Ep. 409 - Democrats And Media Devastated By Peaceful Gun Rights Rally
Democrats and the media were pushing for violence at the gun rights rally but it didn't happen. Now Governor Ralph Northam owes an explanation as to why he declared a state of emergency. Also, AOC makes the most horrifyingly honest statement we've heard from a politician in quite some time. And why are we all addicted to social media? I have a theory.
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You know, I gotta say, I'm a big supporter of gun rights, but frankly, I am ashamed of the gun rights advocates who were protesting in Richmond yesterday.
I am just embarrassed by them.
I mean, think about it.
The media had been rooting so hard for there to be violence during this rally.
Democrats were pushing for it.
The governor of Virginia was really pushing for it.
I think it's pretty tacky, I have to say.
ahead of time and then the rally happens and there's no violence at all no
violence you people at the rally if you went to the rally you really thought it
was it was polite to embarrass the media and Democrats by being peaceful and just
having a normal rally and then going home I think it's pretty tacky I have to
say it's almost as tacky as the time when when nobody shot up a screening of
the Joker as as media had obviously been hoping for I mean, you couldn't have at least burned a car or, you know, shot out a window or something.
Maybe attacked somebody with a crowbar.
You know, the kind of stuff that Antifa does.
Of course, when Antifa does it, the media never notices.
But if you had done it, the media would have loved that.
It'd be the only thing they talked about for the next three weeks.
And you took that opportunity away from them.
They banked so much on it.
And then you just, you, you, I don't know.
I found it rude.
I just find it rude.
Maybe I was raised differently.
I was raised, what my parents always told me is, if somebody has a negative opinion of you, don't embarrass them by refusing to live down to it.
And, you know, but that's an old-fashioned way of being raised.
I guess it's just, it's just kids aren't raised that way anymore.
And it's really sad.
Just had to get that off my chest.
Yes, the gun rights rally did happen in Richmond yesterday in response to the gun control measures by Democrats in the state, and it was a peaceful event.
One where not only was it peaceful, actually, but they cleaned up after themselves, which is another thing that oftentimes at left-wing protests, little things like cleaning up after yourself, maybe they don't focus quite as much on that.
But cleaned up after themselves and went home, and that was it.
And it was indeed very frustrating for the media, and I want to talk about that, and about what, also what I think is an extremely significant political scandal attached to this, or related to it.
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All right, so the gun rights rally happened yesterday.
Huge turnout.
But not much to say about the rally itself.
It went off without a hitch.
There was a bunch of people there.
Yes, they were carrying weapons.
No, it didn't devolve into violence.
These were lawful gun owners, responsible gun owners, and they're perfectly capable, it turns out, of coming together and assembling without randomly shooting people.
If you didn't know, they are capable of that.
So they made their point, they made their voice heard, and then they went home.
I think the notable stuff, the stuff worth talking about, is everything surrounding it.
Namely, the governor of Virginia, who tried to gin up fear and paranoia about this rally, and when the fear-mongering was proven to be baseless, he tried to take credit for the fact that it was peaceful.
So yesterday after the rally, Northam put out a statement saying, quote,
we are all thankful that today passed without incident.
The team successfully de-escalated what could have been a volatile situation.
I will continue to listen to the voices of Virginians and will do everything in my power
to keep our commonwealth safe. Yeah, I really love that.
This is great.
This is... I'm going to do this from now on.
Whenever I go somewhere and there's no violence, I'm going to take credit for de-escalating.
So, you know, I just got back from Kroger, got the toilet paper we needed.
Don't worry.
Everything stayed calm.
Nobody was hurt.
I was able to successfully de-escalate the situation.
Don't worry.
No, that's...
He says it was a potentially volatile situation.
Now, I wasn't there, but I did follow it pretty closely on social media.
I saw plenty of footage of the event.
I didn't see anything that looked even remotely volatile.
What I saw were people mostly cheerfully making their voice heard, getting their point across about gun rights.
There was chanting and singing.
They said the Pledge of Allegiance, which was very upsetting for some leftists on Twitter, it turns out.
But I didn't see anything volatile.
I didn't see anything... I didn't even see anything that looked like it almost could have turned violent.
But all of this would be more funny, I suppose, if it weren't for the corruption involved here.
The governor of Virginia, Northam, he of blackface and infanticide fame, as I said, declared a state of emergency leading up to the
rally, even though there's no apparent reason for it. Here's what he said in part when he declared
the state of emergency last week. He said, the anticipated effects of the potential convergence of
tens of thousands of demonstrators on Capitol Square, some of whom may not come to assemble
peacefully, constitutes an emergency as as described in the Code of Virginia.
Therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution of Virginia, so on and so forth, I proclaim that a state of emergency will exist starting on January 17th through January 21st.
Okay.
Some of whom may not have come to assemble peacefully, Did he have any credible intelligence that there were people coming who weren't going to be peaceful?
Did he have anything other than a prejudice against gun owners?
If he had no such intelligence, Then he just declared a state of emergency as a political tool to gin up fear towards a group of citizens who are exercising their First Amendment right.
Unless you're going to tell me that every time there's a protest, he declares a state of emergency because who knows, maybe some of them won't be peaceful, which is true in general.
I mean, every single day, you know, people come to the capital of Virginia and for all you know, some of them might not be peaceful.
So why not declare a state of emergency every single day?
If you're declaring a state of emergency, it should be for a specific reason, like a specific threat, a credible threat that you received.
Again, if there was no such threat, if there's no credible, specific reason for declaring a state of emergency, then this is a scandal.
This is an abuse of power far worse than anything Trump has done in office.
Now, of course, we know that Northam is never held accountable for anything he says or does.
This guy is like, we talk about Teflon Don, Teflon Donald Trump, but this guy's Teflon too.
You got blackface infanticide, gets reelected, and now we know that this isn't gonna hurt him either.
But if we had a real media, if we had a real news media, they would demand that the governor of Virginia release whatever intelligence, whatever threats he supposedly had.
Whatever justifies the state of emergency that he declared, he should release.
And if he can't, or he doesn't, then we're gonna know that there was either no reason for it, or there was very flimsy reason.
And the real reason underlying all of that is just that it's very obvious.
He's trying to make people afraid.
He wants you to think that when a bunch of gun owners get together, well, it's an emergency.
You know, it's a powder keg, and we're just on the verge of chaos every moment.
But to be declaring a state of emergency officially for that reason is, again, an enormous abuse of power.
Speaking of power, switching gears here, here's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking recently at some kind of event, and she made an interesting, I think, admission.
Listen to this.
To be ethical, if you're a billionaire today, the thing that you need to do is give up control and power.
So I don't want your money as much as we want your power.
The people, not me, that's going to get cut and clipped.
Yes, yes it will, AOC.
Yes, yes it will.
It will get cut and clipped.
We want your power, she says, which is one of the most horrifically honest things we've heard from a politician in quite some time.
It's always, we say we want politicians to be honest, and I want them to be honest, but it's always horrifying when they are, because then you hear stuff like that.
And yeah, fine, she corrects herself and says, no, no, no, not me, I don't want your power.
Fine, all right, I'll let her correct herself.
We don't want to jump on someone's case for a slip of the tongue.
But what actually does she mean when she says, we?
Who is we?
You know, she says, well, she says the people.
She's referring to the people.
All right, well, what do you mean by the people?
Are the people a monolith that can be given power, whatever that means?
Can you take power from one individual person and then give it to the people?
Well, we know from past experience that generally when Democrats, especially Socialists, talk about, not that there's much difference between the two anymore, when they talk about the people, what they mean is the government, the state.
So she's saying that she wants the power of billionaires, not just the money, but the power to go to the people, but what that means, what we know that means, is the government.
So when she said we, she really did mean herself, because she's a part of the government.
She's an agent of the state.
And I think this brings up an important point, which is this.
All of this demonizing of the wealthy, all this stuff about taking money from the wealthy, taking power from them.
Well, okay.
But when you advocate for that, you're advocating that the government get bigger and stronger and more powerful.
And this is something I wish especially Democrat voters would Be able to understand that you as a peon, me as a peon, we remain peons in both scenarios.
So whether billionaires have all that money and power or the government takes it, either way, you know, we're still the peasants in the situation, unfortunately.
I don't like it, but that's the reality.
AOC and Bernie and her ilk, they're not going to make us any richer or us any more powerful than we already are or aren't.
They're talking about this for themselves.
This is something they benefit from.
It's like we talked about last week with the student loan.
And this week too, I think.
The so-called student loan forgiveness.
And we talked about how it's not really forgiveness, it's transfer.
You're taking the debt, student loan debt, and you're transferring it from the people who took out the loan, and it would seem, by all rights, should be the ones to pay back, and you're transferring that debt to somebody else.
And by Elizabeth Warren's plan, and Bernie Sanders' plan, it's going to be those dreaded billionaires and millionaires again.
So it's really a transfer.
And with this, with what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is talking about, again, it's a transfer.
It's not taking away the wealth and the power from billionaires.
It's transferring it from billionaires to herself and the government.
And if you think you're going to be any better off with the government being more powerful than it is, then I think you just haven't been paying very close attention.
Before we move on, I want to tell you about something that we're doing over here at The Daily Wire that's really important.
If you're a regular listener, you have, of course, heard me talk about pro-life issues and my unwavering position on pro-life issues.
And the reason why I focus on it so much is that, you know, since Roe v. Wade passed, over 60 million unborn children have been killed in the womb.
60 million.
That's a number so large that it's hard for us to conceptualize But 60 million people we're talking about.
And last year, the left went even further off the cliff, passing the New York state law that allows abortion up to birth.
There was a law in Illinois that would allow partial birth abortion, which is an utterly barbaric procedure.
And to make matters more intense, pro-life advocates are actively being targeted by the pro-abortion left.
When Ben Shapiro spoke at the March for Life last year, our advertisers were targeted by the left, and several of them pulled their ads from the program because of it.
This was not the first time.
It's not going to be the last time that we are attacked in an attempt to shut down pro-life voices.
We're also not the only targets, of course.
Live action is one of the biggest voices in the pro-life movement.
I'm a big fan of live action's work.
I have been for a long time.
They do some of the most important work in the pro-life movement, whether it's raising awareness and education on the abortion issue, undercover videos that expose Planned Parenthood.
That was my first.
I think a lot of people, that was their first.
introduction to live actions work several years ago when they were doing these undercover videos.
And they were one of the first groups to go in and do these undercover videos of Planned Parenthood.
So, and they're paying the price for it.
They've been banned from advertising on Twitter.
They have seen their advertising efforts and their online distribution restricted on several platforms across the internet because of the work they do.
That is why our dailywire.com members are really important.
Your membership helps us say no to advertisers who, you know, cave to left-wing ideologies.
If there are advertisers that Are going to cave, are going to try to control what we talk about, whether it's on this show or any other show.
With your support, you know, it's easy for us to say, we don't need them.
We keep our pro-life message from being, you keep our pro-life message, I should say, from being cancelled and instead it grows even louder.
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That's of course L-I-V-E-A-C-T-I-O-N live action to support awareness and education around the world on this issue.
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Okay, one other thing to mention before we read some emails.
I happened across this on Twitter.
Someone posted a screenshot of a tweet.
Don't know who posted this originally.
Doesn't really matter.
It's more the sentiment that I want to address.
A common sentiment.
And so this tweet says, male privilege is wearing the same outfit multiple times to events while girls can't wear the same dress twice no matter how cute it is.
Okay, so that was the tweet.
Talking about male privilege and the, you know, you hear this kind of thing a lot.
It's related to the unrealistic beauty standards that women deal with, all the supposed pressure on them to be stylish and trendy and all that, etc.
and so forth.
Here's my point.
I want to say this, maybe for the benefit of some female listeners, if they weren't aware, and my message is this.
As men, you know, We don't care one bit.
At all, really.
How stylish your clothes are.
We don't care about you being trendy and stylish.
We don't need you to wear a bunch of makeup, right?
I mean, the makeup industry is a multi-billion dollar industry.
So, women are spending lots of money on makeup.
And I guess a lot of women feel like they, you know, feel pressure, like they have to put a lot of makeup on before they leave the house.
You're not doing that for us.
Because we really, we don't need that.
We don't care.
And I really am speaking for all men when I say, I think I can speak for, you know, maybe there are a few outliers, but I can speak for almost all men.
In fact, we would actually prefer it if, if you cared less than you do about, uh, about what you wear.
So my point is, but you can care however much you want to care.
It's up to you.
My, I'm just, my point is the pressure that you feel.
It's not from us.
You know?
It's from you guys.
That's pressure you're putting on each other.
So there's this thing that I've noticed in this culture of women putting pressure on each other to act a certain way, or do a certain thing, or buy a certain product, or dress a certain way, putting pressure on each other, and then blaming men for the stress that their own self-imposed rule causes them.
Meanwhile, we're over here like, we don't care if you do that or not.
Don't look at us.
I mean, women who are very focused on how they look when they go out in public, men end up getting blamed for it.
So I guess at some level, women feel like they're doing it for men.
But I also feel like they must know that really they're doing it for each other.
They're not really doing it for us.
Because, as I said, we don't notice and we don't care.
And the reason why... So it's not male privilege, yeah.
A man... I guess... Now, I mean, a woman who feels like, what, she can't wear the same outfit twice?
Ever?
I mean, that seems pretty extreme.
That's gonna get very expensive.
But it is true that as men, we don't have much compunction about wearing the same outfit multiple times.
We're not worried about it.
We don't have that stress.
But if that's a privilege that we have, it's a privilege that is available to you as well.
We've taken advantage of that privilege because we just don't care about it.
And we're not looking at each other and judging each other for that.
Now, you know, I mean, I could be around a guy every day for two weeks, and he could wear the same outfit every single day.
And it would probably take me about seven or eight days before I noticed.
He could get away with seven or eight days of wearing the exact same outfit, and I probably wouldn't notice.
After a while, I might.
And then when I do, I might start putting it together and say, wait a second, I don't think I've seen him wear anything but that, now that you mention it.
And then once I notice it, yeah, I'm going to make fun of him, because it's my duty as a man to make fun of him for that.
But it's not a big deal.
And we just laugh about it.
And I don't think he goes home and cries in his bathroom that he got made fun of.
I think it's just he understands that, OK, he's been wearing the same outfit, and so he's going to get made fun of for it.
It's fine.
It's just what men do.
My point is that as women, I mean, you could have the same approach if you wanted to.
So I think there are a lot of things, and it's not just this.
There's a lot of pressure that women feel in society, a lot of oppression that they might feel, that, again, gets blamed on men, but I think really comes mostly from themselves, from other women.
Another example would be in the workplace.
I always...
One of the common tropes that you hear from feminists is on top of the unrealistic beauty standards, which again are almost entirely made by women for women, those beauty standards.
But another common trope is this thing you hear about in the workplace where women feel, you know, hostility if they speak too much and they get talked over a lot.
That's a big thing that you hear.
It's a trope that women are getting talked over in the workplace.
And every time I hear that I think, I mean, I don't doubt that you get talked over, but is it really by men doing that?
Women, they've done studies on this, and women, on average, they say like 20,000 more words a day than men.
They do a lot.
Or no, maybe it's 20,000 words total.
That'd be a lot of words.
But women speak a lot more than men.
They're much more verbal than men are.
So, most of the time, what I notice, you know, whether it's in a work environment or socially, Yeah, people get talked over, but it seems to me that the people who do the talking over more often are women, just because they have more to say.
So they've just got more words they have to get out in a day, and so they're going to end up trampling over each other in the talking.
Whereas men...
I mean, me, I could go six days and say nothing, if it were up to me.
Now, doing this job, it's kind of hard, but if I was living in a cave or something by myself and I had no one to talk to, I'd be fine.
I could go indefinite amount of time and say nothing, honestly.
I think a lot of men are like that.
Now, there are talkative men.
But a really talkative man, you notice.
If you encounter a really talkative man, you think, wow, this guy doesn't shut up.
You really notice it because it's not common for men.
Whereas women are more talkative, which is fine, but again, that's... So, if you're getting talked over, you feel like you can't get a word in edgewise, probably it's because of other women that are doing that to you.
It's probably not men.
So, I'm not saying that men can be jerks and they can be judgmental and all those things as well.
But I think we need to stop and reassess the obstacles that women face, especially socially.
We need to stop and reassess and see how much of that actually is coming from the patriarchy, from men, and how much of it is actually coming from inside the house, as it were, inside the female house.
I think a lot of it is imposed on women by women.
All right.
Let's move on to emails.
mattwalshow at gmail.com is the email address.
From Andrew, I had some questions yesterday about Star Wars, and so I got a lot of emails, which I appreciate, from Star Wars fans, answering my questions.
This is one from Andrew, says, let's start with the helmet thing.
First, I'd like to point out that I made the point that only in Star Wars, I couldn't figure out why only the bad guys wear cool helmets and masks.
And I said maybe that's why people go to the dark side because they want to wear the cool costumes and all the cool costumes are with the bad guys for some reason.
Andrew says, let's start with the helmet thing first.
I'd like to point out that good guy characters have cool helmets.
In episode 6, Leia gets a sweet bounty hunter helmet.
In episode 2 and 3, the Clone Trooper follow the same customs as the Stormtroopers and wear their sweet helmets all the time.
Now, the reason Darth Vader wears a helmet is because he has to.
His head is permanently disfigured and isn't even functioning properly anymore.
Well, he doesn't have to, right?
That's more of a vanity thing.
He just doesn't want people to see his disfigured head, which I don't get that either because if you're a bad guy, you're a super arch-villain.
If there's any time you can get away with having a disfigured, disgusting, scarred face, it's when you're a supervillain.
So if you're a supervillain, just embrace it.
Kylo Ren has a cool helmet in canon because he idolizes Vader and wants to be like him.
In the real world, J.J.
Abrams wanted to mirror Star Wars 4 with Star Wars 7, so he created a character with a cool helmet to be the antagonist.
Well, he certainly succeeded in that because Star Wars 7 is just...
It's just basically a shot-for-shot remake of other Star Wars films.
Next, I need to touch on this.
It is such a common mistake.
When they say they're jumping to light speed, they're really entering another dimension in which the space is compressed.
They calculate their route and exit elsewhere.
If they couldn't do this, it would still take decades to travel across the galaxy.
And lastly, the lightsaber thing.
First, let me start by saying that some of the characters thought of this too, such as the leader of Death Watch from Star Wars The Clone Wars, Ezra from Star Wars Rebels, I don't even know what these are, and even Luke has a...
Blaster and a lightsaber in episode 5.
Finn in the battle of the forest planet, on the forest planet, even wishes he had a blaster.
He fights with a lightsaber against the stormtrooper with the riot control axe because the stormtrooper wanted to make it personal.
The reason that force users don't fight with blasters is for two reasons.
One, while the lasers fly slowly in episode 2, we see Jedi reflecting lasers.
in a chaotic battle scene. They have a sense that allows them to block and deflect the lasers.
This gives them lasers whenever their opponent does.
Additionally, they have better ranged offensive abilities, that being force telekinesis. They do
not use it on each other because they cancel each other out. And lastly, they use lightsabers
because it is Jedi tradition and it's been going on since early times. Okay, Andrew,
your answer on the helmet was sufficient.
That's fine.
I'll accept it.
I still think the good guys could do more with the costumes.
They could do themselves a favor by adopting, not just helmets, but even capes.
In Star Wars, a lot of the bad guys walk around in capes for some reason.
So if you're going to do that... In the Star Wars world, if you can get away with wearing a cape and people don't make fun of you for it, It seems like in the real world, if you saw a guy come out with a cape, you'd say, what are you wearing a cape for?
But if you can do that, then I don't see why the good guys don't do it too.
As far as the ships jumping into another dimension instead of going into light speed, okay, fine.
But again, that still requires advanced technology, obviously.
And this is a galaxy where such technology, you got a ship that can jump into another dimension and travel across the galaxy in an instant.
And this ship was sitting in a junkyard.
That's how common this technology is.
Which brings us to the lightsaber bit.
And I feel like you haven't answered my challenge, which is that in a world with this kind of technology, it should be extremely easy to come up with a weapon, a personal weapon, like a type of gun, that could defeat a dude holding a lightsaber.
Like I said, the only reason laser guns don't work is because the lasers move so slowly.
But if you just came up with a gun that shoots lasers at a faster speed, or even you just use a regular gun with lead bullets that travel at a regular bullet speed, then no Jedi in the galaxy would be able to move fast enough to deflect all those bullets.
So, I could see using lightsabers in a ceremonial way, if it's part of your tradition and your culture, but to actually use it in battle, given the kind of technology that exists in this world, doesn't make any sense.
It's like if... It'd be like if Japanese soldiers still used samurai swords in battle.
Now, they might use them ceremonially, but they're not gonna actually go into battle in modern times with a sword.
And by the way, going back to the technology bit, here's another thing that bothers me.
C-3PO is apparently a conscious, sentient robot.
I mean, it's extremely advanced.
If C-3PO existed in this world, he would be, I mean, easily, far and away, the most advanced piece of technology, the most advanced piece of equipment in the world.
I mean, not even close.
The operating system that C-3PO is using is just beyond anything we can imagine, because it is capable of human thought.
And yet, externally, he's like the Tin Man.
So he's got the external build of like a robot that maybe Toyota would have come up with in 1992.
But then internally, his operating system is way, it's like thousands of years in the future.
That doesn't make any sense to me.
I mean, if you have the technology to make a robot like that, why make him useless physically?
It would be like if I had the most advanced engine anyone's ever made, and I put it in Fred Flintstone's car.
It doesn't make any sense.
So, that's a problem.
This is from Seth.
Says, Matt, you talked last week about social media and how much damage it does and the compulsion you feel towards it.
I have a very strong compulsion.
I'm embarrassed to admit, but I'm probably on social media six or seven hours a day.
I don't even like it that much.
I just feel drawn to pick up my phone and scroll mindlessly.
My question is, why do we do this?
Why are people so obsessed with social media?
Why are we on it all the time when it doesn't even make us happy?
What's the reason?
So I was thinking about this yesterday, Seth, after I read your email, and the easiest answer is to say that social media is an addiction.
But that doesn't really clarify anything.
You just chalk something up to an addiction and say, oh, it's an addiction.
It doesn't clarify it, and also I think it's not really true.
I think we talk about a social media addiction, I think we mean it in a sort of colloquial way, but I don't see how using social media could really be a clinical addiction.
Now, you might find in the medical community, psychiatrists, they maybe will pretend it's a real addiction, but I don't think.
I think you've got to draw a real distinction between, say, heroin addiction, and the compulsion you feel to use heroin, and the compulsion you feel to get on Twitter.
I just don't think they're in the same universe or same ballpark.
So, I don't think that answers it.
I think part of what draws us to mindlessly scroll The internet, social media.
Same thing that draws us to mindlessly binge Netflix and watch TV all the time and so on and so on.
Watch reality TV and all this stuff.
I think it's that we fear thought.
We don't want to think.
We don't want to contemplate things too seriously or too deeply.
We don't want to dwell on anything very serious.
We certainly don't want to think about our mortality, about death, about our basic human condition.
So I am becoming increasingly convinced that so much of our culture, so much of what we do, is at some level driven by our desire to prevent ourselves from thinking.
We're trying to prevent ourselves from thinking, and I think that's what explains So much of what we do in this culture.
It's a defense mechanism.
We do all of this, and we entertain ourselves relentlessly, almost obsessively, because it stops us from thinking.
We are very troubled by thought.
And it seems that we'd rather not have very many of them.
Very many thoughts, that is.
I think we, in general, are becoming very frivolous people.
That's what you find In the culture, but especially in the internet culture, frivolity and irony and cynicism.
We obsess over dumb things, irrelevant things.
We're always ironic about everything and cynical about everything.
And I know it's kind of hypocritical for me to be complaining about that, of all people.
But again, it's hard for me not to see that as, at least at some level, a defense mechanism, a way to deny, to turn our heads from the really serious business of living and thinking and being.
I mean, think about this.
Speaking of thinking.
Prior to modern media, so, you know, I'm talking about prior to internet, TV, radio, even.
So for, I don't know, the first 10,000 years, give or take, of human civilization, there was none of that.
Nothing to listen to.
Nothing to watch or scroll through in terms of media.
None of that existed.
So, what did people do?
You ever thought about that?
What did they do?
Well, they worked.
Okay, they worked a lot.
They toiled and they worked.
Fine.
And that was a lot of their day.
And maybe they read.
Although, if you go back far enough, literacy was pretty uncommon.
And they didn't have the same access.
And you go all the way back to before the printing press.
People didn't have access to books unless you were a monk or someone in the elite class.
So maybe you read.
Maybe you did some reading.
But what else do they do with their free time at the end of the day?
You got your work done for the day.
It's not time for bed yet.
What are you doing?
I'm sure they talked to each other.
I'm sure they spent time as a family.
They played games and so on.
But the point I'm getting to here is that there was probably time, there was probably lots of time, cumulatively, where they sat there and didn't do anything.
There was probably a fair amount of sitting silently and doing nothing.
That was probably a relatively normal part of human existence for thousands of years.
Where there'd be times in the day when, you know, there was nothing really to do.
So you sat there and, you know, maybe you just did nothing.
Maybe not for six hours, but there would be time in the day.
Because you didn't have a phone to pull out and distract yourself.
You didn't have a TV to turn on.
And you're sitting on a piece of furniture in your living room and you're just sitting there.
Thinking.
Now, when was the last time that you did that?
When was the last time that you sat somewhere No phone, no TV, not talking to anybody, not doing anything, not flipping through a magazine, nothing.
You just sat there and you thought.
When's the last time you did that?
I bet for a lot of us it's been like years since we've done that.
And in the times when we feel like we're forced to do it, we panic.
Like, have you ever been in a situation, maybe you're in a waiting room, and there's no good magazines to read, and your phone is dead, and they don't have a TV, and you're sitting there waiting for the dentist to call you back, and you've got nothing to do, and you know, you've got your phone in your hand, and you feel this compulsion to look at it, but it's dead.
It creates a real sense of almost like panic, like you've been disconnected from something.
And the idea that all you can do is simply sit there is overwhelming.
We're really uncomfortable with it.
And why are we uncomfortable with it?
The only explanation I can come up with is that it allows for a lot of unadulterated, unfiltered thinking.
And we don't like that.
We're afraid of our own thoughts.
So I think that's part of it.
Maybe we've even forgotten how to think in some ways.
Because we've outsourced our thinking to the internet.
We let the internet think for us.
I mean, we let the internet literally complete our sentences for us.
All right.
From Lee says, Hi Matt, love the show.
Wanted to know how you feel about reincarnation.
If you believe in the afterlife, why do you rule out the possibility of reincarnation?
Billions of people believe that we will be reincarnated after death.
Do you think this is possible, or have you ruled it out?
If so, why?
Well, first of all, it's not up to me to rule anything out, per se.
I mean, when we die, whatever happens, happens.
So I can't rule it out or rule it in.
It is what it is.
Now, as far as what I think about it, well, in a certain sense, yeah, we are reincarnated.
In the sense that our bodies are made up of atoms, 7 billion billion billion atoms to be precise, or sort of precise.
And when we die, those atoms don't die with us, they are recycled back into the world and they become other things.
Just like the atoms in our body right now, we're other things.
And if you trace it back far enough, Our, you know, as Carl Sagan talks about, we are the stuff of stars.
We are literally stardust.
We were made from stars.
And we are, in a sense, you might say, reincarnated stars.
So, if you want to look at it physically, at the atomic level, then, okay, I guess, I think it's weird to call that reincarnation, but you could make some sort of argument for that.
But that's not what you mean by reincarnation.
I assume reincarnation means, when you talk about it, it means some mysterious, mystical way that your actual essence, your being, you as a person, continue to live on in another form after this form dies, right?
That's what you mean.
Now, to me, that's disqualified on a logical basis.
I don't even need to get anything else.
I think it just doesn't make any logical sense, and I'll explain why.
Because if reincarnation is true, then I right now am just the latest version of myself.
I had other selves before this one.
And those other selves screwed up so badly that they got sent back to Earth in my body, those poor bastards.
But what does that mean?
If I had other selves, yet those other selves had different physical forms, different personalities, different experiences, Different beliefs and different everything.
Different family, different everything.
And I can't remember those past selves, and thus I don't have any of their memories, then in what sense exactly are we the same?
Exactly in what sense am I that past self?
It doesn't even mean anything.
I'm a completely different person with a whole new set of experiences and everything.
Where is the continuity?
And what exactly would be, I guess this is really the point, what exactly would be the difference between me dying and being obliterated and me dying and coming back, quote unquote, as an entirely new person with no memory of my past experiences?
Isn't it the same thing as obliteration?
I mean, think about even if you... Let's even make it less extreme.
Let's say that there was some sort of technology where they're able to obliterate your mind and implant a new mind into your body somehow.
Let's say that technology existed.
No memory anymore of your past self, completely new personality, completely new everything.
Although you still have the same body.
Isn't that the same effect?
Like, leading up to that, as you're waiting for yourself to be obliterated and have this new self implanted in with this crazy technology, isn't that the same thing as death, basically?
Now, if you were to consider that your body is obliterated, too, and now you have a new mind and a new body, then it's okay.
I don't even see how we could call that reincarnation.
So, that's my issue with it.
I just don't see the difference.
I know there are people who claim, oh, I have memories of my past self.
First of all, no you don't.
But second of all, not enough of a memory for there to be any continuity.
So that, again, it just ends up being the same thing, effectively, as there being no reincarnation at all.
All right.
That's how I feel about reincarnation.
We'll leave on that note.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for listening.
Have a great day.
Godspeed.
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