Supplementary Material 44: Peasant Archmages, Moral Panics, and LOTR Parenting Tips
We descend once more into the Gurusphere, encountering secret peasant archmages, decline narratives, Epstein emails, and endless moral panics.The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (1 hour, 37 minutes).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus00:00 SM 44 PF00:23 Introduction01:30 Konstantin Kisin: Not Left Or Right, Just Right05:20 Boghossian is shocked by pessimistic French people08:50 Konstantin and Warren Smith as relics of the anti-SJW era12:45 A PSA! Hyper Capitalism Tier Update!18:36 Matt's AV Setup20:01 Recommendation: Successville (British version)21:40 My peasant farmer dad is secretly an Archmage!28:14 Scott Galloway talks with Gwyneth Paltrow40:18 American Capitalist Culture and the Gurus48:54 Bryan Johnson vs AG151:45 Bryan Johnson & Epstein Schmoozing58:09 Bari Weiss's Peter Attia Woes59:14 Epstein and QAnon Conspiracies01:03:23 Overinterpreting Epstein emails01:09:04 Shermer promotes Dave Rubin to hawk his book on Truth01:10:37 Conspiracy Theory prevalence on left and riht01:17:44 Jonathan Haidt and his anti-social media crusade01:23:15 Plato on the Corruption of the Youth01:24:30 The Eternal Appeal of Decline Narratives01:26:22 They won't let you enjoy things anymore...01:30:24 Matt's laissez-faire parenting tips01:31:45 Life lessons from Lord of the Rings01:34:17 The Witch King of Angmar defeated by a Woke White WomenSourcesKonstantin Kisin on not being left or rightBoghossian and Kisin bemoan civilisational decline narrativesThe Guardian on Bari Weiss’s new CBS “Podcastistan” hiresNiall Ferguson on how Trump “won Davos”The Guardian: Elon Musk had more extensive ties to Epstein than previously knownMy Farmer Dad Is Secretly an Archmage – viral short-form fantasy dramaBehind the Scenes of My Farmer Dad Is Secretly an ArchmageOriginal Chinese version of <a...
Hello and welcome to the Coding the Guru's Suppler Mentary Material with the venerable psychologist Matthew Brown and the cheeky young upstart anthropologist psychologist Chris Kavner.
Young is all relative, Matt.
It's all relative, okay?
Young at heart.
I'd prefer you used a different adjective than venerable.
I could think of many other ones.
What about inimitable?
That's better, isn't it?
that's pretty good yeah i think you're i'll go with that The inimitable Matthew Brown.
I don't know.
I'm not quite sure what it means.
What does it mean?
Just you can't be imitated?
Like, no one could imitate me.
But it's not unimitable.
It's inimitable.
Now it sounds like a word that doesn't mean anything.
Yeah, it's too, we've said it too many times.
So good or unusual as to be impossible to copy unique.
Well, that's me in answering.
Yep, that's what I've often said about you.
That's true.
Oh, no, speaking of self-congratulatory self-descriptions.
That just reminded me of something I saw on Twitter recently.
Good old Constantine Kissing.
He's good.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
Constantine.
He recently appeared on, what was it, Newsnight?
Was that where he was?
That's a BBC thing, right?
Yeah, I saw that he got a round of coverage because he was, oh, question time.
Sorry.
He was on question time.
Yeah, it's like, you know, kind of panel format where they get a bunch of talking heads and they answer questions and then they respond to audience prompts and stuff as well.
And Constantine was being his usual self there.
That's the first problem.
Like the fact that he was invited on something like that to, you know, represent a certain constituency or something.
Like they couldn't find anyone better.
Constantine was it?
I know, I know.
But, you know, as he pointed out in response to somebody criticizing while he was there, you know, he is somebody that gets clicks and attention.
Well, what he said was, I have the biggest political substack in Britain.
There's a lot of qualifying things there, but you know, and he has trigonometry and all that kind of thing.
But yeah, Constantine has been very successful in making himself a gob for hire, right?
He's, but the main thing he does is that he gives all the right-wing talking points and then he gets very upset and stamps his feet and wheels and lashes if you point out that he's right-wing, you know?
Yeah.
He periodically admits it.
He periodically says, fine, I'm right wing.
And then he forgets.
Then he goes back.
Yeah.
If right wing means endorsing pretty much all right-wing populist policies and liking right-wing politicians and finding right-wing stuff really appealing.
Then I guess I'm right-wing.
I know.
I have to, and as always, he capitalizes like anytime he has a success, he's quick to capitalize it on it.
Yeah.
Do you remember after the Oxford Union speech, he was just glowing with happiness and working hard to capitalize?
So on Twitter, he said, welcome, new followers.
A few things you should know.
This is a chef's kiss tweet.
I am not left or right, and I am not party political.
I care about what's true and what works.
How about that, Chris?
He's not left all right.
And he's not, he's not party political.
I think party there, I think, is doing a lot of heavy lifting because I think the way he'd get out of this is say, well, I don't explicitly endorse a certain party.
I'm not a card-carrying member of such and such.
Give him time, though.
I think he'll pretty much clearly come out endorsing reform.
Yeah, Farage.
Yeah.
But, you know, I'm just interested how he could possibly weasel out of that that he's not party political and not left or right.
But, you know, this is the guru's thing.
This is the thing that we've noticed since the very beginning, since the beginning of the IDW, this claim that they are above politics.
They don't have any tribe.
They don't have any particular allegiances.
They're just beams of pure truth and rationality.
So don't you dare try to pigeonhole them.
All they care about is what's true and real and good.
And it's just like, it's easy to say that about yourself.
I know it sounds good and it clearly works.
Like, because Constantine Kissing is still running with that formula today.
And it's been like a decade.
Decade.
Yeah.
How long can they keep getting away with that?
I know.
Well, he also, his second point in that tweet is, I want Britain, America, and the West to be strong, confident, and united, which is another calling point.
And I saw today he was also tweeting out this thing about somebody was lamenting.
Oh, it was Burghausian.
Of course, it was Peter Burghussian.
He was saying in Paris last night, we went out to dinner with six French people in their 30s.
I asked them, are you optimistic about the future of France?
Everyone burst out laughing.
I encounter this over and over again.
Profound pessimism about the future.
So much so, they laugh, right?
And Constantine says, there is nothing that shocks our American friends more than how utterly declinist Europe and Britain have become.
Massive political and cultural changes required.
But, you know, the thing I want to note here, one, anybody being surprised that French people would not be optimistic and singing the joys of the beauty of France and the future.
Like, come on, right?
You know, French people are the people who are known as existential philosophers and so on, right?
There's not.
They invented the word ennui.
Then also Constantine and them keep like getting butthurt about, you know, people criticizing the West or whatever.
But I've never listened to a more moany bunch of sad sacks than the carousel of guests that appear on Joe Rogan, on trigonometry.
They're all moaning about the end of civilization, the decline of America.
I mean, fucking the Trump slogan is make America great again, implying that currently it's just terrible.
You know, all his speeches and stuff are talking about the decline and we're going to lose this.
And yeah, so it's all these words they say, where, you know, they're like, we want to be optimistic and have good visions of the future, like Elon Musk.
And you list, look at Elon Musk's Twitter feed and it's just the most BS, racist, culture war, conspiratorial bullshit.
But they like to pretend that they're optimistic and positive.
Yeah, I think this is the sort of thing that annoys us the most, just that having it both ways, like spending day in, day out being an like totally partisan, ideologically blinkered talking head, and then pretending that you're above it all and you don't have any things and you just care about truth and stuff.
If you cared about truth, he wouldn't use those measly weasel words around climate change and things like that.
As he said, these people that trumpet Western civilization first and big, strong future and be optimistic and the left are so bad because they criticize things that are wrong.
That is literally all they do.
If you listen to their content, it's moaning and whinging about how everything is awful and in decline and gone wrong and the West has fallen, et cetera, et cetera, and getting worse.
Yeah, so it's like you can't pick a lane, you know?
That's what annoyed us about last Manosphere talk that we covered too.
Like, I personally do not like and do not care for and don't endorse that kind of manly mannersphere, be a man, crap all up, right?
But if you do, and if you really lean into those gender stereotypes, and that's what makes you a super duper man, then you can't whinge and moan and write little poems about your sad feelings.
Like Chris Williams, like it's come on.
Demonstrably, they can.
I know they are apt.
They can have their cake and eat it too.
And it's not fair.
They shouldn't.
Well, Constantine finished off that tweet by saying, most important.
I mean, he, you know, he managed to plug his sub stack and his podcast, of course.
But then the last bullet point he said, most important.
I don't care if you're offended, winking this.
And it's just like, that's Constantine.
He's the embodiment of a 2010s culture war dream.
Facts.
You don't care about your feelings.
Yeah.
Like, it's dead.
Like, that is, that's a cliche.
That is such a vapid cliche at this point, surely.
But it still works.
It still works.
It works for him.
Constantine's kind of running like an unthought relic from the culture.
He's running on the fumes of 2010 culture war stuff.
And it doesn't matter that he's an empty vessel, just a drum that goes bong when you hit it.
Clearly, I think going for the lowest common denominator and just repeating empty cliches, that's a winning strategy.
I think he could become Prime Minister of England.
I know I've said that as well.
That's where we're heading.
But similarly, Warren Smith is like that, right?
You know, the guy that came to fame by doing that video where he was a teacher reacting to a student talking about J.K. Rowling's tweets.
And he's went on and he makes like React videos, right, about stuff that he sees on the internet.
And it's, I mean, to say that he is not the intellectual behemoth that he presents himself is to put it mildly.
Like his takes are really, really by the numbers culture war stuff.
And if you go and look at his output, it's just him constantly endorsing every sort of right-wing culture war tick that you can imagine and not really adding anything to it.
But occasionally in his videos, he's adding in, you know, and that's how you do critical thinking.
And his videos get hundreds of thousands of views.
So it's, there's a huge market for feeding people partisan culture war stuff and then telling them this is actually intellectual discourse.
And, you know, I'm not partisan for any side on this.
I'm just looking at this critically and they're not, right?
Trigonometry is not.
The title gives it away.
Warren Smith is not.
He's just repeating every line that comes from right-wing culture war pundits.
But there's a huge market for it.
That's right.
And to be clear, the critique here is not that they're right-wing or conservative.
You can absolutely be right-wing and interesting and have novel ideas and actually contribute something new, right?
There are heaps of figures throughout the 20th century that have fit that mold.
And I assume they are still around today.
But the issue with these people is that they have, like, Konstantin Gisson has never had an original thought in his life.
Like, that is my problem with them.
I know, I know.
I mean, we listened to the episode where he talked about how the Oxford Union speech was the defining moment of his life.
And it was an empty, rhetoric-drenched culture war speech that contradicted itself and made all these claims that are demonstrably false and so on.
But that was the proudest moment of his life.
And in favor of his interpretation, is that it clearly did open doors to him and get him invited on bigger podcasts and get him more guests and stuff.
So he's correctly reading the cultural moment that that is a big deal, you know, going viral in clips because that's what gives you currency in Trump's America and whatnot.
Yeah, this is true.
Matt, one little announcement thing we should make collectively.
We're making this as a podcast group.
Okay.
Come on board.
Yeah.
This is an important PSA for our listening audience, which is, you know, Matt, we are men of the people.
We are salt of the earth type guys.
You know, we're out here just scraping to get by.
We do the podcast mainly because we're servants of the people, right?
We represent the people.
We fight back against the evil corporations, the evil gurus taking over.
It's a calling.
It's a spiritual quest, whatever way you want to put it.
We would give it away for free, but we don't, right?
Our bonus material.
No, we do.
We give away the podcast for free because of our commitment to the importance of the fight back and all that kind of thing.
But we have bonus material and that is available for an extra cost, right?
And since we started the podcast, we haven't adjusted our pricing for the different tiers, Matt.
We have a $2 tier, $5 tier, and a $10 tier or something like that.
It's kind of close.
I think actually we did adjust the pricing because Patreon made us increase it by $1.
So it's like $3, $6, $10 now.
But those were changes forced upon us, Matt, by the evil overlords of Patreon.
And they've been following us, Matt, still saying, are you sure your lower tier should exist?
We're getting emails around that.
And, you know, you and I were talking and we thought, look, when we started doing that, the podcast for many years, we were just putting out one extra thing every month or so.
Right.
Normally, Matt, it's wall-to-wall content.
You're overflowing.
You've got decoding academia episodes.
You've got supplementary material.
You've got interviews coming early.
It's a whole, what is it?
Double-loaded shit, correct?
That you've got.
So what we're doing, all of this is just to say we're going to take away the lowest tier and just simplify it into two.
And this means that anybody that signs up will automatically be able to access the decoding academia thing, which is the majority of extra bonus content that we have, which you currently don't get on the lowest tier, right?
But we're going to not do this for like another month.
So should you want to sign up and get Grandfather in at the low low $3, that's where you're going with this.
That's interesting.
Subscribe or Miss Out00:03:50
Yeah, it's available.
So look, we're not saying it's going tough shit, right?
And if you're already there, you don't have to do anything.
It's not like being taken away.
So the only thing is if you want to subscribe at the $3 tier, you have like another month for it.
And then we're going in line.
We're following the herd like all the other podcasters.
And we're charging.
A whole $5 for a month.
Yeah.
All right.
That's it.
And yeah.
So we're not $15.
We're not like the fifth column or Sam Harris.
Okay.
We're just charging around $5 because of the overwhelming amount of content that you got.
And we wanted to let people know to give them notice.
Yeah, even though it doesn't affect anyone.
Transparent swords.
Yeah.
Even though it doesn't affect anyone who's actually currently subscribed to us.
No, that's right.
So, and like I say, you can still sneak in under the under the low barrier if you want.
We're not sneaking in if you want to.
I mean, yeah.
Yeah, that's it.
It's there.
It's there.
The options there.
Don't say we didn't warn you.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
Yeah, because what?
$2, $3.
What does that even buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks these days?
Not anymore.
Not anymore.
He wouldn't even buy it.
Wouldn't buy a fancy coffee, not one with like pumpkins.
Not a white man.
I can't afford a white mankind for that.
Yeah.
You wouldn't be able to afford one of those sort of wanky, complicated coffees they sell in America.
Look, it's inflation.
It's inflation and it's economics.
It's hard times.
It's got things to do with Trump tariffs.
It's the whole thing.
Listen, everyone.
I'll tell you the truth.
Look, Chris works damn hard.
He works damn hard at this.
He's grinding away.
He's doing all kinds of things.
Editing.
He's doing a lot of it.
That's really what I'm doing.
You're like, these are tons of things.
Editing, posting the face.
Mostly, okay, mostly editing, but that's not nothing.
That's nothing.
That's not nothing.
Yeah, that's right.
There's people with entire jobs that are editors.
So that's true.
That's right.
So, yeah, but look, okay, that's our.
And he doesn't have tenure.
Help him out.
I don't have tenure.
Doesn't have tenure.
That's right.
I don't have a house.
Okay.
All these other gurus, they all live in houses.
He's not publishing as many articles as he should be because of this podcast.
Also true.
Yeah, that's why.
That's why.
That's why my output looks like that.
Okay.
The sacrifices and I would say I don't want to remove the lowest here.
We don't want to remove it.
We're just being forced by capitalistic forces beyond our can.
But there's no mentions of sports cars, Chris.
If it comes to that, I'm out.
Well, I haven't unleashed my high-end luxury brand.
Yeah, eat the gurus.
Well, there you go, Matt.
That's a public service announcement done.
Okay.
Back to our normal scheduled guru decoding duties.
Duties.
Very good.
Very good.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
Hey, can we have a break from moaning about the state of the world and the online discourse for a second, Chris?
My new speakers arrive today.
My hi-fi speakers.
Wow.
Yeah.
Wow.
I'm so happy.
I'm so happy.
You seem to be getting a lot of AV equipment.
Like, are you planning to have a desk?
A V, A V. That's so 1980s of you, Chris.
That is so 1990s.
What do you call it?
Vibe accoutrements.
What's the hip lingo for it these days?
This is stereo.
Stereo, Chris.
We've got a turntable.
We've got a bunch of vinyl.
I should say it's my son who's getting into vinyl.
And otherwise, I wouldn't.
I'm quite happy with streaming digital.
Thank you very much.
Vinyl Vibes00:08:56
But, you know, I figured I'd lean into it.
So last night I bought a whole bunch of records.
I got, you know, classics of the genre, like Kraftwerks, Autobahn, for instance, Brian Eno's music for airports.
I can't remember the rest of them, but I got like 11 LBs.
You know, just a bunch of, just a bunch of hi-fi stuff.
And we've got the good speakers, got the turntable, got a good amp.
We're going to set up the lounge room.
It's going to be very cool.
Very groovy.
It's a new hobby.
Sound your thing.
Wow, wow.
Well, since you're, you know, talking about positive things, Matt, I'm going to give you one.
You know, people say we don't recommend enough, you know, the things that we like.
And I have said there's a new British comedy I came across that you don't really get, but that's okay.
It's called Successville, where it's like an improvisational comedy show where they're doing like an Edis detective drama and they throw in some minor celebrity who has to like kind of play along and often doesn't do it well, which is where the humor is.
Now, I know you don't, you don't really get a matt.
You're like, well, I don't get it, but trust me, it actually is funny if you've got a sense of humor.
So, um, I don't get it.
Explain to me.
They're doing a skid, and there's a guy in there who is following along, trying to follow along and failing and not quite getting it and cracking up.
And that's the joke.
Is that the joke?
No, that's not the joke.
The joke is it's good improvisational comedy stuff around the detective EDs, like hard-bitten theme.
But the out of their depth celebrity people trying to interact and play along in this, the fact that they kind of mess it up.
That's the humor, Matt.
That's good.
Look, people get it, okay?
People get it.
I don't know how successful it is overall, but and I know there's an American version.
Don't watch that.
Watch the British one.
I haven't seen the American one, so it could be better.
But from my point of view, it's good.
So I'm recommending that, Matt.
And you can't stop me.
Even though, you know, it's just it's too high broad, too high broad for you.
But I've got something more, you're sweet as well, a recommendation that I have to give to people.
This is really testing the limits of what we're allowed to talk about in this section of that, because I saw something recently, which is it's hard to even explain what it is, but the title of it is My Farmer Dad is Secretly an Arch Mage.
Okay.
And what it is on like Instagram, it's probably on TikTok and stuff as well.
You might have seen it, where there's like these little one-minute 30 or three-minute clips or so, where there's like a simple premise, right?
And the simple premise in this is the person that everybody is treating as a peasant dolt is actually the most powerful Archmage in the Citadel or whatever, right?
And in the little three-minute clip, it's like, you know, him about to say, oh, that's because I'm, and people cut him off and say, quiet, dad, you stupid peasant.
You don't know anything.
And, you know, they're talking, if only the archmage was here.
And it's like, it's kind of dramatic edging, if you will, that you're waiting for the bit where he's about to reveal that he's this guy and he's been treated very badly, right?
And then the clip cuts.
And it's like, if you want to watch the rest of this, you know, sign up for whatever source, right?
But if you see more of these clips, it's just like that's what happens in every single clip.
So the story like progresses, but every clip is like this three-minute chunk where it's building up the reveal and then it, you know, it doesn't really happen and it moves on to the next thing.
And the acting in it is so bad.
It's so bad.
There are people in it.
I'm not even sure they're actors.
You know, it's like if you and I were to do a production, it would be on par.
There are also like people in it who appear to be normal actors and they're quite good.
But the thing is, Matt, it's so addictive.
It's like psychologically addictive because it's so cheesy and the premise is so stupid, but you're just like, oh, but I kind of want to see what happens, right?
And it's only meant to be consumed in like three-minute intervals.
But after I watched a couple of them, I went and hunted out the full thing.
And it's like an hour and a half.
It's a full movie.
And that's all that happens for like 90 minutes is little segments like that.
Oh, God.
It's, yeah.
I don't know.
So you said there's a link to keep watching or something like if you, if you follow the link and pay the paywall, do you get to, do you get to see the, I presume so, but it's like, it's some predatory click be it thing.
The harvester credit details.
So you shouldn't do that.
You should just go and find where it's been uploaded on Dealy Motion or YouTube or whatever.
So you, so you went out and sought out like a whole library of the clickbait tips.
It's a movie.
It's an entire movie just cut up.
And it's also in vertical format.
It's a movie in vertical format, which adds to the feeling of surrealness, right?
And the effects are kind of 1990s sci-fi channel effects.
But Matt, the other thing about it is there's something weird about it where it's like set in a medieval fantasy, right?
But the bit that was like kind of ringing strange to me was if you know what Izekai is, you don't, but it's, it's like a, oh, you know Izekai?
Oh, I just said Izakaia.
No, no, no.
No, it's like this category of mangan anime where people go into a different world and they have to level up and fight.
And they're often like now scraping the barrel for ideas.
Like I was reborn as a vending machine.
I was reborn as a like pachinko ball or whatever, right?
Like this is the level that they're at.
And this one reads a little bit like that, but the actors in it are going around and they're hamming it up and stuff.
And it's like a European court setting, right?
But they're talking about, I'm a seventh degree mage and he is only an eighth degree.
And, you know, to get to the ultra master level, you have to have done the whatever.
And the thing that struck me is like some of the things they're talking about just seemed like a weird fit with that setting.
Just culturally incongruous.
And then I discovered it's because this is a remake of a Chinese like original, which is the exact same premise, but set in China.
And so all the references, if you watch that version, are like them sitting, you know, at a Chinese court.
It's the exact same thing, the exact same dialogue, but just in a Chinese setting, which makes much more sense because at the end, he becomes a god and all this kind of thing.
So yeah.
But, you know, Matt, one, I'm not recommending that people watch this, but I'm saying as an addiction specialist, this would be interesting for you to see because it's like psychological crack.
It's like, you know, putting people up to the end of a reveal where they're waiting for people to get their comeuppance and then it doesn't give you that.
And, you know, every single scene is like that.
Yeah, that is interesting.
But maybe it's just a you thing.
I don't know.
We can't.
My farmer dad is secretly an archmage.
Okay.
That's the one.
Check it out.
The only good actor that really is the father, the mean.
But that's what you want, right?
You want the follower who's secretly an archmage.
Actually, that character sort of reminds me of you.
It's a bit like the dad character in it.
So yeah, there you go, Matt.
I'm just recommending that.
Is that relevant to the format?
It's something he likes.
I guess that's fine.
That's fine.
It's a positive thing.
I mean, I didn't like it.
Let's just be clear here.
I consumed it knowing full well what it is and thinking, oh, what a terrible thing that this exists, but also, you know, genuinely enjoying it.
So it's not like I watched and thought this is the way movies should be from now on.
I'm just kind of amazed that it exists.
Yeah.
Well, me too.
Well, I will watch.
I'll watch one.
All right.
Yeah, I'll watch one.
I'll watch one.
I'll watch one.
Yeah.
That's it.
Yeah.
Maybe everybody in the audience will watch it.
Well, but okay, Matt, to return to the theme of this podcast, the actual theme, right?
Scott Galloway.
I mean, he's not.
He's not the theme of the podcast, but he is somebody who recovered recently.
Surplus Value Discussion00:03:22
And I saw him pop up with Gwyneth Paltrow.
Actually, I think it was an Instagram short or something that I saw.
And he was talking about the same topics.
Actually, I listened to a little bit of that interview.
And it's amazing, Matt.
He says all the same anecdotes, you know, like the ones on Chris Williamson.
It's like a comedian, you know, making the thing appear as if it's spontaneous, but it's the same anecdotes, the same statistics, and he delivers it the same way.
So it's quite, yeah, quite amazing message discipline.
That's interesting.
And how was Gwyneth Paltrow?
Well, I mean, she was, you know, she was kind of herself.
Was she into those talking points?
Yeah, I mean, she is.
They all are that talked to Scott for the duration of the conversation, at least, right?
And there was a bit, I mean, this is a familiar theme, Matt.
I've got one clip for you, just one little clip, but I wanted to discuss it because it meets something resonant that we covered.
I don't think any of those are what I call the real rite of passage.
I think of, I think there are a lot of people born as males who live 80 years, die, and never became men.
Yeah, I agree.
The way I would describe it is, and I parrot a lot of this from my yoda on this topic, a guy named Richard Reeves from the American Institute for Boys and Men.
I think when you become a man is the following.
And I try to tell my boys this.
It's when you get to a point of surplus value.
So I say to my kids, I say to him, I'm like, you're total negative value right now.
We have a school spending so much.
There's so many talented people and so many resources being poured into at school.
You're giving nothing back.
Your mom and your dad spend so much money, time, and love and affection on you.
We don't get as much back.
I mean, yeah, kids, greatest thing in the world, blah, blah, blah.
We don't get as much back as they're getting.
That's the whole point.
At some point, when you become a man is when you get to a point of surplus value.
You're creating more tax revenue than you absorb.
If you live in the United States, you're absorbing $20,000, $30,000 a year in government support.
If you want to call 911 and have someone show up, if you want people to defend your borders, if you want to be able to go to national parks, travel on roads, you're absorbing a lot of tax revenue.
One way to add surplus value is to create more jobs and revenue than you absorb.
Another way is you provide more care for other people that provide care for you.
You absorb more complaints than people complain to you.
You take care of more people than the care you've absorbed at that point.
You're adding surplus value.
You notice people's lives.
You're the guy that makes people feel better and feel safe.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
At first, he was really emphasizing the economic side of things.
And I was thinking, this is a very, very economic definition of manhood.
So there's the surplus value theory there.
All very good, I guess.
And then he branched out to, you know, all kinds, you know, emotional surplus value.
You're providing more emotional support than you're requiring.
You're giving more than you're receiving.
Isn't that a good thing, Chris?
Yeah.
Well, so in terms of amounts of time spent, a lot more is spent on the surplus value in terms of financial contributions to society than the being kind.
Providing Emotional Surplus Value00:00:41
But even there, converting.
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