other? For instance, the border. I'm convinced that the cry for a border wall is not really a cry for a border wall. It's a cry. It's a, I have trusted you to take care of our problems. I've trusted you that you cared about somebody coming in with illotent,

somebody coming in with drugs, people coming in and doing nefarious things. I trusted you for so long. And you keep telling me you want to fix it. And then you don't. I want a wall, not because I'm afraid of Americans. I want a wall because I don't believe you actually mean this. And if I don't have a permanent wall, you can do whatever you want. But when the next guy comes in or when you don't have to be reelected,

you're going to stop taking care of these things. And I think a lot of the frustration that's happening that is being made into, oh, you're a racist, is actually, I don't trust the government anymore. I don't trust people in power anymore. And I want something fixed that used to be common sense. You know, there are a lot of issues like this that happen in times of real. political polarization where it's not about the specific political case at hand. These are avatar issues. You'll see, by the way, the left on the political left in America, we're talking effectively

about open borders. You know, the Democratic Party doesn't want open borders. They've never talked about open borders before, but the reason they are is to be in contrast to what they think Trump is talking about. And the people who support Donald Trump are saying what they're saying about the wall to be in contrast to what they believe the other side believes. And you know, in these times of incredible polarization. We do theater. This is kind of, and again, I understand it's important to have sovereignty. I understand it's important to have rule of law. But a lot of the times in the discussions that we have, we're trying to set ourselves apart from the other side. We're actually making issues that have traditionally not been at the center of the American conversation into those that are because we can get

the daylight, the maximum amount of daylight between the two sides. And I think that's a perfect example. Is that just politics? It's not just politics. It's culture. We're, we're, more polarized as a country than we've been at any time since the Civil War. A lot of data show this. One in six Americans have stopped talking to a family member, a close friend because of politics since the 2016 election. And here's the kicker clan. 93% of Americans hate it.

93% of us say it's not the best country. We are not who we're supposed to be. And we hate how divided we become. So I say this. I mean, you and I are on the same. I mean, I think not just the same. book, but the same page of the book. Personal values and public values. Right. And and and lift yourself up above this and encourage people by having courage, that's contagious

and encourage others to do the same. But you'll, I know it. I don't need a poll to tell me, I know people in America are tired of this. They don't want to feel this way. Yeah. But when you talk to them, they will all say, well, they're, They're not going to stop. Right. They're just not going to stop. And I look at the two sides, and I think they're right. They're not going to stop.

Neither side's going to stop. Neither side's going to stop. Right. But most of us are kind of weirdly in the middle on this. So when I say 93% of Americans hate how divided we become as a country, that's true. That doesn't mean 93% of us don't have opinions. Correct. Look, I'm a political conservative, so are you.

I have strong opinions. I go hammer and tongs after the stuff that I think about. But I don't think that people. who disagree with mere stupid and evil. On the contrary, I mean, everybody listening to us, everybody watching us on YouTube right now, they love somebody with whom they disagree politically. And they're bitter and they're angry about the fact that they're being told that they have to repudiate their mother-in-law.

Or somebody who, somebody, their mother, their sister, they don't like it, right? The problem is they got, they have no team. And furthermore, there's, there is a little bit of a culprit here. The 7% that don't hate how divided it becomes a country. are dining out on it. You know, we have a whole outrage industrial complex and politics and media on campuses. You know, people who are basically getting rich

and powerful and famous saying the other side is stupid and evil. Look, I disagree strongly with other people because disagreement is the essence of the competition of ideas makes America great. Disagreements, good. We shouldn't agree because agreement leaves the stagnation in mediocrity

and, you know, one candidate elections and it's terrible. You know, one product in the stores. We don't want that. I don't want to live that way. But I don't want to hate the people who disagree with me because I don't hate the people who disagree with me. I want to compete on these ideas with them.

And basically when we have 7% or whatever minority ginning up the hatred between the two sides, then you can be in this disequilibrium where 93% of the people say they don't like how the country is acting, don't like how we're fighting each other all the time and hating each other all the time, treating each other with contempt. But at the same time, they don't know what to do. And so they're on one side of the other. So what do they do? The first thing to remember is that it's really not about just getting a better president or Congress or government.

It's not. What's going to happen is we need an interior revolution, Glenn. This is interesting. I was thinking about this for a long time. You know, I'm an institutional guy. You know, I live in Washington, D.C. I run a big think tank. You know, I talk to politicians like you.

You know, I talk to, I've known presidents of the United States. It's a great life. And I always think there's got to be an institutional answer, but there isn't. whenever it comes to hatred, whenever it comes to relationship problems, that's an interior revolution. That's a social movement that starts inside each person's heart. And here's basically how it works. Look, nobody in history has ever been insulted into agreement, ever.

And that means what we're saying, that I'm right and your stupid evil, that's a counterproductive, it's a very, it's an ineffective way of arguing. Now, there are people getting rich making those arguments, but we will never prosper on the basis of that. So we're not persuasive. Nobody's persuading anybody. Number two, we're unhappy. We find that actually the current climate where we treat each other with contempt in this country with the bitter polarization is leading to higher levels of depression, higher levels

of loneliness, higher levels of anger, higher levels of stress. In other words, when we are treated with contempt and we treat other people with contempt, we're not as happy as we could be. And number three, we hate how it's turning the country apart. Lose, lose, lose. The answer to that is not that I am going to change the whole country. The answer to that is that Arthur's going to change Arthur. So I wrote Love Your Enemies as a way to say, this is my declaration of independence, man.

I'm not declaring bankruptcy. I'm declaring independence. Independence from the outrage industrial complex. Independence from the contempt that's ripping my country apart because I refuse not to love my fellow Americans. I want to be more persuasive. I want to be happier. I want to do something good for America. So I've, you know, after I left Fox, you know,

I mean, the year I joined Fox, I was at... It was a great year, by the way. We watched it. I was like, I was there on Fox at 5 p.m. every day. So, in 2008, I'm voted the third or fourth most admired man in the world. You know that stupid poll that comes out? Yeah. Shows how stupid America really is.

I was in between Nelson Mandela and the Pope. I was tied with one of them. I don't remember. And we just had a laugh. We were like, this is ridiculous. ridiculous. Go to Fox. In a year, I'm hated by half of the country, saying the same things that I said on CNN, just a different megaphone now. And hated by half the country. So I'm there for a couple of years and I leave. And I really do some soul searching on, okay, so if you had to do it all over again, because you see the result, what would you do? And if I had the same knowledge, exactly the same thing. I did my best. but if I had today's knowledge, if I knew now, or then what I know now, I'd do it differently.

How would you do it differently? I would never point the finger. I would never make declarative broad statements on movements or people. Okay? So let me see if I'm stating this right. You would separate more ideas that you disagree with with the people who hold them. I would try everything I could to not talk about people but ideas. Right.

That's really hard to do when you're talking about the news, but that's where we go wrong. So I say to people, because I've really reflected, and I thought, okay, I spent two years talking about the things that were coming, right on a lot of them. Right. talking about what is happening, how this system works, and it didn't make a dent with anyone who is except on my team. Okay? That's not a winning strategy. That's not a persuasive strategy.

Correct. And now the left is doing the same. The right is still doing it. And I'm watching it and I'm saying, guys, this doesn't work. We're locked down. We're totally locked down. Totally locked down. Yeah.

So when I say this to people, they say, but you have to. And I say, you don't have to do anything. Convince, you don't have to convince me. Convince somebody that pretend I'm that person that says, you can't do that. Let's say somebody on who agrees with us in politics, somebody in the right. And they say, look, the people who say these things on the left, they are evil people. They're wicked.

They're not just wrong. They want something as bad for America. And I'm going to stand up and I'm going to say it. I've heard this many times. I've heard this many times. And my answer to that is, okay, what's your objective? Do you want to live in a one-party state? Are you grateful to not live in a one-party state?

Then you just told me you're grateful for the other party. Are you grateful that you live in a place where there can be a competition of ideas? Then you're grateful for the other side on that competition of ideas. Furthermore, what if you could do anything you wanted and there were wicked people? Do you want to kick them out of America? Do you want to put them in jail? Do you want to hurt them? I'm going to say no. I know what you really want. I bet you want to persuade them. I bet you really in your heart of hearts don't hate them. You want them to think differently because you love your ideas so much and you think they're so good for America. Okay. Let's talk about persuasion. How many people have you persuaded this week, this month, this year, this decade? How many people? You're stupid and evil. It has never persuaded anybody in the history of humanity. And by the way, it's more. orally bereft because you love people with whom you disagree politically.

So to say that people on the other side are stupid and evil, you're talking about your mom. And furthermore, you're putting up with some talk show host saying that about your mom. Shame on you. Fight for your mom. So if it's impractical and it's immoral, it's time to change. Let's be persuasive for the, for what? Don't agree. I mean, agreements for chumps.

Agreements for mediocre places and mediocre people. unless you really are in agreement but if you're not, don't give in. But if you can't actually disagree with respect and love, look, we're not talking about terrorists kicking down your door. You're talking about Americans who disagree with you and maybe strongly disagree with you.

But this is the freest, most prosperous country in the history of the world, built by people who risked their lives running away from the jack-booted thug and the knock in the night so that they could have a competition of ideas. Shame on us if we can't pursue that competition. Don't you understand that these

are the jack booted thugs that are coming they're talking about ending the free market they're talking about uh getting into bed with people like google and monitoring everybody and taking away our health care and our choices they're they actually are talking now about killing children after right after they're born don't you see these are those guys you know the problem that we have when i talk to people on the on the hard left they can't can't tell the difference between an average Trump supporter and a Nazi. It can't. And the reason is because they're in their silos and they have been hearing from their media figures and from the college professors.

And they've been hearing from the politicians on the extreme wing of their party that there's no real difference between people who have strong views with which they disagree and historically murderous tyrannical regimes around the world. And you know what? It's happening on the right too. You know, we're saying that any run of the mill Bernie Sanders supporters is no different than a Stalinist. man, we got to get out of the house more. We got to remember that that is just a, that's a, that, it's a, it's a, it's a huge distinction between Americans who disagree with us. We are very far away from these extremes.

Now, again, it's okay that we strongly disagree. It's okay to say on anything from the border to abortion to say, no, no, you're, I believe that your ideas are completely wrong, but that's different than saying, so therefore you're a Stalinist or a Nazi because you've foreclosed any possibility of making any progress and you basically said, I got, I got basically, only two scenarios, either I lose or you lose. And in America, we can't make progress when we have that Manichaean situation. When we have that black and white situation, it just won't work.

That was another problem I think I would do differently. I don't know how, though. Is I talked about the Nazis a lot. Right. But I wasn't calling people Nazis. I was saying, these are the seeds. Yeah. And if it's not, if it's planted,

the next party will just water that too. Right. It's whoever in the end grabs the pendulum because of so much chaos that has been created on the ground by all this arguing. Yeah. No, that's actually this is the perfect ecosystem for us to actually lose our ability to have a competition of ideas in the first place. Because somebody will say, look, this is chaos. And sooner or later, people will throw up their hands and say, all right. All right.

Yeah. This is a mess. We can't do anything. We go, you know, the Democrats are in charge, nothing gets done. Then the Republicans are, they take everything and make these wild promises and nothing gets done. And it goes back and forth. And, you know, I'm not so sure about the democracy thing anymore. That's a threat to democracy.

You know, it's interesting because, you know, you talk about you, you wish you had, when you were at Fox in those Fox years, that you had separated people from their ideas more. And, you know, I wish I'd done that too. I, you know, it's the same thing. It's like none of us is without blame. I know. And, you know, I saw... None of us. I know.

I don't mean just the people... I mean, people who have never spoken on television or radio, just in their own home, all of us. Treating people with contempt. And, you know, contempt is the conviction of other worthlessness of another person. Anger is not problematic. You know, anger, according to specialists in marital reconciliation, anger is uncorrelated with separation and divorce. You know, thank God I'm married to a Spaniard. So, you know, it's contempt where you take anger and you mix it with...

disgust that becomes a toxic compound. It's kind of like, you know, chlorine and bleach. You put it together, you get chlorine gas and it kills you. There's a guy named John Gottman who teaches the University of Washington and Seattle. He's the world's leading expert on bringing couples together. He's a hero. And he has a marriage laboratory and he can predict with 94% accuracy if a couple will be divorced within three years with one session. And what he's looking for is contempt. He's looking for these expressions like eye rolling, sarcastic jokes, derision, dismissal of another person. That's how the, that's how people are talking on television. That's how people are talking about the Thanksgiving table around the Thanksgiving table.

That's how they talk to family members. It's not right. You know, and so the big problem, if we want to declare war on this, we actually have to declare war on the communications habits that have been cultivated within us, such that we can listen to other people, really listen to what, what their moral principles are and engage them at that level. And then, then disagree. If you listen, really, listen, not trying to win, not listen while thinking, okay, I got to remember that because

I have to say this, just listen, put your shield down. Right. I have found that both the right and the left, I'm not talking about the fringe crazies, both the right and the left, generally outside of Washington, are saying the same thing. We're frustrated with exactly the same things. And we're being told it's them on each side. No, no, no. It might be you guys.

It might be Washington than is that we're all saying, this isn't working because we're not following certain principles. And we've lost the mooring of those principles in our own self, in our own home that we can't recognize when the system has lost it. So it's not just them. No, it's us. Yes, it starts with us. Jordan Peterson is super popular these days.

He probably had him on your show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's phenomenal. The reason that Jordan Peterson is so, in my view, is such a big phenomenon right now, particularly among young men, is because he calls people to personal revolution. This is the point in my book is calling people to personal revolution. Jordan Peterson basically says, you know that evil out there with the other guys, the other guys, the other guys, the other guys? It's in your heart too.

If you want to take on evil and you want progress, if you want things to be better, being the master of yourself, conquer yourself. And people are like, can I do it? Can I do that? Can I do that? Is that possible for me to do that? Yes. No, no, no, it's not just possible. You must do that. You must be the master of yourself. Take your happiness. Grab your happiness. Grab the love to which you're entitled. And the only way that you do that is willing the good of the other, even if you disagree with the other. You know, and so that's the key. I mean, yeah, it's true. We haven't been represented well with leaders in Washington. It's true. They have not listened enough. But you know what else? You know, there are people all over this country that have lost the first. frontier spirit, the entrepreneurial startup life that basically says that when things aren't right, I got to do something about it. You know, it's, we, it's, and the United States goes through phases like this. You see this all throughout history. Every 50 years or so, we go through a phase like this, where we have, you know, a bad economic circumstance, people who are demobilized, people

who blame leaders, we get populism and the whole thing falls apart. And we start again. And this is not the first time that this has happened. So let's watch to the end of the movie and say, what is the personal revolution I need within. How can I grab my happiness? How can I show more love? How can I be more persuasive, happier, more successful and help my country? And if we can start that social movement, Glenn, I actually am more optimistic than I've been in a long, long time. Okay, so how? It starts with the revolution within asking ourselves, what am I trying to do? You know, what is the outcome that I want to see? Do I actually want people to be more bitter, angrier, more hostile? Or more hostile? do all want more hatred or do all want more love?

Now, for most of us, that's a question that answers itself. I want more love. I want to experience more love and I want other people to experience more love. Can I push back on this? Please do. I have found, and what's amazing to me, I have found so many diehard Christians who say, the Jesus stuff won't work. I'm like, I think that's what Judas said. It worked then. It worked for Lincoln. It worked for Gandhi. It worked for Martin Luther King. What makes you say it won't work? People of faith have lost their faith that love is the most revolutionary. Now, most of the people who are making that argument, it's one of two things happening. The first is that they're in a very short term time horizon. If you've only got three weeks, then you'll get out the negative power tool. Yeah, all day long. But if you're playing the long game, if you're playing for five years, 10 years, the rest of my life, eternity. They'll say, I know, but they'll say we don't have that. Yeah, well, okay, so I got that. But I also recognize that, you know, the people who were most effective were the people who were playing the long game. You know, Marlon was a king. It was, you know, he was playing, look, when he died, when he was assassinated, he was at 33% popularity of his ideas. Today, 95% he won. He won. He was playing. He was playing. Look, when he died, when he was assassinated, he was at 33% popularity of his ideas. Today, he won. He won. He won. He was. He was. He was. He was. He was

What are we trying to do? Are we trying to have satisfaction in the next four weeks? Or are we actually trying to save America? What are we trying to do? Try to convince people, because I've tried to do it, that Bonhoeffer won. Absolutely. He was hung in the woods, alone. Yeah.

Gilled. I know. I mean, look, if you read the second letter of St. Paul to Corinthians, it's got that desperate language. And you can tell St. Paul is going like, I don't know if this is working. I don't know. And he's frustrated and he's angry. And he created Christian theology.

Christianity is we understand it as a religion comes out of the way that St. Paul taught. We can't expect to win in the time horizon that we are going to most enjoy. The question is, what are we trying to do? Do I want to have more love in the world? Do I want a better country? Do I want America to continue to be a gift to the world or not? Look, you and I have talked many times about capitalism.

capitalism is a long game. The reason I came into the free enterprise movement is because poverty is the thing that I care about the most, because I recognize that since 1970, two billion of my brothers and sisters have been pulled out of poverty by one thing, which is the American free enterprise system spreading around the world. If I had gone three weeks to three weeks or four weeks or four weeks or even year to year, I would have said, yeah, big government programs and socialism, they work better. They work better as the short-term power tools. But I'm saying, dude, I got a 50-year-old.

year time horizon because I want two billion fewer people who are earning their success. If that's our gift to the world, you have to think on a long time frame. And if you want more love in the world, hating on the short term is not going to get you there. And if you're actually trying to practice the gospel of Jesus Christ, then short term hatred is not going to get you to that goal either. It just isn't. It's not compatible with what he taught. He did get angry. He turned over the tables of the money changers. But at the same time, he was working, what he wanted was to change the hearts of the other people. Why? Because he had love for everybody, including his tormentors. He said, Matthew 544, love your enemies. He didn't say kill your enemies, hate your

enemies. He said love your enemies. Do good to those who harm you. Because that was the ultimate long-term strategy. I can tell you that I have a hard time relating to Christ. You know what I mean? It's a pretty hard figure to do that. Yeah, it's kind of hard. You're kind of like, love your enemies. Well, yeah, but you're Jesus. Yeah. I'm nowhere close to Jesus.

All right. But I read, I read Paul. Yeah. And I read, um, just, just reading, uh, letters of Peter. Or, or, or, or, or, or, or, uh, the opening of, of Acts, the first two chapters where he lays out, you got to be together. You have to be of one mind.

Then you're going to be influenced. You all come together. Make sure you're going to be influenced. And things are going to happen. But they're going to say horrible things. Miracles are going to happen. They're going to see it. They're going to deny it.

They're going to tear you down. But love them. Right. Love them. And you see Paul all the way through. He lays out. He's more calculated. Jesus was just Jesus.

Paul's more calculated. You know what I mean? He's waiting to be taken to the steps to be whipped. And he's like, hey, hang on just a second. I just want to talk to these people for a second. And he's amazing because he has the same pattern over and over again. You know, I really, like when he's on Mars Hill, you know, I come here. They got all these gods.

Yeah. Come here. I think it's in the scripture where it says, you're too religious. That's not what, that's not right. He didn't mean you're too religious. He meant, you guys, man, I've come here. I see all these gods everywhere. You guys are really super religious.

I even found a god. I haven't found a temple dedicated to a god with no name. Right. And he used, he talks, I read it even in your poetry. Yeah. He knows them. He's found a way to love them. Yeah.

He admires what they've done. Then he finds the door of the unknown God and says, by the way, I know who that one. is. Yeah. And they listen. Yeah. Why? Why? Why? Because he made moral common cause with them. But, but Glenn, there's also, you know, people listening to us are going to be like, yeah, Glenn, Arthur, you know, those guys, they're really lucky guys. They've got a really good platform. Easy for those guys to stand up there and say, love your enemies, right? But, but you know what? It's an incredibly practical, self-interested argument that I'm making to. Because the one thing that I know is that you'll never persuade anybody who doesn't already agree with you if you treat other people with

hate, you will be more stressed out, more frustrated and more lonely if you do that. And so will the other people. And you're getting a country that if you're like the 93% of the rest of us, we don't like the way the country is going. So this is a very self-interested argument. If you turn it around, if when people treat you with contempt, which they're going to, if you go on social media, you go on Twitter, 20 seconds from now, we post a picture of Glenn and Arthur doing a podcast, right? We're going to get just reamed on with contempt. We have a choice. A lot of how we're going to react. Now you can be, you know, it's like you react like if you, if you stimulated a slug with a, you know, an electrode, it'll react, right? If you can react to that

can, you can react to that contempt with contempt. Or you can choose your action because you're the master of yourself and choose to react with kindness and respect. People who are watching that interaction, they're going to say, huh, I think I know which person in that exchange I like better. That's how persuasion works, man. This is especially with. social media now where we could make a group statement by being individuals. I know what I mean? It's like if you're walking in, you're invited to this ball party, whatever, and you walk into a giant ballroom and there's 70 people over on one side and they're just yelling and screaming at each other. Taking both sides, all sides is just awful. And there are five people on the other

side and they're laughing and they're they might even be going these guys are crazy and laughing about how crazy they are and they're all getting along I guarantee you you walk into that room you do not go to the 70 people you go to the five right and you at least observe what's happening in that safe area and yet social media right you go to the 70 it's crazy it's craziness if we were just five eventually those 70 those numbers would dwindle down because they either kill each other or some people

would just go, I'm tired of this man. This is crummy. I don't like it. I don't want to be over here. This is not fun. Yeah, and you know, that's what a lot of people are actually starting to figure out about social media. They're starting to figure out that it's not fun. They don't enjoy it. It's not fun. They're not persuading anybody and we're starting to actually see that bleed. So let's create a movement.

Like the people were watching us. I've made a public commitment that I'm going to say five nice and loving things for every criticism. I put out on Twitter. That's my five to one rule. By the way, I didn't make that up. John Gottman, the guy I talked about before, the marriage counselor, he makes his couples do a five to one thing, so they can't criticize each other until they've said five loving things. It makes them write it down a notebook. So I've made a commitment to doing that. I made a commitment. I wrote a book called Love Your Enemies. So if I'm ever a jerk, boy, am I ever going to hear about it fast, right?

When you write a book and it's on the bestseller list and it's called Love Your Enemies, well, you know, you know that of 10 years from now I'm acting like a jerk. I'm going to hear it. Why? Because I want that call me out because I haven't been right in the past consistently I want to be better I want to be a force for good and the interesting thing about this is not just about me as a public figure and Glenn Beck is a public figure there's about every single person watching us who is a leader and says what kind of leader do I want to be? Do I want to be a coercive divisive leader who goes anonymously into a forum and hates on somebody else and persuades no one and winds up more stressed out? No, for a little tiny bit of dopamine, for a little bit of this neurotransmitter,

like smoking a cigarette? Or do I want to be the guy that people are watching and saying, huh, that's actually the kind of person I want to be. Am I the kind of person I would want my kids to be? You know, and when we do that, by the way, we coalesce around a philosophy that Americans like the best, which is frankly kind of a center, right philosophy, pro-capitalist philosophy. So let's do that on the basis of love, as opposed to trying to pretend that we're going to brow beat the whole country into it because it's not going to work. Speak directly to somebody. Left, right, doesn't matter, that they're afraid.

They're afraid. They see what's on the horizon. And I want to talk to you about tech in a minute. But they see what's on the horizon. They feel insignificant. They feel left behind. They feel whichever side, they feel like they no longer matter. Right.

Okay. And the one thing that they can do to make. matter is to pick aside and be part of a team because you're even more ostracized when you won't pick a team when you won't and I don't mean pick a team I mean when you won't slam right because everybody's going after you right that point right and so and I hear this from people all the time they'll say I can't say anything I'm glad you say something because I can't say anything I'd lose my job and and I think all the time you know that's a very big possibility for me You do.

Look, it's happened to you. It's happened to you. You've gone from thing to thing. It's not like, you know, you stayed in one job for your whole life. Correct. You've had disagreements with employers. Why? Because Glenn Beck lives a startup life. And that's the answer to this whole conundrum where people are afraid, right?

We live in a climate of fear. We have a culture of fear. The big, you know, it's like love drives out fear, St. John the Apostle. Why? Because fear is the ultimate negative emotion. It's the opposite of love. People think hate is the opposite of love. It's not.

Fear is the opposite of love. When you feel fear, that's crowding out love. And so what do you need to do if you want to have more love in your life? Take on the fear. Look, you confronted fear in your life. I did too. We all do. We have to confront it head on.

But when we have a culture where our leaders on right and left are telling us to be afraid of the other side, and it's endemic across our culture. You know, I'm looking at a lot of data these days about people in the 20s. They're a third less likely to be in love than we were when we were that age. They're less like, they don't. date. It's like, I ask my, I can't one of my sons, a junior in college. Is this true? He's like no in dates. They're less likely to do. They don't have relationships. And the reason for this is because there's a culture of fear of personal rejection. That's a non-entrepreneurial culture. So when people

are afraid, they're afraid of being rejected, they're afraid of being of being ostracized because of politics, you got you got to stand up. You got to live a startup life. You got to say, this is what I believe. I reject fear. I will live with love. There is no other way. And if we do that, that's the interior revolution within. To love your enemy, this is the ultimate subversive tactic. It's the ultimate toughness.

It's funny. I mean, I tell a lot of stuff in this book about the Dalai Lama, because I've been working with the Dalai Lama for seven years. It's the weirdest relationship because, you know, the President of the American Enterprise Institute with His Holiness of the Leland, the Tibetan Buddhist, you know, the most respected religious leader in the world. And people sort of associate him with the president. political left, but what he is is he's a man fully alive because he is, he has stood up ultimately

to fear. And we talk about this all the time. And we talk about how ultimately you, you're responsible for living your one life. And when you do that, then it's the ultimate satisfaction. I mean, look, if you need to, don't look at Twitter. Delete the app on your phone. It's no big deal. And if you want to, if you're really willing to take a big bite out of life, then stand up and say, I refuse to hate. I refuse to hate people just because they disagree with me. I refuse to be afraid. I refuse to have people in my own political party telling me that I'm one step away from a jackbooted thug. Because I don't believe it.

I don't actually believe it. I think that it's still a great country. I still believe it doesn't mean I'm going to get everything I want. We're going to get a bunch of laws that I have. We're going to tax is going to be all screwed up. And, you know, abortion laws are never going to be. what I like or they're not going to be for a long time. But, but, but for Pete's sake, this is not Nazi Germany. It's not, you know, we're not about to have a knock in the night in this country. So

we have to stop being afraid and we have to stop, start living our lives as people who are not afraid. That's why Jordan Peterson right now is so popular because Jordan Peterson is telling particularly young men, take control, be the master, stop being afraid, recognize what you have within you, good and bad. And maybe you can actually start, um, start being as a live. as you're supposed to be. Just spent a weekend with Tony Robbins a couple weeks ago. Same message. See your coach?

Yeah. Same message. Same message. Yeah. Just, uh, who are you? Who are you? You decide who you are. So what's blocking you?

Yeah. You. Yeah, yeah. Take it out. Go. That's exactly right. I mean, it's a, Tony Robbins has an incredible ministry. Um, what Tony Robbins has been able to do.

I mean, finding the giant within. I mean, that's just like he's actually literally a giant. I know he is. It's amazing that use that word because he is so deeply spiritual. All the stuff he talks about. Yeah. We just all use different language. Yeah.

You know what I mean? It's all the same truth. It's all the same truth. And what we are doing in public life when we talk about public policy and politics to hurt this country is by telling people that they're victims, to telling people that they should be, the master, their master should be. their grievance that they need to band together to fight somebody as opposed to being able to to stand up on their own. I mean, Tony Robbins, when you know, when you see him and he's talking to people who feel

that they've been oppressed and they've been held down, he says, throw off your chains, man. I know. I mean, stand up because you can. And it's the ultimate freeing experience that that's what Americans need to do too. We are not victims. We're the ultimate non-victum country. Like the Becks and the Brookses came to this country as ambitious riffraff. Run it away from some...

And we're still ambitious riffraff. At least I am. Totally. My family is still just ripraff. So riffraff, it's time to unite. That's the point of love your enemies. The ultimate act of subversive riffraff is to stand up against the outrage industrial complex and say, I refuse to hate because I refuse to live in fear.

That's the ultimate message and is the how-to guide on how to get past the fear. I have a... My assistant is Scottish. Yeah. He was with the Royal Marines and some elite, you know, kill you with a toothpick and a spoon deal. And, uh, uh, murderous McGiver. Yeah. And he was, uh, we were talking about, uh, curse words because, you know, you watch British television and they can use the C word like there.

It's running out of style. And it's so jarring to America. And, and I said, what is your deal with that? And he said, it doesn't mean it. doesn't mean the same thing over there, you know? It's just, it carries a different connotation over here. And he said, I learned that real fast. He said, but you guys have a word that I cannot get used to.

What's that? He said, you guys will call each other. Oh, yeah, bastard. He said, you don't ever say that over there. Note to self. Right. But it makes sense that it means nothing here, but over there. but over there where it's all hierarchy it's all who are you related to what family did you

come from here it's like we're all bastards we're all the riffraff we're all the scum and we made it there it means something yeah yeah that's right and and you know it's for us to remember it's funny you know Glenn when I when I talk to Americans and ask them about their families that was brag about how poor their ancestors were that's like a point of pride there's no country in the world except maybe Israel where it's also a point of pride that your family came from nothing and built itself up and what that is is they in the time in American life that's so inspirational where this really became a thing was after the Civil War after this time of incredible polarization in the United States and the country had to come together and it did spontaneously around the self-improvement movement where you know the Baptist and the Tent revivals and the abolitionists who before had gotten rid of slavery then where they were talking about Temperance and others like Andrew Carnegie building English-speaking libraries and Dale Carnegie, no relation that I'm aware of, was writing how to win friends and influence people. This was the civic religion of what?

Of Riffraff being his or her own CEO. There was no grievance. There was no victimization. And it's time for Americans to get that back. I just performed at a Carnegie theater. You do? Yeah, in Pittsburgh. and it was adjoined to a library.

And I'm sitting in this library. I read a lot. I'm sure you do too. I have a pretty big library, but, you know, bigger than most people, because nobody reads anymore. But, you know,

it's not some wealthy, you know, crazy library full of books. And my library is probably bigger than that original library, okay? And he said, I have to build this. He built these libraries

all over, all over the country. English-speaking libraries all over. 2,509 of them. It's crazy. Yeah, crazy. Crazy. And we don't know this. And what he said about why he built them?

Do you remember this? So that every man. So that every man can lift himself up? Yeah. He said, not everyone will use the ladder, but there is a ladder to pull yourself out. And it is, it's all in a king's library. So he wanted these libraries to be fit for a king.

so if you had the desire to pull yourself out, you had the capability. The Shushine Boy has equal opportunity with the son of a wealthy man. Yes. And that is the American spirit. Now, is it always going to be true? Is it always going to be perfect or the pathways to earn success always going to be perfect? Of course not. We want them to be.

And in point of fact, they've been blocked too much over the past few decades. It's been too hard to do that. There's not been enough income mobility, both going up and also, frankly, down you know there's just not there's been you know people create moats around their castles and we have to fight against that all the time but to basically throw in the towel and say and and to have populists tell us you know somebody's got your stuff and i'm going to get it back whether it's a whether it's a foreigner or a banker or a capitalist or an immigrant it's not right to say that somebody's got your stuff and i'm going to get it back and the reason that

things are not right in your life is entirely because of somebody else's culpability that's an anti-American sentiment. And look, I get it. Things are hard. Things have been hard in my life at times. Things are hard in the lives of people who are listening to us. And there is skepticism about this. But I tell you one thing that will never get the job done is complaining about it and banding together and saying that some other side that disagrees with us is inherently stupid and evil. All we're going to get after that is a cold civil war. And a cold civil war is in a country that's weak. And a cold civil war is in a country that's vulnerable to people who wish us ill. And we can't afford that. Can you help me solve a problem? I've never been able to answer. Free

market is fantastic. Free market, not what we have. Not crony capitalism. Not crony capitalism, okay? And that's really part of the question. Right. I look at two examples. Let me start with Rockefeller. When Rockefeller was building Rockefeller Center, I don't know if you've ever noticed, really looked. I'm very into art and, and, and, the architecture of Rockefeller Center. And I used to drive to Radio City Music Hall every day that was where my studios were. And it's all designed for a reason.

Everything has a reason. It's almost a temple to man. Right. Okay. And as I'm driving up, I notice one day, that building is an old 1800s building. And there's another one on the other side of 30 Rock. That's part of 30 Rock now.

That's this old 1800s building. Out of all these blocks of these perfect art deco, there's two buildings that stand alone and they don't match. So I looked up. What is it? What happened? Yeah, what is it? So he bought blocks and blocks and blocks and blocks,

like 12 blocks, okay? Bought everybody out. There were two owners that wouldn't sell out. One was a guy who was greedy. He offered him, I think, a million dollars. during the Depression, sell it. He thought Rockefeller was going to keep going up. And so he said, nope.

And Rockefeller's top was a million. He said, screw him. The other guy was a guy who owned an Irish bar. It was his family's Irish bar since the 1800s. Right. He knew that prohibition was going to end. And he said, this is going to be my family's bar again. I'm not selling.

I don't care what the price is. So Rockefeller said, build around. Okay? that wouldn't happen now. Those guys would have eminent domain. They would have lost those places immediately. Somewhere along the line, America loses its Detokeville that at some point people get powerful enough and rich enough that they kick the door behind them.

Right. Only when, and this, I can't believe I'm saying this in the 1930s, but only when things like eminent domain, I'm sorry, man, that's his property. He can do whatever he wants with it. When that's strong enough, we're okay. But when you have people like Google, when you have Apple, you have these gigantic corporations with all this money, and they spend all of that money in Washington to write laws,

they're closing the opportunity, kicking the door behind them. So I don't want to ever live in a place where I... that I would say, well, there's only so much money you can make. Oh, there's only so much this you can make. Oh, we've got to break these people up. How do you stop these, and not everybody's like this. Carnegie is a good example. How do you stop people who are that wealthy from dictating the terms for everybody else?

So the problem with crony capitalism, forget particular companies, The problem with crony capitalism is that the really, really rich guys have a lot of power. Right. And they have power not just to add to their own wealth, but to protect themselves from startups. To protect themselves from new companies. That's usually what happens. Right. So the way that we need to generate better policy, to engineer policies in this country, is to block that.

We don't need to break up any companies. We don't need to prohibit any size. can buy another company? No, no. Block the fact that they can actually generate regulations. Okay. They have perfect capability with their, you know, vast armies of lawyers and accountants and specialists and consultants to cope with, but that the little guys

can't. See, that's the problem. I mean, we have an over-regulated economy and huge companies like an over-regulated economy because it doesn't hurt them they can afford it. It's a barrier. It becomes a barrier to entry, effectively. So we need few. barriers to entry in an economy that's more capitalistic and then capitalism will take care of itself, you know.

Doesn't that require a public that is educated enough to know we don't have anybody that really understands high tech, maybe five people in the Congress, maybe five people. We are in we are on the verge of something entirely different. And when I talk to people in Congress, they'll say, I'll tell them about something that's on the horizon and the next. two years and they'll be completely new to them. Yeah, it'll be a completely surprised. And they'll be like, well, we've got to pass a lot. I'm like, you don't understand. It's moving so fast by the time you get your head out of your butt. It's totally different again. So there's no way to keep up with it. They then go and look, you know, like FDR did, hey, you're the big four automakers.

What would be fair? How can we make this right for everybody? And they develop all these rules because the guys in Washington don't know. So they just go to the experts and they close all the doors for everybody. Yeah, well, that's always the problem is when there's more regulation start to get suspicious. When there's more regulation, particularly that's being proposed by business, get twice as suspicious. Right. That's what we need to do. I mean, one of the beautiful things about capitalism is you don't have to know everything. You only have to know your thing. And one of the things that we need to do is to is to take barriers away from people in productive activity. It's the same thing, Glenn,

is barriers away from people to doing what they need to do in their own lives. You know, the, the big problem that we have in the United States of happiness is that is faith, family, friends, and work. And so we don't need government to actually create regulations, a pro-religion bureaucracy that's the worst thing ever, or pro, you know, the Department of Families or something. And we certainly don't need, you know, the friends bureaucracy. What we need is to take away the disincentives for people to do those things. And that means getting out of the way of those things. And, you know, the government is in the way of faith, family, community, and work. The government is in the way of productive activity and in the way of entrepreneurship all the time.

So that's what the president needs to do. But they will say that, for instance, it's not scalable. For instance, Facebook, you know this. Once you have a company over 150 employees, it changes. Right. It just changes. I found that. Right.

We as individuals, we're built to have 30 maybe really good friends, okay? in our life. We are not capable of having, you know, a thousand followers and a thousand friends on Facebook. It doesn't work at scale. It's actually bad for us. Right. It doesn't work at scale. So that's the problem that they'll say because it's coming now.

The Internet has been great. We haven't really regulated the Internet until recently. It's been a Wild West and look what it's done. but now you're starting to have problems because now who do I trust? What do I do? So now they're starting to come in and the argument will be it's out of control. People are allowed to do just anything. Just say anything.

And I say, yeah. You have to choose to get over it. Right. Or you have to choose not to participate in it, which is exactly what we're talking about here is protecting ourselves by opting out. in a lot of cases opting out of that part of the economy in the same way that I opt out of cigarettes. I opt out of alcohol. I opt out of pornography because those things are bad for me.

And so what we need to do is individuals look all progress. I mean, institutional solutions fine, right? I'm glad that there are some institutional solutions, but all progress comes from the heart of the individual. Yes. There is no other way. You know, when we, and what we're talking about with antitrust, with very large tech firms, for example, these are sophisticated problems, to be sure. But to the extent that we are victimized by the internet,

this is really because we're abusing the product. And this is basically say, you know, what you know what we need? You know, plan, man, I just can't stay off Twitter. So I need more regulation of Twitter. Don't get off Twitter. Get off Twitter. It's very simple. It's very simple.

Be the master of yourself. You know, it's like there's too much hatred in my life. So what am I going to do? I'm going to make hatred illegal. No. Stop hating. start loving you know this is the key whenever we get into a very bad place in the united states whether it's in the civil war or whether it's today we must follow it with a self-improvement

revolution there is no other way that's how we're if anybody who's watching us wants to save america start by acting in a different way personally that's where it comes from that's where the social movement starts we need a million social movements that will come together you know the the the politicians you know the outrage industrial complex that are ginning up this hatred, it's not because they're awful people. It's because they're followers and their demand signals

that are coming from us. There's a parade going down the street and they're like, I've got to get in front of that parade. It needs a leader. And democratic capitalist societies, there are no true leaders. They're only followers who look like leaders.

So each one of us has to be the true leader and each one of us who wants to make it better to say, basically, I'm just not, I'm not part of that parade, man. I'm going down this alley. And then if enough people start doing it, I don't want to be that 70 people

yelling at the other side of the ballroom. I want to be the five people laughing over here and that's when when when the politicians and the media and the you know the academics and all the people who are part of the outrage industrial complex they go huh okay I guess this direction we're going you know any leaders like this do you know anybody who's I know a lot of people who want to do this everybody I talk to look it's the weirdest thing I'm writing if I had written a book I would be you know mega bestseller you know Republicans are stupid or

liberal are evil yeah if I've written that book you know mega bestseller right no So I said, you know, it was a calculated risk. I spent the last two years praying and writing and thinking about how to write a book called Love Your Enemies. A self-improvement, personal revolution book for me and for people who want to think this one, I thought, you know, maybe sells 10 copies. I don't know. You know, and the weirdest thing is this book has been out for a couple of weeks now, and it sold tens of thousands of copies a week. I mean, this is selling better than any book I've ever read. I've ever written read ever

this is selling really selling better than the Bible you heard it right here this is selling better than any book I've ever written right and what that means is it doesn't mean that this is the best book ever written no there's an incoer's a zeitgeist there is a demand there is a desire

for this and if we grab it I mean then then the there's a lot of politicians that you and I love that we really like then they'll be set free to. And it's time for us to set our leaders free. Let me change to tech. Yeah.

You think a lot about tech. A lot. And you like tech. I love to be sure. So I don't know much I want to make sure that our audience understands. My Glenn Beck, conservative guy, thinks that the tech economy is interesting and is promising and is optimistic and is fun. It gives me, it's like going to Silicon Valley.

But that's countercultural, man. because, you know, conservatives all was like, oh, no, it's all bad. It's all terrible. It's, it's, it's, it's, you know what it is? The Constitution and the declaration, you take the declaration out, but the Constitution is just a system and it's going to be based on moral sentiments. The Internet, good, bad, it's both. Based on moral sentiments.

Same thing with tech. It's going to be the worst or the best, but it's all going to be up to us. Okay. It's going to be a reflection. It's going to be a mirror. Yeah. It's going to be an amplification. Right.

I got it. Okay. And the amplification, like a giant, like a giant mirror out in the sun, it'll vaporize things if we're bad. The internet. The ultimate karma. It is. Okay. So I look at tech and I have.

I see the unlimited potential ahead of us. I also see 1984 will look like child's play. You know, they're already doing it in China or headed that direction. I see a world of no disease. I see a world where we can pursue the things that we want to pursue freedom like we've never. The one time I could ever say, the founders never envisioned this would be what's on the horizon with tech. All good ways. Some bad.

I was going to say. Then there is the darker side of the prison that it could build. But I think the first one, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, the first trouble that will come is unemployment. And we have a disconnect from Washington and Silicon Valley and the American people. Washington is saying, we're going to get the unemployment rate to zero. Right. And that's good. Well, the people who are building the next economy are saying, we're going to get unemployment

to 100%. Because we don't have to work anymore. Right. Okay. Disconnect. Yeah. And the American people who are not involved in this and really don't. see that the industrial revolution that took 100 years is going to happen in the next 10.

Yes. And when that happens, the pressure is going to come down. The politicians are going to do one of two things. We know they're going to do this. I'll bring those jobs back. No, they're not. No, they're not. When they start to say that and they really realize those jobs aren't coming back,

we have Silicon Valley here. They have really, only one thing to do, and that is to team up with Silicon Valley. Otherwise, we're going to go with torches and kill those evil scientists that are making all these spooky machines. You know what I mean? And no one is talking about things, and I don't agree with this. This is what I want an answer on. I do not agree with basic universal income. Right. Okay? However, in a time where we would have 30% according to Bain Capital, 30%

permanent unemployment by 2030. You've got to have something in that transition. Because you've got a lot of people like me that wait, Twitter's no longer cool and what is this Snapchat

thing? Right. That just do not adapt real fast. They won't be able to shift and it will cause all kinds of strife. How do we solve the upheed that 10 year upheaval as a bridge to the answer I mean the obvious answer is we don't know right or we don't know I mean we're we're we're it's going to happen and we're going to get through it right right the question is how much pain and what

the pain looked like and how can we what's the threshold before k total chaos and that's a big reason why some people are pushing for a u. Socialism in a UBI. UBI. UBI, unlimited basic income. Okay, so to begin with, I actually don't agree entirely with the premise that we're going to get to this 30% unemployment. Why? Because what traditionally happens is that when there's a technological revolution, and all that technology

means is that we use inputs differently. Inputs are simple. There's labor. There's land. There's capital. And there's entrepreneurship. Those are the only inputs into any production process in the whole economy. And the way that those things work together.

differently, that's a change in technology. And it might be a machine or it might be, you know, a new way of thinking or, you know, something, right? It might be college, you know, whatever it happens to be. Okay. So when there's a technological revolution that changes the way that we do things, generally speaking, it doesn't destroy jobs. It changes jobs. Every job is 22 or 25 or 40 things.

I mean, Glenn Beck's job is like 700,000 things, right? Because you run this big company. But most people's jobs are literally like 25 things that they know how to do that require expertise. What technology does is it is it did it pulls all of those 25 things apart and puts them in a box and then mixes in everybody else's 25 things shakes the box and takes out handfuls of 25 new things and passes them out and those are the new jobs. The reason that young people do better is they're trained up in the new bundles of 25 and so that's the challenge is not because we have become overtaken by events that we've become obsolete we basically

only know how to do eight of the 22 things in our jobs and so that's a we need to do is we need to disintermediate those and learn how to train people in different parts of what the new collection of jobs happen to be. That's not just Votech. That's not just career in technical education or, or, you know, technical school, vocational school. That's not what we're talking about. We're training people in new individual tasks and that's a much smaller job. That's a much easier job than saying you used to be a driver and now there's driverless trucks. And so now we're going to teach you how to fix air conditioning systems when you're 60. Well, it's not going to happen, man. But that's not actually how the job is going to change.

The job is going to change in many different ways. And so you're going to have to learn how to do this with a computer slightly differently while you continue to do this as part of your old job. And that's how we need to be thinking about it. That's how the best, the best research that I've seen says that that's the challenge. And that's a less daunting challenge. It's a challenge. Yeah, it's a challenge and I think part of that challenge is getting people to realize that nothing will be the same tomorrow and being comfortable with that. Nobody's ever going to be really comfortable with it. But if we had a more entrepreneurial culture, we could be much more comfortable than we currently are. We didn't have leaders on both parties that were telling people to be afraid of the future and afraid of each other. Yes. It would be a lot better. We shouldn't be afraid of each other and we shouldn't be afraid of the future because this is America and we're a strong country that's dealt with a lot. Okay, when you said that there's, you know, only five things that happen, you know, for, for jobs.

Yeah. Okay. What were the five again? It was, uh, um, the five things that happened for, for, for a market to, I don't remember. Okay. So the inputs are the inputs. Yeah, they're labor. Labor.

Capital. Okay. Stop. Right. Capital. Yes. Right. Labor.

Right. Uh, uh, um, robotics. Next one. Well, and that's a substitution of capital for labor. But it changed the relationship of labor to capital because you're still going to need people that is doing different things in relation to capital. Won't need as many. Yeah. Well, you'll need it.

You'll actually, in a weird way, you know, it's a funny thing. In the Industrial Revolution, everybody thought that capital was going to substitute for labor and labor was going to be just like overtaken by events and never do anything. Yeah. And it turns out we needed more labor in the end. We need more people, more people doing more stuff because the whole economy. That was the miracle of capitalism. It's not a zero sum. It's a bigger and bigger and bigger pie.

But we have to make sure that people have expertise such that they can work with this expanded capital in a way that they can't currently do it. So you see what I mean, right? Yeah, I think I do. Yeah. I think I do. The problem is you read, uh, demon haunted world by Carl Sagan. Hmm. You know, he talked about there will be a time when all of this will be Latin to the average person.

Yeah. And so they'll just be going to the high priest of tech and going. make this work you know what I mean we are not learning we are not expanding we are a we are becoming

calcified that's the threat see that's the threat see if we were actually expanding our knowledge and we're expanding our confidence and we were less fearful then we could actually have expanding human capital education skills jobs

that would match with the changing physical capital which is the machines and the software that are coming into our world such that that labor could be appropriate to it and up to the task. You know, we have way more people working. I mean, right now, I mean, there are seven and a half billion people alive. Only 100 billion people have ever lived and died before the current humanity that we see on earth. And, you know, all those people that are, that are alive today, the workforces are so much bigger than they used to be. And yet, everything's automated,

particularly compared to what it was 200 years ago. And that's because when, when you're more productive, you have more productive capacity, you have more capital, you actually need more labor and everybody gets richer and more stuff gets done if, if you're not calcified, if you're actually willing to learn and change. And that's the main task of our leadership today. Look, you and I have both railed against education systems that are appropriate for the 1950s, that are teaching the same stuff that you and I learned in the 1970s, as school kids, the 1970s. I mean, not exactly, but for all intents and purposes. That's actually that you're just really, rigid and and doesn't have any choice and and is you know that the way that the structure it's it's kind of like

education systems a lot for the benefit of the of the educators as opposed to the students in the future of the country I mean that's that's that's that's the problem you know to a certain and and unless we can modernize that then we can't improve the human capital we can't improve the human capital then we're stuck in the dystopian future you described do you believe in a GI and ASI that's coming. I mean, these things are coming. I do believe that these things are coming. It's funny.

I was talking to a guy. The guy was in my hometown. I grew up in Seattle, and I was back there for some speeches I was given. Did you grow up in Seattle? Queen Anne Hill. Really? Queen on Hill, north side of Queen Anne Hill, yeah.

Born in Everett and lived in Mount Lake Terrace and then moved to Mount Vernon. That's crazy. Yeah. Is maybe why we connect, man? It is. And maybe why we connect with our heart because there's something different in the business.

It's gone nuts now, but there's something different. I know. Anyway, I was talking to this guy, and we were driving, it was at night, and he was driving me up one south past the old Sears building. This is now the Starbucks building. And I said, oh, you know, we're near Boeing Field. And I said, go over there because I said, let's go get on the I-5 and let's go up the freeway instead because I want to see

if I can see from the freeway into the, it was at night. the open hangar where they're building the 787 because it's such a beautiful plane. And so we were doing it. We were talking about it. It turns out he's really into innovation tech. And I said, I just read an article and I said, give me your impression of this.

He was a very, very pious, religious Muslim guy. Tell me this, I just read an article, since you're really into tech, that in 40 years you'll be able to download your mind. Right? And this is basically some combination of AGI and ASI, right? What do you think about that? He says, oh, it doesn't make sense.

And I said, why not? It says, because you can't download the soul. And that's how people see it. And said, this is the key difference. There's a, there's a, the frontiers of technology are vast. We don't know where they go. But humans are fundamentally different. That's, I mean, and the soul.

I disagree with you more. I totally agree with you myself. Right. But the way it's going to be perceived. and here's why. You know who Stephen Hawking is? Of course. Okay.

So I've talked to him several times, and this is one of the main things. It scares the hell out of me with Stephen Hawking. Not Stephen Hawking. Oh, shoot. Dawkins, Richard Dawkins. No, no, no. He's a high-tech guy, Silicon Valley, started the university of... Peter Thiel?

No. I can't remember now. Oh my gosh Wrote the Age of Spiritual Machines Oh Yeah He was the guy He was at Microsoft

What is it Yes Ray Kurzweil Yeah Okay so Ray Kurzweil Yeah right for sure So Ray is Leading this And I think in a kind of a creepy way

He's you know He's looking for the singularity And I think he's trying to recreate his dad Quite honestly Which is a whole other subject He's basically that That was behind this whole concept Of downloading the mind

Right Right He says it'll have by 2030, okay? But he sees the mind just as, or the person, just as a, a map of how you think. Okay. He's a complete materialist. He basically says the mind exists inside the brain.

Yeah. Yeah, he's different. But, you know, well, I mean, not only that, he doesn't believe in the soul. Correct. Correct. He doesn't believe the soul exists. Correct. Right.

Correct. Okay. So I've had some, I've had some interesting exchange. I so respect him. And I believe him that he can accomplish some of the things that he talks about, but he also scares the hell out of me. Yeah. Why? Because he looks at humanity differently than I do.

He believes, he believes will come to a time when if you get cancer, we'll just download you into a computer. Well, that's not me, right? That's a copy of me. That's not my soul. And he doesn't believe in a soul. So, you know. But that's a distinction without a difference to him. Yeah, but hang on.

And for you, okay, but hang on. Uh-huh. When you pass the Turing test, when you get AI, look at how people already will treat basic AI. Right now, you have people just with Siri. You have people like me who are like, shut up, Siri, shut up. Actually, Siri makes you a little mad.

Yeah. Or something irritates you. And you know it's a machine. There are others who are like, don't, don't talk to, and they're serious, don't talk to Siri. that's very low level. I talked to a research psychologist, a sexual psychologist, and she said, I heard her on a podcast and say, you know, we should get, we can get AI, and we can put that into a body and maybe a body of a robot of a child and give them to pedophiles to see if they can take out their aggression on those, because it'll be a life-like experience.

and so they know they can get it out there and not on real children. And I'm thinking to myself, A, that sounds nuts. Two, the minute that that machine claims to be conscious, because it will, and it will not be human, but it will be convincing enough to a human that you will start to have compassion for it. Okay? A, I don't want to be enslaving something that claims to be alive. B, you and I know it's not alive, but when it becomes convincing enough to be alive, then what happens? So here's why I'm not worried about it.

People anthropomorphize their pets. People attribute human characteristics to animals all the time. And yet, we haven't gotten to the point where we give equal human rights to animals. There are some people who want to, but it's not going to work. It's never going to get to the point where we say it is, I mean, we, we haven't gotten to the point where we might get to the point where we can grow animal protein in the laboratory such that we don't have to factory farm animals and we decide that that's not the most ethical thing to do but we're still not saying that a chicken is basically a person we feel doesn't have we don't feel relate to a chicken

we it's they're not in sold in the same way we don't believe that they're in sold as people people naturally not everybody not not not you know a lot of atheists and not a lot of materialists and a lot of, you know, philosophers throughout history. But most of us believe that we are in soul as people. And there's something different about the human soul than any other being living or pseudo living. Well, I can't wait. I can't wait for 20 years. We both have to be alive.

And we got to talk about this again, right? We have to talk about it again. We have to decide whether or not the robot is more like a person or more like a dog. Yeah. And that's going to be the question. It's going to be more like a person. Majority of people because it will become so lifelike. And it will be very persuasive.

I think it's, Glenn, I think it's going to be more like my dog, Chucho. Why? I think because that, because we can, we can distinguish. You know the fact that it isn't a person. You know what that is? No. Okay, so you know how Pixar, when they, any, any animation company, they, they take the features and they make the eyes big or they change them.

So you know it's not human. Right. Because of something called the Uncanny Valley. and you like something that looks human. Right. And then all of a sudden it gets close enough to where it nose dives and people are like, I don't like that. And now I don't like it.

I don't like that. That's creeping me out. Right. So we're still nose diving. But they think, and this is a big if, they think if they can really nail it, it'll come right back up. That's an empirical question. Yeah.

It really is a question we don't know the answer to. But I, you know, I, again, a part of this is. is informed by my Christian faith. That the insolment is inherently known. Unless, I mean, there are going to be cases in which we become confused. There are going to be cases in which we confuse ourselves on person, on purpose, because we're too clever by half. But I, you know, we can't even say it's male and female anymore.

Well, we can because most people still do, I think. I think most people do. And people are afraid to say it. People are afraid to say it. But I think that in the end, particularly when we're talking about, what is the essence of humanity, that we're not going to cross that line because we can't. Because the soul is still the soul. Because the guy who said, you can't download your mind because you can't download the soul.

In the end, he recognized me. He inherently knew it. Like, he hadn't been thinking about this. I presented him with this. And it was just his... But you started with, he is a deeply... You didn't use religious Muslim. deeply pious, pious, Muslim. So you started with the premise that he's coming from a soul-based

point of view. The world is going that way. You know, unless there's a reconnection to that. I think that we can get to that. So therefore, you have just defined what we need to do. What we don't need to do is to try to put, you know, head to breaks on technology because it's not going to happen. That's an exercise and futility. Right. And it's, it's, it's, what we need to do is if we really if what the world that I think is going to be and you want to be, even though you're not sure it's going to be, is where we can tell, where we can distinguish the insolment of a being versus that, which is a simulacrum for humanity. I'm going to pretend, I, of course, know what a simulatrum is, but there are probably

some people in the audience that don't know it. Something that simulate something else, something that looks like it, but it isn't. Okay. It's a simulacrum. Okay. So, you know, the super light. life like you know it down here well no Harvard professor I have no idea every fifth word I'm like I have no idea okay hey man you're giving me the acronyms AGI and ASA I'm like oh man

it's like you're killing me man I'm just an economist so the one way or the other whether or not I'm right or your fears come to pass or whether or not my confidence is more appropriate one way or the other the world's going to be better what a way to frame that. Did you hear that? Your fears and my confidence. How about my confidence and your lunatic, utopian. I know my lunatic.

Loving your enemies, man. And the robots, too. They're killing to kill us, but it's all good. Anyway, so one way or the other, if we don't like the idea where people can't distinguish and where people are no longer fully human because humanity is now manufactured, If we don't want that, then we have to actually fight it.

And the only way that we can fight it is by remembering the one thing that the robot can never have, which is divinity. The robot can't have divinity. And if we believe the divinity actually exists, we have to make sure that people continue to understand that. And that means we need a revolution of faith. We need a revolution of soul. We need a revolution of the heart. Nothing else is going to do it. You know, tech is not going to take care of us.

If Christians and Jews and Muslims and Hindus and they actually believe that these things are true, then they need a re-evangelization. We need a new enlightenment. And the good news is that traditionally throughout American history, these enlightenments, these times of, you know, great religious fervor, they come along with self-improvement movements. You know, the temperance movement was fundamentally religious, and it had to do with evangelical Christianity coming across the United States.

And, you know, the big burst of activity of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, your church was during the self-improvement movement. It was part and parcel of the self-improvement movement. And so you can't disentangle. You can't take apart self-improvement from religious fervor. Let's not try to do it. What we need then is we need religious entrepreneurs that are reminding people of the divinity that is within each one of us. That is our ultimate defense.

Okay. So I 100% agree. Let me take you then quickly to faith. I was talking to Billy Graham and I said, where do you see? this headed. How is, how are we going to navigate this? And he said, um, the next great awakening is not going to happen with one guy. There's not going to be a really gram. It's going to be individuals, all of the individuals just rising up and doing it themselves. He did not mean this, but I, I do. Um, I agree with that. And I think the church, unless the church, and I say

that as a whole body, wakes up to reality. You know, what people are really feeling, what people are really struggling with, what they're really afraid of. And I got, I got more out of, you know, a couple of hours with Tony Robbins that's deep. That's deep. Then you get in a lot of churches. And some of these churches are violating their own principles. Yeah.

My own church. I'm a Catholic. And it's in crisis. It's just in crisis right now. I think we all are. People are in the Southern Baptist to have that terrible report that talked about sexual abuse and, you know, we're not living up to our own standards for sure. And people are, you know, the biggest rise in religious activity, you know, the category, you know what it is? Nons, not N-U-N-S, N-O-N-E-S, the non-affiliated people. That's a huge crisis because it just means people are walking away. People are just like bored. It's inactivity. It's just, it's torpor. It's, you know, the kind of thing where it's funny. I was in, on Christmas Day, I was in Barcelona, which is where I go a lot because my wife's from Barcelona. And I went to Christmas Mass in Barcelona. There were like 12 people in church at Christmas Mass. It's a former live in Spain. In Spain, Spain is a formerly Catholic country. Yes, he used to torture you if you were. Tricamato was a long time ago.

A long time ago, yes, I'll give you that. So, but, but, you know, I, 20 years ago, you know, went to the same church and had my son, my oldest son was baptized 21 years ago. And that same church, it was on Christmas Mass. It was full and it's emptied out. And that's what that's the real threat that we face. And that's, you know, what we need is a revolution of interest and of each person actually finding the fire within. Well, how do we do that?

You know, it's interesting because when you look back at Poland at the end of the Cold War, the nine days in Poland, when JP2, when John Paul II, he went there. And, you know, the communists, they had to let them come. And there was just nothing that they could do. But they were trying to keep control. And a third of the country saw him in person during those nine days. I mean, he was just like mobbed every place.

And finally in Warsaw, in the central square on the last day, when in unison, a million people started to chant, we want God. That wasn't JP2. That was the heart of each person in unison saying, I demand divinity. I demand to be fully alive. I demand to be a human. What is the ultimate dehumanizing system? Communism. Communism is what turns us into the robots.

It makes us into homo-economicus, you know, where we're nothing more than an economic unit, right? It makes us into the dystopian fears that we have about tech, about being able to distinguish between the people and the machines and the machines substituting for the people. That, you know, communism is like kind of, it's like a little, it's like a little demonstration project for that, right? And how did, how was that beaten? That was beaten through two things. where Ronald Reagan showed the rest of the world. He said, you know what you want. You want to be free.

You want to throw off your chains. And John Paul II said, and you want God because you have the divine within you. And those two things, they brought down the iron curtain. Okay. So maybe the iron curtain is going to be the silicon curtain. Maybe that's what we're going to be talking about. Maybe the dystopian future is one where there are these alternatives. But there's still only going to be one.

future, which is defining the divine within and finding the liberty of what it means to be fully alive and to be living my own life because I'm a true individual. I'm not a cog in the machine. I am somebody who has incarnated soul. And if we actually, as those of us who are leaders who believe these things, if we're going to do one thing, it's that we have to propagate this and we have to teach people that this is true and we have to show people how to live that. And then they'll be free. this has been a blast. Thank you. Glenn Beck, every minute with you is a blast.

It's fun. The name of the book is Love Your Enemies, Arthur C. Brooks. Thanks, Arthur. Thank you, Glenn. God bless you. Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.