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June 30, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:12:48

4133 Our Orwellian Reality | Rick Mehta and Stefan Molyneux

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	Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux.
	Hope you're doing well. We're here with Dr.
	Rick Mehta. He's a free speech advocate and an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada.
	You can check out his Twitter at twitter.com forward slash Rick R Mehta.
	That's R-E-C-K-R-M-E-H-T-A. Dr.
	Mehta, thank you so much for taking the time today.
	Oh, my pleasure. So once more, unto the ramparts, we free speech advocates go.
	We had a pretty good run of it there in the sort of 80s and 90s, and it seems like things have changed quite a bit.
	And in one of your talks, which we'll put a link to below, you talk about some of the shifts that even you've seen since you were in undergraduate to where you are now.
	Yeah, I guess because I started in 89, and I believe that was probably...
	Just as the university system was starting to get very politicized.
	So I really didn't notice anything was really wrong until around 2015, I think.
	And it didn't help that I'd only spent one year not being in the university systems.
	And it was just a year after I graduated and all of my All of my applications to grad school have been rejected.
	So for that one year that I actually got to see what the real world was like, but for most of my life has been sort of the insulated academic.
	So I'm glad that I did wake up and notice what was happening.
	But I think for so many, they just don't because they're just, yeah, leading a life where they're in a bubble.
	And there does seem to be this progress of the left.
	And it probably is true when the left is where the right is and the right is where the left is in the past.
	But it seems like there's this kind of progression.
	Let me know what you think. It goes something like this.
	When the left is trying to get in, they say that they're really, really into diversity and you should not be so close-minded and you should accept their arguments.
	And they kind of broach the moat, so to speak, by claiming diversity.
	But then when they get in, that diversity moat seems to get pulled up pretty quickly.
	And then they're open to every race, ethnicity and gender as long as they're all leftists.
	And that inclusiveness does not seem to expand to include people who aren't on the left.
	And so once they take over the castle, the ramparts come up and suddenly diversity doesn't seem to be quite as much of a priority in the genuine diversity sense rather than the race and gender stuff.
	Yeah, it's all very Orwellian-esque.
	I mean, yeah, it just seems like all those works that I read of Orwell when I was in high school, you know, were far more applicable than I had dreamt.
	I guess because we were in that high school system at that time, we kept having those issues reinforced.
	So those are always on our radar.
	And I think we just took it for granted, our freedoms for granted.
	But from what I can tell over, yeah, I think since 2003, I think that was around the time I remember there was a big news item about To kill a mockingbird being racist and I think that was removed from the curriculum and then I didn't really pay too much attention but looking at what the students are like now when they come in,
	it doesn't seem that they even know about those great classics works of literature that emphasized our freedoms and how we can use language both to clarify but also to hide our meanings.
	And so all of those issues that I took for granted as a student, the students coming in Don't have that.
	So it seems their literacy skills have gone down, their numeracy skills.
	So both from the reading and being able to process numbers, which is what we need given that our world is probabilistic.
	We have to be able to think in terms of probabilities.
	So those two skills have gone.
	And then sort of the general life skills, like how to cope, how to cook, do your taxes.
	Those have all gone by the wayside.
	Clean your room, as another famous Canadian keeps reminding us.
	Okay, I haven't followed that advice, so that's why I'm giving my bell shut on that one.
	But my excuse is I have a dragon at my door, and I'm sticking to that one.
	Right, right. But yeah, and then yeah, just the general coping, resilience, knowledge about just general world affairs.
	So I'm not sure what skill set they're coming in.
	And I think the lack of stimulation then is being made up for by The constant texting and having to go on their cell phones.
	The symptoms look, to me, very similar to that of what ADHD would look like, where you need to have the constant stimulation just to maintain your nervous system at an optimal level.
	Oh yeah, no, the hyperstimulation of modern text media and cell phone media is quite extraordinary.
	And the thing that's so frustrating about young people, oh boy, have I ever crossed that threshold in the middle age now.
	Those young people, he said, adjusting his suspenders.
	But the thing that's frustrating about young people, and this I would expand to include people who are ideological, is that, you know, when you're driving home, once you get home, you stop driving because you're there.
	And if you have an ideology that provides you the answers, To big, complex, challenging social problems, then you stop looking for answers because, well, you already have the answer.
	I don't spend a lot of time examining whether the Earth is the center of the solar system because I think that's pretty much been answered.
	And the problem with the ideology, you know, we have big challenges or discrepancies in groups, right?
	Discrepancies between ethnicities and races.
	We have discrepancies in outcome between men and women.
	These are all fascinating questions and questions which we should defer to science and to philosophy and so on.
	But we have this ideology in the West in particular that says, well, if there's any discrepancy between any groups, it must be the result of bigotry.
	And of course, if you have that answer and you believe that answer with all of your empty, fervent little leftist heart, then you're going to stop looking for new answers.
	And in fact, you're going to view anyone who provides alternate explanations as an immoral enabler and justifier of bigotry and sexism and racism and so on.
	And that to me, I mean, trying to be an educator in this context when people are arrogant with answers that don't really stand the test of science must be extraordinarily frustrating at times, although magnificent when you can break through.
	Definitely. Yeah, I noticed this past year, just with the teaching, I mean, I hadn't taught the second half of the introductory psychology since 2006.
	So it had been a while, and back then I had my biases.
	And so it was kind of interesting to look at the literature fresh and realizing that some of what I taught before actually was wrong in terms of role of genetics.
	I thought, no, it must be all environment.
	And then looking at the latest literature, I had no But to go with the findings, and that's what I presented in class.
	But a lot of people were not happy.
	What I found interesting was the lack of connection.
	So some students, when I showed them that the role of heredity actually seems to increase with age and showed them data, they thought it's fascinating and then it would be obvious.
	But then when I put that into the context of sex differences, or I prefer to say cultural differences instead of race differences in intelligence, then suddenly you're, you know, oh, Yeah, the uproar that it caused was unlike anything I'd expected.
	Oh, genetics is one of these astonishing...
	Fiery moats that people...
	It's like the bridge of death in the old Monty Python movie.
	People are like quail before it.
	And I think because we all wanted differences to be environmental.
	Because it would be nice if different ethnicities and different genders and so on ended up roughly in the same place.
	But the fact that they don't, we'd love to think that it's environmental 100%.
	Because then we can change it.
	And we can alter things. And this is the new Soviet man.
	And we can just... Reinvent humanity as if profit motives don't matter and human beings don't respond to incentives and so on.
	But this genetics is a real challenge because it does push us up against the limits of our vanity in everything that we can change in society.
	And learning to accept what you can't change is really the basis of adult wisdom.
	But it seems really, really tough for us to grapple.
	And let's just talk about the gender stuff at the moment.
	What have you found over the last little while with regards to gender differences that you would say probably can't be changed by tweaking environment too much?
	I guess just the natural skill set.
	I think we just are born with being able to do different skills, but there are going to be exceptions.
	I find it an interesting topic because I am one of the exceptions.
	So my mother is the one, for example, who's always the one about go, you know, work hard, earn the big bucks.
	She was the one who did, you know, worked as a computer analyst and so was very mathematical and could do those kinds of skills.
	I can't do that to save my life.
	And I'm the one who's happy, you know, when it came to salaries, I feel like, oh, okay, I reached, you know, The point that I've, you know, I'm earning what I think I deserve for my role in society.
	I don't want to have more than my fair share.
	And so I'm comfortable with that.
	I, you know, I was the one who originally was more interested in a career in, you know, like nursing, you know, the sort of the more people-oriented fields, whereas my mother is the one who's great with working with things and didn't really want to be with people.
	So, so, I mean, so, I mean, I just see it as if I can accept that there are individual differences, I don't, I don't really fit with the bell curve, then Yeah, I just don't see why others can't.
	Yeah, just because I know there's that trade-off.
	If you're better at verbal skills, you're going to not be quite so good at the math and vice versa.
	So just accept that we all have different abilities and go with what's your talent.
	And I don't see what the big deal is to make, you know, why we have to have the world in a certain way.
	And unfortunately, I think the ones who've taken up in academia are ones who have a certain cause that they're willing, that they want to see the world in a certain way.
	And They're determined to implement that, whether society wants that or not.
	Well, of course, there is a base material gain to be achieved.
	So if you are in a group that doesn't make as much money as, say, the East Asians or the Ashkenazi Jews, who are sort of the top of the economic ladder, if you can convince everyone that the reason you make less money is because there's a horrible injustice going on and the government should use its power to transfer resources from the more successful groups to your group,
	Well, there's quite a financial incentive in that, and quite often it seems like where there's a giant financial incentive and a sort of power shift available, ideology kind of sneaks up and covers it with some sort of ideological purity test rather than say, well, you know, I could get some free stuff here if I complain about this loudly enough and deny any alternative explanations.
	It may be just as simple as, again, human beings are profit-driven, respond to incentives, and this is just a way to get resources.
	Yeah, I think another context we could put that in is the sudden push for mental health resources.
	So suddenly, you know, because there's the mental health epidemic of people not...
	Unfortunately, there are many who actually do have genuine conditions that need to be treated, like post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, but now I'm noticing a trend that now we're trying to put everything in terms of a pathology.
	So with one interview that I did with The colleague and interviewing a grad student the potential grad student was talking about in the field of neuropsychology just all these issues of trauma that happen in childhood as if trauma is a normal part of childhood and that to me seemed very strange because you know when we think of the world the word trauma we think of something very serious and that and it should be something that's rare and we go to extreme lengths to protect that you know that's why we get our children to wear The bike helmets,
	which we didn't do as kids, those kinds of things.
	So the idea is to prevent the trauma, but then on the other hand, we're trying to have some kind of index of it, which I see it as normalizing something that we should see as pathological, as something that we should be trying to keep to a minimum.
	Right. Now, you've talked a lot about the science of psychology and where it stands in relation to a lot of sort of leftist conjectures.
	Because, you know, I'm sure everyone knows this is generally the way that science is supposed to work, is you come up with a hypothesis called microaggressions or rape culture or a gender wage gap or something like that.
	Okay, there's your hypothesis.
	And then you say, okay, well, it's explainable by this, this, and this.
	And then, of course, what you should do is subjected to rigorous analysis of data.
	And you should try and figure out if there are any co-joining factors or any other explanation which could give rise to reasons why this could be happening and so on.
	It seems like there's a bit of a skip, like they come up with a hypothesis and then it's just true.
	And anyone who disagrees with them is fundamentally a Nazi.
	I mean, I'm exaggerating, but not a huge amount.
	And that process of submitting a hypothesis to rigorous examination of data and alternative explanations seems to not be occurring with a lot of this stuff.
	And you've talked to her quite a bit about how things like microaggressions and other sort of leftist tropes have been examined by the discipline of psychology and have been found fairly wanting.
	Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know for microaggressions, for sure, there's the article by Scott Lilienfeld, and he basically, yeah...
	Says that it can't be used at this time because it's completely untestable.
	There's nothing you can do to test it.
	And yeah, I remember learning about that as a student because, you know, I have coarse brown skin, East Indian heritage, and I never perceived myself as having much racism.
	I mean, people are always a bit uncivil, but nothing that I would consider, you know, something systemic.
	But it was in my classes that they were teaching us, oh well, there's this whole Concept of the microaggressions and that you see it if someone asks you, oh, well, what country are you from?
	But I never perceived that as being a racist comment addressed to me.
	But somehow that's something they've been teaching for a number of years.
	Just, you know, a fairly innocent question.
	Or if you speak with an accent or whatever, that somehow that's racist.
	Trust me, I get that question all the time, but I don't think it's racism.
	It's just like, hey, you've got a really fruity accent, so where's that from?
	Exactly. Now also there has been some pushback from psychological disciplines about the concept of implicit bias or unconscious bias and stereotypes and so on.
	Yeah, definitely there have been a few that have been speaking out, but it has been quite heavily politicized.
	I don't think it helps when you, like you know, I stop being a member of the American Psychological Association because Their own magazine would talk about their work with groups like Black Lives Matter.
	So instead of maybe just studying, looking at the perspective and see how it maybe adds or detracts from the bigger puzzle, they're now involved with those groups.
	And so once you do that, it's like the way I see it, it's like the undercover police officer who joins whatever group.
	But then loses all perspective and becomes part of the gang.
	And I think that's what happened with psychology.
	Instead of just looking at their interpretation, their way the world and trying to incorporate and see how it fits in the bigger picture, we've, to a large extent, adapted those perspectives.
	And yeah, I think that put psychology in a particularly precarious situation.
	And it hasn't helped that Yeah, the field like the social neuroscience, now where they try to put the implicit bias in the context of, let's say, an fMRI study or doing event-related potentials to talk about how there could be a biological basis, but then they often don't include the necessary controls.
	So let's say black on black, which is what you'd need if you're going to do, you know, white versus black.
	So those kind of ones aren't there.
	And I think we know that even when black people look at pictures of Of black versus white, they'll tend to, on average, rate the black one faces, let's say, as being more dangerous.
	So it seems to be something across the board that's probably genetically built in.
	And I think that by not including those controls, we're actually moving away from the truth and it actually is going to cause more harm than good.
	Well, I'm just thinking about blacks reacting to black faces as being more dangerous.
	Looking at the shooting statistics coming out of places like Chicago, I can see why they may have that particular perspective.
	And not being able to start from the facts is always really frustrating.
	And for the younger people as well, you've mentioned this as well.
	I'd like to get your perspective on this.
	For the younger people as well, there's this...
	This fundamental, I don't know, is hysteria too strong a term?
	You let me know. But when they come across opposing ideas that are robust, that are not just some random opinion, like some troll opinion and so on, but here's some recent arguments, here's some evidence, here's some data, here's some genetics and so on.
	It's more than a deer in the headlights, which would signify kind of intellectual paralysis.
	It's more of a... I don't know.
	It's like that old quote from the Nazi, you know, when I hear the word culture, I take off the safety on my revolver, you know, it's like when I hear opposing ideas, I'm going to escalate until those opposing ideas go away.
	And that to me is not, it's not robust.
	You should be able to entertain an opposing idea, even an idea you find offensive.
	To understand the roots and the argumentation behind it so that you can more effectively dismantle it.
	But it's almost like a fundamentalist religious relationship to a demon.
	You can't let the demon in.
	It will possess you. It will take you over.
	You'll have no free will anymore.
	And like vampires, you have to invite them in your home and then they Suck your blood and bite your head off or something.
	I don't know. I'm not an expert in vampires.
	But this idea that even to entertain or have in your vicinity an idea that you consider offensive, that is so wrong.
	That seems so fragile and so non-robust that I don't know how you can really learn anything in that context.
	Why go to school if it's just to affirm everything you already believe?
	Yeah, and I actually did at one point.
	Fortunately, my recorder wasn't working that day, but that was finally...
	I'd gotten frustrated in my class and I did say that.
	Because with the course, after the first time when people got upset, I did a debrief.
	I did a second debrief at another point of the course.
	And then I did, what else did I do?
	I reorganized the topic.
	So I put the stress and health before social psychology.
	And talked about the idea of safe spaces and how there's no evidence for it and then gave the argument that if you go through just what's even in a textbook and you're going in with the notion of the world being a safe place then what's going to happen is you're going to have an exaggerated stress response and that's going to actually cause you more harm both in the short term now but then also when you go into the real world where people are going to disagree with you So I'd gone through all that,
	and then when I got to the social psychology unit, I went to the section on cognitive dissonance, and for a change of pace, I used a clip by, it was either, yeah, I think, yeah, Antonia Okafor, so just kind of showing, like she showed, went into her story of how she was someone who had voted for Obama twice and then switched, you know, Switch her point of view.
	And so I kind of got the idea that if you're using that approach of just calling people's names and whatnot, saying they're racist, could it actually do the opposite from what you're intending, where they'll actually go more of the opposite way.
	And so they seem to reason with that, just the idea, I thought maybe that our own actions could actually be driving other people away from our point of view.
	Then I proceeded with the course, and then later on when I was showing a video, yeah, like, Yeah, I remember that there were people walking out, some students, one student even said, next time talk about psychology.
	Yeah, at another point, there were multiple points afterwards where students were just walking out just because I was presenting an idea they didn't necessarily feel comfortable with.
	So finally, at one point, I just said, you know, why is this still happening?
	I asked about that and said that the behavior that I was observing from some people in the room was very similar to that, like that of cult members and Jess did say you're very prone to going down the same kind of path as, let's say, people in the Jonestown Massacre, where you're just a slave to whatever other peoples tell you to do.
	I mean, that's one possible outcome.
	And afterwards, I thought that could be also the root of evil.
	I haven't read Ordinary Men yet, but I think that was the mindset, though, behind the soldiers who did these horrible atrocities.
	Well, this is... The big fear, I think, and challenge about higher education, because higher education in the past, when only about 10% of people went into higher education, it was kind of the intellectual elite, and they could usually handle this kind of stuff.
	I mean, when I went to three Canadian universities and the National Theatre School, but that's not particularly relevant, unless you need me to do some Shakespeare.
	But at Glendon College, part of York University, at McGill, and at the University of Toronto, I was on the debating team in particular and traveled around Canada doing debates.
	And the devil's advocate position was something that you were fully expected to inhabit and to exemplify.
	So you would have some position and you would flip a coin and you either take the pro or you take the con position.
	And you had to find a convincing way to Argue for something, even if you found it to be personally offensive.
	And this is the mark of an educated person, all the way back to Aristotle, the ability to entertain an idea and to explore an idea without accepting the moral validity of that idea.
	And that really seems to have fallen away.
	And now I think the concern is you talk about students who are complaining that they're only allowed to cite feminist sources when talking about the gender wage gap.
	Now, there's lots of criticisms of the gender wage gap.
	I put some on this channel, had some experts in to talk about it.
	Directly and indirectly, you know, $50,000, $75,000 a year in terms of your tuition and your lost income and all that in order to do what?
	Well, it should be to challenge you and teach you new things and teach you things that you wouldn't have come across before and learn how to argue against money.
	And learn that you're not always right.
	Because why do you keep learning things?
	Well, because you're not always right and there's always more to learn.
	But the idea is like, well, you're going to pay all this money and you're going to sit in this classroom and you're only going to be allowed to use particular sources that affirm what the teacher is already telling you.
	Boy, that is straight up indoctrination.
	I'm going to call a spade a spade.
	That is straight up indoctrination and very much the opposite of the kind of education that I received not just a couple of decades ago.
	No, same here.
	And this year was unusual in that this was the first time I'd ever had students say, I want you to just stick to the textbook.
	Usually people always used to like it, you know, when I go and use maybe the book as a base so that we have some structure to the course, but then expand on some ideas or present other perspectives.
	And usually that was something that was that, you know, students really liked about my teaching.
	But this year was the first time ever where Yeah, they said, you know, just stick to what's in the book.
	I just want the book read to me.
	That was bizarre.
	Have you traced the genealogy of how this fragility ends up arriving in your classroom?
	I mean, it must start pretty early.
	It must start through stuff that kids are getting in primary school, junior high, and high school.
	Have you done any kind of deep dive into how people end up so relatively fragile and untutored in wisdom when they arrive in your classroom?
	Well, I think this has been...
	Probably years in the making we had the self-esteem movement and I thought that that had died down but I guess it's just been in force just at a lower volume so if you kind of think a low volume but prolonged that can have quite the effect so if you have that in the elementary and high school system where you can't fail a student even if they hadn't had nothing in we want to make sure that their self-esteem is always Maintained, even if there's no evidence for it.
	So that has been something long in the making.
	Yeah, and then combine that with the fact that the curriculum doesn't actually, has lost its rigor.
	So, you know, the discovery math, I think, that they're using these days, as opposed to just straightforward, you know, memorize that multiplication table.
	I mean, I remember it was frustrating as a child because I couldn't do math, but I mean, even I was eventually able to do it, and I'm really bad at math.
	So yeah, a lot of the rigor has disappeared or gone by the wayside.
	So I'm not even sure what they're actually learning.
	But if you go to the Teacher Union website, these days they're actually quite open about it.
	I think grade five, somehow in phys ed, they're going to work in white privilege.
	So it's like the social justice is actually being implemented in place of curriculum.
	And this is at the elementary and high school levels.
	And so now instead of the universities being the place where you say, okay, enough of that nonsense, here's a fresh start, is that now the universities, it seems, are now saying, no, we want to make sure this is the way that it's going to be.
	So we're going to guarantee that, you know, if you had any inkling of coming in as an educated person, you know, who can think freely and independently, now let's just make sure we get rid of that.
	At least that's the impression the way I'm seeing it.
	Oh, I get so many tortured calls in my call in show.
	From young people who were like, well, I don't agree with the professor, but I don't trust the professor to mark me fairly if I disagree with her or him.
	And it really is tortured because then the question is, well, what am I doing here?
	Am I here just to spend a lot of money to be afraid and nervous and deny my natural intellectual curiosity in order to conform with the perspectives of somebody I genuinely don't respect?
	Ooh, that's a tough sale, but I need that hoop.
	I need that piece of paper to go get my good job and that kind of stuff.
	It is... Really, really tough for the young, the intellectually curious.
	And, you know, we've talked a little bit more about non-leftist topics, but it can be pretty tough for the traditional left as well.
	And that can be, oh man, it's rough.
	It's rough. And do you find when you teach Dr.
	Mehta that you are able to break through to some of these students that they kind of shake off, you know, I guess Kant's dogmatic slumber that he awoke from his dogmatic slumber?
	Are you able to sort of Send the blaring alarm of reason and evidence into the minds of people and awake them from that kind of dogmatic slumber?
	What kind of ratio, perspective, or percentage are we talking about?
	Well, if I just use my overall instructor ratings as a proxy, I've never, yeah, I guess because I've never seen my ratings that polarized.
	So it's almost like it was 40% of students giving me fours and fives.
	Another 40% giving me ones and twos.
	And only about 20% in the middle.
	So I was reaching some, but they're also the ones who are going to be quiet about it because it can be intimidating when you have people who are screaming in your face.
	So it was interesting looking at the comments because some of the comments were, what did you not like about the class?
	It was like, oh, well, my fellow students who had to make everything into a drama as if it was all about them.
	So there was some of those.
	And then, yeah, on the other hand, you know, some who had to write down Me Too as a comment as if I was going to take that as being meaningful when...
	I mean, I'd spoken out about that in class and just called it a mob rule.
	So I don't know what they were hoping to achieve by putting that in my comments.
	I'm not sure that they're hoping to achieve anything other than confirmation bias.
	Now, the other thing I think that's happening...
	Because there's the experts, right?
	Psychologists, psychological associations, and so on.
	And this occurs in a wide variety of fields.
	But of course, we'll just talk about psychology for the most part.
	So there are psychologists who take a lot of government money for the most part.
	And they produce a lot of very interesting research and materials.
	And they are then supposed to, at least I think it's ideal, that they percolate their arguments and ideas out to the general population.
	Because, you know, they're taking a lot of tax money.
	And so they should, I think, provide value back to the group who is funding them.
	But I think something's happening, and it really has occurred from the rise of the internet onwards, which is there is a great deal of discrediting, I think, for cadres of experts, for the professionals, because something like the wage gap, you know, lots of academics will talk about it, and then people will find out that they're very strong.
	In fact, I view them as decisive counterarguments to that.
	Or people won't talk about what you want to refer to as culture and IQ or ethnicity and IQ differences.
	And they'll say, well, this all gets shouted down and then they do the research and they find out, well, no, there is some real data behind that and it is explanatory and it is not something that can be easily dismissed and so on.
	And then what happens is people throw the baby out with the bathwater and they say, well...
	If there's this level of obfuscation and misdirection and sophistry occurring in the stuff that I've studied, what else are these people saying that is politically correct but not empirically supportable?
	And then there is this great turn away from the experts.
	And I think that sets people a lot adrift in society, which is a real shame.
	No, I agree. Like, I guess when I started at a K back in 2003, it seemed like there were a few psychologists who Speaking about the field, and I guess the, and it always seems strange to me that physicists, you know, they've actually, I think, solved some of their big problems, And they can explain their material in very plain language to the general public.
	But that's like psychology never seemed to be able to.
	And you try to read the psychological literature.
	And oftentimes the journals are just needlessly dense.
	And they'll make an issue, you know, that's not how that.
	Well, they're trying to keep the educated lay people away.
	It's like the mat and lass in the Middle Ages.
	We can't have the Bible in the vernacular.
	People will think for themselves.
	Yeah, so for the longest time, that's what seemed to be happening.
	And yeah, so and you think of any of any field, the psychology would be the one that communicates finding readily to the general public.
	But there seemed to be very little of that.
	And now it seems like psychology has gone from being a science now, to the most part, to just becoming an ideology now instead of an objective science.
	I don't know how it can claim to have credibility.
	If we can actually get through this, I think our field is going to have a rough time earning the respect of the general public.
	Well, and I think it's courting the contempt of the general public because a lack of respect is when you become indifferent.
	But when you think that people may actively be working against the values you treasure, then I think contempt may be the appropriate response.
	And you've talked about this.
	If you could expand on this, I find that fascinating.
	That researchers...
	Are not only avoiding topics, but also are not allowed to talk to the media, to talk to the general public without going through their faculty executives sometimes.
	What is going on to the point where people are like, well, I could have a career...
	Or I could study gender differences.
	And it's like, man, the most essential questions that are constantly being talked about the most are being bereft of expertise because people are fearing for their careers or their relations with their fellow academics.
	I mean, I think of the professor at the University of Waterloo, who died recently a couple of years ago, who was studying...
	Dr.
	Philippe Rushton, who was studying race and IQ differences.
	Man, he had a very, very tough time of it professionally and with his colleagues and so on.
	And boy, that is a real blow to the kind of open inquiry that does help society progress.
	Yeah, well, I remember...
	Yeah, because...
	Yeah, that was just when I was in high school.
	I remember when, in 1989, when the Premier of Ontario...
	Had demanded his resignation, and the university did fight for him.
	But, yeah, unfortunately, yeah, I never learned to...
	It was only in recent years that I really, I think, math have gotten a really good hang of thinking critically.
	So I just accepted the claims, oh, well, his research is funded by white supremacy groups, etc., without ever actually checking into that.
	So, yeah, and...
	Yeah, and I think if the debate had been framed more in terms of maybe...
	IQ, or sorry, culture instead of race.
	But even if it is race, I guess the way it was, they went about doing it really was a setback.
	Well, and I think its purpose isn't, I mean, I don't know whether they thought they would shut him up.
	But the purpose, I think, in general, is to act as a sort of shot across the bowels for other people.
	Like, if you try to take on this very important topic...
	You are going to be harassed and harangued and face all kinds of negative social consequences.
	And of course, people who go into psychology are often very sensitive people, which is quite what you want.
	And they're kind of, I think, worn off topics that are sensitive.
	And that means that those topics still get discussed.
	They just get discussed without data and without expertise, which is a real shame.
	Yeah, well, in terms of the state of affairs, I was...
	In Toronto last week, I did a talk at the IdeaCity conference.
	It was a fun one to put together in the sense that I had only 10 minutes to do it.
	Wait, wait, 10 minutes to speak or 10 minutes to put it together?
	Oh, sorry, 10 minutes to speak.
	Good question. I was going to say, that's a pretty tight deadline.
	Actually, I do remember giving a speech to a grand total of 30,000 people in person online, and I lost my notes about an hour beforehand, but actually turned out to be for the better.
	But sorry, go ahead. Yeah, so anyway, because it was 10 minutes, I put it in very broad, general terms to make it accessible to the audience, just because the main point I wanted to get to them was that If you actually knew what was going on here, you would not want to fund it with your money.
	So then that was a point I did get across, I think.
	But anyway, afterwards, a filmmaker approached me and she told me that she'd had no problem in the past getting people like, say, drug dealers or other kinds of people from the criminal element to appear before her camera to talk about, you know, whatever for her documentary.
	But that she was having trouble getting professors to appear on camera So if they did appear, they wanted to have their faces blacked out.
	And these are supposed to be our tenured professors.
	Wait, wait. So the criminal drug dealers have no problem appearing on camera, but the taxpayer-funded academics wanted to be blacked out like they're describing some extraordinary rendition to Turkey or something.
	Oh, that's not good.
	Yeah, no, it's strange.
	The amount of self-censorship, and I can see why, because you get the You get personally ostracized.
	And it's amazing if you just look online on Twitter and the way these professors behave and nothing happens to them.
	It's just appalling the way, you know, if you just look at their tweets or the way they act, I wouldn't want them, I wouldn't want to be a student in their classes if I had a different perspective.
	Yeah, so I think that's wise and that's considered acceptable.
	And so you have these double standards on what's considered acceptable or not.
	And so the The ploy that's used now is, oh, yeah, you have academic freedom.
	However, there are going to be limits.
	And so it's like what matters is how you go about presenting your arguments now.
	So you don't want to be harassing or discriminating.
	So those are the approaches that they're using now at the universities.
	Or with the decolonization, okay, we have to be careful, though, not to be racist towards our indigenous.
	And then you have the women's group. Oh, well, you can't be sexist.
	So you do have academic freedom.
	And there's always the but and their limits.
	I think that's the ploy that's being used now.
	Well, I mean, the traditional mantra is you have free speech, but you don't have consequence-free speech.
	But I don't know.
	I mean, when the consequences tend to be somewhat dangerous harassment, when it tends to be an attempt to get you fired or destroyed, to me, I don't know.
	I mean, that seems abusive.
	And if the consequence to free speech is abuse and attack and, you know, what the left generally does, try to destroy your reputation and detach you from your source of income, I mean, that's like me saying to my wife, well, you're free to cook me a cold dinner, but I'm going to push you down the stairs if you do.
	You can cook me a cold dinner, but you can't cook me a consequence-free cold dinner.
	And it's like, but if the consequence is abuse, that's not valid.
	That's not fair. That's not right.
	Oh yeah, this just, yeah, it's a way of justifying mob rule, and even some of the everyday conversations, because I'd mentioned to one person, yeah, so that was, I think, I can't remember, I think it was Guelph, yeah, where the owner of the cafe, he was having trouble trying to get employees, and so he put out an ad in the paper that was, you know, Making fun of the hipster stereotype.
	And so... I was highly offended by that.
	Sorry to interrupt you. I just wanted to mention that.
	I was highly offended by that because he required a man bun, which I am absolutely unable to produce.
	So that's horrifying to me.
	Such discrimination against the Shinier set.
	Yeah, I guess...
	Well, he said he accepted them.
	So I guess we can't really argue that he was discriminating against us who are...
	Oh, I see. I see. Right.
	But yeah, I think he got fired because he used slave wanted.
	And so the groups, they said, oh, you minimize the impact of slavery in the past, which I thought was ridiculous.
	But then the co-workers thought, no, you know, if you say something stupid like that, you deserve to be fired.
	And I just thought that was a bit odd because actually the number of applications increased.
	Everyone found it funny. So there was no, no one had even complained about it, as far as I could tell.
	And this is what is so frustrating, and, you know, as a psychological expert, perhaps you could lead me through this thorny maze, Dr.
	Mehta, but for me, when you drive a particular mindset out the front door, it so often turns into a weird acidic vapor and comes in through the back door.
	So this idea that a lot of leftists are very secular, I mean, I know a lot of them are socialists, if not outright communists, and so on, hostile towards Christianity in particular.
	And then what they'll say is, you see, well, Christianity persecuted people for blasphemy, you see, even though that was actually quite rare in many cases.
	And the death count of the Spanish Inquisition was relatively low compared to, I don't know, other religions around the world.
	But they say, you see, it's terrible that there would be these sects within Christianity and there would be attacks upon people for blasphemy and so on.
	And that's the worst thing in the world.
	And then it's like... You said something I'm now going to interpret as transphobic, so I'm going to try and destroy your life.
	And it's like, I don't think that you've kind of gotten rid of the mindset, of the religious mindset that you claim to be criticizing so much.
	It's almost like you want to get rid of religious persecution as a competitor, so that you have open field for your own persecution complex.
	Yeah, well, I find that way of thinking very interesting, because science is always about...
	So, you know, you're always trying to think, what's the appropriate control group?
	What's the appropriate comparison?
	But then there, there's absolutely no comparison.
	And it's used as if it's an absolute truth just because we have some number greater than zero for an action that happened, you know, God knows how many years ago, right?
	So it's a bit... Yeah, it's a strange way of thinking in terms of the mental gymnastics.
	But I think it's all part of...
	Self-deception, you know, humans are very good at lying to themselves.
	And, yeah, because I mean, no one ever goes into a traffic jam in downtown Toronto and thinks, oh, you know, I'm part of the problem, right?
	So it's always everyone else but me.
	So, yeah, and I'm not sure how you counter that when people don't want to accept that there's going to be fallacies in their own way of thinking.
	And that's, unfortunately, I think what's happened is Within the academic circles, it's with people who see themselves as perfect and then are willing to criticize others.
	Yeah, certainty is the most wonderful thing when it's earned through hard labor, self-criticism, empiricism, and reason.
	When it is indoctrinated, it's perhaps the most toxic and dangerous force in the universe.
	And you've talked about this, that in surveys of students, I think this was in Canada, correct me if I've got this wrong, 50% thought it was okay to shout down speakers they disagreed with.
	And a fifth, 20%, thought that it was okay to use violence against speakers they found offensive.
	That is appalling.
	Now, I mean, I've given speeches under threat of bomb threats.
	I'm doing a speaking tour of Australia and New Zealand next month, and I'm sure that there'll be a certain amount of aggression involved in that.
	But how is it possible for people to justify the idea that speech, free speech is violence, but their violence is somehow free speech in a protest?
	Yeah, that's one I don't understand.
	And that's something, certainly not anything I've ever taught.
	And it definitely goes against the whole idea of civil disobedience or what the original movements were about.
	If we look at, let's say, someone like Martin Luther King or Gandhi, they always were about using peaceful means to get their point across, trying to win over people to their perspective.
	And yeah, but this is totally not about that at all.
	It's all about Putting your ideas by use of force, whatever that may be, that expression, by any means necessary, very militant.
	Well, that is an open confession that violence, thuggery, if not outright attacks, by any means necessary, means that there's no practical or moral limit on the actions that will be deployed to achieve a particular goal, up to and including murder.
	And that, to me, is an astonishing thing to say publicly.
	And, you know, those of us who have some kind of public presence, we do have to be careful and we need to maintain respectful tones and conversations.
	But, man, this...
	I mean, you bring up Martin Luther King and Gandhi.
	I think there's pretty strong arguments to say that it was the relative civility of those they were opposing who made those strategies possible.
	Weren't a lot of Gandhis in Nazi Germany or communist...
	Russia or communist China or Cuba because those people would just be shot and thrown into a shallow grave.
	So peaceful resistance works if you have a relatively civilized power structure in place.
	But boy, they're not looking to institute a very peaceful power structure.
	I mean, the idea is this is what they're like when they're still relatively in the intellectual minority and when they still have to use more words than fists.
	But Should they gain political power?
	Should they gain ascendancy?
	My fear, of course, and it's a very visceral and real fear, Dr.
	Mehta. My fear is that the left, the radical left, will do In the West, what they have always done, which is to escalate, to start mass murdering, to start throwing people in concentration camps.
	By any means necessary means there's no moral break on the pursuit of a particular goal.
	And right now, in some ways, it's comical because they still lack the kind of institutional power that they've had in other places, but it becomes progressively less funny the more power they gain.
	Oh yeah, and I guess we're seeing the way they treat people, like, and this is coming from the leaders, like just, you know, I guess looking at the states, what happened with the Red Hen restaurant, you know, with Miss Saunders, and then the reaction by Representative Waters, I think her lay name is.
	So yeah, actually endorsing, yeah, That kind of treatment towards people just because they have a different perspective.
	That of course is going to lead to people who disagree to become all the more emboldened because from their perspective it's just self-defense.
	And the left will say that the right is violent, will continually harass and attack the right, and then when the right fights back, it's like, aha, you see, we told you all along in the classic self-fulfilling prophecy.
	Now, let's talk about something that you sent me that was very, very interesting, I thought.
	The bullshit meter, I think, is the technical way of putting it, which was your thesis.
	Step us through the thought process behind that, the methodology and the conclusions, if you'd be so very kind.
	Well, it's been a while. So yeah, it was actually not mine.
	That was my honor student who worked on that project.
	But it was a fun project.
	Yeah, because there was a measure that came out in 2015.
	And it's called the Bullshit Receptivity Scale.
	And so it had a bunch of tweets by Deepak Chopra, and then some control statements.
	The deepities, I think Dawkins calls them like they seem deep, you know, but when you think about them, they just kind of evaporate like candy floss in your mouth.
	Yeah, so her project was just looking at predictors of who would give high profoundness ratings to BS statements.
	And so, yeah, I haven't looked at her study in a while, but it was what you'd expect in terms of, I think, like the factors like the numeracy, being low on numeracy and openness to different perspectives.
	So those are, I guess, what we're trying to do is replicate and extend Prior work, but what I will talk about though is a little side project I put on that because that's something I'm actually going to present at a conference next week.
	So when my honours student was working on that project, she thought, it's strange if you're asking people if something's nonsensical, you can ask them how profound it is.
	Why don't we try a version of that study, just asking them straight up front, is this bullshit?
	Yes or no? Classify that as a bullshit statement or not bullshit statement.
	And so I thought, okay, if we're doing that, I came up with an idea.
	We'll just add one or two other statements.
	So the one I put that was of interest then was because it's 2017, because that was the justification that our prime minister used to explain why he made his cabinet gender balanced.
	And I found it strange that that was early in his tenure.
	He had just started. And that no one from, it seemed like almost no one from academia was making any criticism of that.
	I thought for sure people were saying, oh, what a stupid comment that was.
	But nothing like that on campus at all.
	But I'd see it, let's say, on online comments, but anywhere but the actual academy.
	So we fast forward to 2017.
	We're doing that project.
	I thought, okay, why don't we just add that item?
	And we'll also ask in the demographics about their political affiliation.
	And so then when I analyzed the data, it was interesting.
	I didn't see anything from the profoundest ratings.
	So regardless of political orientation, everyone just gave them low profoundest ratings.
	So they were typically in the range of, yeah, 1.25 to 1.86 on a scale of 1 to 5.
	So nothing interesting there.
	But when I looked at is it BS, yes or no, it did seem to vary then.
	The percentages that classified it as BS seemed to vary as a function then of their Political affiliations.
	So the group that I classified as others, so those would be the ones who are apolitical or said they might, you know, let's say liberal on some issues or not on others or don't follow politics or anything that you couldn't classify.
	With them, it was 67% that said it was BS. With people who are conservative or Or even moderate.
	So like, yeah, sort of like your classic liberals, they're over 80%, put that statement as BS. But people who classified themselves as progressives are sort of on the left side, only 55%.
	So they were at chance levels.
	I would love to actually try to go into that and see if there's a way to put people as far left or not.
	But I don't think if you ask people, are you an SJW? On a quest there, chances are they would probably get their shackles up.
	Well, no, you simply mention ethnicity and IQ and see if you get punched in the head.
	Then I think that's your, because obviously you'd want to wear some kind of helmet and, you know, be quick with your reflexes.
	But yeah, that is something.
	That is something. And I also wonder if you gave these deepities that may be more common among the right, if the left would then be more skeptical, but the right would be more accepting of these things.
	I think possibly. I've come across some other papers, and they show that both the left and the right are equally willing to unengage with viewpoints that are different from their own.
	So that seems to be just part of human nature.
	For the longest time, psychologists had said, oh yeah, no, that's closed-mindedness.
	It's just a feature of conservatives.
	And of course, these are liberals who are studying them.
	So now, yeah, the more recent studies show that both are equally intolerant of views that are different from their own.
	I mean, I think, obviously, I'm not going to disagree with the math behind that, but the one thing I would say about that is that if you're not on the left, I think if you're not on the left you're very much exposed Unless you live in a cabin in the woods,
	in which case, right? But you're very much exposed to leftist ideas and arguments on a continual basis if you engage with the world.
	I don't think that's quite as true if you're on the left, because you can get much more of an echo chamber.
	You actually have to go and seek out non-leftist views, whereas if you're not on the left, the leftist views kind of come at you like a tsunami.
	Oh, definitely, yeah. I guess I never really noticed it until we had the change in government here in Canada, because...
	When we had the Harper years, it was easy then to speak out against what they were doing wrong.
	And it seemed like, great, everyone agrees with me.
	There must be something right here.
	And you just think, oh, we're doing it because this is actually the, because it is actually objectively wrong.
	So it was only when there was a shift and then we had a leftward government that I noticed the discrepancy of what was happening in academia.
	Otherwise, before that, I was Usually oblivious to it because of my own personal biases as well.
	And then you think, oh, if others are agreeing with you, then it must be some kind of an objective truth.
	And so now I look at the past very differently.
	Oh, the mainstream media.
	I mean, this is why I love the internet.
	Because the mainstream media's relationship to Justin Trudeau is sycophantic beyond what even Henry VIII's Joker or Fool would have been able to achieve.
	Because, you know, a simple question is, ah, Mr.
	Prime Minister, you consider yourself feminist.
	How do you reconcile that with selling massive quantities of arms to the Saudi Arabian government, where in Saudi Arabia a woman can't even get a medical procedure without the permission of her male guardian?
	So how do you reconcile being a feminist with selling arms to a repressive regime that crushes the aspirations of women on a regular basis?
	That's a fair question.
	I think, will it ever be asked by the mainstream media?
	I'm pretty much going to go with no.
	Yeah. No, I have to agree with that then.
	It's unfortunate, yeah, because it seems like journalism has gone by the wayside.
	So it's not about seeking truth or just trying to uncover the stories.
	It's with whatever the government of the day happens to be.
	So if the government vote gets voted out and someone else comes in, who knows what they'll end up doing.
	It's hard to know for sure. Or if they'll just stick with trying to be a leftist point of view and hoping they can somehow get sales.
	It's a strange, yeah, strange world we're in right now.
	I think most mainstream journalism is just far left activism.
	And if you ever want to find that out, become famous, say stuff that the left doesn't like and find out how they write about you and find out just how objective, well, you know this as well as I do.
	When you read about yourself in the mainstream media, it's like, wow, that guy's terrible.
	Boy, I sure wouldn't have anything to do with that.
	Oh, wait, that's me. I'm not terrible.
	They're just lying. And it's a pretty constant thing.
	And so I invite everyone to conduct this personal experiment, become somewhat prominent, say things the left doesn't like, and then read about yourself and see what kind of context you're put into.
	And yeah, it can be pretty brutal.
	And it's like what happened to the anti-war movement after Obama got into office.
	Well, it just vanished, because now their guy's in, and so there's no reason to protest anymore.
	In other words, they don't care about the 100,000 bombs That Obama dropped into mostly innocent civilians in the Middle East.
	They don't care about those lives because they're guys in.
	And so it doesn't matter anymore.
	It's really terrible.
	Yeah, just like I used to be a strong supporter of unions because I thought, oh, well, we're there to make sure people have good working conditions, etc.
	But it's only for the group.
	And as long as you pay your member dues, so it's not like they really care about working conditions.
	It's just like, you know, what can they get?
	Uh, for themselves. So it's really been, it was a bit disheartening because those are values I've always had and I thought the unionized way was to do it.
	But, um, you have come to realize that we want to have that.
	It's about, yeah, lobbying government just to make sure we have one set of rules that actually is fair for all citizens.
	So we know exactly what you can expect.
	Uh, let's say if you're an employer, um, you know, what your responsibilities are, but also we can expect and same for employees and same for a corporation versus, uh, You know, a person, if we had those set of rules just there and we all follow them, our society would be functioning so much better than it is right now.
	Well, this just came out.
	SCOTUS in the U.S. today has overturned 40 years of U.S. law, which basically forced people to pay into union dues, whether they liked it or not.
	And of course, forced association is a violation of freedom of association.
	I have no problem with unions whatsoever because they're voluntary gatherings of people in a common interest.
	The two problems, by the by, just sort of my perspective, the two problems with unions is number one, when you have a government-granted monopoly, then unions become progressively more and more difficult because there isn't competition to blunt the demands of unions.
	And secondly, If you're forced to join a union, then you have no longer freedom of association and that becomes a problem as well.
	If they're voluntary groups like clubs, fantastic.
	More power to you, negotiate away.
	But if you have a monopoly and or you're forced to join...
	Then we have a problem in forced association.
	And this should be relatively simple to work through morally.
	But of course, again, there's a lot of financial incentive.
	The left loves unions because unions generally donate to the left.
	And therefore, because the left loves unions, the leftist media loves unions.
	And you should see the weeping that's going on in the press today from the SCOTUS decision.
	You know, strikes a blow against workers, strikes a blow against unions.
	It's like... Actually, no, you're giving choice to workers.
	And if the workers like the union, they'll donate their money.
	And if they don't, they won't.
	That's empowering the workers.
	But of course, you can't hear that narrative from the left.
	Yeah, well, it's the same over here in Canada.
	So that's what I said was that here, most of our faculty are unionized compared to, at least the ones who are tenure, tenure track, compared to the US. Yeah, if you're in a unionized workplace, you have to join the union.
	You can always say, I don't want to have a card.
	But your dues are still going to be taken off your paycheck, whether you want them or not.
	And with the Canadian system, if you're a tenured faculty and something happens to you, the lawyer represents the association, not you as the member.
	So it's not like, oh, okay, well, you've been paying your membership due all these years, you're in a bind, you're going to need legal representation, so here's the one, and we'll just give it to you or give you an equivalent of your choice or something like that.
	It's just like, this is the one who's going to be appointed to To you, but that person's not there to represent you.
	It's whatever the association is prioritizing.
	You don't really learn about the union until you need the union, and then you learn more than you ever want to know.
	So let's close off with this, if you don't mind.
	I'm always fascinated by the backstory.
	And you have talked a little bit about growing up in Canada, some of the pluses and minuses, some of the racism that you experienced.
	What was your journey to where you are now?
	I know that's a big topic and all of that, but the transitions that lead people to be more in the free-thinking camp, I always find fascinating.
	Maybe we can bottle it and reproduce it somewhere around the world, but what was your big arc journey to where you are?
	Well, I guess in the 70s, I mean, I was born just one month before the October crisis.
	So for those who aren't known about Canadian history, that was when a group called the FLQ had kidnapped a minister and some other people.
	There were mailboxes being bombed at the time, etc.
	And so in October, the Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau at the time, Then instituted martial law.
	So it was a pretty ugly chapter in our Canadian history.
	There was a lot of tension between the English and French.
	And then finally, in 1980, there was a referendum and Quebecers voted 60% to stay in Canada, you know, not to have a, you know, not to back a separatist kind of approach.
	So after that was done, from my perspective, Being a non-white, because being a child of immigrant, I was neither English nor French, so it was not a good time to be in Quebec at that time.
	But since then, overall, my experiences as a Canadian were quite positive.
	And I was a leftist for the longest time.
	It was in 2015 when I got together with a friend who I hadn't seen for years.
	And where everything was about racism, everything was somehow sexism.
	Even movies like The Dark Knight Rises somehow was sexist and Islamophobic, etc.
	And I didn't know where any of that was coming from.
	Nothing seemed to make sense.
	And any arguments I gave would just be discounted.
	So it was just constantly...
	Yeah, because I always thought the friend who I thought was brilliant, I just thought, all you're doing is setting up the...
	This discussion so that you're always going to be the winner.
	That's not... Yeah, so it wasn't brilliance.
	I just thought, this is bad reasoning.
	And so then that really started to make me question my beliefs.
	And I started to think, actually, you know, for the past few years, chances are I might have been part of the problem of why there's all this tension in this world.
	So thankfully, I never, like, docked a student's grades or anything like that.
	Never. So because if I read a paper I disagreed with, I would just look at the structure.
	And I never commented on that because...
	I just thought there's nothing the course outlines saying the student needs to agree with me.
	So I might have had a harder time.
	I would have to put aside my biases.
	But I always made sure that student was marked fairly.
	But anyway, 2015, I started questioning my beliefs.
	And then that's when I just decided I know what my belief system is and what I'm fighting for, but I'm not going to be tied to any kind of an ideology.
	Yeah. And so that's...
	Yeah. And then it was...
	And I didn't realize, I didn't think there was much going wrong.
	It was only when the whole Peterson affair started happening, and I thought, this is strange.
	Why is no one talking about this on campus?
	There's all these, you know, like the Yale, you know, the events that happened at Yale, and there's all these events.
	It just seemed strange. Why isn't this something that we're actually discussing on campus?
	And so as I started to ask the Questions eventually, the long story short is it just all blew up in my face in ways that I hadn't anticipated.
	I don't want that long story to be too short, if you don't mind.
	Where did you go for your sources?
	And was there anything in particular where you had that moment where the ice castle comes crashing down, so to speak?
	Well, it's on my YouTube channel.
	If anyone wants to, there's only a couple talks there thus far.
	Yeah, if they type in Rick Mehta, free speech, because I think if they just type in Rick Mehta, they'll probably get a lot of Bollywood.
	Which is fine, too.
	But this one is where the intellectual content is.
	Yeah, well, I find people actually watch for themselves because the first hour where it's just the discussion, that was fine.
	But then afterwards, during the question and answer period, you've never seen anything different.
	Like that, there was just these long-winded diatribes, and I was like, is there a question there?
	And it just seemed strange that the very people, like, from, let's say, someone from the women's group was the one complaining about power dynamics, and nothing seemed to make sense.
	And so then, when I was trying to put together my speech in September 2017, it was from that sense of what is going on, there seems to be these disconnects.
	And so, yeah.
	And... Yeah, so I think where things really went off the rails was when I put out the tweet in January to the opposition leader just saying, you know, wait a minute, you say you're in favor of free speech in terms of supporting Lindsay Shepard, but then you've just fired, you know, you just kicked someone out of your Senate caucus all because she posted letters onto her website.
	Are you saying then that the Indigenous are a protected class that can't be criticized?
	If that's the case, that's not good for race relations.
	And so then that led to a Twitter mobbing, a petition to have me fired, countered by a counter petition to have me keep me here.
	Yeah, and once it was in the news, that's when it led to...
	Yeah, then a lot happening behind the scenes.
	And then the other item that hit the news was...
	That the university was investigating me for harassment and discrimination based on social media, emails I sent on campus, behavior in the classroom.
	But if anyone listens to the audio recordings, there's nothing to that.
	Didn't they say that you should stop putting these recordings out?
	Yep, that as well.
	Don't you dare defend your teaching in public.
	That's just wrong.
	How are we supposed to have some secret inquisitional star chamber if you keep publishing facts?
	Yeah, so the interesting then too is that, yeah, what the advice the union gives then is to just, yeah, the strategy is always, yeah, comply now, grieve later, because the way employment law works is that if the University asks you to do something and you don't.
	You're basically not doing what your boss is telling you to do and that could be insubordination.
	So it becomes a bit of a tricky line then there on how do you defend yourself then when they can then try to use employment law against you.
	And this strategy then is just, oh yeah, well just Comply and then grieve it and then it just takes forever and then you're forever grieving.
	Well, and there's a long time there where you can't talk about what you believe to be true.
	You can't advocate positions that you find to be verified and reasonable while you're going through the grieving process.
	So how do you look yourself in the mirror going to work saying, well, I can't really talk about this and I can't really talk about that.
	But maybe in a couple of years I can.
	It's like, oh, that's rough.
	Yeah, so... Yeah, so I won't go into too much details right now, but basically sort of, yeah, the things are a bit of a standstill.
	We'll just see what proceeds from here.
	So for now, I'm just kind of keeping my cards close to the chest and just...
	Yeah, because sometimes you can do...
	Sometimes the timing of speech matters more, too, than anything else.
	No, I'm fine with that.
	Certainly don't give away your playbook.
	I'm fine with that. And it is funny because...
	The cause and effect seems somewhat random.
	So you put out a very reasonable tweet, in my view.
	And then the airstrike of social justice rage descends upon you.
	And I don't think, and tell me if I'm wrong, I don't think you said, aha, I know exactly what kind of reaction this is going to get, and I know exactly how this is going to play out.
	It was like, no, this is just a rebuttal to somebody where it seems like they're being kind of hypocritical on a particular topic.
	It happens all the time. You know, we all need to be brought up to our standards and reminded of the higher path and so on.
	And so it does seem a little bit random to the point where it's like, well, someone just happened to see it, they happened to spread it, it happened to catch a wave, and then your life is turned upside down.
	And it is really hard to predict ahead of time What is going to upset people?
	And I think that randomness is part of the whole game, which is, well, we just want you to be afraid to talk about anything, because it's kind of random.
	What gets you blowback and what doesn't?
	So just shut up as a whole, and your life will be easier.
	And it's like, tempting though that may be, all of the freedoms that we inherited came from people who didn't shut up when threatened.
	And it seems a bit of a betrayal of that legacy to do the same.
	Yeah, no, it's... Yeah, I definitely agree.
	I found it interesting because in December I was hoping to stimulate discussion or stimulate a blowback by using tweets like, you know, tweeting out to the university, let's just ditch the decolonization initiatives if you really want to say that you're against racism with a hashtag, it's okay to be white, thinking that might be something that would stir the pot.
	But none of those ones did.
	Or when I, let's say, tweeted to the farmers market, hey, look, this is what far less are saying that, you know, The farmers markets are symbols of white supremacy.
	What do you have to say about that?
	And sending that to the university and to our local farmers market.
	But that didn't seem to stimulate anything.
	So it was like the place I least expected to have coverage.
	That's where it came from. What is the decolonization narrative?
	I'm a little out of the loop on that.
	It's also known as the indigenization of the institution.
	It's not just, let's say, let's have an Indigenous perspective so we could see, let's say, their side of history or maybe their approach to psychology is yet another.
	It's about, in English, let's say, replace the works of Shakespeare by, you know, the Indigenous way of knowing whatever that happens to be.
	So, yeah, it's like, let's replace curriculum with something else.
	But it's only the activist approach.
	It's not, you know, you don't hear much, let's say, about the indigenous who are working in the oil fields.
	Yeah, it's only the ones that are in the stereotype of the ones who just lived peacefully with nature.
	Yes, well, I mean, the indigenous, perhaps we can talk about that another time, but having spent some time working up north and spent some time with indigenous populations and on reservations, Boy, what Canada's doing is not working in the most horrifying kinds of ways.
	So perhaps we can talk about that another time.
	But having compassion for the indigenous population is not the same as saying everything that exists must continue to exist and all the policies in place must be expanded because, man, is it rough for a lot of people, particularly the children.
	In these communities it is just horrifying and anybody who thinks that a continuation of the status quo is anything other than cruel is I think somebody who needs to go and spend some time in these communities a little bit more viscerally.
	Yeah because I mean some of the problems like access to drinking water I mean that should just be something that's part of what is you know if you're in Canada those are just things that we should be able to just take as a given.
	I think that you can access it but yeah the way they're going about doing it Doesn't help anyone.
	I think it's doing quite the opposite because a lot of the universities, they want to have, you know, like an office for the indigenous.
	So if you're going to have anything to do with the indigenous, you need to go to an office.
	That sounds a lot like communist Russia.
	Yeah, and then starting off events with, you know, we acknowledge that we're on this unceded territory.
	Sometimes it seems strange looking at universities and If you look at their website and say, you know, proudly on this unceded ancestral lands, it's like, what does that mean?
	You're proud to be a colonialist?
	Or what does this mean? I don't really understand that.
	So to me, it just seems like virtue signal.
	I don't see how it benefits anyone, because for non-Indians, I think it's just instilling feelings of guilt when they had nothing to do with the past.
	And then for the Indigenous, I imagine many of them just see it as virtue signaling.
	So I don't see how it's in any way But they put it just because activists want it.
	And the fact that you hear the same statement across the different places, even in the theater or at a symphony, it does seem like it does give the appearance then of it being a compelled speech as opposed to something that's Well, it is such a squandered opportunity to me.
	We have this policy in the West of multiculturalism, of diversity, of bringing every ethnic and cultural group in close proximity.
	Now that's a challenge no matter which way you cut it.
	That's very much against how societies evolve, which was generally kind of win-lose combat and so on among ethnicities.
	But this is the policy that's underway and we need to get behind everything that's going to make that policy work as well as humanly possible.
	Now saying, well, this is cultural appropriation and this is racism and this is insensitivity to other cultures and this is colonialism and this is, I mean, this is just a way of setting everyone against each other.
	So bring all these groups together and then see if you can foment as much hostility and hatred Between them is humanly possible and in general that means towards whites.
	Boy, talk about having a policy and then sabotaging any chance for it to succeed.
	I think that's the great danger of what's going on is that if we're going to find ways to live together and it is my hope, hope, hope that we can and I think we can But if we've got all these people, Iago-like, whispering all of these divisiveness and hostilities into everyone's ears, then bringing all these groups together and fomenting hostility between them is a way of disintegrating a country rather than gaining the oft-touted values of diversity.
	Oh, yeah, definitely. And I think that approach ultimately leads to a population that can be easily controlled, because if you're all against each other, then it's easy to see if miss what's happening in the background.
	So I think that is the...
	The big fear, I think, all has to do with what Orwell was talking about way back in the 1940s.
	Well, I really, really appreciate your time, and I wish you the very best of luck.
	I'll sort of keep track on what's going on in your struggle with free speech, and feel free to use my platform as a resource to get the word out there when that's appropriate.
	I just wanted to remind people, of course, we'll put links to your channel below and to your great speeches, which, you know, we're hoping to get some more views.
	It's really, really well done. And remember to go to twitter.com slash Rick R-Metta.
	That's Rick R-M-E-H. Don't forget the H. M-E-H-T-A. I really, really appreciate your time.
	And I really, really appreciate the work that you're doing.
	I mean, for people who are not in academia or haven't heard this much about the struggle, it's kind of easy to get in line, to keep your head down and so on.
	And the courage that you're displaying in speaking out against political correctness and challenging some of the hypersensitivity of some highly volatile people, I think is very admirable.
	And I really, really appreciate the work that you're doing.
	Okay, thank you. It's been a pleasure.

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