Dark Horse - Weinstein & Heying - Israel: What It's Like on the Ground featuring Jessica Rose on DarkHorse
Aired: 2026-03-31
Duration: 02:12:59


=== Personal Surfing Experience (15:27) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey folks, welcome to the Dark Horse podcast.
[00:00:03]  Inside Rail, I have the trepidatious honor and pleasure of sitting with returning guest Jessica Rose, who is a fellow at the Brownstone Institute, as am I, making her a fellow fellow.
[00:00:18]  She's also a fellow at the Independent Medical Alliance.
[00:00:23]  If I didn't say it just a second ago, she's an independent scientific researcher, a biologist.
[00:00:30]  And she is in northern Israel.
[00:00:33]  Can't say more about where at the moment, but we will get into that.
[00:00:38]  She is obviously juggling the reality of bombs and fragments, and I'm sure she will tell us raining down from Iran and may have to go suddenly.
[00:00:52]  If that happens, we'll pick up the conversation another time.
[00:00:56]  In any case, Jessica, welcome to Dark Horse.
[00:00:58]  Hey, thanks for having me back.
[00:01:00]  It's really nice to see you again.
[00:01:03]  Great to see you.
[00:01:05]  I wish it were under better circumstances.
[00:01:08]  But in any case, I'm hoping to get a sense for what is going on on the ground as much as you can tell us and also in the social environment.
[00:01:22]  But before we get there, let's just establish the basics.
[00:01:26]  Where were you born?
[00:01:28]  Ottawa, Canada.
[00:01:30]  Ottawa.
[00:01:31]  And when did you move to Israel?
[00:01:35]  In well, actually, I didn't move right away.
[00:01:39]  I got invited to do my PhD and I'd never been here before.
[00:01:44]  And because, you know, this kind of situation that we're in now happens occasionally, there was an offer from my principal investigator to come for a three-week trial because he has had students that he's invited to come to do PhD and master's programs who were like, hell no, I can't live like this.
[00:02:10]  And so I came for a three-week trial in 2007 and I loved it.
[00:02:17]  I mean, the Mediterranean region is just, it's historic, it's beautiful.
[00:02:25]  The people are, you know, rich with culture.
[00:02:28]  The food is great.
[00:02:30]  I'm a big foodie.
[00:02:32]  So I took to it like a duck to water.
[00:02:35]  And then, you know, he was pleased.
[00:02:38]  So he said, okay, welcome aboard.
[00:02:40]  And I went back to Canada and I clued up my things that I needed to do, grabbed some stuff and came over in 2008.
[00:02:52]  And you've been living there ever since.
[00:02:54]  Yep, pretty much.
[00:02:55]  All right.
[00:02:58]  Okay.
[00:02:58]  And you did live in Tel Aviv.
[00:03:01]  Yep.
[00:03:01]  Is that correct?
[00:03:02]  Yep.
[00:03:03]  Yep.
[00:03:04]  So you know the city well, but you're not there now.
[00:03:07]  That's right.
[00:03:08]  I was attending Bar-I-Lan University, which is like the religious university near Ramat Ghan, which is like a more religious neighborhood.
[00:03:17]  And that was just because my PI was there.
[00:03:19]  It wasn't any specific reason.
[00:03:23]  And so, yeah, I took the bus every day, or not every day.
[00:03:29]  When I had to go to the university for meetings and stuff, I would take the bus from Tel Aviv to the university.
[00:03:38]  All right.
[00:03:39]  Well, let's get into the question of what you all are facing on the ground right now.
[00:03:47]  I should also say you told me something as we were chatting a few days ago.
[00:03:53]  You're a very avid surfer, I would say.
[00:03:58]  Is that a fair description?
[00:04:00]  Yeah, you could even call me professional because I was.
[00:04:04]  I think I did call you professional last time and you've slightly corrected me.
[00:04:07]  But in any case, you're that serious about surfing and you were surfing.
[00:04:12]  Well, I will tell you what it looks like in the outside world is we get two very different stories about what's going on.
[00:04:20]  And I want to hear about that.
[00:04:23]  Well, we hear that there is massive devastation on the one hand, especially in Tel Aviv.
[00:04:33]  And we also hear it's fine.
[00:04:36]  People are on the beach.
[00:04:37]  Not a big deal.
[00:04:39]  I have a feeling neither of these portrayals exactly describes the situation.
[00:04:45]  Tell me, you were out surfing the other day and you literally had bomb fragments raining down on you.
[00:04:54]  Not raining.
[00:04:55]  There was one.
[00:04:56]  So yeah, it's an interesting story.
[00:05:00]  I'll frame it like this.
[00:05:01]  So, well, first of all, I'd like to say, and I need to elaborate on this.
[00:05:10]  Israelis are very special.
[00:05:12]  The heart of an Israeli is unique.
[00:05:16]  And there's a resilience that comes not just from living here, but from the people that have lived here in the past, even that have let there's a very strong resilience that flows through the veins of the people who live here.
[00:05:37]  And I imagine in the veins of the people who live in any region that's in turmoil.
[00:05:41]  I mean, this is the only one I've lived in.
[00:05:44]  So people might think that, okay, well, there are bombs falling.
[00:05:49]  How stupid are you for going surfing?
[00:05:51]  I'm sure a lot of people think that of me.
[00:05:54]  But besides the periodicity of the attacks that are preceded by warning sirens, there comes a point when you kind of get past your fear of it all and you realize that life is too important to be hiding.
[00:06:17]  And you have to get back to some sort of normalcy at some point.
[00:06:24]  I'm a bit weirder than most people because my threshold for chaos is very, very high.
[00:06:33]  I mean, I don't let anything stop me from surfing.
[00:06:37]  When COVID was happening, I'm sure we talked about this before.
[00:06:42]  They closed the sea.
[00:06:43]  And, you know, it's not just me.
[00:06:45]  It's the heart of a surfer.
[00:06:47]  It's like, it's not just the heart of an Israeli, it's the heart of a surfer.
[00:06:50]  Like you, you can't stop a surfer from surfing.
[00:06:53]  You can't do it.
[00:06:55]  We'll do everything in our power to go have a session because it's so important for us to have that experience.
[00:07:04]  It's more than just, you know, catching waves and being a surfer, dude.
[00:07:09]  It's like you get so many beneficial things from surfing besides body movement.
[00:07:15]  You get bonding with the water, the sun, mother nature, all these amazing things that actually put you in the right.
[00:07:24]  So it's like, there's a really good physiological reason to do it and mental.
[00:07:29]  So yeah, we're getting like four or five attacks a day, you know, more or less.
[00:07:36]  There have been a couple of days we don't have much action.
[00:07:40]  And so this was one of the days when it was pretty quiet.
[00:07:44]  Waves were pumping and I was like, ah.
[00:07:47]  And where I surf, there are like two main breaks.
[00:07:51]  One of them is a little more powerful.
[00:07:54]  And so I, and it's a little farther away.
[00:07:57]  Like you have to paddle a little bit farther.
[00:07:59]  So I was there.
[00:08:00]  And because it's a little farther away and people don't want to paddle, I was there with only one other guy.
[00:08:07]  So I was on a longboard.
[00:08:08]  He was on a shortboard.
[00:08:09]  And all of a sudden it looked like, because we were pretty far out, that there were signs of a siren.
[00:08:18]  There's two levels.
[00:08:19]  There's like the one that goes from people's phones that gives you eight minutes to get to a shelter.
[00:08:25]  These are the warnings that you get when the Iranians are sending stuff over because they're coming from Hezbollah and Iran in the north.
[00:08:33]  And so I tuned, I'm very tuned in, like very tuned into my surroundings.
[00:08:39]  So I was like, I heard someone yelling.
[00:08:41]  I was like, okay, that's probably what that is.
[00:08:44]  And I saw people leaving the water.
[00:08:46]  And I turned to this guy and I'm like, is, you know, is there a siren going off?
[00:08:50]  And he's like, I don't know.
[00:08:52]  So I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty sure we're going to hear a siren soon.
[00:08:56]  So we're waiting there in the water.
[00:08:59]  And sure enough, sirens go off.
[00:09:02]  And I'm like, there's nothing to do because even if I paddle as hard as I can and catch a wave, I'm not going to get out in time to get to a shelter.
[00:09:12]  And a lot of us are of the opinion that it's actually safer to be in the water, even if there is shrapnel coming down.
[00:09:20]  My take on it before a couple of days ago was that I could just go deep.
[00:09:27]  So the day before, I forgot to mention this part that this happened, and I'll finish the story.
[00:09:34]  There was a video that was circulating amongst friends because, uh-oh.
[00:09:43]  Hold on, there's some, okay.
[00:09:52]  I just have to keep listening because there's some things falling.
[00:09:57]  So everyone in Israel knows each other.
[00:10:01]  Everyone, it's a very, very tight-knit loving community.
[00:10:04]  So if one person who's surfing a break in Tel Aviv has something happen to them, then everybody in the surfing community is going to know in like five minutes.
[00:10:15]  It's like we're a bunch of old grandmas.
[00:10:17]  Hi, did you hear about the thing?
[00:10:19]  And so there's this video that's, it's, it's actually a camera.
[00:10:24]  No, don't quote me on that.
[00:10:26]  There's a video.
[00:10:27]  Could have been from a camera or somebody's phone.
[00:10:31]  It was the break in Tel Aviv where I learned to surf.
[00:10:35]  I learned to surf when I was 32.
[00:10:37]  Thank you very much.
[00:10:39]  And it's the exact same spot where I took hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of ways.
[00:10:45]  So the video is kind of boring.
[00:10:47]  You're looking at a view of the sea.
[00:10:50]  And all of a sudden, the thing about these things, and I'll get into that, that's so striking is the speed and the sound.
[00:11:00]  And so this thing comes reeling from the sky and just like, like you don't see something, you just see the effect.
[00:11:07]  So you see this massive plume of water go up into the sky, like 40 feet.
[00:11:12]  And I'm like, what?
[00:11:15]  Because none of us have seen that before, as far as I'm, you know, concerned.
[00:11:20]  I haven't.
[00:11:21]  And I was like, what?
[00:11:25]  I was shocked, not only because I was so familiar with this, but because it happened.
[00:11:31]  And there were surfers in the water just a few meters away.
[00:11:35]  Nobody got hurt, thank goodness.
[00:11:37]  But those, there were, there were guys in the water and probably girls.
[00:11:43]  So it kind of shook me.
[00:11:45]  And this idea that I always have, like, I'll just go deep and I'm safer in the water kind of moved a little bit.
[00:11:53]  And so my brain kind of flicked on in a new way.
[00:11:57]  The very next day is this story that I'm telling you now.
[00:12:02]  So I was out there and, you know, there was a wave coming.
[00:12:07]  So, you know, I'm paddling for my wave, pop up, start surfing, walking to the nose.
[00:12:14]  Sirens go off.
[00:12:15]  So I'm surfing while the sirens are going off.
[00:12:17]  It's kind of surreal.
[00:12:19]  And I'm like, please don't let anything hit me, you know, while I'm riding a wave.
[00:12:25]  And I finish my wave.
[00:12:26]  I turn around, start paddling back, look up to the right.
[00:12:32]  The same thing in the video.
[00:12:33]  And this plume of water goes up in the air.
[00:12:36]  Like, it was even higher than the one that I saw in the video.
[00:12:39]  It was like 50 feet.
[00:12:40]  So it must have been a huge chunk.
[00:12:42]  These are huge, huge, like bigger than I can show you with my hands, chunks of pieces of either the interceptor missile or the ones that were being sent over from having exploded, coming down into the water.
[00:12:59]  Or it could be these ones that split off and send off multiple smaller bombs.
[00:13:09]  These are really insidious and they're very hard to get with interception.
[00:13:18]  So that's why you have to be really careful with just having cover over your head.
[00:13:23]  So it might, I don't know what it was, but it caused quite the splash.
[00:13:29]  And I looked over to the guy because he was pretty close to me because I'd been paddling up and I was like, did you see that?
[00:13:35]  And he's like, yep.
[00:13:37]  And I was like, so do you feel safer in the water now?
[00:13:42]  And he's like, what can we do?
[00:13:45]  And that kind of summarizes it.
[00:13:47]  It's like, what can we do?
[00:13:49]  And what can we do is to try and stay alive and be smart.
[00:13:54]  So, yeah, that was my personal experience the other day.
[00:14:00]  I'm not going to stop surfing, by the way.
[00:14:03]  Yeah, it sounds like this is exactly what the motorcycle riders mean when they say ride or die.
[00:14:13]  It's like, this is a choice.
[00:14:16]  This is life.
[00:14:17]  And, you know, I get exactly what you're saying about the, I'm not a surfer.
[00:14:23]  I've done it one time and not well, obviously.
[00:14:25]  Oh, come on, John.
[00:14:29]  In principle, I would love to be good at it, but I never got there.
[00:14:32]  But anyway, I'll get you going.
[00:14:36]  All right.
[00:14:37]  I'm not walking to the nose, though.
[00:14:39]  I'm just staying upright would be my objective.
[00:14:43]  But in any case, the idea has always struck me as a fascinating way to commune with nature, right?
[00:14:51]  Each wave is absolutely individual.
[00:14:53]  And here you are, not commanding the wave, but accepting it as it is delivered, riding it.
[00:15:01]  And then, you know, in some fit of, I don't know, Buddhist reality, it vanishes and is gone.
[00:15:10]  And whatever you did is only captured in you somehow.
[00:15:14]  So anyway, I get that totally.
[00:15:15]  Oh, beautiful.
[00:15:17]  Wow, you really get it.
[00:15:19]  I have my own ways of communing with nature.
[00:15:21]  It's more often, you know, staring up into the canopy at monkeys, but whatever.

=== Local Conflict Reality (07:19) ===

[00:15:27]  Okay, so we get a lot already from your story.
[00:15:33]  This is happening right around you.
[00:15:34]  It's not an abstraction.
[00:15:35]  It's not somewhere else, even out in the water where it seems like you would be safer for various reasons.
[00:15:41]  You're obviously not safe.
[00:15:46]  I have a bunch of questions.
[00:15:48]  I want to know how much devastation there is.
[00:15:55]  Obviously, all of us adults understand why there would be restrictions on broadcasting images of damage because you don't want to provide feedback to the enemy as to where they've hit.
[00:16:10]  On the other hand, that is a slam dunk for those who wish to conceal the level of damage.
[00:16:18]  And those of us in the outside world, I think the honest brokers are all scratching their heads because, you know, when you don't have a lot of information, the propaganda is a lot more effective.
[00:16:33]  So what can you tell us about how much damage there is?
[00:16:37]  Do you know people in Tel Aviv at the moment?
[00:16:40]  Yes.
[00:16:42]  I don't talk to a lot of them.
[00:16:44]  Like, not enough to have any stories, like my friend's apartment type thing, like nothing like that.
[00:16:55]  But do you have a sense of how much devastation there is on the ground?
[00:16:59]  I don't think there's, there's, I wouldn't, I would never use the word devastation.
[00:17:03]  And by the way, I'd just like to throw in that I think it's supremely intelligent not as a strategy in any conflict, not to, for many reasons, not to, I'll use the word sensationalize what's going on because A, it's insensitive.
[00:17:25]  B, you are giving away data, which you shouldn't do.
[00:17:28]  A lot of the, I'll tell you this, there have been some touchdowns all over the country.
[00:17:34]  It's impossible that there wouldn't be because I'm telling you that it's, it's where we in the north, it's like four or five times a day.
[00:17:44]  And it's not one or two things.
[00:17:46]  Like, like, first of all, there's a difference.
[00:17:51]  Like, Hezbollah is still, like, someone got to tell me, like, how the hell they still have the ability to be firing at us.
[00:17:58]  But, and so it's coming from them and it's coming from Iran.
[00:18:03]  So there are different strategies that they're using to inflict damage.
[00:18:07]  So sometimes there are like the other day, it was yesterday, actually, there were like 30 at one time overhead.
[00:18:20]  So like it's kind of impossible to get it all, especially with these cluster bombs.
[00:18:26]  If the audience members don't know what anything about those, these are really insidious.
[00:18:32]  I was having a conversation with one of the guys that I was hiding with the other day.
[00:18:38]  I was like, I just looked at him and I'm like, what kind of a messed up person in your head do you have to be to design something like that?
[00:18:46]  Like, you know, weapons design is one thing, but like, you have to actually think in your head, like, how can I F up as many human beings as I possibly can?
[00:18:58]  You know what I mean?
[00:18:58]  It's like that, that's the thinking behind this kind of weapon.
[00:19:02]  It's like next level evil, if you ask me.
[00:19:07]  Anyway, so where was I?
[00:19:11]  You were talking to the guy you were hiding with.
[00:19:13]  Yeah, it's inevitable that there's going to be some destruction, but it's, I wouldn't, I would never call it how it's being referred to.
[00:19:24]  And the thing about it is the, like I said, the heart of the people here and the unification of the people here, it's just as much as you see like somebody's house got obliterated or something, maybe it's what I choose to see.
[00:19:41]  I don't know.
[00:19:42]  But as much as that, that you see, you see people coming together.
[00:19:48]  There are many people who are from abroad who are here now volunteering to help people clean up their homes, rebuild their homes, provide medical care if people get injured by shrapnel.
[00:20:03]  So you see, there's a, I mean, I don't want to say it's great, but there's this positive side in all things, if you ask me.
[00:20:13]  And so with as much, you know, destruction as there might be in some of the infrastructure, there is rebuilding immediate.
[00:20:22]  There's no hesitation.
[00:20:24]  It's like, and it's not like people are trying to, you know, forget or, you know, like, let's get rid of that as soon as possible.
[00:20:33]  So nobody can see.
[00:20:34]  It's not like that.
[00:20:35]  It's like, let's restore.
[00:20:37]  Let's rebuild immediately so that people can get back to what they were doing, really.
[00:20:44]  And a lot of people, even here, you know, you have conversations.
[00:20:49]  I talk to my mom about this stuff.
[00:20:51]  She's very interested in what's going on.
[00:20:55]  And she asked me the other day, like, what are the conversations like in the bunkers?
[00:21:00]  Like, are people scared?
[00:21:01]  Are they like crying?
[00:21:03]  And I'm like, nope.
[00:21:07]  And she said, do they come?
[00:21:08]  They must complain, right?
[00:21:09]  And I'm like, nope.
[00:21:11]  I've never heard a single person complain.
[00:21:14]  I've never heard them whine.
[00:21:17]  I mean, everybody's afraid.
[00:21:19]  Let's not be stupid here.
[00:21:21]  But that comes, you know, manifests in different ways in different people.
[00:21:25]  Some people talk more.
[00:21:27]  Some people go quiet like me.
[00:21:30]  Some, you know, et cetera.
[00:21:32]  But the thing that it's just incredible is that everybody's always there for each other, no matter if they know each other or not.
[00:21:42]  And it's a very supportive environment in a very, very, very stressful time.
[00:21:53]  So I don't want to underplay what's going on here by saying that there's not a lot of stuff getting damaged because even I, I don't watch the news, so even I might be misinformed.
[00:22:07]  I can tell you that in my local area, we've been very lucky because of the anti-missile missiles.
[00:22:16]  We've been, we're okay.
[00:22:19]  However, it's if you've never experienced anything like this, it's really hard to get a real feeling of what it might be like.
[00:22:33]  I'll do my very best to convey.
[00:22:40]  This particular conflict is different, first of all, from the other ones that I've experienced.

=== Missile Alarm Sounds (03:20) ===

[00:22:47]  I've been in like seven, I guess, now.
[00:22:50]  This one's much more hearty.
[00:22:54]  It's been going on for a month now, is it?
[00:22:57]  Maybe a little more or less.
[00:23:00]  And it's been every day.
[00:23:03]  Normally, there's like a pausa, you know, you get like a, I mean, a couple of days off where your cortisol levels tend to go down a little bit.
[00:23:15]  But there's been no, there's been no release of the fight or flight mode.
[00:23:22]  It's like it's you're on all the time, even when you're sleeping, like subconsciously, you're, I mean, you're going to hear that sound.
[00:23:31]  I was talking to someone yesterday who said they hear the sirens all the time.
[00:23:34]  And I'm like, damn.
[00:23:37]  I get it, but luckily I can shut that off.
[00:23:40]  But When they said, I hear the sirens all the time, you're talking about in their heads, or you're talking about their, yeah, yep, yeah, because you do.
[00:23:49]  It's it's it's awful, it's an awful sound.
[00:23:52]  It's like if I ever heard it again, it would be fine.
[00:23:55]  Um, and I get that tendency, it's like you know, like that other day in the water when everything, you know, it's that feeling of it's been too quiet for too long, and all of a sudden you your memory like sings that stupid siren song in your head.
[00:24:10]  And I'm like, Yeah, that's probably that's probably just not my memory.
[00:24:13]  That's probably like a signal that it's going to happen soon.
[00:24:16]  And it did, it happened like a few minutes later.
[00:24:19]  So, but uh, I can't resist asking this.
[00:24:22]  Maybe this is the biologist coming out, but is it the equivalent of a song that won't get out of your head and like earworms?
[00:24:32]  Is it like that?
[00:24:33]  Yeah, but but it's it's I mean, it's certainly not a song.
[00:24:37]  It's I described it once as the uh, I'm gonna get this wrong, but I'm gonna try the glissette resando.
[00:24:43]  I'm gonna look this up because this will give everybody a really nice idea of how awful the sound is.
[00:24:52]  Uh, it's not like the um the air horns that you hear when there's like a tsunami warning.
[00:24:59]  Yeah, it's called the glissette risando, G-L-I-S-S-E-T R-I-S-S-A-N-N-D-O.
[00:25:07]  So go go look that up and listen to it.
[00:25:10]  That's the actual siren that you hear.
[00:25:12]  No, it just sounds a lot like it.
[00:25:14]  It's like a, and I want to do it because then it gets into my head.
[00:25:18]  But it's not like the air horns that you hear, which are kind of more, I guess, familiar, especially if you're Hawaiian, you know, like if there's going to be an earthquake or a tidal wave, it's different from that.
[00:25:36]  And it goes up and then it goes down and then it goes up.
[00:25:41]  And so it's kind of like it's penetrating.
[00:25:46]  I guess that's the best way to say it.
[00:25:48]  But it's also persistent.
[00:25:50]  I mean, like I said, there were a few nights there.
[00:25:56]  My God, it was like every hour in the dead of night.
[00:26:03]  You get this message from your phone, which is another horrid sound.

=== Social Tripwires Explained (14:56) ===

[00:26:08]  It's the eight-minute alarm, which is new.
[00:26:11]  So that's wonderful.
[00:26:12]  I think the defense systems here are just like they're very, very, very good.
[00:26:18]  And if I may say, professional.
[00:26:22]  They give you an eight-minute opportunity to get to a shelter because a lot of people have these safe rooms in their buildings if they're new buildings, but there are also a lot of older buildings because there was a lot of construction in the 50s and 60s, I suppose it was.
[00:26:44]  And so a lot of the older buildings don't have these.
[00:26:47]  So they have like outside of the apartment shelters.
[00:26:50]  So a lot of people have to like physically get up, grab their kids or their animals or whatever.
[00:26:58]  In my case, my laptop and go to a reinforced concrete structure.
[00:27:07]  These are specially built.
[00:27:10]  And so, yeah, doing that.
[00:27:15]  Let me ask you a couple of things that arise as a result of this.
[00:27:18]  You talk about messages that you get on your phone from the National Defense Service, presumably IDF.
[00:27:24]  I don't know who it is, but early on in this conflict, we saw a report out here in the world.
[00:27:32]  I assume you saw it too.
[00:27:35]  I want you to tell me what happened and how it was interpreted.
[00:27:39]  But did the Iranians send a message to all the cell phones in Israel or was that a false report?
[00:27:46]  Oh, I remember something like that.
[00:27:49]  I can't comment because I have no idea.
[00:27:52]  You didn't get it.
[00:27:54]  No, no, no, I didn't get it.
[00:27:56]  I remember hearing about it and thinking that it was like something I didn't have to pay attention to because it didn't apply to me because I didn't get it.
[00:28:04]  So, yeah.
[00:28:06]  And you didn't hear about it from other people who got it.
[00:28:09]  I didn't hear anyone who got it.
[00:28:10]  So I don't know.
[00:28:14]  All right.
[00:28:16]  Can you give me a sense out here in the outside world, at least in the U.S., and I assume everywhere else in the West, it is very hard to approach the issue of the war without setting off tripwires, social tripwires everywhere.
[00:28:44]  It's like COVID.
[00:28:45]  It's like BLM, where my experience at least has been if you are not on board with the exact view of the world on one of the two sides, you are viewed as the enemy of both.
[00:29:04]  And so it's a good idea.
[00:29:07]  It works.
[00:29:08]  Yeah, it's very powerful.
[00:29:12]  I get the sense that whatever is going on inside Israel is different and that perspectives that are very difficult to express out here are more easily expressed.
[00:29:24]  That the idea that there are opposing camps inside of Israel that have different views of the war, even if I assume almost everybody is strongly on board with winning the war because you have a lot at stake.
[00:29:42]  But is there, are you hearing a diversity of opinion about whether this was foolhardy or necessary?
[00:29:51]  Are you hearing both of those things?
[00:29:52]  I'm the wrong person to ask because I'm a bit of a loner, to be honest with you.
[00:30:00]  I don't really talk to many people about what's going on.
[00:30:03]  Like I literally, and actually, that's kind of who I am.
[00:30:07]  I try to, I learned from COVID, like to stay away from certain subject matters because like I'm a real loner when it comes to that subject matter here.
[00:30:19]  Like nobody really knows what I do here.
[00:30:22]  Like if they know Jess, like from the neighborhood or surf community, they don't really know that I'm this like really outspoken, you know, nucleoside modified LNP shot like anti-advocate.
[00:30:37]  So like you're talking about mRNA vaccines.
[00:30:42]  Yeah.
[00:30:42]  So like I will put my ear, you know, to the ground sometimes, but it's not to be boring, but it's pretty much how you described it.
[00:30:54]  And it's pretty much human nature playing out in any case.
[00:30:59]  It's about 50-50, I would say.
[00:31:01]  Like people are like completely against this thing even starting.
[00:31:07]  The others are of the opinion that like it needs to happen.
[00:31:10]  Otherwise, we are always going to be this place is always going to be a nation under fire by people who have no other motive than to eliminate us just for the sake of being alive.
[00:31:24]  It really is like that.
[00:31:27]  And so, yeah, I guess I try and stay like, I try and stay neutral.
[00:31:35]  I do hear, but this is kind of a regular thing from a lot of people who know me.
[00:31:40]  They're like, why do you live here?
[00:31:42]  Like, aren't you Canadian?
[00:31:44]  And I'm like, and it used to really piss me off because it's like, why are you asking me that?
[00:31:51]  Like, I, you know, I feel like it's kind of like, don't you appreciate this place that you live in and that you were born in and that your family lives in?
[00:32:04]  And I feel like I appreciate it more, the land and the beauty sometimes than some people.
[00:32:10]  So I guess what I'm trying to say is it's a big mix, but ultimately, the bottom line is 100% of people want to live.
[00:32:22]  They want to survive.
[00:32:23]  And that's what everybody's focused on.
[00:32:25]  It's like, even if, like, I hate war is hell.
[00:32:29]  I hate this.
[00:32:30]  I want it to stop right now.
[00:32:33]  When the ceasefire happened from the last one, I was like, praise God.
[00:32:37]  And it's up to humans, right?
[00:32:39]  So it's kind of annoying because we're not in control.
[00:32:41]  The civilian population is never in control, which sucks.
[00:32:45]  But like, what was I saying?
[00:32:50]  It's just, yeah, I forgot what I was saying.
[00:32:54]  You were saying that you hope it will stop that you hate this.
[00:33:02]  You were describing that you find the question strange.
[00:33:08]  Why do you live here?
[00:33:09]  Because you obviously live there because you appreciate it.
[00:33:12]  And it would seem that that would be obvious to the other people who live there.
[00:33:18]  Not sure where you were headed, but I think I was trying to get into the global head of the necessity for this, which is something that some people absolutely believe.
[00:33:37]  Like it's necessary that certain things are done in order for a nation, any nation, we don't have to use the word Israel, any nation under constant attack from terrorists to not be under constant attack from terrorists for whatever reason.
[00:33:58]  And there's really only one way to do that.
[00:34:02]  And you have to remove the source of the attacks.
[00:34:11]  And if it's a terrorist group, which Hamas and Hezbollah are, according to just about every country in the world, are classified officially as terrorist groups, then seems like, you know, if you're a living, breathing, loving human being, that you probably shouldn't have a problem with somebody, you know,
[00:34:41]  taking the reins to do that.
[00:34:44]  So most people, even if they're against the war, like me, you know, I hate war.
[00:34:51]  I don't like being in danger all the time.
[00:34:55]  Get, you know, from a bigger point of view, why it's important and maybe even necessary to do this.
[00:35:03]  I mean, yeah, it's such difficult subject matter.
[00:35:11]  It seems to be the nature of man to fight, which really bothers me.
[00:35:16]  I don't mean man as in males.
[00:35:18]  I mean man as in humans.
[00:35:23]  It seems to me that there are several questions that have to be teased apart there.
[00:35:27]  There's a question of whether it needed to be done from Israel's perspective.
[00:35:34]  There's a question in the U.S. as to whether or not it was reasonable for us to involve ourselves.
[00:35:42]  And then there's another question, which is, let's say that you accepted that it was necessary from Israel's perspective, there was no other way to accomplish the goal.
[00:35:52]  Israel can't be safe if it's not accomplished and there was no other option on the table.
[00:35:56]  Let's say that it was necessary for the United States to participate.
[00:36:02]  Then there's a question about whether or not it's going to be effective, ineffective, or even counterproductive.
[00:36:11]  And if it's going to be counterproductive, then you have to go back to those first two questions and say, well, the fact that there was no other option doesn't make it good if it's going to make the very same matter worse.
[00:36:23]  For example, I think the message that we have collectively now sent is that a country like Iran is only safe if it has a nuclear weapon, which is presumably what Israel's position is.
[00:36:42]  So from the point of view of we can't have a nuclear Iran, well, did we just increase the likelihood of a nuclear Iran because now they know that they will be attacked up until the point they have one?
[00:37:00]  Yeah.
[00:37:01]  Yeah.
[00:37:02]  I saw a, I can't remember what it was.
[00:37:05]  It was some kind of documentary or I don't know, it was some kind of conversation about this.
[00:37:12]  I don't know anything about geopolitics.
[00:37:14]  I just kind of look from the sidelines, but the conclusion was that it's kind of gross to say, but any nation that is like that has nukes is safe, like in the eyes of the other like big nations.
[00:37:31]  North Korea is a good example.
[00:37:33]  And so, yeah, it's a good question, man.
[00:37:39]  I actually like to flip and ask you, because you're an American, what you think the answer to the question about whether or not it was, well, I mean, we can't really ask, was it a good idea?
[00:37:58]  Because like the thing about this is, is that it's completely unpredictable, the situation.
[00:38:03]  That's the part that really pisses me off when people that part, however, was predictable.
[00:38:09]  And that's one of the things that is a key component in answering your question is I think, you know, there was a PowerPoint presentation in which the logic behind this was described.
[00:38:23]  It has not been shared with us.
[00:38:24]  One of the conspicuous features of this conflict is that it has not yet been articulated to us Americans why we did this.
[00:38:32]  And on the one hand, what are people saying?
[00:38:36]  Like the people that you hear talking, like what do they think?
[00:38:41]  There is a large contingent that believes this was not by any stretch in America's interest and that we were forced into it or the president was propagandized or coerced into it.
[00:38:58]  And then there is another large contingent that if I am to give their position its due, their position is there simply was no other option.
[00:39:14]  This had to happen and it is a reality of the situation that a price needed to be paid in order to stave off a much larger delayed price.
[00:39:29]  Now, I will cards on the table.
[00:39:33]  I having not heard a rational explanation for what we are doing, having been correct about the Iraq war and the quagmire that emerged there,
[00:39:47]  understanding something about the complexity of fighting a war in Iran, seeing the naivete of our leadership in thinking that attacking Iran was going to result in the Iranian people overthrowing their regime rather than circling the wagons around them.
[00:40:14]  I'm spooked.
[00:40:15]  I'm spooked that the people in charge do not know what they are doing.
[00:40:18]  I'm also spooked that there is a larger, privately understood objective, which is to destabilize.
[00:40:31]  That's the part that really bugs me.
[00:40:34]  One question before I say more words.
[00:40:37]  Do you ever talk to Trump?
[00:40:38]  Do you have access to his ear?
[00:40:40]  I have never spoken to him, so I don't.
[00:40:43]  yeah i'd love to hear what he's thinking um i'm sure a lot of people would like to be on fly on the wall in the conversations he has but yeah that's the part i will say i am spooked by what he puts out publicly because his stuff out publicly though or is it somebody else Like, that's always the question I have.

=== Strategic Disconnection Fears (02:41) ===

[00:41:05]  Like, did he actually say that?
[00:41:08]  Somebody else who also has a stuck caps lock key, maybe.
[00:41:14]  But my sense is that just, you know, observing the man from afar, my sense is that he views his ability to directly put things into the public as a key arrow in his quiver,
[00:41:36]  and that he would be very reluctant to give that up, especially since he has a constant problem with the danger of betrayal.
[00:41:46]  So my guess is it is actually him tweeting.
[00:41:50]  And the problem that I see, having no good access to information about what's actually going on on the ground in Iran, in Israel, or frankly anywhere else, his public pronouncements appear disconnected from reality as far as I can ascertain what reality looks like, which could be one of two things.
[00:42:20]  This president has a comfort with saying untrue things in order to accomplish an objective.
[00:42:29]  And it is possible that we are seeing him strategically deploying things that are not a reflection of reality.
[00:42:37]  That would not be good, but it would at least provide the comfort that the person in charge himself has information that would allow him to navigate somewhat reasonably on our collective behalf.
[00:42:51]  But the alternative is that he is being gamed, that he is being given information which leads him to steer us into greater danger because someone else sees it as in their interest to do that.
[00:43:10]  So I'm in no position to distinguish between these things.
[00:43:14]  I would say one of the reasons that I really wanted to have you on was that some sort of clarity about what's actually going on on the ground is a necessary calibration for assessing what is being told to us.
[00:43:32]  And, you know, I don't know where I stand on it, but I'm spooked to hear the commander-in-chief speaking as if we are absolutely clobbering Iran.

=== Meme War Context (12:45) ===

[00:43:47]  I have no doubt that there's tremendous damage there.
[00:43:50]  But the question is, is it damage that actually achieves some intended objective?
[00:43:57]  Or is it damage that the Iranians are prepared to endure because they've been preparing for this for decades?
[00:44:04]  Well, of course they are.
[00:44:06]  Right.
[00:44:07]  Sorry.
[00:44:08]  Well, and one other thing I will just add, I don't know, you know, I don't know how, in what order or what topics even to cover, but one thing that I'm watching out here in the remote parts of the world from this conflict is I'm watching a meme war,
[00:44:25]  a one-sided meme war being deployed seemingly by the Iranians themselves, taunting our president in exactly the style that he would typically be doing with his enemies.
[00:44:40]  Have you seen these?
[00:44:42]  Nope.
[00:44:44]  Wow.
[00:44:45]  Well, I cannot vouch for their authenticity, but I have looked to see if it is challenged by anybody.
[00:44:51]  My expectation would be if it was a third party, there'd be community notes all over Twitter saying this is not authentically from the Iranians.
[00:45:00]  And if that was what I was seeing, I'd say, well, okay, that's par for the course of 2026.
[00:45:06]  But these things, so far, who knows what, I don't know, but they appear to be incredibly sophisticated, short form videos that have a kind of, there are a couple different styles of them.
[00:45:25]  One of the styles is this sort of, how do I describe it?
[00:45:31]  It's like Lego stop motion, but it is deliberately made so that the Lego characters have the capability to do things a Lego character couldn't do.
[00:45:41]  It's not stop motion.
[00:45:43]  It's animation deliberately chosen to be in Lego form and taunting the president, calling him a loser, portraying him as frightened and deluded and under the influence of literal demons.
[00:46:02]  And so that's one sort of thread.
[00:46:06]  And then the other thread is an appeal to the victims of Western free market culture, right?
[00:46:25]  So it deliberately appeals to American Indians.
[00:46:31]  It appeals to, it portrays little girl victims of Epstein.
[00:46:39]  It portrays the girls who were killed in the girls' school in Iran in the early hours of the attacks.
[00:46:48]  And it's like a call to action for all of the people who have been wronged in the West and portrays them as in natural alignment with Iran.
[00:47:07]  First of all, just We at least need to notice that there is a front in this war that has never really existed before.
[00:47:17]  Maybe there have been minor efforts, but this is high production values carefully thought out by someone who understands psychology in the West.
[00:47:31]  And it is jarring to see this coming from, you know, a mullah-led theocracy that is portrayed to us as so backwards and ridiculous that it couldn't possibly mount such an effort.
[00:47:58]  And, you know, I hope that people in hearing me say that will understand I have no sympathy with that regime.
[00:48:06]  On the other hand, it is important if you are going to be in conflict that can turn kinetic with highly sophisticated weapons and innocent people all over the map.
[00:48:20]  It is important not to underestimate your enemy.
[00:48:24]  And what this meme war seems to be saying is we have desperately underestimated our enemy.
[00:48:34]  And the fact that you would expect, based on who Trump is, that memes are kind of his bread and butter with respect to gaining power.
[00:48:47]  It's half of how he did it.
[00:48:52]  You would expect a you would expect an arms race in the meme war.
[00:49:01]  And we see nothing from our administration.
[00:49:04]  Nothing.
[00:49:07]  And on the one hand, you could say, well, they're trying to be adults.
[00:49:11]  The Iranians are playing to a channel that isn't adult.
[00:49:15]  On the other hand, it's not like propaganda isn't playing a major role in this war.
[00:49:21]  So here you have there's a novel version of propaganda being deployed, frankly spreading like wildfire as far as I can tell, because it is interesting and because it's of exactly the genre of the moment, you know, short form video.
[00:49:37]  That's what people are consuming.
[00:49:40]  And it's very hard to look away.
[00:49:42]  Anyway, interesting.
[00:49:43]  You're not seeing any of that.
[00:49:45]  No, I'm going to go check it out, though.
[00:49:48]  Like, I have no idea what you're not to sound rude, but I have no idea what you're talking about.
[00:49:54]  It's weird.
[00:49:56]  Which I'm glad for.
[00:49:58]  It probably has a lot to do with the fact that I try and have limited screen time, but very interesting.
[00:50:06]  Yeah, I'm going to check it out.
[00:50:07]  Who do you think is behind it?
[00:50:10]  It sure looks like, I mean, undoubtedly, if it is what it appears to be and it's being released officially by, I think, the IRGC, then they have employed something somewhere.
[00:50:27]  Either they assembled a team that has a deep toolkit, both technically and in terms of psychology.
[00:50:39]  This is a team that knows something about who it's trying to reach.
[00:50:43]  So either that exists inside of Iran or they've contracted somebody, which is hard for me to imagine because wouldn't somebody working for the Iranians in the outside world be setting themselves up as a target?
[00:51:02]  So I don't know.
[00:51:03]  I find the whole thing Shocking and fascinating and troubling, if I'm to be honest.
[00:51:15]  Yeah, wow.
[00:51:16]  I'm going to have to check that out.
[00:51:18]  Yeah, it's really something.
[00:51:21]  Let's use that as a segue to, I can't remember if we were talking about this off or on camera, but like we both agree that there's something bigger going on in the world right now.
[00:51:33]  Probably has a lot to do with this.
[00:51:36]  Sucks for us, though, right?
[00:51:38]  Well, wait, wait, wait.
[00:51:39]  Let's clean that up a little bit.
[00:51:40]  I know what you're saying because one way to think about the war with Iran is that it is part of some much more massive planned reorganization of power, resources, populations.
[00:52:05]  And I don't feel confident that that's true, but it is impossible to dismiss, in my mind, it is impossible to dismiss the idea that the PowerPoint presentation that explains what we're doing in Iran is much broader than maybe even the Middle East.
[00:52:27]  Sorry, my phone scared me.
[00:52:29]  Sorry.
[00:52:30]  You see how on edge I am?
[00:52:32]  Sorry.
[00:52:32]  I was listening.
[00:52:33]  It's like, sorry.
[00:52:37]  Okay, so I've just fleshed out a little bit what I think you were saying.
[00:52:42]  What do you see with respect to whether or not something larger is in play?
[00:52:47]  And that's exactly how you should ask me personally, because I use my eyes and I'm a person who looks at outcome.
[00:52:55]  I'm also a person who investigates motivation because oftentimes people's motivation is the driver to the end point.
[00:53:07]  So anyway, it's just interesting after a very short time.
[00:53:12]  I mean, four weeks to be pummeled by rockets is a very long time, but it's not a long time overall.
[00:53:21]  And in this short time, what are we seeing now?
[00:53:26]  Like, let me ask you, this is fascinating.
[00:53:30]  I'm so glad we're doing this because you might not be seeing what I'm seeing.
[00:53:33]  And we just got to.
[00:53:33]  I'm sure.
[00:53:34]  I'm sure.
[00:53:35]  I'm not even seeing what other people who are ostensibly in the same position I'm in are seeing.
[00:53:43]  And I don't know how much of that is individually tailored.
[00:53:47]  I don't know how much of that is happenstance.
[00:53:49]  You mentioned before we began here that if you click on one video, you get fed a lot of things in the same genre.
[00:53:57]  So who knows how much we're doing the work of the algorithms to ourselves by triggering them to feed us particular kinds of propaganda.
[00:54:09]  I'm proud of coining the term the fog machine of war.
[00:54:13]  This is not simple fog of war.
[00:54:16]  This is intentional derangement for some purpose, which could be mundane economic purposes at the platforms.
[00:54:26]  It could be some cabal at a higher level that doesn't fly any particular national flag.
[00:54:35]  It could be anything in between.
[00:54:37]  But at the very least, we individuals looking into a screen feeling like we are eyewitnesses to history have to understand that although you may be seeing an event that actually happened, the context of that event, the scale of that event, all of these things are susceptible to manipulation.
[00:54:55]  And so we are, all of us are, you know, like blind staring into our screens.
[00:55:03]  Yeah, totally.
[00:55:04]  And the thing that everybody needs to remember, which is something that I've learned, is that you're only allowed to see what you're allowed to see.
[00:55:11]  I don't believe anything anymore in the age of AI, like in terms of what I'm seeing.
[00:55:17]  I literally, you know, I disbelieve anything until I kind of have a feel or I see it with my eyes.
[00:55:28]  So the feel and the thing that I'm seeing right now is a byproduct of what's been going on for four weeks is these like global, global level deficiencies in very important things like fuel, like fertilizer, even water in the Middle East.
[00:55:57]  And there are countries and nations now who have gone into emergency mode and lockdown mode, which makes me really nervous and roll my eyes back in my head because it's starting to look a little bit like what we were starting to see about six years ago.
[00:56:19]  But this time, my feeling is that it's going to be a much larger scale.
[00:56:25]  And I don't know if this was, it's just like you said.
[00:56:29]  I don't know if this was the intention.

=== Global Dissociation Patterns (12:27) ===

[00:56:32]  It's pretty damn convenient if it wasn't because speaking on, you know, on behalf of the globalists, and I have no idea who they are, so don't anyone ask me.
[00:56:42]  When I say they, I don't know, I'm a bunch of rich assholes.
[00:56:45]  So if there is some kind of coordination that supersedes the horrible story of what's going on here now, it kind of makes sense to me.
[00:57:00]  And that really bugs me.
[00:57:02]  It really bugs me.
[00:57:04]  Because just from a local point of view, I'll make this point because it's relevant.
[00:57:10]  A lot of people, you're well aware of this, and human nature is to side with someone or to cast blame or to figure things out.
[00:57:22]  Like we love to figure things out.
[00:57:24]  We love to say, yeah, this is why or that's why.
[00:57:27]  They're to blame.
[00:57:28]  And a lot of people are like, Israel, blah, blah, blah, blame.
[00:57:32]  Why is it always Israel?
[00:57:34]  And so that kind of amplifies that whole vibe that some people are holding right now because it's like, it's our fault that you don't have gas in your gas pump in remote whatever it is.
[00:57:48]  Which is like, you can't oversimplify it like that, first of all.
[00:57:54]  But you see what I'm saying?
[00:57:56]  Let me just say, I think about this every day, and I try very carefully to remember that if you say the Americans, the Americans are doing this, the Americans are doing that, you will end up blaming me for a lot of things that I have bent over backwards to prevent, right?
[00:58:20]  I love that you said that.
[00:58:21]  And I want to remind me to elaborate.
[00:58:24]  Yeah.
[00:58:24]  So the point is, I'm not, you know, I thought the Biden administration was an existential threat to the country and the Constitution.
[00:58:37]  I think the Trump administration has betrayed all of those of us who voted for Trump on the basis that he promised no new wars.
[00:58:48]  Now, mind you, I don't know why that happened.
[00:58:51]  So the point is, it's not the Israelis, obviously.
[00:58:55]  The Israeli citizens are divided, right?
[00:58:57]  It can't be the Israelis.
[00:59:00]  It's not even Israel.
[00:59:02]  As far as I'm concerned, you have an administration that has power that is making decisions for reasons it only partially shares or maybe doesn't share at all.
[00:59:13]  And so I try to remain laser focused on the fact that very few people actually have influence on the events we're talking about.
[00:59:21]  And it does not make sense to drag in a flag or to point to a set of borders on a map and say those people because it never is.
[00:59:31]  Yeah, it's not constructive to do that either because it's not valid, like in a correctness way, if you ask me.
[00:59:42]  Yeah, I just want to say I'm glad you said that because it's like for me, you know, I'm a people lover.
[00:59:50]  I have no prejudices, well, except against death cultists.
[00:59:53]  I don't like them much.
[00:59:55]  So like I, you know, you can't, I don't know, this whole thing about nations and people lumping everything in together.
[01:00:06]  It's just, it's not productive to do that ever.
[01:00:08]  And if anybody, you know, is kind of like on the fence about what's going on here, maybe you yourself have kind of gotten a bad impression of Israel, for example, because of all the stuff that's being shown.
[01:00:23]  I hope that listening to me speak maybe will get you curious at least to find out like a little bit more about the truth.
[01:00:35]  And it's not just the truth of Israel.
[01:00:37]  It's the truth of everything.
[01:00:38]  It's the truth of the grand scale that we are all, all of us are manipulated by.
[01:00:48]  Like it sounds really, doesn't sound very optimistic for me to say that, but like it's like you were saying, Brett, like everything you see on a screen, especially in these days of AI, are their extreme manipulations.
[01:01:07]  It's not just to get you to buy shit either.
[01:01:10]  Like we are being commercialized.
[01:01:14]  Like we are seen as data right now, if you ask me.
[01:01:19]  And I know this might sound like I'm talking about a completely different subject matter, but I'm not, because I think this all ties in.
[01:01:29]  Just like I'm really good at, I have a very vivid imagination.
[01:01:34]  I even have a sci-fi brain.
[01:01:36]  Somebody told me once I should be a science fiction writer.
[01:01:39]  And I can imagine, you know, bad things happening in the future pretty easily, not just based on what we've done historically, but because it's kind of obvious when you look around.
[01:01:52]  If you start seeing countries saying, okay, we're imposing these rules or sanctions or whatever on the people of our country with regard to fuel use, how much water you can drink, how much food you can eat, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:02:14]  What is that going to look like in a very short period of time globally?
[01:02:19]  The first thing that I see is a disconnection from nations, like a dissociation between us, not just trade route shit, but like actual people.
[01:02:30]  I see division, which is like the greatest tool of evil warmongers like Divide and Conquer, like you all know.
[01:02:39]  I see individual communities changing for the worse.
[01:02:44]  I see people struggling.
[01:02:47]  I see people fighting.
[01:02:50]  It's going to take a lot of resilience within local communities for people to come together.
[01:02:55]  And I think they will.
[01:02:57]  You're not going to put an Aussie down, for example.
[01:02:59]  Like I've seen quite a few videos that are quite funny about the pumps being empty.
[01:03:04]  And in Australia, you have to have a car to drive around because it's so big.
[01:03:09]  It's like, you know, one house to the other house is like.
[01:03:12]  It's almost like the whole continent.
[01:03:14]  Almost like that.
[01:03:17]  So, yeah, it's, this is what I'm starting to see as a byproduct of what's going on.
[01:03:24]  And even though I'm smack dab in the middle of this, like getting pummeled every day, what I'm seeing is, like, I'm not sitting, oh, you know, no, that's not what this is about.
[01:03:38]  And I don't want to put my energy to that because I think something bigger is going on.
[01:03:42]  I could be totally wrong, by the way, but I mean, it just seems to me from looking around, because I'm a world looker.
[01:03:51]  And maybe I'm misinformed too, but it just does seem like something else is going on here.
[01:03:59]  So you said you agreed.
[01:04:01]  I'd love to hear your opinion.
[01:04:03]  Well, I'm glad you asked because I think this is a very important line of inquiry.
[01:04:10]  And I want to, before I give you my opinion, let me say I think we are caught between two hypotheses for what is going on at the larger scale.
[01:04:23]  One is that there has been a plan enacted in which this conflict or conflict in the Middle East more broadly is part of some larger intentional reorganization or attempted reorganization.
[01:04:46]  The other is that the principle, I'm trying to remember who exactly coined this phrase.
[01:04:55]  It may be Rah Emmanuel said something like, don't let a good crisis go to waste.
[01:05:02]  So the fact that we see forces in motion as the result of this conflict could be that those forces initiated the conflict for the purpose of doing whatever they're doing.
[01:05:17]  Or it could be that those forces are reacting to the opportunity created by what's going on.
[01:05:23]  And, you know, I would say almost undoubtedly you'll have components of both.
[01:05:28]  So let's just keep that in mind.
[01:05:30]  But what do I think is going on?
[01:05:32]  I'm reminded Heather's PhD advisor, great guy named Arnold Klugi, phylogenetic systematist, and also kind of a philosophical hardliner.
[01:05:43]  I'm not sure if there are any systematists watching, they'll know what that means.
[01:05:47]  But in any case, he had a little note on his file cabinet that you would see as soon as you entered his office.
[01:05:57]  And it said, it's about power and limited resources, stupid.
[01:06:02]  And, you know, it's just one of those things.
[01:06:05]  There's a reason that he had that among all things prominently displayed.
[01:06:10]  And it's because us little people get caught up in these narratives about why things are going on.
[01:06:19]  And in the end, those things, even though those narratives may be partly or even sometimes wholly true, they exist in a context of dynamics that haven't changed.
[01:06:32]  In fact, dynamics that aren't even human fundamentally.
[01:06:35]  All creatures compete over limited resources, whether that's food or territory or mates.
[01:06:43]  These things, that's a feature of the landscape before you even introduce humans.
[01:06:48]  And so when you do introduce humans, the ways in which that unfolds are much more diverse and confusing because human beings will tell you they're doing something for reason X when really they're doing it for reason Y.
[01:07:04]  We know how to lie.
[01:07:06]  I've noticed.
[01:07:08]  But in any case, that's what I think is going on.
[01:07:11]  And, you know, the concern, of course, is anytime we talk about collusion and conspiracy, which I think we have to because there's an awful lot of collusion and conspiracy.
[01:07:23]  Anybody who thinks otherwise is a fool.
[01:07:26]  But anytime we talk about this, we have to realize that the philosophical rules of analysis and logic do not apply in the same standard way that they would if we were in a laboratory or trying to conduct an experiment in a forest, right?
[01:07:43]  The forest is not trying to mislead you about what it's doing.
[01:07:47]  The beakers on the lab bench are what they are.
[01:07:51]  The deception involved in human events at scale is so profound that because every crime comes with a cover story or a rationalization, we are constantly having to say the fact that that's the simplest explanation for what we've seen may be deceptive.
[01:08:21]  It may be that if we had seen more evidence, we would have a very different understanding of what the simplest explanation is.
[01:08:28]  So anyway, the punchline there is it is very important and very difficult to be a nuanced and careful conspiracy theorist.
[01:08:43]  You'd be a fool to rule out the possibility of conspiracies, but in seeing conspiracies, it's very easy to talk yourself into the idea that something is there when it's not because the normal rules of logic do not apply in a simple way.
[01:08:58]  Yep.

=== Resource Map Redrawing (03:01) ===

[01:08:59]  I would also there's no question that something like an attempt to topple the regime in Iran redraws the map of resources in a potentially profound way.
[01:09:22]  Obviously, the Strait of Hormuz is sitting right there, and the world immediately has a stake in this conflict.
[01:09:30]  And the world's preparedness, each of the nations, their differing levels of preparedness for being starved for resources quickly reorders the map of power.
[01:09:46]  And you would hope that those who had initiated this conflict would have prepared for it in that way.
[01:09:58]  But I'm not so sure.
[01:10:01]  I don't see a lot of wisdom in the political landscape.
[01:10:06]  I see a lot of game theory causing us to behave in ways that are very unwise.
[01:10:13]  And so I don't know how well prepared we are for this conflict.
[01:10:17]  And frankly, obviously, as you pointed out just a few minutes ago, the austerity that kinetic war can induce is useful in the same way that a virus spreading around the globe is useful.
[01:10:42]  That the ability to lock us down, the ability to shut down the mom and pop shops so that they would never reopen, so that wealth concentrated in the hands of major corporations instead.
[01:10:57]  That was valuable.
[01:10:59]  And so it creates a kind of indirect war profiteering.
[01:11:06]  You don't have to be selling munitions in order to be making a profit on the reorganization of civilization that comes when we have to tighten our belts.
[01:11:17]  And, you know, obviously, it is not lost on me.
[01:11:22]  Your connection between the COVID lockdowns, which were unnecessary and devastating.
[01:11:32]  Devastating and exacerbating of exactly the phenomenon they were nominally supposed to address.
[01:11:42]  That the same people who liked the idea of locking the public down may well see the inability of people to travel because there's not enough jet fuel, there's not enough gasoline.

=== Sad Lockdown Parallels (02:52) ===

[01:12:01]  That's a feature, not a bug to some people.
[01:12:03]  And I think we need to understand who they are and what role they may or may not have played in pushing us in this direction.
[01:12:11]  Yep.
[01:12:12]  Yep.
[01:12:13]  It's becoming clearer to me by the moment.
[01:12:16]  I'm already seeing, you know, headlines about jet fuel.
[01:12:21]  However, I want to repeat that I don't believe anything I see.
[01:12:25]  I need multiple sources of evidence from like also sides of the die.
[01:12:30]  Dice, die, dice.
[01:12:31]  Anyway, I feel that there's way too much hubris.
[01:12:37]  That's another like parallel between what was and what is.
[01:12:41]  You know, it's the same, it's the same machine, nonetheless, if not the same people instigating these conflicts.
[01:12:53]  I mean, this is ultimately, it's kind of sad.
[01:12:57]  It's no, it's not kind of sad.
[01:12:58]  It's very sad to me how these resource wars, you know, it's, it's like, it's just so beneath us as a species.
[01:13:10]  I find it pathetic.
[01:13:11]  Like, we're so much better than this.
[01:13:15]  Are we really, are we really still doing this?
[01:13:18]  I mean, that's how I feel about it.
[01:13:19]  I mean, it's the difference between where we could be as a civilization, although, you know, some people would argue we're not one yet.
[01:13:29]  What is that scale that starts with K?
[01:13:34]  Anyway, Elon Musk is always talking about it.
[01:13:36]  Civilization scale.
[01:13:37]  Yeah, I've forgotten what it's called.
[01:13:39]  Kirkpopsky or anyway.
[01:13:42]  Sorry, I don't remember.
[01:13:44]  But yeah, it's we're so we're so far from where we could be.
[01:13:50]  And it's very important that people tap into the reality that the reality itself, whatever that means, is so different from what's portrayed.
[01:14:07]  And what I mean by portrayed is like what the public in general is allowed to see or narrated.
[01:14:16]  And like you said, it's an individual level now, even more so because of the algos.
[01:14:24]  I mean, they're putting you into like a do loop of this.
[01:14:33]  And this is by design.
[01:14:34]  I mean, these algorithms are designed to Tap into who you are, what you like, where you go, everything that is you so that they can, like in my opinion, what they're trying to do is recreate you, like, or an avatar of you in a way.

=== Algorithmic Manipulation Loops (05:21) ===

[01:14:53]  It's more, it's not about selling crap to you.
[01:14:57]  That's bullshit.
[01:15:00]  This age verification stuff that's going around all the time.
[01:15:04]  Sorry, I'm seemingly going off on a tangent, but I'm not, because I think this is all linked.
[01:15:08]  This is not about protecting children.
[01:15:10]  Come on now.
[01:15:12]  You know, like it's, it would be really nice if one of the things I could do in this episode is help people just think about the massive illusion of what's being presented to you.
[01:15:32]  I guess a better way to say it is take a step back and in silence and like think hard or maybe not hard, maybe think softly about what's real to you and what's important to you and how you want the world to be.
[01:15:57]  That might sound a little bit too spiritual for now, but I think it's really important.
[01:16:01]  And I am very spiritual these days because I'm in a war.
[01:16:05]  But, like it's, it's important to me and from a global point of view, for people to try and imagine the world that they want to be in, because it's very different from the world that I think we're actually heading toward because of assholes who are literally creating the circumstances to make our lives like basically a life of slavery at the very best and, you know,
[01:16:33]  a life of turmoil and destruction at the very worst.
[01:16:36]  So I don't know, that might have sounded a little bit like disjointed and ranty, but I think it's a really important part of why this is all going on.
[01:16:50]  It's more than just a base human struggle here.
[01:16:53]  It's pettiness, it's hubris, it's there's a lot of manipulation and lying going on.
[01:17:00]  And sometimes it's hard to actually see what the lies are.
[01:17:08]  And it's even harder once you see something that you kind of believed in is absolutely a lie.
[01:17:14]  It shakes your foundation and then you kind of have to rebuild from that.
[01:17:17]  And it's hard to do that.
[01:17:18]  A lot of people just don't want to do that at all, which is why they stay in a state of, I don't know, in a state beholden to ignorance.
[01:17:29]  I don't know how else to say it.
[01:17:31]  Like, you know, going back to the COVID thing.
[01:17:33]  I mean, some people still have no idea that there's even a problem with the entire thing.
[01:17:40]  I can't believe that, but it's true.
[01:17:42]  You know, there are some people who have no idea that there's a problem that happened in the last six years.
[01:17:50]  Some people have no idea there's a big global problem going on right now.
[01:17:54]  They think that there's just this stupid war that has nothing to do with them going on between Israel because Israel's the devil.
[01:18:00]  I mean, that's what that's what some people think.
[01:18:04]  It's crazy.
[01:18:06]  Well, let me try to reorient.
[01:18:12]  I hear exactly what you're saying.
[01:18:14]  And I think a couple of things.
[01:18:17]  Wow.
[01:18:18]  One thing I think is true.
[01:18:19]  Thank you for hearing what I'm saying because I feel like I'm just like, and nobody has a clue what I'm talking about.
[01:18:25]  Thank you.
[01:18:25]  No, I mean it.
[01:18:26]  No, I've known you long enough.
[01:18:29]  I know what you're getting at.
[01:18:31]  I think others will get it too.
[01:18:34]  Something finds our freedoms galling and the idea that we have a right to demand things from our societies is a problem to be addressed and it's constantly chipping away.
[01:18:53]  It can't go after it wholesale, but if you look at what's happening to freedoms in the nominal West, they are being eroded rapidly.
[01:19:03]  And I can't help but feel that, you know, we've all heard of 15 minute cities and at some level, maybe we headed that off because it had a name and we all wrapped our mind around what it really meant.
[01:19:17]  And so it's now going to be kind of hard to do because a lot of us are alert.
[01:19:21]  But there's an attempt to create 15 minute cities of the mind where you're unable to escape some Truman show that's been created for you so that you will comply and that you will allow and that you will sanction all of the things that these powerful forces prefer that enables them and hobbles us.
[01:19:49]  And in that light, my position since October 7th, or at least my stated position since then and my fear before October 7th, was that much rests on what happens in the Middle East and that the dynamic as I see it is this.

=== Torah-Based Structure Concerns (04:35) ===

[01:20:15]  Israel is two places.
[01:20:21]  Now, mind you, I have never been to Israel.
[01:20:23]  I would love to go.
[01:20:25]  At the moment, I would be afraid to go because I don't trust the people in charge of Israel.
[01:20:31]  I think they have the right to eliminate anybody who has a contrary position and an audience.
[01:20:39]  But hopefully I'm imagining that.
[01:20:43]  But in any case, I see Israel.
[01:20:48]  Say again.
[01:20:49]  I think you'd be welcomed.
[01:20:52]  I think I'd be welcomed by people.
[01:20:55]  But anyway, let's put my paranoia aside.
[01:21:03]  Israel looks like a forward-looking, high-tech, cosmopolitan nation.
[01:21:16]  And it also looks like a civilization with a deep and very direct connection to the Torah.
[01:21:28]  And the problem is that the Torah is a document that was written or that came to be in an era where the rules that governed human-population interactions were the rules of lineage against lineage violence, where you displace other people so that they will not displace you.
[01:22:00]  That was what history looked like until very recently.
[01:22:04]  It was really the only option.
[01:22:06]  It was an extension of the biological reality that populations of creatures displace each other.
[01:22:13]  Populations of people displace each other.
[01:22:18]  What emerged very late in human history, in the very recent chapter, is the modern West in which we behave more or less as you were suggesting we ought to behave, or at least we aspire to it, where we don't look at somebody as defined by their population of origin or their religion,
[01:22:44]  but we collaborate with each other because it's productive to do so.
[01:22:49]  And we treat those other things as cultural variation that is interesting, but not materially important in our interactions with each other.
[01:23:00]  It's a very productive system.
[01:23:05]  It is as fair as any system that has ever been devised.
[01:23:10]  It is much fairer than communism, which aspires to promote fairness above all other things and results in a gray, unproductive dystopia for totally understandable game theoretic reasons.
[01:23:24]  Anyway, the point is, I think the world does know what we are supposed to be doing.
[01:23:30]  I think we haven't seen the West function the way it's supposed to.
[01:23:34]  It falls down on its obligations frequently and behaves in ways that are exactly counter to the values that we espouse, but it also succeeds regularly enough that we know that it works.
[01:23:45]  What we have is a prototype of the West, and we know that the right thing to do is to refine that prototype and make it work as the brochure describes it.
[01:23:56]  But that because Israel is caught between its modern cosmopolitan Western side and its religious Old Testament side, that much hangs in the balance.
[01:24:12]  In other words, what I've said since October 7th very publicly is that we are in danger, the whole world, of being dragged backwards into lineage against lineage violence rather than pulling those who are still engaged in lineage against lineage violence into this modern, superior, fairer, more productive way of existing as human beings, where we don't get rid of competition.
[01:24:41]  You know, that's the beauty of our system is that the competition is not kinetic and it is not targeted at displacing people.
[01:24:49]  It's about ideas.

=== Secular Mode Behaviors (15:35) ===

[01:24:51]  Can I figure out what the opportunities are in the market and can I bring them into reality?
[01:24:57]  And yes, if I do it well, then some other competitor will lose for having done it more poorly.
[01:25:03]  But that makes us all wealthier when we do that.
[01:25:06]  So anyway, basic point is I'm concerned that we are actually watching the nightmare that I described unfold, where the world is being dragged backwards into lineage against lineage violence in the Middle East, with Israel leaning into its Torah-based structure, even though it is under the direction of secularists.
[01:25:33]  Now, I wonder, does that resonate?
[01:25:35]  Does it even make sense for you?
[01:25:40]  Yeah, I totally get what you're saying.
[01:25:43]  Resonate.
[01:25:46]  I don't know.
[01:25:49]  I, from what I know about the religios, that's what I call them because, you know, it's an Australian term.
[01:25:58]  I don't know why I pick these up sometimes.
[01:26:00]  My cat is trying to get up, so that's why I keep turning around.
[01:26:05]  You are welcome to bring your cat onto the podcast.
[01:26:08]  Okay.
[01:26:08]  Well, look, Brett invited you, so come on.
[01:26:15]  Okay, so here he is, Mr. Mister, who ripped my hand open this morning when I was trying to help him get out of the blanket he was trapped in.
[01:26:27]  Okay, yeah, so I don't inter you know that the religious are the religios and they're they're kind of they keep to themselves and they have their thing.
[01:26:37]  I don't know much about them.
[01:26:38]  So can you be a little more specific?
[01:26:40]  You're not are you talking about all you're surely not talking about all religious people in Israel?
[01:26:49]  No, no, no.
[01:26:50]  Like the the Hasidim, I think I would I would call them, like the Hasidim.
[01:26:56]  The Orthodox.
[01:26:57]  Yeah, the Orthodox people.
[01:26:59]  So yeah, they're they're a lot of people might disagree with me on this, but I think structurally in terms of Israel as a place with like a huge diversity of cultures and religions, et cetera, they actually play a really vital role.
[01:27:18]  Even if people don't want to admit it or they don't understand why, they actually do.
[01:27:23]  And I don't understand the dynamics of it.
[01:27:25]  All I know is that that seems to be apparent to me.
[01:27:30]  Because I've actually thought about what it would be like if they didn't comprise a large proportion of the community.
[01:27:39]  And they do have a very distinct way of life.
[01:27:43]  Like they don't use, I know this is going to sound funny, but I'm making an important point.
[01:27:48]  They don't use smartphones.
[01:27:52]  Their children, they have many children and their children all have to, like, they have to learn a musical instrument.
[01:27:58]  They have to learn three languages, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:28:02]  So there are a lot of things that come.
[01:28:05]  I have a very minimal knowledge of this.
[01:28:07]  I'm saying this outright of their culture because I'm not a part of it.
[01:28:11]  But there are so many things that I can see from the outside that are like, they're really like awesome.
[01:28:18]  For lack of a better way of saying it, it's like, yeah, one of the best things I think Western culture could do right now is get rid of all the bloody devices, especially in the context of raising children, because they're messing everyone up.
[01:28:33]  Sorry, but it's true.
[01:28:37]  So anyway, I think that they, you know, they make up a very important part of the entirety of the people of Israel.
[01:28:46]  I'm not sure what proportion.
[01:28:49]  Like there's about 9 million people here.
[01:28:53]  But anyway, as per you're talking more about like going back to tribal type ways, right?
[01:29:02]  Like that's what you were implying about lineages.
[01:29:05]  Yes.
[01:29:06]  I mean, if you just think about the way history worked, the idea of obviously it is evolutionarily effective to destroy another population and replace them.
[01:29:28]  So this displacement game is ancient and it's the default game.
[01:29:35]  And it is a significant fact of history that that's not the only game.
[01:29:43]  If it was the only game, then the rest of this is academic.
[01:29:47]  The basic point is what you say doesn't really matter.
[01:29:51]  This is all a question of deploying power in order to displace others so that they don't displace you.
[01:30:03]  And the Alternative version of how to live works well, but I'm afraid that it is fragile and that we collapse backward into that more ancient form of being.
[01:30:23]  And mind you, I'm not taking anyone to task for their religious beliefs.
[01:30:32]  We could get into a long thread about what those religious beliefs are, how I see them as a secular materialist.
[01:30:39]  But I understand why people hold those beliefs, and I'm not suggesting anyone shouldn't.
[01:30:46]  But my concern is, and this isn't just about Israel, it's certainly a concern about Iran.
[01:30:52]  It's a concern about the United States, is that when you take what you think the lessons of those ancient texts are and you attempt to map them onto modern international relations, you get a terrifying outcome.
[01:31:14]  So, you know, in the U.S., we have evangelicals who have a particular interpretation of the New Testament.
[01:31:23]  That interpretation has led many to see the conflict in the Middle East as a key to getting to the end state where Jesus returns and the devil.
[01:31:40]  Ah, the return of the Messiah thing.
[01:31:42]  Okay, yeah.
[01:31:43]  Right.
[01:31:43]  So my point is, look, I'm not telling you you're not fully entitled to that belief.
[01:31:48]  Of course you are.
[01:31:50]  But I am telling you, I don't think there is a moral justification for attempting to adjust policy so that it brings about a terrible outcome because you think that terrible outcome is actually good, right?
[01:32:07]  That can't be policy.
[01:32:10]  So the confusing thing in Israel, as I see it, is I take Netanyahu to be secular, and I take his faction to be primarily secular.
[01:32:24]  But they appear to be behaving in a recognizable mode from a time when secular wasn't even a thing.
[01:32:33]  Interesting.
[01:32:34]  Can you elaborate?
[01:32:36]  Well, I have said elsewhere that this feels like a holy war and one that could globalize.
[01:32:46]  You have, you know.
[01:32:48]  Isn't it, though?
[01:32:49]  I mean.
[01:32:50]  I think it is.
[01:32:52]  You know, like.
[01:32:53]  So, so shouldn't that, if this, if, if that is not a mirage, if this is somehow a holy war that is de facto between the Judeo-Christian world and the Muslim world, every single person.
[01:33:13]  Okay.
[01:33:14]  That's what I'm concerned about.
[01:33:16]  And, you know, okay, you can say, Brett, you're a crazy person.
[01:33:18]  You're seeing things that aren't real.
[01:33:20]  This is really just a valid point.
[01:33:23]  And it could be exactly what's going down.
[01:33:26]  I don't know.
[01:33:27]  Right.
[01:33:27]  So if it is, then everyone on earth should be saying, holy moly, what just happened?
[01:33:35]  We cannot afford to have the world's two largest religions battling in literal terms, in a kinetic sense, on planet Earth.
[01:33:48]  The planet, it's not big enough.
[01:33:50]  It can't endure that.
[01:33:51]  And what we risk here is losing the one alternative to that style of interaction that actually works, which is the West.
[01:34:02]  So, you know, maybe I'm naive, but I think the West, and again, it's a prototype.
[01:34:10]  I'm not claiming that it lives up to its values even most of the time, but it does some of the time.
[01:34:16]  I think the West needed to help the Middle East.
[01:34:25]  It needed to pull Israel across the line into its one of two ways of thinking.
[01:34:32]  And it needed to help the rest of the Middle East see, A, that this is a better way of being.
[01:34:45]  And B, that it doesn't, I mean, one of the things that would have to be true for that to work is the West would have to clean up its act with respect to the carnage created by unfettered free market democracy or whatever it is that goes under that cloak, right?
[01:35:03]  Because we do a tremendous amount of damage to innocent people, right?
[01:35:09]  We allow corporations to parasitize our children.
[01:35:12]  That's inhumane, and it makes it much harder to make the argument to other people that we to say, right?
[01:35:24]  So, you know, I see, you know, I see the Iranians hanging gay people from cranes, right?
[01:35:34]  There is not a defense in the world for this absolutely barbaric behavior.
[01:35:40]  On the other hand, I see the West as inducing girls to prostitute themselves for the profit of corporations and for the benefit of unscrupulous men.
[01:35:55]  It's not quite hard to do.
[01:35:57]  Men walking around with their wieners hanging out in front of children and calling it pride.
[01:36:03]  Right.
[01:36:03]  There you go.
[01:36:04]  So the point is we make a very poor case for the one system that actually has a potential to increase the longevity of the human race, right?
[01:36:15]  And we are falling down on that job.
[01:36:17]  And at the same time, we are allowing ourselves to be dragged backwards into a prior mode that, A, is intolerable at a human level, right?
[01:36:27]  I don't want to live in a world where people view me as less deserving of life and dignity than them because of the book I.
[01:36:41]  That vision of other people usually comes from seeing yourself that way.
[01:36:50]  This is the thing that really like there are people who don't value life.
[01:36:58]  It's the simplest way for me to put it at all.
[01:37:01]  Like, you know, everyone can relate to the idea of that by thinking about someone who would abuse an animal, for example.
[01:37:10]  Right.
[01:37:10]  Like they don't value animal life, which probably means they don't value life at all.
[01:37:15]  And, you know, not to be a psychology about it, but a psychologist about it.
[01:37:20]  But like, you know, a kid that abuses an animal usually grows up to be an abusive human being.
[01:37:25]  Anyway, yeah.
[01:37:26]  But I want to say three things.
[01:37:29]  One, I think your vision is beautiful.
[01:37:32]  I really do.
[01:37:35]  It would be lovely if that's actually what humans could pull together and do as a species.
[01:37:44]  I love that vision.
[01:37:47]  Two, A lot of how you described that way that we can make things work as a species without this holy war and without the pending war between good and evil.
[01:38:04]  I'm just going to say, like, you see it every single day in the place where I live.
[01:38:09]  21% of the population is Arabic.
[01:38:14]  And lots of people don't know that.
[01:38:16]  They're like, Jews, Jews.
[01:38:18]  No.
[01:38:19]  There are, it's like a quarter of the population are, you know, Arabs.
[01:38:26]  And that comprises Muslims and Christians.
[01:38:29]  We are made up of everyone and everything.
[01:38:33]  And everyone, it's a very weird thing.
[01:38:38]  It's like this part of the world creates this vortex where certain kinds of people kind of just come together and without saying anything, without really thinking about it, just fall into a way of living together with like an understanding that comes from just looking at each other in the eyes.
[01:39:00]  I don't know if you know what I'm saying, but it's like there's a demonstration of how everyone can live harmoniously together happening right now.
[01:39:09]  And I'm not saying it's always like that.
[01:39:12]  And I'm not saying there aren't people who are here to cause shit because there are.
[01:39:19]  But ultimately, when you walk, like I'm a person that engages with life on the daily and people, and I look at things and I feel things and I touch things.
[01:39:31]  And when I look around, and I did this a lot, you know, a lot of people asked me, like, how did you know there was something going on in the beginning of COVID?
[01:39:40]  It's like, it's the exact same mechanism.
[01:39:42]  I look around and I listen and I look and what I see is just normal people.
[01:39:50]  You know, some are annoying, some are funny, some are good looking, some are ugly, whatever.
[01:39:57]  Just normal people living their lives.
[01:40:00]  And everyone really has one goal.
[01:40:02]  They just kind of want to have a good day.
[01:40:04]  They want to, you know, be able to feed their kids and themselves.
[01:40:08]  They want to be able to do their job, the thing that they love, go surfing, whatever.
[01:40:13]  And I think this is absolutely universal to all the human beings on the planet.
[01:40:17]  Even the ones who have become bad seeds, I still have hope for them.
[01:40:22]  Not evil ones, but the ones who have kind of turned to the dark side.

=== Human Dignity in Gaza (10:40) ===

[01:40:27]  I'm a believer in turning people back.
[01:40:30]  Everyone wants the same goddamn thing.
[01:40:32]  Pardon my language, but like everyone.
[01:40:36]  And I can hear the people of the world now.
[01:40:38]  Oh, well, what about the people of Gaza?
[01:40:41]  And I'm going to go there because I've always been empathetic to every single individual who's suffering.
[01:40:47]  I've never been there.
[01:40:49]  I can't comment directly on what's going on there right now.
[01:40:52]  I cannot imagine that it's not awful.
[01:40:57]  And I really do empathize.
[01:40:59]  I sympathize with every single human being who's not a death cultist.
[01:41:05]  I have to throw that out there because I don't sympathize with them.
[01:41:09]  And it's just so difficult because it's the normal masses who are like how I just described.
[01:41:24]  And then there's this like tiny little percentage of people.
[01:41:28]  I'm serious.
[01:41:29]  I think this is how it is.
[01:41:31]  Who seem to have a culmination of wealth and what you might call power and resources to manipulate this entire mass into doing what they want.
[01:41:44]  And people, it all ties into what we're saying.
[01:41:48]  People are manipulated into believing things that they would never believe if they weren't in a certain state of mind.
[01:41:56]  And so I think that it's possible one day that we humans will evolve to a point where we all have enough.
[01:42:04]  Not this, you all have nothing and be happy crap.
[01:42:08]  I mean, we all, there's an abundance of resources on this planet.
[01:42:12]  There's enough for everyone.
[01:42:13]  There aren't too many people.
[01:42:15]  We just need to start doing things right.
[01:42:18]  We have to stop polluting.
[01:42:19]  We have to stop effing up the planet, for example, because we are doing that.
[01:42:24]  We have to stop hating each other, quite frankly.
[01:42:28]  Yeah, we have to agree on the basic human dignity of people.
[01:42:34]  And I think your point about death cultists is, of course, right.
[01:42:39]  It seems to me that every human being starts out deserving of human dignity.
[01:42:46]  You can lose that if you decide it's your right to obliterate others or top from birth that it's okay and you should kill as many people as possible based on a religion.
[01:43:01]  Of course.
[01:43:03]  But the basic dignity of people is actually fundamental to the actual Western structure.
[01:43:16]  And I don't know why.
[01:43:20]  I guess I increasingly hear people invoking something in this neighborhood and discussing the war in the Middle East.
[01:43:27]  But I don't think we're focused on this enough.
[01:43:29]  We're really in a battle over which structure is going to govern the future.
[01:43:36]  And I think unfortunately, I mean, let's take the situation in Gaza.
[01:43:44]  I'm struck.
[01:43:46]  I cannot, if we go back to the dichotomy between explanations, the two hypotheses we discussed earlier, is there a plan that involves the destruction of Gaza and that's what's going on?
[01:44:02]  Or is there a faction taking advantage of this destruction in Gaza?
[01:44:08]  What I see is, oh my God, did I just hear the description of a beautiful, you know, a real estate proposal in Gaza?
[01:44:17]  I think I did.
[01:44:19]  Is that incidental?
[01:44:21]  Or, you know, was that on the minds?
[01:44:25]  I mean, obviously, October 7th happened.
[01:44:28]  On the other hand, the problem with Benjamin Netanyahu, as I see it, is that he is tremendously capable, and I see no evidence in his behavior that he believes in the fundamental human dignity of all people and that he's only interested in going after those who have, through their actions, lost that right.
[01:45:01]  And I don't know what to make of that.
[01:45:03]  It troubles me.
[01:45:05]  I mean, among other things, I am tremendously troubled by the fact that he cynically argued, apparently, to support Hamas.
[01:45:17]  Now, this was years ago, and the purpose was to divide the Palestinians.
[01:45:23]  That's the ostensible purpose.
[01:45:25]  But the problem is I'm putting myself in the mind, or I'm trying to, of a Palestinian in Gaza who Benjamin Netanyahu has supported Hamas, and now I'm living under Hamas rule.
[01:45:43]  I would be livid that somebody would cynically inflict Hamas rule on me and then that it would result in a massive bombing campaign.
[01:45:58]  It just seems to me, it reminds me so much of Anthony Fauci, right?
[01:46:02]  Anthony Fauci became the go-to guy for what to do about COVID.
[01:46:09]  But he was also a guy involved in the creation of COVID.
[01:46:13]  That shouldn't happen.
[01:46:15]  At the point that Anthony Fauci had shown such terrible judgment that he would offshore the work of the dual-use research that seems to have created SARS-CoV-2, he lost any right to be in the room for a discussion about what to do about COVID.
[01:46:33]  And I feel this is the situation with Netanyahu.
[01:46:37]  He, let's say it was an honest error, that he cynically wanted to divide the Palestinians, was callous enough to attempt to inflict Hamas on the people of Gaza, and it went badly and resulted in the most major massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
[01:47:00]  Well, didn't he naturally lose his right to be in the room when discussing what to do about the problem of Gaza?
[01:47:07]  It seems like he should have, and yet he remains in power and now is behaving in a belligerent way with respect to Iran.
[01:47:15]  Now, you know, look, maybe the hardliners are right.
[01:47:20]  Maybe there's no future in any alternative system in which we do honor the dignity of other people.
[01:47:28]  And I'm naive.
[01:47:29]  That's possible.
[01:47:31]  But if I'm not, then the point is, well, what rules are we living under where the people who make problems worse are the people we go to to figure out how to solve problems?
[01:47:41]  It just does not add up to me.
[01:47:45]  Yeah.
[01:47:45]  Are we trying to figure out how to solve problems?
[01:47:50]  I don't know.
[01:47:51]  I've never met the guy.
[01:47:53]  And I've heard him speak a few times.
[01:47:56]  And I'm not sure that I agree because I just don't know.
[01:48:02]  I'm not in his head.
[01:48:03]  I don't know what he's thinking.
[01:48:05]  I don't know the connection between, I don't know enough about the connection between him and Hamas.
[01:48:14]  But that's actually a distinction I'd like to make because I don't think enough people understand that there's a huge difference between the people of Gaza and this terrorist group.
[01:48:28]  However, the unfortunate part is that you're right.
[01:48:32]  Like they are inflicted upon the people and they're very scary, very scary.
[01:48:40]  And, you know, I haven't been there.
[01:48:45]  I haven't experienced it.
[01:48:47]  So I feel like an idiot saying anything about it.
[01:48:50]  But I would imagine that a lot of people are exceedingly subjugated and have lost, I would say, the spirit to revolt, to fight back.
[01:49:03]  I don't know.
[01:49:04]  I just feel I feel a lot of sympathy for all people who are suffering at the hands of others.
[01:49:18]  I mean, of course, it ties into what's happening now.
[01:49:21]  Everything is tied together.
[01:49:24]  But I don't know.
[01:49:28]  Like, I'm still trying to figure out, like, I have no idea.
[01:49:34]  Like, well, no, that would be naive for me to say.
[01:49:37]  An idea why the U.S. is involved with this current situation.
[01:49:45]  My feeling now, I'm going back to what you were saying about Trump.
[01:49:49]  I'm trying to remember what I was going to say about that, but like, I have a feeling now that he's just a feeling that maybe he might be feeling himself that, how do I say it diplomatically?
[01:50:15]  He might have bitten off more than he can chew in terms of Iran.
[01:50:20]  I mean, again, I've never been to Iran.
[01:50:24]  I don't even really have a close Iranian friend.
[01:50:28]  The most I know about what's going on there from these like these speaking groups on Twitter that I get invited to sometimes that have some like intel people in it.
[01:50:41]  And I mean, the only thing I really know, and I don't even know if this is true, is that the internet is down there.
[01:50:49]  so that you know communication is down as well um it's also depressing isn't it I just, every now and then I tap into the actual people who are involved.

=== Billionaire Wake-Up Calls (13:38) ===

[01:51:07]  Like, I think about all the people of Iran as well, like the different tribes, I guess, forgive me if that's the wrong word.
[01:51:18]  The Persians and the Kurds, et cetera, and women.
[01:51:22]  I mean, there are beautiful photographs of what Iran used to look like, where women were wearing beautiful clothes and everyone was smiling and happy and the culture was free.
[01:51:38]  And not saying that there isn't beauty in the architecture or the art or whatever, or, you know, that, well, actually, maybe the education system has changed, but like, I just hope that I just hope that we can overcome evil.
[01:52:02]  I don't know how else to say it, but like, I hope that the good people of all the places on earth can set aside their base fighting.
[01:52:14]  I don't know what to call it.
[01:52:15]  And see, try to see, if you still can, if you're evil, I don't think you can.
[01:52:20]  Try to see eye to eye with whomever you're sitting in front of.
[01:52:24]  Man, woman, child, whatever, wherever you're from, doesn't matter.
[01:52:34]  You're describing what the West is when it functions.
[01:52:38]  Yeah, when it functions.
[01:52:39]  Yeah, and I will just say I am reluctant to admit that in the end, it does come down to a battle between us and them.
[01:52:50]  But I think the us and them are misunderstood.
[01:52:53]  And the us, us is every person on earth who understands that the right way to do this is to put aside ancient rivalries, skin colors, religious texts, and participate in preserving and enhancing the earth as much as we can, given our opportunities.
[01:53:17]  And them should be an empty set.
[01:53:20]  It should be all of the people who oppose that plan.
[01:53:23]  And hopefully there are none, but there aren't going to be none.
[01:53:26]  But my basic feeling is I am ready to make common cause with anybody who is on board with the idea that we do know a better way to be, that we see it sometimes, it fails other times.
[01:53:41]  But what we should be doing is trying to figure out how to make it fail less, succeed more, and work better, right?
[01:53:47]  It's that simple.
[01:53:48]  The West is a prototype of something, and it is a prototype that is so superior to a world in which you have to worry about who's coming after you because of, you know, the, you know, the medallion you wear around your neck that everybody wants it if they've participated in it.
[01:54:08]  Yeah.
[01:54:09]  And again, it does involve cleaning up the problems.
[01:54:12]  There's, you know, the so-called free market does a lot of unnecessary harm and it does it to innocent people.
[01:54:20]  So it's not like the West is some shining example of how to, you know, respect people.
[01:54:26]  It doesn't work that way.
[01:54:27]  It degrades a lot of people.
[01:54:28]  But is it the better system?
[01:54:30]  Yes.
[01:54:30]  And frankly, is it the only system that allows humanity to have an indefinitely long future?
[01:54:37]  It is.
[01:54:38]  But it, you know, we can't have half the world involved in lineage against lineage violence and the other half struggling to put it aside.
[01:54:46]  It's unstable and it brings us right back to where we are now in the Middle East.
[01:54:51]  And I don't know.
[01:54:53]  I just wish people would take it as a wake-up call.
[01:54:56]  Yeah.
[01:54:57]  Sometimes I wonder, I'm sorry, it's just my personality.
[01:55:01]  I have to bring in some levity and joke.
[01:55:05]  You know how they're talking about releasing like UFO stuff?
[01:55:10]  Yes.
[01:55:12]  I'm unimpressed.
[01:55:14]  Yeah.
[01:55:14]  So, but like, it occurs to me sometimes that maybe I'm the like Uber optimist here and I'm half joking, but only half.
[01:55:23]  That maybe this is some kind of plan to unify the human species.
[01:55:30]  You know what I mean?
[01:55:32]  I know what you mean.
[01:55:33]  The problem is, okay, I'm with you until you see.
[01:55:38]  Oh, don't be with me because I don't know if I'm there.
[01:55:41]  No, I'm with you.
[01:55:42]  I'm with you up through it's some kind of, and then you said the word plan.
[01:55:48]  And the problem is the people in a position to plan, one, haven't figured out that their plans never work out because they don't know anything about complex systems and they tell themselves stories and then something that they didn't.
[01:56:01]  Yeah, we need some systems biologists to rule the world.
[01:56:05]  At least maybe the only value is that the systems biologists can tell them, hey, actually, that thing you think is going to happen, it's not, right?
[01:56:13]  You know, that would be useful.
[01:56:15]  But okay, so the planners are A, incapable of deploying a plan that unifies us.
[01:56:23]  And B, they wouldn't do it if they could.
[01:56:27]  The people in a position to plan are trying to figure out what real estate they're going to put in Gaza now that the buildings have conveniently fallen down.
[01:56:41]  They're not of a mindset to unite us.
[01:56:43]  In fact, our uniting as a planet is like their nightmare.
[01:56:48]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:56:49]  So do you think that these people are the same people who did the Lahaina thing?
[01:56:55]  I'm just using it.
[01:56:56]  No, seriously.
[01:56:57]  Like, do you think that this is the same thing?
[01:57:00]  Let me put it to you this way.
[01:57:01]  I don't know what happened in Lahaina.
[01:57:03]  I've certainly seen evidence that says there are things about that event that do not look like normal fire dynamics.
[01:57:12]  But I don't, I'm not going to pretend to know what did happen.
[01:57:16]  On the other hand, let's put it this way.
[01:57:18]  You want to wear some scary goggles, wear goggles that look at human events and say how much of this could be interpreted through a real estate lens.
[01:57:29]  Right?
[01:57:30]  Those are scary goggles to wear.
[01:57:31]  I try not to put them on too often because, wow, can you freak yourself out?
[01:57:35]  But there's an, let's put it to you this way.
[01:57:39]  If you were a diabolical, highly powerful person, wouldn't you be looking at the world and saying, huh?
[01:57:46]  There are too many people over there.
[01:57:48]  And gee, that would be some nice real estate if only there wasn't a such and such.
[01:57:53]  So am I saying that happens?
[01:57:55]  No.
[01:57:55]  But I am saying I think most people fall down in their analysis of the world because they do not properly understand what it would be like to be a psychopath.
[01:58:07]  And to the extent that there are psychopaths who have the ability to do things the rest of us would never do, you would expect clever ones to rise.
[01:58:16]  And once in a position to do things that normal folks don't even contemplate, the question is exactly what force do you think it is that's holding them back.
[01:58:29]  So anyway, I don't know what happened in Lehaina.
[01:58:32]  I don't know, frankly, why the events in the Middle East are unfolding the way they are, but you could imagine it's about power and limited resources, stupid.
[01:58:44]  And somebody is looking at the map as if it was a chessboard with no more concerns of people on it.
[01:58:50]  No doubt at all in my mind.
[01:58:52]  Like I do this as a thought exercise for myself sometimes.
[01:58:55]  I'm like, it's very hard for me, though, because I have no interest in money.
[01:58:59]  That's not the thing that I place value on.
[01:59:02]  But like, I don't even think most people understand the concept of a billion dollars.
[01:59:08]  And there are billionaires and there are more billionaires like since COVID.
[01:59:13]  So literally, and a lot, you know, it ties into this Hollywood thing where people just get up to no good.
[01:59:19]  And it's like, well, people are like, how can they do that?
[01:59:22]  And it's like, okay, do the thought exercise where you literally can do whatever you want today.
[01:59:28]  You can literally do whatever you want, as gross of a thought as you've ever imagined, you know, some fantasy playing out or as great.
[01:59:38]  You can do whatever you want.
[01:59:39]  What would you do?
[01:59:40]  And so like, I think that like, if you asked the average person to do that and then like turn it into the worst freaking thing you could possibly imagine, if no one was ever going to find out type thing, you know, that kind of question.
[01:59:56]  Imagine, I imagine that a lot of people would be behaving in a similar way to these psychopaths.
[02:00:05]  And it's interesting because I actually watch documentaries on psychopathy and a stunning number of people are actually considered true psychopaths.
[02:00:16]  Don't quote me on this, but I think it's like one in 100.
[02:00:18]  It's something crazy, like the statistic on actual psychopaths walking among us.
[02:00:27]  You have to understand that given the way the world is constructed, we have a very wrong idea about sociopaths and psychopaths because we become aware of them when they screw up.
[02:00:45]  It is their behavior that gets revealed that calls our attention to the fact that such a person existed, which means that our sample is biased in the direction of those who fuck up more regularly and those who actually don't have a superpower the rest of us don't have.
[02:01:05]  If you literally have every move available to you and your competitors have only a limited subset of moves that are constrained by some sort of moral guide rails, then the point is, oh, well, there are lots of games you'll win.
[02:01:18]  The only games where you won't win are games where, for example, reputation causes your superpower to be neutralized.
[02:01:26]  But we don't live in that world.
[02:01:28]  You can make your money destroying other people's children and you can spend it at the car dealership just like anybody else.
[02:01:38]  So, you know, we've set up a game in which there is a particular kind of monster that we should expect to see at the top.
[02:01:46]  And then when we see people at the top doing monstrous things, we bend over backwards to imagine what other explanation might exist because we wouldn't do that.
[02:01:56]  But it's, you know, the only thing that's hard about the puzzle is imagining what it would be like to be a truly amoral human being.
[02:02:06]  But they do exist.
[02:02:08]  Totally.
[02:02:09]  And actually, I think that amorality is one of the huge problems that we're facing.
[02:02:21]  Maybe not as a species, but like, man, maybe I have a weird perception of the West, but like amorality is just something very prevalent.
[02:02:35]  It's rampant.
[02:02:37]  Yeah.
[02:02:38]  And it's like, it's not just a word.
[02:02:41]  I mean, it comes with a boatload of characteristics and implications that are kind of foundational.
[02:02:49]  And without them, I mean, you're not a boatload.
[02:02:54]  A yacht load.
[02:02:55]  It's a very particular kind of boat.
[02:03:00]  Yeah, I agree.
[02:03:02]  And yeah.
[02:03:08]  Yeah.
[02:03:09]  Empathy.
[02:03:11]  True empathy, though, I mean, like being able to put yourself in somebody else's shoes on the subject matter of trying to imagine what it's like to be a billionaire psychopath.
[02:03:20]  And like the planet is your playground and beyond, you know.
[02:03:29]  I might be going overboard by saying this, but I can't personally imagine ever being a human being that could be that type of, that could ever be power hungry.
[02:03:45]  I'll put it that way, because I don't have an appetite for that kind of thing.
[02:03:51]  I mean, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
[02:03:54]  It's true.
[02:03:55]  Money, I think, is the root of all evil.
[02:03:58]  I really do.
[02:03:59]  I know that sounds kind of foolish, but I really do believe that.
[02:04:03]  It makes people weird.
[02:04:05]  Yeah, it changes the game theory, to be sure.
[02:04:09]  Yeah, well, it's like you said, it allows you to just not only have the game and have the pieces, but you're in control of all the moves.
[02:04:19]  So it's kind of boring.
[02:04:20]  Like, I actually think about that sometimes too.
[02:04:23]  I'm like, maybe they just act like assholes because they're bored.
[02:04:27]  Let's go ruin these people's lives today because I'm bored.
[02:04:31]  You know what I mean?
[02:04:32]  I think this is a known pattern actually from psychopaths is that they do get bored and they're thrill-seeking.
[02:04:37]  I was kind of joking.
[02:04:40]  Well, your joke was a little on the nose, I think.

=== Courageous Future Prospects (06:04) ===

[02:04:45]  We could obviously get deep in the weeds here if we start to explore the complicated relationship between Jews and the idea of an afterlife.
[02:05:01]  However, I think there is something to the idea.
[02:05:05]  You know, Jews have a much more remote relationship to an afterlife than, for example, Christians.
[02:05:16]  And I think there is something valuable in the idea that what we are supposed to be doing is working to make this place better.
[02:05:33]  And this comes back to the us and them thing that we were talking about before.
[02:05:40]  I think at some level, we have to courageously face the what seem like dire prospects in front of us and do everything in our power to beat the odds.
[02:05:58]  And I would say, you know, one COVID dissident to another, we've seen this work.
[02:06:06]  We know that we can punch above our weight class.
[02:06:09]  And what it takes is weirdly a kind of, well, for me, it's not a literal faith, but it's an as-if faith.
[02:06:18]  If you have faith that good is supposed to win out, then the idea is, well, in what way, you know, this looks like David and Goliath.
[02:06:29]  So the point is, David and Goliath, it doesn't look too good for David, but he wins.
[02:06:34]  So what should we be doing to beat the odds?
[02:06:38]  You know, where's the slingshot?
[02:06:39]  That's the question.
[02:06:42]  And anyway, and I think, you know, if we do recognize it as, hey, you know, who's on our team?
[02:06:49]  Well, in principle, it should be every single person who respects the dignity of others, then that's a pretty big team.
[02:06:57]  Yeah, respects life.
[02:06:59]  Yeah.
[02:07:00]  I think that I know this might sound disjointed, but somewhere it connects in my brain.
[02:07:11]  You might have to draw a map outside on a piece of paper.
[02:07:14]  But if I sometimes I think like if I had to list like three things that I think human beings are absolutely uniquely, significantly beautiful because of, I always think to architecture, first of all, like beautiful buildings.
[02:07:43]  I think about books, like actual books with like words from different languages written on pages and bound.
[02:07:53]  And I think about music and musical instruments.
[02:07:58]  And within all of these cultures, and even if you want to just talk about, you know, the two that are quarreling right now, I don't want to oversimplify anything, forgive me, but we all have, now let me back that up.
[02:08:19]  I like to talk about people as individuals.
[02:08:21]  Every single person has the ability to be to do whatever they want, first of all.
[02:08:30]  And I think everybody has a talent.
[02:08:32]  You need to do some work and explore, listen to your heart to figure out what that is.
[02:08:37]  But we've demonstrated as a species of individuals that we have these incredible abilities.
[02:08:46]  And what's even more beautiful is that when we come together, like say an orchestra, it's more than sync.
[02:08:55]  Like something even more beautiful comes out as a result.
[02:08:59]  That could never happen with just the single individual, as brilliantly talented one musician might be, in the music music, example.
[02:09:07]  And I think this is how I just choose to see the world.
[02:09:12]  No matter how much turmoil is going on around me or chaos, I just I will never not envision a world one day, or even as a potential, that never gets realized.
[02:09:26]  That's how I see us, like we, that's what we could be.
[02:09:30]  We could be this beautiful orchestra creating something magical.
[02:09:34]  That is, I don't know if, I don't know how to express it, it's not burnt into time, but it's it's.
[02:09:42]  It's, it's universal, it's like um, I mean maybe, maybe millions of years from now, some you know, other other species you know might not be able to see us play live, but maybe there's a, a cd remaining or something that they'll be able to hear, or a building, a beautiful Gothic cathedral or something.
[02:10:08]  And um I, just I, I think that we owe it to ourselves as this wickedly weird complex, confused species, to just um, be all of those things, but in a constructive way.
[02:10:31]  And I don't know if any of the psychopaths are listening to this, but like if you're not actually a psychopath and you just kind of turn to the dark side, like maybe this, what I'm saying can help you believe that there's a reason to go to the light.

=== Choosing Light Over Dark (02:08) ===

[02:10:50]  Because there are people like me and Brett who we really, we don't just want to live a good life in light and love.
[02:11:02]  love, but it it it, it's just better, it leads somewhere.
[02:11:09]  Better, I mean um fine, if you want to go play in a dark sandbox with your money, but like I don't, that's it, I love it, and uh, there's, of course, a lot of ways we could uh build on that, but I think it.
[02:11:27]  I think it speaks very well for the challenge ahead of us.
[02:11:30]  In any case, Jessica Rose, thank you for joining me and uh, I worry about you and anyway, please stay safe and um, surf the spots that stuff isn't falling on, because uh, it would just be a terrible.
[02:11:49]  I mean, I guess maybe it's the best way to go out, but uh still, i'd rather you hang out and uh continue to surf, for well, that's the thing right, like that's, that's the philosophy, like I, you know, I I don't, I don't want to sound morbid, but you know, like the inevitability of life is death and we're all gonna succumb to it, contrary to what some people might think.
[02:12:10]  But anyway, read Yanya Kellek's new book.
[02:12:14]  Um, but uh, at least i'll go doing what I love.
[02:12:18]  Um no no, you know, you gotta it's.
[02:12:20]  It's surf or die.
[02:12:23]  Those are alternatives.
[02:12:24]  Don't surf and die, all right.
[02:12:26]  So anyway, all right I, I promise i'll try.
[02:12:33]  And thanks to the universe for not interrupting us with missile attacks, thanks to the universe for making any of this possible.
[02:12:40]  Yeah really, even just getting the atoms to work is a kind of a Thank you, Adams, for coming together and making this weird surreal experience happen.
[02:12:51]  All right.
[02:12:52]  Well, a great joy talking to you.
[02:12:55]  Stay safe.
[02:12:56]  And to everyone else, thanks for joining