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| So I'm going to rush in where angels fear to tread and talk about the Logan Paul Japanese suicide forest debacle. | |
| For those of you who don't know, Logan Paul is a shaggy-haired, youthful Owen Wilson type who's been vlogging since he was about 10. | |
| He's 22 now. | |
| He's got 15 million subscribers and does an ungodly amount of views, of course. | |
| And he has been vlogging every day, doing like a 15-minute video every day for like well over 400 days in a row. | |
| And he sort of made this commitment that no matter what he did, he was going to publish it. | |
| And I assume for shites and giggles, he went into a very sort of famous forest in Japan where, That is called the suicide forest, because about 100 people, mostly men of course, a year kill themselves, hang themselves in general in that forest. | |
| And as he was wandering around, I guess fairly soon after he got into the forest, he came across a dead body, a man who had hung himself. | |
| And he blurted out, and he did have warnings at the beginning of the video, and it was entitled, We Found a Dead Body in the Japanese Suicide Forest. | |
| So this was not... Something that was sprung on people and he hyperventilated. | |
| You know, he's got this kind of goofy frat boy persona and he came across something sort of very real and something very serious and the reality and the gravity of the situation clearly crashed into his bubble foam, fairly Disney-esque personality. | |
| He's halfway to a cartoon character as a whole, although I'm sure entertaining for many. | |
| And he was shocked and hyperventilated and was appalled and made a few jokes. | |
| And, you know, there was a woman grinning away in the background, but nobody really seems to be focusing on her because, I guess, male privilege and all. | |
| And then he did some shots afterwards because he was so shaken up and I assume they called the authorities and so on and it was dealt with. | |
| And he published this and he did not monetize the video. | |
| And then, well, a social mob descended from...upon his tousled head and demanded said head the destruction of his career, his YouTube channel, his personality, his person, demanding that he kill himself, ironic for people who are upset about a suicide video. | |
| And he then apologized and said, look, I didn't do it for clicks. | |
| I didn't do it for views. I already get views. | |
| I wanted to raise awareness. | |
| It was shocking. It was appalling. | |
| It's a big issue. It's a big issue in Japan, in its sort of late stage Roman Empire, sclerotic socialism. | |
| Suicide in Japan is a very, very big deal. | |
| So just look at 2014. 70 Japanese people committed suicide every single day. | |
| And of course, the vast majority are men because they're just imbibing deep of the giant skysuckling teat of male privilege. | |
| And yeah, 2013, there were just under 30,000 for three consecutive years. | |
| 71% of suicides in Japan are male. | |
| And suicide is the leading cause of death in men aged 20 to 44. | |
| And that is a very big deal. | |
| Japan, of course, like many countries that embark upon the socialist forced redistribution of wealth, which is to say virtually all countries, has generated a very sort of inverted pyramid of ancient fish-eating vampires who are preying upon the young, destroying their economic opportunities. | |
| Japan has, I think, the highest debt to GDP Well north of 200% in the world, massive amounts of loans, a culture of keeping alive zombie companies at the expense of youthful opportunities, and this same phenomena that is occurring for Japanese men is also occurring for white men in America, America in particular and other places as well, where white men, economic opportunities are being destroyed, there's no future. | |
| And there is, of course, an opioid epidemic partly fueled by an open border or semi open border policies under previous administrations. | |
| And so you have huge amounts of suicide by addiction occurring in among whites, particularly white males. | |
| For whites in America, life expectancy has been declining for the past several years for the first time in, I don't know, a huge amount of century or more. | |
| And so this question of suicide is very important. | |
| Now, I don't want to make this about myself, but I just want to tell people where I'm coming from. | |
| I have not known anybody who has killed himself or herself, but I have known when I was younger, as a teenager in particular, I knew people, and maybe you know people like this too, but I knew people whose their lifestyle was An invitation to death pretty much on a daily basis. | |
| You know, the people who drink vastly to excess and then do stupid things. | |
| The people who drive motorcycles in the rain, as the old song goes, way too fast. | |
| The people who take drugs. | |
| People who just get involved with very dangerous people in potentially dangerous situations. | |
| And it's kind of like a countdown to the early exit that occurs for these kinds of people. | |
| And so I do know Some people, I'm thinking in particular people I knew in school, in junior high school and high school, who I have found out have since died as a result of their addictions or their thrill-seeking or danger. | |
| And so it is a big issue. | |
| And the idea that seeing this, I mean, it's blurred out. | |
| People say, oh, well, you know, it's a channel for kids. | |
| Well, as parents, you need to monitor what your children are exposed to. | |
| Like, I'm sorry, it's just the way... | |
| That it is. You know, any channel where a guy's going into a suicide forest is not automatically a channel for children. | |
| So expecting, if parents aren't willing to step up and restrict their children's video consumption or tablet consumption on the web, then expecting everyone else to censor themselves because you're not controlling what your children see seems like a kind of... | |
| It's pretty much a hole with no bottom, right? | |
| I mean, so I have some issues with that. | |
| And the fundamental issue, sort of two fundamental issues that I have. | |
| One is the showing or hiding of death. | |
| For gain is a constant feature of human history. | |
| Come on. I mean, we all know how this works. | |
| You know, I mean, in wars, like war paintings from the Renaissance and so on, you know, the dead are always the enemy and the heroes in the... | |
| Pillar of light with the handsome jawlines and so on. | |
| They're all on your team and the enemies are all orc-like and so on. | |
| So this manipulation of life and death for the sake of political purposes or propaganda purposes is a constant feature of human history. | |
| If you look at the difference, say, the left wants third world immigration into Europe and North America because people from the third world vote overwhelmingly for the left, right? | |
| So they can't win the intellectual debate, so they're importing voters. | |
| And so if you remember a couple of years ago, There was this Turkish father who got on an overloaded boat to cross the Mediterranean He ended up his his and the boat was capsized and and his son ended up dying I think he was three or four years old and there was this picture you saw you know the little boy face down and in the What in the waves on the beach in Turkey this was publicized everywhere many many children could see this now I don't remember, | |
| and correct me, of course, if I'm wrong, as always, but I don't remember there being a massive outrage about the endless and incessant broadcasting of this image of a drowned little boy on a Turkish beach, in the media, everywhere, tons of places that children could see this image, whether this still exists. | |
| Now, the reason why this was put out by the largely leftist media was to create sympathy for the migrants so that the economic opportunists and welfare seekers could get into Europe and then start eventually end up voting for the left as they became naturalized and as they got their families in as well. | |
| So, there was the clear exploitation of a tragic and horrible death of a little boy for political purposes. | |
| And I don't remember people screaming and saying to everyone in the leftist media that they should go kill themselves and that they were garbage and should rot in hell and so on for exploiting the death of this little boy for their own political gain. | |
| If you compare that... | |
| To the terrorist attack in Nice, right? | |
| Where the little girl, her teddy bear was by her dead body after the terrorist attack and her body was in a body bag. | |
| They never showed the actual body. | |
| They didn't show the bodies directly because that would cause popular resentment to rise against endless world immigration and the risks associated with it. | |
| Therefore, you don't show those bodies, but you do show the body of the little boy. | |
| Drowned on the beach. | |
| So this doesn't excuse anyone about anything. | |
| I just sort of wanted to point out that, you know, this guy showed a blurred out picture and his own reaction to it. | |
| Sorry, this guy showed a blurred out video of the body that he found and his own reaction. | |
| And people are just dumping all over this guy. | |
| Although this is a very real issue, and I can tell you this, there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people now who are aware of suicide as a very large problem in Japan, and they weren't so before. | |
| But if you look at the difference in which, in the ways in which the Turkish boy was treated versus the girl, the white girl in Nice, well, you show one body, you don't show the other for political gain, for political purposes, which is a little bit more important than potential clickbait from a YouTuber. | |
| And here's the issue I think I really wanted to, I want you to focus on and meditate upon, because I see this all the time, you know, if people think that I'm not being particularly compassionate enough or empathetic enough, You know, they will all caps scream at me and so on, right? | |
| And so what people are saying is that, hey man, empathy is a value and the way that I'm going to teach you that empathy is a value is by being psychotically vicious towards you. | |
| And this is kind of like a big paradox, right? | |
| If empathy is a value and somebody is lacking in empathy, then what you should do, of course, is treat that person with empathy. | |
| If empathy is your highest value, and if this young man was showing a callousness, a coldness, a shallowness, a lack of empathy, I don't think that screaming that he should rot in hell, that he's a piece of human garbage, that he should go kill himself and so on, I'm pretty sure that's not actually teaching him the value of empathy. | |
| In other words, if a lack of empathy is a moral crime, then you are participating in that crime by trashing someone. | |
| And the other question too, which is interesting as well, is the value of apologies. | |
| There are some people out there who make the case, and I'm still a little bit on the fence about it, but there is the case which says, listen, when you're being attacked by one of these baying psycho mobs, apologizing won't help, won't change anything, won't make anything better. | |
| And in fact, just makes things worse because you're appeasing a mob. | |
| And I, again, I kind of understand that. | |
| I do think that if you're wrong, you should apologize, but not because the mob is attacking you. | |
| And this young man did put out a pretty sincere, seemed to me pretty sincere apology. | |
| And of course, it's not enough. | |
| It's not because now people are accusing him of being manipulative and not taking ownership and so on. | |
| And there is... No, satisfying some people. | |
| And this, to me, when it comes, I really do value criticism, but I am very skeptical of critics. | |
| And this is an important thing. | |
| And I'm not saying this because you particularly care about how I deal with these things, but because it's an important lesson, I think, for you to have, for you to learn. | |
| Which is, if somebody comes at you with criticism, The first thing you want to do is you want to ask yourself, let's just say it's some guy named Bob. | |
| So Bob comes rushing at you with some fundamental criticism. | |
| The first question you want to ask is, is Bob following his own rules? | |
| Is Bob following his own rules? | |
| Well, most times, no. | |
| Most times, it's like, you lack compassion, you piece of human garbage. | |
| It's like, oh, so you're teaching me the value of compassion by calling me a piece of human garbage. | |
| And that is a problem. | |
| Why do people get so upset about this in particular? | |
| Well, there's a lot of deep things. | |
| This is a male issue, to a large degree, the suicide issue in Japan. | |
| Japan, demographically, is a faltering, if not outright dying society. | |
| You have a very top-heavy group of voters that are basically enslaving the young. | |
| This is a common pattern throughout the West, and of course in the East Asian countries as well, but particularly in Japan. | |
| And so... If this suicidality as a result of being preyed upon by elder generations through the power of voting control of state apparatuses of coercion, well, that's a big problem because the left doesn't want that problem exposed. | |
| So this is another way of making sure that people don't talk about this issue because I think this guy was shocked. | |
| I think he was appalled. Now, you could say, well, he shouldn't have made this joke or he shouldn't have said that and so on, but it's, again, part of that sort of empathy and compassion thing until you actually stand in a wood and see a man who's Hanged himself, it's kind of tough. | |
| And of course, you know, we do have a collision, as I said, of something kind of serious coming into a kind of goofy public persona. | |
| Maybe it was unstoppable force meeting immovable object. | |
| But if you want the man to learn empathy, if you feel that he was cold, if he was callous, if he was disrespectful, and that's not a term I hugely understand. | |
| But let's say you believe all of these things. | |
| What is the rational and moral response to somebody who lacks empathy that you wish to correct? | |
| Is it to scream at them, verbally abuse them, and, you know, wish death and destruction upon them and their house? | |
| Well, you are very much guilty of the same crime that you claim to be so opposed to. | |
| And if you can't find ways to treat people you disagree with, with any form of compassion, if you want to get involved in the conversation, if you can't find ways If your primary criticism is that someone lacks empathy and compassion, but you verbally abuse them as a response, I'm afraid any sane person is just going to have to write off your criticism. | |
| And empathy is lacking in the world. | |
| And in this, I think, kind of sick interaction between this vlogger And this people who are criticizing him, verbally attacking and abusing him and so on, calling him a see you next Tuesday word and so on, and just shredding the guy from top to toe. | |
| I don't know that responding to perhaps a callous Reaction to a suicide is to attempt a kind of soul murder. | |
| I don't really think that is a step in the right direction. | |
| And so I hope that this helps when it comes to being criticized. | |
| Judge your critics first and foremost. | |
| And if the critics are hypocritical, dismiss them. | |
| If they are acting with integrity, treasure them and keep them close to your heart because they will be very essential in guiding you to a better path. | |
| This is Stefan Molyneux. | |
| Thank you so much for watching. Please help out the show at freedomainradio.com slash donate. |