Timcast IRL - Timcast IRL #366 - Texas School Principal SUSPENDED Over Teaching CRT, Parents Furious w/Chloe Valdary

Episode Date: September 4, 2021

Tim, Ian, and Lydia join Chloe Valdary, founder of Theory of Enchantment, the alternative to critical theory, to discuss the recent case of the Texas principal who was fired after being accused of pro...moting critical theory at the school he served, companies who panic after bringing in critical race theory trainings and turn to Theory of Enchantment to help them make real changes, the extraordinary case of Daryl Davis, who de-radicalized members of the KKK, the crucial role of wisdom traditions (commonly called religions) in society and culture, and the biggest question: What should be done with absolute power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 A high school principal in Texas has been suspended over accusations that he held, quote, extreme views on race and was pushing critical race theory. This is another example of parents being outraged over what their kids are being taught or told to do. And as I've stated now probably 50 billion times because we had Bannon on the show and he said he predicted this. We're now seeing more similar things. There's another there's a development in the Loudoun County school protests.
Starting point is 00:00:26 More parents are seeking to join a lawsuit over trans pronouns. And that just goes to show, along with mask mandates, critical race theory and critical gender theory, it's something well beyond one thing, right? You hear from conservatives all the time. It's like, oh, critical race theories in school. I'm like, well, that doesn't explain the protests over masks and the similarity between the groups of parents that are for or against these ideas. It's like an overarching culture war or tribalism. So how about we talk about all of this and talk about potential alternatives? And with that, we are being
Starting point is 00:00:57 joined by Chloe Valduri. Valduri? Yes, Valduri. I said it wrong. You want to introduce yourself? Hi, everyone. I'm Chloe. It's good to be here. I run a really dope startup called Theory of Enchantment. We teach an awesome anti-racism practice that is not critical race theory. So that's what I do for a living, and I'm happy to be here. We were having a really awesome conversation about Nazis and World War II Germany and New York and authoritarianism. And I'm just thinking, like, we should just do this on the show. It's a really good conversation.
Starting point is 00:01:30 And I think this is going to be a fantastic discussion about all of this stuff, liberty, indoctrination, school. So glad to have you. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Absolutely. Happy to be here. It's still summer. Feels like fall.
Starting point is 00:01:42 Especially in this room, guys. Yeah, I know. It feels like fall. Chloe and I are wearing our winter jackets i love it happy to be here glad to hear it and i'm really hoping now that he's mentioned that that i survive the evening because i'm not wearing my winter jacket but i think we're adjusting oh yeah i'm excited to have like a nuanced conversation about critical race theory and i really love the idea of having an alternative to that kind of stuff so i'm stoked for this evening awesome i think a lot of like there's an interesting thing where they use the phrase anti-racism all the time yeah typically referring
Starting point is 00:02:12 to like crt ideas or whatever yeah and i think most people in this country don't like racism so yeah approaching that we had we had papa john on you know papa john's place and he kept saying that he was anti-racist but it sounds like a direct reference to Ibram Kendi and very specific ideologies. And we're like, how do we navigate that? So it'll be fun. We'll jump into all this stuff. We'll talk about all that. But before we get started, my friends, go over to TimCast.com, become a member, and you'll get access to exclusive members-only segments from the TimCast IRL podcast, this one.
Starting point is 00:02:41 And you will support our journalists. We just hired another journalist. We're looking to expand we're also going on a big adventure into some haunted towns starting tomorrow we're going to be off
Starting point is 00:02:50 for Labor Day because trying to work on Labor Day is the most insane thing we've tried it before it doesn't work no joke it doesn't work
Starting point is 00:02:55 so like last year we're like no I'm not taking a day off for Labor Day and then like there's no news no one's working nobody's talking
Starting point is 00:03:02 nobody wants to come on the show and I'm like okay we're just going to we're taking Labor Day off so yeah nobody wants to come on the show and i'm like okay we're just gonna we're taking late yeah good so uh yeah we'll be going on adventure and we'll be we'll be having that in the cast castle vlog so thank you for our support don't forget to like this video subscribe to this channel share the show with your friends let's talk about this first story i find particularly interesting from just the other day cnn reports this texas high school
Starting point is 00:03:21 principal was put on administrative leave after being accused of promoting critical race theory. James Whitfield, principal of Colleyville Heritage High School in Dallas-Fort Worth, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, was placed on leave Monday, a month, after a community member at a school board meeting publicly accused him of having extreme views on race and called for him to be fired. Now, the school district says he wasn't removed due to complaints by community members. At a July 26 school board meeting, Stetson Clark, a former school board candidate, said he was concerned about the implementation of critical race theory in our district and named Whitfield as someone with extreme views on race. Because of his extreme views, I ask that a full review of Mr. Whitfield's tenure in our district be examined and that his contract be terminated effective immediately, Clark said at the meeting.
Starting point is 00:04:09 Clark said a friend shared a letter that Whitfield sent to parents and students last year, which claims, I'm sorry, which Clark claims showed the principal promotes a conspiracy theory of systemic racism. The controversy at the high school and around Whitfield comes as a number of parents and community members across the state have urged that critical race theory not be taught in schools. So this is interesting. We have freedom issues and we have culture war, you know?
Starting point is 00:04:36 You've got a large group of people in this country who want to teach these things to kids. I want to get semantic for a minute. Oh, here we go. Yeah, yeah. Teaching critical race theory. What does that mean? Does that mean that they are we go. Yeah, yeah. Teaching critical race theory. What does that mean?
Starting point is 00:04:45 Does that mean that they are teaching it like the philosophy of the critical race theory, like a philosophy of communism course where they're teaching this is the philosophy? Or are they critically race theory teaching students about whiteness and things as part of the math class? Is it part of the indoctrination of the teachings?'s my question what's the difference yeah this description sounds very he said she said so i don't know what to think about this story right and especially when they're even saying the school like he wasn't removed because of the complaints yeah oh but but i to go back to what you said real quick and you can well you can agree or disagree like i'd love to hear your thoughts on this i think there's actually three different views over what it means to teach critical race theory.
Starting point is 00:05:29 And depending on the politics of the individual involved and what they're trying to achieve, they'll adhere to one of them. So you have teaching critical race theory, which is the left always jumps on this one and says no one is reading Derrick Bell and Kimberly Crenshaw to children. This is not happening. Critical race theory is not a book on these schools no one talked about it conservatives aren't making that point they're making the point more about critical race applied principles which is uh the next two there is the implementation of the principles meaning they take action in the schools that are rooted in critical race theory and this idea of inequities and Marxist ideology. So they're actually applying the teachings of critical race theory to the kids and having the kids exist in this environment. And then there's teaching critical race.
Starting point is 00:06:15 So that would be critical race praxis, I would say. And then you have the teaching of critical race theory through surreptitious means, whereas in the math questions, they have injected theories of critical race theories, but it's not a quote, right? Yeah, exactly. Like, assuming that white people have, or whiteness is a problem, how would you get from point A to point B?
Starting point is 00:06:36 And you're like, they're like inserted as part of the assumption, is the part of the theory, the theory is part of the assumption. The example actually was this viral video, viral, sorry, photo, where it showed a picture of a cartoon of a white guy
Starting point is 00:06:48 and a black guy. And it said, Daryl is a white man who gets stopped by police 17 times every year. Daryl is a black man who gets stopped 236. What percentage?
Starting point is 00:06:58 So they do things like that. That's very surreptitious. But that's the third one. Or that's the second one I mentioned, where it's like they're just putting these ideas into play. I consider that praxis also. Is that praxis?
Starting point is 00:07:12 It seems like a type of praxis. That's where they're teaching what critical race theory claims, but doing it not through the books. Like you don't know you're learning it. And then what I, what I mean about the third way is when they say things like progressive stack and the teachers are like, I want all the kids to say their, you know, their race and what they feel. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:07:31 So there's like differences. So that is, that is the definition of praxis is no one knows that it's happening. You're sneaking it in under the radar. You're not standing in front of the class and reading Derrick Bell and Kim, Kimberly Crenshaw, Kimberly. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it just means theory and practice. Yeah. It's applied. You're not standing in front of the class and reading Derrick Bell and Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- Crem- How would you describe the other one where like, so there are stories where the teacher will say, okay, or there's one viral right now where it's like she put the skin color
Starting point is 00:08:10 tabs on a chart. Okay. And then like had the kids line up by. So that's like, I guess they're very similar in a certain way, but that's overt, right? That's when like, hey, we're going to take all the kids and line them up by race. Whereas the secondary one is like the math question implies that critical race is real, but they don't. It's surreptitious. I guess it's
Starting point is 00:08:29 the subliminal and the superliminal. Yelling at their face. When it comes to teaching the theory, I don't think it happens that much yet. A nice 10th grade course on the philosophy of critical race theory where you learn about from 1911 or 1920 when it began yeah you
Starting point is 00:08:45 know and all the things james lindsey talks about with like the history of the theory that'd be cool if they knew they were learning it and they were interested in studying it as opposed to just being told like whiteness is a thing and yeah when you're seven you know yeah i don't know the numbers though the the classrooms don't have cameras in them it's kind of disturbing that it's happening in secret it is kind of crazy to imagine there'd be cameras in classrooms and all the kids are being watched or whatever.
Starting point is 00:09:07 Body cams on cops. That brings up another complication. So then we would have another freedom, liberty complication. So what are your thoughts on this?
Starting point is 00:09:18 Well, I don't know about this case specifically because it seems very vague. Let's talk in terms of generalities. Give me a generality. Should teachers who implement critical race theory or engage in the praxis,
Starting point is 00:09:31 should they be fired? It's interesting because if an institution is being inconsistent, meaning if an institution has decided to bring upon a policy where they're teaching this to their staff and they're teaching this to their staff, and they're saying, you know, this is what is in vogue now, and this is what we're doing. And then, let's say,
Starting point is 00:09:54 a new culture cycle occurs, and people rail against it. And from there, teachers who are already in that institution who were, let's say, inculcated in critical race theory continue to teach it, it's a bit inconsistent for an institution to sort of switch gears. So I think it's... Obviously this probably didn't happen in Texas with this particular teacher
Starting point is 00:10:20 because schools in Texas, I imagine, aren't teaching critical race theory, so I don't know about this particular case. But for other schools in Texas, I imagine, aren't teaching critical race theory. So I don't know about this particular case. But for other schools in other states, I think it might be wrong to place the burden upon the teacher if the institution brought this to itself in the first place and then switched gears. But isn't there a deeper problem, I guess, if parents hate this stuff? If you have the average person saying, we don't want this for our kids,
Starting point is 00:10:49 how is it that a school comes to be teaching this? Well, that's a larger issue. The institution not actually being in community with its parents and really not even caring about what parents have to say and the input of the parents. And I think that probably goes beyond critical race theory. And it's probably been an issue for a long time. You have a startup that teaches anti-racism? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:11:13 But define your anti-racism because it's not the same as like Ibram Kendi's, right? No. So Ibram Kendi defines racism as basically the presence of inequity. So he defines inequity as material outcomes between groups. So if there's a difference in outcomes between different races, then that's proof of racial inequity and that's proof of racism. Whereas our understanding of racism is psychological, we understand that racism or supremacist ways of thinking occur when an individual or group of people experience some kind of insecurity and then project that insecurity onto others in order to feel worthy.
Starting point is 00:11:51 And our approach teaches people how to practice dealing with themselves in a holistic, healthy way so that they will be less likely to overcompensate. Interesting. So what do you think about critical race theory? I know you're not a big fan. I mean, I really don't think about critical race theory, I have to be honest with you. And there are probably many different reasons for that. You know, as I've said this before the show, but I try not to be counterdependent in my identity because that's also a form of dependence. People tend to think that codependence is the only form of dependence, but actually counterdependence is also a form.
Starting point is 00:12:28 So counterdependence is when your identity is dependent upon countering someone else or something else. I'm not a fan of critical race theory because I'm not a fan of postmodernism. I think that there's no transcendence at the heart of postmodernism. I think that postmodernism has a point
Starting point is 00:12:41 in that it critiques dominant structures in society which are susceptible to corruption just by nature of being. But the problem is that it becomes parasitic and begins to eat itself. And so there's no actual transcendence at the heart of it. So I'm critical of critical theory in general. But I don't really think about critical race theory because I'm just trying to get our anti-racism program out there. If you avoid counterdependence, why do you say you're anti-racist? This is a great question. I love this question because we define racism not as another person or as an analysis of outcome, but as a state of being.
Starting point is 00:13:29 Racism is a defect in relational ways of being. You're not relating to yourself properly, and you're not relating to others properly. And so to be able to counter that presupposes adopting a set of practices, a kind of lifestyle. And I think in that sense, it's less parasitic, because at the heart of it, where you're trying to reach is transcendence did you like meditation and stuff yeah oh cool well how would you define racism then um again for me racism is a kind of relational defect um and it happens when a person
Starting point is 00:14:01 is not in the right relationship with themselves so they're feeling a lack of self-worth or contempt or. But so like how does that present itself in society, for instance? Right. So just to clarify, you have, you know, even Kennedy's view about unequal outcomes. Yeah. You have the dictionary definition of prejudice or discrimination positively or negative on the basis of race. Yeah. I would say that we're more of that latter definition, but we're also more interested in psychological underpinnings of what causes that prejudice, what drives that prejudice in the first place. And where is that prejudice coming from? From, again, a deep psychological perspective. the street in LA and kicked a piece of the sidewalk that was up and busted his toe and was like, ah, who's supposed to fix these sidewalks and looks?
Starting point is 00:14:48 And it's like, I bet it was this race of people and looks. And those workers in the city tend to be percentage-ally mostly a certain race. Yeah. And then they're like, I knew it. It's that race. Yeah. That person is not well with himself. And then you'd have to go deep into their individual psychology.
Starting point is 00:15:02 Just like what happened to you when you were a kid? Why are you blaming people for kicking? Yeah, what's going on here? There's something else going on here. So here's my issue, right? The reason why I do think critical race theory is bad, or I should say critical race – I mean, I also think it's bad, by the way. I'm just not –
Starting point is 00:15:20 The reason I do focus on it is because I think it's overt racism. Yeah, but again, that's, that's what we ultimately, that's the beauty of it. That's what we ultimately tackle because it doesn't matter whether you're black or white, you could be feeling some kind of weird self worth issues and project and
Starting point is 00:15:36 they can manage, it can manifest in different ways, but that's ultimately what's at the heart of it. So in a way we're kind of addressing critical race. I love that. That is. Yeah. Because when you think about these young people and their animosity and the things they project, it's rooted in this misunderstanding of what race is and then a projected anger towards a certain race.
Starting point is 00:15:56 So when I look at critical race theory and applied principles, I think they're overtly racist. They want – they're certainly against Asian people who are a small minority in this country, but yes, also against white people. They blame someone else. But many passionate critical race theorists are white. So what do you think is going on with that? Well, I think it's, a lot of these people, it's tribal. So Ibram Kendi, for instance.
Starting point is 00:16:22 Yeah. His belief is basically that if there's a law or policy that creates an unequal outcome based on race, it's a racist, systemically racist policy. Yet when it comes to New York's vaccine mandates, which disproportionately impact black people in New York, he's nowhere to be found. Yeah. Because his whole thing is actually more, you know, I'll put it this way. I would say I think he believes a lot of what he says. Yeah, I think so too. I think he's sitting there going, yeah, but I'm not going to challenge this one instance where it's happening because the people who pay me also like that too.
Starting point is 00:16:54 I don't know, but what I'm wondering is, I get all that, but you just said critical race theorists are tribal and they're like anti-white people. But a lot of the people who buy into this are white so like so what's what's going on there they're tribalistically espousing an ideology regardless of their own race they're trying and in fact they say things like as a white person i recognize these things because they care more about what their tribe says than about who they are what they experience experience, and what the actual problems are. So who is their tribe? Who belongs to their tribe?
Starting point is 00:17:28 So in the culture war, it's very strange, but there is very overarching tribal factions. There's the left and the right, but that doesn't actually get to the heart of what the factions are. So Bill Maher is considered to be kind of in the left, but he's kind of in the middle of the culture war because he's very anti-woke. He's very critical of the booster shots, but he despises Trump. And so he's kind of in the middle. On the right, you actually have liberals, people who are economically left. So it's all scrambled. Yes, but it may actually just be authoritarian versus libertarian in a large way, not completely.
Starting point is 00:18:06 Because you certainly have people on the right who are authoritarian, who are defying critical rights theory, you know what I mean? But there's a big component of it is authoritarian versus libertarian. It may have a lot to do with individualist versus collectivist but again not absolute because there are elements of the fringe far right ultra you know uh nationalist they're they're you know collectivist in a certain to a certain degree okay so it's it's it really is hard to to figure it out but i would say it's kind of like yin yang you know what i mean it's not like there's two equal spaces that are opposing each other it's like they actually swirl around and have you know similarities and differences when i when i look at uh like kendy and i look at um robin d'angelo
Starting point is 00:18:51 but also just the democratic party there's something that's very you know very obvious in that there is a substantive lack of principle substantial lack of principles and you know to i'll just shout out texas for Texas, for instance. They did the heartbeat bill. And all of a sudden we have people screaming, my body, my choice. Okay. Yet once again, I'll throw back to New York. I'm like, yo, what about them mandating vaccines? Because I'm pro-choice.
Starting point is 00:19:14 You know, even though I don't like abortion, I think it's bad. And I agree with a lot of conservatives on their suppositions. The problem is the government intervening for medical reasons. And it's like a very scary – getting into the nuance is difficult. But I look at Texas, and I'm like, yeah, I understand the exemptions. I don't like having to go to the government for a medical – something that has to do with a very serious, embarrassing, humiliating, or troubling medical procedure. I'm going to say the same thing about New York City. a sudden now i see this establishment and this like left faction in the culture war has no interest in defending bodily autonomy or racist policy which is the vaccine mandate in new york city
Starting point is 00:19:50 so when it comes to throw it back to what we were talking about yeah the overwhelming amount of white people who are anti-white i think it's mostly because they don't care about the ideas if they did they my buddy my choice would mean Vax mandates too. What they care about is just being part of a collective that vies for power. It makes me think of self-flagellation, like a religious, because we talk about a metaphor like this sort of religion. There's this lack of religion in society. So some people have adopted a new faith. And people would beat themselves on the back with whips and stuff as part of this self-flagellation. Like, I'm suffering.
Starting point is 00:20:26 I'm so horrible. Original sin. I'm a sinner. I must punish myself so that I'm not punished in hell or whatever. And I think these people kind of have that same self-punishment mindset. I don't know if this self-flagellation is just part of the human psyche that needs to be agitated from time to time or something. I think there's a few different things. Definitely.
Starting point is 00:20:42 It's like working out. A few different things happening here. Some of these people, the less prominent, you know, white people who are anti-white, probably don't actually care, but they're scared. Okay. They want to fit in.
Starting point is 00:20:53 There are several prominent activists who were always on the left, but the left, as of today, is fundamentally different from the left of 10 years ago. Okay. So my favorite shout-out is to Rap News by Juice Media. They had a video 10 years ago, it. So my favorite shout out is to Rap News by Juice Media.
Starting point is 00:21:05 They had a video 10 years ago, if it was the end of 2010, where, oh man, it's almost 11 years ago now, where they say, you know, Hillary Clinton is bad. Alex Jones is calling out the commie Nazi fascists. The Democrats and Republicans, the establishment are trying to turn back the clock on freedom of speech and all that stuff. And I'm like, wow, if you were to make that today, you'd be a Trump supporter. If you said Hillary Clinton is bad and we need free speech, Julian Assange is good and Alex Jones is speaking the truth. That was 10 years ago.
Starting point is 00:21:34 That was the left. Yeah. So there's been this very serious shift. A lot of people all of a sudden are just like Jay Leno said it the other day. You know, Jay Leno, a story came out. Jay Leno said either you get in. A story came out, Jay Leno said, either you get in line with the woke or die. Do you think that's true?
Starting point is 00:21:50 No, absolutely not. I mean, if you want to be Jay Leno and be on TV, yes. We're lucky enough that there exists an economic space where this show can function, but if the internet didn't exist, these conversations would be happening in secret. But if the internet didn't exist, these conversations would be happening in secret. But if the internet didn't
Starting point is 00:22:06 exist, would any of this be happening? Probably not. It's a double-edged sword. But to be fair, something else would be happening, right? War, for instance. Iraq War. The lies in the media.
Starting point is 00:22:22 So, it's... Factions emerge out of the chaos. We narrowly avoided 1984 because we had the internet. The whole like, a never ending war over sea where it's a different enemy and then now you're fighting
Starting point is 00:22:31 a different enemy one day and all of a sudden, 20 years later, they're like, and now we've always been at war with your Eastern, you know, did you ever read 1984?
Starting point is 00:22:39 Yeah. And so that would have been Afghanistan and Iraq, but since we had the internet, we saw it all. Oh. We were like, nope. Just to mention,
Starting point is 00:22:44 so the first group I think are people who are scared. I shouldn't say the first group, but there's a group of people who are scared, and they'll just be like, whatever you say, leave me out of it. Then you have true believers who are just white people who are like, wow, I can't believe this is what has really happened, and I'm woke. I've awakened to the world. Then you have grifters. I genuinely think Robin DiAngelo is a grifter. You don't think she believes what she's writing? Absolutely not.
Starting point is 00:23:06 Okay, why don't you think she believes it? I think fundamentally her ideology, at least the way she espouses it, is absolutely contradictory. So if you are a white person who believes white people should step back. But plenty of people believe contradictory things. Yeah, I know. Genuinely. And so that's a cognitive dissonance where I will challenge someone's, you know, whether they actually believe something. And boy, do people go nuts when they realize it.
Starting point is 00:23:33 One example of the difference between me and someone like that is I had been saying for a while that, look, I think if a business wants to mandate vaccines, depending on the scale of that business, I think it's actually fine because I don't want to impose my will on a mom and pop shop where it's like an older guy. And he's like, look, I'm hiring two or three people. I want them to be vaccinated. I'm like, I don't want to infringe on the rights of just a regular working class dude. Yeah. Then a week later, I said, it is the people of New York who are upholding the edict, making this happen. If the regular people said no to the mandates, all of this would stop. And then I said, well, certainly both of those ideas can't be true. So perhaps it's wrong for businesses to mandate their employees get the vaccine. Okay. As opposed to what we see with the, you know, my body, my choice people, where they completely just say, F you, I'm not going to argue about New
Starting point is 00:24:17 York. It doesn't exist to me, or they won't even bring it up. Yeah, but I don't think that makes a person a grifter, not to be semantical. I just, I, that doesn't make you a grifter. I suppose, I suppose I can then say about D'Angelo is that based on what I've heard from her and seen from her, I just believe she's lying. Okay. Like, I do not feel that what she says is genuine. I have no idea. So, fair enough.
Starting point is 00:24:39 Yeah, I mean, it's all trying to read people, I guess. Yeah. And. I think she had a hard, I guess. Yeah. And. I think she had a hard childhood. Yeah. And I think that plays a huge role. Elaborate. Well, I read in passing somewhere that she, her father wasn't in the picture, abandoned the family.
Starting point is 00:24:56 She grew up in going from like moving constantly. And also her mother was sort of incompetent. And she dealt with issues of abandonment and identity issues at a very young age. And I have almost no doubt that that is playing a huge role in all of this. So it's possible she's just not that smart? And or it's possible that she is spiritually suffering and this is how it's manifesting. High intelligence but with a lot of pain. That's a very dangerous recipe too.
Starting point is 00:25:27 I don't think she displays high intelligence. Anakin Skywalker. Well, so how do you deal with that? You have very prominent people, very wealthy people in big institutions that are implementing these ideas at an ever-escalating rate of, you know... Well, I think one of the ways you deal with it is you guard yourself as much as possible from falling prey to some of the shortcomings and, I guess, blind spots. But you don't do that simply by propositional exposition of facts who's right who's wrong but you actually do it by recognizing the complexity of the human condition your capacity to fall prey to that your capacity to uh become susceptible to that way of thinking
Starting point is 00:26:20 and the and giving yourself the practices required to not fall prey to it because it's so easy to fall prey to it in a way. What are some of those practices? Meditation, for sure. Shadow work from Carl Jung's philosophy. What's that? Shadow work is when you recognize what's triggering your ego. Usually our egos are triggered by other people when they're doing
Starting point is 00:26:45 something that we don't like and that thing is present within us. Now, there's a difference between saying to a person, your behavior is reckless, your behavior is problematic, and saying to that same person who engaged in that reckless behavior that you're trash. Those are two very different things. Once you start engaging in the latter kind of vocabulary, you set yourself up on a pedestal and you set yourself up as better than that person, as if that behavior is foreign to you, as if you're not capable of engaging in that same behavior. And you've actually started down the path of supremacist ways of thinking. In the literal sense, you think that you're supreme. you think that you're superior to that person so you do shadow work by you can do it in many ways but one of the ways you can do it
Starting point is 00:27:29 is noticing when your ego is triggered and recognizing how the behavior that someone else engaged in or the impulse that someone else is operating out of is also existing within you and you'll see that same behavior the next time you You'll still say it's reckless and problematic, but your ego won't be triggered by it. So you'll be less likely to other that person when you critique that person. And then I would imagine your criticism will be more likely to be taken by them. Exactly. They'll be able to receive it, more likely to receive it. There's no guarantee to anything, but there will be more likely to receive it. Sounds like we just need to replace CRT with philosophy. Yes. Self-reflection.
Starting point is 00:28:06 Yeah. I mean, that's our motto. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So instead, I think what we end up getting is too many people in the United States don't want to be involved in any of this. Yes. Fighting is hard. It's taxing.
Starting point is 00:28:21 And I think you can look to the animal kingdom. Fighting is never the first choice. So here's taxing. And I think you can look to the animal kingdom. Fighting is never the first choice. So here's something interesting. The aggression of an animal can be determined on where it lives or where it operates. So burrowing animals, for instance. When you encounter them in a burrow, they will fight you. They're aggressive. They have one dimension to move in.
Starting point is 00:28:39 So there's no escaping. Birds don't attack you because birds can just leave. And leaving is way easier. So what ends up happening for regular people is that there are vested interests in spreading CRT and its ideology. There's money to be made for sure. There are true believers. There are people who are scared of just going along with it thinking they'll fit in. And then corporations say, look, this is what's on social media.
Starting point is 00:29:02 We think this plays well. We don't want to rock the boat. And then it creates this social pressure where over time people are just like, I don't want a fight. So they give in to the most aggressive ideology. And that leads us down a very, very dark and authoritarian path. But then that thing actually blows up in their faces. And then they come call us. No, but I mean.
Starting point is 00:29:22 In many cases. They've brought in crt into the staff into the training of their people it wreaks havoc in the workplace do and then they have to start all over again do you have any specific examples like a story you don't got to name the companies or anything like that but you want to like give us an example um i mean i can just tell you in general we do we do demo interviews with companies all the time and they report back to us. It's a very simple script that they report back to us and it's repeated all the time. We brought in this very typical approach to diversity and inclusion training and it did not go over well.
Starting point is 00:30:02 And now we are trying to figure out what to do and we heard you on some podcasts but like how does that is the life cycle in many cases just like what happened in specifically like like people were self-segregated the diversity consultant told them to segregate themselves based upon race a lot of people don't like that oh yeah that's standard that's standard the consultant tells them or just assumes the lived experiences of all these people based upon skin color. A lot of people, black and white, don't like that. So I wouldn't underestimate the amount of rumblings that may be happening in these companies, even though they're not necessarily – you're not necessarily seeing that on Twitter. But it's definitely happening.
Starting point is 00:30:42 That makes me laugh and it kind of makes me happy. Yeah. Like to hear that the things that we see as bad for the reasons we see it as bad are being reported back to you as that they are bad and they don't work. Yes. And it's like vindicating. Yeah. But it's also cool that you guys can come in and kind of fix that. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:30:59 Try to. So what advice would you have? Like how do you work with a company that contacts you? So we have online courses, but we also have workshops. Ultimately, we are a startup, and we're trying to get to the place where we can create a suite of practices for organizations. So a one-time workshop, and our workshops are pretty dope, I have to say. But it's like a full-day day workshop and that doesn't translate into sustainable practice. It's just not the nature of a workshop. So what we want to ultimately do is
Starting point is 00:31:30 get our stuff into, as of training, into the learning management systems of corporations so that when they're onboarding their employees, they can use our practices, eventually be able to service them with some of our coaches who can check in to make sure they're doing those self-awareness practices throughout the months, weeks, quarters, etc. So ultimately, we want people to start practicing. I mean, the emphasis is on the practice. I had a conversation recently with someone who was talking about policy and they were like, we wrote a statement, because this is also very popular, as I'm sure you know, like, let's make a statement about how we are super anti-racist. And I'm like, that's not a policy. That's a statement. A policy is a
Starting point is 00:32:15 set of practices that an institution operates according to. So we can have a long-term conversation about what those practices should look like again with the with the objective of affording that sense of self-awareness um not overcompensating for your insecurities creating a culture of belonging we can actually talk about how to create those practices but what you have this is not a policy it's just a statement i remember that famous george carlin sketch where he just goes on stage and says every single racial slur you can think of and then he actually calls eddie murphy and richard prior the n-word which like before my time yeah i mean i think it was like early 90s how old are you i'm 28
Starting point is 00:32:54 oh okay so maybe i was probably too young to watch but it might have been like 94 i was one years old right exactly but uh you know even even when i see'm like, wow, I can't believe he would even jokingly say that about these guys. But everyone in the crowd laughs. There was no big controversy over him doing it because the point he was making when he said it was that you need to understand the person behind the words because the words themselves don't affect you, sticks and stones, et cetera. So I'm ended up because I wonder, in a lot of these corporate settings, someone might say an off-color joke, you know, without the intent to actually demean someone. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:33:34 But then someone might get offended by triggering these sessions. Yeah. So I'm wondering. Well, I don't think that's what's triggering primarily. You don't think so? No. Like we've heard stories about people who are like, oh, I said a joke at work
Starting point is 00:33:43 and now they're making me go to, like, a diversity training. I think that's a lot. I think that, like, companies are conservative, and they're like, oh, we don't want you to sue us. So that's why they're doing that. I don't think it's, like, driven by any real thing. No, I completely agree with you. I just mean, like, uh-oh, someone said a naughty word. We might get sued.
Starting point is 00:34:01 Quick, put them in a diversity training to protect ourselves. Yeah, but I don't think I agree, but unfortunately or fortunately, whatever, the end of critical race theory doesn't solve for that problem because the institutions will always be like that. Right. Not to mention, CRT segregates people, which I think makes that worse. Yeah. Well, it does make it worse.
Starting point is 00:34:17 Oh, good. Good idea. Objectively. George Carlin did that Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV in 1972. Oh, so I definitely was not born. No, no, no. On Class Clowns. I'm not talking about Seven Words. That's the first album.
Starting point is 00:34:29 Oh, you're talking about something different. I'm talking about in the early 90s, George Carlin has a routine where he says like 100 racial slurs. He repeated this act over and over through the years and I think he developed it. The bit he did on racism was the word doesn't matter.
Starting point is 00:34:43 It's the racist a-hole behind the word you got to watch out for because he's like i can say and then he says you might be and then he just starts saying racial slur just that might be dirty words he's done a bunch of this kind of stuff it's not the seven words you can't say it is a bit from the early 90s and then he ends by calling richard prior and he murphy the n-word and i'm like wow like but so i bring this up too because i'm i'm just curious as to the way uh i'm i have people who make Asian jokes, you know, at me throughout my whole life. And I think they're hilarious. You know what I mean?
Starting point is 00:35:12 Because I know my friends are just, like, ribbing on me or, you know, they're just making fun of the stereotypes and the absurdity. And it doesn't affect me because I'm secure in who I am. And I'm just like, oh, that's a funny funny thing like if there's a stereotype about asian people and then i end up doing something and then people point that out i'll be like ah jeez you know it's like it's fun i'm not i'm not i'm only a quarter korean uh part japanese and korean but i'm curious as to like what would your approach be in circumstances where someone might be like someone made a racist joke i'm upset about it i don't know honestly that's honest question. It really depends on the context and situational details. I do think it's interesting that they just took down the first episode of The Office.
Starting point is 00:35:52 It was the first episode? I think so. No. Fact check me on that. Okay. Some of the old ones, yeah. Yeah, which I saw coming. I saw it coming.
Starting point is 00:36:00 And it was, unfortunately, no one asked for this. But here we are. here we are so is it the first one i i'm not pulling up snopes on this no way all right so here we have it from metro office the uh the office u.s fans furious as comedy central removes diversity day episode from schedule are you a big fan of The Office? Yeah, especially that episode. Especially that episode. That is one of the most brilliant episodes of The Office. So they say Diversity Day is the second installment of the first season,
Starting point is 00:36:33 second installment of The Office US, and follows Michael as he forces the staff at Dunder Mifflin to undergo a racial diversity seminar. A consultant, Larry Wilmore, arrives to teach staff about tolerance and diversity, but Michael insists on imparting his own knowledge, aggravating both the consultant and the entire office staff, and creates his own diversity seminar. He eventually assigns each staff member an index card with a different race on it, causing tempers to slowly simmer until they finally snap. So what do they say? Comedy Central is removing diversity episode from the rotation is so corporate and stupid. Why was it removed, though? They say it was taken
Starting point is 00:37:08 down. They don't really explain exactly why it was taken down or was there an official statement or anything. Just as video unavailable. Did you hear like why it was removed or what the reason was? They say from time to time they'll not play certain episodes in rotation from time to time.
Starting point is 00:37:24 I mean, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out why this is... Listen, maybe there's something we don't know. We can give them the benefit of the doubt, but I suspect it is the reason that we think it is. That is a funny episode. It's such a great episode. It's tough to say because when it comes to comedy,
Starting point is 00:37:43 if you're making someone the butt of the joke, that in general is kind of hard for me to swallow. I get kind of like, why would you hurt that person to get a laugh? Michael Scott is a ridiculous human being. That's the whole point. You see an idiot making mistakes. That's the point of that show. And you also learn to love – you learn to fall in love with that idiot. That's the whole point if you take
Starting point is 00:38:06 see this is why i ultimately think so so much is happening with regards to critical race theory broadly speaking is going to lead to the death not well hopefully not the death but a suppression of art and the arts and absolutely we as the raven chairman use the arts to teach everything so like if you if you enroll in our online course we use uh philosophy and music and poetry and film to actually teach people our three main principles because we know that the purpose of the arts is to remind people of the complexity of the human experience as opposed to my opinion politics these days which reduces and stereotypes and caricatures human beings to one label or the other the entire purpose of the arts is to be expansive
Starting point is 00:38:56 and so i'm not surprised if in fact this is the reason why that happened with the office i'm not surprised because that is the inevitable that's the logical conclusion and what's ultimately ironic about this is that that means that a lot of things that are coming out of critical race theory or critical race theory light or whatever you want to call it are ultimately antithetical to the african-american ethos and that is one of the greatest scandals that no one is talking about what do you mean the african-american ethos what is that like so there's a great author albert murray who wrote this book the omni-americans or alternatives to the folklore of white supremacy he wrote it in like the 70s or something like that he was this really dope jazz critic and he talked about how within african-american culture
Starting point is 00:39:39 there is what he calls an a kind of idiomatic expression which he defines as impromptu heroism culture another synonym of this is the hero's journey so if you're familiar with like joseph campbell or carl jung and that sort of thing and he talks about how in jazz as an art form and in the blues there's this philosophy that affords musicians the ability not only to literally play with music but metaphorically play with anything that life brings them both the both the negative potential and the positive potential and that is a part of the artistic art form that is central to african-american culture and so once you start once you start going down the path of the death of metaphor, the death of
Starting point is 00:40:28 context, and all of these things, you're talking about the death of art and you're talking about the death of something very central to African American life. I love this about jazz is because you'll start on a note, you're in a key, and you'll hit all the wrong notes that aren't in the right key. And then you'll end on the right note in the key.
Starting point is 00:40:44 And that's like the hero's journey. All the mistakes along the way and then you're... Which are necessary. Which are necessary. There's this recording I was listening to recently of Norm MacDonald.
Starting point is 00:40:54 Okay. He was on a radio show apparently with like a woke producer or radio host. Or maybe she's just one of those people who's like,
Starting point is 00:41:00 I'm just going to say what I'm supposed to say because I'm on the radio and it went canceled. And Norm MacDonald, have you ever listened to this guy? I don think so i mean i know of him but i don't i don't think i've heard him definitely he's got this thing where he talks in a very like slow and blunt way and that's how he drives his comedy so he's talking to when he goes
Starting point is 00:41:18 youtube might get mad at me but i'm quoting norm mcdonald oh and this oh no is this one of these no no no he says he says black people are poorer than white people, and poor people are dangerous. And he was quoting information, right? That's what he says. And then the host goes, oh, whoa, whoa, you can't say that. No, no. And he was like, what do you mean? And she's like, you can't say that about black people.
Starting point is 00:41:41 And he goes, you think black people are richer than white people? No, no, I'm not saying that. And he goes, poor people commit crimes. That's what they keep saying, isn't it? He's like, I think systemic racism is a real thing. And so the way he said it shocked and offended people. They started getting calls, and people were calling in like, you can't say that. I went to school with two black people and they
Starting point is 00:42:05 were way richer than I was. And then he goes, yeah, and a guy in a wheelchair could probably be faster than me. But if I said I'm typically faster than people in wheelchairs, I'd be telling you the truth. And so what I found really fascinating about what he said when he said that is we often hear from the critical race theorists things like systemic racism is a real problem, which creates generational wealth gaps, which results in a disproportionate amount of black people being impoverished relative to white people. However, there are more white people who are impoverished. Then they say poverty breeds crime. And actually, my understanding is it's all true, right? Crime isn't based on race.
Starting point is 00:42:41 It's based on poverty levels. But when Norm Macdonald just says it that way, it actually made them argue against him because the way he said it was so blunt. It came off as kind of offensive or racist. You know what I mean? I don't know. I was curious about it when you had mentioned something before I got the jazz thing came and kind of threw me off track. That's what jazz does. That's right. That's right. That's right. You'll be back, though. That's the perfect. Jazz does that, too.
Starting point is 00:43:05 In talking about, like, you were making a comment about diversity trainings and, like, critical race theory, and it's, like, removing, you know... Arts. The arts. Fundamentally.
Starting point is 00:43:16 That is my biggest issue with it. I guess the reason I wanted to bring this Noah McDonald thing is that I think it shows the... There's something about the way you say things. It's less to do with what the idea is for a lot of these people who are claiming to be like anti-racist or whatever, that the way Norm MacDonald could come out and say this,
Starting point is 00:43:34 but then the people. So you think if he would have said it differently, it wouldn't have offended people? Absolutely. I think if Norm MacDonald said, you know, one of the challenges we face is systemic racism, which has resulted in a disproportionate amount of the black community being impoverished. And then you find that racists blame them when the poverty leads to crime. And people say, oh, yes, I agree with that. That's very intelligent.
Starting point is 00:43:56 But when Norm MacDonald, the regular guy, is like, says what he said, they're like, whoa, whoa, you can't say that. And all of a sudden, like, their own idea brought back to them, like, from a mirror of a regular guy is all of a sudden like their own idea brought back to them like in from a mirror of a regular guy is all of a sudden now but in a different form and just is he intentionally offensive does he aim does he try to offend people well yes but in this capacity i think it's just who he is okay it's like he's he's the kind of guy who's just gonna whittle it down very basically and then he then he was kind of shocked that they were like, you can't say that. No. He was like, what do you mean?
Starting point is 00:44:29 He's like, we say it all the time. Like, what? Yeah. That's interesting. That's art. I mean, they say often, I've heard, that people, when they think back, they remember how you made them feel. They don't necessarily remember what you said. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:44:41 Yeah. There's another George Carlin bit where he talks about the changing of language. He said, we used to say shell shock. That when people go to war, they would come back with shell shock. Wait, I think I remember this. I think I've seen this one. And then he's like, now we say post-traumatic stress disorder. And that's interesting because the way you say something could be offensive to someone regardless of the idea you're trying to convey.
Starting point is 00:45:04 For sure. It also depends upon that person's state of mind, which is why it's complicated to put all the onus on the person who is presumably giving offense. It could be that a person is actually empty inside. And so because they're empty inside, they will take everything to offense because they have low self-esteem. I think we see that very prominently among the woke, the establishment left. I think they're very insecure. Okay. And that's why they tend to be more collectivist.
Starting point is 00:45:37 And that's why they tend to be more like… Do you think more insecure people are collectivist? Yes. What's the relationship between collectivism and insecurity? Finding validation from someone else instead of themselves. themselves well but let me ask you this question don't you think there's a hyper individualistic problem within america and or do you think that so i'm trying to see what the balance is between like hyper atomization of the individual and uh collectivism so i would say um there probably, I think there is a problem of individualism in the United
Starting point is 00:46:09 States. Yeah. And it forms itself in that nobody's willing to stand up for a common set of values. They're like, look, I can't lose my job. I'm not going to speak up. And that results in, you know, kind of chaos. Okay. If you have, you know, an element of what we refer to
Starting point is 00:46:25 as the left in the culture war that are absolutely willing to just say whatever the tribe says, even if, you know, the change of the wind or whatever. Like one day they're making fun of Asian people, the next they said stop Asian hate. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:46:35 And they started canceling their own activists because a year ago it was okay to hate on Asian people and call them white adjacent. Right. And so for them, their willingness to stand up and speak up and speak
Starting point is 00:46:45 up and yell no matter what because they seek validation from others results in them gaining territory in institutions i guess what i'm wondering is though uh reinhold niebuhr has this wonderful quote in one of his essays i forgot the name of it um everyone should read reinhold niebuhr though yes he's awesome um where he says man needs liberty but also man needs community and there will always be a tension between those two. So I'm just wondering where does community and collectivism begin for you?
Starting point is 00:47:13 Collectivism in my critique is more about disregarding fundamental principles and values for the sake of just fitting in. Finding your value in someone else because you don't find any within yourself. So I think I would say something like, hey, here are the things that I believe in. I believe there's intrinsic rights that human beings have no matter what,
Starting point is 00:47:35 even if you try to take them away. And I think we should protect those rights. But I also recognize at a certain point we have to have common missions. One of the big problems we have in the United States is actually the right has lost their sense of collective in a lot of ways. And the left has lost their sense of principle. So now it's just like people on the right don't protest. They've started to more so in recent times, but it's still typically the same groups and not the average person who finds themselves on the right, as it were. The left protests for anything, even if it makes no sense.
Starting point is 00:48:06 Like when Antifa comes out and says, we're against fascism, but then actually beats people in defense of state mandates, which is like, what? Sure. Because they'll come out for anything. Yeah. So I don't know. I think obviously one of the greatest times in American history,
Starting point is 00:48:21 like the space race going to the moon, we had a national mission. We all came together. We all believed in it. And now we have lost social cohesion. The left has some kind of weird social cohesion, but it's not rooted in... I don't know about that. I wouldn't call that cohesion.
Starting point is 00:48:38 Maybe that's fair. Maybe that's fair. But they are connected somehow. You know what I mean? They follow... It's a swarm of bats i think much of it is superficial i think a lot of it i think a lot of it is superficial i don't think it's like i think you like strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter sort of thing on the on the left yeah i don't know maybe it's not yeah i went to a black lives matter protest last year in brooklyn and i held up a sign from that had a kendrick lamar quote that's on it a fatal attraction
Starting point is 00:49:11 is common and what we have common is pain to try to spark a conversation about how in many cases the same uh fears traumas what have you that communities are experiencing also exists within the police officers that are policing those communities so but that didn't actually spark any conversation but what i did notice was that there was no actual spiritual underpinning uh people knew what they didn't want they didn't know what they wanted yes and um and so that was not i mean yes, I met people who have become my friends for sure. But that was not, for example, in comparison to the civil rights movement, something that created actual sustainable community. So I'm curious.
Starting point is 00:49:56 I would question the stability and sustainability of some of the movements today. I question whether or not they actually know what they don't want. Well, that's fair so one of one of the things that uh i talk about a bit is they claim to know what they don't want i'll say that right when they claim sometimes claim to know what the solutions are abolish the police or defund the police but they clearly don't want that because then when the police jump and arrest their political opponents they cheer for it sure one of the things i think we see uh that I bring up often, the root of the culture war, in my opinion, or one of them, was how algorithms were feeding
Starting point is 00:50:29 people shock content for money. And so what happened is, let's say you're 10 years old in 2009, and you get on Facebook, even though you're not supposed to because it's for 13-year-olds and up, but kids are on it anyway. All of a sudden you see in your Facebook feed a police brutality video of a black man being are on it anyway. Yeah. All of a sudden you see in your Facebook feed a police brutality video.
Starting point is 00:50:45 Okay. A black man being beaten by a cop. Okay. There were websites that were making millions of dollars posting nothing but police brutality videos because it's shocking and it gets clicks. Outrage, yeah. So now you're 10. You see these videos and you click on it. So Facebook says, let's give you more. Then 10 years later, these videos have become dominant because it made so much money for people that now there's someone who's voting who genuinely believes the world is nothing but police hunting down black people.
Starting point is 00:51:15 Their whole worldview is built upon this fictional reality of these extreme instances that are actually exceedingly rare. They're bad, and we should stop them, no doubt. But exceedingly rare. They're bad, and we should stop them, no doubt. Yeah. But exceedingly rare. Then they show up at a protest, and quite literally, verbatim, they say, police are hunting us down. Yeah. And if you try and tell them, like, hey, that's not true. They get angry.
Starting point is 00:51:35 They get violent. And then how do you calm someone down whose whole life has been built into this broken worldview? Well, that's not the space first of all to try and call someone someone down for sure but i don't mean like go to a protest and walk up to somebody who's angry and screaming and say hey you're wrong i mean like even even my friends where it's like i've been i was hanging out at their house and i would say things like this they'd be like you're wrong you don't understand and i can't believe you would say this stuff like i did i thought you i can't believe you're a racist and i'm like dude why are you getting angry you know what i mean i'm not mad i'm just these things are reality well i think it's
Starting point is 00:52:09 i don't know you might be having a overly cerebral response to an emotional expression uh form of expression that is correct uh and i don't think you will that doesn't match those two will never match you need an emotional expression to respond to an emotional expression but here's here's the right balance of cerebral and emotional here's the challenge i face with this so when i i used to do uh non-profit fundraising canvassing stuff like that okay uh oh hands down i knew absolutely the emotional pitch was always better than the factual pitch when i was working for a homeless shelter i didn't go up to people and say, did you know that 17 children per day are found, blah, blah, blah. And if we work together, the average annual budget of the homeless shelter will come. Nobody
Starting point is 00:52:53 cares. But if I said, yo, we had a kid last night, his parents both died in a fire and now he's sleeping in the ditch. I want you to, I want you to think about that for two seconds. Like, what is that? Could you imagine not having parents? And then they'd be like, oh, my geez. Like, what do I got to do? The emotional was always better. But you know what?
Starting point is 00:53:15 I don't like it. Why? Because it's disingenuous. Why is it disingenuous? So when you're honest with someone, you can be nice to them. You can be compassionate, empathize, and say, I am going to lead you to water, and I'm going to be nice about it. But if you've got someone who's, like, fervently locked in a worldview over a decade of believing that cops are hunting down black people, and you try to say to them, you know, listen, I understand these things things are horrible i would like to help you in stopping them from happening i would also like you consider that you know these these instances are exceedingly rare and though we definitely should focus on
Starting point is 00:53:57 fighting them we should try to do it from a level-headed perspective and they'll be like no you're wrong you're not you're wrong i see the videos all the time i go on reddit it's nothing but these videos you're trying to you're trying to downplay but why should your reaction be dependent upon theirs meaning just because they're maybe lost in a world view you're not you're not changing your reaction or because they're going to be stuck or paralyzed you're changing your reaction or you're responding in a way that's empathetic because you believe in empathy you're responding in a way that's compassionate because you believe in compassion not because you say oh well compassion didn't work so i'm just gonna throw it throw it all out throw my hands up imagine trying
Starting point is 00:54:39 to tell someone two plus two equals five i don't think that's a good comparison telling some i think you're comparing like a mathematic equation to like things that fundamentally involve human beings and which which goes beyond the abstraction i'm not talking about the equation i'm talking about the reaction people would have to being told something that they hold is fundamentally true and you're contradicting it okay fair enough so i think if you look at a person like Daryl Davis, the guy who successfully got dozens of members of the KKK to leave the KKK, right, by going to their rallies and being literally in community with them, his approach was not simply to go up to them and say, let me tell you why you're wrong. His approach was to genuinely, deeply listen to them
Starting point is 00:55:23 and to hold space for them for the purpose of holding space for them. This is tricky. Not for the purpose of convincing them that they were wrong. They just so happened to be convinced that they were wrong by their mere presence, continuous presence. But he wasn't simply spewing facts at them. He was choosing to be in community with them. And that's not a purely cerebral fact-based approach. You are correct. That's true. Yeah, yeah. I did an event with some friends. We
Starting point is 00:55:50 had Daryl Davis speak, and you're absolutely correct on that. There were instances where he did challenge them, though. Sure. Because being their friend, he would, of course. Right. You could challenge them. At a certain point, the challenge is no longer a threat to your identity. But you have to pave that road first. I think you're absolutely right. I think we should just try to have more friends who we disagree with and just invite them into our spaces. It is difficult. It's extremely difficult.
Starting point is 00:56:14 But again, this is the key. This is the hard part. Not inviting them in order to persuade them to change their mind. No, just invite people to be friends. Just in the spirit of fellowship. Yeah. You know, the challenge is, though, I think when you look at someone like Daryl Davis,
Starting point is 00:56:34 there's a certain kind of realization about who those people were who were nasty and racist because not all of them were converted. Sure. A lot of them were converted. And the people who were converted were the people who weren't necessarily true believers, but they were in a community and they just held things to be true because that's all they ever heard many of the guys that daryl davis met with never even met a
Starting point is 00:56:52 black person before sure and so when they were like oh i know about this but they weren't like evil yeah so they were like by all means you can i believe in freedom and you can talk and say what you want but i hold these views and then they realized a lot of those things weren't true just by talking to them. One of the challenges is when it comes to the wokeness and the culture war, you can't even get through to these people. Let me tell you something. When we did this event in – it was in – I can't remember the name of the town. So I lived in – I used to live in South Jersey.
Starting point is 00:57:23 Okay. And there was this little theater. It's about an hour outside of Philadelphia. At the very last minute, self-proclaimed anti-fascists threatened to burn the theater down because we were holding an event called Ending Racism, Violence, and Authoritarianism. We had an array of speakers, libertarians, conservative. We had no identitarian speakers, either left. Actually, no. We had some progressive CRT activists.
Starting point is 00:57:52 We invited them. But we didn't invite any right or white identitarian types. Okay. Daryl Davis was the headline speaker. Okay. Because we're huge fans. Yeah. It's an amazing story.
Starting point is 00:58:01 And they threatened to burn the theater down. We had booked the thing almost a year in advance. The manager was like, don't worry. We've had Ann Coulter here before. We can deal with protest. He couldn't deal with the violence. So he terminated our contract and said, we will not welcome you in. If you come, we will call the police to have you arrested.
Starting point is 00:58:20 And so he was like, sue me. And there's nothing we can really do. We moved the main event to a casino on the other side of the river which cut our capacity in half and did cause us financial damage people weren't able to buy tickets yeah but we had the event we had daryl davis however a very brave uh uh couple or i'm sorry sorry they had divorced a very brave men and women who had a bar across the street refused to cancel the after party in the face of threats and violence and protest. And we told them, like, we are here for you.
Starting point is 00:58:51 We got your back. You know, don't worry. We will take care of you no matter what happens. We're in this together. And they said, we're having the after party. No one's going to bully us. We know who you are. We know who Daryl Davis is.
Starting point is 00:59:02 We're proud. We agree. And this is insane. Antifa and see our like, you know, woke activists, Black Lives Matter showed up. And Daryl Davis, this is the craziest thing. A black man who walked into Klan rallies, shook the hands with white supremacists and converted them, walked across the street to Antifa, and they all started screaming Nazi at him. And they wouldn't let him speak. He ended up posting on Facebook, a very viral post where he said, I am shocked in all of my efforts meeting with white supremacists
Starting point is 00:59:36 as a black man. They have at least given me the chance to speak, to have the conversation, to become friends. But by simply walking across the street street they won't even let them talk at all the mob is not an individual we're going back to this individual versus collectivism collectivism but it's crazy when a mob i guess i guess what i'm trying to emphasize here is there's something fundamentally different about what's going on now versus i disagree i mean i i i know i knew that that is what you were saying, but I mean, I feel it's necessary that our mind people of yelling racial slurs and coming to her with literally ropes around a black doll's neck to tell her that they wanted to hang her. with this notion that woke fervor is somehow radically different from, say, the things that were happening during segregation in the Jim Crow South. I mean, I think it's just not objectively true. And, you know, you brought this point up earlier about history. I think we tend to forget how intense that was, and equally intense and philosophically
Starting point is 01:01:06 undergirded the response to it. And it needed to be because of the intensity of the circumstances that many of the civil rights leader found themselves in. But it was absolutely similar, if not worse, to everything you're describing. But in this in this story, where you know, you referenced Daryl Davis and his ability to go and talk to, but the Klan is in disarray. And it's in a weakened state. They have no strong tenets. And so it's very different. So the stronger argument is the civil rights movement.
Starting point is 01:01:31 But then you mentioned this young woman who had all these white people screaming at her. Do you think she could have walked up to one of them and shook their hand and said, we ought to have a conversation? I don't think that the proper thing to do strategically is to try to go shake, like, when people were protesting segregation in the Jim Crow South, they weren't going up to white supremacists to try to shake their hands. No, I mean, like, if you went to a white rally, like a Klan rally, and they were saying, don't allow you to do that. No, because I'm saying that at that time, at that time, the circumstances were similar to what you're describing with Antifa. That's what I'm saying. So we agree.
Starting point is 01:02:11 Yes, but you said it's very hard to persuade these kinds of people, but I'm saying the civil rights movement, the philosophy of the civil rights movement, understood that what was at bottom fundamentally of what these people what these racist people were doing was a lack that a vapid lack internally that they were projecting onto the other and so the entire point of the non-violent movement stemmed from this understanding that even as i protest you i know that you are my brother and that you are my sister and I'm not going to do you harm.
Starting point is 01:02:45 That is, and that, that moved the culture fundamentally. Not only because of the visuals of that, but because again, the philosophy was deeply spiritually rooted. And so I'm saying that is precisely the kind of response that is required in these days and times. We've, we've some, we've had a few leftists on this show and it's very difficult for a few reasons. It's not just about
Starting point is 01:03:09 fundamental disagreements. Some people just want to exploit the show and potentially cause it harm and we'd watch out for that. So we might book someone who'll come on and then start breaking all the rules on purpose
Starting point is 01:03:19 and trying to get us banned. Oh. And I think... That's wild. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there are people who have tried to exploit the show
Starting point is 01:03:27 and we're like I know their game we're not gonna you know because they don't like us and I think the other is there's a fear of I guess
Starting point is 01:03:36 excommunication cancel culture okay so there have been instances where people are like look I'd love to come on the show
Starting point is 01:03:43 but I just can't deal with that kind of heat. And other people have dealt with this too. Very prominent figures on YouTube in the culture war have their guests get harassed relentlessly for coming on, and it scares them away and say, I can't do this. But we have had a few different leftists on the show who have been willing to come on, And we're absolutely, I thought they went very, very well. I don't know if we can say we're friends, because I wouldn't impose that on them. But I thought we got along swimmingly.
Starting point is 01:04:12 And we've had Vosh friends on the show a couple times. And Ian's a big fan. I love him. Wait, are you talking about he's a big fan of me? He's into Ian also. You're both fans. He's a big fan of Ian. And so I actually I've really enjoyed having Vosh coming on. He's a big fan of Ian. And so I actually, I've really enjoyed having, you know, Vosh, you know, coming on. He's a socialist.
Starting point is 01:04:29 He's very left. He was pro-Biden. You know, a lot of things we disagree with. He's, I think it's fair to say he's pro-CRT and all that stuff. Okay. And you know what happens is after the show, we're talking D&D and video games. And that's where- That's always what happens.
Starting point is 01:04:42 Yeah, exactly. It's like, hey, you know like we're we're not uh i like you might notice we have we have this poster here uh back there shout out to brent lengel of snow white zombie apocalypse so we argue on facebook all the time and he's a lefty guy and and i'm like kind of but i'm not authoritarian i'm very libertarian so like policy comes second to freedom to me and uh you know he put up a kickstarter for this and i was like i thought it looked really cool yeah i was like i liked the art i thought it was fantastic so i was like i'll i'll pitch it for this kickstarter and i posted about it saying look
Starting point is 01:05:13 me and this guy we argue all the time but i have no no animosity or hard feelings towards i actually enjoy you know having these discussions and and it's never uh i think in this instance we're not screaming at each other insulting each other because we're good people. And there are bad people on Twitter who just want to say nasty words. But my point was like if we focused on the things that we had more in common, maybe we'd actually better understand each other on the things we don't have in common. Absolutely. Or actually just learn how we can live together to get through these certain things. But I got to tell you it's really, really challenging with a mainstream media apparatus that would say something like Joe Rogan took horse medicine.
Starting point is 01:05:46 That kind of stuff. The example I always use. Sorry, audience, for beating a dead horse. No pun intended. Democrats believe the economy is good. Independent voters and Republicans believe the economy is not good. Oh, I saw you posted this. It is.
Starting point is 01:06:00 Yeah, it is objectively true. The economy is not good. I suppose there are some metrics where you could like isolate one specific thing like, well, the unemployment rate went down by 0.2 percent. Yes, but that doesn't make a good economy. When you have 500,000 below expectation jobs, how is it that Democratic voters think the economy is good right now? I mean, New York businesses are losing money because of the mandates that they're speaking about. They're complaining about it. Major shortages, price increases increases it's just bad i mean we had record
Starting point is 01:06:29 job openings 10.1 million last month and then we only filled 235 000 they expected 800 or whatever like we still have a massive we have mass resignations people are quitting their jobs but people live in the matrix you know what what I mean? So what makes it really, really difficult is when you try and even invite someone to come on and they're like, I'm not going to go on a Nazi show or something because the media said bad words. You know what I mean?
Starting point is 01:06:55 Yeah, I mean, you got to take it all in stride. But how would you navigate? So I agree with you on a lot of what you said about meeting people as just a person, not for the sake of winning or persuading. But how do you navigate people who are constantly inundated by lies and deception to keep them away from you? You understand that you are not and cannot be omnipotent and you cannot control everything and you accept the good and the bad and you roll with the punches but what if you're trying to what if you're trying to make sure and you're like i mean look it's i i suppose i i agree but it might be a bit pessimistic like as if to say that i'm watching a building fall
Starting point is 01:07:39 down knowing there's nothing i can do to stop it you You see, that's very interesting because I do think that I'm pretty optimistic. And I know there are no guarantees with anything, but I do believe in culture. I actually believe in culture these days far more than I believe in politics. And I think that the culture is actually far more robust and gives us the space to have conversations with people with whom we disagree. And I think that maybe if you, in addition to meeting people in order to get to know them and things like that,
Starting point is 01:08:13 leaned into the culture more than the politics, I would be curious where that would get you in terms of how you perceive others and how others perceive you. I agree. So we have the Cast Castle vlog, which is the latest show that we launched we've got a couple of the other shows we're launching one's gonna be like mysteries we've done uh we've done like recordings of it and we're doing music and editing and stuff it'd be fun yeah and the reason we started doing the vlog there's two big reasons one is like man the new stuff we do is so negative all the time yeah i know like ian points it out it's like all we do is highlight this bad stuff and i'm like we
Starting point is 01:08:44 gotta highlight fun good stuff yeah and I'm like, we got to highlight fun, good stuff. Yeah. And so the vlog is like, we have baby chickens. Look how cute they are. They're growing up. They're getting big.
Starting point is 01:08:50 And now they're looking goofy because they're in that puberty stage where they have some feathers but not... Awkward looking. They look really weird. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:08:55 And so the goal of the vlog is just to be, like, fun and inspirational. For sure. Building culture. That's dope. And I... One of the complaints
Starting point is 01:09:02 I have about the Republicans because I, you know, I think we used to have a uniparty. The Democrats and Republicans were like the same thing. Yeah. Then the right-wing populists kind of busted in the Republican Party. But the Republicans still very much think the path towards victory is like appointing judges. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:09:17 I think Trump supporters understand that's not the case. It's the cultural institutions. That's going to shape the future. Okay. And what are the cultural institutions? The Apprentice. That was one of them. The Office.
Starting point is 01:09:30 That's true. The Office. So TV shows. Oh, absolutely. For example. TV. Film and, yeah. Colleges.
Starting point is 01:09:37 Colleges. Media. Yeah. Yeah. I was, man, I've been watching reruns of 30 Rock. You ever watch? I literally just restarted watching 30 Rock. That is uncanny.
Starting point is 01:09:50 I was watching Alec Baldwin interview today. Maybe Netflix just like recommended 30 Rock. I was thinking about it for some reason. It's the first show I watched when I moved to New York. And so, yeah, I love that show. And it's a show that couldn't be made today. Yes. And that's the issue.
Starting point is 01:10:05 You know what really was like a knife in the heart? Was when I'm watching, I think it's like the third episode, and Tina Fey, or no, maybe it's like the fourth. I don't know what episode it is. But Jenna is doing a photo shoot for Maxim. Yeah. And there's like loud noise and a fan or whatever. And the guy interviewing her asks her about the war. And she says something, but you can't hear it. he writes down i hate the troops oh and so there's
Starting point is 01:10:29 this big thing in a magazine saying that she hates the troops and tina fey is like or you know why did you say that she goes i didn't say that he misheard me in this protest but anyway she says okay you know jack downing he goes we're putting you on hardball with tucker carlson and chris matth Matthews to debate this. So good. And then Liz says something like, just say the war was started under false pretenses and it was horribly planned and that you respect the troops and don't blame them for this. And I was just like, man, where did that rhetoric go? Where was that left?
Starting point is 01:10:58 Obama. He came in saying he was going to fix it and then didn't. And a lot of it got left. The baggage got left in his garage. I will just add to finish the joke because it was amazing. She calls Tucker Carlson very attractive, which is funny
Starting point is 01:11:11 because they would never allow that. They would never allow Tucker Carlson to appear and be called attractive. He was on MSNBC. And she says something that's really funny because it was 2007. She said, I think the government needs to hunt down Obama and that's why I'm voting needs to hunt down obama and that's why i'm voting for osama in 2008 and that's 30 rock you couldn't you couldn't get away with any
Starting point is 01:11:31 of that it's such a good show that's insane but the reason why i'm optimistic is because it's starting to eat like so much of the art that we love and i think that artists like will revolt against that we have to now because if it gets eaten and it's gone, they won't know that it existed in the first place, and then they won't be able to... But the artists are still alive. Steve Carell is still alive. Yeah, but I mean,
Starting point is 01:11:55 I understand Jay Leno has always been an awful shill, but he said, get woke or die. I don't know why I wouldn't expect him to say that. He would be the last comedian i'd expect to say look at rage against the machine i don't follow them but you understand i don't know anything about what they said recently they have a lyric in a song f you i won't do what you tell me yeah now they've become the the band of f you you better do what they tell you. Well, I think that's because we're moving through a liminal. I just want to give context because I think it helps us to empathize with people.
Starting point is 01:12:33 We're going through an incredibly liminal phase, stage right now with the pandemic and everything on top of the pandemic, whether it's, you know, race relations, polarization, constant outrage from social media. We're going through a liminal stage where people's rituals have been upended, where people have lost their sense of being connected and things like that. And so we're dealing with an incredible amount of emotional scarcity and in a time of emotional scarcity people become extremists it's like a law of human nature and so on some level what's happening is like horrible but on another level it's also expected uh from a like a 10 000 foot. And so the question for me is more, how, how can we, how can we adopt, sorry to keep, uh, reiterating this word, how can we adopt certain practices,
Starting point is 01:13:31 certain relational ways of being so that we can deal with this very difficult time? And I think a lot of what you're seeing is ultimately a, a, a misdirected or misapplied flailing for air in response to many crises, whether that's identity crises, you know, pandemic related crises, all of the above. Yes, I agree. And I think that's why you'll see there's protests over masks, there's protests over gender, there's protests over race. And it seems like the culture war is a million things at once and one thing.
Starting point is 01:14:09 There's a left and a right, and they're fighting each other, but then you hear people like, oh, parents are protesting. Which reason is it they're protesting now? Why does the left have these tenets that are, you know what I mean? It seems like there's a bigger overarching chaos. Yeah, it's an emotional vacancy. I thought that was pretty insightful that you said that. Yeah, like the scarcity.
Starting point is 01:14:27 There's just scarcity. And so one thing I'll do is when I'm fasting, I start to get more in touch with my emotions. I'll cry more. Or if I take psilocybin, I'll cry more.
Starting point is 01:14:36 Like I get more real and then I'm able to feel other people. Yeah. I'm sure there's something. This obesity thing is terrifying, man. It's hard to feel when you're stuffed with food. I just have an idea. That's true. This obesity thing is terrifying, man. It's hard to feel when you're stuffed with food. I just have an idea.
Starting point is 01:14:46 That's true. I think we can solve the problem. We need a monk, a shaman, and a priest. To walk into a bar. To walk into a school. A grind bar, maybe. To walk into a school and have a serious conversation with a bunch of young students just about the great questions of life yes we are everything that's going on fundamentally has to do with the great questions of life and
Starting point is 01:15:12 and hardly anyone is tuned into that that that is what is at the center of all of this i believe and i agree we need some shamans up in here to like help us figure this stuff out but i i was thinking first and foremost just like a straight-up shaman because they could they could ask so many questions to people that would challenge their perceptions it's it's no but i but i actually i before i even i was gonna i was thinking i'm like man you know because you mentioned psilocybin and stuff but then i was like you know what but a monk you know would also and and and a priest and a rabbi, and an imam, and like a Buddhist teacher. I don't know.
Starting point is 01:15:46 What do you call a teacher of Buddhism? A monk? I don't know. I don't know. A Buddhist monk. But having a bunch of different people of different backgrounds, but with a background in the great questions of life philosophy and theology, I think would be profound for a young person to experience.
Starting point is 01:16:04 Welcome to the theory of enchantment. Is that what it is? Fundamentally, yeah. I got this feeling that illegal, making weed illegal has destroyed our culture. It's been 100 years, so we don't, it's kind of new. And all these people, like people in jail, people afraid, getting paranoid when they're using, when they're eating the plant. Something that already makes them paranoid?
Starting point is 01:16:23 You have cannabinoids in your brain like your brain's ready for it it's been part of our evolution for tens of probably hundreds of thousands of years if not more I don't know you think apes were smoking pot
Starting point is 01:16:32 yeah or eating it probably more likely eating it all and then they would like make big bushes of it and they'd all sit in a sweat lodge and light this huge bush of it on fire
Starting point is 01:16:38 and just chill in the sweat lodge and get really hot not humans apes probably were eating it back in the day and slowly evolved over time got more intelligent. Did you ever hear that thing
Starting point is 01:16:46 about like apes ate mushrooms? I do think that the story of Adam and Eve is fundamentally a story about like two, like it's the story of the development of self-consciousness
Starting point is 01:16:56 among human beings and like the fruit that they ate were like mushrooms or something. And then they saw themselves and then they were paranoid, which is why they were ashamed. And that's what...
Starting point is 01:17:07 But actually, it was necessary to go... It's necessary to go through that phase. What is it? The fruit? What was it called? The fruit of knowledge? Is it... Yeah, the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Starting point is 01:17:16 Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So it's just like... I think it's like a symbolic story about that. I think you're right. That's interesting that people... There are people who believe some primates ate some mushrooms started tripping out and like looking
Starting point is 01:17:30 at their hands like wait a minute yeah woke them up it's crazy and that's like not to me i'm not trying to be disrespectful but there's a there's an element of similarity in adam and eve and then eating the fruit knowledge of good no i actually think it's incredibly deep. I think it's a deep and profound story. And I think it's more true because it's symbolic, not because it's literal. I think the fact that it's a symbolic story makes it more true, not less true. Yes. There's more likely lots of apes around the world were consuming psychedelics and kind of realizing that they were what they were over time. I think.
Starting point is 01:18:02 And they wrote one story about it well it's interesting because like in the west our tradition is uh hebraic and greek and adam and eve whereas in the far east it's the buddha but both stories there's a garden involved and like um i always i actually yeah i actually think that like the just an aside, I think that the Far East is, in theory, their wisdom tradition is more equipped to deal with abundance as a curse because the Buddha originally was a prince who was born into a palace and had everything, and his father wanted to keep him from the truths of the world he's going to get old he's going to die he's going to age and all these things so you know eventually he discovers this and this is the part of his path to enlightenment but i do think it's interesting
Starting point is 01:18:54 that like many stories in different cultures across space and time have an origin story that takes place in the garden and it's this and it's this perennial idea of what happens when you discover that there is something outside of yourself. People need some kind of fundamental religion. Well, what do you mean by fundamental? Right, right, right. That's a good point. I don't mean like fundamentalists,
Starting point is 01:19:18 like extremists. I just mean like a base, very, very basic. Yeah, I agree with that. I think people need wisdom traditions, for sure. Yeah, sure yeah exactly okay so maybe i should have said fundamental religion too close too close to the word fundamentalist yeah right um what does that mean does that mean that they're never gonna there's it can never be taken away from them like they believe it no matter what i mean i mean like rudimentary it's it's the substrate of reality of how they understand reality i think i grew up in a religious
Starting point is 01:19:47 home definitely beautiful also dogmatic in many ways same um very grateful for that experience because of where it brought me today but i at this point i'm seeing everything that's happening in the world i'm like my future kids will definitely be raised with some kind of wisdom tradition. There's no way, like, it's going to be, like, vapid or, like, purely secular. It's just not happening. My issue with a lot of atheists is that, and you can check out the discussion debate we had on religion.
Starting point is 01:20:22 We did a bonus segment with Sidney Watson and Elijah Schaefer. So I'm not saying this to be disrespectful to anybody, but a lot of atheists have a very, very limited understanding of great questions. And so often they'll say something like, you know, I don't believe there's a bearded man in the sky watching over us. And I'm like,
Starting point is 01:20:40 I don't think that's what Christians or Muslims believe. I think that's like, you actually haven't sat down and had a conversation with a theologist or experienced any kind of wisdom tradition as you describe it. And so they have this like, I don't know, diminished or maybe that's not the right word, but very, very... Malnourished. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:21:03 That's probably a better word. A misinterpretation of what god is yeah you gotta kind of lack of understanding in in in these great questions because i think when you start to think about some of the i remember when i was like 18 and i'm hanging out with my friends and they were just stoned off their asses and i don't i don't smoke i've never been a smoker and we it was a great it was one of the craziest conversations about time the origins of the universe and you remember it yeah they were sitting there you're like the scribe and then like my contacts were in too long my eyes were getting bloodshot so everyone thought i was staring anyway so i fit in no but like yeah just like asking these questions and then we had like someone pulled up a picture
Starting point is 01:21:37 showing like a linear big bang timeline and then i started thinking about it and just imagining the vastness of the universe. And then we were talking about how the known universe looks very similar to a neuron when we map out. And I'm like, dude. Yeah. I was actually... But I bring that up because there's a lot of people who haven't had
Starting point is 01:21:58 those tripped out conversations that make them... expands their mind's eye, as it were, to be like, why would I ever stop and think that God was like a dude with a beard sitting in a cloud? You know what I mean? Yeah. I was thinking yesterday about individualism
Starting point is 01:22:11 and collectivism a lot. And I'm like, I think I'm, what did I write? I wrote it on Minds. I posted this, that it seems like life is like a subjective experience. Each person is like, life is for me. And for you, life is for you. But then I'm like, but I feel for the slaves slaves in China and like the kids being trafficked around the world.
Starting point is 01:22:28 So there's like, it's like I'm part of this greater collective. Like really, like I am. And that's what they call holism, holistic. And there's a real belief like holism. And then that's like, it coincides with the holofractographic universe that Nassim Harriman's been working on. It's like he solved Einstein's field equation and and he shows, hey, the universe is connected through the vacuum. So this collective idea is like,
Starting point is 01:22:48 yeah, we're definitely the same. At some level, we're the same organism. We're parts of the same organism, but it just depends on the scale that you're looking at it, I think. You know what we need to do? We need to take babies, and then even when they can't talk or anything,
Starting point is 01:23:04 have them just do five years of philosophy trainings and teachings. Philosophy. Just come up to a neural net and learn. Having someone sit down with them and start with very rudimentary basics of... I agree. And positive reinforcement. Obviously, I'm not saying go to a baby and pull up Locke
Starting point is 01:23:23 and start talking about liberalism. No, I mean like starting with a baby and just being with a baby. You want to install some good philosophy in kids, tell them they're intelligent, tell them you're good at learning, and you're really good at that. That is a deep belief, a religious belief that you can instill in a human from an early age. I just mean like asking questions of the things like, what did you see today? Socrates. You saw a bird. What did the bird look like what do you think about that bird have you ever have you okay where'd the bird go did you see the bird you know like just very simple things and then once they're a
Starting point is 01:23:54 little bit older and about to go into kindergarten and they're actually talking and they're learning basic math and reading now you can start asking them more serious questions like where do you think i go every day what What do you think happens? Those are the kind of questions that will make them think and imagine. And then you tell them. And then you can show them. And then as they get older, you start laying on the deep, deep philosophy. And I imagine if you did that, we would have an individualist nation that works as a collective when there's emergencies that needs to, that people trust each other. My problem was learning about philosophies didn't make me philosophical. works as a collective when there's emergencies that needs to that people trust each other my
Starting point is 01:24:25 problem was learning about philosophies didn't make me philosophical it was smoking weed it was the thc and the self-introspection i always kind of wanted to be i was kind of philosophical anyway yeah but people be like you got to read young you got to read this guy and that i'm like i don't care man i am connected with god'm experiencing it. This is like a real thing. And that was the philosophy coming out of me because of what I was feeling. If you guys are really into this, you should check out the work of John Pervakey, if you're not already familiar with
Starting point is 01:24:54 him. He's excellent. He's a cognitive scientist out of University of Toronto. And I've learned so much from him. He has a podcast series on Spotify called Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, where he goes through the whole history of the West from the end of the Bronze Age all the way up to like the 90s. It's like – Oh, man.
Starting point is 01:25:10 I wonder if he would want to come out. You should invite him. He also has like meditation practices that I follow. Like they're free on YouTube. So anyone – it's a progressive course meaning he teaches a new thing every Monday. What's his name? John, what's his last name? Vervake. V-e-r-v-a-e-k-e thank you he's excellent oh cool i'm excited yeah we need you know what's really funny is
Starting point is 01:25:33 because like i'm i've never done any kind of really hard drug at all i drank a bit from when i was like 19 to 20 and i was like drinking 19 to 20 like for a year i drank a lot yeah well yeah if you do that then then you're going to eat it. I was drinking when I was 18. I probably started drinking when I was 16, but not like a drunk, right? I was like my first beer and then some parties when I was 17 and I would get drunk, but I was never a heavy drinker. And then probably like 19 and 20, it was like a party on the weekend, every weekend.
Starting point is 01:26:01 And you just get drunk. You get like a King Cobra. Alcohol blows, dude. It does. It does. As a drug, it's one of the lowest, in my opinion. It's hard. It's just legal. But I've never
Starting point is 01:26:09 smoked pot a couple times. I've never done anything else. I have no interest in that. I have no tattoos, no piercings. Acid is very nice. Yeah, I wouldn't consider it a hard drug. If you do slow doses, those things aren't hard. Alcohol is much harder. But, I say this because I genuinely believe people – well, I'll be careful about how I say it.
Starting point is 01:26:29 But there are certain psychedelic experiences people have had that I think have greatly benefited them. Specifically, the research they're doing on PTSD and other – Molly with PTSD. Yeah, MDMA. And so I'm wondering if there is a very great benefit people would experience undergoing some kind of psychedelic.
Starting point is 01:26:48 There is. And the fact that they made weed illegal in 19- whatever it was, 20-something is terrible because now people don't understand it. They don't know
Starting point is 01:26:54 what the dosages are for it because a tiny, tiny bit is what you're supposed to do with that stuff. Like, you're going to do it. Not a hit of it. You don't burn and go and take this huge thing.
Starting point is 01:27:02 That's an overdose. That's why things get all blurry and you're like, whoa, you're overdosed. That's not intentional use. How much of it. You don't burn it and go, and take this huge thing. That's an overdose. That's why things get all blurry and you're like, whoa, you're overdosed. That's not intentional use. How much of it are you supposed to take? I mean, a tiny, tiny... I don't know the actual micro dosage. You'd probably have to talk to a doctor. There are like... Silicon Valley people do this. Yeah, they micro dose. All day.
Starting point is 01:27:17 That's interesting. But I will say... It doesn't get you high. I'm not encouraging. It was not an encouragement to anybody. I'm talking about medical research and the data we've got so far, and I think it's promising. And that's why I think this extended state DMT research is fascinating because I feel like this research could lead to helping people a whole lot with breaking down the barriers, the walls, their own insecurities, and all that stuff. Have you smoked DMT much? No, I've never smoked DMT. I puffed on it once. It was pretty cool. Take ayahuasca?
Starting point is 01:27:50 One day. Oh, you will? I will do ayahuasca. I am planning on doing ayahuasca one day. And that's the shaman stuff. Yeah. That's the mother. You know, you go to these villages, you might find a shaman. He's not going to be able to tell you anything about calculus, rocket science.
Starting point is 01:28:07 Maybe. Maybe. Probably not. Well, maybe it's a rocket scientist who's fled to South America and was like, I don't know. But they can make for a dope TV show. I'll tell you this. I remember when I was a teenager, when I was a kid and I was a teenager,
Starting point is 01:28:20 that quote, the only thing, like true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing. Yeah, Socrates. When you finally come to understand what that really means. You would love John Vervaeke. I'm telling you. He's fantastic. But when you're younger. He talks about this all the time.
Starting point is 01:28:35 And you're so arrogant. Not everybody is. But like for me, when I was younger and very arrogant and I was like, that means that's stupid. People are dumb. They think they're so smart. And then I get a little bit older and meet more people and I'm like'm like man i'm so dumb yeah i'm the problem wow i realized that but it's funny because like he's like socrates is trying to warn me like you're not being wise by thinking this and i'm looking straight at the quote being like what a what a dumbass
Starting point is 01:28:58 and then i'm like later on i'm like man he was so much smarter than me i'm so stupid well one of the reasons why some of these drugs are super cool is because they result in ego loss. And the reason why people have a hard time thinking that they don't know everything is because their identity is attached to how much they know. And their sense of self is attached to how much they know. And if they have to wrestle with, oh, I don't know something, does that mean my life is meaningless? And then they go down this rabbit hole. So that's ultimately like, that's why like acid is like a great drug because it affords you a sense of ego loss.
Starting point is 01:29:31 I also discovered fashion when I did acid. Oh, interesting. Fashion, like you got into doing fashion? Yeah. Nice. One of the reasons I've been a big fan of Jordan Peterson for a while was when he went on that Jim Jefferies show and he said, you know, he's like, I don't think that, you know, you should be forcing a person to say certain words
Starting point is 01:29:48 and, you know, like telling them how they should run their businesses and, you know, who they should invite in. And then he was like, but don't you think it was a good thing that they forced businesses and civil rights movement to desegregate? And Jordan just went,
Starting point is 01:30:01 yeah, maybe I was wrong about that. Like just very simply like oh hey good point yeah so many people would be like what how did no yeah it's just like yeah i see what you're saying yeah that's a good point yeah humble i'm like that's that's a sign of somebody who's actually thinking listening and not so concerned with himself he's more concerned with what is true what is the great the great questions yeah in search of the truth. And the answer, as we know, is 42. Yeah, of course, yes. That's true, as is my age.
Starting point is 01:30:28 Wait, what? Wait, what did you say? The answer to the great question is 42. What does that mean? According to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, did you ever read that book? No, why is everyone insisting that I read this book? Maybe because you should.
Starting point is 01:30:39 He's wonderful. In the book, they're like, what is the meaning of the universe? They ask this giant super-reviewer. No, no, they said, what is the great question? What is the great question? Or what is the answer to the great question? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the computer at the end is like, you didn't ask what the book, they're like, what is the meaning of the universe? They ask this giant supercomputer. No, no, they said, what is the great question? What is the great question? Or what is the answer to the great question? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 01:30:47 And the computer at the end is like, you didn't ask what the question, like, you didn't tell me what the question was. But the answer is 42, according to that book. So they, they, like, Earth is a computer, I guess, to, like, calculate the answer to the great question. Already wrong. Already starting off wrong. Come on.
Starting point is 01:31:02 It's all good. I've not read the book. I've seen the movie. I have never done either, but I played the video game. What the hell? It was one of those text games. I'm not the only one. So basically, in the movie, Earth is destroyed to make way for a superhighway.
Starting point is 01:31:14 Yep. And they're given only an hour's warning. It's like a comedy. Your planet will be destroyed to make way for the galactic superhighway. We're sorry for the inconvenience. Have a nice day. And then they kill everybody. Okay.
Starting point is 01:31:23 But then later, I guess later i can't remember like a group or aliens realize earth was actually a special project to calculate the answer to that question so they have to rebuild the earth and remake it and everyone comes back and whatever interesting and then they go to the computer what's the answer 42 and they're like what like you didn't give me the actual question is that how it ends? it's a trilogy I never finished it it is a trilogy with five parts leave it to the British
Starting point is 01:31:52 I think that's British comedy there's a couple other movies that I like I think it's called Anything Anytime with Simon Pegg is that what it's called? I don't know that one. Is it also sci-fi?
Starting point is 01:32:08 Yeah, it's aliens to decide whether a race they discover is worthy. Absolutely anything? Absolutely anything. Grant a random entity on the planet absolute power. Ooh, that's great. That's a great test. So Simon Pegg just all of a sudden has the ability to do anything. What would be the first thing you'd do with absolute power?
Starting point is 01:32:27 Give it away. That would be me too. Ding, ding, ding. I wouldn't. Give it to someone or just make it disappear? And you would lose. No, I wouldn't. What would you do?
Starting point is 01:32:35 What was the first thing you'd do? Ascend to a higher plane. What does that mean? What does that mean? Perceive the universe from external dimensions and explore and just watch and understand and learn and try to learn whatever I could. And then what? See, here's the problem with your answer.
Starting point is 01:32:50 Give the power away. Well, I would disperse it. I would turn it to zero and all the power. Yeah, you would disperse it. When you say give it away, to whom do you give it? For me, it's like I'd just go to Mars. I wouldn't interfere with anything. I'd observe.
Starting point is 01:33:07 I'd watch. Your very presence would be an interference. Why would it be? Because it's physics. If I have absolute power, I would phase out of sync with existence. This is this. Okay. Well, so this is we're suspending.
Starting point is 01:33:19 We're suspending physics in this hypothetical. We said absolute power. We'll suspend classical physics. Did you mean like political power. We said absolute power. We'll spend classical physics. Did you quantum physics? Oh, did you mean like political power? No, absolute power. No, no, because we're talking about a movie where the dude can literally do anything at all. Godlike power.
Starting point is 01:33:31 Can you define absolute? What does that mean? Well, hold on. So it's in the movie, literally anything. Absolutely anything. So he can chill on the sun. Yes. He can like.
Starting point is 01:33:41 Well, I mean. Yes, yes, yes. You could burn your body alive. Hold on, hold on. I'll spoil the movie for you guys. Okay. All right? He actually...
Starting point is 01:33:48 So the aliens, you think the test is that they want to see what you do with absolute power. And Earth fails the test because Simon Pegg ends up being a good guy who gives the power away
Starting point is 01:33:59 and doesn't want to be this powerful entity. And the aliens are outraged because, of course, the only thing someone should do with absolute power is cause pain and suffering and control and dominate.
Starting point is 01:34:10 And only a few races have ever actually used the galactic power in this way. So then they try to destroy the Earth. But I guess, like, I can't remember exactly what happens. He made his dog intelligent. And then the dog...
Starting point is 01:34:22 He made his dog intelligent? He gave the power to his dog because he didn't want it. But then I can't made his dog intelligent he gave the power to his dog didn't want it but then i i can't remember basically what happens is the power actually destroys the source of the power itself and kills all the evil aliens before they can destroy earth right that's why you give it away because if you don't give it away it'll destroy you like the one ring if i had actually if i had absolute power I would just go to higher dimensions. They would be coming after you. Who would? The Nazgul.
Starting point is 01:34:47 Nobody can follow them. I don't know. I don't know that far. I don't know, man. Have you seen Doctor Strange? I love Doctor Strange. It's one of my favorite Marvel films. It is my favorite movie.
Starting point is 01:34:56 Yeah. It's one of my favorite in the Marvel Universe. Did you just watch the new What If? The new What If? On Disney Plus, there's a show called What If oh cool what's that it is
Starting point is 01:35:07 it takes the Marvel Cinematic Universe stories and says what if in this universe X happened so in the latest one they said
Starting point is 01:35:16 what if oh man I'm disappointed in this episode it says what if Doctor Strange lost his heart
Starting point is 01:35:23 instead of his hands so you know he would die no no no his emotional heart so here's what happens guys spoiler alert if you want to watch this can we just flesh this out on our own because if it sucked
Starting point is 01:35:39 then it's going to devastate me I just think they missed the best version of the story let me break it down for you guys I could fix all these movies No, no, no. I guess it didn't suck. It becomes like Doctor Octopus. I just think they missed the best version of the story. All right. Let me break it down for you guys because, you know, I could fix all these movies. Of course. You have ultimate power. Spoiler alert for those that want to watch What If.
Starting point is 01:35:54 I enjoy the show. They could do better, but it's a good show. This Doctor Strange episode, I'm going to give spoilers. Okay. So here's what happens. In this version of the Doctor Strange story, for those unfamiliar, in the movie, Doctor Strange is this egotistical, super famous neurosurgeon, and he's driving to get an award, and he tries to bypass a semi on the highway in a storm. And then there's an accident. He flies off the road, crashes, and his hands get crushed.
Starting point is 01:36:22 Now he can't work anymore. So he spends all of his money trying to get surgeries. And then finally, once he's broke, he seeks out the mystic arts and then becomes the Sorcerer Supreme. Okay. In the What If show, Christine goes with him. Christine, of course, is his love interest. In the car accident, he survives and she dies. Because of her death, he questions his life and decides to seek out answers in the mystic arts as to the nature of life and becomes Sorcerer Supreme
Starting point is 01:36:49 and then saves the planet and everything as the movie goes. But with the time stone, the Eye of Agamotto, he can go back in time and save Christine. But every time he tries, she dies in a different way.
Starting point is 01:37:05 She gets shot, a building explodes, something happens. And then the ancient one comes to the past, because he keeps interfering, and she's still alive in the past, and says this is an absolute point in time that can't be changed. If she doesn't die, you don't pursue the mystic arts. And because you don't, Dormammu
Starting point is 01:37:20 wins, and you can't exist. Thus, in this universe, for it to exist, she has to have died. So what happens is, Strange don't Dormammu wins and you can't exist thus in this universe for it to exist she has to have died so what happens is strange becomes evil he says I will break the absolute point in time by he becomes Darth Vader yeah and so in the end he destroys the universe and you
Starting point is 01:37:38 don't really busted me up the missed opportunity what is the missed opportunity first I'll point out the reason I brought it I want to bring it up is the main. What is the missed opportunity? First I'll point out, the reason I brought it, I want to bring it up is the narrator of the show is the Watcher. Love that guy. He just watches. So in all of these different What If episodes,
Starting point is 01:37:54 you can see the Watcher in the background watching. Oh, that's creepy. But no one knows. Cool Marvel character. Because regular people don't have that understanding, but Doctor Strange does. So Doctor Strange actually calls out the Watcher watching him do it. And he says, you're a god. Help me fix this.
Starting point is 01:38:09 And he goes, I am not a god. You did this to yourself. And he goes, no, but you're here. You can help. It was amazing to see him be the one character who knew the Watcher was watching. Because he's Doctor Strange. He's an awesome character. You know what really busted me up?
Starting point is 01:38:23 The opportunity was so good. It was so good. And they so good and they missed it. Let me tell you what should have happened because I was like, oh, I think I know what's going to happen. Christine dies and no matter what he does, he can't save her.
Starting point is 01:38:36 It's an absolute point in time that sets him on the path to become Doctor Strange. So in the end, he shouldn't have become evil. He should have kept trying and he should have defied the Ancient One and said, no, I will never give up. And the Watcher should have said, there is one universe in which Christine doesn't die.
Starting point is 01:38:54 It's the universe where you destroy your hands and your life and everything you're famous for, all of your wealth and lose everything. And then he says, I will sacrifice everything I am and have ever achieved if it means she lives. And then it kicks off the original Doctor Strange movie where he caused his own hands to be destroyed. I think you're going to need to buy Marvel. I agree. You're right.
Starting point is 01:39:20 No, that's totally, that should have been it. Like he calls on the Watcher. Instead of becoming Darth Vader, he would have become Jesus. Can the Watcher do that, though? I don't think the Watcher can interfere like that, Kenny. The Watcher does talk to Strange. Oh, cool. And the Watcher is the one who sees all these universes.
Starting point is 01:39:34 And Strange could have said, please help me if the universe is being destroyed. And he says, there's nothing I can do. And then the Watcher could have said, in one universe. Does the Watcher ever give advice like that historically? I don't know That's maybe the one thing His curse is to always witness and never participate
Starting point is 01:39:53 but like everybody, like Picard every once in a while you bend the rules But he still talked to Doctor Strange At the very least, it could have been that as things are falling apart, he remembers what the Ancient once said about being driven to the mystic arts. And then he realizes he has to have a sacrifice that drives him. So he decides to sacrifice his entire being in life, his hands, his work, his career, his wealth to save Christine's life.
Starting point is 01:40:20 And then he uses the Agamagamota one more time. And she's not in the car anymore. And then he crashes and destroys his hands. She lives. Yeah, you nailed it. That would have been 100%, man. Because then it starts the movie off, and you're like, he did it to himself for a good reason. But then I have a question, though.
Starting point is 01:40:36 Doesn't that change the actual original movie? Because in the original movie, he was, in fact, egotistical. So wouldn't that it doesn't be weird because if he's really doing it deep down because he's not egotistical no no like the driving and the thing happens when he's like in his egotistical state he would go back in time and set the path forward where he destroys his own life erasing his timeline and creating a new timeline where he's still egotistical, his hands are destroyed, he still seeks out the answers, and then comes
Starting point is 01:41:08 to better understand reality, never knowing what really happened with the first iteration of Christine's death. So it's like a time loop that just ends itself. Okay. I just thought that would have been amazing. That would have been amazing. Yeah. You do need to buy Marvel. Man, I think you gotta buy it, man.
Starting point is 01:41:23 Anyway, Doctor Strange, awesome. Why are we talking about Doctor Strange? Because I like Doctor Strange. I forgot the connection yeah you do need to buy marvel man i think you gotta buy it man anyway dr strange awesome why are we why are we talking about dr strange um because i like dr strange i forgot his i forgot the connection i forgot the connection we're making oh oh because you can't because you cannot have absolute power and that was the whole point of um that other movie no the end of dr strange right where he goes to bargain with death and And the... Dormammu. Okay. Well, okay. But his wise colleague says
Starting point is 01:41:52 you always have to pay. You always have something to pay. And I think that's why you can't have absolute power. The bill comes due always. That's legit my favorite movie. It's a great movie. It's an incredible film. I just love the idea of this narcissistic doctor who's like fundamental belief in science and then he discovers hidden meaning and truth after he lets go of himself and goes and becomes
Starting point is 01:42:15 a monk and then becomes this great and wise hero yeah i'm excited for the new spider-man movie because he's like the main oh is he he's? Yeah, so the trailer shows Peter Parker asking Strange to do a spell to erase everyone's memory. Oh, interesting. And so Doctor Strange is doing cool stuff. My favorite Marvel MCU character
Starting point is 01:42:31 is Doctor Strange. I love that movie. I'm excited for the next... Kudos to Cumberbatch, man. Yeah. Fantastic actor. Yeah. Oh, and I was going to say
Starting point is 01:42:38 one of my favorite movies is the first new Star Trek. I don't know, what is it called? Not Into the Darkness, sort of the first one. Oh, also with Cumberbatch? Also with Cumberbatch. Yeah, he plays Khan, I think. That's Into Darkness, the first one. Oh, also with Cumberbatch? Also with Cumberbatch.
Starting point is 01:42:45 Yeah, he plays Khan, I think. That's Into Darkness, isn't it? Oh, is that the second one of the new ones? Either way, Cumberbatch slayed it. The best part of that movie. I loved him. That was my introduction
Starting point is 01:42:53 to Cumberbatch, too. But it's like, Khan, wasn't it Ricardo Maltabon or whatever it was? I don't know who that is. They just like, I guess.
Starting point is 01:43:01 Benedict Cumberbatch is good. He was not a good Julian Assange. I thought that was awful. But he is a really good Dr. Strange. He was not a good Julian Assange. I thought that was awful. But he is a really good Doctor Strange. He had a weird, dark voice as Khan. I was like, what the heck is this? Yeah, when he says his name and then alternate timeline, Spock
Starting point is 01:43:14 is like, oh, snap. It was Ricardo Montalban. Let's read some super chats from everybody. Wow, we're a little late. We went a little bit late because we don't do the bonus segments anyway, and I really wanted to talk about that Doctor Strange episode because it was eating me alive i'm glad you did yeah no that's good that's a good resolution all right man can we just make that because that's what i want to watch yeah i want to believe that in the end he like he became
Starting point is 01:43:35 corrupted but then truly realized what it meant to be a hero and then created a new timeline is it that you can't take one of your favorite people descending into evil darkness? You can't take it? I felt like it was out of character, to be honest. Well, you know, the Shakespearean tragedies are always not what you expect. It's not just that. I'm fine watching Doctor Strange go totally evil and then say, oh, no, what have I done? But there was no payoff for it. It was just like, well, we
Starting point is 01:44:05 were told he was going to destroy the universe. If he did, he didn't care and did it anyway, and the universe got destroyed. I'm like, what was the lesson? What happened other than just it's the end of the universe. He wasn't thrown into despair. He was. Yeah. It's like the universe collapses and then he's just trapped
Starting point is 01:44:22 in a gem or something. He saves Christine, but then she disintegrates in the collapsing universe. How do you feel about Star Wars? Sorry to keep coming back to this. The original Star Wars? Yeah. Great.
Starting point is 01:44:34 The prequels, silly but fun. The sequels, just the worst trash I've ever seen in my life. How do you feel about Darth Vader's arc as a character? I think it's so fascinating. It's really, really good, but I know that you have to watch Clone Wars to get the full grasp of his transformation. The movies themselves don't do it justice. And I was not a fan of like... It's more plot-driven in the movies than character-driven.
Starting point is 01:44:58 I think a lot about it because I think using the dark side is necessary. Yeah, for sure. We have to not fear it, but be familiar with it to control it so that it doesn't take over. This is what shadow work is about. The Jedi are awful. Jedi are awful. Like, have you ever played Knights of the Old Republic?
Starting point is 01:45:16 When you meet the gray Jedi? And they're like... I dated someone who said that the Jedi were awful. They are awful. They're religious zealots. Not necessarily. We are no longer dating. Oh, wow. You'll have to go deeper on why you think that's awful. So the Sith were awful. They are awful. The religious zealots are not necessarily awful. We are no longer dating. Oh, wow.
Starting point is 01:45:26 You'll have to go deeper on why you think that's awful. So the Sith are bad because they covet power and they're willing to kill to gain more. The Jedi are bad because they're dogmatic
Starting point is 01:45:35 and... That's fair. It's a dogmatic religion of celibacy and monk stuff. And that's fine to an extent. Yeah. But not when they wield power
Starting point is 01:45:46 and try to assassinate a chancellor because they think he's a bad guy. But he was a bad guy. So what? They knew. They could feel it. And the problem is, it's very obvious,
Starting point is 01:45:55 if Mace Windu did not try to kill Palpatine at that moment... I agree. I agree with that completely. They would have won. But there's zealotry... I totally agree with that. Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. They lost their way. You don't thinkotry... I totally agree with that. I agree with that.
Starting point is 01:46:06 They lost their way. You don't think you should have just killed him? No. What did Anakin say? It's not the Jedi way. You're supposed to arrest him. And he said he's too dangerous. I can see that scene in my head.
Starting point is 01:46:16 A Jedi is supposed to kill a Sith Lord, right? If they face to face with it? That's the problem. Well, that's the dilemma. That's the dilemma. Because the Sith Lord was also like an elected member. So the problem is their religious zealots who would throw out the rule of law for their own personal religious drive of what is truly evil. And so Anakin watched that happen.
Starting point is 01:46:34 And he's like, it's not the Jedi way. He should be tried. Yes, they should have arrested him and told the world he's a Sith Lord. What should we do? And yes, they had to prove to the and and resist the powers of the dark side and it would have been the difficult choice but instead mace windu was like i don't care it's easy i'll kill him now but anakin's like nope but wasn't he was mace windu under threat of being killed in the moment remember because the other the palpatine whatever i don't he was blocking
Starting point is 01:47:00 the force lightning i disagree in fact he could said, Anakin, help me subdue him. And Anakin probably would have. And he would have said... I don't know. Anakin said, I need... Anakin was almost turnt by that point. Yes, but he said, I need him alive. And so Mace could have said... To learn from him.
Starting point is 01:47:15 And then Mace could have... But Mace didn't know this. Mace didn't know what was going on. But why did he... Don't just try to assassinate the Chancellor. I'm not trying to defend. I think it's more of a dilemma than it is, like, cut and defend. I think it's more of a dilemma than it is like cut and try. I think it's more of a dilemma.
Starting point is 01:47:28 What happened then? The Chancellor used the attempted assassination to justify the extreme expansion of powers and to hunt down the Jedi. If I'd been a Grey Jedi. That one incident caused that. That's absurd. If a Grey Jedi had walked in and slaughtered the Emperor in that moment and ended the Sith. Chancellor. The Chancellor and ended the Sith. What would haveed the Emperor in that moment and ended the Sith Chancellor the Chancellor and ended
Starting point is 01:47:45 the Sith what would have what would have been the problem with that you have to so you're coming at this point this is this this situation from a state of absolute knowledge good and evil yeah imagine you walk into a room and you see two people and one's on the ground saying
Starting point is 01:48:01 help me please help me please and the guy says don't don't listen to him. He's evil. And then what would you do? Read the script, baby. No, I'd use the Force. No, I'm just kidding. I don't know what I would do. You'd stop the guy who was about to kill somebody.
Starting point is 01:48:12 That would be a weird thing to say. And so the issue is, Anakin says it's not the Jedi way. Mace Windu should have said, you're right. I agree with that. But I don't think that's a, you know, folly on all of the Jedi. I just kind of felt like for Anakin to instantly be like, I hate you to Obi-Wan. I was like, that's weird. No, that was unbelievable.
Starting point is 01:48:35 Did Luke use the dark side as well? Yes, which is, I think, and George Lucas, who wrote it, disagrees. But yeah, because he was learning it from, wasn't he learning it from Little Green Man? Yoda? Yeah. He was using force push. He was learning to like fact check me on this,
Starting point is 01:48:55 but he was learning to channel it. He was channeling the light side. Yoda was teaching him how to use the light side. No, but when he went against his father, he could have killed him, but he didn't. And that's how... And he he was almost driven to do that. Yeah, he resisted the dark side. He was in the face of the dark side.
Starting point is 01:49:10 Or did he resist the light side? I think he resisted the light side by being able to accept his father. Oh, I see. You're saying the light should have ended the darkness. Exactly. Interesting. How young, ladies and gentlemen. But by doing so so it ultimately converted
Starting point is 01:49:25 Vader back to the light wow right exactly so it wasn't theory of enchantment it wasn't the he resisted his own impulse
Starting point is 01:49:32 to convert him and because of that he converted whoa so basically Daryl Davis was inspired exactly I was just gonna say
Starting point is 01:49:38 Daryl that's also what Daryl Davis did that's also what Daryl Davis did we should read super chats yeah we really should wow great alright Harry To says I'm so excited I found a farmer that will let me put my finger in a cow's mouth Davis did. That's also what Daryl Davis did. We should read Super Chats because we're just going live. Yeah, we really should. Wow. Alright, Harry To says, I'm so excited I found a farmer that will let me put my finger in a cow's mouth.
Starting point is 01:49:49 He didn't ask any questions. I thought that was strange. Uh-oh. Find a better, different farmer. Talk to your farmer. Blue C says, I loved when Chloe was on Dark Horse with Brett, and they discussed her theory of enchantment. What an awesome mind you have, Chloe. Thank you.
Starting point is 01:50:06 Jesse Meek says, Sacramento has a teacher that openly promotes antifa in the classroom and even offers extra credit to students for attending protests and such shout out to amazing tubers liberty doll and the philosophized so philosopher philosopher sorry all right let's see we got revin sheridan says tim i live in the deep south in the new orleans area and i i was being taught crt in elementary back in the late 90s i was taught black women are the most oppressed and it's my fault are you from new orleans yeah do we have similar experiences with that stuff and then no interesting jimmy kentos says I agree with her definition. There you go. Ron Quay says, Chloe is classically woke,
Starting point is 01:50:49 the way it should be. Wokeism, as it's known today, is just neo-wokeism. I remember when being woke meant seeing the actual truth, not using race to bait and make money. Well, there you go. I like that. Jenny's says,
Starting point is 01:51:01 does Chloe have a curriculum for homeschoolers? So anyone can go to theoryofenchantment.com and enroll in our online course. So it doesn't matter who you are. It's a self-paced course. Anyone can access it. Right on. Very cool. Oh, so yeah, we haven't covered this story yet.
Starting point is 01:51:20 We've all been posting about it. Andrew Lage says, South Australia is forcing returning citizens to download an app that will send them a notification and within 15 minutes they must go to the specified place and take a photo with their face on it. If not, the cops come. Do you hear this? It's crazy.
Starting point is 01:51:36 However, my understanding of how it works is you have the app, you'll get a notification saying you have 15 minutes to post a photo from the location you're at using geolocation, which means if you claim to be at a house in this particular area, you take a picture of yourself, it's geotagged with the area, and your face confirmed, you're good. Geolocation spoofing apps are free.
Starting point is 01:52:00 I knew this was where you were going. It can put you anywhere you want, so it's a terrible plan for the government. It won't work. I was thinking about this today while I was in the MRI machine. Because guess what you can't have in a freaking MRI machine? Literally anything metal, including your phone. I was thinking about tonight's show when Tim doesn't really look much at his phone because he's doing a show.
Starting point is 01:52:22 And I was like, how dare a police force think that this is okay? Absolutely insane. All right. Odd Ninja says, Hey Tim and crew, first Super Chat. To Ian, if a human male gets a human female pregnant, is she carrying a growing human? You mean like
Starting point is 01:52:41 right after, like 10 seconds after the pregnancy? Technically not yet. The question is as the question is. I don't know when you would consider the fetus a human. I'm not sure what the medical definition is. I mean, if you're asking for medical definitions, I'm not the guy that would be able to answer that. You'd have to look that up.
Starting point is 01:52:56 Is it a growing human? It depends on what stage it is. When do you start to consider the zygote a human is later in the pregnancy? It's human father, human mother. Is she carrying something that is growing into a human? It might seem like that, yeah. I don't know. Yes, come on, Ian.
Starting point is 01:53:14 Is the sperm human? Is the sperm a growing human? It says pregnant. Because it's going to eventually impregnate? The question is pregnant, not eventually. Yeah, but the pregnancy doesn't mean that the kid's going to ever be born. The kid could be an abrupt accidental termination. You never know.
Starting point is 01:53:28 And you could get hit by a car, but you're still human. No, that zygote might die before it ever becomes a human. So no, she's not tearing a human, technically. Are you growing old? I don't know how to answer that question, Tim. There's solar age and there's genetic age. Are you growing genetically old? I'm regenerating.
Starting point is 01:53:42 Oh, my gosh. I'm genetically getting younger. You just don't want to admit it. All right. To Tim, ask Knowles about getting in contact with Ted Cruz to come on the show. I thought about that. Oh, really? That would be super fun.
Starting point is 01:53:53 Pulling strings with our past guests. I thought I might. I think Ted Cruz would have stood up for himself on the Cancun thing. I think he, like, that was dumb. It's culture war stupidity. You should tell him about it. You're like, I me on twitter yeah exactly all right salty racer says i think the shadow work is an excellent idea problem is that some people literally just slap in the face to change their behavior this has stopped and it's causing serious problems i disagree i don't agree
Starting point is 01:54:21 with that yeah i don't i was gonna say i don't know about that. Yeah, I think that actually will just... Like when you approach someone as an enemy, you solidify their position. If a person already is acting out of a lack of self-worth and you slap them, so to speak, you're actually going to deepen that sense of low self-esteem. You can't make a change like that unless you're slapping yourself in the face. It has to be you. Yeah. It does.
Starting point is 01:54:48 Josh Oh My Gosh says, Chloe, what do you think about the idea of opt-in taxes for social legislation, for example? I know nothing about that. I know. I thought it was like a very... I don't know.
Starting point is 01:54:57 Yeah. But here's what they said. I'll read it. Supporters of abortion pay taxes for it. Opposers don't. Tim, check out the singer Joff Castellucci on YouTube. Deep, deep singing voice. Cool.
Starting point is 01:55:08 I don't know. What are your general thoughts? I have none. All right. There you go. Zero thoughts. Brandon Freeman says, Tim, please ask her if she's a Marxist and get a yes or no. No, I am not a Marxist. I think you actually said that early on, like you're critical of
Starting point is 01:55:23 critical theory. I'm critical of critical theory. like you're critical of, you know, critical theory. I'm critical of critical theory. I'm also critical of the Marxist take or what seems to be Marxist take on like saying that like what's driving certain people in elite institutions to CRT or to wokeness is because it's financially successful. I don't think that that's actually what's happening. I don't think that's a sufficient driver. And that's a very Marxist idea, ultimately.
Starting point is 01:55:56 Joshua Hickey says white CRT people are white supremacists. They believe they're inherently above the level due to their skin color. Usually they're just undisciplined and spoiled people who haven't earned what they've been given and they know it. Oh, that's interesting. One of the things that I've said and Carl Benjamin has said is that many of these white woke people are white supremacists with guilty consciences. Okay.
Starting point is 01:56:21 Let me think about that for a second. But I don't know i don't know about that i mean what what is the role of guilt in this particular context so the self-flagellation that we spoke about so so one of the stories i tell a bit too much sorry audience for being the voice but uh was when i was in the North Dakota pipeline protests. Not was it? When I was there. And I met a guy who told me that Asian culture was influenced by...
Starting point is 01:56:53 So here's what he said. I said, I had a meeting. He said, what do you mean you have a meeting? I was like, I gotta be in LA in a couple days, so I gotta leave soon. And he goes, that's colonial thinking. To fly to LA? Well, I was driving. I mean, to drive to LA. But he was like, to have a scheduled meeting. He was like, the Native Americans don't have that.
Starting point is 01:57:08 They wake up when they wake up. Oh, goodness. They know. Not this again. And what I said was, I said, I was like, what are you talking about? I was like, how's that colonial thinking? What does that mean? And he goes, like, the European colonizers brought that here.
Starting point is 01:57:20 It didn't exist before they brought it here because the Native Americans didn't have it. And I said, dude, Chinese people have schedules. They wake up to farm. And he goes, well, let's be honest. It was the white people who brought that to him. And I was like, are you kidding me? You're going to sit here and tell me? Dude, we invented the compass a thousand years before you guys did.
Starting point is 01:57:38 That's true. How did he take that? He got flustered. I called him a white supremacist. I said, I am not going to sit here and listen to a white supremacist tell me that my culture, which was thousands of years more advanced than yours, is responsible for everything that my ancestors did. You had nothing to do with it. And then everyone kind of looked at him and he was like, whoa. But that's the idea they espoused.
Starting point is 01:58:03 They believe that the white Europeans made everything. I do think there's an irony to this. And I do think that one of my objections to, like Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote an article in Atlantic a few years ago called The First White President. I think that was the name of it where he's talking about Donald Trump. And he basically argued that white supremacy was, I forgot the particular line, so apologies if I misquote, this is a paraphrase, but he was basically like, white people are, in fact, omnipotent in order to believe that it is cosmic and everywhere in nature. Yeah. And so, yeah, that story resonates with me. And I think it's one of the blind spots and the ironies going on in a lot of these arguments.
Starting point is 01:59:02 Yeah. I see a lot of people mentioning we in the chat because said we invented yes i'm part asian that's the point is that i was sitting in front of a guy who was overtly white and yes i am still mostly white german irish british and uh i think that's it for the most part but the point i was making was like this dude was directly insulting my asian heritage and so i'm like to reference my ancestors and the work they did for you to come here obviously i understand you know uh, like European colonization. This guy was just a white supremacist. All right.
Starting point is 01:59:30 Scott James Pilkington says, greetings, Jim Kess. I smashed it for Ian. I'm very much looking forward to you looking into the Freedom Phone. My phone is only two years old due to all the bloat. It's almost useless. How to fix bloatware. Flash the phone and get a new operating system. Graphene OS? Graphene OS, I've heard is good.
Starting point is 01:59:48 Yeah, and I'm saying that because you're Ian. And I like graphene. Yeah. And that's right. Right now, there is a sad Ian. And by simply smashing the like button, you can ensure that today a sad Ian will not be sad any longer.
Starting point is 02:00:04 Get your graphene here and now. Also, the Freedom Phone thing is going to be a while. They're on back order until November, I think now. So give us a few months on this one. And the problem is we can't expedite it. So it's like... Yeah, we're not going through Eric on this. We're going to go through the company to get...
Starting point is 02:00:18 So we're not getting Potemkin phones, basically. We don't want things that have been tweaked to look right. But maybe there's an easier way to do it. If somebody gets a Freedom Phone, we can work with you or your phone or whatever and something like that. The issue is that if we go to them and say, hey, can we get phones? Well, then we're getting phones from them and you can't trust it. We can't ask them for phones and we can't even ask for an expedited phone. Hey, here are the people we're getting phones delivered to. No, because then they're going to send them
Starting point is 02:00:45 fixed phones or whatever. It's compromising the security. So, yeah, it just could take some time. That's a good sign that they're on back order. Doing extremely well. Yeah, I'm glad they're doing well. Ah, okay. So, Christopher Lambert says,
Starting point is 02:01:01 George Carlin and the use on context. Doing it again special, 1990. So I was not born. You were not born. And I was four. I was not born. All right. C. Hennessey says, Tim, Kevin Paffrath is the real guy you should be looking at for California governor race.
Starting point is 02:01:15 Dude's JFK-style Dem leading is in state polls. He's also known as Meet Kevin on YouTube. He should be able to get the Dem votes. I did see that. He's not beating Larry Elder in aggregate. There may be a poll showing him ahead, but he is doing really, really well, and he does seem like an interesting
Starting point is 02:01:34 guy. I've seen some of the videos and some of the stuff he's talking to. My problem is I don't trust voting for the Democrats after the 2018 midterms. They promised in 31 districts they would get away from the culture war and focus on real issues for the families. And as soon as they got in, they went to Nancy Pelosi and says, what shall we do, my liege? And she said, impeach Trump.
Starting point is 02:01:54 You got it. Do you find there's a lot of cross-contamination between governors and Congress? Like if a governor is Democratic, is that really that big of a deal? Yes. Relative to their influence? Or are they kind of autonomous? When California proposed, I don't know if you saw this, what was it, Prop 42 or something? I don't know, Prop 6?
Starting point is 02:02:13 They proposed removing the non-discrimination clause from their constitution that barred discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, sex from their... Why? Because they argued that it inhibited their ability to engage in anti-racism. Yes, because anti-racist discrimination
Starting point is 02:02:30 is good in Ibram Kendi's book. All of the National Democrats were endorsing it. Okay, that's hyperbolic. Many National Democrats and Democrats from other states were endorsing it. So you think that it says Democrat is more of a warning like, hey, check this guy, because he's identifying with this weird party.
Starting point is 02:02:49 Not that if someone puts Democrat on their shirt, they're necessarily a bad person. What happens to people like Kimberly Klasick and Billy Prempeh? They can't get money from the party. They can't get support from the party. It's hard to fundraise. So people in the party, regardless of whether it's a mayor or a state rep or a governor, are still beholden to the DNC.
Starting point is 02:03:10 The Democratic National Committee, I think it is, right? Yeah. Because they want the access to fundraisers, the data, the promotion. So they're plugging into the sewage dump. Party member is a party member. I don't like the Republicans either, to be honest. I don't like political parties. Me either be honest you know i don't like political parties me either yeah i agree i agree
Starting point is 02:03:29 all right let's see we got you tassarus says ian rights can be thought of simply as the ways you can be wronged they can be derived by observing how life grows and how it can be stunted i don't know about that one. We've been having kind of an ongoing debate about what are rights, what are natural rights, also about abortion, which is where that came from earlier. Okay. So I'm of the opinion that natural rights exist and are,
Starting point is 02:03:57 some people would say gratitude by God. The other way to describe that is just that they're an intrinsic part of being. Ian thinks that rights are cultural and don't inherently exist. Can you split the difference between the two? Probably, yeah. I feel like the Americans were like, we're going to set up a system where we have what we think of as rules, like rights, based on the Christian Bible. So they built the Bill of Rights. And they told us it was given to us by god inherent inalienable
Starting point is 02:04:25 nothing they ever did had anything to do with it was just there to begin with and they're kind of protecting it i don't think so because if we got a new government they'd start telling us your right is to wake up in the morning your right is to worship the dear leader these have always been your rights your grandfather fought for these rights and then eventually you're like my rights have always been that so like it seems like cultural brainwashing well is it possible that one could just be wrong and the other could be right it is possible that there is like an objective reality and there's a way of behavior that serves our propagation and the species and these might be those we might be onto something with that yeah okay but i i think without the
Starting point is 02:05:01 american military to enforce it they don't exist exist. It's not real. Sure. Well, so is your definition of real enforceable? Yeah. If it's not enforceable, it won't be there. Okay. That's interesting. I don't know how to feel about that. I think that rights exist.
Starting point is 02:05:26 We have many, many rights, and governments try to infringe upon them for the sake of cohesion, power, stability. Yeah, because isn't that an argument for power all the way down? Basically. It's terrifying, but I feel like that's real. The reality is the person with the big weapon has always run the show. Yeah, but that doesn't – why does that mean – that's true, but that doesn't mean that one doesn't have inalienable rights just because they're not being enforced. Or why does that necessarily mean that? If they're not inalienable? Because if they want to say you don't have them anymore, then you don't.
Starting point is 02:05:54 I'll ask you this question. Would you be upset with a deer for kicking the coyote that was attacking it? No. Because the deer has a right to defend itself. Sure. The right exists. We recognize it. We don't fault the animal.
Starting point is 02:06:12 Yeah. Would you be upset with someone, with like a woman? This is a weird analogy, by the way. Yeah, because the way you said the deer has the right to defend itself is kind of a misuse of the word right in the term of natural rights
Starting point is 02:06:21 that we're talking about right now. How is it a misuse of the term? Well, the deer doesn't have natural... The deer defending itself isn't really... It's not exercising a right. It's just defending itself before it dies. Would you be upset... I agree with that. If a person was being beaten in the street and
Starting point is 02:06:36 a guy was just pummeling him and then he grabbed a wrench off the ground and smacked the guy in the face and killed him, would you blame the guy who was being beaten? No. He has a right to defend himself. Right. Well, God, yeah. I mean, he should.
Starting point is 02:06:49 If he wants to survive, he better defend himself. And so the way the law works is that we recognize an affirmative defense for murder. Self-defense is not murder. It is not a crime. You're free to go. You have a right to defend yourself. So there are many rights that we recognize and there are many rights the government tries to take away from you. But the right to keep and
Starting point is 02:07:08 bear arms is fundamentally the right to self-defense. In this country. Not all countries have that right. But are you saying that if a person, if the government didn't support a person defending themselves then that person no longer has the right to defend themselves? Correct. Like in North Korea. If a soldier were to kick a guy on the ground and the guy tried to fight back, they'd execute him on the spot.
Starting point is 02:07:24 That's right. Because he has no right. I think you guys are defining rights differently. Probably. Exactly. That's where we came from. So the problem is that even when I read Ian the definition, he didn't agree with it. Well, you read it to me and then you stated a different definition as the definition of the word. It's on video.
Starting point is 02:07:38 You said ethics in the definition and then you didn't say ethics when you were redefining it. I read a large paragraph giving you a very intricate explanation of where natural laws applied and why and then you started nitpicking it so I broke it down to fundamental truths that are inherent, freedoms that are inherent
Starting point is 02:07:58 to living beings because no matter what definition I give you, you would change the definition. This is clearly a great question. Yeah. What are natural rights? Are they given by God? I mean, it's in the Constitution. It says God gave it to you, and you're like, I'm an atheist. Let me ask you guys a question. Is the American government full of it?
Starting point is 02:08:14 Because I'm an atheist. Let me ask you guys a question. Yeah. If a man was walking down the street minding his own business and a cop pulls up for no reason, runs up to him, and starts mercilessly beating him with his billy club. And the man is on the ground and is being beaten, begging, please stop. And then he leans over and grabs a wrench, gets up and cracks the cop, killing him instantly.
Starting point is 02:08:38 Would you blame the guy on the ground? No. Would you? I can't. These are ridiculous situations you're creating, dude. There's no context. I don't know what that... I can't blame either of those guys for that.
Starting point is 02:08:49 I don't know what's going on. I gave you the context. But you just gave me a limited... From the moment I saw it start to happen to when I did. Let's try again. What caused it? Let's try again. Let's try again.
Starting point is 02:08:58 If a man was selling Lucy cigarettes outside of a bodega, and the cops came up and put him in a choke hold, and he was screaming, I can't breathe. And then he grabs a wrench and swings it, hits the cop, killing him instantly. Would you blame the guy being choked? No. Blame him for what? For killing the cop. Jeez, that's a tough one.
Starting point is 02:09:15 Because if the cop, if you attack a tiger and the tiger bites your face, I blame the guy that attacked the tiger. Would you blame a man put in a chokehold being choked? I blame them both. You've got to blame them both you gotta blame them both if you stick your hand in the tiger's mouth and it bites your finger it's your fault and it's the tiger i can understand both argument but i would still mostly blame the cop so that was the eric garner case yeah and you still okay fine he defend i mean self-defense isn't it's not okay self-defense i'm not saying that the reason it's okay to defend your life is because you have a right. You have to defend your life to survive.
Starting point is 02:09:48 Now we built a legal infarction for that. Infarction, is that the right word for that? Infarction is a, yeah, it's blood loss to a muscle. Yeah. All right. Well, I want to make that a political word. I like that. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:10:00 Let's do it. Formation or development of an infarct. Yeah. An infarct. I will get to that later. So I don't want to waste these super chatters' times because people are giving us money right now. The reason why I asked the question about the cop is because you recognized you wouldn't blame someone for defending themselves if a cop was mercilessly beating them. Right.
Starting point is 02:10:17 And they took the person's life and their intent was to defend themselves. But the state would probably still arrest you and charge you. Right. Because they would infringe upon you. Qualify immunity. Well, I think that's... think among other things but that's mostly about lawsuits though i think the issue here is that culturally the police department would say too bad mfr you killed the cop we don't care why and as much as we as human beings if we recognize a situation in which a legitimately innocent person in full context was, being attacked by a criminal police officer,
Starting point is 02:10:46 we would, every person, a conservative, would be like, well, of course, that cop's a bad guy. The state probably would disregard it and probably still arrest them. They would be biased against them. They wouldn't care. But the guy has the right to self-defense. This is what you're going towards?
Starting point is 02:10:57 Now, that's good. Now, that's why we built our government, is to protect that idea. But it wasn't, my argument is that it wasn't given to us by God. It was these dudes, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson. So you just have a problem with the God piece. Yeah,
Starting point is 02:11:09 thinking that it's inalienable and it can't be ever taken away freaks me out. That's not what it says. That's not what it says. Inalienable doesn't mean it can't be infringed upon. It seems to, people seem to think that if you're out in the middle of the wilderness, you still have those rights. I don't think so. You do. No. What do you mean? If you're naked
Starting point is 02:11:26 in the woods, you don't have the right to self-defense and the right to free speech. What are you talking about? Yes, you do. You can pick up a rock and throw it at the wolf. You still can do those things, but you don't have a right. There's no... I still don't understand what your definition of right is. A right is like... Well, what is the definition
Starting point is 02:11:42 of rights? I read it to you. Abilities that are given to you by God. This is what natural rights are. It's something inherent to the dignity of what it means to be human. Freedoms that are inherent to life. Fundamental. It's like part of the sacredness of what it means to be human. In this society.
Starting point is 02:11:59 In order for life to function, certain things have to happen. And as human beings and as all life strives to survive, we recognize that life does certain things. In fact, in the definition of life, when they describe it, it propagates. And I believe defense or the attempt to survive is one of them. No, I could be wrong about that one. The challenge I have with your understanding is it seems that it would be easily devolving into relativism. It is, and that's why people are going crazy right now and railing against the U.S. government because the government's blindly being like, okay, I get it.
Starting point is 02:12:36 We think that this is the best way here and now because we're in it. We're in it. We haven't seen a better system yet. So to us, this is the right way. But it doesn't mean it's the only way or ever will be or ever was i think you're confusing like rights and privileges i've seen people be like you can't do that to me i have the right and i'm like dude you have to stand in front of that right like you have to make sure health care is not a human right right that that statement makes literally no sense but like you banned me off
Starting point is 02:13:03 youtube i have the right to that. No, you should have built a website to protect yourself because you don't have the right. You think the government is protecting your rights because they say they are. No, but here's what you misunderstand. You've got to protect your own rights and create them. So the right to free speech exists. The right to expression exists. There are some limits on causing harm to others because now you're infringing on their right to life and they have the right to expression exists. There are some limits on causing harm to others
Starting point is 02:13:25 because now you're infringing on their right to life and they have the right to defense. But when a massive multinational corporation takes up all the land, we actually have battled this out in the courts. We've decided that publicly owned private spaces, you are required to allow free speech. So Occupy Wall Street, for instance, was only possible because the people went on private property and the private company said, you have no right to free speech on my property. And the government, the people and the precedent in the courts was actually, if you're occupying the common space as a private owner, you can't take away someone's right to free speech. So YouTube bans people, banks debank people. And they should.
Starting point is 02:14:02 U.S. government hasn't done a thing about it. Welcome to the argument against censorship. Because it can't. The government cannot. That's not true, Ian. Not only is it not infringing on those rights, corporations are, and the government can't do anything about it. They can.
Starting point is 02:14:12 What can they do? So first, there's Section 230 reform or Section 230 enforcement, which they're not doing. Why? Well, right now, Democrats have the majority and Republicans have no will. Republicans were too stupid to do anything about it from 2016 and on, and now they're all being banned and blacklisted and they don't care because most of them were neocons unipartyists anyway. Now you have the issue of just enforce
Starting point is 02:14:33 section 230. Never was this law intended to allow Twitter to arbitrarily create editorial guidelines on what opinions are allowed to have. YouTube doesn't come to me and say, we're concerned about the safety of individuals. So you can't talk about Donald Trump's election. That makes no sense. They have editorial guidelines. Now, are there other places you can go? Technically, yes. But if there is a massive major stadium or all of the space in the center of the town is being occupied or owned by one person, we have already determined that privately owned public spaces must protect the free speech rights of an individual. All we need now is for the willpower in any politician to enforce it.
Starting point is 02:15:10 The government has the power. And Facebook is terrified of this. That's why Facebook has been having meetings with politicians trying to be like, please don't regulate us because we know you can do it. People begging for daddy to fix it is freaking me out. The people like a politician could fix it for me. The government could do it for me. Like, dude, these are your rights.
Starting point is 02:15:27 This is not Alexandria Cortez's version of your rights. This is yours. And no corporation or government state is going to make that, is going to keep that for you. That's up to you and your friends. And there's a lot of reading you'd have to do for us to, like, make a substantive conversation here. I'm sure.
Starting point is 02:15:43 We should have experts on. But, I mean, we, like But I think the people who have watched this have researched too much. And for you to enter this conversation with this lack of understanding would be like someone who's never read a math book trying to explain or ask about math to someone who's in advanced algebra or calculus.
Starting point is 02:15:59 But I think if people constantly complain about their rights being taken away, it's going to devolve into their rights being gone as opposed to actually projecting their rights then you realize oh your rights are there because you projected them not because it was written on some paper and given to you from somewhere else you created that in your in your behavior let's read some more super chats common cure says chloe is the anti-kendi. Also, Ian, do you play Deep Rock Galactic? I do. Hit me up on Steam.
Starting point is 02:16:26 I'm Mr. Clear Bro. Rock and stone. Rock and stone. Frank Taylor says, Tim, listen to Chloe. She is smarter than you. I think I've noticed that. Agreed with many of her points and said, actually, you're right. Great points.
Starting point is 02:16:38 That's why I referenced Jordan Peterson as a big fan, because for him to be willing to just be like, I was wrong about that. I'm like, man, that is. That's strength. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:16:49 Someone mentions we got a bunch of Chinese bots in chat. How dare they? Get out. What's up, dudes? All right. Let's see what we got. Caitlin Clark says, first time donation. Your guest is spreading the right messages.
Starting point is 02:17:02 Thank you for providing a platform for spiritually aware and intelligent voices. Oh, absolutely. I like that. This has been a great conversation. Awesome. All right. Andrew Fetter says, hey, Tim and crew. Hope someone has lifted the man stone since my visit.
Starting point is 02:17:17 Ah, yes. He gave us the Atlas stone. Oh, big one. The rite of passage. If you lift it, you're a man. I have not lifted it. Regarding the office censorship, critical theorists need to attack any exploits of their weaknesses. It's how to influence culture.
Starting point is 02:17:31 Wait, say that again. Critical theorists... Need to attack any exploits of their weaknesses. Oh. Anything that might mock or belittle them. Yeah. So when you watch The Office and you laugh at the ridiculousness or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 02:17:44 Interesting. I think yeah, yeah. Interesting. I think he's right. BruceA2 says, Ian, get at her now. I don't know what that means, but also I think she's right. The Bible is highly symbolic and has many allusions to science of all types from a time when they supposedly didn't have science. That's true. I agree with that. Interesting things.
Starting point is 02:18:02 That is very interesting. I was reading a long time ago a scientific analysis of some of the rules in the bible and to why they were yeah like why you weren't
Starting point is 02:18:11 supposed to eat pork or whatever because they were dirty diseased animals yeah trichinosis yeah and it would get you sick and so they were like
Starting point is 02:18:17 don't eat it yeah you know alright let's see what we got here we'll do we'll try and get as many as we can but we've gone way
Starting point is 02:18:26 over but it's awesome yeah this is good cody black says first time super chat i listen every day and love the show trying to get my so sarah to watch as well please help me sell the show to her if you get her to watch it would leave me speechless clever i would i would tell her she should watch it because i'm here and i can always use the female company tonight when chloe's here so have her join me that's right martin the panda says the fundamental problem is an increasing lack of faith in something outside the human experience when there's nothing greater than yourself to answer life's big questions it's much easier to see yourself as divine and those against you as evil. Interesting.
Starting point is 02:19:05 Well, I would agree halfway with that. I think that I do believe that human beings are divine, but I don't mean that in the... I think that human beings are... You know, I'm spiritual, so I think that human beings are made in the image of the divine. And this idea that comes from Genesis is like being made in the image of God is like something that I'm subscribed to.
Starting point is 02:19:26 I don't think that's the problem, but I do think that that doesn't mean, actually, John Vervaeke has this interesting riff that has influenced my thoughts on the idea of the sacred. What do you mean when you call something sacred? Do you mean sacred as inexhaustible, as in the human being is inexhaustible? You'll never be able to fully grasp the deep essence of the human being.
Starting point is 02:19:51 Or do you mean sacredness as perfection? And perfection, if something is perfect, then it's static and non-dynamic and therefore dead. That's not it, yeah. And like an idol, you know? So it's perfection or inexhaustible? Yeah.
Starting point is 02:20:08 Tim, you actually mentioned that the universe was perfect the other night, and I think it was more that it's inexhaustible. I think it's inexhaustible. That's interesting because I've been thinking a lot about that phrase. What do you mean? We were talking about the perfection of the universe and how it just functions so perfectly, but how you're defining perfection is that it's static.
Starting point is 02:20:22 Yeah. And the changing imperfections in the universe seem to give it this inexhaustible quality. And what's the word for that? The heat death of the universe is, as far as we know, an inevitability. If untouched. But, of course, we are the wardens of this space. This is one thing I've talked about. I think the expansion of space right now, it's beyond our understanding how to reverse this.
Starting point is 02:20:45 But it's entirely possible, at least, well, I could be wrong about this, but I believe it's possible. Life in the universe comes to a point where, sure, there's heat death of the universe, but maybe we create extremely advanced machines, extremely advanced AI, super intelligent, that just floats for billions of years until it interacts with that one electron and absorbs it. And that just keeps going without losing any. And then it may take trillions of years, but it's eventually collecting all the matter and still functioning as some form of complex system. Or maybe by that point, we learn how to collapse and control space-time,
Starting point is 02:21:21 and the universe, we just reef shit, whatever's created I hope I'm gone by that time yeah I do not want to experience that all right Martin the panda has an additional
Starting point is 02:21:32 he says I was an atheist for 37 years and realized that's not what I wanted to leave my girls I began attending church for philosophical reasons and now I
Starting point is 02:21:40 have faith in a better understanding of purpose and place there's something more than just us hmm very Jordan Peterson moment yeah yeah yeah jeremy mcdude says i have a theory regarding independent voters thinking the economy is good they live in non-blue hellholes and don't act and don't actually see many effects of the awful
Starting point is 02:21:59 economy of 2021 even then you should at least see how much you pay in gas. Yeah, seriously. Alright. Agent Juice Cartoon says, glad to see Chloe on the show. Many LA animation groups are too identitarian. I want to start an animation group with merit, professionalism, and equality instead. Would love to see if Toe could help make that a group of...
Starting point is 02:22:22 T-O-E. Theory of Inchian. Yes. Group A Reality. Hmm. Interesting. I don't know much about animation or that space. I would be interested
Starting point is 02:22:31 in knowing more about what's going on there. It's a good art form. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have a general help email line that you would have
Starting point is 02:22:36 people contact or is that? Well, people can fill out like a form on our website if they're interested in like learning more and getting more information.
Starting point is 02:22:42 Oh, I got in touch with you. Nice. Yes. Yes. Works for me. I recommend it. Waffles Senseii says chloe glad you came to talk about this stuff with a bunch of political commentators i think your organization will be the most influential because you keep your politics very milquetoast it makes people have to address the ideas on the merit yeah that's good yeah that's a string there's's probably a bunch of Doctor Strange ones.
Starting point is 02:23:05 Oh, so many. I see them. Yes. Or they will actually. Yeah, pretty much. St. Matthew says, Tim, your Marvel idea wouldn't work. There was no multiverse yet, as per Loki. Actually.
Starting point is 02:23:20 That's actually wrong, though. Because, have you seen Loki? no so um instantly the moment that they i guess um well i forgot the woman's name already so what was her name sophie or something i don't know she killed um the one that remains or whatever, instantly the timelines fracture. So it's like, even if there is only one sacred timeline, in fact, the Loki timeline where there's only one timeline, the sacred timeline, actually exists in a superposition of infinity with all the other timelines, just somewhat isolated from them. Because they're, as he mentions, the moment you kill me, there will instantly be all these other conquerors who will be around you.
Starting point is 02:24:05 So it did exist. That's why I think there's an issue with the Loki show trying to do the sacred timeline. Because we've already referenced the multiverse and other timelines. And they have no explanation for how this interferes with those ideas. Other than to say it was inevitable that the one that remains would be killed. Shattering the sacred timeline. Creating timelines and changing the past and thus all those alternate universe could have existed anyway and the show what if actually explores these other universes which exist anyway anyway i have no i did not follow that it was another
Starting point is 02:24:37 language but i'm learning yeah so speaking marvel yeah in the loki show there's only one timeline okay because there's a an organization called that there's an organization called the TVA or whatever. Timeline Variance Authority. They destroy any multiverse branch. Okay. So anything that deviates from their scripted timeline, they go there, they destroy, and they send it to a death dimension. However, at the end, a female Loki variant kills the guy enforcing it. Then the entire Sacred Timeline shatters into infinite universes,
Starting point is 02:25:11 which means that the whole thing is in a state of flux of back and forth. Okay. Because then there's a war between the one that remains. One maintains Sacred Universe, which instantly collapses because it's time. There's no past or future. So it's still multiverse. I'm sorry. They all exist before the prime universe
Starting point is 02:25:28 and after the prime universe and during the prime universe because time is a torus of motion. All right. We'll just read one more because we've gone a bit way over. A bit way. A bit way over.
Starting point is 02:25:39 Okay. Mickey Mouse says, Ian, rights aren't the ability to defend oneself. They are what gives you the moral high ground when you have to defend yourself. Yes, rights are what give you the legal, essentially legal authority. Moral. Not legal.
Starting point is 02:25:53 Laws are not morality. Wait, what? Yeah, I agree with that. Just because something's legal doesn't mean it's moral. Oh, but you think rights give you, are basically your justification for doing the morally just thing. Yeah, right, right. Oh, but you think rights give you, are basically your justification for doing the morally just thing. Yeah, yeah, probably. I agree with that.
Starting point is 02:26:08 Right on. Well, thank you, friends, for hanging out this Friday night. You effectively got a bonus segment, I guess. We normally don't do it, but you can follow the show at TimCastIRL. You can check out youtube.com slash castcastle for all the vlogs we're putting up,
Starting point is 02:26:20 and you can watch what we're doing on a day-to-day basis. And the funny thing is, you can watch me somehow, in between all the work i'm doing tending to the chickens because it's just non-stop work all day every day you can follow me personally at timcast become a member at timcast.com support our journalism do you want to shout out your social media or anything else sure check out theoryofenchantment.com you can follow me on twitter at cvaldery. Also, Enchant Theory. You can also follow me on Instagram at cvaldery and Theory of Enchantment.
Starting point is 02:26:52 Any other wisdom? I would say, make it thy business to know thyself, which is the hardest thing to do in the world. Thank you. That's why I like to make internet videos and watch myself be an idiot on TV. Can't deny it anymore after that. Also, you can follow me at Ian Crossland if you want to. But do it, yeah. I appreciated Chloe's wisdom tonight.
Starting point is 02:27:13 It is very rare to find a very wise and philosophical lady. Very short supply. We need to bring that back. Yes, we do. We need to make it cool again. I'm excited to see it come back. You guys should follow me on Twitter at Sarah Patch Lids as I attempt to have more followers in Sarah Patch Kids. I'm 5,000 away, so
Starting point is 02:27:30 please join me. We have a new members-only show coming up very soon. We're not necessarily going to have a set schedule, but it's going to be called The Green Room. And the idea is when guests arrive, there's actually about 10 to 15 minutes where there's fun and weird conversations. When Steve Bannon came and he met Andreas, who's Ian's friend.
Starting point is 02:27:49 Andreas Nicholas. Exertus. You've seen his shirt on me before. Andreas was saying so many crazy things to Steve Bannon, but Steve Bannon was into it. And Andreas was talking about transhumanism and cyber Marxism or whatever. And after the show, Bannon's like, who is that? That guy, he's, he's a genius. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:28:07 And I thought it was hilarious, but there's, there's like, you know, it's a very, very weird, I don't know. But anyway, the idea is there's a lot of people downstairs that are hanging out in the green, our green room is downstairs. So when people come in,
Starting point is 02:28:18 a lot of the guests will meet people. And so we're actually going to have like a 10 to 15 minute members only video where you can see the non, you knowcycle, like news cycle kind of conversations. You might hear conversations just about chickens. People could talk about their pets. And it's just like off the cuff. And it's something we can do to make more content for the members.
Starting point is 02:28:38 And then we'll actually flesh that out and make something more with it. So that's coming very, very soon, maybe even in the next day or so. We just got to get the website ready for it. So thanks for hanging out, everybody. It's been a blast. YouTube.com slash CastCastle, and we'll
Starting point is 02:28:50 see you all next time. Bye, guys.

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