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Michael Malice: Totalitarianism and Anarchy | Lex Fridman Podcast #200


small model | large model

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The following is a conversation between me and Michael Malus.
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Michael is an author, anarchist, and simpleton, and I'm proud to call him my friend.
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He makes me smile, he makes me think, and he makes me wonder why I sound so sleepy all
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the time.
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And now, enjoy this conversation with Michael Malus in the Tupagalovi language that I'm
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increasingly certain I'll never quite able to get the hang of.
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Hello, comrade.
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So Animal Farm by George Orwell is one of my favorite books.
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It's an allegory about, at least I think, about the Soviet Union and the Russian Revolution
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of 1917.
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So for people who haven't read it, it's animals overthrow the humans and then slowly become
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as bad or worse than the humans.
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So comrade, if we lived on this farm, in the book Animal Farm, which animal would you most
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rather be?
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Would it be the pigs, the horses, the donkey Benjamin, the raven Moses, the humans, Mr.
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and Mrs. Jones, the dogs, or the sheep?
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I'm gonna go with the Milton answer, which is it's better to rule in hell than serve
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in heaven, right?
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It's better to rule in hell than serve in heaven.
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Yeah, so I would have to go with the pigs.
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So I guess I'd be a cop.
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At the very top.
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So the leader, the main pig, Napoleon versus like the others.
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I would say it's not, it's sure it's an allegory about the Russian Revolution, but I think
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Orwell's point was this is broader towards most totalitarian dictatorships.
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I mean, it could very easily be read as an indictment of Mussolini or Hitler, or many
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of these others.
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I'm a huge George Orwell fan.
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One of the things that I think people on the right need to appreciate is the courage of
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many of these undisputably left wing voices who were the strongest ones to take on totalitarian
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communism.
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And the three I could think of top of my head who are all in my top 10 heroes of all time
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are Emma Goldman, Albert Camus, and Orwell being the third.
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Something that leftists like to throw in the face of people on the right who constantly
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invoke Orwell is that Orwell said, and I don't have the exact quote off the top of my head,
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but something to the effect of every word I have written should be taken as a defense
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of democratic socialism against totalitarianism.
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So people like Truman was obviously very hardcore, in many ways anti communist.
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We like to parse things out, you're going to laugh, into binary fashions that left good,
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right bad, or right good, left bad.
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But historically speaking, it would just not fall away into these camps as easily as people
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would like.
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And I think it is important for those of us, it takes a lot more courage to fight the right
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from the right or to fight the left from the left, because in a sense, a lot of your countrymen
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or your fellow travelers are going to regard you as a traitor to the cause.
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So every chance I get, I will sing the praises of these three figures, among others, who
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not all even if they hadn't done what they had done, just lived just amazing lives that
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all of us can learn from and admire and regard as somewhat a role model.
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So
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what was the nature of their opposition to totalitarianism?
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Is it basically freedom, the value of freedom?
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Let's go through the three of them.
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So Emma Goldman, she was an early anarchist figure, you know, we'll talk about her later,
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I'm sure she got deported from the United States with her partner in crime, Alexander
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Birkman, literal crime, he tried to assassinate Frick, who was Andrew Carnegie's main man
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in the Pittsburgh steel mill strike.
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She got deported to the Soviet Union.
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And they're like, oh, you want socialism?
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Because at the time, the anarchists were regarded as socialist, you know, go choke on it.
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And she's there.
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And she was watching in great horror what was going on.
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And she actually went to Lenin's office and she goes, this isn't what we're about.
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The revolution is about the individual and free speech and everyone working together
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to further society.
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And he told her that, you know, you know, free speech is a bourgeois contrivance.
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And regardless, you can't have these circumstances in the midst of a revolution.
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And when she left the Soviet Union, and you know, she went to Britain.
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And at the time, before the 1917, there was a lot of discussion among socialist circles
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about what would the revolution look like, right?
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Would there be the Bakunin anarchist model?
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Would there be the Marxist model?
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Obviously, the Bolsheviks ended up winning.
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But even then, it wasn't obvious because there was the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.
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And what people, you know, you and I know what those words mean.
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But Bolsheviks were kind of funny because Bolsheviks means bigger and Mensheviks means
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smaller.
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The Mensheviks had the numbers.
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It was sarcastic that they were called Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks were called Bolsheviks.
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And Lenin, you know, destroyed all his foes in a very merciless way, obviously.
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Beforehand, you know, there was the idea like, okay, with all these cockamamie ideas, we
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have to work together.
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You know, we don't know what's going to look like for the cause.
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Then as soon as he sees power, he's like, yeah, yeah, we're not doing that kind of pluralism
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anymore.
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This is going to be the right approach.
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So she left the Soviet Union, as did Berkman.
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She wrote a book that they titled, My Disillusion with Russia.
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And I remember this one anecdote, which I'm going to discuss in the forthcoming book,
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where she goes to Britain and the British were very red at the time, they really had
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something called the Fabian Society, which was the predecessor to the British Labour
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Party, which were like, all right, we're going to get rid of liberalism and have a socialist
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kind of nation.
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And she gave talks, and there was this one time where she gave a talk and she started,
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and there was a standing ovation, by the time she was done, you could hear a pin drop, because
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she dared to look at these people in the face, something they'd been fighting for all their
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lives and saying, you know, we've been to the future and it works.
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And she's like, guys, this is worse than the czar.
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You know, people are under house arrest, you're not allowed to have, you know, newspapers
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are being shut down if they have heretical views, so on and so forth.
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And you know, she was just even more of a pariah than she had been previously.
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So she is, you know, deserves huge accolades in that regard.
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I brought her up and we were talking about with our conversation with Yaron Orwell, I
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think you don't need me to explain what he has done and continues to do to use fiction
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to demonstrate the horrors of a totalitarian state.
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And Camus, who might be my all time great lighthouse, so to speak, in terms of being
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a man of conscience, you know, he joined the Communist Party and for a lot of people in
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the States, you hear, oh, you joined the Communist Party, so I need to hear, it's all you need
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to, he was a communist, all you need to know.
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He joined the Communist Party because they were the main ones fighting the fascists in
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France and other locations.
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And he took Nazism, as did many others, of course, very, very, very seriously.
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He wasn't some committed communist, but this was just his mechanism to take on, you know,
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be part of the underground in Vichy France, and so on and so forth.
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So he had the quote, which is ascribed to him, which is kind of a misquote, Howard Zinn
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is the one who actually said it, that it is a job of thinking people not to be on the
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side of the executioners.
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And he very much felt, if you read his speech when he won the Nobel Prize, I forget, in
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the 50s, where he goes, it's basically the job of writers to keep civilization from destroying
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himself.
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I don't think I'm ever going to be a man on the level of Camus and what he's accomplished,
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but I think that vision of it is the job of writers to be the conscience and to point
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out, you know, this is the leftism at its best when, you know, giving voice to the voiceless,
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when you have the machine of the state crushing and marginalizing people, and they might not
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be educated, literate, or have any power at all.
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He's the guy who's like, you are ruining humans, these humans matter, and I'm not going to
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let you look the other way and act like you don't know what you're doing.
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So in this time, whether we look at the time of fascism, or we look at the fictional Animal
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Farm, what's the heroic action then?
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So Camus joined the Communist Party, there's a bunch of different heroic actions, some
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more heroic than others, not just for the, you know, hero is the wrong word, in terms
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of like effectiveness, what's the effective action, I guess is what I want to ask.
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As a writer, as a thinker, as somebody with a mind, what's the heroic action?
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That's a tricky question, because a lot of times in the West, heroism is regardless intertwined
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with martyrdom, right?
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So it's kind of this idea of like, you have to speak to, you know, Camus always talked
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about justice, let justice be done though the heavens fall.
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This is a common kind of motto among people with conscience, and that you have to do the
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right thing, even the consequences might not be what you like.
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And I think that is a good loose definition of heroism.
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So if you meet, I'll give you one example of heroism.
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This was on Twitter, and I really feel bad that I don't remember the guy's name.
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This was the line to Auschwitz, I believe it was, and you know, there's the Nazi guards
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keeping everyone along.
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And if you were certain, I think if you were under 12, they killed you or something, there
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was some age limit where some kids were killed or some were not, there was some circumstances.
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And he asked the mom how old this kid was, and she's like, he's 14, and she's like,
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no, he's 12.
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And she's like, no, he's 14.
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She goes, he's 12.
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And she realized what this Nazi was telling her even in that circumstance, and it ended
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up saving the kid's life.
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So I think heroism in this context is defiance and standing true to values of liberalism,
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humanism and venerating the sanctity of human life.
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I think that, and I think it's also important to pick your battles.
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I don't think if, you know, he got, that Nazi over there got in a bullhorn and said, hey,
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this is the rules, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that's not going to help anyone do anything.
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So I do think, you know, people a lot of times attack me for my anarchist views, like, oh,
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you know, would you call the police?
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Would you use the roads?
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Would you pay your income taxes?
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You know, I got in an argument with Tim Pool, because there was that couple, I think it
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was at Missouri or Illinois when they had their guns and they were being arrested and
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they basically took a plea deal and he said, you should have fought.
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I go, it's a lot easier to say you should fight, but we don't know what circumstance
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someone is under.
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And what these totalitarian regimes did very, very well, as you know, is if you were a target
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and they can't get through to you, that's fine, you have a family.
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So you can sit there, Lex, and gird your jaw and you can stand up to all the torture, cool,
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what are we going to do about your wife?
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What about your mom?
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One thing Stalin did, he made it a law that kids up to 14 and up could get the death penalty
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for certain crimes.
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So after that, the rule was from the NKVD, if you were interrogating someone, they would
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have death warrants for the kid's child on the desk visible.
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So I'm interrogating you asking you to commit to, I'm sorry, to admit to some crime that
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you're not committed.
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And those piece of paper, it's Svitlana, she's got a death warrant.
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You're going to admit to any crime you want.
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So this is something Americans, this is even the case right now in North Korea, which I
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know you had Yonmi Park on, it's something I talk about a lot.
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Let's talk about it instead of the hypothetical, but this is happening right now on earth.
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You can look at the map on Google.
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The great leader, Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea said, class enemies must be
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exterminated three generations.
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So North, when people talk about individualism versus collectivism, Rick Santorum from Ascender
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says the family is the basic unit of society, unit.
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North Korea takes that seriously.
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The family is punished as a unit.
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So if someone does something wrong, three generations have to pay the price and you
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often don't know who it is that got you all in trouble.
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There's not a trial.
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This to Western minds is something almost incomprehensible.
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It's a lot easier to be brave when it's just your skin.
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It's something when it's your child, your loved ones, every man becomes a coward.
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But also what bravery is there for me to write an essay for The Guardian to say, I don't
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vote.
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There's no consequences to me.
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There's no possibility of consequences to me.
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This is the wonderful thing about living in a free country.
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It would take a lot of courage to be in the Soviet Union and say, I'm not going to vote.
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And what would that courage accomplish?
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Very little.
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Heroism in the sense of kind of the suicidal stuff and taking a stance with no consequences
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is a bit overrated.
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There is some aspect, like the way I think about heroism is something like you said about
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the Nazi soldier, which is quietly privately in your own life, live the virtues that you
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want the rest of the world to live by.
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Yes.
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So like without writing about it is not as heroic as living it quietly.
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I'll give you a great example of this.
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I sometimes give talks on networking and I tell the kids, if you know someone's in town
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and it's their birthday with nothing to do, take them out.
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And I say, I do this for selfish reasons and everyone laughs and I go, think about it this
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way.
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The guy who takes people out for their birthday is awesome.
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That could be you.
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Like you have that capacity to be that person and you're making that day feel special.
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They're going to remember for a long time.
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What's the cost?
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30 bucks, 25 bucks.
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So it's very disturbing to me how often people have opportunities to slightly move the needle
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and make things a bit better at almost no cost.
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And they just literally don't think in those terms.
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And one of the things Camus talked about, he's often described as an existentialist,
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which he did not like that term.
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He regarded himself as an absurdist, is the idea that we're basically blank canvases.
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And this isn't something that is dangerous.
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This is an enormous opportunity.
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And you have the ability to become the kind of man or woman that you admire and want to
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be.
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You don't have to be, I don't know, George Washington or one of these great heroes of
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all time.
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But everyone out there has the capacity to be, excuse me, to be a hero to their kids
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or to be a hero to maybe some, there's nursing homes and there's old people who are lonely.
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I think that you take in a dog that's on its last legs.
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These are little things, Terry Shepherd does that a lot, I regarded him as a hero.
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These are not Terry Shepherd, I'm blanking his name.
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These are things that people do that aren't heroic in the sense of Superman, but that
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I find admirable extremely and I think are very underrated because these people aren't
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championed.
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Is this some kind of weird, passive, aggressive and direct way for you to tell me that I should
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take you off for your birthday on Monday?
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Is that why you gave that whole speech?
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That wasn't it at all.
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That was a joke, Michael.
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No, it was a failed joke.
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Nevertheless.
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There was no punchline.
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Without failure, we would not have triumph.
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Can we stick on the Camus absurdism versus existentialism?
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Sure.
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What do you think is the difference?
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In your ideas about anarchism too, it seems like those are somehow intricately connected
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because existentialism is connected to freedom and freedom is connected to anarchism.
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Sure.
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But I mean, Sartre was a defender of the Soviet Union.
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He said explicitly about things like gulags, like even if it's true, we shouldn't talk
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about it.
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What people don't appreciate is how human beings can have contradictory ideas in their
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minds at the same time.
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One would think, okay, someone's a Democrat, they think ABC, therefore they think DEF.
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People would have all sorts of contradictions and it's not at all clear and they'll have
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a clean conscience because the human mind is very sophisticated and is capable of doing
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this.
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So Sartre, you would think he's this radical individualist, this sense of ultimate freedom,
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but he's defending the Soviet Union.
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Camus, on the other hand, would probably be, was very much like a social Democrat.
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He didn't really talk about what politics should be so much as it shouldn't be.
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His essay, Reflections on the Guillotine, is one of the great masterpieces of all time,
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an attack on the death penalty, not in terms of no one's evil or it's wrong to kill murderers,
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but in terms of what does it do for a society?
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If you have someone who takes a person and locks them in a room and says, in two years,
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I'm going to murder you and you lock them for that.
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This is not someone we regard as moral, we regard this as someone who's a complete monster,
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but that's what the state does with the death penalty.
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And he challenges us to think, is this the kind of people we want to be?
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And again, he's saying, I'm not saying killing a murderer is wrong.
link |
00:17:11.060
I'm not saying evil is wrong.
link |
00:17:12.640
His entire career was dedicated to fighting the concept of evil.
link |
00:17:17.120
But are we the kind of people who want to be doing these things that in any other context
link |
00:17:22.600
we regard as torture or depraved?
link |
00:17:25.000
So I'm much more of a Camus person than a Sartre person.
link |
00:17:28.800
So he was probably against war in that same way.
link |
00:17:31.000
So I don't, I have to admit, I don't know much about the political side of Camus.
link |
00:17:36.000
Well, and I don't think his political side is that interesting or relevant.
link |
00:17:38.820
What I find, sorry to interrupt you, what I find fascinating about Camus and what I
link |
00:17:42.760
think about on a daily basis from him is his insistence that you have to live a life based
link |
00:17:48.760
on conscience, that you have to be accountable to yourself when you put your head on the
link |
00:17:53.000
pelt at the end of the day and ask yourself, did I live a righteous life with integrity
link |
00:17:59.080
true to my values?
link |
00:18:00.840
Did I not needlessly cause harm to innocent people?
link |
00:18:06.320
That kind of mindset, did I, if someone is weak, am I using that as an opportunity to
link |
00:18:11.160
exploit them or to harm them?
link |
00:18:13.020
Or do I feel a bit of sympathy or empathy for this person because maybe they didn't
link |
00:18:17.880
have circumstances that were as beneficial as other people had.
link |
00:18:23.040
Well, how does that fit absurdism where everything is absurd, nothing has meaning, it really
link |
00:18:29.720
borders on nihilism.
link |
00:18:31.520
So he regards, his philosophy explicitly said is a response to nihilism and a attack on
link |
00:18:39.960
nihilism.
link |
00:18:41.320
He regards cynicism as the worst value people can have.
link |
00:18:46.140
And I agree with him 100%.
link |
00:18:48.160
A lot of times people call me cynical online and I push back very, very hard because to
link |
00:18:53.360
be a, you know, I had this quote in the new write where I said, I'd rather be naive than
link |
00:18:57.240
a cynic because a cynic is a hopeless man who projects his hopelessness to the world
link |
00:19:01.840
at large.
link |
00:19:03.400
Camus, this is the metaphor I use and I find it very inspirational.
link |
00:19:07.520
I thought it was in his work, but I guess I thought if it described it to him.
link |
00:19:11.200
There's two types of people, you imagine you go to a mountainside and you see a blank canvas
link |
00:19:17.840
on an easel standing in front of this mountainside.
link |
00:19:21.160
One people be like, why is this blank canvas here, you know, what was this, what's going
link |
00:19:25.880
on here?
link |
00:19:26.880
And just be confused.
link |
00:19:28.260
Whereas the other type of person will be like, there's a blank canvas here in this beautiful
link |
00:19:33.040
countryside, what a great opportunity.
link |
00:19:35.640
I can paint this river, I could paint that bird, I could paint my friends or myself in
link |
00:19:40.360
the background, infinite choices.
link |
00:19:42.920
And this is a gift that I have been given.
link |
00:19:45.240
And I think that also ties very heavily into what I was, I went to yeshiva as a kid, which
link |
00:19:49.140
is Jewish school.
link |
00:19:50.380
What we were taught incessantly how to look at life is this beautiful gift that God has
link |
00:19:56.840
given you and that God wants you to be happy.
link |
00:19:59.960
He wants you to live to the fullest in a moral way.
link |
00:20:03.400
I remember the first time I went into a church and they were asking questions about the Jewish
link |
00:20:08.160
concept, the afterlife.
link |
00:20:09.200
They weren't familiar with Jewish thought.
link |
00:20:11.000
And it took me a second because I didn't really have answers.
link |
00:20:13.200
And then I remembered what we were taught, which is, let's suppose you're at this banquet,
link |
00:20:18.300
the best chef on earth, and the table is so heavy because you've got steaks and you've
link |
00:20:22.340
got chicken and you've got sushi and the wine's flowing and you've got your Dr. Pepper and
link |
00:20:29.120
Mr. Pibb and the store brand, everything you want.
link |
00:20:31.780
And you're looking around at this amazing bounty, right?
link |
00:20:34.860
And then you turn to this best chef on earth and you're like, oh, so what's for dessert?
link |
00:20:39.000
I mean, the offensiveness of that is just so insane.
link |
00:20:44.400
You have this, eat the meal.
link |
00:20:45.800
I promise you, if I could deliver this meal, the dessert's going to be okay.
link |
00:20:50.140
So this focus on the afterlife when we've been given this amazing gift on this earth
link |
00:20:56.760
is a very kind of different mindset from both the Jewish tradition as I'd been taught and
link |
00:21:01.640
the Camus mindset.
link |
00:21:02.640
Obviously, Camus was an atheist, didn't believe in an afterlife.
link |
00:21:05.440
This concept that life is meaningless, but that means you have that opportunity to find
link |
00:21:13.720
value, to seek for truth, to seek for happiness.
link |
00:21:17.540
And Camus has this quote, it's ascribed to him, it's like a meme.
link |
00:21:20.080
I've never found the source, so maybe he doesn't really say it, but he says, maybe it's not
link |
00:21:24.080
about happy endings, maybe it's about the journey.
link |
00:21:26.740
And I think when you have that mindset, and as you and I, I think you and I both found
link |
00:21:30.240
this because neither of us, when we were kids, thought we'd be doing this, right?
link |
00:21:34.640
But now that we are really fortunate.
link |
00:21:37.320
Definitely this.
link |
00:21:38.320
Yeah.
link |
00:21:39.320
And definitely that.
link |
00:21:40.320
Yeah.
link |
00:21:41.320
But now that we're fortunate enough to do this, and that we're blessed enough that there's
link |
00:21:43.160
people who find this of value and interest, and we could pay the rent doing this, there's
link |
00:21:47.240
not a day that goes by where I don't think you and I think, this is pretty absurd, but
link |
00:21:53.320
it's also pretty wonderful.
link |
00:21:54.780
And as a consequence of us thriving, it also shows other people that happiness is possible
link |
00:22:00.640
on this earth.
link |
00:22:01.920
And I think cynicism is the lie.
link |
00:22:05.080
It's not just the worldview, it's a lie that happiness is not possible on this earth.
link |
00:22:10.120
Or it's only possible if you sell your soul and you're a bad person, you screw other people
link |
00:22:16.240
over.
link |
00:22:17.240
I reject that in every aspect.
link |
00:22:20.200
As you said, my birthday is coming up.
link |
00:22:21.880
I've been feeling just a lot of really great things have been happening very, very recently.
link |
00:22:27.300
So it affects me very heavily emotionally, especially when I see the response it gives
link |
00:22:33.200
to the kids.
link |
00:22:36.120
So it's one thing to say, this is what I'm for.
link |
00:22:38.800
But when you can provide proof of concept that what you've been advocating does result
link |
00:22:43.760
in positive responses.
link |
00:22:45.160
I got a message from this kid who had tried to kill himself a year ago.
link |
00:22:50.300
And then he was like, look, I found your work, I found some other stuff.
link |
00:22:54.000
And now I realized I'm going to make something of myself.
link |
00:22:56.560
I was born in a meth house, you know, whatever, 19, 20 years old, I should be in the garbage.
link |
00:23:02.240
But I'm going to try to be a stand up because I have opportunity on this earth.
link |
00:23:06.600
Even if he fails as a stand up, you know, he's still such whatever he does, washing
link |
00:23:11.600
dishes, there's no shame in that.
link |
00:23:13.640
Is it so bad to have a crappy job and a girlfriend who you don't really like?
link |
00:23:18.380
But as compared to the alternative of like, I'm going to kill myself.
link |
00:23:20.960
This is heaven.
link |
00:23:21.960
Well, I think there's beauty to be discovered in all of it and all of those experiences.
link |
00:23:27.600
Yes.
link |
00:23:28.600
So, but at the same time, so I often think about I just recently reread The Idiot by
link |
00:23:34.920
Dostoevsky.
link |
00:23:35.920
I often feel like the idiot.
link |
00:23:38.120
That's why when I say I'm an idiot, I often think about Prince Mishkin, that kind of idiot,
link |
00:23:43.280
which the world sees you as naive.
link |
00:23:45.200
I don't think he's naive.
link |
00:23:46.200
I don't think I'm naive, but I tend to see the good in people and the good in every moment.
link |
00:23:53.800
And the world often is cynical.
link |
00:23:57.440
And in fact, especially in what we do, often the intellectual is supposed to be cynical.
link |
00:24:04.320
This is very much an urban, elite, educated mindset, where if you write a book about someone
link |
00:24:11.000
who's, let's suppose, a drug addict or a prostitute, that has heft and that's valid.
link |
00:24:15.600
But if you're writing a book about like a love story, you know, two people fall in love
link |
00:24:19.120
and they're in roller coasters or carousels, that's less legitimate.
link |
00:24:22.960
I hate that.
link |
00:24:23.960
I hate that.
link |
00:24:24.960
I hate that so much because the message it gives to people is you have to choose between
link |
00:24:29.840
thriving and happiness and silliness and seriousness and depravity.
link |
00:24:34.400
And I'm not saying a drug addict or prostitute is depraved, but they're basically their worldviews.
link |
00:24:38.200
Unless it's dark and twisted, it doesn't really count as art.
link |
00:24:40.960
And I despise that mindset, that subtext.
link |
00:24:43.960
So the internet and people around me often will call me naive.
link |
00:24:47.440
Because I don't know.
link |
00:24:48.440
I think the word they want is innocent.
link |
00:24:49.440
Don't you think?
link |
00:24:50.440
It's a better word.
link |
00:24:51.440
But it's not that innocent.
link |
00:24:52.440
No, but innocent in that you genuinely in your heart, I know you fairly well at this
link |
00:24:56.800
point, believe that goodness is possible and that people can, if not be good, at least
link |
00:25:02.440
be better than they were yesterday.
link |
00:25:04.040
See, even the word naive or the word innocent presumes that there's not wisdom in that.
link |
00:25:09.880
Presumes that somehow that's, oh, isn't that beautiful to live that life of a child who
link |
00:25:16.200
sees the world with these bright eyes and is hopeful about the future, but just wait
link |
00:25:21.280
until they grow up and realize that reality is much harsher than they think.
link |
00:25:26.080
But that child might be wiser than all of the adults in the room.
link |
00:25:31.360
And don't you want to be, if the world is like that, don't you want to be the guy who
link |
00:25:36.200
takes it on and changes it for the better?
link |
00:25:39.120
So it's like saying, well, you know, cancer is everywhere.
link |
00:25:42.360
It's inevitable.
link |
00:25:43.360
Well, don't you want to be the one who says, not anymore.
link |
00:25:45.920
I'm here and I'm going to make that change and I can see it being better than it is now.
link |
00:25:51.280
So I think you and I have the same analysis of your worldview and I don't think that there
link |
00:25:58.200
is a good word for it.
link |
00:25:59.900
So I guess it's this idea of inherent benevolence might be wordy, but I think that's more accurate
link |
00:26:05.480
because, you know, you and I did not have such easy lives growing up, to put it mildly.
link |
00:26:11.260
You constantly talk about just horrific aspects of life.
link |
00:26:15.960
So to claim that you kind of don't know that they exist or you sleep under the rug is completely
link |
00:26:20.040
not accurate to your work and your mindset.
link |
00:26:25.120
Can we talk about World War II and the Soviet Union?
link |
00:26:30.320
Sure.
link |
00:26:31.720
So on Sunday, June 22nd, 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, which was the surprise
link |
00:26:41.140
invasion of the Soviet Union.
link |
00:26:43.960
If I could read to you a few lyrics from a song that for some reason is stuck throughout
link |
00:26:49.920
my childhood.
link |
00:26:50.920
It was a famous song during that time.
link |
00:26:54.240
Двадцать второго июня ровно в четыре часа Киев бомбили, нам объявили, что
link |
00:27:02.000
началась война, война началась на рассвете, чтобы больше народу убить, спали родители,
link |
00:27:09.640
спали их дети, когда стали Киев бомбить.
link |
00:27:14.120
The song talks about Kiev, like that moment as part of that operation that Kiev was first
link |
00:27:21.280
bombed and it was announced on June 22nd.
link |
00:27:24.520
The song says at exactly four o clock that the war has begun.
link |
00:27:28.880
For some reason this song haunts me because the exactness of that time and this realization
link |
00:27:39.760
that at any moment you can have this thing happen to you in your own personal life.
link |
00:27:46.360
Maybe we had something like 9 11 happen where everything changes and it's just like haunting
link |
00:27:52.840
because it makes me think that at any moment something like that could happen that changes
link |
00:27:57.960
everything and I just think about like normal life going on in Kiev at the time and then
link |
00:28:05.800
all of a sudden the bombs are dropping and they announce that the war has begun and you
link |
00:28:10.880
thought you were going to stay out of the war.
link |
00:28:23.000
This is something that is very intensely emotional for me because you and I are both Russian
link |
00:28:28.720
Jewish so to know that my grandparents and my great grandma were told that the Nazis
link |
00:28:37.940
are coming and this wasn't a dress rehearsal and that if they get here, which they do,
link |
00:28:45.160
they did, Lvov is very western Ukraine, that 100% you and all your relatives are going
link |
00:28:50.680
to be murdered.
link |
00:28:56.600
There's a monument now in Lvov where I'm from about this but I don't think either of us
link |
00:29:02.920
can imagine what it's like to think that we're about minutes or whatever hours or there's
link |
00:29:13.720
just the Russian army standing between us and everyone we are related to are going to
link |
00:29:20.600
be murdered for no reason and what's the closure here?
link |
00:29:29.560
They evacuated a lot of people but they didn't evacuate enough and to know that there is
link |
00:29:35.720
this force coming to 100% murder you, this isn't some kind of the TV news being hyperbolic,
link |
00:29:45.920
they're coming to kill you and if they get you, they will kill you.
link |
00:29:52.280
We all think about war like, oh, we hope America wins in Iraq, but if America got their ass
link |
00:29:57.960
get kind of in Vietnam, it's not really going to affect America in the sense that you're
link |
00:30:03.640
going to have the body bags and all the kids being killed and that's something that I'm
link |
00:30:06.560
not super in the rug, but no one in America thought the Vietnamese are going to come here
link |
00:30:11.360
and kill them, right?
link |
00:30:12.360
They were secure in their person.
link |
00:30:13.960
So to have that sense of we really need to win because if we don't win, we are 100% if
link |
00:30:23.800
we, they, the Russian army doesn't win, we are 100% all going to be slaughtered and often
link |
00:30:30.280
in not just a bullet to the head and in sadistic ways is something that to know that people
link |
00:30:36.460
who share my blood saw and went through is very hard for me to kind of wrap my head around.
link |
00:30:45.480
And there's no possibility to delude yourself.
link |
00:30:48.600
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
link |
00:30:49.960
Because I mean, they, they would, as the song also talks about, but that they would burn
link |
00:30:55.040
the factories.
link |
00:30:56.640
So it's basically saying we're in the war now.
link |
00:31:00.120
This is like, this is your life.
link |
00:31:02.480
Yeah.
link |
00:31:03.480
Like this is our life now.
link |
00:31:04.480
You know how you, yesterday you worried about like, oh, I misplaced my pen.
link |
00:31:07.560
Where is it?
link |
00:31:08.560
Like, it's like, yeah, this was paradise.
link |
00:31:11.760
Most of us are going to just, our life now is that most of us are going to die.
link |
00:31:17.680
And if we want to prevent all of us from dying, we, we have to fight.
link |
00:31:23.840
And we also can't sit down in some kind of weird, like, desert island or, you know, plane
link |
00:31:30.040
crash situation and be like, let's decide between us who's going to be the first to
link |
00:31:33.880
die.
link |
00:31:34.880
Maybe the like Titanic, the Titanic, right?
link |
00:31:36.880
They sat down and there were like women and children in the lifeboats.
link |
00:31:40.020
You know, they had this rational agreement.
link |
00:31:41.800
You don't have those choices in a war.
link |
00:31:44.560
So it's, it's something that I, it's, it's just very chilling and it's something I don't
link |
00:31:52.280
really have the emotional space to understand or grapple with.
link |
00:31:58.400
Even, you know, obviously I've been to North Korea, you can see it and so on and so forth.
link |
00:32:04.440
You and I can't, or anyone listening to this, except for maybe on me and people like that,
link |
00:32:10.100
you can't imagine what that's like to live it.
link |
00:32:13.080
We can't, I, we can't imagine what it's like to live in those situations where it's not
link |
00:32:18.400
like before Hitler came, everyone's, you know, dancing around and having a great time.
link |
00:32:23.200
I mean, imagine how, what that life is like where your preference to Hitler is starving
link |
00:32:29.360
and waiting on line for hours for bread and to have the secret police and your friend's
link |
00:32:33.640
attorney went and your phones are all tapped and you're a prisoner.
link |
00:32:36.600
But to you, this is infinitely better than the alternative.
link |
00:32:40.520
Like these are the choices that, you know, our family had to deal with.
link |
00:32:45.200
It's something that no matter how much you, it's like a, let me put it in terms of people
link |
00:32:50.440
can understand, you know what I mean?
link |
00:32:51.440
It's like your first bad breakup, right?
link |
00:32:53.720
Like that's a much simpler thing to wrap your head around because it's like, if you've never
link |
00:32:57.920
had it, you can't really, but when you feel it, it's just so intense, but you can't tell
link |
00:33:02.160
someone what's like, we could sit down for days and hours and have people tell us, but
link |
00:33:07.400
until it's the totality of your environment and your life and your mindset, I remember
link |
00:33:13.440
my grandma, she would talk about it like, when you're that hungry, all you're thinking
link |
00:33:30.240
about is bread because your brain won't like, you know, human beings, you know, we're evolved,
link |
00:33:36.440
we have instincts, whatever, and the mind is telling you food, food, food, food, food,
link |
00:33:42.720
and that there's kids thinking this and that they're not going to get the food.
link |
00:33:48.960
And imagine being a parent and you're watching your kids without food and knowing they're
link |
00:33:54.320
not going to get the food.
link |
00:33:56.600
And the fact that this happened in North Korea in the nineties, I met a refugee and he had
link |
00:34:04.960
to watch his dad starve to death.
link |
00:34:07.560
And thank you.
link |
00:34:11.320
And we have no concept of what it's like.
link |
00:34:19.520
I mean, we kind of, you know, it's just like last night here in Austin, all the places
link |
00:34:25.480
were closed and I couldn't get my protein powder.
link |
00:34:28.640
And this is the extent of my suffering when it comes to food, you know, or if I couldn't,
link |
00:34:34.580
there was a restaurant that I went to in Brooklyn where for some faqaqta reason, they weren't
link |
00:34:40.240
serving sashimi, they only had sushi, so I had to have the rice and the carbs.
link |
00:34:44.760
To live a life where that is the extent of your food problems as opposed to the choice
link |
00:34:51.160
is either Hitler killing you or being hungry 24 seven.
link |
00:34:55.240
You know, my grandma told this story of how they had a close call, it was her and her
link |
00:35:00.200
brother and her mom, my great grandma who passed, and I think there was like either
link |
00:35:05.040
helicopter overhead or something, and my great grandma jumped on top of my grandma's brother
link |
00:35:11.680
and not my grandma.
link |
00:35:12.680
So she basically did a Sophie's Choice, my grandma's name is Sophia, and chose the brother.
link |
00:35:18.920
And this is something that she felt, you know, all her life that her mom had chosen her brother
link |
00:35:23.280
over her.
link |
00:35:24.480
But these little things that happen, these little kind of decisions we have to make in
link |
00:35:29.720
life.
link |
00:35:30.720
Or there's a book I read called Five Chimneys, I think, this woman who was an Auschwitz survivor.
link |
00:35:37.080
And what she talked about what people don't appreciate, it's not necessarily the slaughter
link |
00:35:42.640
and the torture, it's that there's no rhyme or reason to it.
link |
00:35:46.200
Like she talked about how they had a camp just for people from Czechoslovakia, and they
link |
00:35:51.560
were treated better than the Jews, and then one day they just killed them all, right?
link |
00:35:55.680
And she's like, I still don't understand why they're giving them food and treating them
link |
00:36:00.320
well, and then the next day they're all killed, and we will never get answers, you know.
link |
00:36:04.960
And things like she talks about how they decided to kill all the kids, and they didn't really
link |
00:36:12.440
either for some reason they didn't have the courage to or they wanted to be cruel, so
link |
00:36:16.480
instead of shooting them, they just kept walking them in the snow until they all died.
link |
00:36:20.200
So it's things like this, that the fact that you and I dodged these bullets, and that we
link |
00:36:26.280
can be here and be doing this and, you know, running our mouths for a living, I think about
link |
00:36:33.120
it all the time, and it's just very disturbing to know, and I know you know this as well,
link |
00:36:43.320
that there's lots of places on earth where if people had a choice, they would kill us
link |
00:36:46.960
on sight and be proud of themselves for it.
link |
00:36:49.200
Yeah, there, I don't know what to make of the contrast, you were talking about the fact
link |
00:36:54.760
that you've been truly happy the last few weeks and months, there's been a lot of moments
link |
00:37:00.920
of happiness and joy, and that joy is built on a history of human suffering.
link |
00:37:08.000
Like in your roots, in your blood, is a lot of people that were tortured that suffered,
link |
00:37:13.260
so that you could have this joy, and you have both the, you have the responsibility to truly
link |
00:37:18.160
be grateful for that joy.
link |
00:37:20.020
But it also shows that there's the happy ending, that it does end, and a good note that it
link |
00:37:24.080
does get infinitely, infinitely better.
link |
00:37:27.880
And that I think there's a, I don't like using the word responsibility, but there is an opportunity
link |
00:37:34.520
for those of us who did dodge that bullet, to give testimony to these people.
link |
00:37:41.160
And more importantly, to give testimony to the people who are going through this now.
link |
00:37:46.340
So one of the reasons I talk about North Korea so much, why I wrote Dear Reader, is because
link |
00:37:51.780
it's very easy, and this is human nature, I'm not condemning people, I think that's
link |
00:37:57.160
just how people are wired.
link |
00:37:58.620
When you see an Asian country with Asian people, and things are bad over there, I think in
link |
00:38:04.360
the West it's like, oh, Asia, they're all crazy, they're wacky, they eat dogs or so
link |
00:38:08.600
on and so forth, some weird stereotype, and they think of them as kind of Martians.
link |
00:38:12.900
So it's important for people who aren't of that kind of ancestry to kind of speak on
link |
00:38:18.840
behalf of these people, because it's very different how just people just naturally react
link |
00:38:22.740
when you have a Westerner talking about this.
link |
00:38:25.480
Instead of it becoming them over there, it becomes, you know, this could have been us
link |
00:38:31.080
very easily.
link |
00:38:32.080
I have a friend, Peter Vahansky, great dude, and I was showing him photos when I was in
link |
00:38:36.520
Pyongyang, and he goes, this looks like a Russian city with Asian people.
link |
00:38:40.320
It completely disturbed him.
link |
00:38:42.640
So that was one of the reasons I did go to North Korea, because that was as close as
link |
00:38:46.560
I would get to see what your family went through, to see what my family went through, and they're
link |
00:38:50.800
still living under this regime.
link |
00:38:54.680
And one of the things I fought very hard to do with Dear Reader, which I was successful
link |
00:38:58.600
in amazingly, and I said, I could die now.
link |
00:39:02.920
I feel like if you just move the needle a little bit, then you've kind of paid your
link |
00:39:08.100
due for your time here on this earth, to have it change from being a laughing stock.
link |
00:39:14.560
And I think Team America did a good job.
link |
00:39:17.200
They made Kim Jong Il into a clown and they made a joke of it, but you're going from nothing
link |
00:39:22.240
to joke.
link |
00:39:23.240
So at least now people are aware of it that it exists, right?
link |
00:39:26.100
And then I and many others took it from a joke to like, guys, this is really, really,
link |
00:39:32.040
really bad, and none of us can even appreciate how bad it is.
link |
00:39:35.560
And I think now there is an understanding, other than a few people who are just looking
link |
00:39:38.920
at it through a Trump lens and wanting Trump to fail because Trump's an asshole and that's
link |
00:39:41.800
fine, to be like these poor people.
link |
00:39:45.160
And it's really unfortunate because there's a segment of Western culture who thinks that
link |
00:39:50.680
correctly, often when you're complaining about or discussing the plight of another country,
link |
00:39:58.040
that's just your prelude to war and an excuse to invade.
link |
00:40:01.120
Like the Kurds in Syria, you know, we're talked about, if we don't in Syria tomorrow, it's
link |
00:40:04.360
going to be another genocide, blah, blah.
link |
00:40:06.360
I'm not saying let's invade North Korea and things like that.
link |
00:40:09.240
All I'm saying is, you know, thank God that this isn't your life.
link |
00:40:14.440
I bring this up all the time.
link |
00:40:15.960
The woman who was my guide when I was there, I'm aware of what she's up to now.
link |
00:40:22.160
She's extremely rich by North Korean standards, but she'll never be in a position to buy medicine.
link |
00:40:28.680
She'll never be in a position to go on a vacation.
link |
00:40:31.580
Things that you and I just, you know, whatever, she can't go on the internet.
link |
00:40:36.440
She can't get an encyclopedia.
link |
00:40:39.260
She can't better herself as a person other than through what the state allows and meaning
link |
00:40:44.000
better yourself as a person in service to the state.
link |
00:40:47.240
So I mean, it's also frustrating because there's only so much that I can do as an individual.
link |
00:40:54.520
What's your takeaway about human nature from looking at North Korea and looking at how
link |
00:40:59.240
the rest of the world is looking at North Korea?
link |
00:41:02.880
This is a great question.
link |
00:41:03.880
I think about it fairly often.
link |
00:41:05.400
I always say human beings are animals, right?
link |
00:41:08.040
When you say someone's an animal, it's like a slur, like he's like a beast.
link |
00:41:12.440
Animals are capable of enormous kindness, empathy, sympathy.
link |
00:41:16.840
You know, they look out for one another, groom one another.
link |
00:41:19.920
There's a thing with apes where they groom each other for parasites and even if there
link |
00:41:24.560
are no parasites, they pretend there's parasites just to have that kind of bonding.
link |
00:41:28.620
You see infinite photos online of like cats raising puppies because the puppies, mom died,
link |
00:41:34.880
things like this.
link |
00:41:35.940
That's part of being an animal.
link |
00:41:37.360
Part of being an animal is also just the most monstrous cruelty.
link |
00:41:42.480
Killer whales, you know, there's this big PC move to not call them killer whales and
link |
00:41:46.320
just call them orcas.
link |
00:41:47.720
They will murder blue whale pups, calves, excuse me, and play with them and not even
link |
00:41:53.840
eat them.
link |
00:41:54.840
So they just murder for the sake of fun.
link |
00:41:58.160
Even cats, you know, kill birds all the time, things like this.
link |
00:42:00.740
So it runs the whole gamut.
link |
00:42:03.280
And I think it's, you know, when Yaron and I were on your show, I don't think Lord of
link |
00:42:07.840
the Flies is accurate.
link |
00:42:08.840
I don't think Hobbs is how reality works when you're in that kind of state.
link |
00:42:14.140
But I think we've seen countless examples of human beings, especially when human beings
link |
00:42:21.240
have power over someone who's powerless, of allowing themselves to engage in not just
link |
00:42:28.040
harm, but cruelty.
link |
00:42:31.340
And that is something as Soviets, you and I are very painfully aware of.
link |
00:42:35.560
It's not just about the oppression, which as bad enough as it is, it's that mediocre
link |
00:42:40.680
person with that little bit of power.
link |
00:42:43.800
And now they're standing between you and your daughter having medicine, and they love it
link |
00:42:50.000
to make you dance, to be like, oh, you need me to get this medicine?
link |
00:42:54.340
Make you go through hoops?
link |
00:42:56.160
Because now they feel like for the first time in their life, they're in a position of strength
link |
00:42:59.280
and power.
link |
00:43:00.280
I think that is, in many ways, the more common nature of evil that what Hannah Arendt talks
link |
00:43:05.400
about the banality of evil, then someone who's like an SS guard, you're shooting someone
link |
00:43:09.440
in the head.
link |
00:43:10.440
Like that, I think we could all wrap our heads around to some extent, like, okay, I'm a military.
link |
00:43:14.800
It's not easy.
link |
00:43:15.800
I have to execute people pulling a trigger, you could kind of have this mental disconnect
link |
00:43:18.900
between the finger and the victim.
link |
00:43:20.880
But like that little day to day stuff, like, are you doing the right thing on a day to
link |
00:43:24.280
day basis that I think is far more common, and far more disturbing aspect in certain
link |
00:43:29.100
senses of the human psyche.
link |
00:43:30.920
Yeah, there's something especially disturbing about a weak man, given power, and just abusing
link |
00:43:43.320
that power.
link |
00:43:44.320
There's something about not just weak, but like, mediocre at everything it does, or less
link |
00:43:49.480
than mediocre.
link |
00:43:50.480
A great example of this, which I'm also talking about in the next book is Ceausescu, who was
link |
00:43:55.000
the dictator of Romania.
link |
00:43:56.420
So you know, the Cold War is still somewhat poorly understood in, you know, popular culture.
link |
00:44:02.900
But the different countries in the second world, the Soviet bloc, some are more liberal
link |
00:44:06.980
than others, some are more sane than others.
link |
00:44:08.800
And Ceausescu, at first was one of the, you know, more Western friendly, more the free
link |
00:44:13.400
ones.
link |
00:44:14.400
Then he met the great leader Kim Il Sung from North Korea, and he had the idea to impose
link |
00:44:17.760
a personality cult on Romania, and it's the kind of things like forcing people to breed
link |
00:44:22.360
because he wanted to make people taller.
link |
00:44:24.440
I think he made like the biggest building in all of Europe, the People's Palace, but
link |
00:44:28.200
it was just for him, while there's no electricity, you know, elsewhere.
link |
00:44:31.900
But you look at this guy, you know, Stalin's a badass, right?
link |
00:44:34.680
He was a bank robber.
link |
00:44:35.680
If you look at photos of him as a kid, he was a hunk.
link |
00:44:37.920
Lenin was clearly intellectual.
link |
00:44:39.920
These were powerful Trotsky, these were powerful men with huge egos, huge force of personality.
link |
00:44:46.120
But you look at this Ceausescu guy, and you could, like for example, on my driver's license,
link |
00:44:52.240
instead of my address, I'm not giving my real address, being like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5th Avenue,
link |
00:44:56.640
by mistake it says 1, 2, 3, 4, 5th Street, right?
link |
00:44:59.800
So you can imagine him being in the post office and me giving him my ID to get my package
link |
00:45:04.000
and him being baffled because this says street, this says Avenue instead of understanding.
link |
00:45:08.240
And this, the look on his face, this dullard, that you can see how, you know how sometimes
link |
00:45:12.620
I'm going to, can I curse?
link |
00:45:15.160
Fuck yes.
link |
00:45:16.160
Yeah.
link |
00:45:17.160
So if you know, like how if you're in the airport and you see someone and you look at
link |
00:45:18.280
them and an adult and you think, okay, this person was born fucked up, just like on sight,
link |
00:45:21.960
like something's wrong with them.
link |
00:45:22.960
How are they traveling alone?
link |
00:45:24.060
You look at Ceausescu, you look at him, you're like, something's not right with this guy.
link |
00:45:28.040
Not in the sense of like evil, but in the sense of he's a simpleton, right?
link |
00:45:31.340
And now he's in charge of this whole country and everyone's taught to regard him as one
link |
00:45:35.160
of the great geniuses of all time.
link |
00:45:37.440
And it's this, the idea, this mediocre nobody, this guy would have in any other culture been
link |
00:45:43.400
accomplished nothing or would have had an honest job where he's like, okay, he works
link |
00:45:49.280
at the mail service and he's bad at it, okay, fine, he's not hurting anyone.
link |
00:45:52.780
And now as a result of this, he's responsible for mass death, secret police, and incarceration.
link |
00:45:58.380
And you know, one of the greatest things I've ever seen, which I'm sure many people see
link |
00:46:03.440
as well, if you go on YouTube, it's his speech, and it's the first time the crowd turns and
link |
00:46:08.480
his head kind of like, because they start booing him, which was unheard of.
link |
00:46:11.880
And he was shot with his dog faced wife not that long after, it was just a great moment.
link |
00:46:16.700
But it's things like this, I agree with you, that mediocre, weak person is now in a position
link |
00:46:22.220
of power over somebody else.
link |
00:46:24.120
And that sense of vindictiveness, like I'm going to feel strong for once in my life,
link |
00:46:29.160
but it's going to be at your expense.
link |
00:46:31.000
That I think is, you know, human nature, it's most primal.
link |
00:46:34.640
And every time I meet a person in this world, you're the first person to get me to cry on
link |
00:46:39.040
a fucking podcast.
link |
00:46:40.040
Fucking the robot gets me to cry.
link |
00:46:41.840
What the fuck is going on?
link |
00:46:43.400
Every time I meet a weird person, somebody, to me, heroism is also taking a risk to rebel
link |
00:46:52.240
against mediocrity.
link |
00:46:55.640
Like in the most simplest of ways, like the license address, like taking a risk to break
link |
00:47:02.240
the little bit of rule that nobody will know about, to take that little bit of a leap of
link |
00:47:07.720
like that little protest against the bureaucracy.
link |
00:47:11.080
Like that Nazi guard where he just spoke out, he's like, hey lady.
link |
00:47:14.400
That's a big one.
link |
00:47:15.400
Oh, that's a big, sure.
link |
00:47:16.400
I mean, like literally at the line at Starbucks or something like that.
link |
00:47:19.600
Like even in the tiniest of ways, when I see people just like, it's almost like that little
link |
00:47:26.280
like glimmer in their eye, a wink, like we're in this together, there's all this conformity
link |
00:47:32.040
all around us.
link |
00:47:33.640
That's at a different time could have been Nazi Germany, could have been a Stalinist
link |
00:47:38.920
Soviet union.
link |
00:47:39.920
Sure.
link |
00:47:40.920
We're in this together.
link |
00:47:41.920
We're going to rebel against that conformity by just taking the risk, that little bit of
link |
00:47:47.080
risk against mediocrity.
link |
00:47:48.920
I don't know.
link |
00:47:50.400
And then once again, I see this in companies too.
link |
00:47:55.200
When I see the mediocrity, I see this, I used to work at Google, I see it in Google and
link |
00:48:00.960
when the companies grow, that mediocrity is overwhelming.
link |
00:48:04.600
The Peter principle, right?
link |
00:48:05.780
The Peter principle.
link |
00:48:06.780
Yeah.
link |
00:48:07.780
My hope is that all of us have the possibility for that glimmer, that risk taking, the leap
link |
00:48:16.120
of faith, whatever the heck that is, the leap out of the ordinary, out of the conformity,
link |
00:48:21.120
out of the mediocrity.
link |
00:48:22.540
So this is where you and I disagree.
link |
00:48:24.860
I think most, a lot of people are not capable of that.
link |
00:48:28.960
They're accustomed to it.
link |
00:48:30.760
I don't know if they're not capable.
link |
00:48:32.680
I understand your position.
link |
00:48:34.400
I'm disagreeing with it.
link |
00:48:35.400
I'm saying I do not think they're capable.
link |
00:48:36.840
I think a lot of people effectively don't have souls.
link |
00:48:40.720
They do not have a conscience in this sense where they're going to look at an issue, bring
link |
00:48:45.680
their critical thinking and say, all right, I am going to do the right thing, although
link |
00:48:51.720
I'm taking a risk.
link |
00:48:52.720
Do you think thinking is involved or is it just taking that leap?
link |
00:48:56.120
There's something about that basic human spirit.
link |
00:48:58.760
Forget the thinking part.
link |
00:49:00.720
It's just saying, I'll take that risk, taking that adventure, the same thing that got people
link |
00:49:06.740
to explore the seas throughout human civilization, explore land, explore the oceans, that exploration.
link |
00:49:18.400
We've done stuff this way all this time.
link |
00:49:21.920
I'm going to take a leap and that comes out of nowhere seemingly.
link |
00:49:25.040
But those people are the heroes, but I don't think that's universal.
link |
00:49:30.760
I'm going to use a very gauche example.
link |
00:49:33.420
There was a show called Scare Tactics, which was basically a candid camera, but they would
link |
00:49:37.240
scare people.
link |
00:49:38.240
They'd have vampires, whatever, a hidden camera and people's reactions.
link |
00:49:45.240
Sometimes the prank didn't work out like they expected.
link |
00:49:48.920
There was one where they were hiring the people who were the marks, the contestants so to speak,
link |
00:49:54.200
was hired to be a security guard.
link |
00:49:56.560
You have to watch this factory overnight and you get paid.
link |
00:50:00.720
But the setup was some people were breaking out of the factory in the middle of the night
link |
00:50:05.840
like in rags and they were saying they were keeping us prisoner here, blah, blah, and
link |
00:50:10.360
just watch the person reaction to this.
link |
00:50:12.600
There was one security guard where he basically forced them back into the building and they're
link |
00:50:19.000
working us 24 seven, we're getting beaten.
link |
00:50:20.960
He's like, I'm here to do a job, get back in there.
link |
00:50:24.500
You watch this and it never even enters his head to be like, something's wrong here.
link |
00:50:30.080
He was given his orders, he's following his orders and to me, that is not uncommon and
link |
00:50:37.600
that person, although they look like you and I, there's something essentially human missing
link |
00:50:43.200
with them.
link |
00:50:44.200
Now, very quickly, the reaction is, well, it's one step from there to Nazism.
link |
00:50:49.920
I don't think it's something that, I'm not saying this person should be killed, but I'm
link |
00:50:54.560
just saying to expect that every human being has the capacity to have that defiance, especially
link |
00:51:02.640
at a cost to their own life, that I think is not realistic.
link |
00:51:07.440
But at the same time, I feel like an octopus on the eighth hand, it is those few of us,
link |
00:51:13.680
or if you want to include me in this, who do make these tiny little protests, who look
link |
00:51:20.640
the other way when someone is hungry, who's stealing food from the supermarket, right?
link |
00:51:25.480
It's like, all right, I'm going to pretend I didn't see anything.
link |
00:51:30.040
Those little elements of heroism are what move humanity forward and demonstrate the
link |
00:51:37.420
validity of the human experience, whereas everyone else is kind of like scenery.
link |
00:51:42.260
I think almost everybody in the world can derive deep meaning and pleasure from having
link |
00:51:48.560
done those courageous acts, and I also think they have the capacity to do them, to discover
link |
00:51:54.280
that meaning and happiness.
link |
00:51:55.480
So you're the cynic, then why aren't they doing it?
link |
00:51:57.560
They haven't gotten a chance to, like I've never tried LSD or DMT, you haven't gotten
link |
00:52:05.340
the chance to try this amazing journey, which is taking the risk.
link |
00:52:09.760
That's nonsense, because as you just said two minutes ago, everyone has that chance
link |
00:52:15.320
every day to do the right thing.
link |
00:52:17.800
We have the chance to do a lot of things and we don't realize.
link |
00:52:20.760
There's a lot of stuff right in front of our nose that we don't realize, because you have
link |
00:52:24.960
to kind of wake up to it.
link |
00:52:26.680
Sometimes you need the catalyst, there needs to be some kind of thing that happens that
link |
00:52:33.040
wakes you up.
link |
00:52:36.000
The fact that most people don't take the small acts of rebellion doesn't mean they don't
link |
00:52:42.440
have the capacity to both do so and to derive a lot of meaning from it.
link |
00:52:49.000
Then it's a discussion about how to create societies that get more and more people to
link |
00:52:55.120
be free actors and free thinkers.
link |
00:52:59.280
That's the question.
link |
00:53:00.720
That probably leads us into a discussion of anarchism and so on, but I just think we are
link |
00:53:04.940
very young as a species.
link |
00:53:07.440
We're trying to figure out how to get ourselves to first be collaborative, but at the same
link |
00:53:14.440
time be free spirits.
link |
00:53:16.480
I think both of those are within human nature for most of us.
link |
00:53:19.440
I think another big concern is that there's enormous disincentives, and this is Michael
link |
00:53:25.880
Malus speaking, for human beings to be kind and for tenderness.
link |
00:53:31.960
I think, especially when you're young, you know what I mean, when you're immature, a
link |
00:53:36.400
lot of times someone will reach out to you with kindness or vulnerability and you think
link |
00:53:40.840
it's funny to kind of dunk their head in the water in a pool or something like that.
link |
00:53:44.920
When you get older, there's this one example of this.
link |
00:53:50.440
This was in the 90s, and there was a woman.
link |
00:53:53.600
She became a stripper or something like that or whatever it was, but she had this amazing
link |
00:53:58.880
body.
link |
00:53:59.880
She was just gorgeous.
link |
00:54:01.240
The show was, she was talking about how when she was in high school, she was bullied a
link |
00:54:04.680
lot and that there was this football player.
link |
00:54:07.240
He messed with her every single day.
link |
00:54:10.160
One day, she even threw pickles in her hair and her hair smelled like pickles and it was
link |
00:54:13.120
laughing at her.
link |
00:54:14.640
This really screwed her up, I mean, up to that show.
link |
00:54:17.520
They took her backstage and they brought out the football player, and now he's a dad and
link |
00:54:21.280
a regular dude.
link |
00:54:22.280
He's like, do you know why you're here, and he's like, no, and they're like, oh, what
link |
00:54:26.880
were you like in high school?
link |
00:54:27.880
He's like, I was kind of a jock, bully, whatever.
link |
00:54:30.200
They brought her out, and he didn't even remember her really, and she just starts crying about
link |
00:54:34.640
the pickles and whatever, and this is something that affected her for 20 years, and I've never
link |
00:54:38.680
seen a clearer example of someone who wanted to kill themselves than this guy.
link |
00:54:43.560
The guilt on his face, and he's looking at her, and he's desperate to be like, what can
link |
00:54:48.580
I do to take your pain away, to make it better?
link |
00:54:54.160
He was just crippled by it because he knew there's nothing he could do.
link |
00:54:57.080
He knew he 100% did the wrong thing.
link |
00:54:59.640
He knew he did the wrong thing unthinkingly.
link |
00:55:02.260
You can imagine, I got to screw over this lady to feed my family, that's fine.
link |
00:55:08.480
At the time, it meant nothing to him, so of course he didn't remember, and he was just
link |
00:55:11.840
paralyzed by this sense of crippling guilt.
link |
00:55:14.560
One of the reasons I always try to do the right thing isn't because I'm an inherently
link |
00:55:19.240
good person, which I do not think I am, I don't think anyone is inherently good, but
link |
00:55:23.240
because I will feel guilty about it for a very, very long time because if you do the
link |
00:55:29.020
wrong thing, this is a very Camus idea, if you do the wrong thing to a good person, that's
link |
00:55:35.760
really, really bad because what kind of person are you?
link |
00:55:39.120
In the same way that everyone can be that guy who takes someone out for their birthday,
link |
00:55:44.180
everyone has that ability for someone who did the wrong thing to someone who's a normal
link |
00:55:48.600
person and do you want to be that guy as well?
link |
00:55:52.080
My friend, Bittstein, he's a big Bitcoin person, my biography ego in hubris is like $500 now
link |
00:56:00.920
on eBay, it's hard to find, came out in 2006.
link |
00:56:04.480
He had told me that you can get it on torrent, it's downloadable, and I'm like, oh, I thought
link |
00:56:11.100
if you're my friend, you'd want to buy it.
link |
00:56:13.380
At the time, it was not $500, I assure you, and he goes, I did buy it, I'm just telling
link |
00:56:18.000
you that you could also get it for free, this information that you might want to use.
link |
00:56:22.600
And I snapped at this kid who was doing right by me and I felt, it just stuck in my head,
link |
00:56:30.840
I'm like, you're an ass.
link |
00:56:32.780
And then years later, I apologize, he had no memory of this at all and I'm glad to be
link |
00:56:36.420
able to reiterate the apology again.
link |
00:56:38.320
But a lot of times I'm extremely aggressive on Twitter and in other venues, I always try
link |
00:56:45.860
to and maybe I fail and that's my moral failing, always do it as a counter attack.
link |
00:56:51.580
If you're going to start going personal, if you're going to start being aggressive against
link |
00:56:55.400
an individual, I'm not going to necessarily hold back when I reciprocate.
link |
00:57:00.360
And it's something that is very common on social media, but I don't think it is normal.
link |
00:57:05.680
Just because a lot of this, you're talking about the quiet little rebellion, just because
link |
00:57:09.680
everyone else around you thinks it's okay to just go up to people and attack them in
link |
00:57:14.120
the most personal ways, impromptu because of their views, really just take a step back
link |
00:57:19.400
and realize what you're engaging with.
link |
00:57:21.000
Now, if that's the fight they want, then my Soviet cruelty could come out and that's kind
link |
00:57:26.800
of why I don't drink because I do enjoy it, but at the same time, be aware of what you're
link |
00:57:32.200
doing.
link |
00:57:33.200
And again, this goes back to Camus's sense that conscience really is what makes us human
link |
00:57:39.520
beings.
link |
00:57:40.520
That's the thing I was saying, I don't think most people think in terms of conscience.
link |
00:57:44.440
They don't think it, we are taught, this is that creeping cynicism that, oh, grow up.
link |
00:57:51.240
When you're an adult, you have to make sacrifices, blah, blah, blah.
link |
00:57:55.520
And even if I buy that for a second, which I don't, but if I have to make sacrifices
link |
00:58:00.080
sometimes, that doesn't mean it's okay for me to make a sacrifice of my values in this
link |
00:58:05.680
moment.
link |
00:58:06.680
If I have to maybe be at work and my boss is a jerk to me and calls me names, I have
link |
00:58:10.800
to be humiliated, but I got to put food on the plate.
link |
00:58:13.800
That doesn't mean it's okay later if I'm at a party and I'm just extremely offensive to
link |
00:58:18.600
someone for no reason.
link |
00:58:21.720
My own flavor of a little bit of rebellion.
link |
00:58:26.160
Sometimes I use the number two.
link |
00:58:28.680
You know, you're very witty on Twitter and Twitter likes mockery and wit and a counter
link |
00:58:45.560
attack is, Twitter loves that, somebody who's skilled at it.
link |
00:58:51.200
My own flavor of a bit of rebellion is to say things very simply, bordering on cliche
link |
00:59:03.080
with authenticity and like genuinely meaning the words I say, but knowing that those words
link |
00:59:09.800
would be, are easy to attack.
link |
00:59:13.720
And that sometimes those attacks can hurt because people would just mock me.
link |
00:59:20.400
People don't like earnestness because they've been taught to be too cool for school.
link |
00:59:24.800
So there's this pressure for me to be sound way more sophisticated.
link |
00:59:29.440
Use bigger words, sometimes throw in a criticism of institutions or something like that, almost
link |
00:59:38.840
as if I have a deep wisdom about the way the world is broken.
link |
00:59:42.800
But when you speak very simply about beautiful things in life, it's very easy to sound like
link |
00:59:50.040
you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
link |
00:59:52.800
And I kind of, I stick by that.
link |
00:59:55.480
I don't know where that's going to end up, but it's like the idiot from Dostoevsky.
link |
00:59:59.480
It feels like that's the right thing, even if it hurts when I'm attacked for it.
link |
01:00:05.320
I do something similar sometimes, which is I'll have some innocuous comment about like
link |
01:00:09.940
bubblegum.
link |
01:00:10.940
I mean, just it's not to be in political.
link |
01:00:12.960
And a lot of times people will respond to this paragraph of just invective about like
link |
01:00:18.960
blah, blah, blah, and then this, and you say this, and you're an ass, and just really trying
link |
01:00:22.520
to get at me.
link |
01:00:24.280
And in those situations, there are very specific circumstances, I will respond and I mean it
link |
01:00:29.540
every single time.
link |
01:00:31.040
I will say, I wish your parents had been kinder to you or your mom or your dad.
link |
01:00:36.240
Because even if I'm some idiot on Twitter, who's just talking about bubblegum, and this
link |
01:00:40.840
is your, I'm not talking about politics where I can see how people get emotional, COVID,
link |
01:00:44.200
my grandma died, now you're talking about her.
link |
01:00:46.600
And I realize this isn't about me.
link |
01:00:50.260
Like I'm someone you've never met making some inane point about nothing, and you're getting
link |
01:00:55.520
agitated about this.
link |
01:00:57.100
It's clearly something else that's going on here.
link |
01:00:59.680
And someone taught you, someone had to teach you that this is how to respond in this kind
link |
01:01:04.880
of very kind of harsh way.
link |
01:01:07.120
And a lot of times they won't say anything or get deleted.
link |
01:01:11.340
And I hope every single time, there's no asterisk here, that they take a second, and they realize
link |
01:01:19.560
that the way that they were talked to growing up was not acceptable, that they don't have
link |
01:01:25.560
to carry this forward.
link |
01:01:27.680
And that they don't have to be kind to me, I'm nobody to them.
link |
01:01:31.040
But take a second and ask if this is the kind of mindset you want to be your norm, as opposed
link |
01:01:36.080
to a weapon you pull out of your pocket sometimes where it's warranted or even when it's not
link |
01:01:39.280
warranted.
link |
01:01:40.280
I think there's a lot of those people out there, and we forget how hard it is for a
link |
01:01:50.080
lot of people to grow up, how they're trained from their parents or the single parent, that
link |
01:01:55.360
the only way they're going to get attention is by acting out, that when they do good things,
link |
01:01:59.640
it doesn't get comment.
link |
01:02:01.080
But if they do bad things, they get a smack upside their head.
link |
01:02:04.240
That I think is far more common than we realize.
link |
01:02:07.240
And it's not hitting the kid that's going to last, the pain is going to give five seconds.
link |
01:02:12.840
But when you're training this child, helpless child, is something that's really, really
link |
01:02:17.480
bad.
link |
01:02:18.480
I don't know if it always can be mapped to that.
link |
01:02:20.440
I always wonder about them, what their motivations are.
link |
01:02:24.800
And I just kind of, whenever I think about them, I think only positively.
link |
01:02:28.920
And I don't even think about the childhood thing.
link |
01:02:31.080
I think, I don't know.
link |
01:02:35.840
I kind of imagine that all of us can go through that stage where we enjoy the derision of
link |
01:02:42.080
others.
link |
01:02:43.080
We go through stages of being...
link |
01:02:44.280
I enjoy the derision of others, but it has to be, you know, Billy Eide had that quote,
link |
01:02:48.200
like, I like it when people are mean to me, I stop pretending to be nice.
link |
01:02:51.540
But like, what's the worst thing someone can say about you?
link |
01:02:53.760
You're not, what harm are you doing?
link |
01:02:56.560
Maybe your podcast is garbage and the people are, the conversations suck and the people
link |
01:02:59.660
are losers.
link |
01:03:00.660
Okay.
link |
01:03:01.660
No, the main thing I would say is I'm way more popular than I deserve to be.
link |
01:03:05.540
What does deserve mean?
link |
01:03:07.080
The reality is there's people out there that just enjoy hating on others and I don't fault
link |
01:03:17.000
them for it.
link |
01:03:18.000
Like, I don't even think of them as haters.
link |
01:03:21.240
I think of them as just people that in this particular part of their life are enjoying
link |
01:03:25.000
this activity of deriding others on the internet.
link |
01:03:32.040
I'm not sure what to do with that.
link |
01:03:34.240
I just don't want to, I don't want to allow myself to think badly of them, I guess is
link |
01:03:38.520
the thing.
link |
01:03:39.520
I'm the one saying don't think badly of them.
link |
01:03:41.160
I'm saying that I don't think they're inherently bad people.
link |
01:03:43.640
I think that their thinking is screwed and that I'm steel mounting them.
link |
01:03:48.000
I'm saying, let's assume everything you're saying about Lex is true.
link |
01:03:51.400
This is an opportunity for you to outdo Lex.
link |
01:03:53.560
Like it's...
link |
01:03:54.560
No, but are you saying they should stop hating because I'm saying like, maybe they shouldn't
link |
01:03:59.420
just keep...
link |
01:04:00.420
I don't believe in should, right?
link |
01:04:01.760
I'm an anarchist, but I'm saying if this is your belief about Lex, you know what it is?
link |
01:04:07.480
I made this comment in my book, The New Right, when people make fun of Andy Warhol and they're
link |
01:04:11.900
like, oh my God, he painted a soup can and now he became a millionaire.
link |
01:04:15.360
I could do this.
link |
01:04:16.360
Well, why don't you?
link |
01:04:17.960
So basically if I go up to you with a check and I say, I will give you a million dollars,
link |
01:04:22.920
you could see the check, you got to paint a soup can, what am I waiting for?
link |
01:04:27.260
So clearly there's a disconnect in their thinking between what they're perceiving and the reality.
link |
01:04:32.720
Because if it was as simple or as, maybe not simple, but as possible for them as they perceive
link |
01:04:38.060
it to be, why are they leaving comments instead of outdoing you?
link |
01:04:42.400
How great would it be for them to have your bigger audience and drive you into the ground?
link |
01:04:46.320
I don't know how that would work because it's not the NBA, but...
link |
01:04:48.280
No, but you want to point out, you do this too on Twitter.
link |
01:04:50.600
You want to point out the hypocrisy, the fraudulence of others, right?
link |
01:04:57.880
Sure, but what are you, you're not claiming anything other than this is, the following
link |
01:05:01.760
is the conversation between me and Machique, whatever his name is, right?
link |
01:05:06.820
I got the voice down, dude.
link |
01:05:07.980
I got it down.
link |
01:05:08.980
I've been walking around my house doing my Lex impression.
link |
01:05:11.160
I've been leaking motor oil everywhere.
link |
01:05:13.160
Yeah, but yeah, I don't know.
link |
01:05:16.280
I don't know.
link |
01:05:17.280
I don't know what to make of it because I think there's a more general statement to
link |
01:05:21.000
be made.
link |
01:05:22.000
Like I see Twitter this way too.
link |
01:05:23.640
When I read a tweet, I try to read it with like the best possible interpretation, meaning
link |
01:05:30.080
like what is the wisdom in this tweet, right?
link |
01:05:33.360
As opposed to what I think a large number of people, not a large number, but some fraction
link |
01:05:40.040
try to see what is the worst possible interpretation of this tweet.
link |
01:05:43.960
And they want to, they want to destroy you for that worst interpretation.
link |
01:05:49.440
Like they want to, there's people, I'm already aware of this with me and certainly with a
link |
01:05:54.480
lot of people, they're waiting for me to fail.
link |
01:05:57.040
They want me to be like, this guy talks about love all the time.
link |
01:06:01.160
They want me to be some dark, like a Bill Cosby type character.
link |
01:06:04.880
They want you to be in pain.
link |
01:06:05.880
Yeah.
link |
01:06:06.880
They want you to be in pain because they don't.
link |
01:06:07.880
Why?
link |
01:06:08.880
I'll tell you exactly why.
link |
01:06:09.880
Because this is why I'm so for being white pilled and being for hope.
link |
01:06:13.180
Because if you are black pilled, meaning if you think it's pointless, we're all done.
link |
01:06:18.160
You're just wasting your breath.
link |
01:06:19.760
If you have any counter examples to this thesis, if there's even a little bit of hope, your
link |
01:06:25.060
entire hypothesis falls through, right?
link |
01:06:27.200
So it's kind of how like you have all these stories of people who are like painting swastikas
link |
01:06:32.360
who aren't Nazis, but just to show that, oh, there's all this Nazism.
link |
01:06:35.800
So I'm going to kind of force the conclusion.
link |
01:06:38.840
So for them, when they see you thriving, you are as a mediocre person with a crappy show,
link |
01:06:45.000
but you're demonstrating that people can succeed.
link |
01:06:47.300
This bothers them.
link |
01:06:48.480
So you are.
link |
01:06:49.480
Anyone can succeed.
link |
01:06:51.200
That bothers them.
link |
01:06:52.200
Yeah.
link |
01:06:53.200
So because that, why haven't they?
link |
01:06:54.200
So now you're a counter to their worldview and that is going to cause anxiety when you
link |
01:06:58.040
have data that contradicts other data in your, in your worldview.
link |
01:07:01.760
This is the, in your mindset, this is a big issue for them.
link |
01:07:04.360
Yeah.
link |
01:07:05.360
So to anyone listening to this, they're annoyed by the look of my face.
link |
01:07:09.720
Remember that you could probably do way better than me and you should.
link |
01:07:12.980
But also what would you failing look like?
link |
01:07:15.720
Like let's suppose this podcast went from whatever views you had to 100 views an episode.
link |
01:07:21.240
That's still success.
link |
01:07:22.740
You are talking to people you like, having conversations about important issues.
link |
01:07:26.920
You're having a good time.
link |
01:07:28.280
They're having a good time.
link |
01:07:29.280
How is that a failure?
link |
01:07:30.280
If I have dinner with a friend of mine, there's zero viewers and we enjoy that time.
link |
01:07:35.660
That is the height of human success.
link |
01:07:38.940
When you are sharing happiness, joy, joy over love.
link |
01:07:43.780
So what's the difference between joy and love, Michael Malus?
link |
01:07:46.600
Uh, I think joy is easier to attain.
link |
01:07:49.940
It's more common.
link |
01:07:50.980
You could share it with everyone.
link |
01:07:53.300
Give me an example of joy.
link |
01:07:55.320
Like what was the moment of joy for you recently?
link |
01:07:58.160
I could give you a great example of joy and this is part in the absurdist mindset.
link |
01:08:02.540
Okay.
link |
01:08:03.540
I love having a bad meal at a restaurant and I'll give you, you can see why.
link |
01:08:09.320
You go with your friend.
link |
01:08:10.980
It takes you 45 minutes to get seated.
link |
01:08:13.260
Okay.
link |
01:08:14.260
I'm starving.
link |
01:08:15.780
Waiter's not paying attention to you.
link |
01:08:17.420
They bring your water.
link |
01:08:18.420
It's got a hair in it.
link |
01:08:19.420
They get the food wrong.
link |
01:08:20.420
Yeah.
link |
01:08:21.420
It comes out again.
link |
01:08:22.420
It's ripe, but it's cold.
link |
01:08:23.420
At a certain point you're like, okay, I'm hungry.
link |
01:08:26.020
I'm living an anecdote.
link |
01:08:28.340
This is something that you, if you were at dinner, we could talk about this for years
link |
01:08:31.800
because how great is it that the worst thing that's happening to me is I got to wait an
link |
01:08:37.700
hour for this meal that's going to be cooked wrong, right?
link |
01:08:40.700
That to me is joy is a holding on to that idea that happiness and thriving are possible
link |
01:08:48.460
even when in the moment it's, uh, everything's going the wrong way.
link |
01:08:53.060
Doesn't every moment have the capacity to, uh, fill you with joy then?
link |
01:08:57.540
Yes.
link |
01:08:58.540
Yes.
link |
01:08:59.540
So it's both the shitty moments and the good moments.
link |
01:09:00.540
Yes.
link |
01:09:01.540
But that, see, that's the way I usually talk about love is like, I love life.
link |
01:09:07.060
Yes.
link |
01:09:08.060
And in that, because life can generate every, everything, the pain, the loss, but also just
link |
01:09:15.180
like simple or complicated bliss, all of that, I just love all of that.
link |
01:09:20.900
And that, because it fills me with a kind of, I guess, joy, but joy has a connotation
link |
01:09:26.740
that it's supposed to be somehow positive, like you're supposed to be smiling.
link |
01:09:30.580
To me, you know, man's search for meaning with Viktor Frankl, you know, just it's, you're
link |
01:09:38.060
in the Holocaust, you're in a concentration camp, just having a little bit of food that
link |
01:09:42.780
you didn't expect you will have.
link |
01:09:45.140
Or even just thinking about food.
link |
01:09:47.740
Or what about there's a kid there, you tell them a funny story and you crack them up.
link |
01:09:51.100
Yeah.
link |
01:09:52.100
Like you take away this child's pain for like five minutes.
link |
01:09:54.420
That is the height of joy.
link |
01:09:55.900
Yeah.
link |
01:09:56.900
So to me, like all of like life is like infinitely full of possibility for joy.
link |
01:10:01.300
Yes.
link |
01:10:02.300
And that's what I mean by love, because oftentimes like romantic love is what people think about
link |
01:10:07.460
when they think love.
link |
01:10:08.460
But to me, it's all like part of the same thing.
link |
01:10:11.180
And it's almost like love, romantic love, or love with a friend, friendship is like
link |
01:10:17.740
you both notice each other.
link |
01:10:20.020
It's like dogs, they look at each other and then they look at the thing they're interested
link |
01:10:23.380
in.
link |
01:10:24.380
You both notice each other and that moment of joy.
link |
01:10:27.340
You share that moment of joy together.
link |
01:10:28.780
Yeah.
link |
01:10:29.780
Like the restaurant.
link |
01:10:30.780
The restaurant.
link |
01:10:31.780
Yeah.
link |
01:10:32.780
If you're both almost without conspiring, notice the absurdity of how shitty this meal
link |
01:10:39.460
is.
link |
01:10:40.460
And like that, again, that little glimmer of realization, that's what makes life beautiful.
link |
01:10:46.620
You mentioned your grandmother in Lvov.
link |
01:10:49.980
You were thinking of returning there.
link |
01:10:52.060
The plans got a little bit delayed, but what are you hoping from that trip of going back
link |
01:10:58.440
to Russia, going back to Ukraine?
link |
01:11:01.420
What do you hope to get out of it, but what do you think you will feel?
link |
01:11:07.540
A lot of things.
link |
01:11:08.540
First of all, I'm going with my buddy, Chris Williamson.
link |
01:11:11.500
He hosts the Modern Wisdom Podcast.
link |
01:11:13.420
He is one of my closest friends.
link |
01:11:15.720
We've never met.
link |
01:11:16.720
Oh, really?
link |
01:11:17.720
We've never met.
link |
01:11:18.720
He's in Britain.
link |
01:11:19.720
He's trying to get his ass over here to Austin.
link |
01:11:23.000
He's filling out his form right now.
link |
01:11:24.540
He's too good looking.
link |
01:11:25.540
It's a crime.
link |
01:11:26.540
I call him Apollo and I'm Loki.
link |
01:11:29.600
So right away you have a buddy comedy because we're going to film it, right?
link |
01:11:32.220
You have these two guys who on paper are very dissimilar, but we're very, very close.
link |
01:11:36.940
In which way are you similar and close?
link |
01:11:40.380
I think we're both very intense people, very strong emotionally.
link |
01:11:47.500
We're both very ambitious in the sense that, not in terms of career, but we want to grab
link |
01:11:52.500
life by the short hairs kind of thing.
link |
01:11:55.260
We are just both good experiences.
link |
01:11:58.820
Did he bench more than you or like in the gym?
link |
01:12:02.420
Of course.
link |
01:12:03.420
The guy's jacked.
link |
01:12:04.420
He's just...
link |
01:12:05.420
Because he's so good looking.
link |
01:12:06.420
I think he'd be one of those guys who's mostly biceps.
link |
01:12:09.260
Oh no, no, no.
link |
01:12:10.620
If you go to his Instagram, Chris Will X is the handle.
link |
01:12:14.240
It's head to toe.
link |
01:12:15.240
It's just sculpted.
link |
01:12:16.240
Oh, wow.
link |
01:12:17.240
So he's perfect in every way.
link |
01:12:18.240
That's great.
link |
01:12:19.240
He...
link |
01:12:20.240
What flaws does he have?
link |
01:12:21.900
Because I need...
link |
01:12:22.900
He has bad taste in friends and his accent is all crazy.
link |
01:12:29.560
He pronounces it...
link |
01:12:30.560
He's an underwear muddle, so now I spell it M U D L.
link |
01:12:35.880
Just us two, British and American, and just two different dudes, it's going to be a lot
link |
01:12:39.540
of fun.
link |
01:12:40.540
Although, to be fair, as you know, I'm an underwear model now as well, so...
link |
01:12:43.540
Yeah.
link |
01:12:44.540
We're going to talk that in a second, maybe, but yeah, sheathunderwear.com.
link |
01:12:49.100
Yeah, this episode is brought to you by Sheath Underwear.
link |
01:12:52.100
Are we going to get some pictures eventually?
link |
01:12:53.940
I think we might.
link |
01:12:54.940
Yeah.
link |
01:12:55.940
Yes, I have them on my phone.
link |
01:12:56.940
We'll have them.
link |
01:12:57.940
We could share them right...
link |
01:12:59.260
You could slice it in right here.
link |
01:13:01.020
So to be able to go with someone who is a very close...
link |
01:13:05.860
I mean, we meet and talk like every day, right?
link |
01:13:08.020
So to someone who generally cares about you, who's...
link |
01:13:12.620
He's very, very grounded, right?
link |
01:13:15.320
So like a lot of times I'll have like some concern and he's really good, and if you listen
link |
01:13:19.900
to his show, at slicing through the noise and being like, hold on a second, I can't
link |
01:13:23.780
do the accent yet.
link |
01:13:24.980
Have you considered A, B, and C because, you know, whenever I had this situation, this
link |
01:13:28.820
is what I did.
link |
01:13:29.820
He was really good with that.
link |
01:13:32.780
So to have a...
link |
01:13:34.060
First of all, just like two buddies on a trip is really a lot of fun.
link |
01:13:37.760
Second of all, I know that it's going to be very intense.
link |
01:13:41.660
So for you, you left Russia much later than I did.
link |
01:13:44.660
How old were you?
link |
01:13:45.660
Thirteen.
link |
01:13:46.660
Thirteen, right.
link |
01:13:47.660
So you remember it, I'm sure, very, very well.
link |
01:13:48.660
I left when I was one and a half too.
link |
01:13:49.660
I don't remember it all.
link |
01:13:50.660
To go to the streets where, you know, my family had to go through this stuff to see the...
link |
01:13:57.820
They came to Lviv, they slaughtered all the Jews.
link |
01:13:59.860
I mean, to have that little memorial there that's there now, and to just look around
link |
01:14:04.020
and know, yesterday, basically, they came here, they rounded everyone up.
link |
01:14:08.580
And also, from the other side, you had the Stalinists coming in and starving all the
link |
01:14:12.260
people.
link |
01:14:13.260
It's just to know that so much horror and death.
link |
01:14:16.420
There's this quote I saw once about a woman who went to Auschwitz and she just made the
link |
01:14:21.500
comment like, grass grows here.
link |
01:14:23.560
Because we think, you know, that when it comes to the nature of evil, that you're going to
link |
01:14:27.100
go there, there's going to be this pits of hell or whatever.
link |
01:14:29.820
There's birds, you know, there's, you know, robins hopping around looking for the worms
link |
01:14:34.100
or whatever.
link |
01:14:35.100
They think it's perfectly nice and you stand there to understand that so much suffering
link |
01:14:39.140
happened here or there is going to be very jarring.
link |
01:14:43.020
I know that it's going to be an issue because I speak Russian and not Ukrainian.
link |
01:14:47.500
And to speak Russian to Ukrainians is like a big deal.
link |
01:14:50.260
So that's going to be a concern.
link |
01:14:51.780
I'm also worried about going to Russia because every Russian has this idea that even though
link |
01:14:56.420
they've just met you, they feel that they're in a position to tell you what you're doing
link |
01:15:00.580
wrong with your life, what you should be doing, if they're a cab driver, I have no tolerance
link |
01:15:04.320
for unsolicited advice on it based at all.
link |
01:15:07.180
That's going to be horrible.
link |
01:15:08.220
They're going to be telling me I need to speak Russian better because ты говоришь по
link |
01:15:10.740
русски как даунчик.
link |
01:15:12.300
I'm not hearing it.
link |
01:15:13.420
I'm not interested in hearing it.
link |
01:15:15.380
So that I think, and also, you know, given my upcoming book, The White Pill and covering
link |
01:15:21.080
what happened back in the day under Stalinism and later to see this was the Ljubljanka,
link |
01:15:26.660
this was the basement where they would, you know, this is something that people might
link |
01:15:30.260
not realize.
link |
01:15:31.260
There's a superb film, The Death of Stalin, which is kind of, that's what I do with North
link |
01:15:35.340
Korea, you know, puts a humorous spin on it.
link |
01:15:37.500
Then when you take a step back and you realize what they're actually saying, it's just like
link |
01:15:40.180
it's very, very disturbing how when Stalin was dying, he had a stroke, he's laying there
link |
01:15:45.360
in a pile of his own piss, he's unconscious.
link |
01:15:48.660
Right before he died, he thought the doctors were all plotting against him.
link |
01:15:52.340
So they were being tortured to confess that they were trying to murder him.
link |
01:15:56.380
They had to get the doctors out of the torture chambers to attend to him and they did it.
link |
01:16:01.840
So this kind of thing to like go there, like Red Square and see this is where it happened,
link |
01:16:07.420
to see Lenin's body, like this is the guy who Emma Goldman yelled at.
link |
01:16:11.740
It's going to be really, because I've worked so much in this space, jarring and intense
link |
01:16:17.980
and emotional.
link |
01:16:19.100
And as intense as it is for me sitting here talking to you about it, to see it and to
link |
01:16:22.700
see the faces and to see Cyrillic everywhere, you know, other than Brighton Beach in Brooklyn,
link |
01:16:28.020
it's going to, I'm sure it's going to do a huge number on me because as Western and as
link |
01:16:34.380
a Tupoi Mirikanyets as the Russians will say I am, this is still where I came from.
link |
01:16:39.380
So no matter, to see it face to face, I don't know how I'm going to react, but I don't think
link |
01:16:43.380
it's going to be like, meh.
link |
01:16:45.860
You've assembled a number of essays from anarchist thinkers in a new book called The Anarchist
link |
01:16:51.260
Handbook.
link |
01:16:52.800
You mentioned Emma Goldman.
link |
01:16:55.740
What interesting things do these thinkers agree on and what do they disagree on?
link |
01:17:00.780
The Anarchist Handbook.com is the website.
link |
01:17:03.180
It covers from the 1790s to, I think my essay is the last one from 2014, which a friend
link |
01:17:09.060
of mine who's kind of a mediocre scientist is going to be reading for the audio book.
link |
01:17:14.020
Also podcast.
link |
01:17:15.020
Podcast.
link |
01:17:16.020
I never had, but it's not a podcast anyone would have heard of.
link |
01:17:19.180
It's like Tom Woods but even worse.
link |
01:17:20.900
So what they all agreed on was the illegitimacy of government and also the malevolence of
link |
01:17:29.460
state actors and the consequences of governments.
link |
01:17:34.180
So they range in terms that most people would easily regard as either left or right wing.
link |
01:17:41.840
But it tackles the nature of government and also creates positive non state alternatives
link |
01:17:48.620
from really many different angles.
link |
01:17:50.620
The slogan I have is the black flag, which is the traditional flag of anarchism.
link |
01:17:54.300
The black flag comes in many colors.
link |
01:17:56.580
So they were really all over the map in terms of what they're for, but their disagreement
link |
01:18:01.000
is about the nature of state and the nature of power.
link |
01:18:04.700
And it's very edifying because this is an ideology that's been in many ways swept under
link |
01:18:09.180
the rug.
link |
01:18:10.180
I want to seriously grow up that I can allow people to sit down and read these essays and
link |
01:18:16.780
see for themselves just how beautiful this tapestry over the decades and centuries has
link |
01:18:22.180
been woven about people who genuinely believed in freedom as the most important and how to
link |
01:18:28.440
maximize that for society.
link |
01:18:32.500
So maybe it's useful to talk about a few contrasting thinkers in there.
link |
01:18:36.220
So one is Leo Tolstoy.
link |
01:18:39.100
Oh yeah.
link |
01:18:40.260
Who I think not many people know is an anarchist.
link |
01:18:46.060
Yes.
link |
01:18:47.060
A Christian anarchist.
link |
01:18:48.060
An anarchist.
link |
01:18:49.060
Yeah.
link |
01:18:50.060
So he came to despise government for his deceit and his violence.
link |
01:18:56.180
But to him, the Christian principles of nonviolence, I think are important.
link |
01:19:00.220
Oh yeah.
link |
01:19:01.220
And it's kind of pacifist kind of mindset of, you know, it's better to someone to punch
link |
01:19:06.220
you than to punch them back.
link |
01:19:07.800
So he's in that way, at least I've read he influenced MLK and Gandhi.
link |
01:19:12.500
What do you think about this flavor, color of the anarchist flag of nonviolence, nonviolent
link |
01:19:19.300
opposition?
link |
01:19:20.300
I will put the caveat that it bothers me when people bring up MLK because he's become so
link |
01:19:26.140
corporate and everyone just brings him up without knowing about him.
link |
01:19:29.540
One of the things that Martin Luther King did so very well was that he forced people
link |
01:19:35.100
to face the consequences of what they were putting forward.
link |
01:19:40.300
You want to be racist.
link |
01:19:41.380
You want to be for Jim Crow.
link |
01:19:42.500
You want to be for segregation.
link |
01:19:43.780
Okay.
link |
01:19:44.780
It's easy for you to do that from your living room.
link |
01:19:46.660
Now turn on your news and you see men and women in suits being attacked by dogs, being
link |
01:19:52.980
attacked by fire hoses and beaten by cops just so they could sit on the front of the
link |
01:19:58.140
bus.
link |
01:19:59.140
And now for a lot of people who were still racist, who were still had animus toward black
link |
01:20:03.180
people are watching this and it's going to be a lot harder to be like, I'm okay with
link |
01:20:09.420
this.
link |
01:20:10.420
I'm okay with human beings, even ones I regard as somehow bad or inferior to be beaten and
link |
01:20:15.420
attacked by trained dogs and they're not doing anything in response.
link |
01:20:20.380
That strikes to, I think, a very basic nature of, especially American, like, okay, whatever
link |
01:20:26.060
you're for, I'm not for people getting beaten and attacked when they're not really doing
link |
01:20:30.700
anything.
link |
01:20:31.700
I think pacifism is something that's very easy to make fun of, but people don't underestimate
link |
01:20:38.340
how powerful it is for someone to say, you can do what you want to me.
link |
01:20:43.780
I'm not going to fight you back.
link |
01:20:45.420
I just want to live peacefully and have the same rights as you.
link |
01:20:49.260
And to say, screw you, you should get beaten.
link |
01:20:52.620
That's a hard pill for a lot of people to swallow.
link |
01:20:55.180
So I think he was really, and Gandhi, of course, as well, were excellent in that regard.
link |
01:21:00.260
There's a little bit of Machiavellianism to it.
link |
01:21:02.140
They've both been beatified in regard to saints, but their strategy worked very, very well
link |
01:21:08.220
for their purposes.
link |
01:21:09.340
So I think just all of us, when you see someone in this kind of Christian, I know you're wrong,
link |
01:21:16.020
obviously, it's nothing very highly Christianity, but if he's someone who's willing to take
link |
01:21:21.820
a punch and to say, you could do whatever you want to me, I'm not going to hurt somebody
link |
01:21:26.700
else instinctively, and maybe this is kind of a hack.
link |
01:21:32.180
Most people want to side with that guy, step in between and be like, oh, okay, let's take
link |
01:21:35.980
a step back, because whatever led to this is not tenable.
link |
01:21:39.500
We need to go back to the drawing board if the consequence is people are having these
link |
01:21:43.500
as a result of my decisions and actions.
link |
01:21:45.940
So I think that aspect of anarchism is very, very, in certain contexts, healthy, and much
link |
01:21:53.780
smarter and more sophisticated than people give it credit for.
link |
01:21:57.660
And let's also point out that Tolstoy wrote War and Peace, and he wrote Anna Karenina.
link |
01:22:03.380
So this was not some naive or innocent, whatever word you want to use.
link |
01:22:07.200
He knew the nature of evil.
link |
01:22:08.980
He knew how bad things get.
link |
01:22:10.820
So he wasn't saying at all that human beings are inherently nice and kind.
link |
01:22:15.180
He was saying it's much more effective to not fight back and to force them to face that.
link |
01:22:21.500
I'll give you another example.
link |
01:22:22.500
I was on the show Trigonometry, and I was talking to the host, and one of them talked
link |
01:22:28.220
about how someone he knew had been the Gulag, or his mom was born the Gulag grandma.
link |
01:22:35.060
And after Stalin died and the Soviet Union liberalized and lots of the people in the
link |
01:22:39.180
Gulags were freed by Khrushchev and so on and so forth, I didn't know this, many of
link |
01:22:44.140
the, or some, let's say some, of the guards of the Gulags killed themselves because they
link |
01:22:49.020
had genuinely believed that everyone in these camps was there for a reason.
link |
01:22:54.420
And when they found out that these people were completely innocent, didn't even have
link |
01:22:58.540
trials, and that they were the ones forcing them to work themselves to death and starve,
link |
01:23:02.980
they couldn't deal with that guilt.
link |
01:23:05.240
So when you are a pacifist or non retaliatory and you're forcing someone who's using force,
link |
01:23:13.020
like look what you're doing, look what you've become.
link |
01:23:15.860
For some people, some people don't care, like the guy in Scare Tactics, like I mentioned
link |
01:23:19.820
earlier, where for a lot of others, they're going to be like, okay, is this who I wanted
link |
01:23:24.180
to grow up to be?
link |
01:23:25.180
They will have that little flame of conscience that you and I talked about earlier.
link |
01:23:27.820
They will be like, how did I get to the point where there's this lady who wants to ride
link |
01:23:32.860
the bus and she's lovely dressed, put together, and I have a, sending a dog on her?
link |
01:23:39.200
What kind of person am I?
link |
01:23:40.460
For some of those people, they're going to be like, okay, I can't be a part of this.
link |
01:23:45.020
I don't even understand the politics.
link |
01:23:46.620
I still am racist, but I'm not going to take part in this atrocity.
link |
01:23:51.540
Well, that was for him from the individual perspective, perhaps he calls that Christian,
link |
01:23:58.260
but listening to that voice of conscience, like whatever that is in you.
link |
01:24:04.420
So for Tolstoy, it seems like anarchism from the individual perspective is silencing the
link |
01:24:13.800
rest of the world and listening to the, for him, probably God given voice of conscience.
link |
01:24:20.180
And so that's what it means to live, embody anarchism for him.
link |
01:24:25.340
And to embody Christianity, I would think he would say.
link |
01:24:27.460
But he would see those as basic.
link |
01:24:29.220
Yes, correct.
link |
01:24:30.220
Yeah.
link |
01:24:31.220
So in terms of forms of government, the Christian government is one that's no government.
link |
01:24:37.860
Yeah, correct.
link |
01:24:40.860
What do you think about that as advice for an individual?
link |
01:24:45.500
Turn the other cheek.
link |
01:24:46.500
Do you think, I tend to believe that that's a really good way to live.
link |
01:24:50.340
I think it's very underrated.
link |
01:24:52.180
And this is me talking.
link |
01:24:53.740
I think a lot of times when someone, let's suppose you're having an argument and, but
link |
01:24:59.540
you have to pick your battles, right?
link |
01:25:01.180
Let's suppose you're having a heated argument and someone says something very cruel to you,
link |
01:25:04.540
where you have attempted to double down and hit back twice as hard.
link |
01:25:07.860
But if it's someone who at all cares about you, where they're just in the moment and
link |
01:25:11.020
you just stop and you just say, did you hear what you just said to me?
link |
01:25:14.880
For some cases, that person will take a step back and be like, just like when I snapped
link |
01:25:19.180
at Michael at Bitstein years ago, I'd be like, wow, okay, this is bad.
link |
01:25:24.420
This is bad.
link |
01:25:25.420
I'm sorry.
link |
01:25:26.420
And they kind of, it's kind of like they have to get to 10 before they control delete to
link |
01:25:31.060
use your language.
link |
01:25:32.060
Thank you.
link |
01:25:33.060
Yeah.
link |
01:25:34.060
Buffer overflow.
link |
01:25:35.060
I appreciate that.
link |
01:25:36.060
And for some, they're going to, they're going to just twist the knife.
link |
01:25:39.160
But I think this is a very useful technique.
link |
01:25:41.820
And also you can also sleep well at night cause you could be like as much as this person
link |
01:25:47.280
tried to hurt me, I still didn't reciprocate.
link |
01:25:51.080
And yeah, I, I took that punch and it sucks, but at least I never said anything that I
link |
01:25:56.580
could feel guilty about.
link |
01:25:58.340
Exactly.
link |
01:25:59.620
Do you think that's ultimately a good way to implement anarchy in your personal life?
link |
01:26:05.620
Anarchy, implementing anarchy in your personal life just means respecting people's boundaries.
link |
01:26:12.500
It means not forcing people to do things they otherwise wouldn't want to do.
link |
01:26:18.420
I think you then have to take a case by case, like there's so many human interactions that
link |
01:26:25.160
are required for life and there's tension and all those kinds of things.
link |
01:26:29.620
It's not always.
link |
01:26:30.620
Am I being naive?
link |
01:26:31.620
Are you innocent?
link |
01:26:32.620
You're being so naive.
link |
01:26:33.620
No.
link |
01:26:34.620
Did you put the hat on?
link |
01:26:35.620
The hat's on the other head now.
link |
01:26:36.620
Well, I had to take off the hat cause it's like Frodo with the ring.
link |
01:26:41.100
I was starting to feel like powerful.
link |
01:26:43.700
I wanted to give you orders and I'm like, no, I just, I think there's a ways of dealing
link |
01:26:49.940
with the tensions that are natural to human interactions that can't be simply, you know,
link |
01:26:58.760
it's not as simple as saying you want to respect the freedom of others and the boundaries of
link |
01:27:05.780
others.
link |
01:27:06.780
It's like you both have to agree on stuff and work something out.
link |
01:27:10.900
And the mechanisms of that agreement, the game theory of that agreement requires different
link |
01:27:15.220
hacks and strategies.
link |
01:27:16.820
And the question is for an anarchist collective that's well functioning, what kind of hacks,
link |
01:27:27.780
what kind of ways of behavior are more likely to be productive and not, you know, that that's
link |
01:27:33.960
almost like the question, do you want to turn the other cheek or do you want to stand your
link |
01:27:37.420
ground really firmly?
link |
01:27:39.160
When somebody is an asshole to you, you walk away.
link |
01:27:42.780
Or when somebody is an asshole to you, you turn the other cheek and give them a chance
link |
01:27:46.480
to rise to the best version of themselves and then find a common ground kind of thing.
link |
01:27:52.060
It's an open question of how to form those collectives when there's people with difficult
link |
01:27:56.940
childhoods and all that kind of stuff.
link |
01:27:59.780
Well, this also comes down to what is your relationship with this person?
link |
01:28:03.300
Is this out of character?
link |
01:28:04.300
If you and I got into a disagreement, all of a sudden, you started getting very personal.
link |
01:28:08.100
First of all, I'd be very hurt.
link |
01:28:09.100
But then I'd be like, this is out of character for Lex.
link |
01:28:11.240
I'm sure I could be like, whoa, let's take a pause here.
link |
01:28:13.620
Like you're getting heated.
link |
01:28:14.780
I'm trying to work this out.
link |
01:28:16.420
What's going on here?
link |
01:28:17.420
And you get a kind of a meta conversation.
link |
01:28:19.220
But again, you and I have a relationship of mutual respect.
link |
01:28:21.880
So as opposed to if it was a stranger who just wants a piece of you, it's just like
link |
01:28:28.300
you are coming at me not correct.
link |
01:28:29.780
I don't have to reciprocate in kind.
link |
01:28:31.740
I'm not going to shoot you, but I'm not going to pretend that you deserve respect when you're
link |
01:28:36.220
treating me with such contempt.
link |
01:28:39.020
I do defer, especially with people I know, because this is smart long term game theory
link |
01:28:44.480
as well as the right thing to do.
link |
01:28:46.180
I do try to give them the benefit of the doubt at first, right?
link |
01:28:48.840
Because if you're going to go aggro, you can't go back.
link |
01:28:51.140
You could always go from like, let me hear them out and then then I could go aggro.
link |
01:28:54.940
So there's a big asymmetry there.
link |
01:28:56.980
Yeah.
link |
01:28:57.980
And that's, I mean, I don't think anyone has the answer to this question is, is that the
link |
01:29:02.340
right strategy?
link |
01:29:03.460
To me, game theoretically, it seems the right strategy is to...
link |
01:29:06.660
With reciprocity is what game theory says is the right strategy.
link |
01:29:09.420
They did the prisoner's dilemma and they found tit for tat is the one that's the most advantageous.
link |
01:29:13.720
So that's for when it's perfectly rational actors.
link |
01:29:16.180
But when you have, I mean, there's noise that there's a, I think, benefit to just, even
link |
01:29:23.620
if they keep being shitty to you, still being nice to them.
link |
01:29:27.860
Well then there's the inverse where girls are turned off.
link |
01:29:30.060
Some people are like, if you're in a relationship and not just girls, but like some people,
link |
01:29:34.380
when you're kind to them, they find you less attractive, right?
link |
01:29:37.940
That is kind of this weird, what am I supposed to do?
link |
01:29:40.620
Like you're only into me if I'm mean to you.
link |
01:29:43.380
I don't want to be mean, but then I'm getting punished for doing the right thing.
link |
01:29:46.840
That's another tricky one.
link |
01:29:48.340
And I mean, this is nothing that necessarily do with anarchism so much as like, you know,
link |
01:29:52.540
human beings are infinitely complex.
link |
01:29:54.320
We don't often know the backstory.
link |
01:29:55.820
Like for example, just yesterday, Jay, who's here is one of my closest friends.
link |
01:30:00.320
I had a dinner with a bunch of people.
link |
01:30:02.260
I couldn't bring a plus four, so he wasn't invited.
link |
01:30:06.340
He didn't know the circumstances.
link |
01:30:07.700
He just thought we were having dinner without him.
link |
01:30:09.220
He was hurt.
link |
01:30:10.320
Once I spelled it out, he completely understood and I felt horrible because for me to have
link |
01:30:14.660
any of my friends feel left out is just a very, very cruel thing.
link |
01:30:19.380
And I felt bad and I'm glad to apologize again publicly that that's ended up being the circumstances.
link |
01:30:23.580
But yeah, a lot of times we're also in Plato's cave.
link |
01:30:27.460
When you're dealing with somebody else, you have very, very limited information about
link |
01:30:30.780
their background and circumstances.
link |
01:30:32.660
And that's why I will always, if it's someone I even have a little bit of a relationship
link |
01:30:37.220
with, try to give them the benefit of the doubt because I found, especially this comes
link |
01:30:41.860
from being a coauthor, when you coauthor books and you're walking in other people's shoes,
link |
01:30:45.380
you don't know a lot of the information.
link |
01:30:47.560
So a lot of times it's just a misunderstanding.
link |
01:30:51.180
But isn't that a fundamentally anarchist question of how we figure out this puzzle
link |
01:30:56.260
of human complexities in order to form voluntary collectives?
link |
01:30:59.620
Like when you have to figure that out, how to make people feel good, how to make people...
link |
01:31:04.140
I agree.
link |
01:31:05.140
That's fair.
link |
01:31:06.140
I think not only anarchists have to think about this as my point, of course.
link |
01:31:10.820
Well...
link |
01:31:11.820
But we have to think about it more than others do.
link |
01:31:13.780
Right.
link |
01:31:14.780
I feel like I should try to argue against anarchism at some point, out of love, out
link |
01:31:19.180
of love.
link |
01:31:20.180
Okay.
link |
01:31:21.180
And so because people...
link |
01:31:22.180
Out of joy.
link |
01:31:23.180
People enjoy seeing me, what is it, when like Ben Shapiro argues against like a 20 year
link |
01:31:29.340
old feminist.
link |
01:31:30.340
Ben Shapiro destroys high school students with facts and legends.
link |
01:31:32.540
This is this video of Michael Miles destroys a Marxist, Russian, communist pig.
link |
01:31:40.440
So anarchism is opposed to hierarchies.
link |
01:31:43.540
Well that's left anarchism, anarcho communism, yeah.
link |
01:31:45.980
The state.
link |
01:31:46.980
But there are many hierarchies that are not the state.
link |
01:31:48.740
We have a hierarchy here.
link |
01:31:49.740
This is your show.
link |
01:31:50.740
I'm differential to you.
link |
01:31:51.740
Right.
link |
01:31:52.740
But they're...
link |
01:31:53.740
Okay.
link |
01:31:54.740
Rigid hierarchies.
link |
01:31:55.740
Forced hierarchies is the...
link |
01:31:56.740
Forced hierarchies.
link |
01:31:57.740
Forced hierarchies.
link |
01:31:58.740
Okay.
link |
01:31:59.740
So humans, when left on their own accord, they form hierarchies naturally.
link |
01:32:04.940
Yes, inevitably in my opinion.
link |
01:32:06.620
Inevitably.
link |
01:32:07.620
Which is why I disagree with the left anarchists.
link |
01:32:08.620
I think it's not a coherent thing to argue for nonhierarchical relationships, even in
link |
01:32:14.380
theory.
link |
01:32:15.380
It doesn't make sense to me.
link |
01:32:16.380
And I know the old school anarchists will call me stupid or uninformed, but I've never
link |
01:32:22.140
been able to even wrap my head around this claim that you could have relationships without
link |
01:32:25.940
hierarchy.
link |
01:32:26.940
Right.
link |
01:32:27.940
So this is a certain sense in which we're living in an anarchism now.
link |
01:32:30.980
And I don't mean just like, because the nations, as you've said, are in anarchism relative
link |
01:32:36.780
to each other, but isn't the United States just a collective that was formed in anarchy?
link |
01:32:42.700
And this is just the collective that we're operating under, this hierarchy that was naturally
link |
01:32:47.180
formed.
link |
01:32:48.180
It wasn't...
link |
01:32:49.180
Well, the United States was not naturally formed.
link |
01:32:50.180
It was formed by force and by fiat.
link |
01:32:51.820
But to your point, I stress this throughout the book.
link |
01:32:56.780
I always say this anarchism is not a location, it's a relationship.
link |
01:33:00.500
So yeah, you and I do have a hierarchy and this is your show, but neither of us really
link |
01:33:05.020
has an authority over the other.
link |
01:33:06.620
Like I'm here voluntarily.
link |
01:33:08.140
You can kick me out if you want.
link |
01:33:09.340
I can leave it anyone.
link |
01:33:10.780
Neither of us has the power to force the other to be in this relationship we've chosen.
link |
01:33:13.920
My lawyer, I defer to his judgment.
link |
01:33:17.420
He's not forcing me to do it.
link |
01:33:18.580
He gives me his advice and I could take it or leave it.
link |
01:33:20.940
Same with the doctor.
link |
01:33:21.940
So there is a clearly like who's in charge and who's not in charge, but they're not in
link |
01:33:25.300
a position to impose their will on everybody else.
link |
01:33:27.620
And you could very easily see John is Stephanie's lawyer and Stephanie is John's doctor.
link |
01:33:33.900
And in each of those contexts, one has this position of ostensible authority over the
link |
01:33:37.980
other.
link |
01:33:38.980
So anarchism is in fact not some utopian crazy thing.
link |
01:33:42.140
It is the norm of human relationships where you meet people.
link |
01:33:46.660
You're not necessarily equal.
link |
01:33:48.100
Someone's going to be taller, someone's going to be stronger, someone's smarter, wealthier
link |
01:33:50.980
with others.
link |
01:33:51.980
So you're not at all thinking I am here and I could tell you what to do and you are legally
link |
01:33:57.860
or morally obligated to follow my wishes.
link |
01:34:01.460
That is the basis of anarchism.
link |
01:34:03.260
So in what way is the United States imposing by force something on you, do you think?
link |
01:34:09.480
If you leave your house, you will go to jail.
link |
01:34:12.820
My money being taken from me via taxation.
link |
01:34:15.720
But don't you have the freedom to not operate under that?
link |
01:34:19.180
No, but that's like, yeah, like technically if someone comes up to you and mugs you and
link |
01:34:22.820
says your money or your life, you are making a choice.
link |
01:34:26.120
But what the anarchist argument is, they're not in a position to force you to make that
link |
01:34:30.380
choice.
link |
01:34:31.380
That is not morally binding, even though they have practically the power to force you into
link |
01:34:35.900
that dilemma.
link |
01:34:37.260
But you have the freedom to live under the United States or not.
link |
01:34:41.300
So even...
link |
01:34:42.300
Yeah, the argument is if you don't like it, leave, right?
link |
01:34:46.680
Not necessarily leave like geographically, but there's ways to live outside the force
link |
01:34:53.940
of the United States.
link |
01:34:55.300
There's ways, it's just very difficult to operate that way.
link |
01:34:57.400
But that's like saying you could outrun the mugger, which is true, but the issue is does
link |
01:35:01.320
that mugger have the right to tell you at gunpoint, you're either giving me your money
link |
01:35:08.180
or I'm going to shoot you or secret plan C, you get to run away.
link |
01:35:12.420
Is that person a moral actor?
link |
01:35:14.580
And the anarchist answer is never.
link |
01:35:16.540
And just one more thing, the anarchist view is the difference between that mugger and
link |
01:35:21.380
the government is only an air of legitimacy.
link |
01:35:25.660
Literally they're morally identical.
link |
01:35:27.180
So is it possible that every hierarchy that gets big enough and successful enough such
link |
01:35:33.180
that it can monopolize a bunch of services it provides, isn't it always going to be amoral
link |
01:35:41.300
in your sense, the way the United States government is amoral?
link |
01:35:44.540
I don't want to say just like the United States government is amoral because that implies
link |
01:35:47.780
the United States government is uniquely or especially amoral.
link |
01:35:50.500
Governments, I apologize.
link |
01:35:51.500
I just want to clarify that because I know you didn't mean that and I don't want that
link |
01:35:53.740
to be the implication.
link |
01:35:56.460
Can you repeat the question?
link |
01:35:57.460
I'm sorry.
link |
01:35:58.460
So like won't every Okay, so that's right.
link |
01:36:01.540
So that's progressive economics.
link |
01:36:03.300
So the argument is in any market at a certain point, things tend to centralize and then
link |
01:36:07.980
that organization de facto can dictate price, can dictate so on and so forth.
link |
01:36:12.540
That is completely historical.
link |
01:36:14.740
If you look at any market, the trend is always towards decentralization, the music industry,
link |
01:36:20.020
right?
link |
01:36:21.020
When we were kids, there were four or five record labels.
link |
01:36:23.460
They were the ones who made all the songs that you're going to see in the Billboard
link |
01:36:25.740
Top 100 with a few exceptions.
link |
01:36:27.560
Now anyone can go to direct to market.
link |
01:36:30.020
If you look at TV stations, right, it went from CBS, NBC, ABC, then you got Fox, then
link |
01:36:35.100
you had cable, which is 100.
link |
01:36:36.620
Now you have satellite, which have sounds around the world and you have YouTube, which
link |
01:36:39.380
is literally infinite.
link |
01:36:40.700
So as technology improves and as wealth increases, which is a function of free enterprise, you
link |
01:36:45.780
are going to always have more and more choice, even within a monopoly, Coca Cola, right?
link |
01:36:52.900
This is an example I used, I think in the new right, when we were kids, every terrible
link |
01:36:56.460
comedian would be like, oh, now that I've got diet caffeine free Coke, what's next?
link |
01:37:02.220
It's like, yeah, that's good.
link |
01:37:03.880
You want to have, what was his name, Cayman, the guy who invented the Segway.
link |
01:37:08.900
If you go, Dean Cayman, if you go into some restaurants right now, you will have those
link |
01:37:14.860
machines.
link |
01:37:15.860
You have like 80 kinds of Cokes and then you could have whatever flavor you want to add
link |
01:37:19.580
to it.
link |
01:37:20.580
Grape, cherry, lemon, lime, so on and so forth.
link |
01:37:22.700
So in any field, you're going to have more and more competition.
link |
01:37:27.200
You're going to have less competition and less choices when the state gets involved
link |
01:37:31.660
because the state wants control.
link |
01:37:33.640
The state wants one big neck with one leash around it and that way it could just pull
link |
01:37:37.980
that dog in one direction or another.
link |
01:37:39.940
And you saw this last year with the lockdowns, Carol Roth wrote this amazing book called
link |
01:37:44.380
The War on Small Business and she talked about, we have seen for the first time in history
link |
01:37:49.620
a massive wealth transfer from small and medium business towards organizations like Target
link |
01:37:55.380
and Amazon who made trillions of dollars last year.
link |
01:37:59.140
Whereas mom and pop, which to me at least is like the acme of American achievement.
link |
01:38:03.540
You come to America, you have a fruit stand, a laundromat, you make socks, whatever it
link |
01:38:08.780
is, you're that unique artisan creating something special.
link |
01:38:11.860
They're the ones who didn't last whereas Target and Amazon did.
link |
01:38:14.780
So when you have the state involvement, it will always be in favor of Jeff Bezos and
link |
01:38:18.460
for the simple reason that it's going to be a lot easier for Jeff Bezos to get Nancy Pelosi
link |
01:38:23.100
and Mitch McConnell on the phone than it is for me making socks on Etsy.
link |
01:38:27.780
Your sense is that there'll be less and less over time Jeff Bezos is like whatever industry
link |
01:38:34.620
we look at, there's be less, there's a trend towards decentralization across all industries.
link |
01:38:42.100
And when I say decentralization, I just mean choice, right?
link |
01:38:45.660
So if you look at again, networks, you're going to, if you were in the 80s and you had
link |
01:38:50.100
a network just for LGBT issues, first of all, it's going to be complete heretical.
link |
01:38:55.220
That's not going to happen and there's not going to be enough necessarily people identifies
link |
01:38:58.420
that to have an audience.
link |
01:38:59.740
Then there was something called logo.
link |
01:39:01.020
They have that and there's lots of other shows like that in this way.
link |
01:39:03.640
So more specific, look at websites.
link |
01:39:06.580
I am positive that you and I, if we wanted to look up breeding guinea pigs, would find
link |
01:39:12.940
thousands of websites about different breeds and all this other stuff 20 years ago, 30
link |
01:39:17.580
years ago, like you're going to have two books and they're not going to be dynamic as these
link |
01:39:21.660
new breeds are developed.
link |
01:39:24.560
So at the same time it does, following on your argument, it does seem easier to move
link |
01:39:31.780
and immigrate from state to state within the United States and to other countries.
link |
01:39:37.020
Do you think that's a form of freedom that embodies anarchism where you can resist the
link |
01:39:45.020
force of state by choosing where you live?
link |
01:39:47.540
To some extent, but the line of people, some of these boomers will go at me on Twitter
link |
01:39:51.860
if I'm going after the police or something and be like, if you don't like America, get
link |
01:39:55.100
out of here.
link |
01:39:56.100
And I tell them freedom means I do what I want, not what you want.
link |
01:39:59.780
Freedom means I don't have to move.
link |
01:40:01.640
You don't have to move.
link |
01:40:02.880
Free speech is a good example.
link |
01:40:04.020
It doesn't mean I have to be on Twitter, right?
link |
01:40:05.880
Twitter has the right to ban me.
link |
01:40:06.880
But what I'm saying is I'm saying something and you don't like it, too bad.
link |
01:40:11.460
You're the one who has to accommodate me because I have a right to do what I want with my person
link |
01:40:15.860
as long as I'm being peaceful.
link |
01:40:18.100
So I guess I'm trying to get to the difference between the state and what you would naturally
link |
01:40:24.660
want in anarchy, which is like a security company, all of those things.
link |
01:40:31.300
They will, as they become successful, start looking more and more like the state.
link |
01:40:36.640
Because you get to elect, you give them money, they have leaders.
link |
01:40:42.180
What's the difference between a government and a very successful service provider in
link |
01:40:49.380
anarchism?
link |
01:40:50.380
Well, this gets a little confused in America as big companies necessarily are hand in hand
link |
01:40:55.420
with the government ended up in bed with them.
link |
01:40:57.580
The answer to this question is a long, complicated one.
link |
01:41:00.020
And thankfully, it's all in the Anarchist Handbook.
link |
01:41:02.340
There was an essay by Murray Rothbard who Dave Smith, this is the essay that converted
link |
01:41:06.000
Dave Smith.
link |
01:41:07.000
So maybe it's not as good as it could have been otherwise called Anatomy of the State.
link |
01:41:11.100
And Murray Rothbard points out that state is the only agency in a country which gets
link |
01:41:16.480
its goods through force.
link |
01:41:18.580
The state is the only agency that is not a producer, but inherently a parasite because
link |
01:41:23.980
it does not get its money voluntarily, but through taxation and by imposing its values
link |
01:41:28.860
on a country.
link |
01:41:30.140
That is what makes a state uniquely different from, let's suppose, an Amazon or a Barnes
link |
01:41:34.840
and Noble or a Target.
link |
01:41:36.380
Jeff Bezos does not have the authority or the moral legitimacy to get an army and go
link |
01:41:42.980
into somebody's house, whereas Andrew Cuomo or Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump and Barack Obama
link |
01:41:48.900
certainly do.
link |
01:41:50.160
But is it possible that to reframe, so Jeff Bezos does if he hires a security force, also
link |
01:42:00.900
is it possible to reframe taxation as a form of payment?
link |
01:42:06.060
If it was done much better, if you could pay this collective that we call government in
link |
01:42:11.660
ways where you could pay for things that you care for, your money would be much more directly
link |
01:42:18.780
contributing to the things you care for.
link |
01:42:21.120
If you care for a service like healthcare, you'll be able to buy essentially insurance
link |
01:42:25.740
from the government.
link |
01:42:26.740
Why am I buying insurance from the government as opposed to insurance from an insurance
link |
01:42:29.780
company?
link |
01:42:30.780
What do you perceive as the difference between a tax and a price?
link |
01:42:33.140
Do you see the difference?
link |
01:42:34.140
Yes, I know on the surface level, I'm trying to get deeply to say there's a lot of similarities.
link |
01:42:40.980
But what I'm saying is there's one essential difference, which is taxes are imposed on
link |
01:42:45.860
you and you have no choice.
link |
01:42:48.940
Here's an example.
link |
01:42:49.940
My book, Ego and Hubris, my biography, it goes for $500 on eBay.
link |
01:42:53.780
Someone paid for it.
link |
01:42:54.780
Some crazy person.
link |
01:42:55.780
People were showing me that it's on Amazon for $3,000, something like that.
link |
01:42:59.940
You could put a million for it.
link |
01:43:01.360
You could charge whatever price you want.
link |
01:43:03.100
The question is, is someone paying that $3,000 for it?
link |
01:43:05.460
Is someone paying that million for it?
link |
01:43:07.400
It's actually the buyer who establishes the price because the seller can put any price
link |
01:43:11.820
that he wants, $80 trillion.
link |
01:43:14.340
But unless someone's paying that amount and clearing the market, that price has literally
link |
01:43:18.220
no real meaning.
link |
01:43:19.540
It's not an indicator of value or worth or market price.
link |
01:43:22.180
Taxation, on the other hand, is by fiat.
link |
01:43:25.100
I can decide it's fair that you, Lex, have to pay 40% and Joe has to pay 45%.
link |
01:43:32.180
Joe and Lex are in no position to be like, this price is too high.
link |
01:43:36.100
Not only is that money set just completely out of their hands, for people who are employees,
link |
01:43:43.380
it's taken out of their paychecks before they even see it.
link |
01:43:45.700
So they don't even have the choice to be like, you know what?
link |
01:43:48.140
I agree that the government has the right to pay taxation.
link |
01:43:50.940
Here's my check for 40%.
link |
01:43:52.340
It's going on.
link |
01:43:53.340
It's a completely different paradigm than you are when you're paying for price.
link |
01:43:56.620
The government provides a lot of services in the current system.
link |
01:43:59.980
But there's no service the government provides that would not be provided better, more efficiently,
link |
01:44:05.180
and with more choices in a market.
link |
01:44:07.180
That's a hypothesis.
link |
01:44:08.180
No, that's very likely.
link |
01:44:09.180
Well, that's not a...
link |
01:44:10.180
I can demonstrate this to you very easily.
link |
01:44:11.180
I love it when you get flustered.
link |
01:44:15.940
This is what people like.
link |
01:44:17.940
It's so cute.
link |
01:44:18.940
The robot's...
link |
01:44:19.940
Don't make me put on the hat again.
link |
01:44:21.940
The robot has a fire.
link |
01:44:22.940
There's smoke coming out of his ears.
link |
01:44:26.300
What is price?
link |
01:44:28.300
I will tax love.
link |
01:44:33.620
I think of the government as a kind of subscription service.
link |
01:44:36.660
No, no.
link |
01:44:37.660
That's the anarchist view.
link |
01:44:38.780
The anarchist view of private security would be a subscription service.
link |
01:44:42.620
So that's exactly correct.
link |
01:44:44.060
But everyone hates when you sign up to a gym, and then you realize in the contract, it's
link |
01:44:50.100
very difficult to cancel that membership, and then they up the price.
link |
01:44:54.940
There's a lot of unpleasant things with a subscription service that then you can elect
link |
01:45:00.540
to go to another subscription service.
link |
01:45:03.620
Or you could go and Yelp and complain, and if there's enough people to do that, the gym
link |
01:45:06.980
will be receptive.
link |
01:45:08.140
Look at the power of Yelp versus the power of the vote.
link |
01:45:11.060
Well, we could talk about that too.
link |
01:45:13.380
So you're saying Yelp is more effective than voting.
link |
01:45:18.740
The thing is, I agree with you, but you take a further step.
link |
01:45:25.340
You say that Yelp is ethical and moral, and voting is amoral.
link |
01:45:31.180
Or like not voting, but government is amoral.
link |
01:45:34.580
So like it's not only is one more efficient than the other, you're saying like, because
link |
01:45:38.960
I would say government sucks at doing what it does, and it's gotten a lot better at it,
link |
01:45:44.460
and I believe it can keep getting better as it gets smaller and it leverages companies
link |
01:45:50.900
more and more.
link |
01:45:51.900
But you're saying, no, no, no, government is fundamentally as an idea gets in the way
link |
01:45:59.620
of companies that should be doing those things anyway.
link |
01:46:03.420
I just think that companies, when you take away government, will start looking like government.
link |
01:46:07.660
Just because something looks like something does not mean it's the same.
link |
01:46:11.520
If someone puts out a yarmulke and tefillin and they go to shul, they're not Jewish.
link |
01:46:16.740
Right.
link |
01:46:18.220
The basic objection you have with government, because you can leave, like I apologize that
link |
01:46:23.580
this is that stupid Twitter cliche statement.
link |
01:46:26.740
But your opposition to this idea of leaving the United States is that it's just, it's
link |
01:46:34.380
a lot of effort.
link |
01:46:35.380
It's too much friction.
link |
01:46:36.380
That's not the option.
link |
01:46:37.380
The opposition is in the introduction to the book, I say anarchism can be summed up in
link |
01:46:43.940
one sentence.
link |
01:46:44.940
You do not speak for me.
link |
01:46:46.500
Everything else is application.
link |
01:46:47.900
So the claim that somebody I've never met or who I voted against, let's say, I hate
link |
01:46:53.180
Donald Trump, I despise him, I want Hillary Clinton to be president.
link |
01:46:56.980
Too bad Trump's your president, that's not what I want.
link |
01:46:59.940
The idea that this person can come on me and make any claims onto one second of my time,
link |
01:47:05.200
as opposed to try to persuade me, that is something that I, an anarchist, regard as
link |
01:47:09.700
inherently evil and nonsensical.
link |
01:47:12.780
But to operate large organizations, like you see this with cryptocurrency, there's governance,
link |
01:47:18.180
you have to make difficult decisions.
link |
01:47:20.220
It's a block size wars for Bitcoin.
link |
01:47:22.140
Sure.
link |
01:47:23.140
So you will, there is a voting mechanism often with membership when you're a subscription
link |
01:47:27.060
service.
link |
01:47:28.060
But see, the thing is, you're using these words and you're switching definitions.
link |
01:47:31.740
Because like, if I go to a store, I can technically say I'm voting for Tropicana orange juice
link |
01:47:35.980
as opposed to another one.
link |
01:47:37.700
But to kind of say, oh, well, you're making a choice there for every choice is a vote.
link |
01:47:41.800
I don't, I think that that's something that the Venn diagram is not.
link |
01:47:44.780
No, I literally mean vote in this case, not money.
link |
01:47:47.060
Okay.
link |
01:47:48.060
There's some decisions, like, should Bitcoin have increases block size?
link |
01:47:52.460
Okay.
link |
01:47:53.460
There's a bunch of different, they're called soft forks or hard forks.
link |
01:47:56.820
Oh, I'm not saying you should never vote, like stockholders have to vote, right?
link |
01:48:00.940
Exactly.
link |
01:48:01.940
But there's no pretense.
link |
01:48:02.940
Here's, let's look at this.
link |
01:48:04.420
If you want to build robots, right?
link |
01:48:06.280
You would sit down with the company, you would, you guys would be like, we should do this
link |
01:48:09.060
kind of robot, we should do this kind of robot.
link |
01:48:10.780
The stockholders would have a vote or the board in proportion to their investment in
link |
01:48:14.860
the firm.
link |
01:48:15.860
Me, who knows nothing about robots, the idea that I'm in a position to walk in and be like,
link |
01:48:22.480
this is what you should do is crazy and bizarre and wrong because I'm not in a foreign position.
link |
01:48:28.060
So what democracy does is it forces people who run businesses well to run businesses
link |
01:48:33.500
poorly by people who don't know how to run businesses at all.
link |
01:48:37.080
That's the, that's one of the many concerns.
link |
01:48:39.220
But you're saying that's the fundamental property of the state.
link |
01:48:43.300
I have a sense that the state could become as effective as what we think of as companies.
link |
01:48:47.820
I mean, as.
link |
01:48:49.060
This is why they can't, because the state does not have access to data the way that
link |
01:48:53.720
firms do.
link |
01:48:55.020
And this is one of Ludwig von Mises's great points, what he called the calculation problem.
link |
01:48:59.660
If I'm looking at comic books, right, and I have Detective Comics, if Detective Comics
link |
01:49:04.900
26 is a thousand and Detective Comics 28 is a thousand and Detective Comics 27 is 50,000,
link |
01:49:12.500
that is telling me that even if I don't know anything about comics, that Detective Comics
link |
01:49:16.780
27 is either very, very scarce for some reason or very, very desirable.
link |
01:49:21.620
It's the first appearance of Batman, whatever, but you don't need to know that to just look
link |
01:49:24.880
at this data and be like, okay, this is the market, tell me something.
link |
01:49:28.620
If prices are set by the government, which the government is a monopoly, I have no way
link |
01:49:33.120
of picking those winners or losers.
link |
01:49:35.220
I don't have that data of supply and demand of an entire nation or a world of people making
link |
01:49:40.620
individual decisions and having price be dynamic and informing me as the organization where
link |
01:49:47.420
I should allocate my resources.
link |
01:49:49.380
So the price is a really strong signal that allows you to operate a voluntary collective
link |
01:49:58.100
where people get what they want and don't get what they don't want.
link |
01:50:01.900
And it tells me what to produce, what not to produce.
link |
01:50:04.580
And it also is great because if I see this podcasting industry, which didn't exist five
link |
01:50:08.860
years ago, and now these people are making bank, that tells me as someone who is an investor,
link |
01:50:15.380
they're making 50%, whatever, 10% profit on their capital.
link |
01:50:19.540
In the plant industry, it's 2%.
link |
01:50:22.260
If I'm going to further my capital to this 10%, and that's going to lower the profit
link |
01:50:26.940
rate as that builds up.
link |
01:50:29.060
And that is how markets are regulated, voluntarily.
link |
01:50:32.500
But the word government, I just think it's possible to have collectives of human beings
link |
01:50:38.880
that represent others based on their voluntary...
link |
01:50:42.220
Yes, of course, you have private governance.
link |
01:50:46.540
Any company, you can have a CEO, you can have a board of directors.
link |
01:50:50.040
But then you, I just, it starts to look very similar to me, a successful private governance
link |
01:50:57.980
mechanism at a scale of the United States starts looking a whole lot like the current
link |
01:51:04.260
government of the United States.
link |
01:51:07.600
Even Amazon, I don't think is anything close to the federal budget, size wise or budget
link |
01:51:12.300
wise or power wise.
link |
01:51:13.580
No.
link |
01:51:14.580
So you're saying you just, it's not even state, it's almost like anything at that size.
link |
01:51:19.600
You want to keep things smaller.
link |
01:51:21.500
And I don't, markets are not going to combine to that level of the state because Jeff Bezos
link |
01:51:29.160
will never be in a position to tell everyone in America, I'm going to take 40% of your
link |
01:51:34.100
money before you even see it.
link |
01:51:35.580
That to me is actually unclear.
link |
01:51:37.380
We don't know that to be true, where that Google or Amazon can't grow to the size.
link |
01:51:41.580
If you take away the US government, I'm not so sure that Amazon can't grow to the size
link |
01:51:46.180
of the US government.
link |
01:51:47.180
Okay, so worst case scenario is we're back where we started, right?
link |
01:51:52.700
That's not worst case scenario.
link |
01:51:54.260
But the concern is that Google is going to be the federal government?
link |
01:51:58.600
That's not the concern.
link |
01:51:59.600
I'm saying like, this is what it looks like when Google is the federal government.
link |
01:52:02.580
It's not, it's like, to me, the US government is our best attempt so far to have large scale
link |
01:52:10.140
representation of people's interest.
link |
01:52:12.460
It really sucks, but it's our best attempt so far and the question is how to improve
link |
01:52:16.580
it.
link |
01:52:17.580
Like if you take away all, if you take away the US government, I'm trying to see how do
link |
01:52:21.740
we improve on that level, that scale of representation of people's interest.
link |
01:52:27.780
Let me give you one example that people could wrap their hands around very easily.
link |
01:52:30.740
I'm against government police monopoly, I'm for private security, right?
link |
01:52:34.780
You don't have to be an anarchist to understand this.
link |
01:52:37.180
Can everyone agree, or at least as a hypothesis, everyone can wrap their heads around, here's
link |
01:52:42.780
a big concern, 911, right?
link |
01:52:44.980
I've heard this 911 call, it's very chilling.
link |
01:52:47.340
There's a kid in a closet, his family's being murdered outside, right?
link |
01:52:50.100
He has to call 911, he's whispering.
link |
01:52:51.860
It's horrifying to hear.
link |
01:52:53.940
There's no reason why the number I call for my family's being murdered is the same number
link |
01:52:59.540
I call for the fire department is the same number I call for an ambulance.
link |
01:53:02.660
What if instead it operated like Uber?
link |
01:53:04.620
You have buttons on your phone, if there's a real emergency, like someone's gun flyers,
link |
01:53:09.220
someone's being killed, you press this and it sends instead of the one police district,
link |
01:53:14.660
whatever company is nearby, you have a bunch of them and they're the ones who are going
link |
01:53:18.320
to come to your house to save you.
link |
01:53:20.260
People can wrap their heads around that very easily.
link |
01:53:22.280
That is one very clear way to go from having a government security monopoly towards having
link |
01:53:27.500
a more free enterprise system.
link |
01:53:29.660
So when you apply that to pretty much anything, it doesn't become that complicated of an alternative.
link |
01:53:34.360
So what I would, you're going to criticize this, but I believe the government, it's like
link |
01:53:42.140
the parenting thing we've talked about earlier, I think it creates a safe space for gov, for
link |
01:53:49.480
I'm for safe spaces, so I'm not going to laugh at you about that.
link |
01:53:52.820
I want people to be safe.
link |
01:53:54.060
But for a safe space for entrepreneurship.
link |
01:53:57.340
So I believe that good government, hold on a sec, give me a sec, give me a sec.
link |
01:54:02.180
Sure, sure.
link |
01:54:03.180
I'm sorry.
link |
01:54:04.180
I'm sorry.
link |
01:54:05.180
You're right.
link |
01:54:06.180
You're right.
link |
01:54:07.180
I'm sorry.
link |
01:54:08.180
I think government gives a opportunity for companies to out compete it.
link |
01:54:11.700
Yes.
link |
01:54:12.700
UPS, FedEx, 100%, not a question.
link |
01:54:16.140
So I believe you need to have private schools, government to give a chance for UPS, FedEx,
link |
01:54:23.780
for SpaceX, oh there's an X in there, to pop up and then government will naturally back
link |
01:54:30.660
off from that place.
link |
01:54:32.260
So like you, but you need the innovators to step in and build the thing.
link |
01:54:36.300
Okay.
link |
01:54:37.300
Like you can't just.
link |
01:54:38.300
When has government ever backed off though?
link |
01:54:39.840
That never happens.
link |
01:54:40.840
I back, well, from FedEx and UPS, from SpaceX, from Amazon.
link |
01:54:47.660
Wait, wait, hold on.
link |
01:54:49.500
The US Postal Service still competes with FedEx and UPS.
link |
01:54:52.720
So here's the other thing.
link |
01:54:53.940
Not nearly.
link |
01:54:54.940
Not well, but they still exist.
link |
01:54:55.940
And the point is.
link |
01:54:56.940
They're dying.
link |
01:54:57.940
But UPS and FedEx are taxed.
link |
01:55:00.840
So not only are they paying for their own company, they're paying for this competitor.
link |
01:55:04.320
This is the essential difference.
link |
01:55:06.220
Imagine if you didn't have UPS, excuse me, the federal government and no post office.
link |
01:55:10.340
So you had FedEx, you have DHL, you have US Postal Service and many others.
link |
01:55:13.940
How about in this scenario, UPS has the capacity to take 20% of FedEx's DHL and couriers money
link |
01:55:22.480
and put in their own pocket and they never have to do anything in return.
link |
01:55:25.220
This is going to be an enormous advantage of UPS.
link |
01:55:28.340
And then when you add the addition that UPS is not necessarily going to be more efficient
link |
01:55:32.180
than the others, this is going to be a huge distortion in the market.
link |
01:55:35.300
Can you imagine if your podcast, you just automatically got 20% of the views of everybody
link |
01:55:39.180
else?
link |
01:55:40.180
I mean, would there be any incentive for you to be great?
link |
01:55:42.420
Or you could just sit in your laurels and do whatever you want even more than now.
link |
01:55:47.060
It's hard to imagine more than now.
link |
01:55:48.500
That's because you're a robot and lack imagination.
link |
01:55:51.300
I think there just has to be, of course you can do it completely without government, but
link |
01:55:56.260
government...
link |
01:55:57.260
That's all I need to hear.
link |
01:55:58.260
Okay.
link |
01:55:59.260
That's all I need to hear.
link |
01:56:00.260
Show's over.
link |
01:56:01.260
Show's over.
link |
01:56:02.260
What else you can do without government at the end?
link |
01:56:03.260
Let us try.
link |
01:56:04.260
The question is that safety net that's needed for entrepreneurship, that's needed for, I'm
link |
01:56:09.860
sorry to say, but I have a sense that there needs to be a bit of a safety net for freedom.
link |
01:56:14.480
I'm much more comfortable with saying you need a safety net for freedom than you need
link |
01:56:18.700
one for entrepreneurs.
link |
01:56:20.200
The beauty of markets is with your startup, if you have a startup and it completely fails,
link |
01:56:25.740
the only person who's screwed is you and your investors.
link |
01:56:28.440
If I'm a government and I make a startup, the entire society fails, like the Iraq war.
link |
01:56:32.620
If I have this cockamamie plan, everyone else doesn't have a choice.
link |
01:56:36.460
They are both funding it and sometimes even drafted or forced into it.
link |
01:56:40.340
The safety net, the antlers, getting back to the early anarchists, one of the things
link |
01:56:44.260
that I admire about them, the inaugural communists, the old school left anarchists, is people
link |
01:56:49.380
don't remember what context they were in.
link |
01:56:51.620
They were in context without a welfare state, they're immigrating in huge numbers from
link |
01:56:55.280
Eastern Europe, you go to the Tenement Museum in New York, people like 12 to a room, kids
link |
01:57:00.060
are working in factories, they're either working in factories or they have to starve.
link |
01:57:03.420
It's not that their parents didn't love them, it's that the parents didn't have birth control,
link |
01:57:06.500
which was a felony, and they also were in a position to put food on the table for their
link |
01:57:09.960
kids because they're uneducated and the jobs are paying nothing.
link |
01:57:13.180
You could understand why Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Proudhon, and all these other figures
link |
01:57:17.980
were like, this is untenable, we see Carnegie with 80,000 mansions, whereas this lady whose
link |
01:57:24.100
husband died at age 30, who's never been to high school or even junior high school, has
link |
01:57:29.780
10 kids, how's she going to put food on the table, it's not going to happen.
link |
01:57:33.340
You could understand why they would be like, all right, we need to seize this money and
link |
01:57:36.780
distribute it around the people, that makes a lot of sense.
link |
01:57:39.120
In a contemporary context, where food is much cheaper, where shelter to some extent is more
link |
01:57:44.940
available, when medical care, we're so oblivious to how bad things were that we see things
link |
01:57:53.180
are bad now, so we assume that they were better than in some contexts.
link |
01:57:56.140
They were much, much worse there in many contexts.
link |
01:57:58.580
So if you're going to make an argument for government, for me, the strongest argument
link |
01:58:03.260
is like food stamps or like free lunches for children, because I agree that would be very
link |
01:58:08.900
inefficient and it's going to probably make them obese because you're going to have Nabisco
link |
01:58:13.940
lobbying to make sure that if you're going to have this protein, you're not going to
link |
01:58:18.420
give the kids an Oreo, aren't you?
link |
01:58:19.780
These kids are poor, you want them to have some pleasure and that's going to have deleterious
link |
01:58:24.220
effects.
link |
01:58:25.220
But if the choice is an inefficient government program and mass starvation, that is one where
link |
01:58:29.780
as an anarchist, I could easily see making the argument for that one.
link |
01:58:36.200
Even though I think very clearly private charity would be more efficient and distribute it
link |
01:58:39.500
more effectively.
link |
01:58:40.500
But at that point, I don't really care about efficiency.
link |
01:58:42.780
If you're throwing out food to make sure these kids get fed, I don't care.
link |
01:58:46.620
So would engagement in military conflict be one of the biggest negative things about the
link |
01:58:53.900
state to you?
link |
01:58:55.860
Yeah, of course.
link |
01:58:57.820
War is the state at its worst.
link |
01:58:59.420
So if we take away war or make it defensive instead of aggressive, yeah.
link |
01:59:05.140
I mean, wouldn't that be a huge step forward if war instead of regarded, we're always,
link |
01:59:09.400
this is what drives me crazy.
link |
01:59:11.100
We're taught as kids in school that war is a last resort.
link |
01:59:15.020
And I agree with that.
link |
01:59:16.580
And yet when you look at the corporate press, war is always the first response.
link |
01:59:21.700
And these people do not talk about what war means.
link |
01:59:26.580
They'll show examples during the Bush years of soldiers coming home in caskets, which
link |
01:59:31.860
already is an unacceptable price in many cases for me.
link |
01:59:34.680
But they don't even pretend to care about the people overseas whose countries we've
link |
01:59:39.020
ransacked and lives we've ruined.
link |
01:59:41.660
And it's just like, well, what are you going to do?
link |
01:59:43.020
Not ransack those countries?
link |
01:59:44.640
So that war to me is the state at its worst.
link |
01:59:48.900
See, I think that there is value from small government that doesn't engage in wars.
link |
01:59:55.140
I do think that the kind of collectives that you imagine functioning well would look like
link |
02:00:01.620
the best version of government that I imagine.
link |
02:00:04.260
So I see them as the same.
link |
02:00:08.620
I think a lot of it is just terminology.
link |
02:00:10.940
I have no problem saying that I'm using the word anarchism incorrectly and to go for what
link |
02:00:15.740
you want.
link |
02:00:16.740
I have no problem with that or anything, really.
link |
02:00:19.500
Because like I said, life is beautiful.
link |
02:00:21.380
But nevertheless, you wrote the essay, why I'm not going to vote this time or ever.
link |
02:00:29.380
Why I won't vote this year or any other year or any year.
link |
02:00:33.980
And the basic idea.
link |
02:00:34.980
I hope you do a better job reading it than you just read that title.
link |
02:00:37.500
I guess you'll take as many takes as necessary.
link |
02:00:42.220
I'll read it in Russian and then pay somebody to translate it.
link |
02:00:45.340
This isn't even Russian at all.
link |
02:00:46.340
He's just making up words.
link |
02:00:47.340
Where'd you find this guy?
link |
02:00:48.340
You get what you pay for.
link |
02:00:49.340
Yeah, exactly.
link |
02:00:50.340
This is anarchy.
link |
02:00:51.340
This is what you wanted.
link |
02:00:56.340
Like your basic summary is, let me see, if pressed, the simplest explanation I have for
link |
02:01:09.140
refusing to vote is this, I don't vote for the same exact reasons that I don't take communion.
link |
02:01:16.180
No matter how admirable he is or how much I agree with him, the Pope isn't the steward
link |
02:01:22.020
over my soul, nor is any president the leader of my life.
link |
02:01:27.820
This does not make me ignorant or evil any more than not being a Christian makes me ignorant
link |
02:01:32.420
or evil.
link |
02:01:33.560
If I need representation, I will hire the most qualified person to do so.
link |
02:01:38.780
Isn't voting our current best developed way of hiring the most qualified person to represent
link |
02:01:44.300
you on some things?
link |
02:01:45.740
No, because if I have a lawyer and the lawyer screws up, I can fire him.
link |
02:01:50.900
If I vote for someone, I don't get who I want.
link |
02:01:53.420
I get for who my neighbors want.
link |
02:01:55.300
So that makes no sense.
link |
02:01:57.700
Representation means I want you to speak for me.
link |
02:02:00.740
Whereas voting is like, I kind of want you, but I'll take what I can get and I'm going
link |
02:02:04.660
to take what I could get regardless.
link |
02:02:06.260
So what's the point?
link |
02:02:08.060
In governments, again, that's what Bitcoin is.
link |
02:02:11.700
You want to be represented in deciding what to do, but once...
link |
02:02:15.540
Wait, Bitcoin isn't picking a person.
link |
02:02:17.680
They're not picking a president of Bitcoin.
link |
02:02:19.980
They're picking an idea.
link |
02:02:20.980
Yeah.
link |
02:02:21.980
It's more like a referendum.
link |
02:02:22.980
And to me, a referendum is much more coherent and defensible than it is voting for a representative
link |
02:02:29.740
because if I'm voting for Joe Biden, I'm saying this person speaks for me for abortion, taxation,
link |
02:02:35.940
environmental policy, immigration, war, right?
link |
02:02:38.420
The odds that unless you're a complete NPC, that this one person will speak for you for
link |
02:02:42.660
everything and will deliver what he promised and has the power to deliver what he promises
link |
02:02:47.340
is not true.
link |
02:02:48.340
Whereas if I have Brexit, if I say I want Britain to remain part of the European Union
link |
02:02:54.100
to say yes or no question, that makes a lot more sense to me.
link |
02:02:57.900
But even that is not pure democracy because going back to the idea of the circulation
link |
02:03:02.300
of elites, which James Burnham talked about, Pareto and Moscow and all them, you're still
link |
02:03:06.780
going to have someone telling you what you can and can't vote for and how these questions
link |
02:03:11.380
are framed.
link |
02:03:12.380
So in contradiction to what the left anarchist said, some element of hierarchy is always
link |
02:03:17.920
going to be inevitable.
link |
02:03:21.700
So listen, I agree with this aspect very much so that we should be voting for ideas and
link |
02:03:27.980
issues not voting for leaders, for leaders to represent us across the full spectrum of
link |
02:03:33.740
issues.
link |
02:03:34.740
It seems to make no sense.
link |
02:03:35.980
Okay, good.
link |
02:03:36.980
Yeah, this is great.
link |
02:03:38.340
But I do think there should be a leader, I do believe in voting for representatives to
link |
02:03:44.460
debate, to be communicators of ideas to us.
link |
02:03:48.500
But let me start to interrupt you, but you could have those two things.
link |
02:03:52.740
For example, wouldn't this be an improvement if they have that now, you have a referendum,
link |
02:03:56.900
you want tax rates to be 30 or 40, whatever percent, you have the guy leading the campaign
link |
02:04:01.080
for 50, fight for 50, then you have the lady leading the campaign for 40, fight for 40,
link |
02:04:05.940
they'll go out there, they can have debates, they can talk about the issue, but you're
link |
02:04:09.420
still not voting for one of them, you're voting for the issue.
link |
02:04:12.340
That makes much more sense to me than I'm going to vote for him and hope that he puts
link |
02:04:16.220
forward 50 and that depends on 99 other senators.
link |
02:04:18.980
Exactly.
link |
02:04:19.980
But also, I mean, I do like the idea of voting for certain people to debate certain ideas.
link |
02:04:23.740
Yes, I think that's a major improvement.
link |
02:04:25.600
But the final vote should be based on the idea.
link |
02:04:27.980
So okay, so we agree.
link |
02:04:29.340
That would be nice to have, plus no wars, and then you'll stop tweeting so aggressively.
link |
02:04:35.740
And to decriminalize things that don't hurt people.
link |
02:04:39.180
Drugs.
link |
02:04:40.180
Drugs especially, prostitution is a big one.
link |
02:04:43.900
And this is me talking, all cops are criminals.
link |
02:04:47.240
There's no one, or maybe other than abused children, who needs access to the police other
link |
02:04:52.580
than sex workers.
link |
02:04:54.300
They're the ones who are the most likely to really put themselves in danger situation,
link |
02:04:58.580
so they need to be able to call security, because that's why they have pimps.
link |
02:05:02.340
Because you're a woman dealing with some strange dudes who are a lot of the time going to have
link |
02:05:06.980
weird kinks, you want to be able to be sure, even if you don't approve of prostitution,
link |
02:05:11.660
think it's horrible, that she's not going to be raped and murdered and have no consequences.
link |
02:05:15.780
And if you're going to say, oh, well, she's a prostitute, she can't be raped.
link |
02:05:19.620
Just think for a second, if you're agreeing to sleep with somebody, and then he starts
link |
02:05:23.120
choking you and beating the crap out of you and saying it's now it's a dom situation,
link |
02:05:26.400
that is clearly beyond the pale of salt.
link |
02:05:29.020
And the same thing with drugs, heroin, cocaine, crack.
link |
02:05:35.780
The people that need help the most are the ones who are addicted to those drugs and putting
link |
02:05:40.720
punishment.
link |
02:05:41.720
Let's suppose you think drug dealers should be in jail, right?
link |
02:05:44.700
It is very hard for me to say that someone who sells cocaine should be treated or in
link |
02:05:51.300
the same building as someone who rapes children, or as a murderer.
link |
02:05:55.340
These are not similar types of evil, even if you believe that that drug dealer is an
link |
02:05:58.780
evil person.
link |
02:05:59.780
Yeah, I have.
link |
02:06:00.780
I mean, there's an essay in there called by Alexander Berkman, who was Emma Goldman's
link |
02:06:06.100
partner on prisons and crime.
link |
02:06:09.120
And this is leftism at its best, forgetting the person is forgotten.
link |
02:06:13.220
And the fact that we have the world's largest prison population, the fact that so many people
link |
02:06:17.180
are just like, oh, you commit a crime, just put them in jail, throw away the key.
link |
02:06:20.660
At the very least, if you want to be totally immoral about it, it's expensive.
link |
02:06:24.260
And second of all, the concept that all criminals should be locked in a room together in these
link |
02:06:28.240
kind of largely inhuman conditions, and that's going to help people.
link |
02:06:31.820
I don't think that that's the ideal mechanism.
link |
02:06:33.980
Yeah, I tend to believe, I usually don't speak so negatively about politicians, but I do think
link |
02:06:40.220
that politicians have done more evil in the war on drugs than did the people that are
link |
02:06:46.660
supposed to be the criminals in this picture.
link |
02:06:49.020
And I'll give you another example of how this is the anarchist critique of power.
link |
02:06:52.860
Hunter Biden, and I'm not making fun of him, I'm not taking shots at him.
link |
02:06:56.420
He had an article in the New Yorker, where he talks about when he was in LA, he was buying
link |
02:07:01.260
crack and there was a misunderstanding or like he left the crack pipe in the Hertz car
link |
02:07:05.660
and then blah, blah, blah, there's an issue.
link |
02:07:07.720
He's admitting to a felony in writing to a reporter.
link |
02:07:11.100
And I'm sure this was within the statute of limitations.
link |
02:07:13.980
There was no possibility he was going to have consequences.
link |
02:07:17.260
Kamala Harris, who was a cop, talked about when she was in college, she was smoking weed.
link |
02:07:22.380
And it's like, I don't begrudge you guys smoking your crack or smoking your weed, but for other
link |
02:07:27.740
people who are poor or maybe just had the short end of the stick, this is years of their
link |
02:07:32.740
life being destroyed.
link |
02:07:35.180
At the very least, even an arrest is a traumatic situation.
link |
02:07:37.880
If you have a weed or cocaine or crack, you're arrested, that's really going to screw up,
link |
02:07:42.580
it's going to do a number on you being locked up.
link |
02:07:44.800
So to have that double standard to me is completely unacceptable.
link |
02:07:48.780
And that has nothing to do with Republican or Democrat.
link |
02:07:51.740
George W. Bush was a coke head back in the day.
link |
02:07:55.220
He talks about overcoming his addiction, and I'm glad that he did, more power to him.
link |
02:07:59.500
But just to have this kind of, you know, it's just really kind of disturbing to me, and
link |
02:08:04.100
this is my anarchist brain, like how prevalent drug use is in college.
link |
02:08:07.980
I think there's a joke on South Park, like, there's a time and a place to try drugs, and
link |
02:08:11.020
that's called college where people experiment.
link |
02:08:13.020
But all those college kids, which are going to become next generation's elite, don't really
link |
02:08:17.100
have that worry that if they get caught, then anything's going to happen to them.
link |
02:08:21.580
But that kid in the street who did not have that good upbringing, even if he's a piece
link |
02:08:25.620
of crap, like he's not going to have a different punishment, I think that's just really at
link |
02:08:30.780
his base on American.
link |
02:08:33.320
So in contrast to Tolstoy, let me ask you about Emma Goldman.
link |
02:08:37.140
You wrote that if anarchism believed in rulers, then Emma Goldman would be the undisputed
link |
02:08:44.260
queen.
link |
02:08:45.260
Yes.
link |
02:08:46.260
What ideas defined her flavor of anarchism, would you say?
link |
02:08:51.940
Emma was really an old school radical.
link |
02:08:56.420
She was a radical among radicals.
link |
02:08:58.800
I don't know what ideas, I mean, what would define her was anarchism, obviously.
link |
02:09:04.020
There's the violence.
link |
02:09:05.020
I mean, she was more open to the idea of violent opposition versus somebody like Tolstoy.
link |
02:09:11.340
Oh, sure, for sure.
link |
02:09:12.620
So basically, Emma and Alexander Berkman, their mentor was someone named Johann Most.
link |
02:09:17.340
And Johann Most was a very early free speech, not very early, but he was a free speech concern
link |
02:09:22.540
because he published a pamphlet in Europe that was translated in the States about how
link |
02:09:26.900
to build dynamite.
link |
02:09:28.540
Because his idea was, all right, you have this oppressive government, this oppressive
link |
02:09:32.100
police force that use batons and bolts against us.
link |
02:09:36.380
The only way for us as the working class to level the playing field is through dynamite
link |
02:09:40.860
and here's how you build it.
link |
02:09:42.440
So the question is, all right, is this something that could be allowed to be legal now that
link |
02:09:46.500
you're allowing the layman to, in his own house, build bombs?
link |
02:09:50.360
So Johann Most, basically, they had a big parting of ways because when Alexander Berkman
link |
02:09:56.560
tried to assassinate Frick, Johann said, no, no, no, this is not something I'm for.
link |
02:10:02.880
And in fact, they thought with this assassination, this failed assassination, this would be the
link |
02:10:07.540
thing that's fired off the revolution because you had the strike, the Pinkertons involved,
link |
02:10:11.540
Pinkertons getting killed, strikers are getting killed.
link |
02:10:14.420
This is what Marx predicted, they're gonna light the spark and everything's gonna come
link |
02:10:18.060
falling down.
link |
02:10:19.060
He ends up going to jail for 13 years instead, Alexander Berkman does.
link |
02:10:23.060
And then Goldman and Berkman had a big issue because when Leon Salgas killed McKinley
link |
02:10:28.780
in 1901, it was really, it's kind of humorous in retrospect.
link |
02:10:32.640
He gets arrested and they're like, why'd you kill the president?
link |
02:10:34.740
He goes, I was radicalized by Emma Goldman and she's like, oh, damn it, she's on the
link |
02:10:39.300
run.
link |
02:10:40.300
I don't even know this guy.
link |
02:10:42.580
And she made the point about like, why is it worse than the president being killed and
link |
02:10:47.140
somebody else?
link |
02:10:48.140
We're all equal.
link |
02:10:49.260
And you would think if you're against capitalism, against the ruling class, this would be your
link |
02:10:53.000
first target.
link |
02:10:54.120
But Berkman, who went to jail, who tried to assassinate someone, he had said, McKinley,
link |
02:11:01.320
this is your villain?
link |
02:11:02.320
He's just a party hack.
link |
02:11:03.540
He's like a symptom of the times, this is foolish.
link |
02:11:06.800
And Goldman disagreed with him.
link |
02:11:08.220
He thought it wasn't necessarily justified, but it may have done something that was defensible.
link |
02:11:14.800
So the three of them, you know, had their differences on the use of violence.
link |
02:11:19.280
And in fact, when she came back from Russia and was denouncing it in her book, My Disillusionment
link |
02:11:24.060
in Russia, My First Disillusionment in Russia, the last chapter she goes, look, I'm not saying
link |
02:11:28.300
I'm against violence.
link |
02:11:29.960
When there's the revolution comes, we're going to have to use force.
link |
02:11:32.220
She goes, but it's not the force of the state against the working class, against the masses.
link |
02:11:37.140
This is exactly what we're opposed to.
link |
02:11:38.640
This is a complete obscenity to our principles.
link |
02:11:41.840
So that was interesting.
link |
02:11:43.320
The fact that she was a, her periodical Mother Earth was a clearinghouse for many prominent,
link |
02:11:49.920
you know, ideas of the day that weren't anarchist, but were certainly radical.
link |
02:11:52.940
So she was a bit, and also she was like tiny, she was like 5.1.
link |
02:11:55.880
So to have this little woman who was so feisty and...
link |
02:11:59.920
Talk back to Lenin.
link |
02:12:01.040
Talk back to Lenin.
link |
02:12:02.040
She took on Lenin, Woodrow Wilson, J. Edgar Hoover was the one who deported her.
link |
02:12:07.420
Someone who just...
link |
02:12:08.420
And the thing is, you have to be careful because I think just like war, it's very easy to glamorize
link |
02:12:14.760
violence and to regard it as something admirable or heroic, like you're fighting for the cause.
link |
02:12:20.560
But if you take it out of the romanticism, you're like, you're killing someone who had
link |
02:12:24.600
kids.
link |
02:12:25.600
You are, you know, killing someone with a family.
link |
02:12:27.280
You're making your, if you're going to shoot someone, they're probably going to retaliate
link |
02:12:30.840
twice as hard.
link |
02:12:32.340
Violence sings its own song and this is a very dangerous road you're going down.
link |
02:12:35.680
So you really need to be careful about what you're preaching here.
link |
02:12:41.440
And you know, she kind of had this mixed feelings about it, but that is certainly not Emma Goldman
link |
02:12:46.440
her best.
link |
02:12:47.600
Emma Goldman her best was about the ultimate freedom of the individual, of caring about
link |
02:12:54.080
people who are desperately poor, who despised the corporate idea that we all had to be made
link |
02:12:59.120
into cookie cutters and be interchangeable and all have to start work at the same time.
link |
02:13:04.120
And basically our entire lives slave for corporation that have nothing to show for it while they
link |
02:13:08.260
get wealthy and you have no opportunity for either productive work or creative work.
link |
02:13:13.400
So that I think the valorization of kind of the lowest of the low is something I find
link |
02:13:19.320
very admirable.
link |
02:13:20.360
There's a quote of hers, which I think even for those of us who are, you know, for property
link |
02:13:24.600
rights is left anarchism at its best, but she goes, go and ask for work.
link |
02:13:30.760
If they don't give you work, ask for bread.
link |
02:13:33.400
If they don't give you bread, take bread.
link |
02:13:35.280
So the idea that like, if you're that poor and you're honestly trying to work and work
link |
02:13:38.800
isn't available and you steal food to keep alive, that you shouldn't feel guilt about
link |
02:13:43.680
it.
link |
02:13:44.680
I don't know that I would disagree with that.
link |
02:13:46.080
I think that there's something to be said at that point where it's just like, you know,
link |
02:13:50.580
if property rights come between that and mass starvation, it's going to be very hard for
link |
02:13:54.680
anyone to make the case for property rights.
link |
02:13:56.280
Now, my argument is when you have free enterprise, food becomes so plentiful that now obesity
link |
02:14:00.880
is an issue.
link |
02:14:01.920
But at the time she did not have, of course, have that data to access.
link |
02:14:06.360
Is there somebody you left out from the book that you thought about leaving in like some
link |
02:14:12.480
interesting figures?
link |
02:14:14.120
Yeah, there's a couple.
link |
02:14:15.960
So Chomsky would have been one, of course, because he's probably one of the biggest anarchist
link |
02:14:22.760
thinkers in contemporary times.
link |
02:14:26.040
I was on the fence about Herbert Spencer because he's not an anarchist.
link |
02:14:30.080
Chris Williamson's reading the chapter for the book.
link |
02:14:32.120
He coined the term Survival of the Fittest and the chapter is called The Right to Ignore
link |
02:14:35.320
the State from his book, Social Statics.
link |
02:14:37.680
It was deleted from later editions, but people found it and reprinted it.
link |
02:14:42.400
And Randolph Bourne, he was an early progressive.
link |
02:14:47.320
He was the only one or one of the very few fighting against entering the Great War.
link |
02:14:51.720
And he had an essay called War is the Health of the State, which is basically about how
link |
02:14:55.700
states love war because it gives them an excuse to increase their power.
link |
02:14:59.640
And it's very hard to argue against increasing state power in a time of war.
link |
02:15:03.220
But since he was not himself an anarchist and there was plenty antiwar in there already,
link |
02:15:07.280
I didn't include him, but those would be the ones.
link |
02:15:09.280
Is there some people that you think the public would be surprised to learn that they are
link |
02:15:16.520
at least in part anarchists?
link |
02:15:17.760
Like I saw that Howard Zinn is supposedly an anarchist.
link |
02:15:20.840
I mean, is there, like, just like Tolstoy is an anarchist.
link |
02:15:25.480
Is there some people like that that you think in our modern life that would be surprised
link |
02:15:29.680
to learn they're anarchists?
link |
02:15:31.100
I can't think of any off the top of my head.
link |
02:15:34.200
I mean, you could say Carl Hess, who was like Barry Goldwater's speechwriter from the 1964
link |
02:15:38.520
campaign, but he's hardly a household name.
link |
02:15:41.200
I mean, I think a lot of people would not ascribe to that term, but are certainly informed
link |
02:15:48.160
with this complete distrust of all authority.
link |
02:15:51.480
Murray Rothbard had an essay, if I didn't include anatomy of the state, I was going
link |
02:15:54.740
to include this one.
link |
02:15:55.740
It's much, much shorter.
link |
02:15:57.280
And his question was, who are our allies and who are our enemies?
link |
02:16:00.680
And the point he made is there's lots of people who would call themselves anarchists who are
link |
02:16:04.880
of little use, whereas someone who is still like a minarchist or for government, but genuinely
link |
02:16:10.200
hates the question Rothbard had is if there's a button and you could press that you would
link |
02:16:14.920
end the state, would you press it so fast your finger would get a blister?
link |
02:16:18.340
Those are allies, even if they're, you know, somewhat of a minarchist.
link |
02:16:22.100
So I think that is kind of a better lens of looking at it.
link |
02:16:26.100
And I don't think anyone needs to really ascribe to anarchism as a whole ideology in so far
link |
02:16:31.600
as you're seeing right now, many people in certain fringe elements are just essentially
link |
02:16:36.720
or are decreasingly fringe and increasing mainstream elements are realizing that this
link |
02:16:42.680
idea that whatever the state does is somehow morally binding or legitimate is something
link |
02:16:47.400
that at least bears strong questioning.
link |
02:16:50.080
Sure.
link |
02:16:51.080
And I mean, I guess there's a lot of groups like the libertarians, for example, have some
link |
02:16:57.680
element of that.
link |
02:16:58.680
Oh, sure.
link |
02:16:59.680
For sure.
link |
02:17:00.680
I mean, I think that's the beginning of the ways of government.
link |
02:17:02.780
And also, I think what I love, I mean, if there's one issue where I would want people
link |
02:17:07.820
to have this kind of analysis, it is war.
link |
02:17:10.560
And it is like, okay, are you really sure?
link |
02:17:13.780
Because this is 100% going to result in a lot of people being killed, a lot of people
link |
02:17:18.340
being traumatized, a lot of people who are never going to recover, children, innocent
link |
02:17:23.320
people.
link |
02:17:24.320
Are you really sure this is the right thing to do?
link |
02:17:26.780
And I think a lot of times if the answer is, well, it's the profitable thing to do.
link |
02:17:30.880
And that is, I think, again, government at its absolute most venal and worst.
link |
02:17:37.420
You Michael Malice in many ways are a New Yorker.
link |
02:17:40.960
Oh, yes.
link |
02:17:41.960
I'll give you one example.
link |
02:17:43.480
I don't know where Austin is on the map.
link |
02:17:45.200
No idea.
link |
02:17:46.200
Not even kidding.
link |
02:17:47.200
But does it even matter?
link |
02:17:48.200
It doesn't matter.
link |
02:17:50.120
But nevertheless, you've decided to move to Austin.
link |
02:17:53.080
Yes.
link |
02:17:54.080
Why do you think you're moving to Austin, or why do you moving both to Austin and away
link |
02:17:59.620
from New York?
link |
02:18:00.720
This was one of the both, I hate it when people talk like this, but I'm gonna do it anyway.
link |
02:18:05.640
This was one of the hardest and easiest decisions of my life.
link |
02:18:08.920
It was hard because I've lived in New York since I was two, other than college.
link |
02:18:13.440
It's the only home I've known.
link |
02:18:14.700
I know it intimately.
link |
02:18:16.160
I know all the cool spots.
link |
02:18:17.520
I love it with every fiber of my being or I did.
link |
02:18:20.920
It was very much, you know, ingrained in my personality, my outlook about what cities
link |
02:18:25.360
can be and can't be and should be and shouldn't be.
link |
02:18:29.760
Deciding to move was not done.
link |
02:18:31.560
But when you see your crew, your chosen family, one by one whittling away, it's not easy.
link |
02:18:39.340
They all left.
link |
02:18:40.340
There's just a couple of us left in New York.
link |
02:18:43.440
And I don't see any mechanism by which New York is going to improve.
link |
02:18:47.400
Things are getting much worse all the time.
link |
02:18:49.440
It's just completely outrageous.
link |
02:18:51.800
Here I would have a huge crew.
link |
02:18:54.500
I didn't realize how much cheaper real estate is than in New York.
link |
02:18:57.480
This is another way.
link |
02:18:58.480
So New Yorkers are the most provincial people on earth who are completely oblivious to the
link |
02:19:01.520
rest of the country.
link |
02:19:02.680
So for a long time, the argument was New York versus LA, right, for certain types of people.
link |
02:19:06.720
And they would say LA is cheaper in terms of rent.
link |
02:19:08.920
So in New York, let's suppose the rent is a thousand, LA was 700, but you have to get
link |
02:19:12.320
a car.
link |
02:19:13.320
I'm like, this is kind of a wash.
link |
02:19:14.520
So I assumed Austin would be like 80% of New York prices.
link |
02:19:18.440
And I'm looking at these houses and for like 700,000, you could get a house here that would
link |
02:19:23.360
cost like 3.5 million in New York.
link |
02:19:26.200
And you could have a gun.
link |
02:19:27.240
And it's just like, I could have a yard and I could have a dog and I could have a three
link |
02:19:30.840
bedroom and I could have, you know, aquariums and my weird plants.
link |
02:19:35.680
So to have all that, and it's just to have, I am very, very lucky that I have such a supportive
link |
02:19:44.160
crew.
link |
02:19:45.160
And they were also very smart because they sat me down and they said, whatever excuse
link |
02:19:49.520
you have not to move here, we are going to make sure that doesn't count.
link |
02:19:53.880
So my buddy Matt said, because I have a huge library, he goes, I will go to your house
link |
02:19:59.400
and I will pack every single book you own myself so you can get that as an excuse the
link |
02:20:04.160
other way.
link |
02:20:05.160
I don't know how to drive and you do this, she's like, we're going to take driving lessons
link |
02:20:09.360
together.
link |
02:20:10.360
There goes that excuse.
link |
02:20:12.320
How do I find an apartment?
link |
02:20:13.800
They're like, we'll go to with the realtor and we'll take pictures for you.
link |
02:20:17.520
We'll report back.
link |
02:20:18.520
You can trust our judgment.
link |
02:20:19.520
And I'm like, that's great.
link |
02:20:20.520
I would do that.
link |
02:20:21.520
That sounds like fun shopping for houses that have to buy them.
link |
02:20:23.800
Then Matt just yesterday had the idea goes, come here, rent a furnished apartment for
link |
02:20:29.640
a few months.
link |
02:20:30.640
You don't have the pressure of buying.
link |
02:20:32.480
And it's just, it's going to be an easy transition.
link |
02:20:34.480
The rent's not going to be anything compared to New York.
link |
02:20:36.640
I'm like, these are all very valid things.
link |
02:20:39.560
You're here.
link |
02:20:40.820
Lots of other people.
link |
02:20:41.820
Yeah, that's what this is.
link |
02:20:43.920
I made sure that's renting month to month.
link |
02:20:47.000
Oh, this is rental.
link |
02:20:48.000
This is rental.
link |
02:20:49.000
Oh, you didn't realize this.
link |
02:20:50.000
I thought you bought this.
link |
02:20:51.000
No, no, no.
link |
02:20:52.000
This is rental.
link |
02:20:53.000
We can talk.
link |
02:20:54.000
Why?
link |
02:20:55.000
I thought you bought it.
link |
02:20:56.000
No, it's rental.
link |
02:20:57.000
Well, I really value freedom.
link |
02:20:58.000
Yeah, of course.
link |
02:20:59.000
Who are you talking to?
link |
02:21:00.000
I've heard of this thing, freedom, it's really great.
link |
02:21:05.440
But not everybody in the implementation of freedom is different for everybody.
link |
02:21:08.960
Of course.
link |
02:21:09.960
I don't want to make a statement about others.
link |
02:21:14.280
I'll just speak for myself.
link |
02:21:15.640
I think when you buy a house, that is not just a wise financial decision or all those
link |
02:21:22.880
kinds of reasons that people have, investment, all those kinds of things.
link |
02:21:26.340
I think it's also a hit on your freedom because the positive way to frame that is you make
link |
02:21:32.000
it a home.
link |
02:21:33.000
Yes.
link |
02:21:34.000
You have a deep connection to it.
link |
02:21:35.340
But the negative way to frame it is you're now a little bit stuck there.
link |
02:21:39.360
Yeah.
link |
02:21:40.360
And you may stay there way longer than you should when much better opportunities for
link |
02:21:44.760
life come up.
link |
02:21:46.960
There's stages in life when you're not sure exactly what the future will hold.
link |
02:21:50.080
I would argue that's very often the case, basically at every stage in life.
link |
02:21:54.640
I just want to make sure I maximize the freedom to embrace the most ambitious, the craziest,
link |
02:22:03.120
the wildest, the most beautiful opportunities that come by.
link |
02:22:07.360
You've actually brought this up too, because I said I really enjoyed the conversation with
link |
02:22:10.640
you and Yaron, talking to you and somebody else, and I think you make a really significant
link |
02:22:19.360
effort.
link |
02:22:20.360
You've said this before, but it really is true and it stands in contrast to other folks
link |
02:22:26.040
who are also good conversation.
link |
02:22:27.360
You really make an effort for that person to meet the person.
link |
02:22:32.000
Oh, for sure.
link |
02:22:34.920
You made me realize it's kind of an art form, but it's also just, it's a thing worth doing
link |
02:22:45.280
of putting in that effort and that leap of humanity to reach the, whether you're talking
link |
02:22:51.000
to Dave Rubin or Alex Jones or Joe or me, just those are different human beings and
link |
02:22:58.720
they're taking that leap.
link |
02:22:59.720
It's fascinating.
link |
02:23:00.720
I mean, do you have, how do you think about that?
link |
02:23:04.120
I'm a huge introvert as you are, I think.
link |
02:23:08.840
I feel very, very, very lucky that I get to get on a mic and run my mouth and for some
link |
02:23:18.040
people, for some reason, people like this.
link |
02:23:20.080
So I know what it's like to have a good convo and I know what it's like to have a bad convo.
link |
02:23:27.960
So before I'll do a show, I will have like some things I would want to talk about.
link |
02:23:33.600
And then I'll think about how to say them in an engaging way.
link |
02:23:36.440
So I do my homework in that regard.
link |
02:23:38.200
I'm also very good at, or I pride myself at taking people who are cerebral or intellectual
link |
02:23:45.320
and making them a little bit silly, but also making them feel safe to be silly because
link |
02:23:49.760
I'm not going to be making a buffoon of them that we're having fun as opposed to disrespecting
link |
02:23:55.120
the person.
link |
02:23:56.120
I think we all saw that with Yaron, who's very cerebral, very serious, but we were all
link |
02:24:00.040
cracking jokes and he was having a good time and he knew even if I'm making fun of him
link |
02:24:05.480
to his face, it is coming from a place of kindness and he's in on the joke and we're
link |
02:24:09.800
all having fun.
link |
02:24:11.280
That is something I try to do as much as possible.
link |
02:24:15.960
I had an episode of my show a couple of weeks ago and someone who's been a friend of mine
link |
02:24:20.680
for a long time and someone I admire a lot, Elizabeth Spires, she was the founding member
link |
02:24:25.080
of, founding editor of Gawker, she's worked for the Observer for Jared Kushner, her resume
link |
02:24:31.320
second to none and she was on my show and she was talking, her politics are pretty straightforward
link |
02:24:37.280
like corporate journalist, blue pilled politics and my audience was very upset that I wasn't
link |
02:24:41.920
pushing back or whatever.
link |
02:24:43.320
I'm like, my job, if someone is coming to a place where the audience is at least going
link |
02:24:48.520
to be somewhat hostile, is not to make her have negative consequences for doing something
link |
02:24:54.740
that she didn't need to do.
link |
02:24:56.140
My job is to make sure that the experience is a positive one for her as the host.
link |
02:25:02.080
So when I'm the guest, I always feel that my job is to make the host look good and make
link |
02:25:07.500
the host not feel like it's work and the audience really likes that because instead of it being
link |
02:25:11.500
an interview or intense, it is a conversation, nine of us know what's going to happen and
link |
02:25:16.640
so this is something I think about a fair amount and I try to apply and insofar as it's
link |
02:25:21.640
successful, I'm delighted and there's times when it's not successful and that's a shame
link |
02:25:26.240
but all we could do is do our best.
link |
02:25:28.760
Yeah, I really enjoyed that conversation with her.
link |
02:25:30.600
I was surprised by the dislikes and all that kind of stuff.
link |
02:25:34.320
Well, one of the things I always talk about is I don't care what my friends politics are.
link |
02:25:38.800
I care about if I'm having a bad day, can I call them up and ask for advice and Elizabeth
link |
02:25:43.120
has been there for me in the past and then when I do it on a camera in front of mics,
link |
02:25:47.680
people freaking out.
link |
02:25:48.680
I'm like, I'm practicing what I preach.
link |
02:25:51.160
My, the relationships are more important than someone's political views and it's not hypocrisy
link |
02:25:57.240
at all to demonstrate that and not to push back.
link |
02:26:01.260
And there was great humor there.
link |
02:26:02.600
You're both a bit of trolls in very different ways but nevertheless, that connection, the
link |
02:26:07.600
humor and the mutual respect and love that was all there, yeah, it's just fascinating.
link |
02:26:14.400
You've talked to Alex Jones a couple days ago.
link |
02:26:16.520
Sure, yeah.
link |
02:26:17.520
I haven't seen him many times before but you've had him on your podcast.
link |
02:26:21.200
This week, yeah.
link |
02:26:22.200
This week.
link |
02:26:23.200
I was kind of surprised that he mentioned that human animal hybrids was like the number,
link |
02:26:31.880
the main conspiracy that people should look into to open their eyes to the, you know,
link |
02:26:38.840
to all this, to the globalists, to all the conspiracies that are out there.
link |
02:26:42.560
Was that surprising to you?
link |
02:26:44.520
No, because I came in there with questions and I was very focused on corralling him and
link |
02:26:51.320
having it be like kind of a coherent intellectual conversation.
link |
02:26:54.120
That was a really, really good, it was only an hour but it was a very good conversation.
link |
02:26:58.120
Yeah, thank you.
link |
02:26:59.120
I, the response was overwhelmingly positive and I'm like, all right, I'm in a unique position
link |
02:27:04.280
because Alex, I met Alex, well, that's not true, but I was on Alex, with Alex on Tim
link |
02:27:08.800
Pool a couple of times.
link |
02:27:10.320
It was mayhem, it was anarchy and I'm like, all right, let me get.
link |
02:27:14.160
But the thing is what people enjoyed is I was the one who was basically able to translate
link |
02:27:18.040
Alex's ease.
link |
02:27:19.040
He's obviously very performative and a lot of times Alex will say things that are not
link |
02:27:23.360
really particularly controversial, but he'll say them in such a way that it sounds crazier
link |
02:27:29.200
than it is.
link |
02:27:30.200
You know, I think Joe's made this observation as well.
link |
02:27:32.440
So what I wanted to have him on my show is, all right, let's go through all these conspiracies
link |
02:27:38.720
which have validity, which don't.
link |
02:27:40.800
And I knew if I asked him, because he's got a lot of historical knowledge, even if you
link |
02:27:43.920
think of a lot of it's nonsensical, let's sort out the wheat from the chaff, you know,
link |
02:27:49.040
because everyone has someone crazy in them.
link |
02:27:50.680
I have this expression, you take one red pill, not the whole bottle, you take the whole bottle
link |
02:27:54.960
of red pills, you assume literally everything in the media is a lie, that's just not a coherent
link |
02:27:59.120
position to have.
link |
02:28:00.120
Is the weather a lie when they tell you that temperature is going to be wrong tomorrow?
link |
02:28:03.060
So that was fun to watch him go through that.
link |
02:28:05.400
And he felt bad because he felt incorrectly, in my opinion, that he was needlessly aggressive
link |
02:28:10.820
and disrespectful toward me on Tim.
link |
02:28:12.320
I didn't feel disrespected at all.
link |
02:28:13.640
It got heated, but I didn't take it personally.
link |
02:28:15.760
People have heated debates all the time.
link |
02:28:17.360
So I think he promised me he wouldn't interrupt and would be deferential, but that because
link |
02:28:21.640
he promised to be on his best behavior, that gave me an opportunity to address him seriously
link |
02:28:27.480
and not to bring the clown aspect out of him, which is easy to caricature him.
link |
02:28:32.200
My friend Ethan Suppley, who I'm sure people know, played basically a character based on
link |
02:28:36.000
him in The Hunt, because Alex is kind of this cartoon archetype.
link |
02:28:40.320
So it was really fun to get another side of him.
link |
02:28:45.680
And also, it's just fun being on his show, just him being bombastic and just trying to
link |
02:28:49.080
be the calm voice of reason.
link |
02:28:51.040
And for once, the trickster was Apollo.
link |
02:28:52.800
Well, I like this thing he said before.
link |
02:28:57.000
And that's what makes me the most interested in Alex is the Nietzsche quote about gazing
link |
02:29:03.520
into the abyss.
link |
02:29:04.920
I think he said on your show that he has become the abyss or something like that.
link |
02:29:08.980
I think that makes him fascinating that when you really take conspiracy theories seriously,
link |
02:29:14.840
the kind of effect it has on your mind.
link |
02:29:17.840
That to me is fascinating.
link |
02:29:18.840
Well, can I say one thing, that term conspiracy theory?
link |
02:29:22.140
If you ask any layman, look, it's like this, you say, do you like puppies?
link |
02:29:26.480
I hate them.
link |
02:29:27.480
Do you like baby dogs?
link |
02:29:28.480
Oh, they're the best, right?
link |
02:29:29.480
People, the human mind is capable of doing this.
link |
02:29:31.960
So if you ask people, do you think extremely powerful people often get together and manipulate
link |
02:29:38.640
data or rules in order to further their power and control and maintain it?
link |
02:29:43.160
I think 90 plus percent of people would be like, of course.
link |
02:29:46.380
Then you say, oh, so you believe in conspiracy theories.
link |
02:29:48.200
Oh no, that's for crazy people.
link |
02:29:49.760
Those concepts are identical.
link |
02:29:51.440
Now that term is used for people who are like, all right, there's conspiracies in government
link |
02:29:58.120
to experiment on people like Tuskegee.
link |
02:30:00.040
This is not in dispute.
link |
02:30:01.040
The CIA has unsealed things, Operation Mockingbird, so on and so forth.
link |
02:30:05.480
And at the same time, conspiracy theory applies to people who say 9 11 never happened and
link |
02:30:09.700
those are holograms.
link |
02:30:11.040
Now it's the same word for both, but these are not at all equal truth claims and they
link |
02:30:16.240
do not at all have equal evidence to them.
link |
02:30:18.360
But it's very useful for powerful people to have that term in the zeitgeist because then
link |
02:30:22.840
I don't have to explain or defend.
link |
02:30:24.400
It's like, only lunatics are going to look further on this.
link |
02:30:27.560
Do you really want to be a lunatic kid?
link |
02:30:29.440
And that takes care of the issue.
link |
02:30:31.400
Unfortunately the same problem applies, language applies to a lot of other areas.
link |
02:30:35.720
100%, that's the nature of language, yeah.
link |
02:30:37.800
It's used not just to communicate, but to obfuscate.
link |
02:30:39.880
Obviously that could be fixed by coming up with different words to label conspiracy theories
link |
02:30:46.320
that are much more likely to be true.
link |
02:30:48.720
Yeah, like power elite analysis is another, is basically conspiracy theory.
link |
02:30:53.720
This is the black pill versus white pill question with the abyss.
link |
02:30:59.200
Do you think thinking about these things can destroy the mind, can make you deeply cynical
link |
02:31:06.780
about the world?
link |
02:31:08.280
Yeah, because if you are thinking that you are not aware of, or no one is aware of who's
link |
02:31:15.320
controlling things and that the level of their control, it gives you the sense of powerlessness
link |
02:31:20.520
and hopelessness.
link |
02:31:22.160
And my counter is the people in charge, one of the reasons I'm an anarchist, are nowhere
link |
02:31:27.520
near as smart and crafty as you think they are.
link |
02:31:30.360
And certainly maybe the ones complete in the shadow maybe are, but the ones who are in
link |
02:31:34.320
the public face most certainly are not, as social media has demonstrated, when you look
link |
02:31:38.240
at how senators and Harvard professors tweet, these are not, you know, intellects that you're
link |
02:31:45.200
in awe of, to put it mildly.
link |
02:31:47.320
So I think that kind of takes the bloom off the rose to a great extent.
link |
02:31:52.680
You mentioned that you've been doing a lot of amazing things, been truly joyful recently.
link |
02:31:57.480
But I don't know if you have a bucket list.
link |
02:32:02.400
Is there items on the bucket list you haven't done yet?
link |
02:32:05.800
Are you pretty much satisfied and happy, and if you die today, if I murder you, you'll
link |
02:32:11.440
be happy?
link |
02:32:12.440
I could die today.
link |
02:32:13.440
Is there an item on the bucket list you want to get done?
link |
02:32:17.840
I don't, yeah.
link |
02:32:20.000
Deep Sea submersible.
link |
02:32:21.000
That would be number one on the bucket list.
link |
02:32:24.640
Why?
link |
02:32:25.640
Because that's where all the most interesting zoology is.
link |
02:32:28.600
And to be in a place where like virtually no human being has been, and to see these
link |
02:32:35.720
gods mistakes and their natural environment.
link |
02:32:38.720
My friend coined that term gods mistakes.
link |
02:32:40.600
If you look at deep sea creatures, you can imagine god making some animal being like,
link |
02:32:44.480
oh god, this is hideous, I'll just throw them on the ocean, no one's gonna see this.
link |
02:32:48.200
So that would be my number one bucket list thing.
link |
02:32:51.040
I would say go to the White House as a guest would be a bucket list thing.
link |
02:32:55.800
Russia, go to Russia would be a bucket list thing.
link |
02:32:59.600
I want to go, these are secondary, like go to Eritrea would be a bucket list thing.
link |
02:33:04.000
I've got a long list of books I need to write.
link |
02:33:06.600
That's that's, I don't know if that's really a bucket list per se.
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02:33:12.680
There's not that much, what I'm at a point in my life is once you cross up certain things,
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02:33:18.520
you basically, instead of driving the car, start surfing.
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02:33:21.800
And just amazing thing, I talked to you about this medical thing, you know, before we started.
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02:33:25.880
At a certain point, and I'm sure this happens to you, because your platform is a lot bigger
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02:33:29.120
than mine, all sorts of things start coming your way that you never would have thought
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02:33:32.760
of.
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02:33:33.760
And you're like, this is pretty darn cool.
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02:33:35.440
So to be, and that's happening at an escalating rate.
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02:33:38.560
Like I'm at a point now where I get stopped every day by people.
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02:33:43.100
So that's going to be a weird thing for me to get adjusted to.
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02:33:47.720
Like without exception, everyone who has ever stopped me on the street has been cool.
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02:33:53.160
And it's been a pleasant experience.
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02:33:54.840
There was one exception at an event where someone was genuinely on the spectrum and
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02:33:58.880
they didn't understand like distance and you don't touch people and that, but that's as
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02:34:02.680
bad as it got.
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02:34:04.200
So that is something that's going to be weird for me to have to deal with over the next
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02:34:09.400
couple of years.
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02:34:10.400
But you know, it's the price you pay and it's hardly a small price when people come up to
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02:34:14.440
you and say you've made my life better.
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02:34:16.320
But it's just weird when you go and like, like I was at the gym and then someone tweets
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02:34:20.380
like, did I see you at the gym just now?
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02:34:22.600
It's kind of weird.
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02:34:24.000
And I'm sure it's the same for you when you're walking around and you don't think about it,
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02:34:27.920
but people know who you are and you don't know who they are that you're being watched.
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02:34:30.880
Even though it's not malevolent, it's still just, you don't get prepared for that.
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02:34:34.880
Michael, there were, there will be two really big names that wanted to do this podcast.
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02:34:42.200
We'll do this podcast that I considered to do episode 200 with.
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02:34:46.060
But then I realized why the hell talk to somebody famous when I could talk to somebody I love
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02:34:54.840
that nobody knows or cares for.
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02:34:56.840
You just hit a random number generator.
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02:35:00.680
Yeah.
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02:35:01.680
Just, I listed all the Russians I know and who is the easiest to get.
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02:35:04.800
You're the.
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02:35:05.800
Yeah, who's the most desperate for camera stuff.
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02:35:07.800
He's got a shitty book out, we can talk about that for five minutes.
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02:35:12.600
This garbage cut and paste that he did.
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02:35:15.120
Uh, it turned out okay, I think slightly above average.
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02:35:20.640
Michael, I love you.
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02:35:22.560
You're an incredible human being.
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02:35:24.040
It's an honor that you would talk to me and you'll be my friend.
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02:35:26.800
Thanks so much for doing this.
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02:35:27.800
Uh, the respect that I got, uh, when you asked me to be the guest for the anniversary episode
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02:35:34.500
was similar to the respect when my two friends, Josh and Zoe, they were going to get married
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02:35:38.520
at city hall and they said, we want someone to witness at the Basque.
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02:35:41.840
So it's one thing when people tell you they like you and respect you, which I had growing
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02:35:46.680
up.
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02:35:47.680
It's another thing when they show it.
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02:35:48.680
And this is something that I do not take lightly and I hope no one takes lightly.
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02:35:51.960
And if someone does right by you and shows you respect, going back to kind of taking
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02:35:56.360
out for dinner, thank them, buy them a candy bar, buy them a soda, do something to show
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02:36:01.840
that you don't take it for granted.
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02:36:03.840
Because I think what you and I both want to do is increase human kindness as much as possible.
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02:36:09.960
And I'm going to look at the camera, be kind to yourself, because a lot of you deserve
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02:36:16.040
it.
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02:36:17.040
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Michael Malice and thank you to Gala
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02:36:23.880
Games, Indeed, BetterHelp and Masterclass.
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02:36:27.760
Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
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02:36:31.480
And now let me leave you with some words from Jack Kerouac that perhaps begins to explain
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02:36:37.160
the nature of and the reasons for my friendship with Mr. Michael Malice.
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02:36:42.400
The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad
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02:36:47.880
to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say
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02:36:53.160
commonplace thing but burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders
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02:37:00.400
across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everybody goes
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02:37:05.920
ahhhhh.
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02:37:09.120
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.