James Cox was born in England but headed East to seek his fortunes and ended up in Singapore where he became a history teacher. Then he discovered crypto and became a trader. Now he is the author of self-help blockbuster Truth & Beauty: The Sovereign Man’s Philosophy. One James listens (and occasionally interjects) while the other James airs his theories on how a man should live a good, fulfilled, worthwhile life. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Truth-Beauty-Sovereign-Mans-Philosophy/dp/B0FK3WW5ZV
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Welcome to the Delling Pod, James Cox.
Um I know you mainly from Twitter.
Yes.
As Count Orloff.
Captain Orlov, I think, yeah.
Oh sorry, Captain Orlof.
Um I I upgraded him.
Who is Captain Orlof?
Uh I'm not a uh sort of massive Twitter uh influencer or anything, so it's just a private account I made up just for fun so I could interact with people and watch uh watch the flow on Twitter.
So Captain Orlov is a character in my favourite book, Taipan by James Clovell.
Okay.
And I just ran with that.
Hence the name of your investment company.
That's it.
Taiban investments, yeah.
Taipan investments.
I I was thinking it's quite a ballsy name to choose your investment company.
Because a Taipan is what?
A kind of is he one of those sort of do you have to be white to be a Taipan or is it academic?
I'm not sure there's a rule about that, but it sort of means big boss in Cantonese.
Um it's more just a nod to my favorite book, James Clovell.
If you're not familiar with James Clovel, he wrote the sort of Asian saga set in said in Hong Kong and Tokyo and uh Singapore uh and it was the book that sort of in my in my twenties I thought, yeah, this is what I want to do.
I'd like to be a trader, like um the hero Dirk Straw.
And and did you go out east to fulfill it?
I did, yes, yeah.
So I've lived I'm British as you can hear.
Yeah, I've lived most of my life, however, outside of the UK.
I grew up in the Middle East as a boy, educated in the UK.
Um, but as soon as I could, I you know, was always aware there was a great big wide world out there.
So as soon as I was able in my mid-20s, I went to Singapore as a school teacher, as a history teacher, and loved it, and I've been out in Asia ever since.
Um I you know moved on with my career from history teacher to trading to hedge fund manager and now we hope philosopher, um trade philosopher.
Um, but yeah, I I'm very British, but I belong to a Britain that probably hasn't existed for perhaps 20 years, because that's when I left.
Do you know?
I was gonna say to you that I could tell within milliseconds of meeting you that you were not that you didn't live in in England and hadn't done for quite some time.
I mean, although as you say, as you say, you're very British, you have about you the air of somebody who's sort of spent time in Singapore and stuff.
I don't know what it is.
Yeah, uh, well, you know, there's something I I think expats have a certain quality about them.
Um, I don't know, probably one of the one of the the qualities they have is they're not so depressed about the state of their own country because they haven't been experiencing it.
I mean, you know, you have low tax rates, you have all those all the good things, you have staff often in the east, don't you?
Yeah, it's a good life.
It is a good life, it is a good life.
You know, so I'm currently in in England.
I bought a place in Bath.
Uh, I've always had my bath.
Uh, and I've been I've been here for a couple of weeks now.
Has anyone told you about 15 minutes cities?
Yeah, yeah.
Um you know Bath is Bath is is is very much heading that.
I've got a mate who lives in Bath.
Yeah.
And I'm just yeah, he's he's of our persuasion.
Yes.
And I'm thinking, do you know what's coming?
You you realize that Bath is is going to be one of the epicenters of this 15-minute city nonsense.
Yeah, I mean, I I kind of hope not.
I'm actually from Bristol, where the politics is pretty wild.
Um, and Bath seems to be more conservative.
You know, it's essentially a city in yeah, I mean, it's essentially a town in Somerset.
So yeah, the politics are more conservative, and there's oddly a lot of expats here, and we seem to be able to sniff each each other out pretty easily.
Uh, I've met literally dozens of expats here already.
Um it's quite remarkable.
Do you uh not think um that we're all better off not in this country?
Yeah, so I mean I've got split uh feelings about that.
On the one hand, yes, I mean, if you want to make something of your life if you're young, yeah, the chances of getting gaining success are going to be much greater where you're living in a country where there's an expanding economy, not a shrinking one, yeah, with a growing population and demographic graphic not a shrinking one, with a tax base that a tax system that encourages on encourages entrepreneurship, um, and you know, so simple things.
Singapore has no capital gains tax because the one thing they want you to do is gain capital for obvious reasons.
But the price you pay for that is live living in Singapore.
Uh the the last time I was in Singapore, I I can't say I fell in love with the place.
I remember what wanting to go and have a fag.
Um and I was outside, and there was this sort of designated sort of like a like a circle almost or a square drawn on the ground, which was the only area you're allowed to go and have a fag.
And and I remember striking up a conversation, a rather haunting conversation with a a mainland Chinese person who'd come up.
It was interesting because I was good to see somebody to try somebody's mainland Chinese cigarette.
Um thinking this is a very weird situation to be standing in a square in the open air.
I mean, this is what to me that's what fascism looks like.
Yeah, perhaps.
I mean, you've you when you're a guest in someone else's country, I think it's very important to accept it as it is and try and focus on the positives.
And if you've got um criticisms, then look for somewhere else.
So, you know, I'm actually living more in Bali just as of recently.
Um, where you know there's a much more relaxed atmosphere socially, um, and you know, food is cheap and rules are regulations are more relaxed.
Yeah, so I encourage people to think in terms of which country is gonna serve which purpose best.
Yeah, yeah.
Um now you asked about Baths, 15 minutes cities.
Are you best off moving out?
My issue with all of this is that the UK, for reasons that we're gonna get into, hopefully in this conversation, is a very, very special country.
And I and I mean that not merely because I'm British, but because I've traveled a lot.
I've lived in Southeast Asia, I've lived in the Middle East, I've lived in South Africa, and I can guarantee you the more time you spend outside of the UK, the more you realize it is a very special place.
Um even now, absolutely cannot in London and Keir Star of the Tilateral Commission.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Um, because we've got a depth of history and cultural history um in so many different realms, whether it be technological or literary, we have an embarrassing galaxy of success in so many fields that people take it for granted like it's normal,
and it's not, you know, Shakespeare, the steam engine, um the big Ben, these are not normal achievements, they're astonishing achievements, and we're still capable of it.
And I believe that to the bottom of my soul, but we do all need to you know move on from the insanity that we've been doing for the last few decades, and I believe that we can, I believe that we must.
So um, you've written a book and uh it's quite interesting.
Uh here.
Is this that this isn't the final edition, is it?
You're gonna do some edits.
No, it's not, it's the it's a sort of author's copy.
Um, I'm not so happy with the editing.
Um there are lots of mistakes.
I mean, look at though.
Yes, well, I don't money, this is just a kind of dry run.
Yeah, um, I wanted to have something like I could put in the hands of friends and family and some influences that I've been following for a little while, including your good self, that feels more substantial than you know, can I blast you a massive PDF form?
Um it's available on Amazon.
We can we can move on to that later, but yeah, it needs a second edit.
Um the editor I used made quite a few mistakes, but I was just keen to get it distributed whilst I'm currently in the UK.
Like I said, I I normally live in Asia.
I'm currently in the UK because I've bought a house, and I just wanted to have something to talk about as a basis for discussions.
But thank you for the praise about the front cover.
Um I quite like the the three horsemen and the four horses.
I think it's you do you can you ride?
Can I write?
Ride a horse.
Oh, right.
Um, not really, no.
Maybe that's something I should crack on with.
Well, I think giving you writing a book with three three horsemen and an empty horse, and you're the cover is inviting you to become the fourth horseman, yeah, kind of suggests to me that maybe because you wait, come on, yeah, you you're you're obviously doing well with it, but actually talking of which type do you specialize in in in far eastern investments or what?
Or just to no, not really.
I uh have been into um sort of macro thinking for quite some time.
Uh, I mean, my story thought it's worth during the great financial crisis 2008.
I remember watching George Bush Jr. on TV saying they're gonna print basically a trillion dollars to give it to the banks.
And I I remember thinking, okay, the following questions, what the hell is a trillion?
I've never heard of that before.
Yeah.
Um, you know, you had to actually have to Google it.
Um, second, why does it go to the banks?
The very people who cause the problem, what why are they the ones who should receive this money?
Third, um, you know, surely this is going to be taxpayer funded at some level by at this stage I'm just a school teacher, right?
So I mean, it strikes me as egregiously unfair.
And then fourthly, I mean, I at this stage I'd only done economics A-level, but even I knew that this was going to be inflationary, surely.
Um, so as a historian, I took a sort of really deep dive into money and the history of money.
I became obsessed with the gold standard.
I started learning how to trade and uh trade gold, and you know, the worst possible um start in trading career is a fantastic start because by 2011 I'd convinced myself I was a genius.
Um, and then the gold markets and silver markets collapsed on me, wiping out my funds.
Um so, you know, in life you you win some, you learn some.
This was a learning experience.
And then in the summer of 2012, I hit hit upon Bitcoin, and I just became obsessed.
I wrote what I thought was the first book about the topic.
Actually, a Frenchman beat me to it.
Uh, I believe it's still possible to buy on Amazon, um, but there's far better books on Bitcoin now.
But I believe I wrote the first in the English book.
So you went all in on Bitcoin.
I did.
Well, not all in.
I mean, I was a humble school teacher at this stage, yeah.
And um I had picked up a particular type of trading, actually from one of your guests, Francis Hunt.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So I I've been learning about trading, different trading systems, reading widely about the topic, hit upon Hunt with his uh trading method, which um was ideal for commodity trading, and that's where I applied it to gold and silver.
Um, but then looking at the price action, I could see this would work really well with crypto.
So I went ahead and tried out Hunt's system with crypto, uh, and that was pretty successful.
Um there, uh, you know, I I'd established a bit of a reputation with some people.
Um I'd run a small um exchange uh for Ripple, if you've heard of Ripple, um, with a Dutch gentleman called Mark.
XRP, guys.
Yeah, XLP.
Yeah.
And so it was the right idea.
Wait five years too early.
Um, and you know, our relationship went well even if the exchange didn't.
So set up a set of a fund, uh, which I've since recently wound down.
Um, I have to say there's a gulf of difference between trading your money and trading other people's money.
The latter is far, far harder.
And that's not to say it can't be done.
You know, you've got some legendary fund managers, Stanley Druckenmiller, for example, uh, who can do it.
Um, and I take my hat off, I salute anyone who can do it, but uh I'm I'm much happier just um managing my own money, um, and that's given me the freedom to take up writing again, which I've I enjoy.
And um, you know, it was during the COVID crisis, I I I went to Singapore, I went to Portugal and rented a farm and just sort of thought, what on earth is happening?
Because I'm having conversations with people that don't make any sense whatsoever.
So for about a week I thought this is sort of 20 2021.
Maybe I've gone mad.
You know, that that would explain an awful lot.
Occam's razor is that I'm a nutcase.
Yeah.
Um, but I thought, no, I don't think I am.
And the more I started researching uh COVID, I recognize that same experience that I had when I understood the monetary system and learnt about gold and was trying to explain it to people, you could actually see someone sort of turn their brain off at the back.
Um perfectly intelligent people just sort of shut down when you try to engage them about the monetary system.
And then I the same thing happened with COVID.
You asked them perfectly simple questions.
Um for example, how can we say that um I don't want to get too political straight away, but drug X is safe for pregnant women until you've got minimum nine months testing.
I mean, just the most layman of people must accept that, surely.
Uh and hopefully a bit more than exactly nine months.
Um it was that same disconnect, and I started sort of going down lots of different rabbit holes um in terms of my thinking and my reading.
I was looking at different philosophies to try to explain life better.
Uh so I ended up with a weird sort of uh gap between stoicism, which I I still greatly enjoy.
I found some sort of weaknesses and some and some um not flaws but sort of missing elements of stoicism, and then some much more modern thinkers, uh the brothers Weinstein, um yourself, uh Whitney Webb, all these other people who were challenging the central premises of of what was happening during COVID.
Um, you know, this is not to mention the George Ford Floyd um mania as well.
Um you know, I I started thinking I've got to try and come up with some new philosophy that would bridge the gap between the old and the new and the future.
Um that's where I I hit upon the idea of axioms, and we can talk about axioms later, but they're actually really quite helpful for um collecting your thinking.
Now, most axioms are domain-specific specific axioms, um, which will help you sort of arrive at a conclusion.
Um, but that was sort of the genesis of my of my book.
Um so I mean I sent you earlier, I said I'd like to talk about the truth and beauty axiom and journalism, because I think it's most apropos that we have this conversation because you were one of the people,
one of the very few people who had a position of influence during those years that seemed to be doing the the actual job of journalism, which is to ask power difficult questions, yeah.
Um the only the reason that I could do that was because I was no longer in the mainstream.
I mean handily I'd been fired by the previous spectator editor from my I had a me column in the spectator.
I think I'm safe to say this now.
I don't I never I never talked about it because um because it was sort of sensitive issue while Fraser Nelson was still there.
Um but I didn't that the spectator was the last place I had in the mainstream media to be able to express um skepticism about the status quo, whatever, in a kind of in a mainstream environment.
And I don't know of anyone in the mainstream who was able to speak honestly.
You look at all the telegraph writers, for example, they none of them criticize the vaccine, none of them.
They I mean that's why Bob Moran had to leave as well.
You know, he was their cartoonist and he left for because journalists are so very heavily muzzled by their employers, they don't they don't have freedom to express their opinions, they're they're very constrained.
Um, and that's that's that would that was the thing that made me realize just how bad things were.
I I'd grown up in this, or I'd I'd I'd had a career in an environment where I imagine that hey I can say what I like.
It's a free country, and I can I can voice my outspoken right wing opinions because we live in a pluralistic media culture, and you've got the guardian on the left of telegraph and the mail on the right, and I can be a right wing person.
I hadn't realized how um that you were all that all of all of the people who operate in that domain are often unwittingly playing a particular role, and and part of that that the the job of the function of that role is to give readers the illusion that there is a uh um a plurality of opinion when it's not, it's all very it's all very controlled from the top.
Yeah, yeah, I yeah, I hear you.
So just for the listeners' benefit, the axiom that this philosophy, new philosophy and book is based around is truth is beauty and its pursuit and act of faith.
So I'd like to try and make this that real uh because it probably sounds a bit mysterious first time you hear it.
And and the first thing I'd like to start off with was the job of a journalist.
Yeah, that statement.
I mean, an axiom should always be true in any field for it to be a real axiom.
And I'm presuming then that more than applies to journalism, because the way journalism in my mind is meant to work and used to work, is that you held a microphone to power, yeah.
Yeah, and asked tricky questions.
However, clearly at some stage, and I I don't know when it that microphone turned into a megaphone, as in whatever the authorities and people in power wanted the little people to believe, the job of mainstream media is to blast them with it without question.
That's the way it appears to me.
I don't know whether you think that's an unfair criticism.
No, I think it was always dust there, James.
I think that that's that's the that's the next level.
You're on the kind of something really bad happened around about COVID and it's awful.
No, I think it I think it was uh it must have been earlier than that because COVID, I mean, it was like watching an orchestra, right?
I mean, it was just all it it was almost beautiful in some ways, yeah.
But it was choreographed.
So it must have whatever happened, it happened long before that.
I just don't know where.
I mean, in the early 70s, you had the Wall Street Journal of all papers doing the Pentagon papers.
Now that's that's journalism, that's dangerous, that's risky.
That's that's the pursuit of truth.
I don't know about the Pentagon papers, but let's let's go to the the all-time classic allegedly journalistic scoop, Watergate, where we're we're we're we're taught to admire Woodward and Bernstein, we know their names.
And I think they were just deep state stooges.
That they were certainly one of them was was intelligence, if not both of them.
They were they were promoting the agenda of the deep state.
So Watergate was what 73, 71, 72 round roundabout then.
Yeah, yeah.
So okay, so we so we can we can tell from that that that since at least the early 70s, journalism's been uh a mouthpiece for the deep deep state, but you can go way back further.
So okay, we've got the Gulf of Tonkin incident, that was faked, and yet the media kind of whipped that up into a kind of cruel célber for the starting of the Vietnam War.
You go before that, everything we were taught about second world war was a lie.
Um the first world war similarly was was you think about all the the manipulation with the public's emotions and stuff that went into the run up to the first world war to make the public anti-German so that they were ready for to send their sons to die in the in the trenches.
I think you go back way further, you go back to the Crimean War.
I don't know why I'm giving wars, but I suppose wars are a good sort of proxy for for everything.
That that we were told absolute lies about the conditions of our troops.
That that the Crimean War was the first war that had a a major major coverage in the in the media.
So you had that that famous um correspondent from the Times, didn't you?
The first war correspondent going out to the Crimea and reporting on our voice.
I think the media's always lied to us.
Okay, but surely surely that hasn't been the experience of all journalists.
I mean, you yourself have written pieces that were edgy and dangerous um for for you for the so I imagined, so I imagined.
Yeah.
Sure, but you okay.
You I think you wrote it, was it you mentioned Watergate?
You you wrote um climate game is back.
Yeah, yeah.
Plummergate was one of your sort of more uh famous pieces of you know the only way that but that went against the grain now.
You because this is with the axiom that you try and sort of stress test it.
In that situation, you've discovered something that's pretty ugly, yeah.
Yeah, that you you've uncovered thing, you know, data points that have been made up, um narratives that have engineered to a someone's financial gain, it's an ugly topic, yeah.
Um so when I say truth is beauty, of course, there are true things that are true that are ugly, but what I mean is it it's not that it's factually incorrect, but it's not the way it should be, it's not cosmically aligned.
So you've discovered something that's not beautiful, that's not cosmically aligned.
In fact, it's a downright lie, yeah, and it's serving a particular agenda that is serving the already rich and powerful at the expense of the little guy, and you've gone out and called it out for what it is in black and white, and risk therefore blowback for your own personal career.
Yes, that's my question for you as a journalist is why on earth would you do that?
Because you know it's not good for you.
So why do it?
Oh, I see.
Well, that's it.
That's interesting.
Well, because I guess I've got a moral conscience, and do you know what?
I don't even consider it a kind of uh I I don't consider myself special or heroic, although I can see it could be seen as heroic.
I just think how could you how could you not do the right thing because how could you live with yourself?
That that isn't isn't that one's job.
It would be like a soldier being given orders to take a particular position and going, Oh, I don't fancy that, it's a bit dangerous.
Well, it's kind of the job, but but maybe maybe maybe the soldiering is a bad example because I don't I don't really uh approve of war because I know in whose interests wars are are created.
No, okay, but the soldier is still doing his duty.
Yeah, I I just think that we all ought to do the right thing, and we know what the right thing is.
We because we all have a moral compass.
I mean, this was this was C. S. Lewis's argument in in Mere Christianity about how how we know there's a god.
We've we've got this thing, and you mentioned this in in your book as well, that that the obviously is uh a benign creator who has imbued us with this special quality where we know we're drawn towards truth and beauty.
Yes, yes, we're we're we're drawn to it, and it resonates deeply in us when we see it, yeah.
So um, you know, thousands of people today have traveled thousands of miles and spent tens of thousands of dollars to come and see Bath because it's beautiful.
So the the Roman baths, the cathedral, the the the buildings, it it's beautiful, and we resonate deeply with us.
It's really important to the human condition, But it must be true.
And if it's not, then it becomes very ugly very quickly.
And also you think about how hard the I don't know who it was, but how how hard it was to keep Bath in the state it's in.
There were lots of pressures to try and destroy it, weren't there?
And some of the successful.
That's why Bath is exceptional because most of our beautiful towns, and there were many and cities, have been destroyed.
Yes.
From Coventry downwards.
Yes.
So with my axiom, if it is an axiom, the first half is not original.
So truth and beauty, you know, Plato discussed it, Thomas of Aquinas discussed it, John Keats in the You're probably a Keats fan being an English lit dude, um, with his um his poem, and he writes truth is beauty, beauty truth.
Um, that bit that discussion is old as the hills.
What makes the thing dynamic is and its pursuit is an act of faith.
Because when the journalists ask one more question about an ugly topic, there's no guarantee at all that the next answer is beautiful.
In fact, the next answer is probably going to be even more ugly than what you already know.
Does that make sense?
That it the Pandora is, you know, it's rarely that there's just one lie, it's probably a whole load of lies, and yet you keep on digging away in the hope that you're going to find the truth.
And in so doing, that's an act of faith.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
I thought you were going to say it was an act of faith in the sense that by persisting you are trusting in a kind of a supernatural judgment system.
Yep.
That's it.
So with this axiom and the philosophy that it's built upon, the unavoidable conclusion is some kind of benevolent grand intelligence, divine creator.
Because if that's not the case, you could keep on searching for the truth and keep pulling on that string and just keep going further down the rabbit hole and finding more and more misery.
Does that does that um does that make sense?
You only only belief in some sort of cosmic goodness is gonna give you the fate of the world.
Oh, I see what you mean pursuing the truth.
I think you have to believe that uh, as Mulder and Scully would say, the truth is out there.
You have to believe that the truth is um an attainable thing rather than just uh a subjective thing, which is what culturally we've been encouraged to believe.
Um that the truth is subjective, which which it's not, which is which is to me, it's satanic.
I mean that it's it's uh an inversion of what is uh of the nature of truth.
Sure.
So do you mind if I tell a quick story um that might help the listener sort of unpack this truth is beauty and its pursuit and act of faith.
If that if the the journalism um context or lens didn't work, uh perhaps the story of the Wright brothers will.
So on the back of the book, uh there's a the famous picture that was snapped by a lifeguard in Kitty Hawk in 1903.
Um that is one of the most famous pictures.
That's the one, one of the most famous pictures in the world.
Um was taken by a lifeguard, and he only just managed to get it just in time because the plane's plane's actually moving, it's about to, it's just taking off.
Um so that story is very famous, but what's not famous is how that happened.
So on Christmas Day in 1878, Milton Wright gave a toy helicopter to his sons, Wilbur, aged 11, and Orville age seven, and you pull the little rubber band and up the helicopter goes, and they became totally obsessed.
You know, how is it that that plenty thing flies?
And that was sort of always the childhood interest, and you know, flight has been um a fascination of man since Icarus and probably before.
Um and Wilbur, the sort of brains of the two, he took up uh academia and physics, and he was going to go to Yale.
But in when he was 18 years old, he got hit in the face with an ice hockey stick, which shattered not only his face, but his general confidence.
He became a recluse at home, researching uh flight, but not very much else.
Um Orville, the younger one, wanted to be a businessman, and by 1890s, he'd set up the right um cycle company because cycles were bicycles are all the rage.
And that turned out to be the perfect situation that the two of them could study mechanics and engineering and so on, and they realized it was the perfect setup to pursue flight.
Um and in 1899, they wrote to the US military and said, I we think that we can we can fly.
And they said the US military said, Well, thanks, boys, but uh actually we've got a real physicist, you know, guy called Langley, Harvard educated, you know, who actually knows what he's doing.
So Langley got vast amounts of money, $50,000.
Whereas the Wright brothers just had to work at home in their in their makeshift garage.
So Langley believed that flight was about power.
If you had a strong enough engine, you'd fly.
Whereas the Wright brothers knew actually, no, this is much more like a child rising a bicycle.
It's speed times balance, gets a gyroscopic balance for a bicycle, and they realized that speed times balance times lift is the the what gets you in the air.
And you know, they built 200 planes.
Um people forget that.
Um 1901, uh Wilbur wanted to give up because I mean just couldn't bear it anymore, just crashing planes, and in 1903, Langley failed, but the Wright brothers succeeded, and when their father called the Dayton Ohio Gazette to tell them my boys have flown.
The editor said, if this was important, I'd know about it already, and hung up.
I like that.
It's a long story with a good punch to that.
But that is that is the five the five men, if I may, who saw it with their own eyes, must have seen truth and beauty at the same time.
Yeah, because it's been the obsession of man since we've seen birds fly from Icarus to the designs of Da Vinci.
We wanted a fly, and the truth was that we can do it, but until that day, just before Christmas, 25 years later, for quarter of a century, that belief was nothing other than an act of faith.
That pursuit was just an act of faith by the Wright brothers.
Every failed flight, every sleepless night working on designs, was just an act of faith.
And these two Ohio boys, American engineers, they cracked it, and they were rewarded with a site that must have been true and beautiful.
Beauty took to the skies, and there's a great example of truth is beauty and its pursuit and act of faith.
And the the key word here, oddly enough, is actually and not and obviously and its pursuit and act of faith, not butt because nobody stuck uh gun to Orville and uh Wilbur's head and said you've got to fly.
They chose to do this, yeah.
It was their pursuit, yeah.
In the same way that you chose to write watermelons, yeah.
Nobody made it.
In fact, it would be much better for you if you didn't, probably, but you did it anyway, because it's the pursuit of truth and beauty that is your is your telos as a journalist.
Yeah, I think it should be everybody's tellos.
And I would love it to be everybody's telos.
I mean, I don't know how you'd apply the the the search of truth and beauty in in say the financial markets.
I suppose actually you could do what a what a guy I I follow on um on Twitter um does.
Um Baron Barron trading.
I can't remember what it what is what he tweets under now, but um he looks at the a company's balance sheets as assets and all the you know goes through all the all all the books and and looks for undervalued companies.
I mean it's it's it's pure, he's not he's not looking for I mean the the Warren Buffett's of this world, I suspect that they they they are privy to a degree of uh insider information, the the kind of people they hang with, and and also much of the investment world is dependent on things like crony capitalism.
I mean that for example the entire renewable sector would not exist were it not for government fiat, the government's making a worthless sector valuable so long as the they keep milking the taxpayers.
Do you know what I mean?
There's the there's there's very little purity in the markets, but occasionally that there are opportunities for people with integrity to shine, but but mostly not look.
My experience of the financial markets is quite simple.
You need to work out what is true that most people don't believe is true, or vice versa.
That's it.
And when you're right, you make money when you're wrong, you use it.
It really is that simple.
It's that that's it.
I suppose so.
I mean, apart from gold, which is one of your specialities, you know how manipulated the and that and silver even more so.
Those markets are not authentic.
Thank God.
Oh, really?
Yeah, because it's given us so much time to accumulate gold and silver.
Oh, I see our prices that shouldn't let let you know alone to its natural path would be higher.
So it's the suppression of truth is pardon gold dust.
I mean, it's it's manner from heaven.
If you can find something that's artificially propped up or suppressed, yeah, and most people don't understand that or don't know that.
I mean, that's just that's the holy grail.
But how do you know it's not going to be artificially suppressed beyond the point where you can afford it?
Well, you you've got to pursue that line of logic with faith.
Right, okay.
Are you I've just done a this will this you this podcast will go just after the one I've done with Dom Frisbee?
Um are you you still very bullish gold and silver?
Yeah, yeah.
Um I've sent a copy of the book to Dominic actually.
Um I've I sent him my Bitcoin book a long time ago.
I've read some of his books.
Um, I think Hylia, the guy, I actually quote Frisbee and his theory about where gold comes from in the book about the big bang.
Um it's yeah, I think that's bollocks.
Okay, maybe you do maybe yeah, but okay, if the big what however you think that the world came to into existence, gold it is some you're touching divinity in some kind of way, and uh when it comes to the topic of um aesthetics,
when it comes to the topic of axiology, um I believe that the human mind is calibrated to try and discur the truth, and it's not an accident that gold and silver are money all over the world in unrelated um civilizations.
You just one once gold coin is in your hand and it's real gold, you feel good.
There's a reason for that.
Yes, you're you're you're touching the divine.
Uh and it my I've got theories, um, you know, I've studied Austrian economics, for example, uh, and I've got sort of what I call in the book resonance theory of value.
That that there is an objective truth, um, and not everything is subjective.
I disagree with Meis's actually on one of the core tenets of Austrian economics.
Does does he say that that it's all relative?
It's all relative, it's all subjective.
Is that what he says?
Yeah, that's a basic core of Austrian economics.
Um, to a large point, that's true, but it's also not.
So in what context are they talking about this relative?
So, okay, so in the book, there's a chapter called Axiology, and you're in the square of Salamis in ancient Cyprus, and two philosophers approach you.
So one is Plato, and he wants to talk to you about Axiology, and you don't understand what that is.
So Mises, he says, it's the topic of the relative value of things.
But as I've been explaining to my friend, all value is subjective.
So that's the intro into the subject.
And then in the chapter, you go to the marketplace, in the marketplace, the eternal Agora, who is an old lady, invites you into her tent.
And she explains to you the resonance theory of value, which can be summed up as this.
Those who can see value clearly will prosper, and those who can't are fools.
Thus, a fool and his money are quickly parted, says the ancient going.
So it's the same thing.
So you're good at seeing value, or you're not.
And here's my second premise with Axiology, is that you can train yourself to be better.
Just as a musician can train his ear to hear the C notes, you can train yourself to be better at valuation.
So if you wanted to sell your house that you're in now, you'd go to an estate agent who's experienced.
You wouldn't ask your gardener what price he thinks it might be, and then stick it on the market at that.
So valuation is a skill, and value is not subjective, in my humble opinion.
It's subjective within a bandwidth.
This is all a little bit advanced and might be a bit hard to fathom without reading the book.
But there's a sort of taster of the nature of the book.
I try to look at ancient old topics, such as Axiology, such as good and evil, and find sort of a deeper truth.
Perhaps we can talk about good and evil later, because I think that's an important topic to you.
Just going back to Mises a second, was it Mises who was talking about the paradox of water or diamonds or something?
Yes, water, yeah.
Water.
So if you're drowning in a lake, another glass of water is not particularly valuable.
If you're in a desert, that's true.
But yes.
Yeah.
So he's right about that.
He is right about that.
So I sort of find a halfway house between the two.
I didn't know much about you before, when I was reading your book.
And having talked to you a bit, it makes a lot more sense now.
Your period as a schoolteacher has obviously had an influence on you.
Okay, thank you.
Why is that?
Well, there's a pedagogic quality about what you do, which is not a criticism.
It's an observation that you obviously were inspired by your time as a teacher.
And were you teaching boys?
I mixed.
Okay.
History.
But I can see that you want to create a kind of a manual, a sort of user's manual for a young man to make the most of his life.
And actually, I mean, I think your book could do with some editing, some chopping.
I think the book's too big, but I think what I would say to you is that if an 11-year-old boy, say, could read your book and absorb the information and
act on it he would have a better life than one that that didn't which is which which is great I I mean I what whether it was whether you'll ever sell it I don't know I I just I just speak as one who's had a I've experienced publishing and it's not how it works it's not about whether the idea is good or whether the the the message is important.
It's I that was another thing I wanted to talk to you briefly about.
That I there's a chapter in the book where you you say, Look, I know how the world really works.
I I know it's controlled by what what is that chapter, the one where you talk about how um The Grand Conspiracy.
The Grand Conspiracy, yeah.
So when do when did you pick up on that?
Was that when I was in Portugal?
I started to realize that you know it's not just money, it's not just COVID, it's many things, and so I weave it all together.
Um that chapter uh I'd sort of like to take lightly in this discussion because um previously you mentioned uh it's kind of the book is kind of a manual, and that's true.
Uh and he stated it's it's too long.
Now I'll accept that, but I'd also like to put my case forward.
The book is actually two things.
One is a generic life guide for men.
Yeah, yeah, and that goes through 20 different topics.
Uh, we're all going to have to um manage health and wealth and career and friendship and so on.
Um, and I've tried to arrange them in the in an in a ladder of complexity going from body, mind, soul.
And the front cover of the book um has Hercules for body, Marcus Aurelius for mind, and King Arthur for Soul, and they that's becomes relevant later.
Um and the reason I've done so is this.
The second half of the book is a new philosophy that places truth and beauty at the forefront of what we're aiming, what we're here to do.
Um now, this was generally accepted as you know what you're trying to do.
Yeah, so if you went back a few hundred years and found a architect or a simple carpenter or carpenter's apprentice, and told him, you know, James, what we're here to do is make a beautiful building that is truly built and will stand the test of time and will be beautiful.
He'd be like, Yeah, of course.
Like what else could we possibly be here for today?
And yet, over the last 50 years, we have had a different philosophy, a very different one, um, that has uh denigrated that to the point of ridicule.
Um, and so this philosophy, truth and beauty, I believe to be very uplifting and positive and dynamic, and is the opposite of the reigning paradigm of postmodernism.
Now, in order to move on to a new paradigm, you're going to need to feel strong and courageous because courage is one of the four stoic wisdoms, and it's courage that is going to help the journalist ask the tough questions.
It's courage that's going to help the Wright brothers fly a plane, or whatever it is that you're aiming to do, you're gonna have to pursue truth and beauty with faith and courage.
And I submit it's nigh on impossible to challenge the reigning paradigm that we're blasted with 24-7 in every direction, whether it be media or uh the educational system, doesn't matter what um to stand on your own two feet and feel strong in body, mind and soul, uh and that requires a manual first because uh as far as I'm aware, there isn't one.
I I am unaware, and I spent a long time looking for just a general life guide for men.
Uh the closest I found was um The Road Less Traveled by Um M. Scott, which I haven't read, is it good?
Yeah, it is good.
Um, it is very good.
It it's it's Christian, it focuses a great deal on um relationships, romantic relationships with women, um, and being a good Christian man, which is which is great, but there's still lots more in life that you're gonna have to conquer.
You're going to have to um get yourself an education.
Now, maybe you're wealthy enough and lucky enough to go to um Christ College, Oxford, uh, because you're smart telly.
Um I go to Christ College.
Cambridge, sorry, where did you go to there?
I crisis at Cambridge.
I went to Christchurch.
Christ Church, sorry, sorry.
Um that's all right.
Yeah, but even if you're not that fortunate, it still behooves you to get yourself an education, even if that just means going to the public library.
Yeah, yeah, no, I I I agree.
But it depends on what kind of education.
You you advocate for the trivium, yes, I think is is excellent, and it's what they can do at hope, for example, uh, hope homeschooling, which which has the hope festival in in in near battle in the I didn't know that.
Yeah, I did not know they're very keen on it, and it's absolutely just explain what the trivium is briefly.
Sure.
So the trivium was the generally accepted medieval approach to learning, and they broke it down into grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
So grammar, um, literal grammar, the meaning of words, etc.
logic, how you would um combine different ideas, and then rhetoric of how you would express yourself.
And I suggest that I mean, for reasons that were benign, I think that went out of modern teaching.
So by the 20th century, it had disappeared from all education.
Um, however, I suggest that approach applies to all domains of human excellence.
Okay, so if you want to be a musician, you're going to have to learn the notes and the chords and the component parts, rhythm, etc.
Then you can start learning harmonies and how do logic is the next stage.
How do these things work together nicely?
Once you've mastered levels one and two, you can become a musician.
If you want to be a chef, you're gonna have to learn the different types of food and different types of flavor, and then logic.
What are the rules?
Yeah, why can't you serve chicken and fish in the same meal?
Um, what flavors work and complement each other?
Once you've covered levels one and two, you can now become a chef and create your own food.
And just the core noodles, super chicken and prawn, which is almost yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's true.
That's true.
Okay, you've caught me out there.
Um so I suggest that the trivium method is a really easy way to approach any field of excellence.
Yeah, and to my amazement, when you look at philosophy itself, epistemology and logic are taught as two different topics, as though they're just unrelated things, and rhetoric is not taught at all, which is exactly why nobody cares about, or one of the reasons no one cares about philosophy anymore, because it's just so dull.
So the art of rhetoric is to communicate what you've learned to the listener that's going to improve their life as best you can as elegantly and succinctly as you can, whether that's in the form of cuisine or music, um, and I would suggest even philosophy, you need to make it true and beautiful.
Um, and so I I suggest that philosophy should go through the trivia method.
So the the standard components and that how they work together and express yourself.
So that's my argument in the book, and that story is told to you via my three horsemen who lead you through a journey from Stonehenge to Bath through the Rust country to Tintagial Castle, um, in different stages.
Um, hopefully bringing some colour to the topic of the trivium and for and how it should apply to philosophy.
Um so the what what does it what what does the trivium do?
What why does it work?
What how does it keep one honest?
Sure.
So essentially you're gonna have to learn the component parts of your craft, then you're gonna have to learn the logic of how those parts work together, and then rhetoric is the final stage in which you're expressing what you've learned to produce the most exquisite form of your of your understanding and knowledge knowledge.
Now, with philosophy, we've got sort of we're gonna learn about epistemology, we're gonna learn about logic, maybe some ethics, and then we'll stop there.
But it's a little bit like a carpenter learning all the different types of wood and how to join things together and then stop there.
And you're like, well, hang on, I was hoping you might make a wardrobe or a cabinet or or something.
So here's the strange thing, James, with philosophy, is that we used to produce for hundreds of years, we used to produce a new philosophy approximately every 15 years.
Now I would suggest that that's the sign of a really healthy and dynamic society, that smart guys are getting together, finding flaws with the current paradigm, and arguing for something new, and that carried on for hundreds of years, about twice every generation there'll be a new idea, which you know we can debate.
We get to 1970, and it just stops, and it's all the more surprising given the cost of reading and knowledge and information.
So, you know, a few hundred years ago, not everyone was literate, it was only a proportion of society.
Books were expensive, the internet didn't exist.
So you if you saw the trajectory of information and how abundant and easy it is to get now, the rational mind would have thought, okay, well, there's going to be a new philosophy every five years or one year, because there's just going to be so many people reading and thinking.
But actually, the opposite happened.
We got to 1970, and we just stopped producing new philosophy.
And postmodernism is the last philosophy, and we can you know, we can dig into why that might be.
I've got some theories.
Yeah, I suppose um what I'm hearing when you say all this.
This is a I think a lot of what you say is true, but it's quite a normie take on things.
I I I think this is the problem for those of us who've who've spent too long down the rabbit hole.
And I I notice I notice moments in your book uh that that you're sort of you're you're straddling a divide because a lot of what you know would would put you into completely into my camp.
And at the same time, you're you're trying to keep a toehold in the in the old world.
For example, there's a there's there's a page which I'm afraid you're gonna have to cut out where you where you start talking about a sort of mini pin to to David Attenborough.
Well, I mean, these are wrong.
It's like it's like praising, it's like praising, I don't know Moloch or something.
Okay.
Um, but no, I suppose the moments when you when you talk about the Victorians, for example, I think that everything we're taught about that Victoria's is probably not true.
That actually they were extraordinarily well read and much better read than we are now, and and and they crave books, and they and then they they even if they couldn't afford them, they had they had libraries and things.
I think the appetite for reading and and self-improvement and stuff was was made us look like well look like the kind of it was an extraordinary generation of achievement across the board, whether it be literary, scientific, discovery, they were astonishing.
That was trajectory that we were on, yeah.
And of course, they had low taxes, they had had very low taxes, they had they had yet to introduce Rockefeller medicine.
So despite this narrative we're given that they were all dying of various Victorian diseases that we've eradicated thanks to vaccines.
That probably wasn't that wasn't the case.
Um yeah, I think it would have been a great time to live.
Better than that.
It was a Dynamic time to live, and one of one of the uh points I make forward um in the chapter on ethics is that one of the greatest ethical acts that you can do is create originality, like the Wright brothers, yeah.
That you have gifted the world something that's true and original and beautiful, and you only did so because you pursued that with faith.
There is no other way to do it.
Um indeed, the harder the um the contribution, the greater the pursuit, and the greater the amount of faith to do so, if that makes sense.
So if I said, James, I'd like you to walk a mile, that doesn't require it's a pretty minor pursuit, it doesn't require very much faith.
If I said I'd like you to run a marathon in under four hours, now we're talking.
Yeah, I'd be going, yeah, I've got better.
I just think running past a certain age, it just it just depletes the muscles and okay.
I think you take my point though.
Yeah, um yeah, I do.
But the the interesting thing is that with postmodernism, we've had a rapid decline in original original contributions, something I call apatheosis, so original, true, and beautiful, yeah.
Now there's a chapter called The Great Plateau.
Um, and it's probably going to be quite challenging for readers to accept the following arguments.
We talk about exponential technological growth, yeah.
And we're we're always saying about how how fast we're going.
But what people really mean is information technology.
The fact that we're having this call over Zoom is evidence of that.
And yes, we have seen in our lifetime astonishing levels of improvement and advancement in information technology, but in basically all other fields, whether it be energy, we've had no new form of clean of denser energy since the 70s.
Uh, we've not had any materials, you know.
We had the last great material was was 1970 with carbon.
We used to name our civilizations after the materials we used.
We just we've just stopped.
And so the World Trade Center was the highest building in the Western Hemisphere that was built in 1973.
Um the more you study this, you realize something remarkable.
In 1971, the future stopped in almost every human domain, yeah.
We never went we we had the the the Concorde in 1969, 1970.
So we've got 1971, plus or minus two years, everything stopped.
Now we're not aware of that.
Nixon took America off the gold standard and bingo.
Bingo.
So we came off the gold standard in 1971, and we created postmodernism, and then it all stopped.
So we stopped making new philosophies.
Um physics had the standard model in 1973.
Since then, no physic, no breakthroughs in in physics.
We've just become obsessed with string theory.
Uh, and you can listen to Eric Weinstein talk about what a travesty that is.
Um, we've not had any new forms of um powerful energy.
Um in travel.
We used your grandparents could go faster in a concord 50 years ago than we can today.
We we stopped moving faster.
Now because we're obsessed with our screens, whether that be phones or or computers, we can't see the outside world stopped.
And I would suggest this is all due to our thinking and and postmodernism has somehow hijacked the trajectory of the ascent of mankind.
Yes.
The only bit of that I would disagree with this.
It's it's it's really it's really them.
The people that I don't believe that any of this is organic.
This this hasn't come from below.
This is all created from above.
And okay, so I think we can agree without even having to examine it.
String theory is utter bollocks.
But then billions of dollars spent on but then you could half a century of uh of some of the greatest minds.
But you can apply that to almost any science, and and you could go way back, you go further back.
You could go to um Einstein and Heisenberg, and it's all bollocks, it's just Newton Newton was bollocks.
When you're sort of next level conspiracy theory, rather than kind of you know, entry level, which is what you are, you realize how completely completely and utterly specious everything is.
Um, I mean, well, there's not space for it now, but but when Newton's Principia Mathematica came out, it was the equivalent of the emperor parading naked in his new clothes, and everyone's going, whoa, Newton.
This is just amazing.
I mean, I I don't I don't understand it, but but yeah, everyone's saying it's really good.
Well, I mean, he's got it, he's the man, and then the same way.
I uh I did a podcast on this with somebody once, um, with a I think a former quantum physicist, actually.
Um, but you should listen to that one.
Uh, where he he worked out that that a lot of these names that that we associate sort of the early 20th century characters like like Heisenberg and and Einstein and people like that, they're just charlatans, they're just just that they were they were they were sold as the next new thing.
So I I'm not at all disagreeing with your thesis.
I'm saying that that because things definitely have got worse since the 1970s, and probably because of the reasons you you give, including going off the gold standard and string theory.
I my personal view, and I could be wrong, is that this has been going on a lot longer than you think, which makes it kind of scary, doesn't it?
Yeah, yeah.
So I mean, essentially, with conspiracy theory, first of all, if you think that there are no cons if you have a theory that there are no conspiracies, it's probably because you're a moron that should that should be excerpted and plastered all over there.
Please don't um on tick tock, whatever.
Well, secondly, you you also have to knuckle down to some logic, yeah.
So there's different types of logic, and what we're discussing here is called abductive logic.
So um abductive.
Abductive.
Right.
So um a detective when he's sent in to solve a crime, he doesn't know.
There isn't, you know, the the murderer didn't leave like you know, little list of things that he did and places to look for the clues.
He's you know, he's finding uh uh a bloody hand prints on the broken window, he's you know, he's putting this together to develop a theory that would explain the evidence.
So likewise, an archaeologist he doesn't know, but he's finding fragments of pottery or mosaics and enough to put together the mosaic to sort of suggest what what this was, and you know, he's outlining an idea of of what it might might be.
So likewise, and as a historian as myself, right?
You don't know, you're just reading bits and bobs and trying to construct an idea of what that society looked like or what the event the reasons for that event.
Same for journalism.
This is all abductive knowledge, you don't you don't actually know, you're just trying to piece together the evidence as best you can, so likewise was with conspiracy theory, the things that we know within reasonable level of confidence that either definitely happened or definitely didn't happen,
and we're then trying to construct a narrative to make sense of that that is coherent and will explain the majority of the things that we don't know.
That said, like all forms of education uh and intellectual pursuit, the key words are humility, curiosity, compassion, and courage.
Humility, cure you don't because we don't know.
We don't know.
That's the answer.
We don't know.
But that doesn't mean you just you just give up and don't worry about it.
No.
How does how does the compassion come in?
Because you need to be compassionate, first of all, to yourself.
So there's a chapter called wisdom in which I outline your default setting.
The journalist in you might be triggered by this.
So trigger warning coming, James.
Your default setting should be, like I state in the um the introduction.
If something looks ugly, your default setting should be cling to ignorance.
Okay, because once you've one you should your two options are cling to ignorance, I don't want to know about this, it looks unpleasant, or I'm going to pursue this topic with faith that I will find truth and beauty at the end.
Now, in wisdom, I argue that your default setting should be cling to ignorance.
Because once you've learned something, you can't unlearn it.
I'm sure that there's all sorts of topics that you and many of your readers have looked into, whether that's Epstein, 9-11, whatever it is that they kind of wish they didn't know afterwards, and you can't undo that.
So I suggest some stoic virtues of um justice.
Is this pursuit going to do me more harm or good?
Yeah.
Um temperance, don't spend all day learning about 9-11.
It was that's not it.
You need to go outside and exercise.
You need to call your friends for a laugh.
You that you still have to live.
And and thirdly, if you do decide that on balance of probability you should know more about this topic, and you can do so in a temperate manner, you you need to do so with courage.
Right.
I suppose what if your business model is finding out about all this stuff.
You can't really go, oh well, I'm not gonna go there because it won't be good for me.
Oh, yeah, there is there is a topic to do with what I call the compromise problem.
Yeah, um, that I have I've been compassionate to myself and taken it pretty easy.
Uh, and I I've read a little bit, I I've looked at you know the the memoirs of Annika Lucas, and you know it it's it's something that could harm your soul, and it's gonna be very difficult to unharm your soul.
Um, and so I suggest that in you are to ask about compassion.
Here's an example of it.
Uh, and furthermore, you need to be compassionate to others.
Just because you know something unpleasant, it doesn't mean that your mum needs to.
No, I've read I've read the deposition of um a um of Jesse Sabota, um, who was a mother of darkness and has seen the very worst of this stuff, allegedly, so she claims, and I read these court depositions.
So, this is her sw the sworn affid affidavit that I think it's with the court of Wisconsin or somewhere about some of the things that she saw, and they were definitely so horrible that I really really really would rather not have read them.
And I don't think that my I didn't I didn't need to know this stuff, so I so I do agree, I do agree with your it hasn't it hasn't enabled me to fight the fight any better.
It's not gonna so that there's an example where if I may criticize James, that was an example in which you could have showed some compassion to yourself.
It's an example where you could have showed some more justice, sense of justice.
We're talking stoic principles.
Is this gonna do more harm or good?
And you could have shown more temperance.
You you could have said, okay, I'll give this 20 minutes, and then that's the max.
Oh well, I I I probably gave it no more than two minutes, but once that was too much.
I I absorbed, yeah, yeah.
No, I didn't I didn't spend all day going, oh wow, no, I mean I just read it, and you just can't.
That's the thing.
Um I was trying to, I suppose I was trying to assess her credibility as a as as a witness.
Um and yeah, but uh on that occasion it was a mistake.
But no, I I I think I think you make a very good point there.
I'm glad that you didn't say anything sententious to me, right?
Because I'm not going to accuse you of sententiousness on that score.
I think that seems very reasonable and thought through.
There is a the I I did have this experience recently where someone sort of implied that there were certain kind of conspiracy theories that the implication was that merely by believing them you hadn't done your homework, you hadn't shown due skepticism.
And I'm thinking, well, no, nothing, nothing is off limits.
Everything is worthy of investigation.
Uh and it's the it's the conclusion you reach, which is what matters.
And don't just because you think a notion is absurd, doesn't mean to say that it's that it's unworthy of investigation, then that one should one should confine oneself to acceptable acceptable areas.
I didn't I don't think that one of the things I've learned is that when I when I when I started out looking into um conspiracy theories, and I was a complete normie at the time.
I just thought, well, it's all bollocks, obviously, people are making it up.
And I thought maybe there's one conspiracy out there that will turn out to have legs, and I'll and I'll find it and I'll go, yeah, right, and then I'll know that all the others are rubbish.
And of course, you you go from one to the next and the next, and you realize people aren't making this stuff up.
It's just been it's just been concealed, and that and then enables you to understand the duplicity and mendacity of the of the system we live in.
Sure.
And the techniques they use.
I mean, perhaps this is sort of a good uh opportunity to talk about good and evil.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm perfect.
I I um as a good segue.
So I I've got um a couple of chapters called The North Star and the South Star.
So this is this is ethics now, another pillar of philosophy.
So the North Star, I simply state is happiness times longevity.
That's it.
So in order to help explain that to the to the listener, um, we've got the two paradoxes.
One is what I call the junkie paradox.
Okay, so a junkie can get far happier than the two Jameses for an hour or two, and then he goes down the other side and into the pits of despair.
His options are shoot up all over again or go cold turkey.
Either way, he is not optimizing for longevity.
On the flip side, we've got the JP Getty paradox.
I'm not sure if that name means anything to you.
Yeah, I don't think he had a long but not very happy life.
Yeah, so JP Getty, um, for the listener who hasn't heard of him, there's a really good movie called Um All the Money in the World, and it's a true story about uh an American oil tycoon who uh he he got a long lease, 50-year lease on the QAT Saudi border, uh pennies on the dollar.
The Arabs had no idea why he would like to get so much land, thousands of acres, you know, for so much money.
Of course, we know he discovered oil in abundance and became you know insanely wealthy.
This is just off of World War II.
In 1973, his grandson was on holiday in Italy and in Rome, and the mafia captured him, kidnapped him, and demanded millions of dollars to get him back.
And Getty, mean old fellow that he was, said, you know, between the millions of dollars and my grandson, I'd rather have the millions of dollars.
And after a year, they got sort of fed up with him, uh, fed up with the situation, cut the kid's ear off, sent it to the father, and the father begged, he said, you know, but bar, please save my son.
And he said, Okay, I'll do three million because 2.2 is tax deductible, my accountant says, and I'll lend you the 800, but at interest, that way, you know, over X number of years I'll have got my money back.
Now Getty is a miserable old miser, right?
He's optimized for longevity, you know, his family's gonna be rich forever, and he's living until he's almost 90.
But happiness, you think anyone was sad when when Getty popped his clocks?
I doubt it.
So here we've got a situation in which those two paradoxes point you towards optimised for both.
You want to live a happy life in a manner that's sustainable.
Now that can scale down to just you, but it also can scale up to your family and your community.
It can scale up to a whole nation.
It can scale to the whole planet if we choose to.
The flip side of the North Star, um, which is real, it's called Polaris, is the South Star, which is other people's happiness times longevity brackets times minus one.
Meaning I'm gonna steal other people's happiness.
So if I want a bicycle, I'm not gonna save up for a bicycle, I'm just gonna steal yours.
It's the mechanics of it's the mechanics of evil, just stealing someone else's happiness, and that could be done at a very primitive level.
I could just be a simple thug who just goes around threatening people because I'm big and strong.
It I might be a scam artist, I'm a bit more sophisticated.
If I'm more sophisticated, I might become an ideologue, I might sell you some utopia that will never arrive.
But in the meantime, I'm I'm gonna steal as much as I can for you, such as Marxism, such as postmodernism.
But if I'm really smart, I'll become a parasite, and that's the apex predator, because you don't even know he exists, and so this is a good metaphor.
And oddly enough, the North Star Polaris, we're all familiar with because you can see it in the night sky, it it's clear to see.
But the South Star also exists, it's called Sigma Octantis, and you can only faintly see it every now and then because the strange thing North Star is far, far, far further away in space than the South Star is.
The South Star is much closer, you just can't see it, it hides in the darkness.
Um North Star we can see because it it shines 25 times brighter than the South Star, and the reason for doing so is that it's 7,000 times heavier.
So I think this is a really great metaphor for good.
It's much harder to do good things, it's much easier, it's much closer to do evil, yeah.
But the end result of goodness is 7,000 times greater than evil, yeah.
An evil person cannot achieve anything, he can only steal, he can't create because creation requires the truth, the pursuit of truth and beauty made with good faith, and an evil person can't do that, all he can do is steal.
So does that does that make sense?
Well, it it makes total sense, and you're sort of more or less expanding my own personal philosophy.
But I I like the um the star example, but I I suppose we definitely definitely live in a culture where there are rewards for bad behavior.
I mean, I would I would call it the B system because that's that's that's what it is, really.
That that you you often gain promotion in a particular field by showing yourself to be more willing than others to be able to do the things that um you find difficult to do, everyone would find difficult to do, but nevertheless have to be done, if you know what I mean.
Um so that so that so there are kind of you you get made a senior partner because you're you're more vicious, you're more uh you know you're you're you're you're more comfortable drowning kittens.
Um but do you think it really is easier to do evil than good?
I mean, it definitely comes at a cost, doesn't it?
You you you you've I don't just mean later on where you get you you get to burn an eternal hellfire or whatever.
Okay, but but even at the time it it it doesn't it quite hurt to do bad things, do you think?
I think it it can hurt your soul, but no, that the the there's a logic to evil, and I I've met I've I've looked through the Bible, I've thought about it, I met with my minister in in Bristol.
Um, and he his belief that the Bible's quite vague about evil.
He said there's not really enough to go on.
It's kind of a moot point.
So he thinks that's an absence of goodness, an absence of light.
Um my my minister in Bristol, a quick shout out, he's called Reverend Pilgrim, believe it or not.
Reverend Pilgrim.
And is he is he based?
He sounds based.
Um he uh went to I I think Cambridge Theological College, and one of his best friends went to Africa as a ministry, and he said no.
Evil exists, and I've seen it with my own eyes.
So something beyond not doing, you know, the right thing.
That's um his his mate saw this, or or he did.
His his mate saw it as a missionary in Africa.
He said, I've seen it evil, it exists, and there's clues for evil in the Bible also.
Um the Quran is actually more explicit.
It said, She's on uh Satan uh said along the lines of um you did the evil thing.
I just I just told you you could do it.
You know, so that the God God told you the truth, and I told you a lie, but you chose to believe me over God.
So this is on you.
You did it.
James, give me one second.
I've there's I've got a dog with smelly breath, and I I think I need to force it to drink some water because it's it's looking at me in a stupid way.
Let me come here.
Let me come here.
Let me come here.
Let me come here.
Let me come here.
Let me come here.
Let me come here.
Well, there's a phrase, James.
Hello.
Hello.
There's a phrase which might even be axiomatic.
You can lead a smelly breath dog to its water bowl, but you can't make it make it drink.
That's just been my experience.
Okay.
But I was thinking, was it you who it might have been you who who sent me that story about the the the friend in Africa, or is it somebody else who sent me that story?
I think it would be a someone else.
Interesting.
Because that's that's that's definitely not the first time I've heard that.
People who've been in Africa as missionaries or whatever, say, look, I know I know that evil spirits exist, I know what evil looks like.
It's this stuff is real.
And I didn't expect us to be having this conversation towards the end of the podcast, but as you know, I'm on a mission to find out what's what about creation, the forces of darkness, Christianity, everything.
So I'm always asking questions.
I don't I don't want to just just go with what I'm told by this or that faction, because that's that's what they are really.
Um that I think it's a bit of a cop-out.
This phrase you often hear, well, evil is just an absence of good, it's just moving away from I I because I suppose what they're trying to do is dodge the the difficult issue of well, if evil exists, does that mean that God created it?
Which I don't think God did.
I think it's a it's it's an evil is an inversion, a sort of satanic inversion of good.
So, in a way, it's kind of Satan, Satan made in a way, but we do know what evil looks like, and there is and it it is around everywhere, actually.
Yeah, um, look, uh, I argue that actually there is a uh you not only does evil exist, there is an intelligence to it, there's a taxonomy of evil, as I just stated, we've got the the primitive thug, you've got the liar thief, you've got the ideologue, you've got the parasite, and that's the the ladder of intelligence.
Um yet, here's the clincher when you study the compromise problem deep enough, you understand that actually the the winner is the North Star, uh, and it's all expressed in the in the Bible.
So, first of all, we've got John 8.
I think you're a you're a fan.
Um, everyone who sins is a safe slave to sin.
So once they've got you doing sinful things, they own you, yeah.
And we don't need to get too deep into the grisly glory of what that means.
So the you what you've got is a an what you call in maths a Nash equilibrium.
If I've got evidence of you doing sinful things, then I can get you to do what I like, and you're not gonna say boo, you're just gonna do it, because you're not gonna say James is blackmailed me to who you with it.
You see what I mean?
So the answers are all found in Christian teaching.
Um, and so with journalism, um, what you're trying to do, oddly enough, is that with good journalism, when you're discovering sin, is that you're actually setting the sinner free, you're removing the leverage from the system by shining a light on the sin, you're you're setting the sinner free, yeah.
Because um, again, John, uh, we've got then you'll know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
Oh, yeah.
Makes sense.
So the following is going to be really rough.
Um, with the people who have sinned who are in positions of power who are victim bullies, yeah, they've done terrible things, but they themselves are also victims.
Yeah, they're they're stuck in that Nash equilibrium.
The only way to set them free is the teachings of Jesus Christ.
You have to know the truth, because the truth will set them free, and you have to forgive them, which will require, if we can ever do it, Christ-like levels of altruism.
Yeah, because these people have done some of the worst crimes you can imagine.
And yet, our only path to salvation is to forgive them.
Because without that, the Nash equilibrium remains silence and secrecy.
And this is the only way out.
And so the end solution is Christianity.
And not only for that, for what I call the sovereign man himself.
So let's let's take a character who's powerful rather than someone who's not powerful.
Let's take um George Foreman, the boxer.
Okay, big George, six foot three, 250 pounds.
Um he smashed smoking Joe Frazier, um, almost beat Mohammed Ali.
In 1977, he had a fight in Puerto Rico, he lost, uh, he had a near-death experience in the changing room, and he devoted himself to the Lord afterwards.
Okay.
Now when you sin against George Foreman, and he turns the other cheek for you to strike him again, at that moment, you're a Christian.
Yeah, no matter how much of a selfish, spiteful sinful, sorry excuse of a man you are, you're all in on Christianity, specifically Christ's Sermon on the Mount, Matthew, chapter 5, 39.
Yeah, because those words are the only thing stopping George Foreman, doing the world a favor, and separating your body from your soul.
Yeah.
At that time, you're all in on Christianity, whether you like it or not.
So the answer is Christianity.
And I talk, you know, one of the key words, truth is beauty and it's pursued in an act of faith.
Um faith gets a whole chapter.
Um, because Christ talked about not only vertical faith, that's quite common and very common across all religions.
Christ is talking about horizontal faith, loving each other, right?
Even our enemies.
Yeah, and the good so the story of the good Samaritan and so on, love thine enemy, he's he's talking about horizontal faith.
And if you time to two vertical faith times horizontal faith, you end up you get 10 out of 10 for both, you end up with 100.
It's it's your chance to build make earth as it is in heaven.
So the the end conclusion for me with all of this journey, whether it be my axiom or um conspiracy theory or just how to live a good life, you end up with words of Christ.
Because the North Star, that path is it, there is no limit to what we can build together if we behave in a in an honest and decent altruistic manner.
Literally, sky's the limit, as the right brothers showed.
Yeah, it the the opportunities are as vast as the universe that he himself created, whereas the forces of darkness are mathematically unstable and can't build anything at all.
So, quite literally, the North Star is 7,000 times heavier than the South Star.
Well, if you believe the um if you believe the astronomers, which that's another story.
I agree.
Let's hope it's accurate for the sake of the analogy, which is a good one.
Thank you, James.
Um, yeah, I think we we've we've we've this is my ideal length for podcasts.
I mean, I obviously it's loads more talking.
I've enjoyed very much talking to you.
Tell tell us where or do you want people to get get hold of your book yet?
Or do you it you yeah, please go ahead.
Uh it's available on if you can't wait to um read it.
Um, I'm most flattered, Truth and Beauty by James Cox.
It's available on Amazon.
There are some editing errors, some of which are mine, most of which are not, and there's a second edition coming soon.
Uh, but I'm hoping it's already A good read and um stuffed full of information.
So whether that's you're simply uh a youngish man hoping for some life advice, whether it be career or wealth or or status or whatever it is, or if you're um you feel that you're comfortable with that and you'd like to move on to a new philosophy, um hopefully uh it's an uplifting, easy to comprehend one that will trump um the awful postmodernism paradigm.
And together, James, we can we can slay the dragon of postmodernism.
I think it's it's good that you're doing something positive instead of just getting everything is so completely buggered.
It's all entirely within our hands.
It's all entirely within our hands.
We can win.
Well, I don't know, actually, I think God might have a part of this.
But yeah, I agree.
We've got to believe what we can.
We've got to believe in God first.
Step one.
Yeah.
Um, thank you, James.
Um, Captain Orlando.
And um uh yeah, thank you very much.
Um everyone else, if you've enjoyed this podcast, which obviously you have, don't forget, I rely on your subscriptions, your paid subscriptions to be able to do this.
Um please do consider supporting me on Substack, even though they make it quite hard or on locals.
Support my sponsors, um buy me a coffee, all these things.
Come to my events.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you for watching.
Love you all.
Even even the even the freeloaders, I love you too.
But I I like especially the paid the paid subscribers.
Sorry, I'm you know, I'm biased that way.
Um, thank you again, James.
James, it's been a real pleasure.
We'd love to do it again sometime.
We'd love to do it again.
Global warming is a massive con.
There is no evidence whatsoever that man-made climate change is a problem, that it's gonna kill us, that we need to amend our lifestyle in order to deal with it, it's a non-existent problem.
But how do you explain this stuff to your normy friends?
Well, I've just brought out the revised edition, my 2012 classic book, Watermelons, which captures the story of how some really nasty people decided to invent the global warming scare in order to fleece you, to take away your freedoms, to take away your land.
It's a shocking story.
I wrote it, as I say, in the well, 2011 actually, it the first edition came out, and it's a snapshot of a particular era, the era when the people behind the Chin Climate Change Scan got caught red-handed, tinkering with the data, torturing till it's screamed in a scandal that I helped christen Climate Gate.
So I give you the background to to the skullduggery that went on in these seats of learning where these supposed experts were informing us, we've got to act now.
I rumbled their scam.
I then asked the question, okay.
If it is a scam, who's doing this and and why?
It's a good story.
I've I've kept the the original book pretty much as is, but I've written two new chapters, one at the beginning and one at the end, explaining how it's even worse than we thought.
I think it's a good I think it still stands out.
I think it's it's a good read.
I obviously I'm biased, but I'd recommend it.
You can buy it from James Dellingpole.co.uk forward slash shop.
You'll probably find that one.
Just go get to my website and look for it, James Dellingpool.co.uk.
And I hope it helps keep you informed and gives you the material you need to bring round all those people who are still persuaded that oh, it's a disaster, we must amend our ways and appease the gods, appease mother diet.
