Episode 1229 Scott Adams: I'll Tell You What Keeps America Together and How the #GoldenAge Can't be Stopped
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
- Things so important you can't charge for them
- Andrew Yang running for mayor of New York
- The Golden Age is in process
- 2020 enlightened us in many regards
My Christmas Eve gratitude
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If 2020 wasn't the hardest year of your life, you've had some hard years.
But we're here.
We made it. And let's see if we can make it to summer.
Then we win. And if you would like to maximize your experience of the best part of the day, What's the best part of the day?
That's right. That's right.
It's this. This is the best part of the day.
The rest of your day might be pretty good.
Could be excellent. In fact, the rest of your day might be extraordinary.
But it won't be as good as this.
Are you ready? All you need is Cup or mug or glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite holiday liquid I like, coffee.
Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes the holidays extraordinary.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
Heard around the world, and it happens now.
Go. Well, in the news, President Trump is issuing pardons.
It's outrageous.
Can you all join me in being outraged at the people that the president is pardoning?
Are we good? Are we done with the outrage?
There's something I've been explaining to people on Twitter this morning, and it goes like this.
You don't pardon innocent people.
I mean, if you can, that's great.
It would be great if you knew someone were innocent, but they were in jail.
Yeah, maybe pardoning them would be the right thing.
But that's not exactly what pardons are for.
The pardon is to give the president an unfettered ability to pardon, and a big part of that is you can't question it.
You can say to yourself, why are these people on the list?
But that's going to be true for every president.
Probably there are favors involved or whatever.
But our system allows us.
And so I refuse to be outraged by the system working exactly the way it was designed to work.
The president has this power.
Had it been a different president, pardoning different people who I liked more or less than this group, Same response.
I'm not going to get outraged about the system working the way it was designed.
The other news is that apparently the GOP has rejected the call for the $2,000 direct checks to people instead of the $600.
And I guess Trump vetoed the omnibus bill, but it looks like they have a veto proof.
They can override the veto, so it's going to happen anyway.
But I would rank as the biggest mistake of 2020...
I don't even know if it's a decision, but this action by Congress to deny the $2,000 check on Christmas Eve.
Just let that sink in.
Now, many mistakes have been made in 2020 because we're humans, and especially when you introduce the pandemic and you have this fog of war and so many unknowns and Scientifically, we didn't exactly know what was right to do.
It took us a while to crawl our way through it and learn enough that we can get on top of the virus, which we're almost there.
But here's the thing.
There are some kinds of mistakes that you can forgive quite easily.
And I'll remind you again, and Christmas Eve is a good time for this, that at the beginning of the pandemic, I said...
We should forgive in advance all of our leaders.
We should forgive in advance all the mistakes that they are about to make.
Because the mistakes that they were going to make, and they did, you know, various leaders, experts made a variety of mistakes.
Up to this point, there'll be more.
They weren't the kind of mistake that you should You know, want to destroy somebody over.
They were the kind of mistake that you make because you don't know what is the right thing to do.
Now, if your mistakes are because you don't know what is the right thing to do, you wish the mistake had not happened, but it's hard to criticize somebody for trying hard and having the right intentions, but it didn't go well.
That's not what's happening here.
With Congress rejecting the $2,000 checks, and yes, I understand That they didn't just reject the checks.
It was about the bulk of the rest of the stuff they didn't like, like foreign aid and whatever else they didn't like in the bill.
Those were the reasons.
But here's the thing.
You don't tease the public about maybe getting enough money before Christmas and then yank it back.
I get that there were reasons.
And I'm not even going to argue that the reasons were good or bad.
I'm saying the entire situation, not just the rejecting of the 2000 when it was rejected, but the whole situation that Congress got us to, where they would reject the bigger check on Christmas Eve, is the biggest mistake I've seen in 2020.
And it's a year of a lot of mistakes.
Now, the reason it's the biggest mistake is that it's not because anybody didn't know something, right?
Pandemic mistakes were legitimate mistakes.
People didn't know what to do.
There were smart people disagreeing on what to do.
I forgive those mistakes.
I don't forgive this mistake.
This is not the kind of mistake you forgive.
Because they knew what they were doing.
Every single person involved knew the result of their actions would bring us here.
It's almost not even a mistake.
It's almost just a slap in the face of the American public.
So congratulations, Congress.
I didn't think you could be worse, but you did it.
You got there. You got to the only thing that could have been worse, yanking that money away from the people who desperately need it on Christmas Eve.
The only thing that's stopping me from massive profanity is that I'm trying to keep things positive today.
It's Christmas Eve.
But unambiguously and without any question, the biggest mistake, blunder if you want to put it, is this.
There's nothing even close to this.
Because of the intention problem.
But let's talk about something a little bit more positive.
Are you with me? Would you like me to take it up a little bit?
Come with me.
You'll like it.
Here's a little bit of positivity that dropped recently.
You've all heard of Naval Ravikant and What you might know is that his Twitter feed is unusually valuable.
So the things that he tweets and has tweeted over the recent years are so valuable that even my publisher asked me to contact him and say, would you please convince him to do a book?
Because if he ever does a book of this content, it's so frickin' good and useful, like actually directly changes your life kind of information.
That it would be the number one best-selling book in the world.
And I think that actually would be easily true.
That if Naval wanted to make a book, it would be probably number one in the world.
I think it would be easy to predict.
But he was not interested and is not interested in a book.
And his reasons support why you should pay attention to him.
Who could...
Can you think of any other situation in which someone knows they could have a number one best-selling book with not really even a lot of work?
Because the material exists.
You could just have a ghostwriter assemble it, put your name on it, you're good to go.
But there's something about the value of, let's say, products or content.
In his case, content.
If you make something in the world that a lot of people like and want, you could probably sell that thing and become rich.
So making something that's bad and nobody wants, well, nobody buys it and nobody's better off.
If you make something that's really good, people are going to pay a lot for it.
And a lot of people are going to pay a lot for it.
But here's the weird part.
If you make something even better than that, something that somebody is willing to pay a lot for, if you make something that's even better than that, you can't sell it because it would be immoral.
It would be immoral to keep something from the public that would have that much benefit.
If you put a friction between this thing, whatever it is, and the public, you're just not a good person.
If the thing that keeps poor people from Naval's content is that they can't afford the book, is that a place you want to be?
No. Naval's content is so valuable that he understood from the beginning that it would be immoral to sell it.
And so, somebody, Eric Jorgensen, decided to Put Naval's, I think with Naval's approval, put it together in a book that is free.
So it is a book.
It's free. You can download it.
It's called the Navalmanac.
N-A-V-A-L-M-A-N-A-C-K, like almanac.
It's like a Naval almanac put together.
Navalmanac. And so this is available for download, and now everybody everywhere has the benefit of this.
There's another example of this.
Can you think of another example of something that's a product that's so good you can't charge for it?
Can you think of another one?
The vaccinations.
Yeah, the coronavirus vaccinations are so important to society that you can't charge for them.
If we charged for those vaccinations, that would be the height of immorality.
Nobody would be in favor of that.
So just look for that phenomenon.
If something is too good, you can't charge for it.
You just can't. Now, I'd say that we've reached D-Day for vaccinations, meaning that the war against the virus just turned into an offensive war.
And you remember, well, maybe you don't remember, but in World War II, the big swing in momentum was D-Day, the invasion of Normandy and the troops coming in and eventually that cleared out Europe of the Nazi scourge.
And it seems to me that we've reached D-Day.
I don't know what day you want to call it, the first vaccination, I guess.
And now a million people have already received it.
A million people already got the vaccination.
It's pretty good, isn't it?
You have to read a Sam Harris article that I tweeted, so it's in my Twitter feed from yesterday.
Sam Harris breaks down how the decision was made about who gets the shots and who doesn't.
And you really have to read that article.
So, this is, I would say this is Sam Harris doing a real solid benefit for the country.
Because I didn't really understand everything that went into deciding who gets the shots first, and what the order is.
But let me tell you, when you find out how that was decided, you're not going to like it.
You're not going to like it.
But you have to see Sam Harris' description of it.
I don't want to ruin it. Just look at it.
The bottom line is that the determination of who got it first was not made based on saving the most lives.
It was made based on awokeness.
So you've got to read the article.
It's mind-boggling.
But the good news is that we're on the offensive now.
It looks like The number of deaths, according to one model, by April 1st, we could have 567,000 people died from the coronavirus.
That number is so shocking that it's hard to even read it.
Honestly, I didn't think it would get that high.
And I'm still optimistic it won't get that high.
But I think we're going to blow...
Low past 400,000, no matter what.
So let's think positively on that.
So Trump vetoed that defense bill.
I'm kind of glad he did because it was really on principle.
You know, it'll still get passed because there's a veto-proof majority, I guess, for it.
But I like the fact that Trump vetoed it on principle because it was filled with pork and crap.
There's a new poll from USA Today that says that history will judge Trump's presidency, that 50% of people said that they thought he would be judged as a failed president, which is suspiciously the number of Democrats who listen to fake news.
But as I've said, they are wrong.
And the history, the further you get away from 2020, the better Trump will look.
And in 50 years...
I think Trump will be regarded as one of the top three presidents.
But it might take a long time for us to get that kind of perspective.
Because then you're just looking at what he did.
Your feeling about his personality and what you felt during this year will fade over time.
And simply the decisions he made and the things he accomplished will be left behind.
So his reputation is going to climb.
Not right away, but it will.
So Andrew Yang is apparently filed to run for mayor of New York.
That's one of the best things I've heard today.
Isn't that kind of cool?
Can you think of anybody off the top of your head who would be a better choice to be mayor of New York than Andrew Yang?
I mean, you know, even if you're not the same party as Andrew Yang, It's kind of a great choice.
Because what we like about him, regardless of your party affiliation, what people like about Andrew Yang is that he's not a dogmatic...
He's not just going to make decisions because of what the team does.
He's actually someone who looks at the facts and is smart and does reasonable things.
Doesn't seem to be tied to any specific...
Your way of being.
He just seems smart and capable.
I think he'd be a great choice.
We'll see how he goes.
Well, I'm going to go into my positive part of my live stream now, right?
And I want to give you a little story.
Maybe some of you have heard it before, because I've told it before.
I'm going to give you a little story that's just the base, sort of setting the table for what I'll be telling you next, all right?
So later I'll connect the stories, but I'll just start with this.
So several years ago I was asked to give a speech for Salesforce.
Now Salesforce is a big multi-billion dollar fast-growing company created by entrepreneur and now CEO Mark Benioff.
And prior to giving the talk to Salesforce, I got to hang out with Mark Benioff for a bit and we were just sort of chatting.
At some point the conversation turned to, and I don't know how it got there, but sort of methods for success.
And Benioff told me his, I guess you'd say his main theme or principle for success.
And I'd never really heard it before in those terms.
And the word he used was intentions.
Intentions. And the way he, I think I'll try to explain it as best I can, maybe I'll get it a little bit wrong, but the idea is that it's one thing to want something, but it's more powerful to put your intentions in a clear package and put it out in the world.
And his kind of way of seeing the world is that clear, clean intentions attract everything you need to make them work.
So the people are attracted to, let's say, confidence and certainty and intention well described.
Because we live in this world that's sort of ambiguous, and you don't know exactly what's the right thing to do, what's going to get you in trouble, what's going to work.
So anytime you see somebody who's a leader, and a leader gives you a clear intention, and it looks like a good one, And what they want is very unambiguous.
People are drawn to that.
And so that was his secret.
Now, I would make the distinction between intention and affirmations is whether you put it into the world.
An affirmation is something maybe that you're chanting or writing down about something that you would like to accomplish.
That's sort of an internal process.
So your affirmations are you talking to yourself.
An intention, if you do it right, is something you put into the universe and other people see it.
And then they're drawn to it.
Now, I saw him play out that theme minutes after we talked.
It was a dinner for the staff.
And I got to sit at the table with the executives.
And so while I was at the table for dinner, one of the executives used his moment of access with the CEO. To talk with him about a PowerPoint presentation he was going to give to some important group.
And so the top executive shows Benioff the PowerPoint thing.
And Benioff's first comment, and I'm going to paraphrase the conversation so this is not exact words or anything.
And Benioff looks at it and goes, put on the front page, on the top of it, make sure you tell the audience about our 1% plan.
Roughly speaking, they have this deal where Salesforce gives, I think, 1% of their profits to charity, and the employees donate 1% of their time to charity, something like that.
And so Benioff says, put that on the front.
And his executive says, oh, I've got that.
I've got that information. It's in the body of the thing.
I think it's page three or something.
That's sort of the best place for it to be.
Given the flow of the presentation, it belongs in the body of it.
And Benioff listens to his explanation, and he says, put it on the first page.
And then the executive tries again.
He says, yeah, it's very important, of course, and We've put it right in the best possible place it could be in that third page.
That's the flow.
And Benioff looks at him and he goes, put it on the first page.
And he argued again.
Third time. The executive goes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's right where it belongs.
And Benioff looks at him for a third time and says, put it on the first page.
And you could see it finally hitting this guy.
Intention. Intention. Benioff was very clearly saying, no, our intention is to help the world.
We're going to do that by making money, that's good for us too, but our intention is to help the world.
And that's going to be on the first page.
So our intention is to be good people, help the world, and we're going to do that by making money and having a strong business.
The executive wanted to show how the business was going to be great, And because the business was great, hey, we'd make some extra money.
We could do this 1% thing.
That was backwards.
Intention was backwards.
Benioff, unique among his people, I think, understood the power of that.
And that by putting the intention out, he could attract what he needed.
And sure enough, one of the fastest growing companies in the world.
Amazing success.
Hold this story in your mind.
I'm going to circle back to it.
I've been asked a lot about my past prediction from over a year ago that we would be entering the Golden Age.
And then instead of the Golden Age, we entered a pandemic.
That looks very different from the Golden Age.
In fact, it looks a little opposite.
If you had to say, what's a golden age?
You would describe it very different from a pandemic.
So, am I wrong?
Is the golden age not coming?
I think it's definitely coming.
I'm more certain than at any point.
And it's because every construction phase starts with demolition.
We're in the demolition phase.
Was it possible to get to something that is extraordinarily better without demolition?
No, not if there's already a building there.
If there's already a building there, which is society as it's evolved, you can't build the new thing until you do something about the old thing.
They occupy the same space.
So there is no such thing as Upgrading a thing unless you can destroy the old thing.
Now, it was not our choice to destroy the old thing.
The pandemic made that choice for us in a way.
But demolition had to happen.
Don't think that the demolition is the sign of where we're going.
The demolition is your signal, and I'll make the case a little bit stronger here, It's your signal that it is maybe the darkest before the dawn.
And that the way you can tell that something good might be coming, often, is because it looks really dark.
And that's what happens before good things happen, quite often.
So the fact that things look dark at the moment do not take that as a signal that that's the direction.
We're going through a phase that had to happen.
There wasn't any way around it.
There was no way around. We had to destroy what was there to build something better.
Is that what we're doing? Well, I can't speak to the experience for other countries.
So I know we have an international audience here.
So I'll just speak to an American experience.
I think you'll find maybe a lot of this applies everywhere else.
But there's a lot of things we learned this year.
And when I tell you what I think we learned...
It might blow you away, because you probably haven't thought of it in these terms before.
And it goes like this.
If you had asked me a year ago, what is it that makes America, America?
What is it that binds us and holds us together?
I would have given you answers such as, I would have said, well, it's a It's about the Constitution.
It's about shared values.
I'd say it's about the way we've been socialized.
I might say something about a culture.
Somebody might throw in religion.
But you'd probably have a big, complicated answer.
Liberty. Somebody would say freedom.
You'd have a big, complicated answer of what it is That holds America together.
Why doesn't America just fly apart?
For 200 years, we've not only held together, but gotten stronger.
Why? What's the glue?
Now, here's what's mind-blowing.
In the past year, everything that I would have said holds America together, dissolved.
All of the connecting structure, all of the glue...
That I believed was holding the country together just fell apart.
For example, do we have a democracy, a democratic republic?
No, we don't.
The Constitution just sort of failed this year.
We don't have, because of the way the system worked, nothing that you could identify as the will of the people being expressed in the form of a republic That turns into a government.
We don't have that.
How about freedom of speech?
Nope. Apparently, social media censorship, if you go too far in the wrong direction, you don't have freedom of speech anymore, at least in a practical sense.
You have it in a legal sense, but you don't have it in a practical sense.
So, we sort of lost our freedom of speech.
How about our freedom in general?
Well, we kind of lost that too with the pandemic.
So we found out that our press, which was one of the most important parts of keeping our liberties together, the free press.
We found out we don't have a free press.
I mean, it's free if you're not paying for it, but it's so illegitimate that you can't even say we have a press in the way that we imagined it even a year ago, I would say.
So we don't have a press.
We don't have an election process.
We don't have the same shared beliefs.
Even the idea of patriotism completely disappeared.
There are still patriotic people, but the idea that it was a shared value, that patriotism was something we all stood for the flag, nobody knelt, doesn't exist.
How about our shared history?
At least we have a shared history, right?
Not anymore. Now we have the 1619 Project, which is an alternate history.
I'm not saying it's right or wrong.
It's just saying it's a different history.
So we don't have a history anymore.
We don't have...
The Constitution, you know, exists, but it's not really guiding us in the way we thought was holding us together.
We don't have a free press.
We don't even have freedom. We don't have freedom of speech.
So everything that I would have said is essential to holding America together disappeared.
But what happened?
Did America fly apart?
When everything that held it together, that you thought held it together, and I thought held it together, it all disappeared in the last year.
And America got stronger.
Everything that makes America America disappeared, and America got stronger.
Now, I'm saying stronger because if you look at the stock market, which I know doesn't represent all people, but it's a good proxy for how strong the nation is, right?
It gets reflected in the stock market.
So there's lots of work to do and to take care of people who are disadvantaged in every way, especially during the pandemic.
But the country... Got stronger.
So, what are we missing?
Apparently, and not even apparently, I'll say obviously, there is something that keeps America together that was not those things.
Now, you could say it's the economy, maybe.
But I have a different opinion.
I think what keeps America, America, is intention.
It's intention. When people were talking about America's going to fly apart and there's going to be a civil war, and I told you there wouldn't be.
I told you emphatically there wouldn't be and there can't be.
And the reason that there won't be and there can't be, I'm not talking about some unrest in some city or something, but the reason that we won't go completely into Anarchy and civil war is we intend not to.
That's it. The entire country, in my opinion, is held together by an intention.
Our intention is to stay together.
That's it. Our intention is to stay together.
Now, let me say a little bit more about that.
I've told you before that in your personal life, it doesn't matter what you say you want.
That's not the thing that will change your life.
Your wants will not change your life.
But what you decide will.
Your decisions are what change your life.
You decide it and then you do it.
Wanting something is inactive.
It's a decision.
And that's also a decision is also a clear statement of intention.
Because once you make a decision, your intention is solidified, right?
And I believe that all of us individually, for our own reasons, maybe, we have an explicit intention to stay together.
And so I would like to give my Christmas message to everyone here.
This is my Christmas message to the country, and it goes like this.
So I'm speaking to America now.
The rest of you, I know there's lots of international viewers, but just bear with me for a moment.
Maybe some of this will apply to your country as well.
And I'm going to speak directly to black Americans.
I'm going to speak directly to Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, every other kind of ethnic Americans.
I'm talking to all my friends in the LGBTQ community and everybody else that I don't know in the LGBT community.
I'm talking about all Democrats, independents, Republicans, my friends, my critics, every religion, and every belief.
I'm talking to every single one of you right now.
And I just have one thing to say.
Just one message.
I choose you.
I choose you to be in my country.
Now, I don't mean it's up to me, obviously.
I just mean that it's my intention to remain in this country, an American, as part of an American country.
It's my intention to be part of this great experiment with everybody.
No exceptions. Be you in jail.
Be you free.
Be you my critic or my enemy.
It is my intention to remain American.
And I don't really ask anything in return.
Because the moment you ask something in return, you're doing it wrong.
I don't ask anything in return.
I just choose you.
That's it. Anything more than that makes it less, I think.
So Christmas Eve is sort of a time for gratitude.
I think it's a good reminder to be grateful.
So I am grateful to all of you.
I'm grateful to my critics for making me stronger.
I'm grateful to everybody who's ever disagreed with me for making me work a little bit harder.
I'm grateful to my audience.
I'm grateful to all of you who have good intentions.
Keep it that way.
And so I tell you that the golden age is not only coming, it can't be stopped.
And we're in the demolition phase.
It's not the fun part.
It's not the fun part.
But we will get through this.
And let me tell you what's happening that maybe you've missed.
Because you're looking at the coronavirus, you're looking at whatever Trump is doing.
But there's a lot of stuff happening that you're just not noticing.
It's slower. And it's taking us to the golden age in a way that is unstoppable.
There's nothing that can stop it.
And let me say more about this.
Of course, what the pandemic did was accelerate all trends.
That's the demolition phase.
You've accelerated the trend toward things that were going to go out of business and stop anyway.
And so a lot changed.
But there are some things that I don't think you noticed.
There has been a rewrite of the operating system for the United States for sure, but I think maybe for people, maybe for reality.
Here are some examples of how the operating system of our entire reality has changed just in the last few years.
Every bit of this is new-ish in the last few years.
Number one, when did you hear the idea of a talent stack?
Think about it. Think about the idea of a talent stack, the idea of combining talents so that you're not the best in the world at any one thing, Well, you've collected some talents that work together well.
The way I collected my meager talents to be a cartoonist, I don't draw well, I'm not the funniest person in the world, but there aren't too many people who can do all of that.
So that was my talent stack.
So instead of trying to be the best in the world, have you noticed that the idea of a talent stack Has gone from something I wrote about in a book in 2013.
I had to fail at almost everything and still win big.
That one you see over my shoulder.
From that book, have any of you noticed how influential that's been?
Have you noticed that the idea of a talent stack went from something in a book to something like common knowledge in just a few years?
And it's transformative.
Because if you thought the only way you could succeed...
Was to be the best in the world at something and you knew you couldn't and you were right because how many people can be the best in the world at anything?
That was kind of demotivating.
But as soon as you realize that success is just a matter of assembling parts that are available, skills, things you can learn quite easily, that's a whole new way of looking at the world.
How about the idea of systems versus goals?
How many years ago was it that that wasn't a thing?
I think people have talked about it in various ways forever, but when it came out in that same book, How to Failed Almost Everything, it started to creep into the consciousness of the world in a way that it had not until then.
Now, part of that is because I'm a hypnotist as well as an author, so if I write something, it has more chance of being influential just because I've learned the skills in my skill stack of how to make things sticky.
But have you noticed That the idea of both talent stacks and systems being more important than goals have become common knowledge.
And when I say they become common knowledge, I say that's when it becomes part of the operating system.
It's one thing when it's something that's in a book.
But once it gets out of the book, and it, you know, takes over our minds, then it's the operating system.
Now, what would the world look like with just those two changes?
That's it. Because before this, you had to have enough money or whatever to get into a good school and college.
There were a few ways to succeed, but they weren't available to everybody in the way that you'd want them to be.
But now people know that talent stacks and systems versus goals can be transformative, not just to society, but to people.
That's a big difference.
How about this? A few years ago, you would have said facts are more important than Persuasion.
Do you still say that? I think we understand now, in 2020, something that I said in 2013, in the same book, Had It Failed Almost Everything.
And in my book, Win Bigly, I said it more clearly and emphasized that persuasion is what is moving us Not facts.
Facts, of course, are the most important thing to the outcome, but we don't make decisions based on facts.
We're just not that species.
We thought we were.
Ten years ago, if I said, how do people make decisions, you'd say, well, they look at the facts, they use their reason.
What would you say today?
Today, you'd say, well, they'll look at the facts and then they'll use their bias to make the decision, right?
That's a big difference. We understand now we are an irrational species in a way we didn't really know 10 years ago.
I mean, you always sort of knew it, but you thought it was other people, didn't you?
Yeah, people are irrational, specifically other people.
But what you've learned recently is that, yeah, people are irrational, specifically other people, and also you.
Also you. Also me.
There's no... Nobody gets an exemption.
We're all irrational.
We're just trying to up our game.
But realizing you're irrational is the base requirement for improving your game.
Your thinking game, as it were.
That's a big difference.
Imagine a world that went from thinking facts matter to our decision to understanding they don't.
How big is that?
It's really big.
It's really big. Completely transforms your entire experience of reality.
How about this?
How much do you trust your narrative keepers?
How much do you trust the news?
You don't. Ten years ago, you probably said, well, if it's in the news, it's probably true.
Yeah, they can make some mistakes, but if it's in the news, it's probably true.
Now what do you think?
Now you know it's not true.
You don't wonder if the news is accurate.
You know it's not.
And that's now common knowledge.
President Trump did that for you.
President Trump took an illusion we were all under, that the news was something like a legitimate organization, and he taught us that it wasn't.
That it was always an illusion.
That the news is a propaganda sort of experience.
How about this? Do you trust science the way you used to?
Because I think what we've learned recently is that, yeah, you can trust science as a process.
But number one, you don't know where you are in the process.
It's a big problem, right?
We love science as a process of going from the unknown to learning something useful.
But you never quite know where you are on that journey.
Are you in the middle, where you're still confused, but it's different from where you started?
Or have you reached the end, where you actually know what's going on and it's not going to change?
You don't really know.
But there's a bigger problem.
We don't really trust science.
We end up trusting scientists.
And while I love science as a process, what do we know about people who are explaining to us anything?
Whether it's the news they're explaining to us or science they're explaining to us.
Well, what we know now is that it's being filtered through humans who are so flawed and so biased that it doesn't matter how good science is, you're never going to know.
Because the only thing you know is what a scientist tells you.
You don't know anything about science, unless you're directly involved in it.
We know what the scientists tell us.
And we now learned To distinguish, right?
I would say 10 years ago, you would have said that the scientist and the science, with all the different concepts, you could treat them like they're the same, right?
Because if the scientists told you something 10 years ago, you'd say, oh, that's what science says.
What do you say now?
Today, if a scientist tells you something, you're far more likely to say, wait a minute, That's not necessarily science.
That's a scientist who may be biased, may be bought off, may be wrong, may disagree with people.
But it's a different level of credibility, and now we understand that.
We didn't understand that before.
Of course, there are big changes in society.
Commuting will never be the same.
I don't think people will go back to the commuting ways that they had because it just was so unpleasant.
The only reason that commuting was the thing that it was, where it was not unusual for people to spend an hour each way to get to work at home, two hours in many cases.
I know people who commute two hours each way, every day.
I think that's going to go away, right?
I mean, I don't see people going back to that.
And here's the reason. I've taught you before that one of the best ways to predict the future, just one of the things that's a good variable to understand, is that people can get used to anything.
If it sort of creeps up on you, you can get used to it.
It wasn't always that a commute took forever and you sat in traffic.
You just sort of got used to it.
You hated it. You never got used to it in the sense that you didn't hate it, but you sort of accepted it because you got used to it.
Then the pandemic comes, and then suddenly you don't have to commute.
Now you're not used to it, are you?
Now, now commuting's a big problem because you're not used to it.
After the pandemic's over, you're going to say to yourself, what the heck did I ever...
Why was I doing that?
It was crazy.
I mean, now that we have the right technology that you can Work remotely.
It just doesn't make any sense.
So I don't see that ever going back.
Likewise, I don't see cities going back to what cities were.
I don't know what cities will become, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to live in one, especially because commuting doesn't make sense either.
So cities will change.
I don't know how. But again, I'll go back to the Andrew Yang running for, I think he's going to run for mayor of New York City.
Nothing Would be better for the United States.
And forget about what you think of Andrew Yang's party affiliation.
Let's say you're not a Democrat, so you just can't get on board with a Democrat thing.
But who would be smarter, better, more trusted, more qualified to do a little A-B testing and find out what a city can become?
Not what a city used to be, but what could a city become?
What is the thing that's after the pandemic?
Can you think of anybody in the public domain who you would trust to wrestle with that question?
Because there's no right answer.
Somebody's going to have to have some intuition, some skills, some real ability to dig in and be creative and take some chances and all that stuff.
He's perfect. He's perfect.
New York City... New York City, if you don't elect Andrew Yang, you're crazy.
You'd be absolutely crazy.
I don't care who he's running against.
Republican or Democrat, I don't care who he's running against.
You need to do this.
Not just for New York City.
You need to do it for the country.
Because whatever New York City does, everybody's going to watch, right?
And it's the biggest thing.
So if you can make it work in New York City...
There's a good reason you might be able to reproduce it.
So I see just the fact that there is an Andrew Yang, that he just exists, just the fact that he exists, and that he just paired himself with this specific problem, one of the most important levers for the future.
You don't get to the golden age without re-engineering some basic stuff.
As basic as UBI. Which, by the way, we just got used to.
That's what the direct payments are for the coronavirus.
It's kind of a UBI. In a way.
So that's coming.
I think that the future we will be able to beat pandemics better.
I think that what we learned from all of this, what we learned from the pandemic probably will put us in really good shape for future pandemics, but also future viruses and future collaborative science and collaborative medicine.
I think we took a gigantic step forward in terms of medical science, not to mention telehealth.
And things that changed because of the pandemic.
So now you can get a doctor on a video call, no matter what state you're in.
Shopping will always be different.
Here's another big change.
The rise of independent voices.
Let's say independent journalists, the Tim Pools of the world, independent voices, the Joe Rogans of the world, independent...
I'm not sure what you would call me.
Does anybody have a label for me?
What would you call me?
Tell me in the comments.
I'll look for it.
If you were to label me, pundit?
I'm not sure that pundit quite fits.
Because when you say pundit, you're usually thinking of somebody who's advocating one side or another.
I don't know. Maybe that's me.
But the rise of independent voices to replace a broken corporate media is probably a really good thing.
It's probably a really good thing.
And here's another thing that I don't think you quite understand how important it is.
Have you noticed that through my books and these live streams primarily that I've trained an army of better thinkers?
I know that sounds like a pretty, I don't know, egomaniac thing to say, but if you've experienced the last few years with me, I think you'd agree.
I think you would agree that I have succeeded in training a whole bunch of people.
I don't know how many. It's probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
But at least hundreds of thousands of people who have learned a different way to approach problems and maybe a better way.
So I think that's bigger than you think because you don't have to get everybody on board To know something is going to work.
If you get a critical mass, and I think we're maybe there, of better thinkers, that stuff will spread.
So that's something to look forward to.
I feel that television and movies are being replaced by other entertainment.
Livestream, for example.
On Christmas morning, What will be the only live content that's new, original content that's available for you to watch on Christmas morning?
Well, there'll be some news programs, right?
But they're all going to be the special holiday stuff you don't want to watch.
But then there'll be me, because I'll be here Christmas morning.
I'll see you then. And I think that the independent people, like me, Who just have some benefits that they can transmit are a big deal in the world.
Not just me, but the whole idea of it.
I think we're entering a phase where wokeness is jumping the shark like crazy.
Now, I'm in favor of wokeness.
But like everything, there's such a thing as too much.
I'm in favor of ice cream.
But if you ate a barrel of ice cream, you'd be sick and you might die.
There's no such thing, except for maybe money, I guess, or good looks.
There are some things that, you know, you just can have too much of.
And wokeness is one of them.
So I love the idea that any group of people can say, hey, we would rather be referred to by this term.
Please don't use this other term.
We don't like that.
I'm okay with that.
I think everybody should...
Just a basic element of respect is that you should be able to be referred to in a respectful word or way that you like.
But, of course, that can go too far, and then it becomes coercive, and I think we're seeing that.
So I think the wokeness stuff is starting to hit the wall.
It can't go forever.
There's nothing that really goes forever.
Everything hits a resisting point.
And I think the wokeness is near, but not at.
It's very near the point of resistance, where it just won't go further than that, because it can't.
It's just too stupid. So it's already reached a level of pure stupidity.
And once everybody realizes that, we'll say, all right, that's far enough.
We like the fact that we don't have insulting words for people.
But let's keep it to that.
But like I say, a lot of the wokeness stuff is all positive.
You just can't go too far with it, and then it becomes negative.
We're also entering a phase that I'll call a holographic reality, enhanced reality.
We are right on the cusp of merging the non-real and the real into one reality.
It might be because you're wearing some special glasses that show things in your reality that didn't exist.
And it's going to change everything.
You'll be able to put on 3D glasses and attend a meeting almost in person.
So those technologies, which we always knew were coming, 20 years ago you knew all these technologies were coming, but it just takes a while.
We're almost there.
This is sort of the coming year, this enhanced reality and virtual reality stuff is going to go to another level.
We also have a shift of awareness about things such as the role of China in the world.
Now we understand China as a malign influence.
I think we probably thought of them more as, let's say, a friendly competitor or something.
And our understanding of what China really is and what their intentions are, because they've made their intentions very clear too, unfortunately, Understanding that is a big, big psychological and mental shift, but it was necessary to keep us safe.
And here's another one.
Hallucinogens are being normalized, or in some cases legalized, but at least normalized.
Now, if you don't think it's a big deal that the safer kinds of Hallucinogens are being normalized and sort of being incorporated into medical science as well as our general understanding of how to live.
It's gigantic.
It's gigantic.
It's so gigantic, I don't even think I can explain it.
Because if you haven't experienced the hallucinogens, if you haven't experienced them, To know what they do to your understanding of reality that becomes permanent.
And here's the way I describe it.
If you live a world, let's say you do mushrooms as an example, and you experience life in a completely different subjective reality while understanding that life didn't change.
That the actual stuff that was bothering you before, none of it changed.
But you're a different person for a while.
Once you realize that you can live a completely different life with the same world, it changes you permanently.
Because then you understand how subjective your actual life is.
It's not the thing you're locked into.
Your life, you are not locked into, or the way you process it in your mind.
You can really change that.
And that one experience teaches you that, and then that lesson becomes something that reinforces itself through your life.
So what seems like a smallish little corner of the reality is, oh, by the way, some hallucinogens are being normalized.
It's a little bit at a time.
It feels like not a big thing.
It's a really big thing.
It's a really big thing.
And you don't know.
And by the way, if you want to find out how much exaggeration there is here, talk to somebody who has tried these things.
That's all. Just talk to somebody who has the experience and ask them if the change is permanent.
And they'll probably tell you yes.
They might not, but they probably will.
So... This is what I would like to leave you with today.
In summary...
In summary...
The United States is not held together by the stuff we thought held it together.
It's not because of the Constitution.
It's not because of freedom.
It's not because of our free press.
It's not because of any of it.
We just intend to stay together as a country, and none of that's changed.
You know, you hear people talk about blah, blah, blah, Texas is going to spin off.
But it doesn't want to, right?
Not really. Texas doesn't really want to be its own country.
It's something you say, something you talk about.
But given, you know, if the rest of the country just played fair, Texas wants to be part of the United States.
And keep this one message with you.
The intentions you put into the world will create your reality.
And the intention that I put into the world right now is that I want everybody in the United States, and again, you can generalize this to the world, but let me just talk to Americans and in the United States.
Black, Hispanic, Asian American, old, young, rich or poor, LGBTQ, abled, disabled, differently abled, every one of you.
I choose you.
I hope you choose me.
And that is my New Year's, actually Christmas Eve, message for you.
Have a great Christmas, and I will see you in the morning.
