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Oct. 17, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:56:46
3457 Freedom as Religion - Call In Show - October 14th, 2016
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Hey everybody, Stefan Mullaney from Freedom Main Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
So I try not to get too annoyed with callers the moment I start talking to them, but I don't always succeed in that goal, and the first caller we started off not on the best footing.
She wanted to know whether my belief in the free market was just another kind of religion, and my belief that the power of the free market could solve all the world's problems, and so on.
So we had a good conversation about that, and...
How the free market would handle things like poverty and dysgenics and so on.
Very, very enjoyable conversation, as it turned out.
The second caller was an MD-PhD student who's kind of concerned about the direction U.S. society is headed.
How could she protect her future, her family's future and society when she feels like she's being lied to and manipulated by the media?
Oh yes, as the song says, more than a feeling.
So we had a great conversation about that.
And then a young man called in who's becoming a teacher in the government school system.
And how is he supposed to help the students learn to think critically without getting fired?
Hmm, a tricky question.
And we had some good back and forth about some possible solutions.
Now, fourth, kind of on the human and skeptical side, a problem of practical epistemologies.
So like the vast majority of what we say we know, we only know because somebody else tells us.
How on earth are we supposed to judge who's reliable and who's not?
I guess the fact that he's asking me means he thinks I'm reliable, so I give you some of my thoughts about how we can figure out who we can rely on when it comes to getting information about the world.
And the fifth caller is a medical professional.
He runs a pro-Trump Facebook page and he's trying to flip over the fence-sitters to vote for Trump.
And what are the best ways to do it?
And I also asked him what his journey was towards finding some value in the candidacy of Donald Trump.
And he wanted to know what are the honest and logical...
Best ways that he can lead people into understanding the value of a candidate like Donald Trump.
So we had a good conversation about that.
Thank you everyone so much for listening, for watching, for subscribing.
Please help us out.
Please, please help us out at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
Don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Stefan Molyneux.
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And here we go.
Alright, well up first today we have Ruth.
Ruth wrote in and said, Have you ever considered that your belief in the free market and the power of the free market to solve all the world's problems is akin to a religious belief?
My time in the alt-right has led me from a general belief in the free market to a more skeptical outlook on free market economics for various reasons, but I'm willing to concede that I am not an economic expert and am open to new theories and explanations for how free markets can solve societal problems.
I'm not sure if free markets would be able to solve things like dysgenic birth rates, black crime, diversity, and the general feeling of belonging to a cohesive culture.
That's from Ruth.
Hi.
Hey, Ruth.
How are you doing?
Good.
How are you?
I'm alright.
I'm alright.
That's not alt-right.
I'm alright.
Just for those who get confused on these things.
Yeah.
Okay, so the language that you use is...
A bit annoying.
I'm just sort of telling you that up front.
It doesn't mean that you're wrong or I'm right.
It's just kind of annoying.
So it's a belief in the free market.
You say, I sort of have a belief in the free market.
Well, a belief without sort of rational evidence is religion, sort of by definition.
So the moment that you say, I just have a belief or I have a belief in the free market, you are moving it syntactically into the realm of of religion.
And if I say the power of the free market to solve all of the world's problems, now that is kind of a straw man and kind of easy to dismiss.
I certainly have never said that the free market will solve all of the world's problems.
I don't even know what all of the world's problems are.
Maybe if the free market solves all of the world's problems, people will be bored.
I don't know, right?
So, I mean, saying that I just have a belief Is not recognizing the arguments I've put forward for the morality and efficacy of the free market.
It's sort of saying, well, it's just a belief, as opposed to, I have a disagreement with your arguments, right?
Because learning the arguments I've made for the free market and rebutting them is a lot harder than just saying, well, Steph, you just have this belief.
And then the straw man saying, it's going to solve all the world, the free market can solve all the world's problems, is not what I've ever said.
So I just sort of wanted to point out at the beginning, it's a bit annoying in terms of how the question or the comment is phrased, if that makes sense.
Do you think the free market...
I guess I've heard you refer to the free market being able to solve dysgenic fertility and things like that a number of times, but I'm not really positive that it would.
Well, look, I mean, just because I say a can opener opens cans doesn't mean that I think a can opener can solve all the world's problems, right?
So saying, well, Steph, you've said that the free market can help solve dysgenic breeding doesn't mean that I've said it solves all the world's problems, if that makes sense.
Sure.
I just, I'm not sure it would solve that particular problem, I guess.
Well, compared to what?
So, compared to what other...
Because the free market is simply voluntary trade, voluntary interactions.
Non-coercive, either at a state or individual level, right?
Because if it's coercive, it's a crime, not part of the free market.
And if it's state, then it's just a different kind of crime, and again, not part of the free market.
So, if you're saying that voluntary, peaceful interactions can't solve a particular problem, My question is, compared to what?
Do you mean compared to state power?
Compared to coercion?
What is it that you think could solve the problem that the free market can't?
I think it would be good if governments gave smart people incentives to breathe.
If governments gave smart people incentives to breathe?
Yes.
All right.
And where would they get the money to provide those incentives?
From dumb people?
From everyone, I guess.
From mediocre people.
Well, no, because mediocre people tend not really to pay that much in taxes, and usually they're net beneficiaries to a tax system.
So I think what would happen is you'd say, well, I want to pay smart people to breed, and therefore what I need to do is I need to take money from smart people, run it through a bureaucracy, and give them some of their money back in order to breed.
Well...
Hmm.
Because, I mean, you know, the government doesn't have any money of its own, right?
Yeah, sure.
So where's it going to get the money?
Right now, it's a progressive tax system, and the top 1% or 2% pay huge proportions of the taxes.
Whereas, of course, in the free market, the richest people, i.e.
the smartest people, and, you know, the two are not synonymous, but they're pretty closely related.
The smart people make the most money anyway.
IQ is strongly correlated.
And dose-dependent to income, right?
So smart people will make lots of money.
And so I don't know that the government, in taking some of that money away and then returning them a small portion, is doing anything other than lessen.
And remember, smart people are outnumbered by not smart people, right?
I mean, just sort of by definition, the top quintile, the top 20% of intelligence, is outvoted by the bottom 80%.
So the moment you have a democracy or any kind of voter system, smart people are going to be outvoted by less intelligent people.
And so whatever program you set up to, I don't know, take money from smart people and then give some portion of it back is going to be very quickly taken over by less smart people who are going to vote to redirect the money towards themselves.
So...
Do you think there is a way to solve that problem of smart people not having kids?
I read this book by Richard Lin called Dysgenics.
Are you familiar with Richard Lin at all?
Yeah, he's been on the show.
I'll have to listen to that.
The book is called Dysgenics and in it he's arguing that this dysgenic fertility has been going on for over 200 years.
And it was really, a big part of it was caused by smart people reading about birth control and stupid people not reading about it or not being effective, effectively using birth control.
That's one of the big arguments in that.
Right, okay, so then the question is, how did the children of the poor people, like, why did they have so many kids?
I guess that they're more content for those poor kids to grow up in poverty.
Is that...
Is that fair?
Yeah, probably.
Or maybe they were...
There's also, you know, there was charity for, you know, forever.
And probably, you know, happened more after industrialization.
So that kind of...
Didn't that kind of incentivize dumb people to breed more, too?
Well, sure.
If they have...
I mean, if they're getting sufficient charity, then they might as well have lots of kids, right?
But...
In a free society, of course, there would still be charity, but I think the charity would recognize that poor people or single moms and so on, and I've talked about this before, but my concern is that they kind of have kids and they can't afford the kids.
And then they say, well, you don't want my kids to starve, do you?
Give me some money, right?
Look at the poor, hungry, starving children and you've got to give them money because they're hungry and...
You know, that's not really the same as being a parent.
That's almost like having hostages.
You know, like, I had these kids.
I can't afford to feed them.
You don't want them to starve, do you?
So give me some money.
Now, the solution to that, I'm not sure.
Because the beauty of the free market is you don't need to solve problems.
You just need to free people.
Right?
I don't know the solution.
However...
I will say this.
I will say that I would not want to contribute to any charity that encouraged irresponsible breeding from people who could not afford their kids.
Isn't that kind of like what a lot of those charities in Africa are doing?
Like basically making people in Africa have a population explosion?
Well, I mean...
White people going to Africa caused a massive population explosion.
I talk about this in The Truth About South Africa, just the population growth.
When white people went to South Africa and introduced more stable governments and healthcare and better agricultural methods and better distribution and roads and railways, all that kind of stuff.
Massive population explosion, which is tragically beginning to reverse itself.
With modern, at least in South African governments and other aspects.
And, you know, this is a huge problem, and I'm really, really glad that you brought it up.
Because human beings evolve by letting the weak not survive.
However, when we achieve civilization...
We don't like to see the weak not survive.
With compassion, right?
Again, I don't know the huge answer to that at all.
But the way that things used to work was that if you had children you could not afford, then what you would do is you would give those children up for adoption.
And you would be encouraged to do so.
And of course there were, and still are of course, Belief systems and theologies, in particular Catholicism, which frown upon birth control and so on.
And that's not as strong a factor in a free society in the future.
I mean, a society I don't think can be as free as I envision it while still having The foundation of religious beliefs.
And again, I'm talking about way down the road when philosophy has replaced religion and has given, I think, people even more compelling reasons to be good, not this sort of nihilism and leftism that seems to be replacing religion at the moment, which I view as worse than religion, at least worse than Christianity.
So, in the future, if somebody has a child that the parent can't afford, Then the traditional solution to that has been to encourage the parents to give the child up for adoption.
And that takes away the hostage scenario of, well, I had this kid.
What are you going to do?
Just let it starve?
Come on!
Right?
I mean, that's not a great solution or outcome to that situation because it does encourage people to have children in order to gain resources.
Children Are a huge resource consumption, right?
I mean, they cost time, they cost money, they cost sleep, they cost huge amounts, right?
And that's the fundamental economics of it.
And if you reverse those economics, in other words, if having children goes from being a resource consumption to a resource production, which is the welfare state, right?
The more kids you have, the more free stuff you get.
That, of course, is going to hyper-accelerate the reproduction rates of irresponsible people and it's going to decelerate the reproduction rates of responsible people.
This and a whole bunch of other things where it's like, oh, you've got to have a career first.
Oh, you've got tons of time.
Oh, there's things down the road.
Oh, not being a parent is so much fun.
Oh, here's another movie and another TV show showing just how exhausted and tired and upset parents are.
Oh, let's have both people working to make parenting as little fun as possible so to scare other people off from having children.
Oh, let's think about the environment.
Oh, there's too many people on the planet.
All of these things...
That are put out into the ether specifically designed to stop smart people from having kids.
That's all over the place.
And so, but that's, you know, a lot of that comes from government power.
A lot of that comes from entities that get a lot of government resources like environmentalism and so on.
So, you definitely don't want to turn a situation around in society where having children becomes a way of getting resources rather than spending resources.
And the welfare state does that, and the welfare state is inevitably going to do that.
Wasn't it, do you think that, like, maybe in the 1800s, when having a lot of kids meant they could, like, you know, do child labor or work on your farm?
Is that similar at all or not really?
Because I'm just thinking, like, of a case where having children would actually increase your resources, that type of thing.
Yeah, no, that's a good question.
I don't really know the answer to that.
I've not really thought about it, which is surprising, I guess, because it is such a good question.
Okay, so let's go down that road, because I think there's ways to unpack it that can be helpful.
So, I mean, I got my first paid employment when I was about 10 years old.
And I've been working continuously ever since.
So, if your children are on the farm and husking corn or milking cows or whatever, then what happens is they grow up with a lot of discipline.
They grow up knowing that you have to work in order to provide value, that things don't just spring out of the ground or dump themselves in your mailbox.
On their own, right?
And so you have a situation where children are an asset to the parents and they also become an asset to society because they learn how to work hard and provide value and have discipline and do a good job, right?
Because, you know, the old thing that happens with kids is that kids, you know, just watch kids doing dishes, right?
I mean, they do a bad job to some degree in the hopes that if they do a bad job, you'll end up Giving up on having them do it and they'll just be able to sort of not do it.
You know, they put this resistance in and so on.
And the way you counter that is, well, you do it till you get it right.
And so they learn how to do a good job.
They learn how to pursue quality.
They learn the consequences of doing a shoddy job, which is that they have to keep doing it till they get it right.
And so those people, those kids will grow up to be, at least let's just sort of say from a basic economic standpoint, Those kids will grow up to be enormous beneficiaries, the benefits to society.
And so I don't particularly mind if kids start working earlier rather than later because they'll learn all those good work habits and be productive and positive to society as a whole.
Do you think the free market can solve the differential crime rates between races or make people...
Do you think it can help with that problem at all?
Well, that's another great question.
The free market can't affect genetics in the short run, obviously, right?
And the degree to which lower IQ and higher testosterone and differential crime rates are genetic, well, the free market can't magically solve that.
Without sort of picking on any particular ethnicity, I will say this, that less intelligent people need more immediate incentives.
So when I was six years old, I wrote my first short story.
I remember it very clearly.
I was in Africa and the story was of a man Who had a farm in the outback, Australia, in the savannah.
And a cheetah staggered into his farm and was not well, looked kind of bloated and sick and swaying.
And he tried nursing it back to health, tried nursing it back to health.
Then one day he realized it was going to die.
And he went to bed with a heavy heart and he woke up the next morning And the cheetah had given birth to six pups and was not actually sick.
It was pregnant.
That was my big twist at six, right?
Now, I then continued to write stories and poems.
I wrote a science fiction.
I started a science fiction novel when I was 11 called By the Light of an Alien Sun, which my English teacher actually read out to the class.
There were parts of it, which was a lot of fun.
And I continued to write.
Now, what was the payoff for all of that writing?
Well, it was literally decades down the road.
And now, my books are downloaded 150,000 times a month and are having significant impact on countless people's thinking, but that's a long way off from six, right?
And if you're less intelligent, you need more immediate feedback.
You need stronger incentives.
And this, of course, is one of the great tragedies of the welfare state, is that the welfare state becomes proportionately more attractive The less intelligent you are, because it provides you greater resources than you could probably earn in the free market.
And also, the welfare state provides you benefits now, whereas deferring gratification, getting educated, getting up, going to work, and all of that will provide you benefits a long way down the road.
And that's a great tragedy of the welfare state, is it gives the wrong incentives and the most immediate incentives, which means that the less intelligent are the most likely to get ensnared in it.
Now, in a free market, the incentives are going to be pretty immediate, right?
I mean, assuming you're able-bodied, if you don't have a job, you won't be able to buy stuff.
And that may initially be As a teenager, right, you don't want to just sort of put people out on the street and say, go for it, right?
But as a teenager, I mean, that was very clear to me that if I wanted to buy stuff, I had to work, right?
So I had three jobs at one point in high school for a couple of years.
I was a cleaner of offices.
I worked in a hardware store.
And I can't remember the other job, but I had paper routes.
I I worked in a variety of different places and then I eventually got into waitering.
I just had to work in order to have stuff and so you get into that habit of just getting up, providing value and making some bank.
And you need that for young people.
And the less intelligent they are, the more they need that kind of discipline.
You know, I knew guys who came from smart families and they generally lazed around all summers.
Kind of drove me crazy because I generally never had that kind of luxury.
And, you know, their lives have turned out fine.
They've become professionals for the most part and teach at universities and all that.
Because they could laze around all summer, but they knew that they had the brains to really make a go of it in some intellectual field.
So it didn't do them any particular harm.
So the free market...
Is going to provide those kinds of incentives to less intelligent people.
Less intelligent people generally are going to come from less intelligent families.
Less intelligent families have fewer resources, which means if you want to buy stuff, you have to get a job.
And so you get that kind of discipline.
And I think it can help solve things from that standpoint.
In the long run, if you want a more intelligent society, you have to let more resources accrue to the smartest people so that they can have the most kids.
This is how, according to some Theoreticians, one of whom I've had on this show, this is how Ashkenazi Jews became so intelligent with an IQ of standard deviation above whites and a little bit less above Asians.
And they went that way because the smartest people had the most kids.
The rabbis took a lot of intelligence to become a rabbi.
And rabbis were highly respected and female intelligence was highly respected and there are some modern indications, I think, that intelligence passes through the mother more so than the father.
And so the rabbis were the smartest.
They had the most children and they found this very easy to verify.
And so you had a third of an IQ point gain over each generation.
And then you've ended up with where things are now.
And so that example of the smartest people get the most resources is well borne out by that.
And that's what you want.
And the only thing that can provide that is a free market.
Because again, you either have a dictatorship.
In other words, you have sort of the platonic philosopher kings who take from the poor and give to the rich.
Which is sort of pointless because in a free market, the rich will earn more than the poor anyway.
And you won't have to spend all this money controlling the poor.
I mean, aside from the morality of it all and so on.
So the free market is naturally going to accrue the most resources to the smartest people.
And the fewest resources to the less intelligent people.
And if you have a philosophy of, you know, it's fun to be a family man, it's fun to be a family woman and, you know, have kids and go forth and multiply, then rich people will do that and will enjoy it.
Because, you know, parenting is more fun when you have money.
Sorry.
It's true.
It's true.
I mean, I grew up dirt poor.
I'm not dirt poor now.
And parenting...
Is more fun when you have some money.
You're not always having to say no.
You're not always feeling bad.
Kids aren't always frustrated and looking enviously at other kids and all that.
I mean, you don't obviously want to spoil your kids, but if you have more resources, like, I mean, if the woman can stay home and breastfeed and run a great house and so on, and you can all be comfortable, then parenting becomes more fun when you have more money.
And...
So, again, I can't think of anything other than the free market.
If you go democracy, well, the poor vote to take away the property of the rich and everyone goes poor.
If you go dictatorship, well, okay, so you can say, well, only the smart people are going to have power.
However, that might work, but it still won't be as efficient in the allocation of resources as the free market is for concentrating more resources in the hands of the smarts, plus the moral issues, initiation of force and so on.
I can't see any other way than the market that can work it out.
So, do you agree with, like, Trump's economic policies with trade protectionism and that type of thing, or are you against that?
Oh, Mike, you're saying the pass-through-the-mother thing has been rebutted?
But it just came out a couple of weeks ago.
Already?
I haven't dug too deep into it, but some people I respect have been very critical of it, so I can't say definitively, but I'd question it.
I hope it's true.
All right.
Okay, so here we go.
Instead of intelligence passes through the mother, it's intelligence passes through the mother?
Okay, there we go.
There's a little question mark at the end, so just so everyone can email us and say, it's not true!
Okay, fine.
So Trump's plan for tariffs?
That was your question, right?
Well, if it's over and above existing taxes, then no.
If it's a replacement for income taxes, it's definitely a step in the right direction.
Because if you have tariffs rather than taxes, and I've spoken about this before, so I'll be very brief, but tariffs are avoidable, and taxes, income taxes, are not.
Tariffs do have the capacity to stimulate internal trade and the creation of jobs, and taxes have the opposite effect, right?
Taxes drive jobs overseas, tariffs tend to keep them domestically, so if I have the choice Between an income tax and a tariff, I will choose a tariff both morally and practically.
And he does seem to want to lower corporate taxes, income taxes, because a lowering of corporate taxes is the same effectively as lowering income tax.
Because if you lower corporate taxes, then there's more money available to bid up the wages of workers.
And so worker salary increases in the same way, that if you Lower income tax, a worker's salary increases.
So I think if you have to have a tax, that's the one you want.
And of course, that's how America was founded, was on that.
Okay.
Well, I think that answers pretty much all my questions, I believe.
All right.
You're very smart.
Go forth and multiply.
Thanks.
And don't hang up while you're doing it, you know.
I like some fun too.
All right.
Thanks very much for the call.
I appreciate it.
And you're certainly welcome back anytime.
I always like it when it's like, hey, great question.
I have no idea what to think of that.
So really, really good.
Great stuff.
Thank you.
Great.
Thanks.
All right.
Up next is Sophie.
She wrote in and said, I am an MD slash PhD student concerned about the direction the U.S. society is headed.
How do I protect my future, my family's future, and society when I'm not given all the facts?
As an intellectual, I feel like an outsider.
My ancestors were Irish Protestants and French Huguenots who fought for freedoms, and I feel as though I'm a sheep.
How can I be successful in a society that finds morality and truth to be unpopular?
That's from Sophie.
Hello.
Hey Sophie, are you calling from the States?
I have a dual citizenship.
I have Irish citizenship and American citizenship.
I was born in Dublin, but I moved here when I was, I say, three and a half.
Right.
So you have warring impulses to get drunk, write poetry, and invade the Middle East.
No, I'm quite a lightweight, to be honest.
Surprisingly, I don't like Guinness, even though everyone asks me, so I can't stand it.
It makes me...
Oh, Guinness is horrible.
I'm sorry to say this.
You know, as I used to say, you know, somebody said, do you want a slice of Guinness?
It's like, hack me off a slice of Guinness.
Oh, It's like something that solidified in the bottom of a bilge and then they added bitterness and evil to it.
I like Jack Daniels, but because I'm pretty much a hermit most days, I don't go drinking because I can't focus for about a week after I drink.
I'm a light beer kind of guy if I'm going to drink at all.
And I mean, I just have the shorthand now.
It's like, just bring me the gayest beer you have.
Exactly.
That's like, give me a beer that can quote Oscar Wilde and knows how to vogue.
I just, I need the gayest conceivable beer that you have.
Oh, and also add some lime to it to make it even gayer.
So that's my, that's my hard drinking kind of lifestyle.
You mentioned the lime.
Unfortunately, I've been, I work in a medical field, or in the medical field, and I have been diagnosed with OCD. So when they give me a lime to go with my drinks, I just get very disgusted.
I'm just like, okay, you just ruined the drink.
Oh, is that the OCD? Is that because of the coloring?
Oh, no.
It's just because I've done my own research on the bacterial content of the little lime wedges that they gave you in a pub or something.
Oh, no, no.
Nothing that...
No, no.
Mine's even gayer.
I want lime cordial on the side.
Oh, jeez.
And if you can get a little cherry with an umbrella through it, I'm telling you, it's like...
Yeah, absolutely.
It's like my friend who drinks port wine.
I'm like, are you a grandfather yet?
And he's only like 24.
And he's from Wicklow.
I want some brandy and absinthe!
You're like Byron here?
Anyway, it's such an honor to be talking to you.
My mom introduced me to your show about two or three months ago, and I've been listening to your videos ever since then.
I'll have you on the background and be writing.
Yeah, like, I mean, I do as well.
I, for some reason, have this kind of, like, I'm a Gemini, even though I don't really believe in the whole, you know, kind of twins.
I mean, I feel like it's true, though, in my respect, where I have, like, a part of me that likes to study excessively all the time, and then there's another part where it's just like, oh, party all the time and have adrenaline-seeking behaviors.
So, anyway, how that relates to everything we were just saying was...
It just depends how much Lyme you've got in your system.
Yes, that's vomit-worthy.
Anyway, I digress.
It's not surprising to me that the Irish part of you reacts very strongly to tropical fruits.
Because it's not like you grew up around them, you know, as evolutionarily speaking.
Well, we're going to call this potato a fruit and then pretend we won't get scurvy.
All right.
Anyway, yeah, so I actually have to interject something.
I actually wrote about a page or more like a paragraph and a half when I first messaged Michael my question because I am generally not a very emotional person or I try not to be because the school I go to, I mean, I'm in a pretty rigorous program and I have to be kind of like...
I've been my attending slave for about three or four years, and I have to have no opinions to myself.
So I've had to, like, damper that side.
So a very traditional side came out.
I try to be as objective as possible.
Currently pursuing an MD-PhD program and the PhD portion is Social and Behavioral Sciences.
So there's a lot of research that I do and of course that comes with a lot of, or at least, attempted objectivity.
So my questions to you are very emotional based, I suppose.
Yeah.
Did we, did we, I mean, Mike read a sort of a summary.
Is there something you wanted to add?
Well, I guess I wrote it wrong as far as like the moral thing.
I said, you know, how can I be successful in a society where, you know, morality, well, obviously morality is society based.
Of course, you know, the right and wrongs of society are Generally, you take the average amount of what people consider to be moral.
That's the morality of the society.
I meant to say...
Okay, and everyone's definition of right and wrong is different.
So, I guess, how can I be successful in a society where, of course, truth, meaning that the facts are irrelevant.
Sorry, I have gum in my mouth.
And the, you know, just the decisions for people to not be greedy or, you know, it's just not popular to not be greedy.
And I guess I'm naive and I've spent too much time in school and not in the real world, but I don't know.
I just, anyway, I'm on a tangent.
Well, let's start with this part where you said everyone's definition of right and wrong is different.
Yes, that's right, yeah.
Yeah, I don't...
I mean, you could say that that's true, but that doesn't mean that it's a correct statement, right?
I mean, let's just say you've got three people in a room, right, and one person thinks the Earth is flat, one person thinks the Earth is banana-shaped, and one person thinks the Earth is a sphere.
You can say, well, everybody's view of the shape of the Earth is different, but that doesn't mean that they're interchangeable and have the same truth content, right?
So it's true that a lot of people have different views, of right and wrong, but that doesn't mean that all views of right and wrong are equally valid.
Fair enough, yeah.
I guess the major thing I wanted to discuss with you today is So I spent my entire life, you know, the funny thing is when you talked about your childhood, I can relate so much to it.
I kind of grew up in a, well, a very Irish-German, actually.
What, seriously?
Yes, no!
Half Irish!
My sister!
My sister!
We have been lost and separated from the original sod blanket where Irish children are born.
Lo, these many moons!
And, you know, it's all about pretty much the hard right over the easy wrong and, you know...
You really don't put yourself in front of anyone else.
Well, God comes first.
I was unfortunately somehow raised both Catholic and Protestant.
My dad is oddly Catholic and my mom is Protestant.
Anyway, so I'm all messed up, I suppose.
But the thing is, I prided myself on...
I just saw at a very young age just...
The lack of, I guess, education or just ignorance and how ignorance is just so, it's so defeating and it keeps people in these cycles that ultimately contribute to a very depressing state of affairs.
And, you know, I remember, you know, when I would go back to Ireland and Just growing up and seeing all these people complain about their situations and everything like that and how they're stuck in these areas of poverty.
I never agreed with that.
I thought, you know, come on, there are solutions.
I don't know.
I guess I call it reckless optimism, but I've always thought that, okay, I need to learn a system.
As much as I have everything I can, regardless of what people say.
And that will, you know, get me away from this.
That will help me to be a good person in my eyes.
Because I won't be, you know, 80 years old and complaining about how, you know, I'm still on the same street and...
You know, I have 50 kids and anyway, that's definitely probably silly.
So the thing is, I've gotten myself to this place where, you know, I'm taking, I'm in a very rigorous program and I am in, you know, I'm living in the States and it's so easy to become a hermit.
in my program where I can shut off everything that's going on around me outside of the walls that I'm in 24-7 almost and not really see what's going on outside and you know when the sorry when the elections or when this you know Trump and all this Clinton stuff started happening really wasn't like reading into the news because I was like oh you know politics is very depressing I have So many other things that I need to worry about.
So when people started asking me, oh, so what's the candidate you're actually voting for?
And I'm like, oh, well, you know, I really don't know.
And I don't like being able to say that.
I don't like saying, no, I don't have a stance on this because I haven't had the time to really research into everything.
And then my mom is a very...
She does that all the time.
She researches into politics.
She actually has a degree in philosophy.
Fair enough.
And she got me into, okay, you know, you need to answer that question.
So I started doing crazy hours of, you know, reading into both or all the candidates' philosophies or just their, you know, what they want to do when they become presidents.
And I decided, you know, okay, I believe that Trump is who I want to vote for.
And so...
Okay, I'm going on many tangents, but it all interconnects.
No, it's fine.
It's fine.
Listen, you know what?
I promise.
No, don't apologize.
Don't pause.
You need a space to be heard.
I'm making notes.
I'm perfectly happy to let you keep going.
You're excellent.
Thanks so much.
Yeah, so the thing is, I just see what's happening.
I don't know.
It's just...
Okay, it's really hard to say all of what I'm feeling right now because on the one hand, you know, I find that there's a set of laws in this country that, you know, people must abide by or at least they should abide by and I see it blatantly not being followed and they're not getting into trouble for it.
Such as, of course, the Hillary email case.
And, I mean, there's just evidence upon evidence of just, it's happening.
And then I see it, they're not being, like I said, punished for it.
Whereas, and so I'll talk to people about this, and they become...
Very upset with me.
I mean, I'm talking about my friends and other people that I spend day to day with at school, and they say how, you know, oh, I... Well, they've actually called me stupid or a racist, to be honest.
But that's, I guess that's what they always say.
Anyway, so what I'm trying to say is, I just see such double standards.
I see people not really caring about the fact that, oh yeah, there are facts out there.
There's evidence to show that this person, you know, there's collusion, there's corruption, and yet that's not important at this very stage.
And Of the election or just society in general.
And it's very depressing.
And I mean, that's one issue I'm having.
And I just feel like such an outsider.
I mean, it took a long time to really, I guess, assimilate into a culture here.
I mean, my parents are very...
Different than the American culture.
I mean, my father, I don't believe I have ever seen him cry before.
I mean, that's not because it's stereotypical German.
It's just because that's how it is.
And then my mom is just very tight-lipped and she doesn't really...
So my family lives in the States now and I just feel like, am I doing the right thing by staying here?
By just being...
I don't know, doing my school stuff for, you know, the next until I'm about 60 years old.
I'll probably make better than McDonald's pay.
But I just...
I just don't know why what I've been grown up or what I've been taught since I was born, which was right and wrong, like follow the laws, right from wrong, things like that.
It's obviously not important.
And I'm like, I already feel like an outsider anyway, but now very much so.
And it's very scary because I don't want to go back to Ireland.
I'm in this great program and I need to protect my family because They work every single day to pay whatever they have to pay for in a society that's just really taking advantage of them.
Okay, that is a very tangential statement I said there.
No, no, but I think you're touching on...
Different many topics.
What a lot of people know.
And I don't want to be a doomsday prepper because that's just silly.
Okay, there is so much validity to that.
It's just that I just feel like a sheep.
I mean, if that makes any sense.
I feel like I'm blindly following the ignorant masses to the slaughter.
I don't know.
Right.
No, listen, I mean, what you're touching on is what a lot of people face, what I face, what my friends have faced.
Right.
What our kids are going to face.
What you're touching on is very important and very deep stuff.
There's a matrix, right?
We are born into reason and evidence and then we are programmed into this kind of weird social compliance with non-entities and then if we are touched by the electric arc of reason and evidence, We're jolted out of the matrix, and what is our relationship to the muggles who are still surrounding us?
It is a very, very tough question.
I mean, you can, of course, design a life, and you say this hermit-ness, right, this isolation that you have.
So part of it is to say, well, I'll surround myself with good thoughts and good information, and not so much the people around me, right?
That's one thing.
That's not living though, I believe.
No, it's not going to be very satisfying for very long.
It's like being an alcoholic.
You're just numbing yourself until the next day.
But then, you know, you don't really...
I mean, life is good and bad.
You don't have to have it all even-keeled.
Life is not like that, I realize.
I'm sorry.
There are two snippets of songs that I remember with this that really struck me.
Because I was facing that, not live in the woods, but...
Splendid.
The life of splendid isolation.
All right, hang on.
Hang on.
I gave you a long time to talk, all right?
So don't keep talking when I talk.
So this sort of life of splendid isolation is very tempting.
Yeah.
Very tempting.
It's not a super great album, but there's a little snippet on Queen 1, Queen's first song, where he says, And anyway, I've got to hide away.
And then this is, and I've got to hide away.
I've got to hide away.
I've got to hide away from the world.
And then the Pete Townsend song off White City, a novel, at the end he says, I gotta hide out, yeah, hide out.
And it's hiding, the sense of you have a depth of spirit, you have a passion for virtue, you have a commitment to truth that turns you from companion to prey, right?
Turns you from someone who's, you know, easy to sit with at a dinner table and joke about whatever to someone who Who brings out the feral in others because of your dedication.
When you become real, everyone else realizes that they're ghosts.
When you think for yourself, it exposes the emptiness of other people.
And they don't like it.
They view you as someone dangerous to them, which, in fact, you are.
I mean, authenticity is the natural enemy.
Oh, the unconscious enemy of the false self, right?
And I've got podcasts on sort of the false self thing.
Yeah, so the false self is that which we construct because honesty is punished.
It's the social shell we construct because we are attacked and rejected and scorned for honesty and we simply cannot survive as children.
If we are rejected by our parents, I'm not saying this was the case with you, Sophia, like I'm not saying this was imminent, but evolutionarily speaking, right, it was so brutal for children who displeased their parents.
Infanticide was very common.
You know, the Aztecs, what are they, like slaughter 60,000 people in one festival, most of them kids and all that.
So their child sacrifice and, you know, the Polynesians would throw kids into the shark-infested waters who displeased them.
And in Sparta, they inspected children and just left them out to die if they were less than perfect and So children really had to conform in order to survive.
And most of what we call culture throughout all of human history was a collective psychosis that you were killed for questioning.
And so it was very dangerous for the true self, for the honest connection to reality, to philosophy, to recent evidence.
Thinking for yourself is extremely dangerous.
And so we have an aversion to it as a society.
And the only way that we can not have that aversion is to do it alone, to think alone, to think in isolation, to think in solitariness.
It's like having some god-awful guilty, terrible habit that you can't do in front of anyone.
You know, I torture kittens, and I can't do that in public, but that's not the bad part.
The bad part is I think for myself, and that's even worse, you know.
And so we have to construct this social self that laughs along with the collective psychosis called particularly modern culture.
Like, I think there was cultures in the past that were better, but this modern politically correct social justice warrior dominated stuff.
I mean, it's just a complete collective psychosis.
And so when you think for yourself And you then bring that thinking for yourself in conversation with other people.
They freak out.
At an existential level, or more accurately, at a metaphysical level.
Because they think they're something which is a person, but they're not.
They are a sort of Empty cowhide wrapping over the giant gift of collective psychosis inflicted on most of us through childhood, through schools, through churches, through, you know, family sometimes as well.
And when you come back to life, everyone thinks that they're surrounded by people, but they're not.
They're surrounded by dead history.
They're surrounded by emptiness.
They're surrounded by aggressive nothingness and conformity.
And the people aren't there.
Most people, in my experience, maybe you feel differently, but most people aren't really there.
I agree.
Because they will say, yeah, they say they believe something, and you say, why?
They don't know.
No, they don't.
And they get angry at you for saying, why?
And this is all the way back to Socrates, right?
Socrates says, I'm wise because at least I know the stuff that I don't know.
Everyone else pretends they know, but I accept that I don't know.
And so I think this is why I wanted you to talk to the length that you did and want you to keep talking because what you're talking about It's something we have to deal with because either we're going to grab the wheelhouse and move society back towards reason and evidence or we're going to live this tortured exoskeleton existence out here among the fringes of the edges of the universe trying to occasionally hold our breath and dip in to grab a little bit of social contact like we're trying to pry a pearl out of a very dangerous oyster halfway down the ocean where we don't have any scuba gear and we've got to hold a little knife between our teeth and bubbles coming out of our nose
and just before our chest explodes we get back to the surface.
It's not much of a life.
We either are in charge and steer The empty to the actual reality of their emptiness and get them to deal with the existential crisis called you don't exist!
You are a collection of straw men.
It's that great poem, T.S. Eliot, we are the straw men.
Beautiful.
Alas.
Yeah, headpieces filled with straw.
It's a fantastic poem.
Mike, if you could actually just give me a link to that.
I'll do the first couple of lines of that.
It's beautiful.
It's called The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot.
And this is a fundamental problem.
We can't coexist with the dead.
We must lead them back to life.
And there's no other.
You can't go back into the matrix.
You can't undo.
The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original shape.
And once you stretch yourself into the land of the living, You can't get back into the grave, even if you want it.
You can't.
You can't go back into the matrix.
Because there's no self-erasure of the knowledge that got you out of there.
And so we have to become leaders.
And the challenge is, how do you lead people who think you're insane?
Okay, and you know this one, right?
So I'll let you take it from here.
How do you lead people?
people.
You can lead people like, well, they know we've got to go north because that's where the caribou were going and we need to follow the food source.
We've got to go north.
And you're like, I've got a great way to go north.
We're going to do X, Y, and Z.
They're like, okay, you're the leader.
We don't know if you're right, but at least we all agree that we have to go north.
Whereas, you know, if you want to try and be a leader in the modern world, most people are like, okay, we're going to set fire to our hair and then run off a cliff.
Who's with me?
That's where they get to.
I mean, I see it so much in healthcare.
I mean, no, okay, that's kind of different.
But what I try to say is to my family, I see facts in front of me and I try to help them through struggles that they're doing or they're having to go through because I've gone through similar struggles.
And it's just very...
It's upsetting because I try to show them the facts.
I show them, okay, this is what happens after this, and then the cause and effects of these actions are going to lead you here.
But they don't want to...
To care about it.
And then they get very upset with me and then they say that I'm crazy.
I believe I do have existential depression.
However, I don't know if that's really like DSM-5, technically speaking, but I just think that it's been a very depressing journey because I've tried to find the truth in things and then I find that the people that The people that are surrounding me are duplicities and these people that are good people,
the people I love, other people that I don't love, it's just that I've seen them and I care for people's lives and I just see them blindly following this fake thing which doesn't exist and it's like how is that living at all?
Life is just so incredibly amazing.
I've kind of experimented as far as, like, I've tried so many different things.
I tried to learn as much as possible.
My grandfather, I mean, he was a renaissance man.
He knew everything.
He knew how to...
I mean, there's a great quote from, I think his name is Robert Ensign Heinlein.
He used to do a lot of...
He was a novelist, but anyway, it said, like, a human being has to...
Basically, essentially, we're not...
We don't specialize.
We're supposed to learn pretty much everything or know how to do as much as possible, like conorship, butcher a hog, you know, change a diaper, things like that.
I mean, that's what life's about, because we only have one life, and it's like...
And then once you find yourself in so many different...
Interests or you learn so many things, you start to see the connections.
I mean, everything is really interconnected and then it starts to make sense and there's less fear because, you know, ignorance causes fear.
I mean, fear of the unknown and everything like that and then it sets you in the cycle of It's just not good for you.
Just so people know, Robert Heinlein is, of course, as you know, a very famous science fiction writer.
The moon is a harsh mistress and other ones.
This is the quote.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, con a ship, It's beautiful.
I told my attending that, because they're like, so what do you want to do, you know, when you finally graduate here?
And I'm like, ah, I want to do...
Plan an invasion!
Orthopedic surgery, neurosurgery, pretty much ENT, everything.
And they're like, oh, we don't really like you too much.
But, yeah, no.
And today I was thinking, okay, you know, I need to go and buy land...
Far away and put my mom, who's like 60 years old now, there and have her get some chickens and goats and stuff and keep her safe.
No, no, no.
She doesn't have to live.
No, Sophie, Sophie, no.
Don't run away.
I'm not going to run away.
I have to stay in this program for a long time.
Don't hide with chickens and your mom somewhere.
I do.
I mean, no, the future needs you.
I mean, I need you.
I mean, we're all up on this wall.
We need you.
Because the more of us there are...
Well, it is if you don't plan your life with the knowledge that we're talking about here.
Right, yeah.
Just be courageous and continue on.
No, that's a meaningless fortune cookie.
Just be courageous and continue on.
Yes, that's a good plan.
How do you implement that?
I don't know, but it has something to do with changing a diaper.
Right, no.
Look, The rarer something is, the more you need to look for it, right?
That's true, yeah.
And so, my particular...
I can only speak from, obviously, my experience that this is not necessarily prescriptions for actions, but these are things that have worked for me.
People generally don't exist in any meaningful psychological situation.
Or spiritual sense.
They're just a collection of random things that have hit their emotional appeal and ideas they found cool and people who influenced them.
It's just this big jangled mess.
I don't know if you played pick-up sticks when you were a kid.
I love that game.
Sorry.
Yeah.
So most people, we're trying to design ourselves into a building of shape and cohesion.
And most people are just a big pile of pick-up sticks.
Right.
They're just randomly strewn and skewing around.
Now, once you recognize that, you say, okay, well, I can't turn them into something real.
I don't have the resurrection electricity in my fingertips to bring them to life.
I can't do it.
And even if I wanted to with that person, they'd have to want to do it.
And even if they wanted to do it, and I've been doing it for 10 years, they'll be 10 years behind me.
It takes a long time, right?
I mean, if somebody really doesn't want to learn Japanese, There's not much point given the books on how to learn Japanese.
And even if suddenly they did want to turn to learn Japanese, how long would it take before you could have a deep conversation with them?
Many years of study on their part, right?
So instead of sitting there saying, well, you know, there just aren't a lot of people around me who speak Japanese, so I guess I'll just keep speaking Japanese to everyone and hope that, you know, sooner or later something's going to happen.
It's not going to happen.
What you need to do is say, okay, I need people around me who already know Japanese so I can have a conversation with them in the language that I prefer.
The language of philosophy, the language of depth, of meaning, of contact, of reality, of authenticity, of being alive.
Alive, not inherited, which is a historical shadow of emptiness.
So once you know that most people around you aren't going to speak with any depth, aren't going to speak with anything other than Empty, giddy, reaction, vaguely hostile, should anything real come along nonsense, then you can say, okay, well, if there aren't many people around who speak Japanese, then I need to find people who speak Japanese and I need to spend time with them.
And if you wait for it to happen or wait for it to coalesce or wait for something, it's not going to happen.
You have to be proactive.
The price of wisdom is proactivity.
And the great danger is to achieve wisdom and then be passive.
And I say this for many years of doing just that.
This is hard-won, gruesome, bitter, difficult, ugly, broken-hearted experience.
I mean, it sounds like a silly question, but you say you go and find those people.
I mean, I happen to go to one of the best medical schools in the country.
No, no, you're talking about intelligence.
We're not talking about intelligence.
Okay, fair enough.
Okay, we're talking about, I mean, I think you have to be intelligent.
It's necessary but not sufficient in order to become authentic.
Okay, let me just ask you a simple question.
And this doesn't mean that the answer is simple or that the answer is obvious.
But let's say that you're in a small town and at 9pm there's a giant fireworks show, right?
But you don't know where.
So, how do you find the fireworks show?
Bloody hell.
At 9pm?
You look in the sky.
There you go!
Listen to sounds around you, I suppose.
Open your eyes.
You look in the sky.
Because the fireworks show is very visible.
Right?
So, you're kind of implying to look upwards as, like, away from stupid people.
No!
Oh, man!
You are so passive.
This is why you've got this problem.
I'm not bloody passive.
You are in this instance, and I don't mean this as a criticism, when I explain it to you, when I explain it to you now, you're talking about looking up and seeing the fireworks is how you find the fireworks.
The point of the story, my dear, is to be the fireworks.
That's exhausting.
No, no.
Solitude and beating your head against the cheese-grating indifference wall of other people's blindness.
Now that's exhausting.
Okay, yeah.
But it's like, I don't like to...
I try...
Growing up, I wanted to be the popular person in the class.
And I tried to do that for a day.
Or to be a sociopath.
I really can't be that.
And I'm not saying I have to become...
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
Be a sociopath.
That's the best way to get deep, meaningful connections with people.
You have a title.
That's right.
Be a sociopath.
It's pretty impossible.
Because sociopaths make a lot of money and you could donate more.
Sorry, go ahead.
I have empathy, but no, I know that's not what you're saying, but I'm saying I feel very uncomfortable to me, not myself.
You're talking about being on, having a show, the Me Plus stuff that I talked about in the Robin Williams presentation.
Yeah, I'm not talking about that.
I'm not talking about being on.
The people in my life almost exclusively come through this show because I have launched myself into the human sky and I'm busting out all over the place.
I couldn't think of a good poetic ending to that.
You've become a firework.
There you go.
Yeah, I've become the fireworks and then people can find me.
And you don't have to do what I'm doing.
I don't know how this translates to any individual.
But you need to be visible.
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, if you're stuck in the ocean and they're trying to find you at night, you shoot up a flare.
Right.
You have to shoot up a flare so people can see you.
Now, the best way to do that, I think, is online.
You can set up an anonymous blog.
You can do an anonymous podcast.
You can write books.
You can whatever.
I don't know what it's going to be.
Yeah.
But it's a way of people being able to find you.
You know, like Hansel and Gretel, you drop the breadcrumbs.
You've got to drop breadcrumbs so people can find you.
You've got to be visible outside your immediate social sphere with your truest, most authentic self so that people can find you.
I suppose I'm still young, even though I feel like a granny at the moment, because I just don't sleep ever.
But what I was trying to say was, I don't know, I just feel that I couldn't...
It's very...
It's going to be a challenge for me, because I tend to just have to be kind of this regimented thing.
So I guess that's what I'll have to figure out, how to...
Myself out there.
I don't know.
It's hard to say.
But the interesting thing is...
It started.
No, but I was going to briefly mention that I've always thought that, okay, you know, I can't be in this group of friends or these group of people that are not similar to me because that's going to rub off on me.
Or like, I can't be in this town or city that's Full of ignorance, because I feel like that's going to rub off on me, and it's a major fear that I'm going to somehow end up living in the city that I'm in, which is a lovely East Coast city that was marked by There's protests about a year or two ago and there's a lot of violence and drugs.
You put out a lot of fog sometimes when we get close to something important.
Fair enough, yeah.
That's totally fine.
I understand it.
I understand it and I don't mean this in a critical way.
It's a barrage.
I'm sorry.
No, it's fine.
You are afraid of Being sanded down by your environment, right?
Yes, that's true.
Of losing yourself.
You know, like you're walking through a sort of fine acid fog.
And it's like, but what happened to my hair?
And what happened to my epidermis?
I mean, it's like being worn away.
And yeah, it's true.
I mean, you're either being sanded down...
Like chalk or you're cutting like a diamond.
There's not much in between.
Like either you change the world or the world changes you.
I mean, if you're not in step with the world, either you change the world or the world changes you.
You can change the world for the better.
The world ain't going to change you for the better for the most part.
Right, yeah.
Given where people are at.
So, yeah.
I mean, I say, look, you can do something prominent so that people can find you and you say, well, that's exhausting.
Right?
Well, compared to what?
I think that if you write something down, and of course your language skills are very significant, and so if you write something down, I think you'll find it a relief.
I think you'll find it unburdening.
And if you end up putting it somewhere out there in some anonymous, if you want, fashion, that's not effort, right?
How much effort do you spend, as you say, having Existential depression, how much effort do you spend doing the dance around people you can't quite get along with?
How much energy do you expect not sleeping and worrying and being concerned, right?
Compared to what?
If this helps alleviate some of that, because look, you don't need a lot of people.
You don't need 50 people around you who agree with you in fundamentals, right, in terms of reality and honesty and so on.
You only need a few.
You know, when it comes to friendship, Quantity.
It's the exact opposite of my podcast production.
Quantity is often inverse to quality.
The more people, the less quality.
With podcasts, it's different.
The more practice, the better you are at something.
The more you practice piano, the better you get at it.
But when it comes to friendships, quantity and quality are generally inverse.
And so you don't need a lot of people.
You can do it for a couple of months and you can find two friends.
And what would that mean to you?
Two friends.
You could speak your mind without fear.
Without concern.
Without, when are they going to look at me funny?
When are they going to think I'm weird?
When are they going to disapprove me?
When are they going to withdraw?
When are they going to frown on me?
When are they going to roll their eyes?
When are they going to make me feel Like an alien among the flesh people.
I kind of feel guilty.
Like I have found a few people so far in my life that are similar to me who share the same thoughts of what I share.
And it's just I feel guilty.
I feel like I'm being selfish in a way.
And perhaps that's my upbringing.
But you did this podcast or no, it was a YouTube video about...
I think it was like these...
I think you used to teach or help little kids out who are very intelligent at, I guess, some preschool or primary school or something.
I worked in a daycare and I also worked as a teacher's aide in the gifted kids program for older kids.
The latter, yeah.
And you're saying how kind of their eyes got really big, kind of bug eyes, when they're put on very interesting...
Immaterial in front of them, stuff that they could understand, stuff that wasn't boring, stuff that, you know, made them think.
And that's how it is for me.
It's like I finally found the answer to life when I'm actually being able to be in a society or in an area or I guess a situation where, you know, I can be 100% myself.
I'm not having to hide behind some Barrage of becoming a robot like the rest of my friends or students at my school.
And then I feel very selfish and guilty and I'm like, oh, this shouldn't be happening all the time because then that would be bad.
Anyway, I digress.
Well, let me ask you this.
Your experience of this conversation, Sophie, is that do you feel like this is a back and forth where we're impacting each other?
Because I'm trying to sort of figure out how my words are landing in your heart and in your mind, and I'm not sure where they're landing yet.
Well, you've been the only person that has recommended that, you know, I need to put myself out there instead of just say, okay, you need to just keep going with your studies.
You know, you'll find happiness or you'll find like-minded people.
You know, you have to...
No, I mean, I... I feel like I keep on talking because it's such an honor to talk to you, I suppose.
Well, hopefully it's also somewhat of an honor to listen as well, right?
What's up?
Yeah, hopefully it's a bit of an honor to listen as well as talk, right?
Yes.
I'm sorry.
No, that's fine.
That's fine.
I'm just trying to figure this part out, right?
I know you have a lot of words, and I'll give you an image that popped into my head, which may mean nothing or may mean something, but I'll tell you it anyway.
Do you know the character Spider-Man?
Yes, I do.
That's right.
We're going from T.S. Eliot to Spider-Man.
Because, you know, we do the rage, right?
Now, Spider-Man falls off a building.
And do you know what he does?
What's that?
He shoots a sticky web just trying to connect it to something so that he can arrest his fall.
I got that image when you were talking.
It arose in me.
I wasn't sort of distracted.
I'm really listening to what you say.
But the image arose in me of you like Spider-Man falling and shooting out words like webs to slow your fall.
Yes, I tend to do that.
I feel very uncomfortable talking about myself and I'm trying to get better at it.
But I am better at, I guess, working in more of a scientific, talking about other things than myself.
And I've been told, you know, I don't know.
I guess it's the family or just growing up or something.
They're like, oh, you know, you can't talk about yourself.
You're not important.
You know, it's tough.
It's tough for a lot of people to listen to kids.
Yeah.
So, you know, because, you know, when kids tell a story, when kids, you know, plan this, that or the other, I mean, when they're telling you all of their thoughts, it can be a little tough to follow.
And I'm not obviously comparing you to a kid.
I'm just saying that when you were a kid.
I don't really express myself as well as others.
And I think it's just that I don't.
That's true.
I think you express yourself very well.
I get very excited about talking and then my mind goes probably 100 miles per hour.
We'll just say like 400.
That's faster.
And then it just doesn't connect because, oh, someone's actually listening.
So I was a very quiet child growing up.
And so I really don't tend to talk too much, I suppose.
And also becoming a hermit, it helps.
Right.
So then when you have the opportunity...
It's a Spider-Man kind of thing.
No, it's, or, you know, again, I don't mean to give you kid analogies, but, you know, the kid who's got a lot of special stuff, but nobody comes into his room.
Right, yeah, fair enough.
You go into that kid's room, and it's like, and here's my other special thing, and here's my other special thing, and here's my other special thing, right?
Listen, I like it.
I think it's great.
I have no problem and no problem.
It's not a negative at all.
Right.
But it also indicates to me that you need, I think, to find people with whom you can connect more.
And the negative experience that you have, you said you feel guilty or selfish for talking about yourself.
That's true, yeah.
All right.
Why do you think that?
Well, because the thing is, I don't really think...
I mean, I know my capabilities.
If I work hard, I get very good grades.
I mean, it kind of goes to show.
I mean, just from where I'm at right now, it's just that I don't think...
Not because I have a low self-esteem.
It's because I don't think I'm better than anybody else.
So I don't feel like I'm that important.
This is back to the relativism at the beginning.
Everybody's right and wrong is different.
Why are you not better than other people?
I don't see better than everyone, but why?
Can we say you're better than an axe murderer?
Well, the thing is, in what situation?
See, it's all relative.
I really believe so.
I mean, I don't believe I'm...
What's all relative?
Now you're giving me the relativistic fog.
What's all relative?
Okay, no, that was silly.
I suppose...
I don't know.
I just...
I've been...
I see myself have...
No, no, no.
You're giving me the human fire hose here.
Okay.
So, you are better than an axe murderer.
Can we agree with that?
Right.
Yes, I agree with that.
Okay.
And there's, you know, six million categories we could run through.
But you certainly are better than some people saying that I'm worse than an axe murderer.
Okay.
That's probably silly.
Never mind.
Would you like to make an argument that you're worse than an axe murderer?
No, but it's possible.
Is that how you want to spend our time in the conversation?
No, it's not really.
Okay.
No, but it's interesting that you'd go there, right?
So there's a discomfort.
Now, there is, of course, if you are raised, Christian, and you said you had the two barrels of Protestantism and Catholicism.
Yes.
And so there is humility, right?
Right.
Pride goeth before a fall.
The story of, what's it, the guy who flied with the wax wings up to the sun?
Oh, Jesus.
I know.
It's not Jesus, but it's...
It's the waxwing.
Icarus.
Thank you.
Icarus.
That's right.
Icarus.
Thanks, Mike.
Icarus by T.S. Eliot and Spider-Man.
So there is that idea, and this is a very common belief, that if you praise yourself, doom follows.
I remember dating a girl many years ago.
And whenever I would say something positive about myself, she would make a sign.
A sign?
She'd make a gesture, like warding off evil spirits.
It wasn't quite that bad, but it's like, oh, don't, black tongue, don't say it, the gods will get you.
I mean, it wasn't that explicit, but it was kind of like unease, you know?
Like I'd say, I'd write a really good essay, I'd say, wow, I think I did a really good essay here.
Oh, don't say it.
Bad things will happen.
You know what I mean?
It's not other people.
Like, if people say they're good or, you know, they talk about themselves, that's fine.
It's just for me, it's like, you know, I know I'm a fractionist.
I suppose that's also the thing is I just see that I could do better in situations or, you know, I'm not performing at my very best.
So it's a very hard thing to live by because I never feel...
Wait, wait, wait, hang on.
If everything's relative, how could you be self-critical?
Okay, fair enough.
It's important, right?
Because when I talked about something positive, you said, well, everything's relative and so on, but then you criticize yourself.
No, no, no, you can't have it both ways.
If you criticize yourself, you're saying you could do better, which means there are standards of value.
That you're not achieving that you could, and then you can compare yourself to other people and say, well, are other people achieving even 50% of the standard of value I have for myself, right?
You can't have relativism and self-criticism.
It never works, I swear.
I'm still stuck with it.
No, I understand.
No, it's relativism for praise, which lets you diffuse positive things you could think about yourself, and then it's absolutism for deficiencies, So that you can be self-critical.
Yeah.
Makes sense?
Yeah, no, it does.
So which is it?
Do you want the goop of relativism and free yourself of self-criticism?
Or do you want self-criticism, which comes with the pride of having achieved things that other people haven't or having become better than you were yesterday?
Definitely self-criticism.
Because relativism, I mean, you don't ever win with that.
Because every situation...
Well, you're trying.
You're certainly giving it a good old college try to win with that, right?
Fair enough, yeah.
I guess.
Alright, so this is important, right?
Because when you have conversations where you have...
Insights or thoughts that move you in a particular direction.
You have to commit to that thing.
And what that means is that now you have to say to yourself, I'm done with relativism.
And when you have that impulse, and we all do, We have that impulse where you say, well, you know, everything's wrong.
Right and wrong is different.
Everyone has their own particular, whatever it's going to be.
Nope.
That we're done with.
And you have to have the discipline to interrupt that kind of thinking and say, we don't do that anymore.
Because philosophy is one standard, one ring to rule them all and in the reason behind them, right?
Philosophy is one standard.
And if you're going to have self-criticism, you can't have relativism.
You've chosen self-criticism, which means you also get pride for when you overcome obstacles and you improve.
Which means you can't have relativism, which means you have to challenge and confront that aspect of yourself that attempts to short-circuit self-praise through the claim of relativism.
Because that means you're only having one standard, which is self-criticism and pride and objectivity or absolutism.
That there are better and worse things in the world.
There are better and worse people in the world.
And if you are striving for virtue, you have every reason to be immensely proud.
Because it is through the striving for virtue that we have the world that we have.
You like to have the ability to go to school?
I did.
Well, that's because people strove for virtue and at least to a large degree equality of opportunity.
You like the separation of church and state.
You like the free market.
You like egalitarianism between the genders as far as it has somewhat unevenly been achieved.
Well, this is the result of people striving for virtue.
Do you like the fact we don't have child sacrifice anymore?
Do you like the fact that we don't burn heretics at the stake anymore?
Well, that is the result of people striving for virtue.
And I am damn glad that those people did that.
And didn't drug themselves as relativism, but said, no, there is a better state in this world and there is a worse state in the world.
There are better cultures in this world.
There are worse cultures in this world.
In fact, there are downright crappy cultures.
There are better people in this world and there are worse people in this world and there are downright crappy people as well.
I act sometimes nobly.
I act sometimes ignobly.
I'm aiming towards the noble, aiming to shed the ignoble.
I have patience for the process because it is a challenge.
But yes, I am a better person than a lot of people in this world.
And there are people better than me.
I strive to emulate them.
But in particular characteristics especially, there are a lot of worse people in the world than you, Sophie.
And the degree to which you have worked to achieve Honesty with yourself and connection with the world and the pursuit of virtue and excellence is the degree to which you can justly claim the prize of pride.
Now, when we claim pride, we invite attack from immature people, which means you can either have immature people around you or you can have pride.
You can't have both.
Right.
I appreciate that.
I really do.
Thank you so much.
I see it's very nonsensical, but, you know, it is very exhausting to be, you know, both or trying to do both of, you know, having pride and self-criticism and then relativism.
But, yeah, so...
I have such an active imagination, so I can believe that anything's possible.
So that's why I think that's the relativism coming up where it's like, well, I could do this plus this plus this, and then there's no endgame.
No, your relativism was not a fertile imagination.
It rose specifically in response to praise.
Fair enough.
But...
Thank you so much for your time.
I really appreciate it.
It's been like the most exciting night for the last, I'd say, two weeks.
And I get to go to sleep tonight.
And you get to wake up tomorrow and think about being the fireworks so that people can find the glory of your existence.
I should get fireworks.
Aim to be a beautiful thing in this world.
Aim to be a glorious thing in this world.
Aim to be an inspiring thing in this world.
Having knowledge or understanding facts or things, that's the most appealing thing to me.
Knowing how to work things out or at least find solutions or answers to problems, that's the most exciting thing ever.
Because you can.
Well, listen, I enjoyed the conversation, too.
I hope that you will stay in touch.
Oh, definitely.
Thank you so much.
I wish you the very best in your studies.
It is a very impressive thing that you were doing.
I mean, this combo is a big deal and requires some significant horsepower.
I'm sorry?
Well, okay, not the reason I got into it.
It's a free program, but then I have to take four more years.
It depends on when I eventually finish my dissertation, but yeah, it's education.
Anyway, thank you so much.
Well, I appreciate that, and I hope that we can chat again, and I hope you get...
A good night's sleep.
Alright, take care.
Cheers, night.
Thanks.
Now, I made a mistake, which I'm sure Mike will erase to make me look omniscient.
It is not.
The Wasteland, the poem is called The Hollow Men.
It's pretty short.
Yeah, it's lovely.
So, it starts off, yeah.
Mr.
Kurtz, he dead, a penny for the old guy.
We are the hollow men.
We are the stuffed men.
Leaning together, headpiece filled with straw.
Alas, our dried voices when we whisper together, a quiet and meaningless as wind in dry grass, or rat's feet of a broken glass in our dry cellar, shape without form, shade without color, paralyzed force, gesture without motion.
Those who have crossed with direct eyes To death's other kingdom, remember us, if at all, not as lost, violent souls, but only as the hollow men, the stuffed men.
Eyes, I dare not meet in dreams in death's dream kingdom.
These do not appear.
There, the eyes are sunlight on a broken column.
There is a tree swinging, and voices are in the winds singing, more distant and more solemn than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer in death's dream kingdom.
Let me also wear such deliberate disguises, rat's coat, crow skin, crossed staves, in a field, behaving as the wind behaves, no nearer.
Not that final meeting in the twilight kingdom.
This is the dead land.
This is cactus land.
Here the stone images are raised.
Here they receive the supplication of a dead man's hand under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this in death's other kingdom, waking alone at the hour when we are trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss form prayers to broken stone.
The eyes are not here.
There are no eyes here in this valley of dying stars, in this hollow valley, this broken jaw of our lost kingdoms.
In this last of meeting places we grope together and avoid speech gathered on the beach of the tumid river.
Sightless, Unless the eyes reappear as the perpetual star.
Multifoliate rows of death's twilight kingdom.
The hope only of empty men.
Here we go round the prickly pear, prickly pear, prickly pear.
Here we go round the prickly pear at five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act, falls the shadow.
For thine is the kingdom.
Between the conception and the creation, between the emotion and the response falls the shadow.
Life is very long.
Between the desire and the spasm, between the potency and the existence, between the essence and the descent falls the shadow.
For thine is the kingdom.
For thine is...
Life is...
For thine is the...
This is the way the world ends.
Not with a bang, but a whisper.
Thank you.
It's a lovely poem.
Alright, Mike, who's up with the nextness?
Alright, up next we have Nicholas.
Nicholas wrote in and said, I'm an education student at a major university in the United States.
The main thing I've learned is that being a teacher has little to do with actually teaching.
I'm passionate about education but strongly discouraged by the regulations of the public school system.
Between Common Core, standardized testing, and administrative oversight, how am I supposed to help students critically think and learn without getting fired?
That's from Nicholas.
So, Nick.
Hi, how are you?
How's it going?
I'm well, thanks.
How are you doing?
A little bit dismayed, which I guess we'll get into.
Yes.
Well, hopefully we can may you.
Yeah.
All right.
So, just anything you wanted to add to that before I launch in?
Well, I mean, there's just so many.
I guess the reason I'm so dismayed is that I do so much student teaching right now.
And there's just so many stories that I have that I'm sure you would find shocking, and we can get into that, but if you have anything to say.
No, no, I mean, I like a good story, just obviously keep out any identifying characteristics, but I'd like to hear some stories.
You know, sorry to interrupt, because I just asked you to say something.
Isn't it amazing that there's so few videos that come out of classrooms?
Yes.
You know, I always find that amazing.
Like, I've seen a bunch of Documentaries on education.
The War Against Kids.
I actually interviewed many years ago the director on this show.
And he couldn't get footage from inside the classroom.
Isn't it amazing that there's so little footage that comes out of classrooms when, of course, that's what everyone pays for.
I mean, all the people are paying for it with their property taxes and so on, and you simply can't get footage out of classrooms.
It's just something that's always struck me, but go ahead.
Well, so I actually, specifically, I teach music.
And there's just so many problems and the one thing that really frustrates me is how far you have to go with lesson plans.
And so one time I was basically doing some student teaching and the person in charge of me was, let's just say, not a very good teacher.
And so it's this public high school and I had to write a detailed lesson plan because for, I guess, your listeners that don't know, In the United States, at least in my state, you have to write a lesson plan that gets reviewed by administrators and then the administrators actually judge you based on how well you executed the lesson plan.
So I said that I would teach a certain topic for five minutes and then move on to something else, which was just an estimation that I think people Normally do in lesson plans.
And it turned out that I started talking about this and the students had no idea how to do the thing that I wanted to focus on for five minutes.
So I spent 10 minutes on it in order to help them understand what they're doing.
And after class I got yelled at by not only the teacher but the principal because I spent an extra five minutes talking about something that they didn't understand.
They said I didn't follow the lesson plan.
And I said, isn't learning more important than an arbitrary lesson plan?
And she actually said, no, the lesson plan always comes first.
I mean, what do you think about that?
Well, I would hope at some level the children come first.
I would hope at some level facts, reason and evidence and success comes first.
But for bureaucrats, of course, the plan is everything because they have nothing else to measure.
You don't get to measure whether you're successful or not in general for the kids because you don't get paid more if you are successful and you don't get penalized if you're not.
So it seems entirely in accordance with bureaucracy where you have a plan and your conformity to that plan is really the only standard you can measure yourself by.
Seems kind of pitiful to me.
But, you know, like for me, it's like, okay, view count, effect, impact, donations, you name it, these are ways in which I can measure What it is that I'm doing.
I have a plan.
Yeah, Mike and I will often wake up with a plan every day.
Mike, how have our plans been going lately?
Not so much with the plans lately.
Lots of stuff we've wanted to do and it's not slowing down because, you know, gotta accuse Donald Trump of everything under the sun because they got an election to try to steal.
Yeah, no, and...
So, yeah, I mean, the only plan we have now is to have no plans until after the election.
So, you know, I mean, you've got to be adaptable to circumstances, and you kind of have to ignore all the people who are like, oh, there's so much Trump going on.
I was like, yes, that's right.
When you show up at the...
ER, with an appendix attack, you kind of want them to focus on your appendix until it's better.
Oh, so much appendix stuff going on.
Well, you're still in pain.
You're still risking death.
But can we just move on to something other than appendicitis?
Yes, when it's better.
So, anyway.
So, yeah.
I mean, the fact that they're talking about the plans, quite predictable, but not very inspiring.
No, not inspiring at all.
And on the topic of Trump, which I am definitely not allowed to talk about, In the education classrooms where you'll get so it's basically the you know, I'm sitting in class right and They say this is an open atmosphere of Education and you can say whatever you want as long as you agree with me is basically the The gist of You know the education classroom at my university But the one
thing that Trump wants to do is get rid of common core which I think is a terrific idea and I mean, what do you think about Common Core?
Oh, it's terrible.
Yeah.
I mean, it's the usual collectivist nightmare, and, you know, I can forgive Bill Gates for DOS 3, I just don't know if I can forgive him for Common Core, because they're just hoisting this huge experiment on kids, and I've got to...
A whole conversation with Dr.
Duke Pesta about this.
But yeah, they're forcing this whole methodology on kids.
They've never tested to see if it works or not.
And they say, oh yeah, it'll be 10 years till we figure out whether it works or not.
Stop experimenting on children!
It's unethical!
Yeah.
Well, not to mention, I mean, I know the main thing in my state is that it basically encourages teachers to teach the test, which is actually the only option that I have as a teacher right now because...
Can I give a little background for the listeners on Common Core?
Sure.
Yeah, so basically it's this set of standards that all the states are basically required to implement, and although it's not a law, it actually makes up for...
So the federal government actually funds state public schools, and the federal government is in charge of about 12% of the funding for secondary schools.
So basically what they say is that if the states don't follow these standards, that the programs, that 12% totally gets erased.
And the problem is with the standardized testing, so say I'm teaching and all of my students get an A on the test, I actually get a bonus of about $5,000.
And if they get a B, I get 2,000.
If I get a C, 1,000.
D or F, I get nothing.
So what the teachers did in my state, because they're very smart, is they encourage students that, you know, we're not academically gifted to stay home and not take the test.
And the government cracked down and said, no, no, all the students need to take this exam.
So if a certain school does well on exam, they get extra funding and the teachers get bonuses and everyone's happy.
But if a school does poorly, they're basically left out to dry.
And of course, the problem is that not all schools are created equally.
And also, it makes the teachers do that detrimental thing I mentioned, which is teach to the test.
And I don't know how students are supposed to learn in that kind of environment, but it's so stressful, Stefan, because I feel like I have no choice.
Because not only can I get...
I mean, I don't care that much about the pay, but I can get fired if my students don't do well on the test.
So I have to teach to the test.
And I don't know, so it's discouraging me from going into the field altogether.
But the actual teaching...
Sorry, you only have to teach to the test because the test is not about thinking.
Right.
You can't teach to the test if the test is about reasoning, critical thinking, and so on, right?
Right.
Right?
Then you actually have to teach critical thinking.
So, this idea, you get an A if your students do well on a test, well, okay, if the test is memorization, rote regurgitation, categorization, and so on, yeah, you can teach to that test.
But you can't teach to the test called critical thinking.
And that's, of course, the big problem.
I have no problem with merit pay.
It's fantastic.
But, merit pay for what?
I think it does kind of corrupt the kids when teachers end up teaching to the test and the teachers get significant amounts of money for it.
What is it teaching the kids?
It's teaching the kids that it's all just a shell game and their learning doesn't matter as much as lining the pockets of the teacher.
Right.
I mean there's no critical thinking at all.
In my opinion in the schools in the United States it's just I mean how are the public schools in Canada?
Well, I mean, bad.
I mean, they're bad.
There's not the same minority issues as much in Canada.
It's there.
Maybe it's worse now, but it wasn't when I was there.
But, yeah, they're terrible.
I mean, the teachers don't teach you any critical thinking.
They don't teach you any philosophy.
They don't teach you any economics.
They don't teach you any law.
They don't teach you any entrepreneurship.
The teachers, in general, are losers.
The teachers in general are sad little specimens who couldn't make it in any objective field with customer-facing value.
And so they basically go hide out bossing and boring children rather than teaching children the joy and stimulation of learning.
I mean, I had a few okay teachers and no one who was really great.
A few okay teachers, but no, they were terrible.
I remember having an argument with an English teacher and the The argument came down to whether memory exists in the brain or not, and he was adamant that it didn't.
Where then?
In the bone marrow?
I mean, where does memory exist?
I mean, okay, I get this physical memory, like body memory and so on, but in terms of abstract memories, I mean, it exists in the brain.
And anyway, it was just...
Win at all costs.
Never back down.
Childish people who can't admit that they're wrong and who just continue to escalate until you comply.
I mean, that's sort of the intellectual equivalent of cops, you know, but without the relative peacekeeping capacities that cops sometimes achieve.
Just, you know, just terrible all around.
And, I mean, how could it be otherwise?
I mean, it's a government institution.
It's It extracts money from people by force and doesn't have to provide any objective value whatsoever.
In fact, it flourishes and survives by delivering people up to state power who are unable to fundamentally question or challenge any of the narratives of their society.
Yeah.
Yeah, the state power issue is a problem.
Did you know that...
So, I was in class and I was actually told...
That if we vote for Trump, and if we made it public at all that we vote for Trump, we basically could get fired and kicked out of university, is what they implied.
And yet, everybody talks about how great Hillary Clinton is in my class and in the university, and that's totally fine.
So I'm basically...
Well, sure.
But of course they do.
First of all, I think that's reprehensible, that you would get fired for your political perspectives.
Absolutely reprehensible.
I mean, everyone says, oh, you're kind of a religious test at the border.
Well, actually, you kind of do, because refugees, if they're fleeing religious persecution, need to prove that they're part of a particular religion.
But anyway, it's neither here nor there.
But the idea that you would get fired for voting Trump, that is unbelievably reprehensible, and I could do a whole rant on that, just how vile and destructive and hideous and censoring and against political conscience that is.
But...
I think that's well understood by the listeners as a whole.
But of course they're pro-Hillary.
Because Hillary is talking about, I don't know what your policies are, but I'm sure it's something to do with, let's make higher education more affordable for everyone.
Maybe we can forgive some student loans.
Maybe we can increase funding to colleges.
And it's like, well, yeah, of course.
Of course people in colleges like more money.
They're not for Hillary Clinton.
Nobody's for Hillary Clinton.
They're for the money.
They're for the avoidance of market discipline.
They're for more power.
Over teenagers or over the kids in university?
They're not for Hillary Clinton.
People are genuinely for Trump.
I mean, obviously, it's the policies that they represent, that he represents, but I think people are genuine.
People are holding their nose, in my opinion, in voting for Hillary because it's like, okay, so I've got this winning lottery ticket for $10,000 and I've got to go to the store to cash it in And the guy has got halitosis and body odor.
Oh, it's really, really, really gross.
But I got to make small talk with the guy.
Or maybe there's something where they hand you the big giant check or something, right?
Oh, yeah, well, the guy's kind of smelly and gross and bad breath.
But, you know, I got to make some small talk with the guy.
And I got to be nice and I got to smile because that's how I get my check.
You're not for the guy.
You want the check.
You want the money.
It's got nothing to do with the guy.
That's just a ritual you have to go through.
So, I mean, the idea that people are for Hillary Clinton, I don't know.
It's just my...
Especially in universities.
I mean, Trump is talking about cutting back on this mad student loan program.
I mean, student loan debt is way over a trillion dollars these days.
Outstanding student debt.
It's mad.
Does anyone really think...
That the kind of arts education that kids are getting these days is going to somehow pump a trillion dollars worth of value back into the US economy?
Come on!
And so, yeah, they're for Hillary Clinton, but not really.
What they're for is more money, more authority, more power, and more shield from any market forces whatsoever.
Whereas Trump actually, and this is people who, in my opinion, don't care about the young.
Don't care about the young.
People who are like, oh yeah, we should expand the student loan program, Well, what about the kids who graduate and can't pay back their loans?
Yeah.
Do you care about them?
No!
We just want more money for the professors, the colleges, and of course, because the...
I mean, you know that the left would not be promoting student loans, expanding the student loan program and forgiving debt.
They wouldn't be suggesting any of that if Republicans or free market people...
Or small government people were in charge of the universities because they wouldn't want young people exposed to thinking in that way.
So, of course, they want lots of kids to go to college because it's forcing the taxpayers to pay for the indoctrination of kids into leftist ideology.
I mean, it's perfect.
You couldn't ask for anything better.
And so, I just sort of wanted to point out that you just follow the money.
People don't care about Hillary.
They want the goodies.
They want the free stuff.
They want to stay away from the market and they want their budgets to increase.
Do they care about Hillary in particular?
I don't think so.
No, probably not.
Although, you know, I'm graduating with...
I'll probably have $60,000 in debt and the public school jobs pay about $32,000 a year in my state on average.
So it'll take me about a good 10 years to pay things off.
So it's bad.
Alright.
Why do you want to be a teacher in government schools?
As opposed to private schools?
As opposed to any other way you can instruct the population.
I mean, please note, you're calling into somebody who's not a teacher.
Interesting that, isn't it?
You taught me, right?
Well, I think people learn a lot from my podcast.
I think people learn a lot from the experts I have on and from the arguments that I've formulated.
They learn a lot from my books.
Look at that!
Not a teacher.
Instructing the world.
Quarter of a billion views and downloads.
That's a lot.
So, help me understand again why your decision is better than mine.
Yeah, well, I guess I got into it with a, you know, Messiah complex.
So my background is music and I was going to be...
Well, as long as you have a good reason.
Sorry, go ahead.
Thank you.
I was trained, I got into all the great schools for music and I pursued it in college before I chose the education field.
It was because I was doing a pretty high-profile concert in Detroit.
By the way, I love Detroit.
I think it's a great city that's been Damaged and so forth, but I was doing it with a pianist friend of mine, and he took me to a youth boxing gym that he was a part of.
And, of course, it's a city with all these underprivileged kids, and all the underprivileged kids go to the gym.
There's a youth boxing gym.
And for some reason, my friend and I wanted to see what would happen, this crazy idea, if we donated a piano to the kids at this gym.
All of a sudden, all the kids that you wouldn't think would be interested Interested in piano just started blocking too.
They instantly grew connected with each other and their grades even started improving with time and they basically loved it and it gave them something to look forward to and I saw how much of a difference something that was so easy for me to do you know just donating a piano actually improved the lives of dozens of kids and from that moment I I guess I wanted I was a very selfish person And I wanted to take a career where I could actually influence the lives of kids.
Okay, you're not making any sense to me here.
Hang on, hang on.
I'm just trying to follow what you're saying.
Because you're saying, well, you donated this piano.
It really helped children make you feel good.
And I guess you say, I'm a selfish person for wanting kids to do well.
I don't quite understand.
How is that selfish?
I was selfish before the piano thing.
Oh, before the piano.
Well, donating the piano, which my friend and I did, it really opened my eyes to how good it feels to help other people instead of just looking after myself.
I wanted to do a career that was all about me before teaching.
Okay, so you like to teach.
I'm not trying to talk you out of teaching.
You understand?
Right.
Yeah.
So why would you choose to teach in a government school when you can take to the planet-wide reach of the internet and teach people that way?
Why would you want to limit yourself to working under a government structure with government workers and government bureaucracy and government plans and kids who may or may not want to be there and with parents who may or may not be motivated to help them when you can put your reach out to the internet And reach the really motivated, the people who are really passionate about things, and not be bound by any status bureaucracy whatsoever.
Well, I guess for me it was because I wanted to get into the system and kind of try to break it.
It was naive.
But a la your podcasts, I wanted to encourage kids to critically think about how terrible the system is.
And hopefully that could make some kind of difference.
Wait, you want to teach the kids critical thinking in the government environment?
Yeah, not so good of an idea now, is it?
Well, no, I mean, how's that going to go over with their parents?
Yeah, I didn't think about that.
I mean, let's say that you teach them, you know, I don't know, skepticism towards collectivism, skepticism towards the state, skepticism towards religious ideas, or whatever it is you're going to teach them, they're going to go home and they're going to say, well, my teacher said...
And then what?
Come to church on Sunday, Johnny.
Well, my teacher says...
Then what?
I get fired.
Well...
I don't know if you do or you don't, because I don't know what the rules are or the laws are, but it can't be a challenge.
Well, the parents are so difficult to manage in my profession.
So one time I was...
Sorry about all the stories, but one time I was adjudicating a performance, and we were told to give grades to different students.
And so one was the worst score, and five was the best score.
And we were literally instructed...
That we weren't allowed to give anything lower than a three, because it would hurt the kids' feelings, number one.
And number two, the parents would get mad at us.
So we're not allowed to give anything lower than a three.
And what ended up happening is one of the adjudicators...
Anyway, one of the adjudicators wasn't there during that briefing, and he ended up giving a student a two.
Oh, no!
And you won't believe what happened.
So the parent gets infuriated And so the grandma's there and they all wanted to take a picture with the kid who has the, you know, a score of a five.
And this kid gets a two.
She starts crying and the parents are infuriated.
So we have to actually go in to the records and we forge a different score.
And we actually give the kid a four just to, you know, please the parents.
No, and it's tragic because the kid doesn't get the reality of where they are, at least according to the Teacher's evaluation.
And this is why you get kids going to school and, you know, Milo Yiannopoulos shows up with arguments they don't like and they get hysterical because they've not learned how to handle adversity and overcome obstacles.
Yeah, you know, Milo actually came to my school and people had...
Oh, how darling, how delightful.
Yeah.
But it's crazy.
I don't know how to...
I mean, and that's another thing is managing the parents, managing the Bureaucracy, managing the kids and all of that.
So I don't know.
I'm still trying to find myself, I guess.
Right.
So look, I don't have any advice on how to survive in government schools.
I mean, I got out as soon as I could.
I actually took summer classes so I could get out half a year early.
I was so desperate to get out of that hellhole of boredom and aggression and bullying.
I mean, it was a nightmare.
And so I was, you know, happy to get out and don't look back and all that.
And so I can't teach you how to survive any of that.
I mean, I've never tried to survive professionally in that kind of environment.
But, you know, there are other ways that you can educate people, and I would argue, better.
I mean, do you think I'd be better off as a high school teacher?
Do you think I'd do better, good for the world as a high school teacher?
I'm sorry?
You wouldn't reach nearly as many people, that's for sure.
Well, and I can speak my mind about what I think is important without worrying that, I don't know what, kids are going to burst into tears and I'm going to get pressure to change the mark.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, that's not part of my calculation.
Thank heavens.
Because that stuff has an effect on you, right?
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, it just, it's...
Well, first of all, it's stressful because every action that I do, I have to...
Constantly be thinking, you know, what are the parents going to do when they see their child's score that it's not as good as they want.
And, well, these are things that I didn't know before I entered the system.
Right, right.
So these are just possibilities.
You know, maybe you can make a better bank and have more effect doing things in another context or another environment.
Just things to explore, right?
I mean, if you get involved, I'm sure you'll find some way to do the best you can in the situation that you're in.
But, you know, the great thing about the modern world is...
You can have a fantastic effect on the world in a positive way without having to join any particular restrictive organization.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I've already let on that I have some conservative views and that means I'm already on the brink of getting kicked out.
So maybe I'll take your...
No, just remind them that diversity is a value.
Yeah.
That diversity is a strength.
Diversity is a strength.
Yeah, diversity is a strength and there aren't enough Republicans and they need to recognize that Republicans are part of diversity and they should not fear the other.
Anyway, it won't work because they're leftists, so it's not anything to do with consistency.
It just goes in one ear and out the other.
Yeah, it's a shame.
Well, I mean, remember, Duke Pester, and you can check out my last conversation with him, Which we had...
Mike, I don't think that's out yet.
Anyway, it's going to be out soon.
And he had a conversation...
This is off my memory.
But he made an argument that I guess some woman found startling.
It was an argument that I guess was more conservative.
And she walked out.
And he found out months later that she had accused him of some sort of rape or sexual assault or sexual impropriety or something like that because she didn't like his argument.
And...
That's, you know, it is a minefield for conservatives in the school system.
So it's just something to think about.
Anyway, listen, I'm going to move on to the next caller, but yeah, mull over.
You know, find people on the internet who've made a success who you'd like to listen to and, you know, ask them how they did it and just see if there are options that may not necessarily involve you getting into this particular environment, which may not work out for you as well as other possibilities could.
So that would be my suggestion.
Okay, thanks so much for taking the time.
Alright, thank you.
Alright, up next we have Sean.
Sean wrote in and said, That's from Sean.
Here, glad.
Nice to talk to you again.
Oh, nice to chat with you again, too.
How are things?
Doing all right, except for my throat.
I don't know how well you can, if you can tell, I kind of sound like I've been gargling glass, but other than that...
I had one of those a week and a half ago, but only for a day or two, so you sound fine.
You sound fine.
You sound fine.
Okay, so this, you know, is reality hearsay is kind of your question, right?
Well, it's not a question about what is reality, it's I mean, there is a real world out there.
There is objective truth.
The problem is, I can't...
There's a relatively limited amount I can learn from my own experience.
I have to rely on other people.
Sorry, was that the middle of the thought?
I wasn't sure if you were already out there.
Just restating that part of it.
So who do we trust, right?
Well, yeah, and like I said, how...
It seems like, you know, once you get to the point where you look at, well, these people tend to be dishonest, these other people tend to be dishonest, these other people sometimes are, you know, even if they're trying, they make mistakes.
And so what's left at that point besides...
Yeah, no, it's a good question.
And, I mean, I don't believe the mainstream media and journalists at all.
I can't remember where it came from, but there's someone who said, you know, everything that man wrote was a lie, including the words and and the, which I always kind of liked.
So, you know, when it comes to journalists, and this is sort of all the people who deal with ostensibly non-fiction topics.
So, yeah, as far as the mainstream media goes, you know, it's all just so leading the witness, and it's all so biased, and it's all so...
Transparently motivated by particular political ideologies and so on.
If I didn't have to review this stuff for what I do, you couldn't pay me enough to turn it on.
It'd just be like, ew, gross, yuck, no.
So that's sort of important as far as mainstream media goes.
I get very little of News from traditional media sources.
I mean, it's just not worth it for me at all to go down that route.
So that's, I think, and you have every reason right now that these Podesta emails are coming out with regards to Clinton and all that.
I mean, the level of collusion, you know, it's just between mainstream media outlets and the Democrat Party.
It's exactly what everyone suspected, right, which is just a massive amount of collusion and Is it okay to include this quote?
Am I going to run the story by idea behind you?
It's all this kind of nonsense, right?
So as far as journalists go, I believe a damn thing.
As far as educators go, well, I mean, it's a pretty broad category, but certainly as far as academics go, like higher education, higher education now, I think, has just devolved into a conformity contest with idiocy.
Can you, with a straight face, repeat this nonsense?
Okay, we'll give you a degree.
And I view it merely, in general, as a mark of conformity.
Like if somebody calls in and says, I have a master's in social science.
In general, I'm just like, okay, so my respect for you has plummeted.
Somebody says, oh, I didn't even finish high school.
It's like, well, my respect is higher for you than for the person who got a master's degree in social science.
Whatever, right?
I mean...
Whatever it's going to be.
So, as far as higher education goes, you know, there's still some good stuff going on in the sciences and math, of course, the more objective disciplines.
But when it comes to the humanities, I mean, dead and buried, dead and gone.
And I think it's just a conformity exercise for the most part and bad for the brain.
And the studies seem to show that people who've been in college for a while know less than when they first started.
It's not only not being educated, it's actually being miseducated.
It's like somebody teaching you a really bad tennis swing to serve because you end up having to undo a lot of the bad conditioning that you spent four years doing things exactly the wrong way and then trying to undo that is important.
With science, I'm very skeptical these days of science.
There are huge numbers of...
I don't know why this is happening now, but there's a lot of people out there trying to replicate famous experiments.
And failing miserably in vast amounts.
The reproducibility crisis.
Yeah!
You know about this, right?
I mean, it's like in physics, in medicine, in psychology in particular.
I mean, it's insane!
I didn't know what fields were involved, but I knew the social sciences.
I didn't know outside of that what exactly was...
Oh, some big proportion of cancer research.
Like, it was just unable to be reproduced in any way, shape, or form.
And then these people made huge decisions on this stuff.
You know, literally, life or death decisions.
So, the reproducibility crisis is terrible and should shake everyone's Faith in what goes on in what's laughingly called the scientific community, which is a bunch of grant-chasing cretins, in my opinion, who wouldn't know good science if it slapped them upside the head.
And by good science, I mean market-facing science that provides actual value to people.
And, you know, I have a huge amount of, you know, this sounds all kinds of negative, but I'll give you some positive stuff after.
I view the peer review process as terrible.
It's terrible.
You know, the only peer review process I want is the market test.
Do people find what you're saying compelling and interesting and useful and life-changing or whatever it is that you're trying to get across?
This peer review process, again, do other people who generally were successful by conforming to bad thinking and pleasing their professors, well, do those people like what you're doing?
And You know, the truth is not a popularity contest.
In fact, what's true in this world is almost always the least popular thing around, right?
Witness one, Donald J. Trump, right?
So that, I think, is really, really important to understand, at least from my perspective, that the peer review process...
Why should I care what other conformists think about a particular idea?
And, of course, there are so many things that have gone through the peer review process that turn out to be completely false, as in the falsifiability or reproducibility crisis.
So, I mean, gosh, when I wrote my novel, The God of Atheists, 15 or so years ago, there was a professor, I think his name was Sokal, S-O-K-A-L? Who had generated a word salad bunch of nonsense and got it published in some arts journal, some sociology journal I think it was.
And, you know, they thought it was great and they published it and so on.
And he's like, this is all just made-up garbage.
I have no idea what I'm typing.
It just took a bunch of bunch words and stuffed them all together and so on.
And, of course, they got really upset and really angry at him.
Well, physics is no different.
And he's like, okay, well, why don't you just try and submit a physics paper with made-up numbers and garbage and stuff like that and see how far you get.
And this, you know, same thing happened with psychiatry, which we talked about in shows in the past.
So, I think a lot of what goes on among experts is crap as a whole, and it's not crap to me if it's market facing.
I mean, that's the big test for me.
Is somebody forcing people to pay for what it is that they're doing, or is somebody actually facing the market and having to provide value in a voluntary context?
Yes, I know, that praises me at the expense of others, but hey, too bad.
That's still a reasonable and decent standard.
And so Michael Crichton wrote about this as well.
He said, listen, think about something you're really an expert in and then read the popular press when they try to describe that thing, right?
And they're wrong, right?
I mean, they're just wrong about it.
Like, God help me.
I mean, I know computers fairly well inside and out and have been working with them for close to 40 years.
And Whenever you see computers in television shows or movies or whatever, I mean, it's just wrong.
Don't even get me started about the brain aneurysm I had watching Independence Day.
Yeah, it's a foreign computer system.
We know exactly what virus to program.
Of course you do.
They could have justified that.
I'm sorry?
Well, sorry.
Independence Day, I'm sorry.
I actually thought about that one.
And they could have justified that if the writer had bothered me.
Because they had the alien ship there for years, so they could have been studying the computer system in that time.
Anyway, not the point!
Yeah.
I mean, let's put it this way.
The FBI had real trouble getting into a phone.
Anyway, it's neither here nor there.
But yeah, they could have.
They could have, but they didn't, right?
I mean, yeah, could it have been, but they didn't, right?
I mean, people are just like, oh, there's a thumb drive, whatever it is, right?
And so, in general, when you know something about a topic and people are talking about it in popular media, I'm not just talking movies, but it's just terrible, right?
I can't remember which outlet it was.
Mike, you probably remember this, but recently, it was in the second presidential debate.
Donald Trump was talking about how Hillary Clinton had used BleachBit, or one of her guys had used BleachBit to erase the servers to the point where it was unrecoverable, and he said she acid-washed the server.
And they said, well, she didn't actually wipe down the server with acid.
That was their fact check on Donald Trump.
Now, I mean, come on.
It's a phrase, right?
Oh, my God.
You know, it's like saying, well, she erased the hard disk.
And it's like, well, it wasn't actually a disk made of hardness.
And they didn't use a rubber eraser.
Right.
She erased the flash drive.
It's like, well, the drive was not actually flashing.
Right.
When she, you know, it's like, oh, come on.
I mean, I know they're left and you're left, but try and do things a little better.
So I think that most of what goes on is bullshit.
And everything that faces the government, everything that faces the government, I just automatically assume is bullshit.
And then there are tells for this, right?
So if people try and intimidate you with a process you don't respect, well, where's your peer review?
Peer-reviewed stuff that's bullshit.
And it's been proven to be bullshit over and over.
All of this stuff that went on, well, most of the stuff in the reproducibility crisis, in the arts and in psychology and medicine, this was all peer-reviewed.
Most of it was, right?
And it's all bullshit.
I mean, all the stuff that's failing is bullshit.
Not all of it, right?
But significant portions of it are all unreproducible.
So...
I don't care about the peer review process.
Truth is not a popularity contest.
And particularly in the realm of philosophy or ethics, the only way I'm going to suspect that something might be true in the realm of philosophy and ethics is if a whole bunch of experts really, really get angry at it.
And refuse to publish it and refuse to have anything to do with it and use their magisterial imperial disdain.
That's the only way I'm going to have any respect for anything that's going on as if a lot of experts just really...
I really hate it.
And this is true in a variety of fields in economics and all that.
So that, I think, is a negative thing that you can use as a standard.
If people are market-facing, I'm going to assume that they're going to have more value as a whole, which is why I generally prefer the internet to mainstream media.
It is kind of market-facing, but it's in the business of delivering votes to the Democrat Party, I think, as a whole.
And that's not quite the same as being market-facing.
Well, and also heavily regulated.
Well, not heavily, but I mean, there's the FCC and there's diversity quotas you need to fulfill.
I have no patience.
They're all in favor of those regulations.
If they're in favor of those regulations, then I don't have sympathy for them.
This isn't defending them.
It's saying reasons to find their advice questionable because they have X, Y, and Z to keep rolling.
Funny how diversity never seems to include hiring Republicans, but of course, diversity is not a strength if people actually disagree with you, then it's absolutely a weakness, apparently.
So I think people who teach you conclusions rather than methodology, I'm always suspicious of.
So people who say, I don't know, this and this is real, this and this is true, 97% of this, and this is the fact, and this is the reality, and then especially when there's emotional pressure, Involved in it as well.
Like, you know, global warming is real, and if you don't agree with it, you're an anti-science denier, and it's like, hmm, hmm, no.
No, no, sorry.
I don't like to be bullied.
I don't like to be pushed around.
I don't like to be condescended to, especially when people have been wrong quite a lot.
Maybe it is real.
It's not, but I'm just, you know, when there's this emotional attitude, like, you follow welfare state or you hate the poor, you know, it's just like, No.
And there's a lot of internet media that does this as well, right?
Shock Paul!
It's like, don't tell me it's shocking.
Just give me the facts.
Horror!
It's like, don't, don't, no, no.
Don't program me with the word.
Just give me the facts.
I'll come to my own conclusions.
Thank you very much.
And I don't, you know, even some of the media outlets I will consume from time to time will try to give you I don't know if it's a clickbait title or the electricity to the NADS title.
Ghastly incident!
It's like, no, no.
Just tell me the incident.
I can figure out whether it's ghastly or not or what it is.
I just want people to give me the facts, teach me how to think, and hopefully make it entertaining.
I don't want to have any You know, like two-bit emotional bullying if I have questions about things.
So, yeah, I mean, those are sort of my approaches.
And I think believe nothing until people slowly build up credibility.
And then, you know, once someone has credibility with me, then, you know, I'll go all the way.
You know, I'm not one for like, well...
You know, that person has been very consistent for the last 500 times I've consumed their material, but I'm going to be just as skeptical as 501.
You know, I mean, trust is efficiency and it's earned and all that kind of stuff.
So I think, you know, be skeptical.
Let people build their case.
And if they build decent information in a market-facing way and don't bully you for questioning what goes on, then that's about as good as you can get as far as integrity goes and trust.
Would you say one thing is...
If someone is trying to convince you, if this is someone who walks you through the chain of reasoning rather than giving you the conclusion.
Would that be one thing?
Oh yeah, absolutely.
In fact, I mean, I try to avoid conclusions as much as possible and I've certainly almost exclusively avoided telling people what to do.
I mean, it would be useless for me to do that anyway and disrespectful to them and so on, right?
Just a methodology of thinking I think is really key.
Another thing I think that's important is conflict of interest.
You know, are people disclosing conflict of interest or not?
You know, so for instance, media outlets who appear to have colluded No.
I don't think they did say that.
Therefore, they're not disclosing a conflict of interest.
They're claiming objectivity, but they're working with the Democrats, right?
This is the same thing when there are advertisers.
And you see this with people who write financial columns.
They can say, well, I have a stake in this company, which I've mentioned in this article.
And I think that's helpful and important.
Are people clear with their conflicts of interest?
And I can't tell you the number of times people...
Well, Steph obviously is getting money from X, Y, or Z group or person or something like that because they're...
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
No, no, no.
I would be honest if that were the case.
And that's not.
I mean, it's almost all coming in from donations and a little bit from...
Amazon, a little bit from books.
Amazon is not for any product.
It's just people who buy stuff on Amazon using our link at fdrurail.com slash Amazon.
But yeah, they're disclosing conflicts of interest.
So, you know, I mean, we talked to this guy who was in university and people are like, well, I'm really for Hillary Clinton.
It's like, well, are you clear to people that Hillary Clinton is probably going to do stuff that's going to increase Your budget or your salary or your school's income or get more students into your classroom or whatever it is.
Well, that's kind of like a conflict of interest and people don't usually like to talk about things that way.
So, yeah, are people up front about where dollars or power may be influencing their perspectives?
Usually they're not, but that's another thing to keep an eye out for.
I will lose my job if global warming is discredited.
Well, that's...
Or lose my budget.
I mean, that's important.
I'm dependent on government grants for this, that, or the other, and so that's important.
Very, very important.
It's sort of like if you're working for a tobacco company and they say, well, my entire department will be cut and I'll be thrown out on my ass if I say that cigarettes are dangerous, like sort of back in the day.
Well, I think that would be pretty important to know.
But that's not...
Really being talked about in a lot of these circles, you know?
And the other thing too, like avoidance stuff as well, right?
Well, you know, you could see a paper where people could say, clearly this touches on race and IQ, but I'm too terrified to write about it because of what happened to James Watson, right?
I mean, okay, fair enough, right?
There's an obvious thing that you might want to write about, but you've decided not to.
Because you're afraid of the negative consequences.
You know, I saw what happened to Jason Richwine and, you know, I don't want to go that route.
Okay, fine.
And there are some people who've done that, right?
There are people who are studying intelligence genes.
There are people who, and they've just said, nope, I'm not doing it.
It's too fraught.
It's too political.
Okay.
I wish that they would do it.
But it's the whole point of tenure.
The whole point of tenure is to be able to pursue things that are difficult without getting fired.
Of course, all it means now is that people who pursue anything difficult never get hired in the first place, but that's inevitable when it comes to these kinds of things.
So, yeah, I think conflict of interest, avoidance of interest, and all that I think is important stuff to know about, whether people talk about it.
Right.
All right.
Well, that's my sort of tips.
I'm sure there are more, and people can write them in, and perhaps we'll do a show on good tips that people have for credibility.
But I appreciate the question.
I really do.
And I certainly recommend skepticism as a starting point for just about everything.
And let people woo you over, right?
Be the beautiful woman with lots of suitors.
Eventually settle for one.
But let them woo you over.
So thanks, Mel, for the call.
I appreciate it.
Let's move on.
Right up next we have Chris.
Chris wrote in and said, I'm a millennial medical professional who runs a pro-Trump Facebook page aimed at flipping fence-sitters or even non-fans to vote for the esteemed Donald Trump.
When debating friends and strangers, it seems people are more interested in acting as though they are champions of the right causes or as though they are winning the debate compared to being open to logic, reason, facts, and evidence, even the hard truth.
What are some honest, logical-based ways that I can lead people into supporting the God Emperor himself, Donald J. Trump?
That's from Chris.
Hello, Chris.
How are you doing?
I'm sitting in my basket being deplorable.
How about you?
The same, but adorable.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
All right.
So I'm doing pretty good.
Actually, I shouldn't say that because that's what everybody says and then you correct them, right?
I'm actually doing very mixed.
So like I said, I run a Facebook page that's aimed at fence-sitters.
And what I've been running into is just friends that I know.
You really start to learn about people when you start to learn some of the ways that they And I actually have some collections here from some conversations I've had with people to try to dig in and see what I'm facing.
Is it worth it to try to change people's minds?
And some people have challenged me.
And then sometimes I present them with arguments and I'll go through what they've said point by point.
And then the problem is...
is sometimes they – once they see that I give a lengthy response, they either don't respond at all or they'll respond back and forth a couple times and then it stops.
And then sometimes they'll send me links to articles that don't even confirm the statement that they made.
It's just, it's really crazy and all over the place.
So I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this and see if there's anything we can do.
And I think one of the things I should do for your listeners is start by explaining how I came to be a Trump supporter.
Because I know that you have a lot of listeners and not all of them are Trump supporters.
And that's perfectly fine for now.
But once we get closer to it, I just want to show the ideas that some people have preconceived notions about Trump supporters, and I want to show that that's not true.
The platform is yours.
Go ahead and speak to the world.
Perfect.
So I've been following elections basically since about 1996.
And you think, okay, well, that means that when you were 11 years old, you were watching the 96th election.
Yes, I was.
I was 11 years old watching the 96th election.
I went to school the next day and was trying to talk to people about it, and nobody else knew or cared.
So – and it feels like that's basically the way it is today.
This election here is without a doubt I would say the most important one that we've had.
I don't think too many people really dispute that, and the people who don't care to dispute it just want to stay away from the whole thing because you hear a lot of, oh, it's so nasty.
It's so negative.
It's like a war room.
I used to hear this back in 2012 too.
When I first started off – Ted Cruz announced first, and he gave, I think it was like either a 90-minute or a two-hour announcement speech.
And at first I'm thinking, okay, this is pretty much a normal thing, because I had never listened to a full announcement speech before.
And I've got to be honest with you, I'm ashamed of this now, but listening to it then, after all this situation with Obamacare and And having to pay for it and watching my friends pay for it, and luckily I've been able to avoid it, and just the situation with immigration.
Listening to his speech and the things that he was talking and promising at the time, it almost brought me to tears twice.
I really, really appreciated it.
Now, at the time, my knowledge of Ted Cruz was very, very limited, as I'll talk about later.
But because his rise to political prominence was in fighting Obamacare and the fact that nobody in Congress liked him except for maybe, what, Jeff Sessions and Mike Lee and maybe a couple other people, that to me, in my mind, meant that he must have been The hard-nosed conservative leader who wasn't going to take no for an answer, who had the right ideas and he just needed to be given the ring of power.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with the movie Serpico or not.
It's an Al Pacino movie.
Have you seen it or no?
Yes, yes I have.
Okay.
So I see Ted Cruz like that, and I'm thinking, okay, he must be the serpico of politicians where he's not going to be the one who's going to be bent and corrupt and this and that.
So I was on his side first when he comes out of the gate.
A couple other people come out, like Ben Carson, and I like him, but let me just stick with Ted Cruz for a while.
Mike Huckabee comes out.
I'm like, okay, I like him, but let me stick with Ted Cruz for a while.
Finally, it gets down to, I think, Trump and Rick Perry.
We're kind of like the last two to come out of the gate.
And...
So Trump comes out, and I'm thinking, okay, this is going to be very interesting.
Either it's going to go one of two ways.
Either he's going to come out and completely bomb this, right?
Or he's going to come out and it's actually going to be pretty good because maybe his business acumen will translate well into politics.
So he comes out and he delivers this speech, and I didn't think it was terribly spectacular, but I felt like I was listening to a police chief give a speech on things that were going on in the city.
For example, crime.
He talks about illegal immigration, which I knew that was a problem because the mainstream media had covered it a little bit for the summer of 2014.
But he started talking about it, and then when you go and you read and you do the research and you see how big the problem is, you realize, oh my gosh, he's absolutely right.
And then he's talking about trade.
None of the other politicians are talking about that.
So – but toward the end of his speech, I'm thinking, okay, this wasn't spectacular except for the fact that he said that Mexico was going to pay for the wall.
At first, I'm thinking, okay, how is that possible?
How are you going to do that?
I started thinking about it over the course of a few days later, and I'm thinking, he might not necessarily mean that they're going to physically cut us a check.
That's going to be, I don't think that's going to happen.
What he's talking about is he's going to make them absorb the cost of it somehow or other, and he might have the business sense of Oh my goodness.
Ahem.
This is where the transition started taking place.
She comes out during the first debate, and you can tell that the first two questions were aimed at isolating him and trying to make him uncomfortable, where they say, Can you guarantee that you're going to support the nominee?
He raises his hand.
Second question.
Pigs, dogs, slobs, Rosie O'Donnell.
Everybody starts laughing.
Nobody cares.
He lightens it up.
When Megyn Kelly asked him that question, you know, you've called women pigs, dogs, slobs.
Her voice is echoing through the whole thing.
I sat there and I realized she is doing exactly to him what I have had people try to do to me in the past when I have made jokes that people thought was inappropriate at the time.
It's not enough to just pull you aside and say, hey, this isn't cool.
You shouldn't say this.
This isn't the environment.
They try to humiliate you for it.
And when he stood up there and he said, you want to know what?
What I say is what I say.
And if you don't like it, I'm sorry, but maybe I can not be nice to you based on the way you asked that question.
I thought, bam, that's the moment.
That's the turning point for this guy.
Now, people are going to support him regardless of whether or not I support him.
Now, after that debate, everybody that I knew in real life and online was split – Everybody was split.
Half of people said, wait a minute.
I thought this guy could be presidential material, but after tonight's performance, the way he answered Megyn Kelly, he was rude to her.
I'm not voting for him.
Forget it.
Forget it.
And then the other half of people I knew said, oh man, they came after him.
They were out to get him.
They were trying to attack him.
They were trying to make him look bad.
They cornered him.
And so then I'm the type of person, I don't like to be on the fence about what I consider important decisions.
I like to know exactly where I sit with things.
So then I decide, okay, this guy's number one right now.
He's doing better than Cruz.
I need to figure out where I sit.
So then I started listening to people who are pro-Trump and people who are anti-Trump on the radio.
I started listening to a guy by the name of Michael Savage who I've been listening to for about as long as I've been listening to you, which has been about maybe a year or so.
And he's very pro-Trump.
And then I started listening to the people who are anti-Trump.
And slowly but surely over the course of time, I can't give you a day, a date, a time, or an hour – But I can't...
Just slowly but surely, I realized, okay, if this guy gets to be the nominee, I can see myself voting for him.
And yeah, sure, when he delivers speeches and he comes out, it's not as formal as the other politicians, and it's not as...
He messes up his sentences, and he drips from topic to topic, and his voice is a little bit rough.
But I realized, because he's talking about the same ideas that I really, really like, it's actually very refreshing.
I feel like I actually have representation.
And I don't care about the fact that, okay, so maybe he's not polished.
And the fact that he comes out and he's speaking off the cuff and he's not using a teleprompter and he's just saying whatever the heck is on his mind, it was actually very, very, very refreshing for once.
So over the course of time I realized it gets to be time for the primaries and I decide, okay, I'm going to vote Trump.
I go to the primaries.
I'm standing in the booth.
I couldn't believe how different his name looked on the ballot compared to other people in terms of pushing that button, pulling the lever for him, and saying, am I sure I want to do this?
Well, and then the thought went through my head that went, if nothing changes, then nothing changes.
That means if you don't do something different, nothing's going to change, and I pull the lever for him.
Luckily, I've been able to talk four other people into voting for Trump.
We're all on board, so that's really good.
But then I decide, okay, I need to do more.
I need to talk to people and start disproving some of the lies that are being told because one of the major things that made me shift from...
Okay, he's a backup to I'm going to support this guy is the very first thing he said during his announcement speech.
He mentioned illegal immigration, and he mentioned rape.
He mentioned murder.
He mentioned drugs, and I'm thinking – I knew that these problems would exist to some degree, but I had no idea how bad it was.
So he mentions that, and then a couple days later, not right away, a couple days later, when his numbers start climbing, the mainstream media starts attacking him like crazy.
Oh, Trump said this.
He's a racist this.
He's a racist that.
And I've got to be honest with you, Stefan.
I am so sick and tired of the racist word being thrown around every 30 seconds for every little thing.
They make it so that when someone faces a real case of racism, it's not going to get taken seriously because it's going to be a boy-cried-wolf scenario.
First of all – Racist, just for those who don't know, the word racist, when it comes from the left, means that you oppose groups of people coming into your country who are going to vote for Democrats.
That's all it means.
That's basically – I've heard people saying that, and then as I've done more research and I've looked into it more and more and you listen to the politicians on the left, you begin to realize, oh my god, it's true.
Oh my god, it's true.
And that's been the case over and over.
I knew that the media was a propaganda machine.
But I thought it was a propaganda machine maybe 10 percent of the time, maybe 30 percent of the time.
My first clue was in college when I had probably the only conservative professor.
I didn't know what his politics were, but based on the way he talked, now that I think back, probably a conservative.
He goes, oh yeah, I don't listen to Fox News or CNN or none of them.
It's all propaganda.
So I'm thinking, okay, maybe he's just this kooky old guy.
He doesn't know what he's talking about.
He's just saying things off the bat.
But then I ask myself, wait a minute, could it be true?
And then time and again, Trump will say something and they twist it.
And then he says something else and then they twist it.
And then he says something else and they twist it again.
And so when they started doing that, what he did was I saw them attacking somebody who, as far as I knew, even if I had disagreed with him, I could see that he was trying to do the right thing by his country.
Yeah, and sorry, just to those who don't know and don't follow this stuff, Lord love you, but he was talking about immigrants bringing the poison of drugs, illegal immigrants or people crossing the border bringing the poison of drugs.
And the media reported that he was saying that all immigrants were poisoned.
I mean, it's just ridiculous.
They were saying, yeah, it was horrible what they were saying.
It was horribly inaccurate because if you were to take what Trump said and put it into a Venn diagram, you have like a larger circle of people who are in the United States who came from Mexico, both legal and illegal.
Then you have the smaller circle of those who came here illegally.
Well, of the people who are here illegally, you would have a smaller circle within that who are the rapists and the drug dealers and the murderers.
That's what he's talking about there.
But what they do is they inflate the circle so that they're extending it out into as far and as ridiculous as, oh, Tim Kaine at the VP debate saying, well, Trump said that Mexicans are rapists.
No, that's not true on many levels.
Number one, Mexicans would be people who currently live in Mexico.
Not the illegal aliens who came here.
That's the first thing.
Second of all, he was talking about some of the illegal aliens who come to this country.
That's the problem.
And he had the numbers, right?
So 80% of the women who are crossing the border are reporting being raped.
And they take slices of their clothing and they hang them on bushes.
So the numbers were there.
And again, Mexico is not a race.
It's boring nonsense.
It's kind of like an intelligence test.
But anyway, finish up if you could and then we'll get on to the conversation part.
Yeah, sure.
I'll go ahead and finish up.
But one of the reasons I guess I want to tie this into – because now we're getting into logic and how logic works and how if you don't understand logic – All this stuff is just going to slip right past your ear because it used to go by my ear before, but if it is any consolation to you, one of the classes that I took in college as an elective was probably one of the most valuable classes I've taken for life in general, and it was a class on logic.
I mean the textbook was Intro to Logic and you start learning what syllogisms are and categorical syllogisms and you learn about the difference between valid and an invalid argument.
And one of the reasons, one of the things that's kept me really hooked on your show is out of all the YouTubers I listen to, you are the only one who even references any vocabulary from that book as it's taught.
So I just wanted to throw that in there.
That way we can make that part of the conversation as we go forward too.
So I'm done and you can go ahead.
And if you want, I can go through some of these cases a little later on, but feel free to go ahead.
No, I mean, I think you make a good point.
And, you know, Trump's not an idiot.
Like he had someone he hired who listened to talk radio and read the papers and looked up the polls and tried to figure out what...
Could he supply that the Republican Party was not supplying, as it stood?
And that's because he's a businessman, right?
And you don't just go build a hotel, right?
You have to do an analysis of the market.
You're going to have to say, how are we going to differentiate ourselves?
Is there enough traffic there to justify it?
I mean, what are we going to provide that's going to be unique?
And what's our angle and our branding and all of this stuff, right?
So he actually planned...
All of this.
He didn't just say, well, I'm a lawyer and I want to become a politician because being a lawyer is hard work.
And I like power, right?
So he planned it all out.
And so it was not an accident.
Nothing that he did or has done, I think, has been accidental.
And so I think to understand all of that is to understand his success.
You know, this kind of success, people just want to say, well, you know, there are white people who feel alienated and there are angry people and there are racist people.
No.
No.
Because that's saying that Trump didn't do anything.
He's just tapping into a vein of popular resentment.
That is very, very key in leftist analysis of success of people from the right.
That it's just kind of accident, just tripped over this vein of resentment and is stoking it and all that.
It's like, no, no, come on.
First of all, the left minds resentment and victimhood like nobody's business.
It's all just projection.
But no, he planned it and people got sick and tired.
People are sick and tired of the racist thing.
And people are sick and tired of this gynocentric female worship that's going on.
You know, this cack planet white knighting stuff, you know?
What was it?
Women should be revered and women should be...
All of them.
All of them.
Remember that?
They had to break all...
Well, it's like, so Megyn Kelly says, you've called some women pigs.
Know what?
Some women are pigs.
You've called some women, you've called women fat pigs.
It's like, yes, because some women are fat slobs or whatever.
Yes, some women are fat slobs.
And this is what he said.
He said, only Rosie O'Donnell.
One of the most brilliant ripostes that has ever occurred in the history of this planet.
Because he's saying, no, only those pigs.
To whom the subroquay is deserved.
Only those to whom the label fits.
And that is brilliant.
And that was the pushback that to me changed everything.
And I've mentioned it before.
Because it's like, what was he going to say?
You can't ever call a woman a fat slob?
Can you call a man a fat slob?
Sure.
If he's a fat slob, you can call him a fat slob.
Can you call a man fat?
Yes.
You can call the man fat.
I think it was an ad for a gym.
Some fat guy was singing, saying, Oh, look at me.
I'm a pear.
Can you call the man pear-shaped?
Yeah, if he's pear-shaped.
Can you call the man ugly?
Yeah, if he's ugly.
Yes, this giant category, this halo, this church of pear-shaped, Women that you can't ever say anything.
I mean, that's ridiculous.
That is objectifying women.
Women are people.
They're good, bad, and indifferent among them, just as there are among any other group that you can imagine.
So when she's trying to stimulate female outrage and white knighting, and he says, no, only Rosie O'Donnell.
And yeah, that's perfect.
And he's like, look, I don't have time for all this political correctness.
You can't have any intelligent conversations with About anything if you can't have intelligent conversations about women.
Women are the majority of voters throughout the West.
And if you can't have any intelligent conversation about women, your civilization will die.
It literally, and like I said this recently, if we continue to feed the monster of female vanity, our civilization will die.
We need to be able to view women as human beings.
With flaws and virtues and good decisions and bad decisions, we need to be able to say single motherhood is a bad decision that is bad for children, bad for society, bad for taxpayers.
We need to be able to say that.
But it's like, oh, you can't criticize single moms.
Why not?
Why not?
Look, if we're going to have a group of people who are completely immune from criticism, How on earth are we going to be able to make intelligent decisions as a society?
Especially when that group is at least half the population and the majority of the voters.
Can't criticize them.
Oh, okay.
So women are immune to criticism or can't be criticized.
Men can be criticized all the time.
Well, that's incredibly sexist.
It's saying that men have the strength and capacity to be criticized and absorb it.
But women are such frail, delicate.
It's so Victorian.
It's so pathetic.
And he nailed that right at the beginning.
And who cares about women?
Well, it's the women who are getting raped as a whole by the people who are ferrying them across the southern border into the US. So if he builds a wall, then far fewer women are going to get raped.
You know, everyone's all really upset about this nonsense that was supposed to have happened on a plane 34 years ago between The woman whose name literally is Miss Leeds.
Miss Leeds!
You've got to be kidding.
I'm not even trying these days to cover it up.
And apparently now he's dug up the witness, the fabled man across the aisle who said that Miss Leeds was all over him and he wasn't having any of it and he was trying to reject your advances.
This is all falling apart.
And again, this is just part of the general plan.
Each one of these attacks, it's the same script.
They come on strong, it falls apart.
They move on to the next one like nothing happened.
They come on strong, it falls apart.
They move on to the next one like nothing happened.
And people are getting, they get it.
They get the pattern and all of that.
So yeah, we need to have intelligent discussions together.
I'm about women's good and bad choices.
I give women the respect of moral agency, and that means they are subject to criticism if they behave badly, and if people don't want that, then just say that.
Well, women are too frail to be criticized.
They're too hysterical.
They're too emotional.
I don't believe that's the case.
I think women can handle criticism.
But there's lots of people out there who want to pretend that they can't and then have the nerve to say that women should be equal to men.
Anyway, so pure nonsense that I'm really quite pleased that Donald Trump is cutting through all that nonsense.
Yeah, me too.
And you reminded me of a lot of points that I wanted to make too because think about this double standard that gets applied where – okay, so how do you turn this into an argument?
Well, she says you have gotten to an argument.
You've called women pigs, dogs.
First of all, she says the word women.
What about individuals?
Because I can name for you men that I don't get along with.
I can name men that I do get along with.
I can name women that I don't get along with.
I can name women – That I do get along with.
So they're lacing your mind to think that because he got into an argument with one woman or a group of women, that he must therefore have an issue with all women.
It's the same thing with Hispanics.
You're saying all Hispanics are racist.
You're saying all women are fascists.
That's exactly it.
Exactly it, and the only time that that standard is not applied is when the left is doing the same thing with anyone who's white, who's male, who's Christian, who's family-oriented, who doesn't care for homosexual marriage, any of those things.
And so his response was great.
Another thing he could have said is think about the double standard.
You're sitting here having an argument with me.
I'm a man.
Does that mean that you're sexist against men just simply because you're having an argument with me?
So the fact that I got into an issue with Rosie O'Donnell years ago that nobody cares about when they wake up in the morning is garbage.
It's garbage and it's unacceptable.
And also, it showed...
Well, you could also ask her, has she ever called out a woman for criticizing a man?
That's exactly right.
That's exactly right.
Of course, you know, of course she has, right?
In which case, okay, so a woman is allowed to criticize a man or a couple of men without it being extrapolated to her thinking all men are this.
But I'm not allowed to criticize women.
Isn't that incredibly sexist?
Women are allowed to criticize men.
Men are not allowed to criticize women.
Oh, so boring.
I mean, that's the old argument that only whites can be racist and blacks can be.
It's boring.
And it's not even worth rebutting.
It's just so mechanistically retarded.
And if a man does bring that double standard up, what is he told to do?
He's told to man up, right?
But if you said the same thing to a woman, to woman up, it doesn't have the same sort of...
When you hear the term...
Or check his privilege.
Yes.
Yep, check my privilege.
Still don't have any.
Yep.
If my privilege is that I can't criticize women, but they can criticize me, I don't think you know what the word privilege actually means.
My privilege is broken.
You know that old thing, if you want to know who rules over UN society, just look at you, you're not allowed to criticize.
And they call it a patriarchy?
No.
Since the welfare state, it's pure matriarchy.
It's just, yeah, is it cool to be pro-Trump?
Is it cool to have sympathy for Trump?
Is it cool?
I mean, it's boring.
It's really, really boring.
And this is the genius of the left.
They've made certain things cool and certain things not cool.
And it's cool to be anti-Trump.
It's cool to be sort of pro-Hillary or whatever it is.
And it's absolutely not cool.
Like, ugh, you're pro-Trump?
How could you?
You know, it's not an argument.
No argument whatsoever.
And just they've made it uncool.
Like, you know, I was just listening to a Milo Yiannopoulos podcast where he was talking about traveling in the South and people are like enormously nice and invite them over for dinner and are very positive and friendly and, you know, they're making jokes about these are the people who drive around looking for people whose cars have broken down just so they can help them.
And, you know, of course, Hollywood and these, you know, a lot of people in the South will vote Republican.
So what has Hollywood done?
Well, Hollywood has made Southerners synonymous with Racists with rednecks with, well, you ain't from around here, son.
You know, single, nice tooth.
You know, deliverance kind of stuff.
Or in the Peter Fonda movie Easy Rider.
You know, like the southerners are just like inbred, retard, violent.
Why?
Because they vote.
Republican.
Oh, and by the way, as Ann Coulter has pointed out, the South provides an enormous number of military men.
To the Republic.
And so they've made it uncool to be from the South, right?
I think it's Jeff Foxworthy who says, you know, they hear a Southern accent, just shave 20 points off your IQ automatically.
Well, that's the work of the left, just attacking the base.
You know, white males are like uncool and white males are like the only group you can discriminate against these days.
Why?
Because white males generally vote Republican.
Because white males pay the vast majority of the taxes in the country.
And so they've made white males uncool, southerners uncool.
Hmm, I wonder if there's a pattern.
Whereas single moms, totally cool.
Heroes.
Teachers, totally cool.
Heroes, right?
Illegal immigrants suffering, living in the shadows.
Hey, all the people who vote left are cool.
And all the people who vote right are really uncool.
Terrible.
And then they have the nerve to criticize others for collective judgments.
It's just, it's become so, so sad.
It's so pitiful and so obvious when you see it, right?
Who's cool?
Hey, vote left, you're cool.
Who's not cool?
Ooh.
Vote right.
You're uncool.
It's just like, oh man.
We're never getting out of high school.
Apparently that's just it.
It's high school to the end of our days.
That's basically it.
And think about the double standard that's applied where if you make the assertion that many or all Southerners are racist, then what you're doing is you're setting the standard that it's not okay to look at a group collectively and make judgments about them.
Right?
Because if you're a racist, the true definition of racism is when you think that one race of one group of people is genetically superior or inferior to another race of people.
Therefore, if you have it in your head that all people of this group, that there are certain things about them that are true, right?
But then you're then saying that about all Southerners.
Granted, Southerners aren't a race, but you're still taking a group of people, putting them in this own little category in your mind, and you've already made up your mind about all of them before you even met them, just like Hillary Clinton did when she said that half of Donald Trump supporters, and you can't tell me she's met half of them.
There's no way.
Yeah, yeah.
No, she apologized for saying half, right?
But didn't say the estimate should be lower.
I don't care.
Now, just to give you my thoughts back, I don't know what the definition of racism is.
That's the problem.
So you say, well, saying that one race is genetically inferior or superior to another race, I don't know what that means.
Because, like, I was just watching...
No, somebody posted this on Twitter.
It was a list of people who won some marathon recently.
And, like, all of the top people were from Kenya, right?
And I had the guy on.
Why do blacks dominate at sports?
He's talking about fast twitch muscles and so on and just how amazingly great particular people from a particular area of Kenyan are in particular running races and all that.
And so, I don't know, do Kenyans appear to be faster than, I don't know, the Inuit when it comes to running?
Yes!
Now, that just means they're faster at running.
I don't think that means they're genetically superior or inferior.
I don't think there's any such thing as genetically superior or inferior in any way whatsoever.
It's sort of like saying, is a great Jane genetically superior to a husky?
Well, no.
They have different characteristics.
You know, Great Danes are taller and, I don't know, huskies are better in the cold and so on.
But that's not genetically superior or inferior.
It's simply a matter of adaptation to local circumstances.
So I don't find any utility in the phrase genetically superior or inferior when it comes to the races.
I don't really know what the definition of racism is.
I think if you were to say...
I don't know.
All Chinese people are lazy.
Well, okay.
That's a collective judgment.
That's clearly false about any group.
And I guess that would be...
But I never meet anyone like that.
I've never met anyone like that who says anything that...
All red-headed people are...
Pyromaniacs, right?
I don't know.
Well, that's actually probably true.
This is a different one.
But I don't know what the term racism means because every time people put forward a definition, it's full of so many caveats it becomes meaningless or it's only applied to one particular group or it's not applied to some particular group.
So, you know, racism is a collective judgment about a group.
White people can't be racist because they have power.
It's like, what?
White people, all white people have power?
Are you kidding me?
I mean, that's insane, right?
I mean, some of the poorest districts in America are white.
You know, the sort of Appalachian stuff and all of that, although crime is pretty low, but anyway.
So, I just wanted to point out, and I don't have an answer for this in general, but the word racism has been so distorted and abused and used for so long as a political weapon I'm not trying to be like Socratic while I just, I get genuinely, I don't know what the word means anymore.
But your example of somebody who thinks that a race is genetically inferior, well, you know, the race has evolved over 50 to 100,000 years in wildly disparate environments, and so there's local adaptation to particular requirements, and some of those are external, and some of those are internal, and some of those appear to have something to do with IQ. There's no question of superiority or inferiority.
They're simply adaptation to local environments.
I don't want to have to get into a big debate here.
I'm just pointing out that I genuinely don't know what the term racism means.
I say this as a race and a gender, white male, who's been subject to an enormous amount of negative collective judgments over the years.
If there's not a definition of racism that includes the racist and sexist statements made against white males, then I have no respect for that, too.
I'm not saying that's your perspective, but just generally, I don't know what the word racism means anymore.
And, you know, if people have really good illuminating things to say about it, I'd certainly like to hear them, but I just honestly have no idea what it means anymore, other than you've out-argued a liberal.
No, no, I agree with you 100% because if you stick with that definition of racism where it can only be applied to certain groups, then another concept that you've talked about in the past called universality, where you take a principle and you apply it all around the board, all the same rules for everybody, doesn't matter, rich, poor, connected, not connected.
Everybody has – we have one set of rules that applies to everybody except Hillary Clinton, but we have one set of rules that applies to everybody, and that's the way it's going to go.
And I agree with you.
If someone – if the connotation of the term continues to be used like that, then yeah, I have no respect for the term.
The reason I – well, not only did I hear that definition somewhere else, but to me that Hitler falls into that category.
And because he truly did believe that some people were superior or inferior – To others.
Now, my thing is this.
Here's – and I want to give you my background on how I grew up.
When you grow up, you notice that people look different.
You start going to school.
You see other kids.
And you go home and you ask your parents, Mom, Dad, how come – why are some people peach-colored and how – Some people are brown.
Some people are like this or like that.
And the way it was explained to me was this.
Chris, God loves wondrous variety.
For example, not every tree is a peach tree.
Not every tree is a palm tree.
Not every tree is an apple tree.
All the trees are different.
Even bushes, right?
Some bushes are bigs.
Some bushes are small.
And I went to school, kindergarten class.
I was one of four kids named Chris in the class.
So naturally we just kind of all collected together.
Okay, I guess somebody else hung up.
We collected together, hung out together, and one of us was black.
Nobody cared.
Nobody cared about it.
Because as a kid, unless you're taught that by somebody else, you basically don't care.
You basically don't care.
And so I really think that if people on the left were truly – if they want to defeat – part of me thinks that the left just wants racism to exist as a problem because they want to be able to continue to try to say that they're going to solve that problem.
But if you are exposed to different types of people at a young age – and by the way, when I say exposed to different types of people, I mean compatible cultures, right?
Then you're just going to grow up not thinking about it as long as you're taught that it's not a big deal.
Right at the gate, right from the get-go, as long as it's not taught.
But I'll tell you what.
I remember shows growing up like Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Family Matters, and it was just – it seemed like there was this mobility where people could do different things you had.
You could be a lawyer, a cop, a judge, and race was something that you really didn't think about.
After eight years of Obama and the situation with Black Lives Matter and every single time something comes out, people are rushing to judgment.
Oh, let's blame the cops.
Obama as the president doesn't come in to say, hey, let's wait until the facts come out before we reach a judgment.
Let's not have collectivist thinking.
You're saying let's not think about the people who were shot and killed collectively.
Therefore, let's not also think about the cops collectively.
Let's just wait for the facts to come in.
Don't blame white people, even when the cop is black or Hispanic.
It's just things are very racially tense, at least on the television.
Now I work in a healthcare setting, and I see patients of all different types, and everybody is perfectly fine.
I say, what are you doing this weekend?
We're doing this, that, the other.
And everybody – one person seems just as normal as the next one.
It's just – it's only as though – it's as though race is an issue on TV and what the politicians like.
They're trying to strike something up between people.
But when I have people in my chair who aren't white and we talk about things and we get into these conversations – They are just as much not wanting to participate in what the media is trying to get everybody to do in hating each other as I am.
And nobody cares.
Nobody cares.
Well, I mean, this is one of the great challenges of some of the race and IQ stuff that I've talked about is that when kids are young, there's much more confluence, right?
I mean, the races tend to deviate in IQ later on in life, which is a challenge.
And again, this is not all.
This is just, you know, the general trend as a whole.
Yeah.
Yeah, these are challenging issues.
I think that looking at the degree to which blacks are now increasingly supporting Trump, I think is fantastic.
This may well be the end of dependence on what Diamond and Silk call the Democrat plantation, right?
The welfare state.
I think they're getting this is not working.
I think they're getting how destructive this is being.
And I think they're tired of gun control, like Chicago has got how many gardeners.
I mean, it's tough to even watch that tick a roll of how many shootings there are in these environments with strict gun control and inner cities and welfare and all that.
So, I think that, you know, in this election cycle, hopefully the blacks have woken up to the fact that Donald Trump is going to try and get them jobs rather than keep them dependent on welfare, which I think has been a lot more of what the Democrats have been up to, either consciously or unconsciously.
So, we'll have to see how all of this plays out, but I really enjoyed your story of how, you know, there's sort of a patient process, which is great, you know, be skeptical and be open to new information, and I think that is...
Where we can get the greatest benefit from.
So yeah, thanks very much for your call.
Thanks everyone so much for such a wonderful, wonderful conversation these evenings as just a highlight of my week, being able to chat with the world in these kinds of ways.
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Have a great weekend.
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