TrueLife - Social Constructs, Boarders, & Boundaries

Episode Date: August 26, 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. Hears 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. We are here with the one and only Benjamin C. George, with his awesome new book that we've been talking about quite a bit. We've been into some of the new books that maybe even coming out in the trilogy later

that are not out, yeah, but they're conceived of in his mind. Benjamin C. George, how the heck are you? And what's going on? That's another day in paradise, brother. How are you doing? I'm living the dream, thank you. It's been a big week, just as far as getting back into the grind

and putting in extra hours. And, you know, it's like everybody, who's busy living the dream, there's just not enough time in the day, you know? So the grind, the grind takes away from the dream, that's for sure. Yeah,

and yeah, it really does. And then sometimes you wonder, like, what kind of dream is this? Like, what's going on here? That brings me to this idea of social constructs.

Like how, I was thinking about this yesterday. How much of the reality we live in is our own social, is our own construct, you know, or just a social construct. What's your take on that? Well, I think there's going to be multiple levels for that one. Yeah. Right.

You know, there is a social construct for sure. If I go to the park naked, the social construct's going to let me know that that's not appropriate, right? Now, that's not everywhere in the world either, which is interesting. So you get a lot of these different social constructs from where you go. And that was actually one of the things I love most about traveling was all of a sudden you're in a place where the culture is very different. Except was very different, you know, how people feel exception in many differences. You know, I've been in places where you could see things that people would shoot people for here.

And then all of a sudden, everybody's laughing giving people hugs. You know, it's wild dichotomies of different social constructs all around the world. And those always kind of are in a continual interface with our own personal construct, right? You know, how we perceive the world, our worldview. If all of a sudden, you know, if that was offensive, if I thought that was an offensive thing to do, but then all of a sudden these people are hugging it out and laughing, how offensive was it? You know, and so you, you know, your worldview is in constant contrast to those social dynamics, those social constructs that were surrounded by.

I think, you know, there's, it's not just a single social construct in anyone given culture. You have a multitude, right? I mean, you even have a multitude within family. More often than not. And so, you know, those constructs, those frameworks, those things, those, you know, these ideas of how we, you know, what we, how we view all of these aspects of society and itself, you know, there's an interplay to those. And I think there's a lot to be, a lot of good information to be mined from that interplay. From a personal level, just, you know, who am I? What am I doing in this world?

What do I want to do in this world? To how does the world work? Where is it going? How to create a model for the world to predict what's going to come down the line. You know, and a lot of other useful tools. And you can also take it the other way and destroy oneself and one's, you know, one's position in life. if you bend to too many social construct, which I think we're seeing at a grander scale these days.

Yeah. John Anthony says, Interface, construct dichotomy. That's pretty well said right there. Like you come into this. Yeah, way to go, John. Thanks for commenting and throwing that out there.

That's a good one. I was rereading Edward Bernays on propaganda. And, you know, right in the, I think right on the first page, it says, the minds of men are shaped and designed by other men whom they'll ever know. I'm paraphrasing, of course. But, you know, it's, it's fascinating. Like, once, that's one of those books. Like, once you read it, every other thing you listen to or read, you'll never see the same again. Because you, once you see something, you can't unsee it.

And you begin to see the slant or you begin to see the ideas that are. shaped for you. You know, it's almost like the books that you read become a lot like the movie you see. Like it almost transforms them into like, here's this book, here's this thing that you can imagine, but I would rather you imagine it this way. And you know what? And it always takes me back to this idea of, of what would happen if we didn't have these social constructs around us, like, and specifically like media? What if we didn't. have this ongoing on slot of ideas being streamed to your head. Like do you can you remember?

I don't know if you can remember a time like that. We were, I guess we always had media when we were young, but what do you think the world would be like? Yeah, it was different, right? It was different. It was different because, you know, it was everybody tuned into Walter Cronkite to get the news. Right.

And it wasn't this, you know, and granted, you know, the news was still the news. We just didn't have the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, to realize how much of it was a narrative at that point. But it wasn't a dichotomous narrative. It was just the news. And yeah, I mean, those social constructs are going to impact us at every single level. And they do. And it's one of the reasons that, you know, just in my thought processes and reasonings over the years is, you know,

I realize that to have media, well, let me refrain, to have news especially, you know, fact-based, science-based type informational distribution. To have that as a for-profit business is wildly, wildly crazy idea. When you look at how it applies to the world, how it gets used, how it gets abused, who benefits, who suffers from it. I mean, you know, on the grand scale of things, there's very few people who actually benefit from having a for-profit news source. and those people don't, you know, and you're talking 0.01% of people who actually benefit from that, you know, even probably less. And then the rest of everybody is just left to pick up the pieces. So, you know, to your question, if, you know, if we've found a way to, I don't think you ever get away from these social conscious, right?

There's always going to be the need for communication, distribution of information, things like that. So there's certain social constructs that are kind of foundational to culture into how we interact at a communal level. But how we utilize those social constructs, and more, I think probably more importantly, you know, who holds the reins to those is a very important question that could be, that could really change, you know, the direction of society. Because now imagine, throw it back at you, what if we had social constructs where there wasn't, you know, a for-profit business model driving and instead it was just to relay information.

Now, and now how does that change the conversation? You know, for me, I think that changes the conversation of instead of people talking about the headline and hating each other because the headline said to hate this group and, you know, and this is how we feel about this issue and this is how we feel about. this issue. Now it's, this is just the news. And then the conversation evolves around something that is a shared piece of information. Similar to how we can't really have a great conversation unless, you know, we kind of define our terms. You know, and that's kind of like a large-scale definition of terms at a, at a communal, at least, or societal level, where people then can actually use that as a springboard to elevate that conversation. Yeah, that's well said.

It, you know, we, it seems like we never get to defining our terms anymore. And you can see it in our discourse. Like, you know, there was a very interesting interview on, sometimes I'll watch or listen to the old interviews of like Chomsky versus Buckley. You know, and it's like this discourse is just, you just see these two guys sit across from each other. And there are some slings and arrows, but they're, you know, they're not ad hominem. attacks. They're more like... They're well-intentioned barbs.

Well, yeah, and they're funny and they're good and they're direct and they're, the other person has to think about their answer and he doesn't retaliate with something silly or dumb or slanderous. Drawman ad hominem, you know, which is all you see, which is all you see a debate these days or a conversation. Yeah. Yeah, it's, um, it's a, it's a lot. lost art almost.

Though I did see one the other day, there was, I think, who was it? I think it was Brett Weinstein. So not too much of a surprise there. Having a conversation with somebody that he fundamentally disagreed with. And it was a great conversation. They both made good points to their underlying arguments. And it was one of those things where, yeah, you could feel the tension at time because it was, you know, there was a couple barbs that were thrown because it

was like, how are you going to stand on that type of reasoning? Which is where those barbs really kind of meant for in those types of conversations. It's to attack the reasoning, the logic behind the position. And, you know, it was just the back and forth that went really, really well. At the end, they, you know, we're both smiling and happy that they had the conversation with one another. They still didn't agree. And that's okay. But how many times you see that?

That was like, that was a rare fruit rate. there. I mean, most of the times you turn into any sort of conversation with opposing views, and it becomes, you know, pretty ad hominem pretty quick and, you know, pretty credentialed and, you know, pretty authoritative. And, oh, you can't say that because you didn't, you know, study at Cambridge under X and X. And so you can possibly know what this really means. You know, it's like, okay, you know, if you're just going to, if that's your worldview, if that's how you're going to approach these situations, you're. you're never going to expand that and you're never going to have any meaningful conversation

come out of things like that. And by and large, that's the conversations that are happening, especially in the most, sadly, the most important places in the world, the political arena that affects everyone in the world. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's an astute point when you talk about the news becoming for profit. And I remember being a young kid and there was some talk show, not the talk show, not the talk shows are news, but it was Joan Rivers and somebody else on there. And they were talking about

some sort of social issue. And the guy had brought up her race. Like, you know, well, that's what you get for being a white person that doesn't. And like, you should have seen the look of how offended she was like. And she just crushed them. She's like, how dare you bring something up like that in the conversation? Have you ever, where are your parents at? Like, have you, do you have any ideal, what kind of damage you can do to people when you say things. She just unloaded on this guy. And I remember looking at it like, oh, like that was the first time. And it was the first time I realized what that move was. Like, oh, you got, I always told my daughter, when you, when you got the truth, you pound the truth. When you get the facts, you pound the

facts. When you got nothing, you pound the table. And like, that was the ultimate pounding the table. Like, the guy had nothing. So it was caught a racist, you know. And it was the first time that for me it clicked like oh you just put this label on them and then you can walk away and you do all the damage and you come out on some level getting to hold your head up or yeah yeah and so it's and then you know fast forward now some you know probably 25 years since that's really started to come back into society because for a while there was nothing there was nothing like that in fact you know, I remember a time when if you were to call somebody a racist or something like that, you know, that was a serious accusation. Yeah.

Like that wasn't willy-nilly, you know, or, you know, that was like, oh, we need to have a, you know, basically a conversation or committee about this because this is some serious business. Yeah. Like that just wasn't accepted anymore. But then when it became the straw man argument, now it's almost meaning fast for 20-something. Yeah. Right. You know, everybody's been called racist

seven times if they've had any opinion, either direction, really. Yep. You know, which is a wild thing. And so now one of the most heinous acts of transgressions

against your fellow human is almost a meaningless insult because it's just thrown at everybody. And these are, you know, when we don't have these proper conversations, when stuff like that gets to just happen because, yeah, you have a cheering squad out there who will send you a thousand likes.

We end up with in a lot of problems. You know, not just from a country level, but, you know, at a societal level, but at the personal level, too. I mean, you know, you have people who are so embroiled into that tribalism now because of the reinforcement loops of all of the pattern that they're almost lost to reasonable interaction.

On any side you want to look at almost any situation, the extremes of those are so extreme now that they're not even, they're so beyond reason. And sadly, most of it's becoming extreme. I mean, we're, you know, we're just seeing the push to the extremities at this point. Yeah. I would add to that two points.

The first point being, once you give permission to society to start throwing around words like that, you almost give permission to society to start acting like that because it's no longer a taboo. That's a good point. Right? And on top of that, or adding to that, you know, when you think about the world is made of language, you know, when you look at metaphors, a metaphor is a creative way. to show someone your construct. You know, when we say, when we say, argument is war, I'm telling you how I think about the argument.

Like, I'm trying to win. It's not like I'm trying to solve a problem. I'm already at war because I'm in an argument. So, you know, and take no prisoners in an argument. Like, there's all these metaphors around war in argument. And isn't that interesting that maybe that's why our arguments end up in war? is because we're already thinking about the argument as a war. So if we're already thinking about people as a racist,

we've already decided they are a racist. We're no longer having a conversation about which right or wrong because we've already decided that. And like we had said earlier in the conversation, imagine a kid that grows up, you know, that's at the age of five or six, and they're already surrounded by the media. They're surrounded and inundated by different speakers.

Maybe you like them. Maybe you don't. Maybe you think they're right. Maybe you don't. Maybe they are. Maybe they're not. But a kid getting bombarded with that is changing the way he thinks and beginning to use language in a way that will change society forever. And so, you know, I think that that is something that is worth talking about for just a little bit more.

The language that we're using fundamentally changes the society we live in. And I think that kind of brings us back in no absolute. And it weaponizes it. I mean, we're weaponizing children right now. Yeah. There's no denying that. Look at all the stuff that's happening in school boards and book bannings and teaching of X, Y, and Z and not teaching of X, Y, and Z and all this stuff. I mean, we have turned children into a weapon.

Yeah. Shame on everybody involved. Yeah, it's true. You think you want to collectively rob a generation of children. of their childhood, that's a horrible, horrible thing and you should be ashamed of yourself. Regardless of what side of the argument you're on, you're weaponizing the children. You're putting them in the middle of the argument. You're not being grown up enough to figure out a better solution so you don't have to weaponize the children.

Shame on you. Everybody on all side. Yeah, well put. What would that be? You as a systems guy and someone that works with system and understands the decay of systems and the breaking down of systems and the rebuilding of systems. What if we say that the construct or the language model is wrong or the input model is wrong, what would that be in a system?

What would be the analog or what would be the analogy of that in a system breaking down? So let's let's go ahead and break it down to an ecosystem because a lot of people are more familiar with that. You know, so let's just call it a river that's generate. this ecosystem. Whenever you, the analog of like news and information would kind of be, along with a few other pillars of that, I would say, you know, things like health care, you know, things like transparency in government, things like that, those are going to be the borders of the river. It's going to define how the system traverses through the environment.

And without, you know, without defined, without those defined borders, all of a sudden, the water just washes the way and it seeps into the ground. Without, you know, there's a lot of different aspects to that metaphor that we could draw into. But I think, to answer your question, I think it would be, you know, that and a few other pillars of society were kind of defined the outline of the ecosystem, if you will. So in that aspect, what we're seeing now is just the dissipation of the whole ecosystem. If we don't have those borders. Right. If there's no border, if there's no outline to it, you're just watching it basically bleed off into the ether. Without a channel for that water to run through, it's going, you know, it's just going to spread out, sink into the ground and go back down to the aquifer.

there has to be a you know it's there's a reason not just height and elevation changes and whatnot but there's reasons that waterways develop in certain places as post others there's you know the rocky understructures there's the you know the certain faunas and that defines the you know where is that the route of that river that water system and those are all of those kind of pillars of society the news and the information the health there the things that need that you would need in a community to run a community that are extenuous to a single individual. So that makes me start thinking, okay, if we look at the world that we live in and the breakdown of society, if we look at the breakdown of society, like a map of the so-called global warming, according to like the alarmist and stuff,

they say, hey, all these low-lying lands are going to be flooded. All these islands are going to be covered up. And this may not be popular. I'm just spitballing here, but, you know, it seems to me that when I listen to some of the climate alarmists, they talk about some islands, some third world nations that are going to be covered in water. Might, regardless if it's climate change or the sun or it's a breakdown in the monetary system, the same people are going to die. And if we take it back to our water metaphor, like if we take it back to the minority streams that branch off the water system, they're going to get the less water.

But the mainstream is still going to get, it's going to flow down this area it's flowing to. You know, and the borders might be hazy or whatever. You're not going to be able to push it. They're not going to push the water into the little tributaries that you had because if it breaks down, the water is going to go wherever it wants. And that water is going to go to the majority of where. it went before. Does that mean like that you're going to, maybe that's, that kind of seems to me, like that's what global warming is, is just a way of taking money. And we look at it from a system's point of view. It's just a way of taking money or taking water from the main group of flow and

dishing it out to the little tributaries. You try to keep these little fish okay and keep these fish okay. I'm not saying those fish don't deserve to live, but if those fish live in a habitat that's not real, that habitat's not going to make it. You know what I mean? It's just, it's weird to think about how all the systems parallel each other. And it doesn't matter what label you put on it. And they're in a constant state of change as well. Yeah.

That's something that's usually not highlighted in when people talk about these things. It's like, we'll go with the, you know, the climate thing. Yeah, you can have these, these nations that potentially would disappear from an ocean rise. But if you chart back 10,000 years, the oceans have risen. 400 some feet. Are you going to retroactively go back and tell all those people that, you know, we're sorry we didn't save your nation? No, I mean, it's there's there.

I think what it really comes down to, too, is that there is a sincere lack of a consistent worldview out there. You know, I don't know about you, but what I was taught about the world was pretty much absolute garbage. Yeah. You know, it took it took years and years and years of my life. dedicated study to actually get some sort of comprehension about what's going on in the world, let alone what the world is, let alone where we came from, and maybe where we might be going.

These are all questions that most people have zero concept of, and I think that's a problem. You know, if your worldview is confined by the social constructs of what you digest from television and then what you go out and laugh and talk about when you're drunk with your friends all week long, you're going to have a very limited perspective on these systems and how they impact lives, maybe not your life, but definitely other people's lives. And, you know, when you don't have those perspectives, now the choice that you have to make when you're involving yourself with these systems is, you know, well, how's it going to affect me?

you know, because if there's no perception of it really affecting other people, because, well, you know, for a lot of reasons, either I don't know or that's somebody else's problem is probably usually the two main categories that that gets thrust into, you know, you're either, you're just perpetuating a problem. And I think by and large, because of just the structures that we've had, the way society has grown, the rapidity of which it's grown, the systems that were implemented, in order to facilitate that growth have defined us into a very limited perspective of reality, of society, and where we can go. And unfortunately, those limitations are give the people

who have everything all of the money and resources. And then they'll decide what is good for the rest of everybody else. That's really a bad system. It's been proven to be a bad system. It hasn't worked over and over and over again for as long we've recorded history, yet we like to repeat the process.

So, and, you know, the thing is, but if people realize that we've tried this over and over again throughout history, they would say, well, why are we repeating this process? What can we do different? Then you have a new conversation. But if that piece of knowledge never exists, then it's just like, well, I guess on to the next ruler, we'll see what they say. You know, hopefully we get a good one this time and not in your own, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I was. I've been reading this book called It's called the Evolution of Civilization.

That was, I think I don't, it's called the evolution of civilizations. It's by Carol Quigley. And he just talks about the rise and fall of different civilizations. And there's different, there's these different parts of the system that we go through.

Is he the one who averaged it out to 250 years? Yeah. Yeah, he is. Nice call on that. Yeah, that's what I thought. That's what I thought. Yeah. Yep.

And he's, I think he was Bill Clinton's mentor. And he also wrote a book called, oh, God, tragedy and hope, which is the, it's the story of the people that boom the system and blow up the system. And he was like, he's an architect of our system. And he, okay, we're at year 2.30. Guess what boy, start rigging it up. We're going to blow this thing, you know. And he tells you everything. He names, names.

And, you know, you start reading that stuff. And it's a thick, it's a monster, man. It's like 800 pages. But look, the guy's telling you, here's where we're at. Here's what's going to happen. Once you read it, you're like, oh, my God. It's all bullshit. It's all bullshit, man.

Right. And so, but in this book, he goes into the ideas of like, okay, here's what happens at like year two, one, between 180. Maybe you make it a 250, if you have a good one. But here's normally what happens around 180 is that you have this top heavy system And you got three things. He says when the instrument of expansion becomes institutionalized, that is the very foundation of problems.

And if we use the, yeah, right. So if we have capitalism as the instrument of expansion, but then capitalism becomes state capitalism and becomes an institution. Okay, that instrument no longer works. That knife is blunt. It no longer cuts. And so you just, you have, you can make the knife bigger and bigger and bigger.

but it's still not sharp. So it's not going to do anything. You just try to jam it in there, but, you know, it's not cutting the way it used to. And so at that point, there's three things that can happen. One, society can come up with a new instrument of expansion. And that's what you see, like the military industrial complex has been our instrument of choice for capitalism, but it's not really working that well anymore. So now we are, we are pumping all of our money into big.

tech into big pharma, we're desperately looking for a new instrument of expansion. And I think that that's a big part of what COVID does. Hey, can we expand this thing through health care? Can we expand this through new drugs that will change the body? Here's all of our money. But that just shows how desperate things are. So that's one way. And that's the best way to continue to move the ball forward is to expand with a new instrument.

The second part is that you can reform. the institute that you already have. And that would be what, say, a lot of people in the United States want to do, or that's the object of nationalism, is to reform the instrument that got us going. But the people on top want no part of that, because that means they're out of there.

They're like, wait, let's just do it. Yeah, they lose their top. Yeah, they lose being at the, tip of the spear and all the goodies that come with it. And the third is just decay and chaos and back in there. And if you just take a moment to think about those three things, you can really begin to see all three of them taking shape. And I think the world makes a lot more sense when you start looking at it from that aspect.

Oh, especially if then you go through historical records and you look at, you know, the arcs of like the Roman Empire of, you know, France and the 1400s. So, you know, you look at these different arc throughout history and you go, Oh, okay. Yeah. You know, this seems to play out pretty consistently. Yeah, it's a really interesting thing. I, you know, I think we've been exploring for different mechanism of expansion for a while. The internet seemed to be that, and it did kick the can down the road. Yeah. The problem was is that I think the internet, in all of its capacity of change, was, subverted by the institutionalized capitalism that already existed in the world.

Yep. And eventually it just got co-opted and then corrupted to the point where now, you know, how many monopolies are there in the world? There's just a couple. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, everything's on the cloud. You know, every business, you can't, you can't have a VC talk without, hey, what's your

AWS deployment or how are you deploying on Azure, you know, and these are, you know, it's like, well, we're not using the cloud. Well, we're not giving you any money because that's what everybody does. They do it on the cloud. You have to do it on the cloud, which is wild to me. You know, before we started this conversation, we were talking about OBS, which is an open broadcasting software, which is something you can use to do podcasting, if anybody's out there curious.

And it's open source. And, you know, those open source projects, you know, you know, those open source projects, you it takes a little bit more learning. There's not the interface that allows you just to say, click, okay, I'm live. You know, it takes a little bit more effort, but the resource of having that as your own resource, that was the promise of the internet and the promise of technology,

was being able to at the click of a button, I had all these beautiful deployable systems that at my fingertips that I can then use to create and explore. And by and large, those are getting usurbed for monthly subscription fees, right? So I think the Internet was originally, you know, kind of society's release valve, if you will, looking for that next evolution of expansion. And then as it got co-opted, I think that's why we're running into what we're running into now. is now we're looking at the other form of our societal expansion,

which is the military industrial complex. Because this didn't work for us. Now we're going back to the other one. Well, the problem with the other one is that it already had stagnated. That way of life had already stagnated. But it was freaking effective, right? Yeah. And that's why things are going that way.

because it was simply regardless of stagnation, it's effective to drop bombs on people apparently. You know, what's that say about us as a species? That's probably a different conversation. Yeah, I think that, you know, if we look at what made the, there's another book by Thomas Pickety, and it's called Capital. And in that book, he talks about the ideas of Capital, you know, from the beginning of time until now.

And he says that what we saw in the industrial age, the last 100, 200 years, is just this minor blip on the radar where there was an actual middle class. Capital coagulator is all up here. There's two classes. Really, really, really wealthy people. And then there's just slaves.

And what you saw over the last 200 years was this little blip mainly because the rest of the world was wiped out. and the United States just took all the money from the rest of the world because they were the only one still afloat. And in some ways, I think that that is the model that we're looking at now. Like, okay, let's just go bomb everybody and then they have to buy our stuff. Maybe that's the unipolar world we talk about it. You could argue that's kind of what's happened.

I think that Europe is in real trouble with their currency, with their, you know, they're more tribalism than anything. And there are big problems right now. Well, you know, they they tried this grand idea of the euro. And which might actually had a play had Brexit not come into the picture. Because now all the all that old tribalism in Europe just went right to the top of the heat. Yeah. Right. You know, even if it's been a couple generations buried, all of a sudden it was like, oh, it's those Brits again.

Or, you know, from the other perspective, it's the French. They're trying to take it over. And it just became this, you know, all that old tribalism just rose to the top. From an economic perspective, it started out fantastic. When that euro came out, you know, there was two to one on the dollar. I mean, I remember meeting people on my travels from Europe who were, they were having the time of their life. Not only was it two to one on a dollar, but they're in, you know, Central America, where everything, a tenth of the price in the United States.

So they're living a lap of luxury. And now it's pretty much on parity with the dollar, I think. So, you know, if you just look at it from that perspective, that was what, the past 13, 15 years, they went from having two times the value to just one. So they've lost half their value from just kind of a global, you know, buying power perspective in the past 15 years. That's wild. That is wild. When you talk about on a whole of a scale of, you know, GDPs and all this stuff and what people are making, what they're spending, how they're interacting with the world. So yeah, I think they have a lot of very large problems when it comes to that.

Not to mention the fact that, you know, you have a very different dichotomy of governance throughout a lot of those countries where you have really large leanings to socialism. And then, you know, you have, you know, I think that's why Brexit originally took hold, too, is because you have these archaic systems like the monarchy and more of a, you know, a democratic type system. and then you had these, you know, socialist systems that were being in play. And those, how are you going to get along? Yeah.

You know, because at the end of the day, one of those is playing to take advantage of the other. Yep. Yep. Yeah. It's interesting to see how in some ways, in just in my lifetime, I can see the acceleration of policy. And I remember when I was younger, it was. like right when right when the european union came out it was like oh okay they're going to be the european union we're going to be the amaro you know we're going to have these blocks but like that

that whole model went to shit with europe like i think it you know not too long after after the euro came out you know there were skeptics that were like this is never going to work because of what you said like these are societies or thousands of years old you're not just going to put them together and they're going to work and then there was the okay well what we need is a unified military that would work and so you saw like these sort of outbreaks or hey we're all going to go to the middle east as europe now and like we're going to be a team you know but it didn't work and when that didn't work plans for the amaro got scrapped like okay well this doesn't work we can't do that and now you know there's this big rollout of digital

currency that was probably going to be like sDRs like the special drawing rights so we're going to have this one currency and i think a lot of lot of people still feel that way. However, the more that I look at the destruction of the euro and the grand strategy of unifying world government, the more ridiculous it seems to me. Like it just too big. I agree. Well, and it goes back to what we're talking about before. I mean, you know, the social constructs are entirely different animals. They don't even speak the same languages. They're not defined. Their terms are not defined.

They just decided we're going to have the same currency. Currency, while it does make the world go around, it does not drive, you know, social economic construct. You know, those are derived from human to human interactions. And it's not something, like you said, these are a thousand-year-old institutions. It's not something that changes overnight. When you were being raised and grandma told you this is how it is, that implants in your brain. When you're an adult and all of a sudden you're faced with something that's counterdictive to that, yeah, you might have the logic and reasonability to take the evidence and make some sort of rational equation out of that. But how many people do?

And how many people are going back to what grandma told them or, you know, the stereotypes that persist throughout society that are easy to fall back upon when things start to struggle when you have these hodgepodge of ideas like the European Union. So, you know, I think without the proper definition of terms, like, why are we doing this? What are we doing it for? What's the end outcome? Who's going to benefit? You know, all of these things. Those will never discuss. It was just a hip-hop, hooray idea.

Look at us. Here's another tack on my resume. Yeah. Yeah, it's mind-blowing to me to think that when I think about it from that aspect, you know, I begin to see the reasoning behind a unifying message. Call it propaganda or call it a unifying message. But if you want everyone to be on board, you got to get everybody believing in something similar. And it seems to me that our message is like this scientific materialism, you know,

or some sort of materialism reduction. And maybe that's one reason we're going into this place and killing everybody. He's like, hey, look, this is the system we're using, get on board. And once you get everybody on board, then you can give them the money. See, but you're always, that's always going to fail. It's always going to fail, man. It's always going to fail because, because, you know, you have to, you can't tell people that they have to get on board.

They have to decide that they want to get on board. Yeah, yeah. And so if you're not creating the, if you're not fostering the proper environment, for people to have the reasonable ability, the logical ability to, reason themselves in the position of why they want to be on board. Right. It will fail eventually. That's a crack in the system.

Now, if everybody gets on board with a consistent language, a consistent definition of terms, a consistent idea of, you know, a consistent outlook on, you know, humanity, all of a sudden, now you can have cooperation. Now you can have teamwork. The problem is, is you can't just go off and start this from the top down. overnight. You can't say, hey, we're the Euro. Doesn't work. Because people are like, I'm not a Euro, I'm a Spaniard.

Right? Like, I've been a Spaniard my entire life. Why am I a Euro now? Like, I don't get it. And, you know, that's just very, very elementary looking at it. But those things run very, very deep in cultures and in the different social constructs in those countries. So, yeah, you don't get to make a top-down solution for something like this. This has to be a, you know, this has to be a rational conversation with reasonable people taking a logical outlook on things and agreeing to work together, compromise, define their terms, you know, all of these things that, you know, we call community, but are really kind of lost from community these days at most scales. So it's an interesting quandary, but I think, and I think we're going to. we're going to watch the solutions unfold in real time personally.

Yeah. Why, you know, why is it? I don't, I don't understand why nationalism is such a pejorative. Like, why? Is it, is it, sometimes I hear the argument, yeah. Well, I mean, I think, you know, when you hear nationalism, you hear, well, somebody's, you know, they're better than somebody else is usually one of those things. or it becomes to where does nationalism

come from? Well, we all know that the only reason borders are defined is because people were killed. So, you know, in our world today, right? You know, I don't think you can say that there's a single country that didn't war themselves into their current state. Yeah.

I mean, that's just where we are. So, you know, nationalism is incumbent upon war and death. and so I think there's something to be said about that when you when people become nationalists and get you know and there's those populist movement

is because you know historically speaking when that happens people die and so I think you know that's an easy way for something to become a pejorative you know at the same time somebody who enlisted in the military

their family was military they've never heard anything but who poop pura looks at nationalism as, you know, an idealistic perspective, right? So it's very much, again, going to come back down to those social constructs, the terms that are defined at the individual level and the communal level, the societal level. But I think the pejorative of nationalism has, is partly because we just have access to more more history. And we can communicate openly, kind of these days, about that history.

I mean, I would be really interested to see if there was actually a nation alive today that didn't have any sort of war that put it in its place. I can't, off the top of my head, I can't think of one. Like, you know, when I think of ideas, like, it seems to me, everybody's better off when the best idea wins. And, you know, we're not even allowed to have conversations about nationalism or populism. Like, it's such a threat to the structure that these things are off the table. When something's off the table, you know, you can't even begin to, like, I don't, like,

and that's what blows my mind is like, there's so many people at the top that are not even willing to have a discussion or allow people to participate in the discussion. Like, I realize populism could be bad on a global scale. I realize that populism may not be the best thing because some of the people, yeah, if it was populism for, hey, we're planet Earth and we're rallying against the aliens and independence day, that's populism for humanity. I think that would be a great populism, right? But we seem incapable of achieving that level of populace.

because it's not about humanity. It stops at, it stops at, you know, football team. It stops at city. It stops at, you know, state. It stops at country. It stops. There's all these stops along the way before we actually get to,

hey, we're a bunch of apes on a rock hurling through space. You know, but I think if, hey, if we're apes on a rock hurling through space, if that's our identifying characteristic that binds us together. And that was our populist movement. Yeah. Heck yeah. Because, and to be frank, you know, the existential crises facing humanity, which most people don't even ever think about in their lifetime, they outweigh every threat of every nation state, every neighbor trying to steal your crap, all these populist movements, nationalism, it outweighs all of those by orders of magnitude. These are things that we have the evidence to say that it has wiped out life on this planet before. multiple times.

Yeah. There's nothing else that's wiped out life on this planet multiple times that we're aware of. Yeah. So that technically should be our greatest, you know, our greatest adversary. However, we are, we're divided by these ideas, these lesser steps than that populism. Yeah. And that's, you know, national, populism and nationalism can be that. But it just blows my mind that the people in positions of authority, like we're not, listen, man, you guys are a bunch of nationalist hubristic donkeys, you know, like, but like why the same people that refuse to let their people talk about nationalism are the same people that say, listen, I'm in charge of the nation, me, I'm in charge of this.

They're also the same person who's going to call somebody a racist. They're also this, you know, because the reality is shutting down those conversations is in their best interest. It is. It allows them to remain in a position of power, authority, making money, what have you. Those conversations are going to remove those people, just as they always have in the past. Right. You know, because it's, you know, if you look at it, the populist movements of history were all when the authoritative ruling body had shit the bed so extraordinarily bad that everybody was willing to give up their entire livelihoods to make sure that that. person could not exist in that position any longer.

Yeah. That's a, you know, that's a very powerful thing from a perspective of the people versus, you know, how the people are ruled. But that's also a very, you know, that's taught in every authoritative, I want to be a dictator class, right? And figure out how to make sure the people don't think you're the enemy. Right, right. You should probably try to divide them by color, by race, by, you start to divide them as you can. Any means necessary. Yeah.

Let me ask you this. What percentage of people in positions of authority are there because they deserve to be? And what, like, what do you think? I think, loaded question, surely. Absolutely. I would almost argue that most should not be. You know, people who seek positions of authority, often have some character flaws that allow them to manipulate that position of authority.

Otherwise, you know, why would you want to rule somebody? I don't think anybody who's a well put together human, well adjusted, has some life experience, seeing love, experience, joy wants to rule anyone. And if you want to rule somebody, I would argue that, well, you probably have something lacking internally. Yeah. So I would say most, if not all. Now, there are a few exceptions for people, you know, like, it's just that much shit and

somebody has to stand up and there's the one guy who's like, yeah, I'll do it. Yeah. I don't want it. That does happen. Yeah. Exactly. But, you know, those are going to be on local levels, I think, more than anything. I don't think that transitions to any sort of, you know, state or national level.

I think that's just going to be your, you know, maybe a local mayor for a small town type idea. But I think by and large, most people, you know, look at these. people's bank accounts. I think that's an easy correlation to draw. Who got involved in this because they were wanting to do good for people? How much money do they have in the bank? That's probably a fair ratio of how much good they wanted to do.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point to think about it from that angle. It's sometimes it's the person that feels called to do it. But yeah, I think, you know, how much money you have in the bank. And it's weird because it's almost like money is a moat. And it keeps people that can do good away from the castle. Like, hey, if you're, if you can't cross this mode, then you can't fucking play. Well, everywhere that's, right?

It's just a, well, how do I cross the mode? Well, we'll give you the money. But, but you have to, you have to play this way, this way, and this way. Right. Right. We're going to need pictures of your kid. Um, by the way, have you visited an island recently? Yeah.

If not, here's a ticket for you. Private playing at all. Yep. You know, it's, I was, I was thinking about that the other day. Just, you know, when you look at the people in positions of authority, it's almost like they've been self-selected. There's a great book by John Ronson called The Psychopath Test. And in that, in that book, he gives like 20 questions of, do you think this? Have you had that happen?

And in that book, he argues that something. than ridiculous, like 95% of people running Fortune 500 companies or that are involved in this particular aspect of government answer 80% of these questions affirmative. It's interesting to think about how those character traits have been amplified for people in positions of authority. Absolutely. And I can speak to that just my own entrepreneurial path. You know, the reasons I got screwed were because I wasn't.

that. Yeah. And I wasn't willing to make that decision that would enable that type of thing. You know, it was just like, no, we're, we're not going to go that direction. Well, then all of a sudden, you know, it's, and then it's, it's a pool that kind of just self-selects itself all the way up. And then people who are less willing to compromise on their morals and ethic don't make it further up those run. Yeah. And entrepreneurship is a little bit of a nuanced one because there are true. Sure. So there are true, there are true stories where people who are just good people with a great idea, managed to accomplish something. Right. But if you look at every single one of those stories, yeah, those were like the blip of a company.

It's not a multinational conglomeration. It's not something that's been lasting generations. It's not one of these things that's manipulated into one of these massive, NGOs. No, it's a story about a good company with a good product that had a lifespan in most all of those cases that I'm aware of. So, yeah, I think from entrepreneurship, there are some nuances to it, but by and large, on the scale of like politics, I don't think there's much to question. I mean, just look at how these people answer question. I mean, look at how they, you know, look at what they say.

on Twitter, you know, if it's, even if it's something completely unrelated to them, it has to be about them. Yeah. And to be fair, that's also how you get popular.

Right? You don't get popular by not, by not doing that. Very few people, popularity is a similar thing, right? You know, fame is a similar thing. You know, there's the people who are willing to go out there

and, you know, constantly, pound the pavement is part of it. The other part of it is, you know, a lot of people, especially like if you look at any sort of personality in the information arena, media arena, all of those are because they decided to, oh, that person's the devil, that person's evil. This is bad. You should believe this.

This is the truth. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's how they got their popularity. Yeah. And, you know, so, you know, it's not too much of a surprise why we see that, that story played out in the media almost every single day, right? Yeah. And, yeah, it's this weird marriage between image and construct and power. You know, and if you sat, if you look back at some of the debates between like the Lincoln Douglas debates where, you know, they're traveling to like, you know,

all the states and they're debating four hours and they're throwing out these beautiful barbs like it's the old adage of you i toil and make the bread and you eat it you know and like just talking to these farmer like these beautiful debates and questions being thrown and and now you have like these three minutes you have like this coward terrible oh man like a three minute debate and then okay let's go brought to you by Pfizer you know and like it's more of a a show and more of a a an attempt. It wagged the dog, right? Yeah, exactly, man. Exactly. I think that one of the ways we can make the world better is by getting back to

incredible speakers and debates and putting out images, right? I agree with you. I mean, I had the idea I wanted to launch like gauntlet TV, you know, like throwing the gauntlet. Yeah.

And just like a live debate thing. Yeah. It could work. It's one of those things where, you know, it sounds great on paper because you're like, oh, hell, yeah, you get these two people to debate on a real debate, not where, you know, there's a moderator, not any of this garbage, but a real debate. That would be amazing. The reality of that situation is that the person who's likely to lose that debate is not going to engage in the live debate. Right. Because they're pretty well aware that they're going to lose the debate.

They have handlers around them that are aware that they're going to lose the debate. Now, sure, you'll get a few schbox here and there. But I think by and large, it would be very, very hard to get quality debates from people these days, at least the people who are in positions of power. I mean, it would be great. You know, it'd be easy to get people, you know, everyday people having debates and having real conversations. The problem with that is, you know, people don't see the value with that. you know, they see the value at it from like a podcast perspective,

but from like a debate perspective, nobody's calling for debates. Nobody wants to see Joe Biden talk on stage versus, you know, Donald Trump. I, you know, and even if they do, I, you know, I don't. But, you know, it's one of those things where it's, I don't think, it sounds great on paper, but in practicality, I don't think it gets there. If it did, it would be fantastic. Imagine a primetime television.

was tonight's debate. Yeah. And instead of having football stars or celebrity stars, it was the verbal linguist of our time that were able to articulate themselves in such a manner that elucidated ideas and inspired innovation and, you know, created motivation and was able to hash out

good ideas from bad ideas. I think it's a wonderful idea. But I think the practicality in terms of you know, would a network launch it today? No. Could a Grasswoods thing launch it today? Sure. It would just be one of those things.

It would probably take some time to build up. Right. But the only way you would kind of get the gotchas was to get one of those people who has the handlers to get on an debate, you know, and you're going to be hard pressed to do that. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, well, I did have a, I had a vision when I was thinking about the idea. I was like, now if you had a million followers, and you had a little icon on Twitter, like a gauntlet. And every single post that somebody posted, all they saw was a thousand replies of a gauntlet and calling them out, you might be able to publicly shame people into it. Maybe.

But you would need a large enough of a network to do so. Yeah, I think that, yeah, you would need, you would just need to get the ball rolling. And you might be able to do it with like a, You know, there's, I forgot the name of it, but, you know, you could, you could pay some, you could pay some influencers to start going on and talking smack about it. You know, I think that there should be a way to get it going. There's probably ways to make it a viable business model. Yeah.

It would be one of those things where you probably need some investment money to get that rolling. Absolutely. Yeah. But, no, I think, you know, it could probably be done. I just don't think it would be done from any sort of channel that exist out there today. Yeah. It would be a grassroots type thing. But I thought it would be a cool idea.

I would love to have a, I would love to see people in debate. I don't care about people on a panel talking about, you know, everything that they agree upon. You know, that's no fun. And that's all news is, you know, challenging of ideas is how we've always grown as a society, right? Just, you know, those Lincoln Douglas debate. Yeah. Without those debates, those people, you know, that's how they understood their position in reality on the planet in the country. Yeah.

And, you know, I think it would help. And I look around, and I don't know about you, but, you know, most of the, and I think that would solve one of the problems that I see is that most people, by and large, it just kind of lot. There's not a lot of direction. Most people just have their sale up and whatever direction of wind blows. that's where the wind blows. Nobody's trying to attack in any given direction. It's just, you know, we're all out. We're all out of seeing.

So I would love to do something like that. I've thought about doing something like that. Maybe you can inspire me to push me over the edge. Because technologically speaking, it's not that hard to do. Yeah. Yeah, we should. And I think you've even been in some debate. When we, let me shift a gear in your old facts.

Like, I've seen some good ones. There's this one called the Great, gosh, John, I think it's called The Great Debates. And they're a podcast, but they're out of Canada, and it's at the Roy Thompson Center. And they have, like, you know, I've seen, like, you know, like, gosh, what are some good ones I've seen? I've seen some good ones on, believe it or not, on COVID, on, on the Iraq War. You know, and they had, I saw one with Glenn Greenwald. and Hayden, who was like the guy from the CIA, and they were talking about Julian Assange.

And it was, you know, they had the rules. It was like an Oxford style debate. You come out with your opening argument. This guy gets to respond. This guy comes out with his, his, he gets three minutes. This guy gets three minutes. And it's fascinating. And, you know, they're packing theaters.

And I really think it wouldn't take that much, you know, like that would destroy network news. Like, and if you had it on television, and it was something done on Saturdays, people would tune in, and it would raise the level of discourse, not only in this nation, but nations around the world.

There's so many talented speakers that could come out and would love to get their 15 minutes of fame. And another one I saw was with Jordan Peterson versus Eric Dyson. And Eric Dyson is a master of rhetoric. I admire his style somewhat. But he came out, like, he came out and just got just super cocked,

it and like one thing he does like people talking he's like to like try to cut in and like stop people like it's like trying to throw a jab when people are coming at you and I get it but it's so uncouth in such a sloppy style and he comes out and he's like you know

Jordan Peterson you have this best selling book but you're just a mean white man and the crowd's like hey he's a mean white guy and Jordan Peterson just goes that's a hell of a thing to say during the day that's a hell of a thing, Mr. Dyson.

We're talking about this and that. Okay, you want to talk about reparations? How much? How much should you get for reparations? He's like, that's a great question. And he's like, well, then why don't you answer it? What percentage should I pay? Without the straw man. Yeah, dude, he's crushed him.

And Eric Dyson's like, he's a big guy too. And it just for me, it showed how little of a foundation that guy had. He's a master of rhetoric. But when you get down to it, where's your foundation, son? You got nothing. He cut your knees out right there. Most of those, most all of those people are none. I mean, think about it.

What do you have to compromise of yourself in order to subscribe to something like that? I mean, you have to compromise your integrity, first of all. You know, and then you're, and then after your integrity is compromised, I mean, it's just a downward slope from there. Depending on where you happen to be, you know, on that slope when you're having that conversation, you can see it. You know, it's, oh, you sold out. You know, whether that be from a monetary perspective or whether that be from a mental perspective, you know, you sold out to whatever idealism or tribalism or, you know, a concept this is without having any sort of rational recompense, evidence to support it, you know, a reasonable perspective in the world. and I think that's pretty replete when you start to look at a lot of a lot of the most influential people from those types of arena

yeah Jordan Peterson's a wonderful cat you know I really enjoy what he's doing out in the world man he's got just that guy is so deep on so many levels it's hard to wrap your mind around like he's a modern day Dostoevsky or like he's a modern day true philosopher that like understands not only the words that he's using but the argument and what the true nature of the argument can be from multiple levels and that's a whole other world man I read that guy's book sometimes and I'm like what what what how can how did you get there you know well and he cares he cares deeply about it yeah you know

You know, which is if you ever watch him really like speak on how he speak, you know, like I guess for instance, he's on a book tour right now or something like some sort of tour right now. And he's basically doing a live show every single day with new material, every single stop of his tour. So, you know, he's not going out there and rehashing the same speech. He's going out there and he seeks to explore individual ideas from his books and expand upon him. Not necessarily for the audience's benefit, but for his own personal exploration of his words. How many people look at their own words and explore them that way? I mean, almost nobody, as far as, at least in my circle of people that I know.

So, you know, and there's a lot to be said about that. There's a lot to be, there's a lot to be said about also, you know, kind of what we're doing too is realizing that there's, There is a need out there. I don't fancy myself some grand order. However, I realize that I do have a few words that can, you know, make an impact on people. And so it's like, well, if you got a few words and somebody has no word, where's the obligation lot? You know, so, you know, there's a responsibility to knowledge that's often not spoken of.

And I think, you know, once you start to gain knowledge in the world, you know, there is a responsibility to distill that knowledge to other. And I think truly great individuals recognize that and achieve that through various meetings, whether that be artistic or spoken to words or otherwise.