The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 337. In Response to Netanyahu | Maajid Nawaz

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

Maajid Nawaz launches this in-depth discussion with a rebuttal to Jordan Peterson's prior interview with PM Benjamin Netanyahu. From here they discuss the affinities and gaps between Islam, Judaism, a...nd Christianity, and explore the origin of ideology, as well as the technocratic tower of babel we as a species seem to be constructing. Maajid Nawaz is a British anti-extremist, political commentator, activist, and podcast host. He was recently “released” from his LBC radio show for his views on the covid 19 pandemic, and has roots as one of the original named members of the supposed Intellectual Dark Web, along with characters such as Douglas Murray, Ben Shapiro, and Jordan Peterson. Genucel: Use code "JORDAN" at checkout for additional savings on your entire purchase! https://genucel.com/jordan

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 How do you feel about the music? Hello everyone, I'm here today talking to Majid Nawaz, a colleague and well, dawning friend of mine. We've spoken a number of times in a variety of different circumstances. Most recently, Masjid contacted me with some opposition to things I had said or allowed to be said, or facilitated the transmission of, let's say, talking to Benjamin Netanyahu about the situation in Palestine. And so we've been going back and forth on that front and decided to have a conversation. And so that's what's happening today.
Starting point is 00:00:48 Here and also on the daily wire, on YouTube and also on the daily wire, plus platform. Majid Nawaz is a British anti-extremist political commentator, activist and podcast host. He was recently released from his LBC radio show. As a consequence of his views on the COVID-19 pandemic, he wasn't really in favor of the mandated vaccines
Starting point is 00:01:12 and has been, has has roots as one of the original named members of the hypothetical intellectual dark web, along with characters such as myself, Douglas Murray, and Ben Shapiro among others. Good to have a chance to talk to Mausherd again today. Hi, Mausherd. It's been a while since we've had a chance to talk. I don't, I think I, the last time we spoke, I think was probably on your show, wasn't it?
Starting point is 00:01:38 And that was what, is that four years ago, three years ago? Thank you for remembering. I was very proud to be the first national broadcaster to conduct a long form interview with you in Britain on the national airwaves. A job I was since cancelled from, but it was around the time of your own incredibly interesting conversation on channel four when what became a meme, of course, from there from there if you remember was so what you're saying is and Your responses to that assistant question Basically were the stuff of legends. So it's a pleasure being here again with you Jordan and as I said, thank you for remembering
Starting point is 00:02:16 That we had that conversation. They had some sound issues. Oh, yeah, it's still on YouTube and people can still catch that and it was Before the world went mad. I, even though we could probably both see it was on the way to going mad. It was definitely on the way. Yeah, that channel four interview with Kathy Newman, I think, has 30 million views now. Still, it refuses to die. But interesting, you know, I was interviewed
Starting point is 00:02:41 a couple, probably two years later, by Helen Lewis for the GQ on punitively for their issue on masculinity, strangely enough. And that interview, Helen had more tricks in her bag than Kathy Newman in that interview now has 60 million views. And so, but they're both reflections of the same underlying surreal strangeness that we see ourselves constantly
Starting point is 00:03:06 surrounded with now. Yeah, so. But that's not where I first met you, though. I first met you when I had just finished my tour in with Sam Harris. And you had just come on the scene there with Sam and began your dialogues. And I was in the audience, actually, for some of those,
Starting point is 00:03:23 especially the ones in London. And again, thank you for having us at your recent London event. Or Smondon or Bravo or Smondon that you met. We were very happy to see you there as well. We met, I think, with Douglas Murray, didn't we, at that point, for a dinner? Yeah, dinner.
Starting point is 00:03:39 Yeah. Tammy was there. Tammy was there. Douglas was there. You were there. And I think it was in his London flat the time that he had. And we had a lovely conversation then as well. Um, yes, been a whilst been many years. We've been in touch. But this is I think the first time we've sat down on your show. Um, and yeah, well, it's actually I'm very happy that we're doing this because I think the time is good. It's a good time. Yeah. So, so for everybody watching and listening, I've been corresponding with Majid for the last
Starting point is 00:04:05 couple of months trying to set this up. And a fair bit of that has circulated around the Abraham Accord issue that I've been speaking about in the Israel-Palestine situation. And so, I thought we might as well hash that out to begin with. And so, I'm not exactly sure how to begin that. I maybe I'll start by talking about my experience on the Abraham Accord front and you can tell me, you know, what you think about that and then we'll dive into the weeds. So I was very ill for a good while from 2000 and even
Starting point is 00:04:38 2018 when I was on tour, but it got really bad by 2021. I was kind of out of commission for about three years. And when I started to spring back to life, some people in my circle alerted me to the emerging fact of the Abraham Accords, and I started to keep an eye on them, and was very struck by what was happening, the fact that this peace process, putative peace process, was emerging outside of the confines of the State Department under the tender auspices of Donald Trump and his organization. And it looked to me like an extraordinarily, it had the potential to be an extraordinarily significant advance. And then I was struck by how much it was downplayed in the, let's say, legacy press, and also by the Democrats that I was working with, because I worked with some Democrats
Starting point is 00:05:33 behind the scenes for a very long time, and was unable to elicit from them any real enthusiasm for this move forward, which struck me as very, very odd to say the least and still does. And since then, I've investigated the process by which the Abraham Accords were negotiated with the number of the people who were directly involved, including the former Israel ambassador to the US and the American ambassador to Israel. And still, of the opinion that this looks like avenue to something approximating peace in an area that has been characterized by very little peace for a very long time. So in any case, that's the situation on my front.
Starting point is 00:06:27 And we've exchanged a bit of email about that topic. And I'm, well, I'm very interested in your views about the Abraham Accord and about, to the degree that you regard that as relevant about my involvement with publicizing it. Well, first of all, it's something I raised as well before I was cancelled on my previous show on LBC. I was cancelled for the record three months before my contract was due to expire and the reason I was cancelled was very evident and clear to me. I have all the receipts and, in fact, five years remaining on a legal case that I initiated and the lawyers were so happy with the case
Starting point is 00:07:05 that they're doing it without charge. And my basic point was that I was canceled for raising COVID mandates, being what I believe one of the greatest crimes ever committed or attempted to be committed against humanity. And I objected to the mandates and refused as a conscientious objector to take from the booster shot onwards.
Starting point is 00:07:25 Having been coercively injected in prison against my will, I thought that it was absolutely unacceptable for the state to put me back in that position. Yeah, because everything I had been fighting for since the up until that point, including on LBC. And this relates to the Abraham Accords question you've just asked me Jordan, was for universal peace and love. And with the background that I have, which I won't go into now, it's well known, and if anyone wants to catch up on that, they can watch my other
Starting point is 00:07:56 interviews. But with the background I have, I thought it was particularly important for me to reach out to all communities in peace and extend a hand of peace. We say Salamu alaykum when we meet people. And I did so with, you know, I don't need to go over that as well. The track record there for the last decade, what I've been doing is very clear. It culminated in my dialogue with Sam Harris, Islam, and the future of tolerance. And that turned into a film. So when the Abraham Accords came about in that spirit, Jordan, of course, you'd expect me to once again give peace a chance. And my views in reaction to that are on the record. They're all there online. Again, before my job was cancelled, in fact,
Starting point is 00:08:37 clips were uploaded of me embracing the opportunity for peace. What I'd like to say in response to your question, but it was, I think it was necessary. That preamble was necessary because I think peace and though it must be embraced, it has to be regardless of power dynamics. I believe it has to be, it has to be presented. The opportunity has to be presented as if we are speaking to equals. And I don't mean equals in terms of physical strength, war capabilities. I mean human equals, I mean cognitive equals, I mean spiritual equals. And for that reason, I'm probably, again, a caveat for what I'm about to say. I'm probably one of the most vocal, most invoices in the West,
Starting point is 00:09:27 who has advocated for giving peace a chance, considering my background and where I've come from. I have every excuse not to want to give peace a chance when it comes to how the world has treated certain people, including me in the past. But I think it's really important that we have to fight for peace. And one of the ways that it's possible is regardless of material power dynamics,
Starting point is 00:09:51 we approach the so-called adversary who is really a mirror of ourselves as an equal. And the reason I mentioned that is that there's certain language around the entire question of the Middle East. And it's what I think I gave you a bit of a telling off. I'm sorry Jordan, it's better in person with a smile than it is online. So I'm happy to have this opportunity to explain why I believe this is a much better way for us to progress. And that is because there are certain language
Starting point is 00:10:21 that is used around, not just the Abraham of course, but peace in the Middle East, which can be unintentionally, can come with stigmatizing connotations, that build up a feeling of otherness as opposed to bringing people closer together, which is a prerequisite for peace. Our language has to bring people closer together.
Starting point is 00:10:44 If our language is stigmatizing, while we're saying that we want peace, which is a prerequisite for peace. Our language has to bring people closer together. If our language is stigmatizing, while we're saying that we want peace, then unfortunately, that's not the behavior of somebody that wants peace. That's the behavior of somebody who wants to blame the adversary for still being angry while they've extended a hand of peace. And the only persons that have the ability to do that
Starting point is 00:11:00 are those that have the material power, in other words, the luxury, to be able to afford speaking in tones that are divisive while saying, I'm extending a hand in peace. So, a person that has nothing but their dignity to try and defend in any war situation will only ever expect people to address them as a cognitive and a spiritual equal on a human level. So, when I say language, you're not a stranger to this Jordan because of your own expertise and what in fact has led you to prominence around the world because you understand the importance of language and context and symbolism and tradition. So we're going to, I would love to revisit this question language actually as we continue
Starting point is 00:11:44 speaking later on. But for now, I'll just say the example, because I think it goes all the way back to the oral tradition and why it's important to remember before the written word, how language was received and given, which I'm sure you're aware to what I'm alluding in terms of the Semetic Tradition as well. But we can come to that later for the moment what I'd like to say is, write down to, if we want the Abraham Accords to work, write down to the adjectives we use to describe it. As I said, I'd probably done with respect, and I don't mean this to be in any sense,
Starting point is 00:12:19 arrogant Jordan. I don't mean to boast, and I don't mean to put you down. I've probably done more than you on for peace in the Middle East. I that wouldn't surprise me at least. And I've suffered for it. And so take this from my brother who says it to you that I think that for example when we say things like Judeo-Christian civilization, when we know for a fact that historically all of the when we know for a fact that historically, all of the philosophies and the principles that we cherish so dearly in our small, small S open societies, because I don't want to endorse Soros' program of open society.
Starting point is 00:12:54 So all of the principles and values we endorse in our small O and small S open societies were protected, cherished, and then translated by the golden era in the Middle East during the time of the ancient caliphates. And we know the heritage of Andalusia, Islamic Spain, and the way in which the philosophies were preserved from there, how Maimonides and others emerged from there. And we understand, therefore, that part of this equation, Judeo-Christian civilization, it's a deliberate, it's a deliberate amputation of a limb,
Starting point is 00:13:27 not to include Muslims within that conversation. And so Abrahamic is more inclusive, but I've noticed people increasingly use Judeo-Christian civilization when talking about challenging the woke, for example. Another problem there is that, what does that lead to? Why am I raising that?
Starting point is 00:13:44 Because the other end, words for me, I believe are our spells. And when we cast spells, we create feelings in people that reserve, that receive those words. So when we speak in those terms that excludes one key element of that, from that conversation, though, of course, I know I'm a British citizen and I'm welcome here in this discourse. If it's a Judeo-Christian civilization I'm expected to assimilate into, then I will always be the other. And I will always be approaching this discourse from an outside perspective and will be heard as the other by those on the inside. But if we understand that our civilization isn't only Judeo-Christian, and in fact, right down to algebra coming from algebra,
Starting point is 00:14:30 and Choiresmi who invented the concept, the cipher, or the zero either coming from the Sanskrit in Indian, or from the Arabic numerals, you know, I could go on and on. If we understand that, then there's no way that philosophically we could ever find ourselves in a position where whether we thought or not, we don't raise, there's no way we could ever raise
Starting point is 00:14:52 a question that erases the existence of a people. And that's what I believe happened when you spoke to Netanyahu. I believe the attempt to erase the existence of Palestinians. I believe the attempt to erase the existence of Palestinians. I believe the attempt to present the squatter analogy, in other words, as was expressly stated in that conversation between you and Benyemignet and Yahu,
Starting point is 00:15:14 that this was empty land, had no occupies, and therefore when we arrived, like the squatters in an empty property, we immediately have right over this land. And that recognizes absolutely no claim for Palestinians. I believe that's exclusionary language and doesn't aid the spirit of what's called the Abraham of course. Okay, let's recognize people.
Starting point is 00:15:34 Okay. A lot of people say Jordan. Yeah, well, yeah, please, no, go ahead. It's not a new point, it's not a new point. So when we do that, of course, how do we expect Palestinians to receive that language? If they receive it being excluded, that leads to reaction. In other words, anger, it leads to a separation, not a bringing together. And I acknowledge one thing, by the way, that the term Palestinian in our language is a modernist term. So I'm
Starting point is 00:16:01 not getting stuck on semantics. I'm saying that there were an Arab people there as well and they must be acknowledged. Whether you want to call them Palestinians, whether you want to call them Shamiin, Levantine, today they happen to be in the area that is within Israeli military authority called the West Bank. Today they happen to say, okay, you know, this is where Palestinian because this is the ancient man of Palestine. I don't prefer not to get stuck on some antics. I know Netanyahu's argument is, oh, but there is the ancient man of Palestine, I don't prefer, I prefer not to get stuck on some antics. I know Netanyahu's argument is, but there was no such thing as Palestine. There was no such thing as Israel before 1948.
Starting point is 00:16:30 There was no such thing as Pakistan, my parents country or origin, of which I have a national ID card. I'm not dismissing or lowering or belittling any country, yeah. So we have to, I think, acknowledge identity so that we can have the conversation, the spirit for which Abraham accords the spirit for which it was named. I hope that makes sense. Okay, so you brought up three very complex issues there,
Starting point is 00:16:53 and so let me walk through them one by one. So one of the things that has struck me very positively in my life in the last five years, is the fact that the work that I've done, particularly with regards to the elucidation of the meaning of Genesis, has attracted a very large number of Muslims. And I'm very happy about that, and I've had completed a number of podcasts with Muslim thinkers. I would say across the entire spectrum of Muslim thought, not comprehensively, obviously.
Starting point is 00:17:33 But people ranging from pretty traditionalist, I would say, Muslim fundamentalists to people who are as liberal on the Muslim side as it gets. And then also critics of the Muslim tradition, like Ion Hershey Ali, trying to understand more deeply the situation that we find ourselves in. And I need to say a couple of things. I mean, I'm extraordinarily ignorant
Starting point is 00:17:56 in relationship to my understanding of Islamic culture. It's a closed book to me in many ways. I've done what I could to rectify that, but it's very difficult to come to an understanding of your own culture, much less, to try to claim expertise in the niceties of someone else's culture, especially when it's an extraordinarily diverse culture. So, you know, I'm stumbling around in a sea of ignorance, and I would also say the same thing with regards to the situation in Jerusalem. I mean, I was just in Jerusalem a couple of months ago for the first time, and one of the things you learn very rapidly, if you're in Jerusalem for even a few days, is that that place is so bloody complicated,
Starting point is 00:18:37 that it's amazing, it's not on fire all the time. And so, and clearly, it's also the case that whenever there's ongoing conflict like there is in the Middle East, it's because the situation is so complex that no one and everyone has a handle on it. No one understands and that's why it descends into warfare. There's no agreement on what the realities are and so people fight. And so the problem with commenting on that or putting a toe in the water is that the probability that you're going to say something stupid and the certainty that you're going to eat by pirana's approach is 100%. So, well, so now having said that, I would also say that I'm very sympathetic to your notion that the there's something very important to accomplish here in the next 10 or 15 years on the Abrahamic side.
Starting point is 00:19:42 No, so you said that the notion of Judeo-Christian culture is exclusionary and then you outlined a variety of problems with that. And that's an extraordinarily complicated problem because I do believe that there are affinities between Christians and Jews and Muslims that are very, very deep. And they're particularly important right now because Muslims, Jews, and Christians have more in common than any of the members of those three groups have in common with this woke ideology that's pervasively sweeping the planet, that poses an equal threat to all three of those groups
Starting point is 00:20:26 and whatever civilization might be founded on their joint and separate contributions. And the fact that Muslims, Jews, and Christians are squabbling amongst themselves in the rubble, well, the idiot, woke ideology, rages madly out of, is counterproductive to say the least. And so on the religious front, the Abrahamic religions share the belief in the centrality of the book. They share a fundamental monotheism. And then after that, well, then differences that are difficult to reconcile start to emerge and no one really knows how to deal with them.
Starting point is 00:21:09 So, I mean, obviously one of the problems on the religious front with regards to Jews, Christians, and Muslims is conceptualization of the figure of Christ and also of the figure of Muhammad. And no one knows how to sort that mess out. And what you get are dogmatic insistences on both sides with the Jews taking a completely different perspective. And wars have been fought for hundreds of years or even thousands over exactly those issues. So I do believe there are important historical, what would you say?
Starting point is 00:21:47 There's an important history that unites us and there's an important body of conceptions that unites us on the religious side, on the broad west, but we're still in the early stages of the kind of conversation that would allow those remaining points of contention, which are very severe to be ironed out. But to your point, what that at least implies, in part, is that language that is predicated on the assumption that the central civilizing tendency in the West is only Judeo-Christian. Well, that brings with it a host of potential problems like the ones you outlined. And then you talked about the Net and Yahoo conversation with regards to the Palestinians and their erasure. And that's extraordinarily
Starting point is 00:22:40 complicated as well. And maybe all make a case for my viewpoint, or the viewpoint that I tentatively hold at the moment, and you can tell me what you think about it. Sure. Sure. Okay. So clearly, having the Palestinians drawn centrally into the process that's unfolding on the Abraham Accord side is desirable. Now, let's see if we can figure out some of the impediments to that. I mean, one impediment for me is that it's very convenient for actors outside of the immediate locale of Palestine and Israel to ensure that the conflict rages untrammeled for as long as possible. And it isn't obvious to me at all that the Palestinians have been well served by their own structures of governance. And I think that's partly because the tradition of democratic governance is not well-founded in many places in the Middle East and because as I said, it's very convenient for bad external actors to ensure that the conflict with Israel
Starting point is 00:23:54 rages unabated. And then I would say I'm also sympathetic to the Israeli claim for a variety of reasons. And let me lay those out and I don't know how those can be pursued without being while also taking into account the fact that this is unfortunately done, not infrequently at someone's expense. I mean, the founder of Zionism rightly observed that there was a dawning wave of vicious anti-Semitism
Starting point is 00:24:31 in Europe that was going to be incredibly destructive. And that was definitely the case. And then it was the case that the West, in the guise of the UN, let's say, decided that the establishment of a Jewish state was going to be all things considered something like a universal good. And it's definitely the case that the establishment of that state has been incredibly problematic, but that one of the consequences is that there's a flourishing nation in that area now that
Starting point is 00:25:04 is doing quite well economically on the governance side, and that has become powerful enough economically. And morally, I suppose, but at least practically, to be regarded as a worthy ally by the countries that have signed the Abraham Accords. And what that has meant is that the Palestinian situation is still unaddressed and the catastrophes that are associated with that still playing themselves out. And it isn't obvious to me, it isn't obvious to me at all, what can be done about that. Now, your point was, well, one thing that could be done is not to exclude the Palestinians linguistically or practically, and I would say fair enough,
Starting point is 00:25:51 but I don't know how we address the bad actor problem, which is partly the fact that it's pretty damn convenient for people who are anti-Israel in the most fundamental sense to keep the Palestinian conflict raging for their own particular narrow self-interest. And that's a true impediment to peace. It was also a true impediment to peace that the bloody State Department has insisted for the last 70 years that there's no possibility whatsoever of moving even incrementally towards
Starting point is 00:26:24 peace in the Middle East without a full solution to the Palestinian problem? Which the people who Established the Abraham Accord demonstrated in a very short period of time was a preposterous claim so Okay, so let's let's go from there I would much rather see the Muslims and the Jews and the Christians What would you say arm and the Jews and the Christians, what would you say, arm and arm together
Starting point is 00:26:47 on the monotheistic front? That'd be nice, but how the hell we do that? That's... Yeah. Well, listen, you mentioned you entered this debate from the Abrahamicals onwards. So forgive me if I assume that, but that's what I gathered. If it's wrong, I can assure you I've been living
Starting point is 00:27:04 this debate for my entire life. I have been to Jerusalem and the West Bank to Ramallah and to Tel Aviv and up and down the country to the Golden Heights and down into the South. I've been on the Egyptian side of the border with Gaza. I have been right into the various sites there, I've prayed there in the Masjid al-Aqsa and the Qobbada Sahra. And one thing I can assure you with the last decade of my work on this front is I'm not really interested in the last thing you mentioned there which is presenting obstacles to peace. And so I'm really wondering, I think there are vested interests that want
Starting point is 00:27:46 the conflict to continue. The question is Jordan, that it be overly simplistic to assume that those vested interests are only on one side of the debate. Okay, fair enough. Yeah, I comment this as somebody who, again, it's all open. You can look it up. I have gone further than almost any Muslim you will find in the English language on this conversation. And I refuse to go any further because I find the people purporting themselves to be partners,
Starting point is 00:28:19 speaking the language of alienation, demonization, and exclusion. So let's agree on one thing. If it holds, as you said, that there is more in common than there's different, which I believe is self-evident, then, and it then holds by definition, that if we were to be able to somehow rally around the fact that we have more in common than what's different.
Starting point is 00:28:43 And I think that's also self-evident, that we'd have then, we would achieve a great price for peace on planet Earth if we were able to do that. So by definition, I don't need an answer to the question, how can we do that? To say to you with the full confidence of somebody whose heart is where your heart is, that the way to do that isn't to use exclusionary language. And I think that needs to be the starting point, because you know and I know how it feels to be excluded. You've been cancelled. Your voice has been taken by people that have wanted to silence you, and this Muslim who's been to prison for a belief in Islam that I now no longer subscribe to, but we're all products to a certain extent of our environment and experiences.
Starting point is 00:29:28 I was one of the first national broadcasters in Britain to reach out to you and say, your voice was taken away. My belief in infinite love demands that your voice is now heard on a point of principle, regardless of whether I agree with you or not. Now, that's the philosophy I approached this conversation with, which is why when antisemitism was rising in this country, regardless of whether I agree with you or not. Now, that's the philosophy I approach this conversation with, which is why when antisemitism was rising in this country, again, you will find that my voice was the one,
Starting point is 00:29:51 despite how difficult it was considering my background, that was the voice in Britain that was raised, probably among the loudest, to say, I have a covenant with my Jewish cousins, that as far as we're concerned, they must feel that their rights are life and property and family and all of that is kept sacred. And so the point I'm making is that if it holds as I believe it does and you've stated it yourself, that we have more in common than is different.
Starting point is 00:30:19 And if our only problem is how do we arrive at a common basis for that, sharing of what we have in common and celebrating it? Then it's a no-brainer, that a language we're using in the meanwhile, while we're trying to work out how to arrive there, we'll be language that brings people closer, not pushes people further apart. And that would be what I'd say to Kanye West, by the way, is what actually I have said
Starting point is 00:30:41 to people that speak like Kanye West, who have started encouraging me to speak like that. But likewise, I'd expect people like Netanyahu to abide by the very thing that he says he fears arising from other people. And that is people denying his identity, his country's identity, and their own trauma in their own history.
Starting point is 00:30:59 I have visited Yad Vashem. I have been many times with my brethren in the Jewish community, to Honour Course museums and I have cried because it's human suffering, just like I cry in the mosque when I'm asking a lot to elevate suffering in Turkey and Syria right now with the thousands and thousands who have died in the earthquake. It's human suffering. And so if it holds that that's the intention that we have, our language will not divide.
Starting point is 00:31:26 It will only try and bring people closer together. I can't sit here and claim to you. I have the answer to peace in the Middle East. That would also be incredibly arrogant. What I can say to you is that answer, whenever and however it's arrived at, one day I believe it will be arrived at. Because at the end of the day, we don't want to start engaging in self-fulfilling prophecies. If we believe peace is never possible,
Starting point is 00:31:48 we will be in perpetual war. That's how language works. We're casting spells. So if I, as I am, I believe that peace is possible because I believe in the human condition enough to sacrifice for that in terms of my own background and where I'm coming from, and to have people attack me for saying
Starting point is 00:32:05 peace is possible. Then what I expect is my interlocutor will adhere to the same language that reflects their intention. I believe you're a smart man, I believe you're understanding what I'm saying, but I believe that there are vested interests on both sides of this war because there are people that believe in the Hegelian dialect. They've subscribed to dialectical materialism. What they want is conflict create change. We know Klaus Schwab subscribes to that. He calls it build back better after a great reset.
Starting point is 00:32:31 And the way that they bring change is by encouraging division. This dialectical materialism was created by materialists and they understand that if they want to advance their interest, they need to pick groups against each other. The British Empire did it in the name of Devi'l and Conquer. But actually, it's theoretical underpinning. You're aware of Jordan is the Hagellian dialect
Starting point is 00:32:53 upon which was built the communist idea of dialectical materialism. And it's this belief that only conflict advances civilization. Now, that conflict can come in many forms. At this month's One-world government summit, which was also happened to be, I believe, hosted in one of the countries that has subscribed to the Abraham Accords,
Starting point is 00:33:12 the speakers, Klaus Schwab and the usual suspects, told us that they believe shocks to planet are what are required to bring about the great reset that they believe shocks to planet Earth are what are required to bring about the the the great reset that they are pursuing those shocks that they're talking about whether it's a cyber blackout whether it's the covid mandate period and the shocks being depriving us of our civil liberties those shocks in the form of net zero carbon targets where they want to enslave us within 15-minute zone cities
Starting point is 00:33:45 as if we're surfs. Those shocks are designed to bring about conflict and riots so that they can create change through this dialectical materialism. Now there's people that subscribe to that methodology on the Israeli side of the debate, which is hence Pfizer being a major culprit with the Israeli government in all of this. The Israeli government today has just been released, some documents name the three ingredients in those COVID mandates, but there are also people, of course, on all sides of the debate, not just the Israeli side, in Canada where you're from. Just today,
Starting point is 00:34:19 or yesterday, Kristia Friedland, the PM, has announced the result of the emergency inquiry and stated that they were right to cut everyone's money off. Now, the thing is, they're not stupid people. They know this anger's people, they know there's a risk of riots, they know there's a risk of terrorism, but that's why they're doing it. Because if you can bring about the conditions in which people can't eat because they can't buy food, and as was published in the Times newspaper of London today, they're now suggesting rationing, rationing in Britain to bring about the carbon targets, the agenda. That doesn't surprise me in the least.
Starting point is 00:34:59 I watched yesterday, someone at the WF talk about demand management on the power side. So there are bloody excuses. Well, we can't provide you with reliable power anymore, so we want centralized control over your appliances so we can shut down your use of energy when it becomes inconvenient for the system. Now, we got to understand why they're doing this, Jordan, though. They're doing it so that the conflicts increases on both sides. That's why you're noticing polarization go up everywhere,
Starting point is 00:35:26 not just on the Israeli side of the debate, on the terrorism everywhere. There's polarization because that's their method for change. We've got to be careful we're not being useful patsys for dialectical materialism by using language that continues the divide, increases the divide, rather than bring people together. The first thing I would say about all that is that I just rewatched Eisenhower's speech on the military industrial complex is 1960 on speech with my wife this week because
Starting point is 00:35:56 I was curious once again what had motivated someone who was so well versed in the machinations of the behind thethe-scenes military industrial enterprise to put forward that warning 60 years ago. And it's certainly the case that that situation hasn't improved. And it is definitely the case that as you point out, there are vested interests promoting conflict everywhere on both sides of every conflict. I mean, we're certainly seeing that play out on the Russia Ukraine front at the moment. And that this is a good moment. Who are they? Who are they?
Starting point is 00:36:32 That's the question. Okay, well, okay. Now, I think it's the wrong question, Mausit. And here's why I think that. So, well, there's this idea that is deeply rooted in Christian traditional thought of the idea of principalities. And a principality, I'm going to think about it psychologically instead of religiously. So what we're in at the moment is a war of idea networks. And an idea network has an animating essence. So you see that reflected in the use of terms
Starting point is 00:37:13 such as zeitgeist, the spirit of the times. And you see that the animating nature of a set of ideas, when you look at photographs from different decades, you see how styles move and shift everybody across the decades. And that becomes very evident as you move away from the decades. I mean, people in the 60s didn't think they looked like people in the 60s, but you could sure tell now that they did. And that's partly because we're all imitating each other all the time and we're all striving
Starting point is 00:37:46 for consensus and we're all possessed by webs of ideas that happen to be over on during the time and place that we happen to be born. And we have a rat's nest of postmodern slash neo-Marxist ideas operating behind the scenes at the moment that is rooted in, it's rooted in a corrupt enlightenment, and it's rooted beyond that in an envious spirit of cane-like vengefulness that's ancient. And that system of ideas tends to act like a conspiracy. And so imagine that there's a, so with one of my graduate students just before I got canceled as a professor,
Starting point is 00:38:31 we undertook a formal statistical evaluation of the universe of politically correct ideas. Okay, so here were the questions we were trying to answer. The first question was, was there a coherent set of ideas that could be identified as politically correct? And the way you assess that is you gather a tremendous number of questions about political opinion as diverse arranges you can manage, gather them everywhere. And then you give those to thousands of thousands of people and find out their opinions.
Starting point is 00:39:09 And then you conduct a statistical analysis and you see if people answer question A in a particular direction, what other questions are they likely to answer in the same direction? And are there correlations between those, does that constitute a correlation pattern across many, many people? So the question is, what ideas hang together as a set?
Starting point is 00:39:36 And we found there were two domains of ideas that hung together as sets on the clearly politically correct side. And one was a kind of inclusive compassionate liberalism, and the other was something more like an authoritarian political correctness. So imagine you took the liberal compassion, inclusive domain of ideas, and you allied that with willingness to use compulsion and force. Okay, so that set of ideas, clearly two of them hung together, and those two sets were correlated.
Starting point is 00:40:11 So the notion that there is a web of ideas that are part of this dialectical materialism that you described, or that would be a subset of it, that's clearly the case. Now, we also looked at what predicted that. So let's say there is that system of ideas, who's most likely to be possessed by it? And the answer was, well, the first, the biggest predictor was low verbal intelligence. And it's partly because at the core of that idea is set is a very simple proposition, which is that you can understand all of human
Starting point is 00:40:46 social and psychological dynamics merely by referring to the principle of power and oppression. And so it's a radical simplification, and that turns out to be attractive to people who aren't very verbally sophisticated. Okay, the next predictor was being female. The next predictors were having a feminine temperament, and the final next predictor was being female. The next predictors were having a feminine temperament, and the final major predictor was having every or taken a course that was overtly propagandistic on the politically correct side. And so, that was all very worrisome, as you might imagine. But here's the reason I'm telling you all this is that we're seeing a situation where it looks like there are conspiracies at work.
Starting point is 00:41:29 And sometimes there are. But what's actually happening is that people are possessed to a greater or lesser degree by this web of ideas. They reflect that in their own perception and action as individuals, but then when they get together as groups, like imagine that a given person is 25% possessed by the politically correct web of ideas. But then you get 100 people like that in a room, let's say at Davos, and then you have the whole web of ideas, and it has an animating ethos, like it's looks at the world in a certain way and is aiming at certain ends. And then that entire system of ideas works to promote that. And it can do that.
Starting point is 00:42:11 And writes books promoting it. And writes books promoting it. Yes, it's just promoting it. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, and it also means that it can operate in a distributed manner because to the degree that any given person is possessed by some fraction of those ideas, they'll go off into their own domain and agitate on
Starting point is 00:42:32 behalf of the idea system, and that's a principality. And that will act to further the entire catastrophe. And really, the entire idea system in its most fundamental element is an it's an idol, it's a false idol, it's a false religion. So can I say I agree with everything you've just described. I think it's a beautiful way of describing what I was alluding to. I don't think there's one mastermind stroking a cat sitting behind a bit like Danger Mouse, which was a very famous British cartoon that I used to watch as a child, and it had this carat called Baron Greenback, and used to stroke the white cat. And laugh and cackle as Danger Mouse and Penfold, his sidekick, bespectacled sidekick, called
Starting point is 00:43:19 Penfold, who blessed him happened to be quite short and boarding with Spectacled. I think the whole point was that they want to outshine Danger Mouse and Danger Mouse's presence who bless him happen to be quite short and boarding with Spectacos. I think the whole point was that they want to outshine Danger Mouse and Danger Mouse's presence. But I don't think there's some barren greenback figure stroking a cat, because I've met enough of the front line candidates for those who fancy themselves as barren greenback figures, and I don't respect their abilities to pull off such a feat having looked at them in the eyes and... Right, well, that's the other...
Starting point is 00:43:46 Well, exactly. Yes, exactly. That's the other problem with the conspiratorial theories, isn't it? Yeah, so I agree with your description of it. Where I would perhaps push you a bit to go a bit more into this description, perhaps our per layer, if I may, Jordan, is to say that it struck me as describing the reality from one end of a dualist perspective. And I need to elaborate that. I need to unpack
Starting point is 00:44:17 that to really explain what I mean. That happens what you describe. The reason people engaging in dialectical materialism are seeking to do this and utilize, or sort of weaponize political ideas for the purposes of bringing change, to exploit conflict for a direction of travel, which is what dialectical materialism essentially boils down to the exploitation of conflict for a direction of travel. They would call that direction progressive.
Starting point is 00:44:44 The reason they're doing that is because they are very upset with the status quo and they believe that the status quo has not even failed us but is actively harming us. Now the problem I have with what you said isn't what you said. Again, I emphasize I agree with everything you said.'t what you said. Again, I emphasize I agree with everything you said I just believe you described half the picture The other half of the picture is everything you said is also being done by those to whom it's being done too in other words those engaging in woke political activism
Starting point is 00:45:21 Canceling their reacting to the way in which the machine, the state, has such a power, had you many over them, that it also, by the way, believes that the ends justify the means. Let's not pretend that when the state in Canada shuts off people's money, that it doesn't believe the ends justify the means. And the problem here we've got is that we've got people resisting to resisting the status quo, opposing it with something just as absurd because the vision they want to get to equality, not equity, results in tyranny. But what they're opposing also
Starting point is 00:46:00 has an element of the absurd in it because we saw some of that with the unbridled corporatism that is on display through the big pharmaceutical companies and the way in which they prepare to kill human beings for profit. Now, now the problem here, that's why I said, what you've described in my view is a critique of half of the problem. And if we consume out here and understand that this whole thing is caught in the entire things caught in problem reaction solution, right? And if we understand then that the problem here isn't the proton or the neutron, but actually both of them recognizing they're part of an atom, you know? And if they understand they're part of an atom, if they understand their parts of an atom, if they understand their part of one whole, then perhaps they won't approach the world's problems
Starting point is 00:46:50 through a subject object lens and othering, through a perspective of my grievance, my pain, my victimization is valid and yours is invalid because you're the one doing it to me. That subject object, It's separation. And I believe that separation is at the root cause of all of this. If we could understand that in fact, we were all in our own ways, one part of an indivisible whole, the there is no single center in a sphere, for example, every point on a sphere is its center. And yet
Starting point is 00:47:24 it's still a point, right? If we look at the world in a different way for example, every point on a sphere is its center. And yet, it's still a point, right? If we look at the world in a different way, I think that we could escape this trap because the problem I've got isn't just with the woke people, Jordan. And I'm very happy with your work on that front. And I think that more so than most other people I can think of, if not all other people I can think of, your interviews on that front have been game-changing.
Starting point is 00:47:43 And I congratulate you for that. But my problem is a lot deeper than that. My problem is, when I'm calling the machine, it demonstrated its power. Now, COVID mandates and the imposition of mandatory injections against a population and being told that we would lose our jobs, for example, we would remain
Starting point is 00:48:05 locked in our homes unless we consented. That's not a woke thing to do in the caricature of the sense of the woke idea that we have in our heads. That's a put it to put it candidly for you. That is at the state flexing its muscles and demonstrating that it can do what it wants because it's been captured, that the second part is my analysis of it because it's been captured by corporate interests. And in this case, they are big pharmaceutical corporate interests. So we've got, I think we need to understand that they're also engaging in subject object. They're also engaging in other rising. And I think that's where the problem begins.
Starting point is 00:48:49 And therefore, of course, the solution isn't political. The solution isn't in any way short-term. This is a long-term solution to heal what I believe has become a global problem of human beings living in a state of permanent psychosis or separation from the life source, separation from being connected, infinite love, an externalization of the other.
Starting point is 00:49:18 And that's happening across the board, which is why we're seeing polarization. I can't think of a time in my lifetime, and I'm younger than you. I accept that I've seen a polarization this severe around the world. And that's because everyone is the victim. And everyone else is their oppressor.
Starting point is 00:49:36 OK, so let me take that apart in two different ways. All right, so I would say the most sophisticated metaphysical solution to that problem of externalized oppressor narrative is it's the spiritualization of that. So let me walk through that very carefully and you tell me what you think about it. So there's this idea, it's very difficult to know where to start this.
Starting point is 00:50:12 So there's this idea that's laid out in the story of Genesis, in the story of Adam and Eve, that the garden that human beings inhabit is permanently co-inhabited by a serpent. And that serpent is the eternal predator of mankind. You can look at it biologically, and you can look at it, for example, as reflecting the fact that mammals and reptiles
Starting point is 00:50:37 have been in conflict for 60 million years. And you can look at it as a reflection of the fact that snakes themselves have been the enemies of us and our tree dwelling ancestors since time immemorial. And you can look at it as a reflection of the fact that human beings are subject to the ravages of predation. And that's particularly true of infants. And so part of our mammalian heritage, as well as our spiritual heritage, is the fact that we can be prey animals and that we always have to contend with that. Now, the question emerges from that, and this is a very deep metaphysical question, what is the essence of what's predatory,
Starting point is 00:51:20 and then what is the best response to the fact of that essence? And so what happens in the corpus of Christian thought surrounding the story of the serpent in the book of Genesis is that the serpent there becomes assimilated to the figure of Lucifer and Mephistopheles, to the figure of Satan. And Satan, this is Milton's take in particular, Satan is identified with the serpent. And now what that means is that the image of Satan symbolically is put forward as the most apt representative of the predator.
Starting point is 00:52:01 And so here's how it might go psychologically in terms of depth of insight. So you want to protect your children from actual natural predators. And you can throw snakes into that category and wolves and just the natural, the animals that would pose a predatory danger. But then that isn't the only predator. And it's not predator as such. It's a specific predator, a snake or a bear or a wolf. It's not the concept of predator or predation as such.
Starting point is 00:52:35 And then you might think, well, you need a more global and coherent representation of predator. And that's what a dragon is. A dragon is a meta predator. It's a cat, it's a snake, it's fire, it's a predatory bird, it's all entangled into one image, and that's the image of the predator. And the great mythological stories
Starting point is 00:53:00 of the hero confronting the dragon is the human being taking a stance against the predator. But the greatest dragon isn't merely a dragon. It's something metaphysical. And so what does that mean? Well, if you're a mother and you're protecting children, your children from snakes and then from predators and then from dragons, you're also protecting them against the evil in your own house and the evil in your neighbor's heart and the evil within the breast of your own children.
Starting point is 00:53:35 And that starts to become something increasingly metaphysical. And the final transmutation of that idea is that the most profound battle against the predator is the battle that's undertaken within. So you say, well, we shouldn't other and exclude, we shouldn't other people and we shouldn't exclude them. We shouldn't look for a convenient place to put Satan. That's the danger that René Girard has pointed to with regards to the idea of scapegoating is we wanna offload the moral burden onto those we regard as essentially demonic in their motivation.
Starting point is 00:54:13 We wanna be on the side of the good by offloading that. We wanna do that without doing any of the work. And that's part of the motivation for using exclusionary language. When the proper attitude is to take on the apocalyptic nightmare of separating the wheat from the chaff inside our own spirits and to clean ourselves,
Starting point is 00:54:32 so to speak, so that we're no longer unwitting agents possessed by that predatory spirit. And that makes it into a psychological process rather than something we have to act out in the world. And my sense at the moment is that we're all making that decision. We're either going to undertake this looming transformation as a psychological enterprise or we're going to play it out as fate in the world. That was Jung's diagnosis, by the way, at the end of the Second World War.
Starting point is 00:55:04 And so your attempts right now to engage with me to say, well, let's not use exclusionary language and dump all the moral culpability onto someone else, the Palestinians, for example, because we're just playing into the hands of those that are engaging in this conspiratorial possession. I think that's all true. It's murky and it's difficult to straighten out, but it's true. One more thing, and then one more thing
Starting point is 00:55:30 on one of the points you made. So you talked about the use of fascist collusion to further what looks like something even more extensive than the woke agenda. I also agree with that, and this is where my thinking, I would say, tilts more towards the classical left, is that the left has always been good at pointing out the dangers of corporate gigantism.
Starting point is 00:55:52 But what we're seeing now is an emergence of gigantism that's not merely corporate. It's corporate, governmental, and media all coming together at the utmost levels of the power hierarchy, all devoted towards something like the imposition of stricter and the use of compulsion and force to produce something like this revolutionary change that you've been alluding to, mostly motivated at least hypothetically by the stated desire to save the virginal planet from being ravaged at the hands of the industrial nightmare. And so that's all going on behind the scenes at the same time. Yeah, well, they're all unfortunately, Jordan, they're all dancing to the same tune. On all sides of this debate, and this why I say it essentially comes down to
Starting point is 00:56:44 this subject object problem or dilemma because you've got valid critiques on both sides. I'm not too offended by the communist critique of capitalism and I'm not too offended by the capitalist critique of communism. My problem is when the communist say we've got the solution and you're going to have to follow it. Or when unchecked corporatism says, everything's for sale, everything's a product and you and you shouldn't regulate. And, you know, to the extent where these days, as you know Jordan, if you've been following, even traffic children are for sale. So I think the problem is that there is legitimate critique on both sides of the other. But because there's a subject object problem, the solution each side is proposing is other rising
Starting point is 00:57:27 of the people that they are, they see as their adversaries. And that's the classic dilemma. Let's put it, whether it's the political compass you're gonna use or the political horseshoe, even the symbolism of the cross is this. You're left on the right and the up and the down, but that makes the whole.
Starting point is 00:57:43 We've got to have a way to look at the world by first looking ourselves in a holistic way. So if we can step back from subject to object and the problem really began with the, I think, with the advent of writing, where this shift in psychology began occurring, the Kali Uga period in India, for example, I am an Arabic linguist. I come with a particular love in my heart for the oral tradition of the classical Arabic language, l'hukat al-Arabia de l-Fusha, which is the closest language surviving today that has a continuous heritage
Starting point is 00:58:16 because he grew from the Aramaic family of languages had to be revived. But the closest living language to Yeshua's Aramaic is Quranic Arabic. And perhaps Amharic as well, you could argue as well there, but I think that this is why I reflect on this subject object issue a lot because that was a the Bedouin culture was a very oral tradition. And when you put, what happens is when you put words into letters on a page, I think you engage then in the kind of inversion that leads to the subject object authorization. Because those words that we, I say are spells, those words that we use, they had a context in which they were allocated to the thing they were used
Starting point is 00:59:08 to describe or the verb, the action that was said to be done. They had that context there. The minute we put them down on paper and then memorise them and allow the analytical mind to process their meanings, whether we like it or not, it's impossible to ever rediscover the experience that was there in the oral tradition for how the words were used in their proper context. Now, there's loads of examples for this, but I'll give you one example. In Arabic, often the word Haram is translated to mean prohibited. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Starting point is 00:59:41 And I'm by the way, as you would know know again from my own history, I include Muslim common, everyday Muslim translations of the word. I'm not here to say this is an orientalist problem. But because translations here in the way I'm using them is psychological translations, not which particular language you choose to translate this into. It could even be modern usage of Arabic by arrows,
Starting point is 01:00:05 but psychologically they're translating it wrong. It doesn't mean prohibited. Haram actually means sacred. If you go to Makkah and you see the black house of Allah there, that's called Masjid al Haram, the sacred house. It's the same word, Haramah, Haram, right? Why I raised that example is because what is the so-called prohibited?
Starting point is 01:00:24 If you shift into an oral tradition, there was nothing prohibited in that sense. What was prohibited about it was the context around which it occurred. So, sex outside of a sacred partnership, and I use that word again on purpose, and not the word marriage, just to drive home the point I'm trying to make here, sex outside of a sacred partnership is the very same act, but in one context it's sacred, i.e. harama, sacred, in the other context is haram, profane. And that's why the sacred and the profane are simply the silver and dark side of a mirror. The meaning of the word changes only because of its context, And again,
Starting point is 01:01:05 marriage to continue that example, why I said sacred partnership and not the word marriage is because the word in Arabic is zolja for your life partner, your sacred partner. Zolja means pear. It doesn't mean wife and it doesn't mean subservient. It means pear in Arabic. Yeah, you're pairing. So what we have is an aqda zawaj, aqt, which again commonly mis-translated as the contract of marriage, means aqda zawaj means the tying of a pear.
Starting point is 01:01:34 Aqt comes from the word not. Now that word not aqda, which today is again mis-translated to mean contract, which takes all the spirit and love out of that. Which is why you have these pre-nuptial agreements as well. Arq actually means tie to tie and not. So the aqda zawaj, the tying of a pair, they don't have to be married,
Starting point is 01:01:53 they have to be in a sacred relationship. That knot that you're tying there happens to be the word for again, commonly mistranslated to doctrine. Aqida is from the same root there, Aakida, which means again, to have a not with Allah. So you see how the context around those words are fundamentally different.
Starting point is 01:02:14 We've lost that context because we've lost that oral tradition, which is why you and I agree that traditionalism can go a long way to restoring and healing those wounds that the overly analytical mind has inflicted upon itself by what we lost when we lost the oral tradition. Why is all of that relevant? And forgive me for the long anecdote, linguistic anecdote or hermeneutic anecdote. Why all of that in my view is relevant?
Starting point is 01:02:41 It's because it comes back to the problem we're speaking of. Once we take words out of their context and put them on paper, and I'm no luddite, so I'm not saying the written word should never have been invented. The prophet Muhammad, me, blessings be upon him, didn't write the Quran down, it was never written down during his life, so I'm it was actually collected on stones and leaves, and it was the third caliph, Othman, who collected it in one book, which is why today it's called Mushafah, Othman. The one that you know and that everyone sees as the Quran is called Mushafah, Othman. That was only brought about and collected during the third caliph, during the caliphate of
Starting point is 01:03:17 or the successorship. Again, a word very mis-translated. Caliph means successor to our lionish messenger. That's all it means in the temporal sense because Noah can succeed him in the prophethood. So that successor, I will buck her and then after him I will not. They did not collate the Quran for the very same reason. Instead it was memorized in the hearts because people didn't want to lose the context of the words around them. That tradition by the way of memorizing as you know carries on till today, I've memorized half of it myself, though I am a bit rusty. But it was the third calif that then put that... So I'm not against putting things down in writing.
Starting point is 01:03:52 What I'm saying is we've got to be cognizant of what we lose when we do that, so that we can try and maintain the connection that we lose when we do that. And it's that connection or the knot that I'm saying has been lost today, and you with your advocacy for a deeper appreciation of traditional mythologies and wisdom, I think hopefully would understand when I say that connection we've lost. So if we can strengthen that connection, presuppet object, recognize that we're all a point on a sphere. In other words, we're all part of an indivisible whole. Then the other ring is declined. Of course, it's always a struggle
Starting point is 01:04:29 because that connection can be weak sometimes, but that's why you engage in spiritual practice to strengthen it. And whatever way that is, personally, my teacher is Sheikh Ali Al-Kadri. I'm of the Sufi way. But the Sufi way, by definition, was say, that listen, I'm not going to say,
Starting point is 01:04:44 you have to follow me. this is like the Sharia. It means the path to water in the desert. You go to water for life and then you carry on traveling. That's all Sharia means by the way, the path to water. So if we can understand what we've lost when, when we put words down in writing is we lost the relational aspect of the technology, writing was technology, writing was technology, yeah. Why all of that is relevant, I believe, is today, as I mentioned when my conversation a year ago with Joe,
Starting point is 01:05:12 Rogan, today the version of writing, writing today is big tech, is social media. It's taking us to that next stage of separation in the name of togetherness, in the name of community, is actually pulling us apart. And as you see with your own concerns on anonymity on Twitter, it's psychologically allowing people to abuse others
Starting point is 01:05:33 and speak to them in another rising tone, which is precisely what your concern was with anonymous people on Twitter. So I don't think, by the way, the solution is anonymity, but that's another topic, you know? Yeah, well, there's something there that you're pointing to. I'm going to go in a couple of directions on this. You're pointing to the dangers of, what would you say? It's a formalized abstraction. I mean, as we build conceptual systems that are linguistic, they get more and more distant from
Starting point is 01:06:04 the embodied experience. That's that contextualized embodied experience that you were referring to. And they lose their connection with what's most real. And we could define what's most real as the domain of the sacred. I'm going to give you an analogy. This is something extraordinarily interesting. As you had a couple of months ago, there was a paper published in the journal Nature about the nature of genetic mutation. Okay, so it's been thought for a long time that genetic mutations are essentially random. And the reason for that is that
Starting point is 01:06:40 the molecular structure, the atomic structure of a given strand of DNA can be detrimentally affected by all sorts of environmental assaults, including radiation, cosmic radiation, or knock pieces of the genetic code out, and that produces a mutation. There's other ways that can happen. And then those mutations are part of what produces natural variation, and natural selection draws on that natural variation to further evolution. But the idea was that the mutations were random and they have to be in some sense because cosmic rays don't care what part of the DNA chain they affect. But it's been recently
Starting point is 01:07:19 discovered that although the mutations themselves may be random, the repair process isn't. And so DNA, when it replicates, it error corrects. And if there are parts of the DNA strand that have been damaged and are no longer viable, they will be corrected. But there's a hierarchy of correction. And so the more fundamental DNA code is to the basic necessary morphology of the organism,
Starting point is 01:07:50 the higher the probability that the error correction will be 100%. And so what happens is that evolution tinkers on the fringes and not at the core. And the core in this hierarchy of DNA importance is analogous to the sacred. So you imagine in a conceptual structure there are some presuppositions that are, that many other presuppositions depend upon. They're fundamental. And those fundamental presuppositions are sacred. And
Starting point is 01:08:26 the reason it's forbidden to mess with them is it's like touching the arc of the covenant, is if you touch what's properly sacred with a profane hand, you'll be struck dead. And that's the truth. Now, the question is, what's validly sacred. Now, the enlightenment types would say, everything's equally up for grabs, but they don't even abide by that principle in their own investigations, because for example, someone like Richard Dawkins holds it as holy, the notion that the truth will set you free
Starting point is 01:08:59 and that the cosmos has a logos whose investigation will enlighten and further our struggle forward. And those are sacred religious presuppositions that underlie the practice of science, just like they underlie the practice of any religious tradition. There is a hierarchy of presumption, and the presumptions at the deepest level are the sacred presumptions at the deepest level are the sacred presumptions. Now you talked about marriage and the ability of a sacred bond to render sex sacred instead of profane. And I think that is one of the sacred realizations of mankind that the sexual act has to be sanctified,
Starting point is 01:09:42 has to be placed in a domain of fundamental relationship before it can act as anything other than a destructive impulse of hedonistic force. And I think that that's as true as anything is true. Now, part of what's ripping us apart on the international landscape and psychologically at the moment is that it's very difficult for us, number one, to agree that there are such things as sacred propositions, and second, to agree on what those are. And this is part of what's also making it difficult for the Islamic Christian and Jewish faiths to come together. So one example of that, for example, would be continued debate about the centrality of the figure of Christ. And so perhaps we can delve into that to some degree, but I'd love to.
Starting point is 01:10:31 That elucidates the landscape that we're dealing with in a little bit of detail. May I say on your first challenge, what is, sorry, is there a sacred, as opposed to what is it? I think there is a way, a gentle way forward on that one. And actually that would help even if we could like the other point about language I was trying to make that if we can at least agree that our language shouldn't be exclusionary, we at least have a way to try and have a conversation. And I think likewise, if we can at least agree that there should be, that there is a sacred, then the
Starting point is 01:11:06 next level challenges what is that sacred. And I think there is a way forward here, because back to the relationship is in words and their context, and why I believe when you put words down again, I'm not a law diet. And again, so in today's context, why this is relevant, again, just for everyone, and I know you're following me Jordan But why this is relevant for everyone is the equivalent of inventing writing today is you know social media big tech and it's a new invention That's forcing us to cognitively evolve in a certain way and that's what we're seeing all these challenges It's like the 30 years war. I made this point with Rogan a year ago So I think there is a way forward to say that there should be a secret and why that is is back to the invention of writing to serve as the case study for, or as a symbol for today's big tech, and its impact on us and its consequences we're
Starting point is 01:11:53 having to live with. When they put writing down, what it did is it made us believe our future is ahead of us and our past is behind us. When in truth our future is behind us and our past is ahead of us and our past is behind us. When in truth our future is behind us and our past is ahead of us and I need to unpack that. When you write history down in a book, you're going in chronology, in chronological order because that's the inherent capabilities that we have and how we write and where, whether in Arabic from right to left, in Hebrew from right to left, in our make-family languages, or from left to right in English,
Starting point is 01:12:30 you're writing in a certain timeline. It's his story, right? It's the story of the author. And they cannot but either write from their perspective, or from the perspective of the king they serve, or from their perspective being a culmination of the efforts to gather the people's perspectives, but it will still always be their perspective on the people's perspective of what happened in history. So we cannot help try and write in a chronological order. Now, what that leads to is another illusion that our past is behind us
Starting point is 01:13:04 and our future is ahead of us. The written word psychologically does that to us, I believe. The truth is, why is our past ahead of us and our future behind us? Because actually, if you look at it, if you look at it from the oral tradition, if you look at it from the Aramaic family of languages, Bedouins, people that lived for that connection,
Starting point is 01:13:26 they were all about survival of their genes. You brought up DNA. It was about survival, their family. If they lost a child in that context, I mean, that means more than losing a child today if you get my drift because it meant cutting off of their entire ability to exist. That child could have well have been the one
Starting point is 01:13:45 that continued the future of that tribe. Your child is therefore your future, even though it comes after you, which is what I meant by the past is ahead of us. Your child is your future. The things you leave behind are the future. The things you've done, you know, it doesn't matter. What matters is if you build it for your future, which is the thing you left behind are
Starting point is 01:14:12 your children. If we understand it like that, and that comes from the better-wing collective kind of, and when I say collective, I don't mean in a communist, Soviet sense. I hope you understand. I mean in the every every point on a sphere is the center of the sphere and yet it's still a point. Yeah. When you understand it in that context, you understand that sacred if it were to mean anything at all would be to be doing actions as an individual and as a community that don't harm that child. What we've come to today, because of the way in which psychologically we have
Starting point is 01:14:46 inverted, everything's up for sale. Again, back to subject object, the minute we separate from that connection, the minute we cause that separation, which in metaphysical terms would be, or let's call them in, let's say, you know, in, in Sufi terms that's without, as opposed to with, yeah? So the minute we are la ilaha, or that there is no idol, rather than ill Allah except the one indivisible whole of infinite, love, infinite power, 99 names,
Starting point is 01:15:15 whichever attribute we choose, they're all serving the same purpose. The minute we cause that disassociative state, the psychosis, the separation from that source, we are in subject object. When you're in subject object, everything is for sale. When everything's for sale, there is no reason not to include children, and that's where we find ourselves today. Now, whether it's the trafficking I raised earlier, which by the way, it's not just, I mean,
Starting point is 01:15:41 it's everywhere. The reason I always say it's not just because it's also in key of the war that we are so arrogantly supporting. So the problem is it's not just the trafficking. As you know, Jordan, with the decision that underage pre-pubescent children have the right to consent to their genital mutilation without parental involvement, at all, again, is a profane stance to take. It is unforgivable. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:16:12 And but that demonstrates the subject to object problem. We have commodified everything. And that can only, that's only possible because of separation. And I've come to these conclusions, Jordan, not, I don't, don't get me wrong. This is the evolution of my own thinking on this because it would begin with the Wigar genocide. I was pre-cancellation on LBC. The Wigar situation shocked me to my core.
Starting point is 01:16:37 And I saw a coming technology and how it can enslave and entire people. And then when COVID hit, I had already, because I don't know if you were followed any of it, and forgive me again, this is not supposed in any way. But I did a four day hunger strike for the Weigh-Armor Slims, complaining of the Chinese Communist Party's treatment of their and disrespect of their heritage. They could have been Tibetan Buddhists.
Starting point is 01:16:59 They could have been Chinese Christians. And in many campaigns I've involved in, they have been for every, not just Muslims, right? That's why I'm making that point. But it shocked me to my core because I saw a coming technology in what's possible, where the end result of the direction of travel that certain people through their dialectical materialism would like to take us to. And that's what I call the technocratic tyranny. Yeah. So then when COVID by the time COVID came, I had already been shocked to a point where I left my work. I was on a live show and
Starting point is 01:17:30 I went on a four-day silent hunger strike, risking being cancelled at that point, but thankfully, that isn't what got me cancelled. But by the time COVID came, I was already primed. And my own experiences had started on a new journey, post, not just from post-prison, but post even everything I've done in the last 10 years, that evolution had to carry on, because I had to look at myself and see what things have I participated in
Starting point is 01:17:59 in my own last 10 years of campaigning that could have perhaps helped that technocratic train along its tracks whether on Whittingly or not. And I realized, for example, I've said things like, you know, these nations are undemocratic. They don't have democracy inherent to their cultural traditions, which is probably true. And I say these in referring any non-democratic nation, not singling anyone out here, probably true that they didn't have it. But then I realized that during COVID, if the very people that were peddling this myth, that we are in charge of
Starting point is 01:18:36 our own destiny, those very people locked a roughly 70% of the world into their homes until they consented to a forced injection. Those very same people could turn off your money supply, just because you were protesting out on the streets of Ottawa. And I realize we've noticed that. Yeah, indeed. So I realized, I... So I would have Canadians think that's a good idea, by the way. Crazy, right? But I realized I had been unw Canadians think that's a good idea, by the way. Crazy, right? But I realized I had been unwittingly participating in the problem. It's why I'm explaining it in this way to say,
Starting point is 01:19:10 I've also been on a journey in that way, to realize that I had been participating in a problem because my belief up until that point was that there were certain countries in the world that were under tyranny and that others that were free. And the truth is, there are certain countries in the world that are under the illusion of freedom and the rest of the world is under tyranny.
Starting point is 01:19:33 And the illusion of freedom is still okay, comfortable. But you better bet that when they want to turn off your food supply, your money, your ability to trade and buy and sell a gender 2030 Jordan, have a look at it. There are idealist zero meat consumption consumption. I know, I know. No cars. So I realize that I had become an unwitting tool
Starting point is 01:19:58 for advocating for certain civilizational values that I still hold dear to. And by the way, I have sacrificed for and the people I thought that were my allies in advocating for those values are actually my enemy. But enemy, I don't mean in a war like said, so I mean intellectually. My adversary to be polite about the situation, they don't subscribe to these values whatsoever. And so then I realized what was wrong in me, to be unable to see that. And I realized that I had also fallen prey to this problem.
Starting point is 01:20:29 I was describing one half of the dualism I referred to earlier. I was in the yin and not the yang or the yang, not the yang. And not realizing that if you zoom out there, there's an entire atom. And if we understand that, we cannot but approach it with love. And you mentioned you wanted to talk about Yeshua. But this is the same. I want to comment on your circle, on your sphere metaphor. Okay, so I read a very interesting description of God once, and this is derived from Jewish thought, and I believe I encountered this
Starting point is 01:21:00 when I was reading Yilg. So the is, God is a circle whose circumference is nowhere and whose center is everywhere. And that's allied with this idea that each person is of divine worth and made in the image of God. It's the same idea, right? Is that each of us is a center. And that's a very strange thing because we tend to think of things as having a single center, but whatever the world is is complex enough so that it has a multiplicity of centers. And I do believe that to be the case, and I do believe that each of us is for better or worse at that center. I also think that center, by the way, is symbolized by the cross, because the cross is the center and the point of maximal suffering. So that's part of what that symbol means psychologically.
Starting point is 01:21:52 And so now you say that things go astray when we forget that, right? You're using the metaphor of this fear, and I think that's right. Things go astray when we lose the notion that each human being is a locus of divinity in the most fundamental sense, and that it's the moral responsibility of each person to make that divinity manifest to the degree that they're possible, and that the world is a much lesser place when people don't do that. And it's incumbent on you to take yourself apart, to see where you're failing to do that, long before you worry about whether someone else
Starting point is 01:22:30 is failing to do that. Which doesn't mean that you should lay yourself open to idiot victimization on the tyranny front, but it does mean that you shouldn't put the cart before the horse. And it is very easy to see the problem as out there in the world, which it also is, instead of it being something that has to be contended within the confines of your own heart.
Starting point is 01:22:53 And it does start, and this also ties back to our discussion about what constitutes what sacred. So in the tradition emerging, you agree with my basic proposition on that, on that note there, on the, what, that they resist sacred? Yes, absolutely, and that's absolutely. Well, in that idea that that sacrality is associated with the notion of diverse centers is metaphorically and symbolically
Starting point is 01:23:19 and historically appropriate. And then you might ask, well, what does it mean to be such a center? And I would say, and you've been stressing then you might ask, well, what does it mean to be such a center? And I would say, and you've been stressing the idea of love, for example, in this conversation. And so here's a couple of definitions of love. All right, so one would be the commitment to the commitment to the proposition
Starting point is 01:23:42 that it would be better if everything flourished. So that's the notion of life more abundant. The commitment to the proposition that it would be better if everything flourished. So that's the notion of life more abundant. That's the opposite of an anti-natalist approach. So the sacred approach that insists upon the centrality of each individual is predicated on the idea that existence itself is fundamentally good. If existence is operating according to the principles of love and according to the principles of truth,
Starting point is 01:24:09 so you see in the Genesis story, for example, God uses the divine word to create order out of chaos. And the divine word is honest, but also devoted towards love. And the idea is that words spoken in that spirit bring about the order that is good and transmute the cosmos as a consequence. And that each of us is doing that wittingly or unwittingly worse or better with every word we speak.
Starting point is 01:24:37 And that's partly why the idea of the logos, which is the divine word, is so central, particularly to Christian thought, but obviously also to Islamic and Jewish thought, because there's a tremendous stress laid on the sacriality of the word. But this is why it's because the word spoken properly produces a cosmos that's habitable, that's habitable and good. And that's the fundamental sacred principle. And I think it's just true. It's true metaphorically, traditionally.
Starting point is 01:25:09 It's true scientifically. I was true at every possible level of analysis. And then it's incumbent on people to act in accordance with that. And it's incumbent on our political and economic organizations to organize themselves in what would you say? In a manner that's commensurate with that individual's sacrality. That's also the source of our idea of individual right.
Starting point is 01:25:32 It's not state granted, which is something insisted upon by enlightenment rationalists. Precisely, and if I may, if we arrive at that, and what you've just that code is also Ibn Arabi, so in the Islamic mystical tradition, Ibn Arabi's ideas of Wahd-e-Li-Li-Wajood, or the oneness of being, is a similar approach to this. And if we can tap into that one thing we understand as, again, I agree with you, is that everyone, if everyone is sacred, what we've got a problem with is when we invent technology, we are engaging in that process of the separation. And every time a civilizational steering intervention, technological intervention,
Starting point is 01:26:17 is created, it takes us further along that path of separation because we are appropriating the divine in the thing we make. It's a reflection of the... if it's only ever, you know, where the TV is, I looked at my eye and thought, how do I copy it? Yeah. So whenever we do that, make a record of the human experience, we're separating. Now that doesn't mean again that we're Luddites, but if we acknowledge this, if we're cognizant of this behavior, then we understand that not only must we constantly nourish that connection to the source so that it guides that technological invention as it comes about. And I could apply the same, the written word, what can be said about the written word, I did say on Rogan about the printing press, and I believe, again, what I did say, that we're in that moment again now
Starting point is 01:27:07 with the advent of the Big Tech. That's the Tower of Babel problem. So what happens immediately after the flood in the Genesis narrative is the emergence of the Tower of Babel. As a, let's call it, you can think about it as an antidote to the flood. Too much chaos, what do we do? We'll build a tower of technological artifacts that stretches to the sky, and then we won't
Starting point is 01:27:35 need God, right? And so it isn't the tower, isn't the problem. It's the presumption of the tower builders and the tower inhabitants that the tower now Supplants the transcendent. That's the problem. Let's say of the communist doctrine, which is fundamentally materialistic It's like and that's why it becomes totalitarian That's its attempt to supplant what's transcendent and the consequence of that so interestingly in the Tower of Babel story is that the presumptuous technocrats and bureaucrats and perhaps scientists and technologists build the Tower of Babel as an alternative
Starting point is 01:28:11 to the proper divine, what would you call it, Leanna between heaven and earth, and then it takes on this nightmare-ish quality and the end consequence of that, Mausier, is that no one can speak to each other anymore, is that the most fundamental elements of communication become fragmented to the point where no communication is possible, because everything truly sacred that would ground communication has now been dispensed with. And then we're in the situation where we ask,
Starting point is 01:28:39 well, what is a woman, for example? So you know exactly what you've just said there is exactly what I've been trying to say as well. So we're on the same page on all of this. And so extending that technology, if we're not constantly nourishing that connection to the source, in other words, the width rather than the width out here.
Starting point is 01:28:59 So if we're not constantly aware of this danger, and it happened with the printing press, it happened with the written word, it's now happening, we're in the moment, I believe, where Big Tech is doing that to us. It's creating that tower of Babel's division separation in the name of unity. In the name of unity,
Starting point is 01:29:14 the, we're encouraging homogenization with absurdly no foundation upon which we can ever agree upon for consensus. So great, it's a very strange situation. We're finding ourselves in that. If we understand what that does, we understand that institutions and systems have inherent within them,
Starting point is 01:29:35 the tendency to create and further that separation and disconnect or psychosis or disassociative experience. Institutions and systems do that by definition, which is why the worst example of it is the communist state. But if we understand that, then we understand another thing, another great insight, I believe.
Starting point is 01:29:53 And that is that the void that is created by the invention of this tech which leads to becoming incorporated in systems and institutions, the void that is created between the dot on the sphere and the sphere itself. In other words, in recognizing that indivisible whole while also recognizing that we're each a point. We're a wavelength, we're a particle. So that gap between being a wavelength and a particle, being a dot on the sphere and being the sphere itself, the institutions are the thing that are widening that gap systems are, I call it the machine.
Starting point is 01:30:25 This is why Yeshua is important, because Yeshua comes with love, and one thing we have in common by the way is the understanding of the abiding importance of Yeshua and Yeshua's return. Why? Because symbolically, what does that mean? The void and by we, by the system. Muslims and Christians, Yes, yes, yes. Here I'm talking to you in the singular here, the we hears you.
Starting point is 01:30:48 Yeah, but metaphorically, of course, what it means for the broader conversation is that void that is created there when we have systems adopting new tech and the separation that creates between the human and the machine, that void has to be filled with love. It's the only way we can go forward. And this is the sacred version of it, as opposed to the profane version of it. But if we take out that love, if we take out the sacred connection, you will end up with the profane.
Starting point is 01:31:14 You will end up with this technocratic theory, where in it we start coming. It's already above us, it's over us. And the sensible human dignity, respect for the individual's choices, the sacredness of the individual is being erased. Yeah, and that's what the COVID-19 period demonstrated. It's what the 15-minute cities are demonstrating.
Starting point is 01:31:35 Oxford in the United Kingdom, the famous Oxford city has already passed this, the only to my knowledge, the only city in the world, that actually proposed it as a council, and then decided to backtrack and then promise they would never enforce it, was ironically the town ours, it's a city now, it's a town then, the town I was born in, south end on CNSX, which recently announced it would permanently no longer consider adopting this 15-minute city.
Starting point is 01:32:00 Oh, good. Other than the city of south end in Essex, all other cities are adopting this. And so we're seeing the encroachment of this technocratic tyranny because I believe we have this separation is going to become exacerbated unless we remember our connection to the source. And in that vein, it's again why I believe that otherizing language in this moment we're in is so, we have to be so careful about it because it's ready to blow, across the world, right?
Starting point is 01:32:29 You look at Modi in India, you look at Netanyahu in Israel, you look at the COVID mandates in the West, you look at Hamas, you look at the whole world is ready to blow the polarisation has got to Iran, which you and I, again, with our posts online,
Starting point is 01:32:43 you know, we interacted on the topic of Iran. The whole world is, the tectonic plates of shift into a point where some shocks are coming our way and we're out of crossroads. And the only way we're gonna get through this in a way, I believe ultimately we will get through it by the way, but I cannot but advocate or do perform the role that I believe I'm here for, which is to advocate
Starting point is 01:33:04 that we get through this in a sacred way, in a way that is not profane, in a way that protects the sanctity of the human being. But we, all of us who believe in that need allies in that task, because we're in a, I believe, as a crossroads, it's a very, very sensitive moment we're in, and I don't believe most of our colleagues appreciate the moment we're in, most of them. As the blue singers from the American South know well, you meet the devil at the crossroads. So precisely.
Starting point is 01:33:32 And this, friends of ours that we have in common that I believe have failed, they've missed this completely. Well, we keep talking all of us in the hopes that we get smarter as we do so, and we'll hope we manage that, and maybe we manage that together to some degree today. I'm, we're out of time on the YouTube front here, and that's a pretty good place to end, even though obviously we could keep talking endlessly, which is pretty much what both you and I do.
Starting point is 01:33:59 And so, I hope we get a chance to pick this up again in the not ridiculously distant future. I'm coming to the UK in April. Maybe we could meet then. I've also started an enterprise called the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship that's an attempt to provide something like an alternative to this tower of Babel Horror that seems to be descending upon us. And in any case, for everyone who's watching and listening on the YouTube platform and it's associated channels, thank you very much for your time and attention and to the
Starting point is 01:34:30 Daily Wire Plus for facilitating this conversation and setting it up technically. That's much appreciated to the film crew here in Seattle. Thanks for your time and efforts and Majid. Everyone, I'm going to continue talking to Majid for another half an hour on the Daily Wire Plus platform and we'll do something more autobiographical delving into Majid's history and the manner in which his interests and problems have made themselves manifest in his life. And so if you're interested in that, head over to the Daily Wire Plus side of things. And thank you very much, Majid. It was very good talking to you. And I think we got some distance today,
Starting point is 01:35:07 so, hooray for that. Thank you, and you're always welcome to London. Any time you come, and Tammy, as well, we've met, obviously, on many an occasion. I'm yet to meet Michaela, but you're always welcome, and our door is always open for you. And you're also always welcome to appear on any other platforms we have
Starting point is 01:35:24 at any time of your choosing and comfort whenever you are ready or not. It's up to you, but our door remains open for you. So thank you very much Jordan. Great man, appreciate the invitation. All right, well thank you all very much and ciao, Martin. Hello everyone, I would encourage you to continue listening to my conversation with my guest on dailywireplus.com. I would encourage you to continue listening to my conversation with my guest on dailywireplus.com.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.