TrueLife - Class, Caste, & Culture

Episode Date: July 11, 2022

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Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Fearist through ruins maze lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope your day is going beautiful. I hope the sun is shining. Hope the wind is at your back. Hope a little miracle happens that makes you smile and cry tears of joy.

How's that for a beginning, huh? Pretty nice, right? What are we going to talk about today, George? It's a great question. Thank you for asking. I thought we'd get into the thin red thread that ties together, class, cast, and culture. This running narrative, What is it about these things? Class, caste, and culture? Can you think of anything that binds

those things together? Depending on where you live, maybe you are upper class, lower class, middle class. Maybe you are like school in the summertime and you have no class. I know I have been that guy before. Maybe you are from a different part of the world and you were born into a caste system and you thought you could never leave, but you caught a slow boat to China and then cut a fast plane to the west coast and you got in a fast car with Tracy Chapman. Either way, you've been part of different cultures. You have learned quite a bit about who you are, what you want, where you're going, and where you've been. I want to talk about the class and cast, also the culture of the Western world where I live.

No, I think it was Tolstoy. I could be wrong on this, so don't shoot the messenger here. But I think it was Tolstoy who said the amazing thing about the American system is that they believe they don't have a caste system. I've heard it explain to me that in Britain, for example, in parts in Europe, there is a caste system. You have the House of Lords versus the House of Commons. The way that I heard it described, and I am not from there, so this is just a description that I've heard, is that it works

better than the American system. It's this idea that, yes, we are elite. We are born into money. We understand it. We go to Oxford and these great schools. We have. have a better education and you are working people and we as the elite intelligent people it is our duty to take care of you and we will and the working class people know they'll never be in the elite class and the elite class know that they will never be in the working class and there is a distinction there everybody knows it but they do not feel animosity towards each other Now that part, I don't know. I can't see how there wouldn't be any animosity.

And the system here in the United States, at least the way I see it, is sort of a mix of both. I think that there is an emerging sort of caste system or maybe as if Tolstoy said back in the day, there's always been a caste system. You know, it's amazing if you want to look at people in government and just look at their last names. A lot of people who are in positions of authority today are there because of their families, or they can trace their lineage back to old families. I would point you to the Supreme Court and even some of the newest nominees. If you look at who their families are, you can see why they are where they are. look at the Federal Reserve

who are these people who are their families who are their grandparents what are their ties to the country it's usually old families and old money putting out new rules that seem a lot like the rules of yesteryear

so that is the caste aspect that I see as far as class in the United States or in the west I think it's possible to move up in class as long as you have provided immense value. I think you can be invited in to the upper classes if you have created immense wealth,

created a product or a service that is incredibly beneficial. I think that you must carry around a handkerchief so that you can wipe your face after you have to kiss so many asses. But that's just me. It could be wrong on that. I'm not sure that I want to be at some of the places where the quote-unquote richest people in the world are. Maybe that's just me being cynical. Maybe I do want to be there. I don't know. Not quite sure. But I think that there's something deeper. I think there's something deeper. I'm to get to that. I think that there is this thin red thread that weaves its way through the ideas of class, cast, and culture. There's this thin thread that ties it all together, or at least gives the

appearance of doing so. And that thin red thread is this word called consumption. You see here in the United States, if you're consuming habits, or maybe I should say, if your habit is consuming a lot, then you can give the appearance of being in a higher class. You can give the illusion of being born into a higher caste. I think you could even make the argument that the class system in the Western world is based on consumption habits. How much can you consume? And can you consume the right type of things? Can you consume a new Gucci purse every year? Can you consume a new Porsche? You know, there's some people in the higher-ups, these poor kids, they don't even get their first Porsche until they're 16. They got to work all winter just to go to Europe in the summer. I'm just kidding.

They probably don't have to work the whole winter. I'm so funny. Okay, what was that? Consumption habits. Consumption habits, consumerism, and the class system. Okay, let's see here. You see, there's this notion. There's a notion of distinction and culture as being a matter of consumption. rather than the possession of discriminating perception and judgment. Does that kind of make sense? Let me say that again. What emerges from our buying habits is the notion. It's the notion of distinction and culture as being a matter of consumption

rather than the possession of discriminating perception and judgment. I like to think of the consumption, the consumer angle, the thread that ties this all together, are consumption habits as sort of like a barrier or maybe like a straight jacket. And people willingly put on this straight jacket so that they can show solidarity with other people wearing the same color straight jacket. Does that make sense? It's like they allow themselves to. be labeled by their consumption habits. And with consumption comes advertising.

With advertising comes ideas about who you are. Because the advertising companies are so good at putting meaning and feeling into inanimate objects that once you put on that object, you put on that persona. You put on that meaning. You put on that feeling. You know what I mean by that? Let's take, think, okay, let me try to paint you a picture here. Imagine like a really swanky bar, a really nice part of town.

And this gentleman walks in, looks like a good-looking guy, walks in in like a nice suit, good-looking shoes, and he walks into the super nice bar and he sits down at the bar and overcomes a beautiful young bartender. And she's like, oh, what can I get for you? He pauses, looks up, and orders an expensive whiskey,

some buffalo trace or something Johnny Walker blue or something. And she kind of looks at him and gives him one of those, oh you're one of those guys smiles you know something flirtatious and stares just just long enough to let the gentleman know she's interested and then she comes back and pours him a shot and he says something like leave the bottle so she leaves the bottle and then you see him pour a glass and it pans back and then it pans back away from him and it pans back to him the whiskey in the glass is gone, and to the left you see the napkin with her phone number on,

or something like that. You see, in this particular instance, we've got you to pretend that that whiskey will allow you to ascend to the highest class and achieve a high-class woman at that point. I'm not saying that bartenders are all high-class women, or they can't be, whatever. I'm talking about. What I'm saying is that the advertisement has motivated your consumption habits

by showing you that drinking this can help you with sin the latter. And that is what ties consumption habits to class, cast, and culture. See, so that guy, maybe that guy that came into the bar wasn't rich at all. Maybe he lived with his mom and he spent his college money to buy that suit and buy one bottle because he liked that girl. And he's just pretending. But for that moment, he got to ascend to the highest level and be in this class, or at least was able to give the perception of it. And that idea, this idea that all of us can ascend to a higher level, or at least be perceived to be at a higher level, I think that is something that is destroying all of us.

It is this idea of being able to jump class systems may be the very thing that buries us into a caste system. Does that kind of make sense? All this extending and pretending, all that does is force you to try to live a life that's unhappy. It gets back to the spectacle of society. That which is

is that which appears to be. Right? The fake it till you make it. That's the idea that I think we're at as a culture and as a world. And it's not even that the guy in the middle fakes it to be the guy on the top or the guy on the bottom fakes it to be the guy in the middle or the guy on top.

it's also that the guy on top is faking it as well it's I believe we've gotten to a point where it's all an illusion it's this idea of what can I make it look like

let me give you a bigger example how many trillions of dollars is our country in debt but if you ask a federal if you ask somebody at the Fed or anybody in Congress, they'll tell you, look, it's not the amount of debt we have. We have just pay the interest. It's all you ever have to do is pay the interest. All you ever have to do is pay the interest. That could be looked at another way. You're paying for the interest of others, right?

It's like our, it's like our guy that goes into the bar. He's paying the interest. He's paying to be interesting. When in fact, he's probably an interesting guy already. But he wants to pay for the interest. It's like we're all selling a story. What do you want your story to be? So that gets us back to consumption habits and these ideas that are like straight jackets. You see, that is the totalitarian technique

of stratification by arbitrary cadres and ranks just as in the age-old dictator method of divide and rule. carve men up into middle brow, Midwestern dentist or low brow, Eastern salesmen, or highbrow, Southern Agrarian, and you can lead them around by the nose. Any fraction of a man can be sent to war

against some other segment of himself, or any group can be panicked by a report about any other group. Does that sound familiar today? It sounds like exactly what is happening. Not only in the United States with man versus woman, gay versus straight, BLM versus white nationalist. It's this divide and conquer rule.

And I want to make a note there. That note is that just like censorship can be celebrated because it means the government are those who are censoring are so afraid they have to censor. So too can the blatant strategy of divide and conquer be looked at as weakness from the very people on top. When the strategy becomes so blatant, when it becomes so sloppy, when it becomes panicked, that means that the very people on top are becoming incredibly scared about their control. They are becoming very aware about their lack of control. And so they lash out. They fund riots. They fund viruses. They fan the flames of

abortion. When both sides want the same thing, the people on top have no leverage. That's why they call them wedge issues. At the end of the day, the red tie and the blue tie are going to dinner and laughing at the guy that's not wearing a tie. It's a huge problem. I think if everybody takes a few moments to think about the situation in which they're in and think rationally about someone who you think is on the other side. You know, let's take the idea of immigration for a minute. Some people say, let's let everybody in. Other people say, let's let everybody in,

but let's go through a process. I think there's small differences, but those little differences are being held up as giant obstacles so that the people up top can siphon money from both sides. It's this illusion of division And that's what creates the class That's what creates the cast And that's definitely

What causes culture wars The more superficial The marks of difference The more ferocious will be the hostility Let me repeat that again The more superficial the marks of difference The more ferocious Will be the hostility

I want you to think about that phrase And now think about a social credit score. It judges you on your habits. It intensifies the differences and makes a public much more pliable. It allows for ideas to be pushed onto the people from the central power. Anytime there's a rating on you. you've kind of lost your humanity. Right, the same way we put a blue ribbon on a prize pig,

so do governments want to put a ribbon on you. Hey, congratulations. You're a prime piece of meat. You do everything you're told to do. That kind of influence is dehumanizing. Let me give you another example of what happens at Fortune 500 companies. and or other places where people have an employee number. The moment your name is taken off and your number is putting on,

you no longer have humanity. And you can be looked at as a number. You could be looked at as an animal. You could be looked at as a product who produces instead of as an individual who creates. And I think that that is something that takes us right back to consumption habits. What our system does

is it provides people at the very top a way to commoditize everything. And I'm not sure it's capitalism that does that. I'm sure it plays a huge part.

But it's definitely something that strips humanity of all the things. that matter. I once heard it said that we must have, humankind must have rules or they become monsters, but they must have freedom or they become numbers. So it's all about finding the sweet spot in there. We need to have guidelines. We need to have some rules. But when we decide that we're all widgets and numbers, life's no longer worth living. That's what one thing that is, I really fear with the incredible dystopian nightmare that seems to be kind of coming our way at times.

It seems that there is this group. I don't know. Does that sound conspiratorial? It sounds to me that the world is pretty much run by multinational corporations. All governments are fascist in nature. it just depends on to which degree how fascist are they but they are that i think it was john dewey who said government is the shadow cast upon people by business and we are seeing with the breakdown of supply chains with pandemics with outbreaks of populism i think what we're seeing is the system breaking down In fact, I would argue this.

Here's what I think is happening. I think the entire economic system is breaking. And everything we've seen so far has been an extension of a populist revolt since Brexit and Trump. Maybe even a little bit before then. It seems to me that if you think back just five years, you know what? You'd probably even take it back to the Battle of Seattle, where the World Trade Organization, and came into town. And a bunch of, this is crazy,

a bunch of left-wing people got up there and were all upset, didn't want it to happen. It doesn't even have to be left-wing people. It's just people are upset that we have become so commoditized. We've become so stripped of humanity. I think that the people in positions of authority, and by that I mean bankers, insurance companies, the majority of prime ministers, politicians,

World Economic Forum, Atlantic Council, Council on Foreign Relations. This is the real power in the world. These are the people that make decisions around the world. There's already a world government. It's just that the people don't recognize it. That, I think, is somewhat breaking down. If you can't get sweatshops in China

to make products for a nickel, all of a sudden people are freaking out, oh no we're going to lose out on our profits and i think that is that was the reason if i believe covid was probably made in a lab and i don't know if it escaped the lab or if this was an elaborate ruse in order to stop commerce in order to slow down demand the reason i say that is if you've been paying attention to the federal reserve at all what you have heard is jerome powell and the federal the seven banks or whatever just complaining about demand oh no there's too much demand there's too much demand oh no there's too much demand so if that is the problem let's just pretend

that demand was the problem so what happened they stopped shipping what would that do well that would that would stop demand in its tracks what else do they say oh no there's too many working people making too much money. Wages are spiraling out of control. Think about how crazy that sounds. People in the highest positions of authority and finance are saying, are screaming that people are making too much money. People are making too, working people are making too much money. Another way of saying that is, hey, we're not making big bonuses here. Hey, our margins are being squeezed. Hey, these people on the bottom can just quit whenever they want and go find a better job. That's what I hear when I hear people at the top saying that employment is running rampant.

For the first time in 60 years, and I believe it's because of demographics, working people are able to walk away from their job and go work wherever they want to. Working people can work from home, and if their boss doesn't like it, working people can tell them to fuck off. Because there's another job right over there. For a long time, people in positions of authority have been able to say that to their employee. Look, if you don't want to work here, then go work, go find somewhere else to work. Well, now it seems because of demographics, because there's 10,000 baby boomers retiring a day, there's not enough people on the bottom to support them.

It's like an inverted pyramid. And that's why demand is going to go up. that's why the jobs report is always going up that's why if you're in a if you work right now you can go anywhere and get a job regardless of how horrible people in positions of authority tell you it is it's really not that horrible if you work for a living you could go on linked in right now and get 30 different like you could sign up for i don't know here's what i've signed up for a content creator and every single day I get no less than 30 job applicants I could apply for. No less. Sometimes 90. These are all like a hundred grand a year. That's crazy to think about that.

That's how much the Western world needs people to work. And that's why you're seeing Republicans and Democrats just opening up the gates like let everybody in, bring them in here. We need people to work. And the more people we can bring in from third world countries, the more we can bring down the wages, which more we can be profitable and have huge bonuses for the people on the very top. So if you look at it from that angle, let me know if this sounds crazy.

Maybe it's crazy, I don't know. But it seems to me that you had Trump, you had Brexit, and this was like the first few cracks in the World Economic Forum, Fascist takeover of the world. For a long time, people at the very top have been carving up the world. We own this. You know, this idea of colonialism has never really left. It just left the conversation, but it's still been happening.

And now all of a sudden, the people in the richest countries are like, hey, we're not getting our cut anymore. You guys hand us over our money and we're not playing. And so there is a full court press to push down the people in the richest countries. That's why they want to raise gas prices. They want to choke out the people in the richest countries so they cannot revolt. They do not want a populist revolt. Populism is a pejorative to these people. They want to be able to strip every rich country of its resources

and funnel it into their private institutions, to put it into their family office. And that means if you work for a living, you should be getting less so that they can get more. And we spoke about who they are. you know what here's here's an idea I'm thinking about making some playing cards do you remember when we had the iraq war

and they had like saddam hussein udeh Kudai all the all the you know not the Taliban but they had all the different Iraqi military people on there all the terrorists were on these cards

so that the soldiers could look at these cards and they could see who the enemy was. They handed everybody cards. They played cards, so you're constantly looking at who the terrorists are. So if you see them out in the open, then you know who they are. I think we should have those playing cards

for all our politicians. I think we should have all those playing cards for all the CEOs and Fortune 500 individuals. That way, if things do break down, every man, woman, and child can understand who the people are that are responsible for making the horrible decisions that have put us in this position.

Well, that's what I got. I've been going about 30 minutes here on this class, cast, and culture and the thin red line that ties them together known as consumer habits. That's what I got, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you enjoyed this rant as much as I enjoyed ranting it.

But more than that, I hope you have a beautiful day. I hope you love the one you're with and everybody and your family is doing fantastic. That's what we got for it. day. A-loha. Oh, huh.