In this episode of the podcast, Russell Brand is joined by Brett Weinstein to talk about the prospect of a third world war, and why he thinks it could be a good idea. He also talks about why you should be worried about the future of the financial system, and what it could mean for the economy if it were to end up in a Third World War, and how to prepare for the possibility of it happening. This episode is brought to you by Rumble, where we stream wildly and widely widely, widely and wildly, but our home is that sweet home of free speech itself, Rumble. You can watch me on a variety of platforms right now, including: -Rumble, where you can say whatever the hell you like, wherever you like. -The New York Times, where I talk about all sorts of existential stuff. -Tucker Carlson's new show on Tucker Carlson Tonight, where he talks about how he's going to make it in the 21st century. -My best Tucker face, which is Tucker Carlson's Tucker Carlson! - What's a monster? If you like what you hear here, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and become an Awakened Wonder! You'll get access to new episodes of the show, new interviews with Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson and Jordan Peterson, and much, much more! Subscribe to our new show, The Dark Side Of, wherever he gets his work, coming soon! Stay Free with Russell Brand, Stay Free With Russell Brand. Stay Free! - Stay Free, and Don't Tell Me What You Think I'm Working On It! . . . Stay Free: - Russell Brand's new book, by , coming soon, by Good Mythology and Good Morning America, Good Morning, Good Life, by Good Morning and Good Life . We'll See The Future, coming Soon, Good Day, by Mr. Russell Brand , by Badass Capital, and much more... Thank you for listening to Russell Brand? - Russell Brand: Stay Free? by: , Good Morning & Good Life & Good Day by: Good Morning by: Jordan Peterson & Tucker Carlson ( ) Leave Us, by: Michael Baden, My Best Tucker Carlson: & Michael Bad Morning, by Michael Badalino Thanks for Listening to Us, Please Share Us?
00:03:09.000Well Joe Biden, who happens to be in charge around here, is selling endless war as an economic opportunity.
00:03:16.000We've got Brett Weinstein on the show and I always struggle with whether it's Steen or Stein because of Epstein and Weinstein, like, you know, I never know which one is the goodies and which one, you know, I mean it's confusing but I now know it's Weinstein, Brett Weinstein, a fantastic guest on the show, and it's a brilliant conversation.
00:03:31.000We talk about all sorts of existential stuff.
00:03:35.000Now, for the first 15 minutes, we'll be available everywhere.
00:03:38.000Then, we'll only be available on Rumble.
00:03:41.000Like, subscribe, download the Rumble app, if your crazy phone will allow it, because then you'll get informed every time we... You know what I've never started saying?
00:04:08.000You know, like, I feel more like I belong to those days, I suppose.
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00:04:14.000That's basically the upside of all of that.
00:04:18.000Now, um, you are aware because you are informed.
00:04:22.000Let's see your best Tucker face, asks Maximatisis over in the chat.
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00:04:32.000We've got a great interview with Tucker Carlson coming up.
00:04:41.000Like that kind of thing, that's how he talks, isn't he?
00:04:43.000Um, now obviously this is a tentative and terrifying time for all of us with the world being divided continually with both literal military conflicts and ideological conflicts and peculiar online spats occurring and people being divided on the basis of war wherever you look.
00:05:03.000But you can rely on the legacy media to ask the right questions.
00:05:07.000In this instance what a third world war would mean for investors?
00:05:13.000What a third world war would mean for investors?
00:05:17.000Well the thing is with investors is you are a subset of another group that's called people.
00:05:22.000Now what a third world war would mean for people, which includes investors, is Death!
00:05:28.000It will mean certain death or no hold on don't be too pessimistic you might be one of the survivors that gets to live in a sort of a Kevin Costner style water world or some sort of Mad Max dystopia where currency's other people's teeth and that.
00:05:42.000It's not going to be great and anyway even looking at it as an investment opportunity Do you know what's a monster?
00:05:49.000I'll tell you what you should be invested in.
00:06:58.000Bundling together complex global conflicts ain't a good idea because they're all different and require different solutions.
00:07:06.000Also though, what's weird is Joe Biden, like say if you are affiliated with the conflict in the Middle East by virtue of religion or ethno-national identity, well Joe Biden has got a different set of priorities.
00:07:22.000Listen to John Kirby talking about that.
00:07:24.000So was the vice president correct he would veto an Israel only bill if it didn't have other issues that you were concerned about?
00:07:48.000It makes it easier to believe that All wars are ultimately perpetuated because they are profitable.
00:07:55.000Remember Julian Assange says it's the function of government to transfer public money into private hands and for his brilliance and honest journalism and exposing corruption and revealing to the public he was of course given the knighthood and the Nobel Peace Prize and oh no he wasn't he was put into Belmarsh prison without trial.
00:12:17.000It's a risky business comedy, and Elon Musk was in our country for an AI convention conference thing, and Rishi Sunak, who's our Prime Minister at the moment, probably not for very long, and again, Someone I would be critical of.
00:12:30.000I'd be critical of him because he went to them parties during Covid.
00:12:33.000You know all of the government were having parties when we were locked in our houses and at the time we're going this ain't good.
00:12:43.000He invested in Moderna hedge fund Right and then wouldn't admit if he profited from it and he was doing that before he was Chancellor and ultimately became Prime Minister.
00:12:51.000Also he gave contracts to his Mrs's firm during the Covid pandemic.
00:12:57.000Also his Mrs's firm has connections to WF so he's one of them sort of globalist Trudeau type ones.
00:13:02.000But I saw a picture of him as a little boy And like, his parents were just like, they're normal people, and it made me feel like, oh, he's just a kid.
00:13:09.000He's just like a kid trying to do well in life.
00:13:11.000I don't even think he went to Eton, and that's normally standard for a British Prime Minister.
00:13:15.000There's only one school they go to, and I've been there, and I don't mean you're bad if you've been there, because I know people that have been there that are nice.
00:13:22.000But like, Rishi Sunak, when he was a little boy, he looked kind of sweet.
00:13:26.000And I think, don't you think we've got to try and elevate ourselves to the level of love?
00:13:29.000Anyway, if you watch Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of our country, talking to Elon Musk, there's such a disparity in power.
00:13:34.000You also see Elon Musk sort of operates on that sort of very curious level that he's in, like sort of thinking around in his own sort of mind, where he's doing binary poems.
00:13:45.000And like, Sunak tries to sort of do a joke, And Jim Murphy says, I think so did Hitler.
00:14:22.000Anyway, before we watch this, tell me in the chat, would you, do you want to watch a video to round off our fun and games of the WF discussing how it's unnecessary to explain science around COVID to the plebs?
00:14:34.000Or two, Stroke risks connected to Pfizer's new two-in-one Covid flu combo vax.
00:14:41.000So one or two, do you want to see the stroke risk combo thing or WF deciding, you know, that we're too stupid to explain science to?
00:14:48.000Anyway, meanwhile, here's Rishi Sunak piggybacking off an Elon joke and making you feel sort of a bit of a shudder in your guts.
00:14:56.000No, as I was mentioning when we were talking earlier, I have to somewhat engage in deliberate suspension of disbelief.
00:15:02.000Because if I'm putting so much blood, sweat and tears into a work project and burning the 3am oil, then I'm like, wait, why am I doing this?
00:20:00.000Trump said, no I just wanted to demonstrate that there was plans for a war with Iran and I was opposed to it.
00:20:05.000This is a curious and peculiar time where Forever Wars are being sold to us as somehow necessary for the economy and beneficial, as if that's the best thing for ordinary Americans, as if there's no other way that the lives of ordinary citizens around the world could be improved without curious incidents that appear to be
00:20:23.000Oddly in alignment with the interests of the powerful and increasingly impossible to oppose on any level, even as they lead to death and destruction and annihilation and perhaps the sort of dismantling of our collective soul.
00:20:36.000All violence is wrong, either you believe that or you don't.
00:20:39.000And if you believe all violence is wrong, then there's nothing to discuss except how do we bring about diplomacy and peace in all of the world's conflicts?
00:20:46.000Surely that, at least, should be sayable.
00:20:49.000But we're seeing politicians kicked out of their parties, we're seeing the word ceasefire being Sort of essentially banned.
00:20:57.000As I've continually said during this conflict, I am not in a position to condemn those who are inflamed, engulfed and lost in emotion as a result of the original horrific attacks in Israel or the ongoing military action right now and its obvious devastating consequences.
00:21:13.000I believe that if you are directly affected by that or you have an affinity with that, who can possibly deny your right to your feelings?
00:21:20.000What is interesting for all of us, and I would like you, regardless of your faith or creed or religion, to consider these perspectives is people are making a lot of money out of this war.
00:21:29.000People are accruing a lot of power out of this war.
00:21:32.000People are being granted the ability to censor and cancel and possibly surveil and shut down as a result of this war.
00:21:39.000There are apparently plans to displace the entire Gazan population.
00:21:55.000But that's enough of my wayward proselytizing.
00:21:57.000Let's see what the President of the United States of America has to say on this subject.
00:22:01.000Of course you are aware that originally Biden said that Trump was a threat to world peace.
00:22:06.000That Trump had to be gotten out of office before he brought the world to the precipice of apocalypse or even beyond because of his mad handling of the situation with Iran.
00:22:15.000The world has changed because of what Trump has done.
00:22:18.000And the American people, including independents and some republicans, know how bad he is.
00:23:03.000In an interview with 60 Minutes earlier this month, President Joe Biden boasted of the United States' ability to fight multiple wars at the same time.
00:23:54.000You'll be familiar with both the maps of China surrounded by American military bases and now the map of Iran surrounded by American military bases.
00:24:01.000The assumption is that America is sort of somehow policing the world.
00:24:05.000And the story, I suppose, is that's to protect you from the rest of the world.
00:24:09.000The most optimistic argument, I suppose, we could make is that if America didn't occupy this position as a kind of global police force, then terrorists or the Chinese or Russians would take over your nation.
00:24:21.000But surely it would be possible to have a literal defense rather than attack industry or a defense policy that was about if anyone does anything like they're coming near us or our interests, Then we will prevent that from happening using military might.
00:24:34.000I suppose that immediately poses a bunch of questions.
00:24:37.000Are there American interests that are overseas?
00:24:43.000Are there alliances with nations that ultimately amount to resource-based alliances or alliances of dominion?
00:24:48.000And does the American foreign policy really come down to an appetite for unipolar domination and global hegemony?
00:24:55.000Do you ever get enough time in your life to say, would it be possible to just have a different type of life, where America wasn't agitating for and aggravating wars because it's somehow beneficial to the military-industrial complex?
00:25:06.000Mightn't it be better for us as ordinary Americans, just our neighbours and our homes and our day-to-day lives?
00:25:11.000I mean, you don't get time to ask those kind of questions, and certainly if you ask them out loud, you're likely to be silenced and shut down.
00:25:16.000So something very unusual is happening.
00:25:19.000Biden's string of American exceptionalist cliches has since been given a vintage election year chaser.
00:25:24.000What if more wars represents an invaluable economic opportunity?
00:25:28.000In an Oval Office address earlier this week, the president said just as much.
00:25:32.000Dressing up new military spending in the language of economic nationalism and even name-dropping particular swing states where his advisors cynically expect the message to resonate.
00:25:40.000These wars have been cynically mobilized for economic and political purposes, literally in swing states.
00:25:46.000There could be more jobs in Arizona, so Who do you want to vote for in the forthcoming election?
00:25:51.000That is not how such a complex and difficult situation should be handled.
00:25:55.000Do not sometimes think that we are approaching a more and more dangerous scenario, and that the people in charge are not reliable, that they're not telling you the truth, that the agenda is not being explicitly stated.
00:26:07.000Other than someone saying, look, it's this.
00:26:09.000Either we are able to dominate the world, or China are going to dominate the world, or Russia are going to dominate the world, or Islamic terrorists are going to dominate the world.
00:26:16.000You'd have to then evaluate whether or not that assessment was accurate, whether or not you trusted these people to carry out that operation, and whether or not they were being honest about the economic undergirdings of that argument, i.e.
00:26:27.000how Orothean, Lockheed Martin, and the donor class benefited from this situation.
00:26:31.000Until that's extracted, I don't think you can get a clear picture of what's happening.
00:26:34.000Here is Biden's garbled Oval Office speech, where he makes all sorts of extraordinary claims, again, American exceptionalism, and also how war is good for the economy, in particular, the good people of Arizona.
00:28:19.000Democracy and militarism are being presented to you as a combined idea.
00:28:24.000But that is so extraordinary, isn't it, when you consider that there is no referendum on whether or not you want wars, whether or not you want to continue to send aid packages to sustain the Ukraine-Russia war, or to advance military activity in the Middle East, or to continue to aggravate China into potential conflict over there in Asia.
00:28:42.000So the idea that it's a democratic arsenal is simply not true.
00:28:46.000It's at best An arsenal that serves the interests of the powerful who have made a set of decisions that they're telling you are good for you, but I've had good cause to not trust them.
00:29:00.000Last week, the White House sent a letter to Congress outlining what it called critical national security funding needs and tabling a proposal worth nearly $106 billion.
00:29:09.000According to an analysis by Steven Semler, much of that money represents little more than a stimulus to the US military itself.
00:29:16.000Subsidies to weapons plants and shipyards, the stockpiling of weaponry, etc.
00:29:20.000Let's take a break from the intensity of disasters around the world in the ongoing Omnicrisis to make sure that you are safe and survive this oncoming apocalypse.
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00:30:18.000Visit twc.health forward slash brand to get your medical emergency kit and use the code brand for a 10% discount at the checkout.
00:30:28.000Okay, let's get back to this story which demonstrates why you're gonna need that kit.
00:30:31.000As if that were not enough, Politico has reported that administration officials are now circulating talking points in Congress that argue that providing military aid is good for American jobs.
00:30:39.000Using the jobs argument to sell weapons transfers is precisely backwards.
00:30:43.000Selling arms to combatant nations must be justified on the basis of their security and human rights consequences, not the jobs and profits they generate.
00:30:51.000But what is the real agenda that's driving American involvement in these global conflicts?
00:30:59.000Support was declining for continuing aid to Ukraine because of the failure of the counter-offensive, because there were obvious domestic problems, notably Hawaii, where American people felt their resources might be better directed.
00:31:09.000Let's have a look at how the defence industry really regards this type of conflict, as opposed to what they say publicly.
00:31:16.000After Israel declared war in response to Hamas killing over 1,400 Israelis and taking around 200 hostages, the stocks of major American and European war profiteers soared, according to a report from Eyes on the Ties.
00:31:28.000Five industry giants collectively recorded $195.6 billion in military-related revenue last year.
00:31:35.000They are Boeing, $30.8 billion, General Dynamics, $30.4 billion, Lockheed Martin, $69.3 billion,
00:32:08.000Eyes on the Ties also highlighted our chief executives are handsomely compensated and the CEO's ties to Big Pharma, the fossil fuel industry, Wall Street and foreign policy think tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations and Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
00:32:22.000During third quarter earnings calls this month, analysts from Morgan Stanley and TD Bank took note of this potential profit-making escalation in conflict and asked unusually blunt questions about the financial benefit of the war between Israel and Hamas.
00:32:34.000The death toll, which so far includes over 7,000 Palestinians and over 1,400 Israelis, wasn't top of mind for T.D.
00:32:41.000Cohen's Kai Von Ruhmer, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst specializing in the aerospace industry.
00:32:47.000His question was about the upside for General Dynamics, an aerospace and weapons company in which T.D.
00:32:51.000Asset Management holds over $16 million in stock.
00:32:56.000We have this $106 billion request from the President, said Von Ruhmer during General Dynamics earnings call on October the 25th.
00:33:02.000Can you give us some general colour in terms of areas where you think you could see incremental acceleration in demand?
00:33:08.000This particular conflict is more divisive than any other conflict in the world, maybe in world history for all we know.
00:33:16.000Even in formerly allied and aligned spaces like the Conservative right or online pundits or left-wing commentators.
00:33:23.000There are new fissures and fractures emerging, new opportunities for censorship, new forms of conflict even just when it comes to communication with people that aren't directly involved.
00:33:33.000Even though some people of course are ideologically or religiously involved and as I've said many times I wouldn't seek to comment on their position.
00:33:39.000Plainly they're invested in a way that's deeply emotional and suggests a deep connection.
00:33:43.000But to hear people talking about it in purely economic terms I think is very very important.
00:33:48.000And it suggests that however powerful, upsetting and awful and devastating this conflict is, all of the lives being lost by everybody involved, a devastating and awful conflict, which personally I believe we should all be praying for an immediate end to, is bringing about profit and opportunity to some very powerful and influential interests.
00:34:07.000Do you imagine for one moment that the perpetuation of the Ukraine-Russia conflict isn't somehow connected to the amount of donations and lobbying these enormous companies are able to spend?
00:34:17.000Do you think that it's exclusively that conflict that's affected in that way, even having heard just a piece of that conversation?
00:34:25.000So while, out of respect for those of you that are directly affected on both sides of this conflict, and we pray for the victims, we pray for them, and I pray for an end to this war, isn't it clear that at least part of what's driving this is profit?
00:34:37.000Or do you think that this conflict is different from other conflicts when it comes from the ability for these powerful companies to extract profit, because they don't see it any differently?
00:34:46.000In the case of Ukraine, sending arms without an accompanying diplomatic strategy runs the risk of enabling a long grinding war that could even lead to escalation to a direct US-Russian confrontation.
00:34:56.000The suggestion that this support should continue because it creates American jobs is misguided and dangerous.
00:35:01.000Yeah, where are you going to be working in some post-apocalyptic nightmare?
00:35:04.000Seems like a risky policy and seems like a good time to mention Julian Assange's famous edict that they don't want a short war in Afghanistan, they want a long war in Afghanistan because a long war is more profitable.
00:35:15.000Do you imagine, based on what you're hearing, that that mentality has, poof, disappeared and replaced by, how can we support the people that we ideologically agree with?
00:35:22.000This is terrible, we all have to stand together at this time.
00:35:25.000Does that seem to be the MO of this particular set of interests?
00:35:41.000The arsenal of democracy does not support democracy.
00:35:45.000It supports hegemony and the unipolar agenda of a very particular set of interests.
00:35:49.000And those numbers may grow as heart-rending scenes of death and destruction continue to make their way back to America.
00:35:55.000While the jobs argument should take a backseat to strategic and human rights concerns, it's worth exploring its validity since it's been introduced into the debate.
00:36:02.000Although it does seem ridiculous that as human beings sharing a planet together, we would consider jobs and finances as in any way superior arguments to life itself, humanity, the deaths of children, any children from anywhere, as a parent, as a human obviously, That's appalling and should be prevented as quickly as possible.
00:36:23.000There are many more ways to create more and better jobs without resorting to increased weapon spending.
00:36:54.000Let's just have ice cream vans driving up and down giving ice creams away.
00:36:57.000Well, that does create more jobs than Armageddon.
00:37:00.000OK, let's just release dogs into the street and then we can have people catch those dogs and see which dogs is running faster.
00:37:07.000Well, it does create more jobs than this government weapons outlay that could also lead to Armageddon.
00:37:12.000Let's just stand in the street and throw fruit at one another.
00:37:15.000I mean, like anything, anything you want to do would create more jobs and potentially not kill us all.
00:37:20.000Forging a less militarized foreign policy and rolling back a Pentagon budget that is soaring towards a trillion dollars per year would open the way to building a more peaceful and sustainable economy.
00:37:50.000But the first priority, especially with respect to Israel-Gaza, must be to stop the killing and end the war, not debate the economic effects of arms spending.
00:37:58.000Of course that has become unsayable because people are so hurt by this terrible conflict and by the atrocities of recent weeks, but surely there has to come a time we're talking about peace in evolving The jobs argument should have no place in this hugely consequential discussion.
00:38:22.000As Pennsylvania representative Summer Lee remarked this week, the deluge of post-September 2001 expenditure not only incurred a cosmic cost to the public, but made the world less safe in the process.
00:38:33.000Post 9-11, our federal government's decision to fund Endless Wars cost 4.5 million lives, including over 7,000 U.S.
00:38:39.000service members, and displaced tens of millions in a time of deep pain after 3,000 beloved American lives were brutally stolen by Al-Qaeda on September the 11th.
00:38:51.000Perhaps it's just worth looking at some alternative versions of reality.
00:38:55.000Perhaps it's worth questioning what America's role in the world is.
00:38:59.000Perhaps it's worth inquiring how significant is the impact of the military-industrial complex and these powerful and influential companies on American foreign policy.
00:39:08.000Are they doing what they say they're doing in, for example, Ukraine and Russia?
00:39:12.000And then once you've come to a decision there, think about other conflicts.
00:39:17.000Again, when talking about this discussion, I don't want to hurt or offend anybody.
00:39:20.000There's enough hurt and offense and pain and suffering in this world.
00:39:24.000I would love to be part of a group that talk about peace and benefit and what we share as a species rather than what divides us.
00:39:31.000And if we are afraid to have that conversation, if we have no appetite for that conversation, if people are being condemned for mentioning that conversation, then we really are in trouble.
00:40:40.000Have you been participating in ARC with Jordan Peterson et al.?
00:40:43.000I was at the ARC conference and I was at the, I don't even know what you would call it, but the Jordan Peterson extravaganza at the O2 last night as well.
00:41:04.000We've been speaking and communicating recently and I suppose there's a sense, an unavoidable sense, Brett, that we're in a very critical period.
00:41:15.000Do you know, like, it's not that long ago, it seems to me, that the apocalyptic preachers were peripheral and marginal figures, derided and maligned at the time as crackpots and lunatics and conspiracy theorists, and indeed they were the first to be picked off, cancelled, removed, even before the term cancelled existed.
00:41:35.000There were people that were eliminated from public discourse for a variety of reasons, but In retrospect, it looks like they were right about a good many things.
00:41:46.000You will see a series of global crisis, an escalation of tensions, an increase in censorship, the legitimization of surveillance.
00:41:53.000And this is something that you've been talking about yourself for a while, I would say, from a more credible and certainly from an academic background.
00:42:02.000And that was germane during the pandemic, which was a time of great cleansing, censorship and control.
00:42:10.000Now that we're to a degree on the other side of it, how do you feel that the continuation of control will be exerted going forward, now that if we're indeed not in the pandemic era, how is it going to be possible to legitimise the kind of authoritarianism that became normalised in that period?
00:42:31.000Well, there are a number of answers to that question.
00:42:33.000The most obvious of them has to do with the World Health Organization and the pair of structural modifications that are currently moving through that body under the heading of pandemic preparedness.
00:42:48.000And for those who are not paying attention to this, These documents, I think they are designed to be so boring that you will not notice them, but what they contain is essentially the framework for a global tyranny that could be triggered by the next pandemic, but pandemic
00:43:08.000is defined so loosely that anything will do, including climate change, and that having defined such a pandemic, all of the signatory countries to the World Health Organization would effectively become subordinate.
00:43:24.000And within the treaty modifications that are being proposed, there are various requirements, for example, that if the World Health Organization were to decide that Some threat to public health was sufficiently severe.
00:43:39.000It could, for example, mandate things including vaccines and gene therapy.
00:43:44.000I kid you not, it's actually, it's named in these proposed modifications.
00:43:50.000And maybe the icing on the cake is That they have also anticipated the conversations that might break out if they attempted this, and they have carved out a right to dictate to the signatory countries what sorts of censorship measures they might have to deploy.
00:44:10.000I think the way to understand this is if you look at what happened during the COVID so-called pandemic, they attempted to deploy a narrative that we were simply supposed to swallow and it didn't work because effectively the force that was imposing this didn't really understand the danger of podcasters discussing these things outside of the normal channels and so the narrative broke apart.
00:44:39.000And you know, in the US now we have something like 3% of people are taking the latest boosters.
00:44:45.000That tells you how badly the narrative fared.
00:44:48.000But they have decided to not lose to us again.
00:44:52.000And they're creating the architecture that would make it impossible to have the kinds of discussions that we did have during COVID.
00:45:00.000Yes, when the word globalism is used, I understand it as meaning the subordination of sovereignty in the manner that you describe, the anti-democratic process that seems to be enshrined in this treaty, the ability to just demand that nations impose preordained regulations, including I feel like it's 5% of the national health budget, and Yeah, and as you say, a curiously loose definition of the term or word pandemic itself, and I was unaware, I missed what seems to be a crucial point, the ability to censor.
00:45:37.000I'm always struck by how this new form of tyranny is masked in the livery of a kind of gentle bureaucracy of Recently, we received more YouTube restrictions. We've
00:45:52.000already been demonetized. It seemed that the UK government asked for our channel to be demonetized
00:45:59.000and YouTube in particular agreed. But this has been escalated actually and now we can't
00:46:06.000post. It seems like kind of niche to say you can't post external links.
00:46:11.000links and stuff like that. But really what this is, is censorship and control of information
00:46:16.000is being posed and imposed to an unprecedented level, because I suppose of this unprecedented
00:46:23.000technology. I suppose how I came to look at the pandemic was as a period of revelation.
00:46:29.000It revealed how pre-existing power structures operate, how their interests converge, and
00:46:37.000what their agenda looks like, visible not only in the instances where it was carried
00:46:42.000out, but in particular perhaps, where it was resisted. And you are saying, Brett, that
00:46:48.000this WHO treaty is in a sense the legislation for the continuation of those measures.
00:46:54.000After this initial attempt has to a degree failed but to a great degree succeeded if by success you mean the profits of those pharma companies if by success you mean the ability for nations where you wouldn't have believed it possible to have successful lockdowns or the measure of control exerted people giving up norms pretty much almost immediately and largely unquestioningly the kind of good faith that was handed over and it seems that to me since then that there's been Perhaps I don't know when it began anymore, Brett.
00:48:01.000Yeah, and actually the sets of conflicts and the way they're being funded in bundles spoken about and conflated in quite peculiar ways.
00:48:10.000You know, the most recent package of 106 billion, some of it for Ukraine, some of it for Israel and Palestine, some of it for China, Taiwan.
00:48:20.000All of it for the military-industrial complex.
00:48:22.000Do you see this as being part of a kind of set of crises that are never-ending and always have as their end point, regardless of the complexity within the crisis, the ability to assert control?
00:48:35.000Well, there are about 20 things in there and I know I'm going to forget some of them, but there are a number of things going on.
00:48:42.000One is there is this incessant push for centralization and The violation of a sensible principle for governance that actually oddly comes out of Catholicism called subsidiarity.
00:49:45.000You know, the pandemic masqueraded as a series of interventions that would only make sense in the context of a government that was absolutely obsessed with our safety.
00:50:07.000So the idea that they're suddenly so concerned that we're going to catch COVID and that we, you know, might end up in the hospital over it is preposterous in light of, you know, the food supply and the poor quality of what it is that they're allowing us to eat.
00:50:18.000And in fact, you know, the strange food pyramids that they've put together that have us eating exactly the wrong things.
00:50:26.000going out and making vitamin D in the sun, right?
00:50:30.000They're not obsessed with our safety and well-being, but if they can claim a crisis in which they can invoke that, then they can do all sorts of things, including censor us.
00:50:51.000In fact, I think we have to assume it is.
00:50:53.000But it is distracting people from this, you know, guided missile headed directly for our sovereignty and our capacity to even invoke informed consent in the defense of our own bodies.
00:51:07.000We're not noticing that because we have this very dramatic crisis, and we are right to be paying attention to that crisis.
00:51:12.000There's a tremendous hazard in it that this crisis, A, as bad as it is in the Middle East and as critical as what goes on in the Middle East is to the world, it also could escalate into a global crisis in which, you know, we might be very directly involved.
00:51:28.000So there's all sorts of reasons to be paying attention.
00:51:31.000The fact that our attention span is divided between these crises, and as you point out, that there is a pattern, a never-ending series of crises, that almost looks like it was designed to keep us reacting out of fear, to keep our amygdala in charge and to sideline our conscious minds, I don't know, maybe that's just the nature of the modern world, but to the extent that we are stuck in this, you know, reactive, fear-based response, we're not thinking very clearly.
00:51:58.000And we need to, because the only way out of this stuff is to think clearly.
00:52:02.000You know, what options are we not seeing, right?
00:52:04.000We're being told that everything involves two sides.
00:52:07.000You're going to pick which side you're on and we'll know whether you're a decent person based on which flag you're waving, right?
00:52:14.000And it's a disaster for humanity, and I hope we will get to this later in the discussion, but it is a disaster for humanity to allow ourselves to be dragged back into a previous mode in which civilizations functioned and away from the superior mode that, yes, we had never completed, but we were well on the way to getting there.
00:52:35.000We had a really good prototype of an alternative system that was in fact fairer, safer, more liberating, more prone to have us pursue meaning and compassion and all of the things that we value about ourselves.
00:52:49.000Those were on the table and they're slipping away from us as we're now very focused on conflicts that we've been told are so utterly binary that, you know, we will out ourselves as immoral if we ask any questions at all.
00:53:02.000Do you mean that liberal democracy was succeeding?
00:53:07.000That there was a period sort of in the, are you saying the 20th century where it appeared like there was meaningful progress and something has pivotally, there's been a pivotal and fundamental change.
00:53:21.000What is the period that you're talking about where things were on the table to use your phrase?
00:53:26.000What has been lost and when did this happen?
00:53:31.000People who follow me will know that I use a term called metaphorical truth.
00:53:35.000And what I mean by metaphorical truth, these are ideas that if you act as if they're true, they work.
00:53:43.000That doesn't mean that they're perfectly literally true.
00:53:46.000The story I would tell, which I think is at least metaphorically true, and I believe it's probably close to literally true also, is that the founding fathers of the United States accidentally solved a problem in trying to confederate the colonies.
00:54:02.000They created a system that didn't perfectly solve the problem of people rigging the system in their own favor, but it solved a lot of the problem.
00:54:13.000Enough That the system actually founded the modern West.
00:54:19.000And it became contagious because when people saw how productive a system that did not rig itself in favor of particular constituencies was, they of course wanted in.
00:54:31.000Now, sometimes they mimicked it without the particular constitutional provisions that really made it work.
00:54:37.000But as long as everybody was loosely on board with, you know, free speech, for example, it didn't really matter whether it was inscribed in your constitution.
00:54:45.000So, to make the story succinct, the West is essentially the agreement not to rig the world in favor of your people, to collaborate with people based on the fact that they bring something to the table that makes them worth collaborating with and to ignore their skin color and the shape of their noses and the particular traditions in their religious places of worship, right?
00:55:07.000You would put those things aside and you collaborate because there's wealth to be produced by teaming up.
00:55:13.000Now, this system is better in virtually every way that it could be better, but it has one vulnerability, which is it's fragile.
00:55:20.000And the problem is that when it breaks down, we should know why it breaks down.
00:55:24.000It breaks down because the productivity runs out, the growth that it would produce runs out.
00:55:30.000And when that happens, it's like a game of musical chairs in which the music has stopped
00:55:35.000and instead of being one chair short, you know, 30% of the chairs are missing and people
00:55:41.000start looking for who they can trust and then all of that lineage stuff comes back.
00:55:48.000And my claim is that this is where we are in history, that all of the growth that we
00:55:53.000would normally be able to produce has run its course.
00:55:57.000There will be future bits of growth that we will get to by innovating new technologies, for example, but we never know when this is going to happen.
00:56:05.000Many games have been played to pretend that we have growth.
00:56:08.000Most of those games have run their course and the bills are coming due.
00:56:12.000And so as that, you know, looming Unbreakable recession shows up on our radar people default back into this lineage against lineage violence and the problem the really big problem is The world was like that that was all of history until the West emerged
00:56:35.000All of the greatest tragedies are born of this kind of thinking.
00:56:39.000But it was at least possible for humanity to move along this way.
00:56:44.000It probably isn't possible for us to do that.
00:56:46.000If we descend as a globe back into lineage against lineage violence, if that just comes to characterize everything with modern weaponry, I don't think humanity has much time left.
00:56:57.000So my claim, and you know, I don't want people to get this depressed sense, I wouldn't be doing the stuff I do if I didn't think that there was a way out.
00:57:05.000But if we don't find our way out, then the point is, it's a short ride.
00:57:10.000And we have to reinvigorate the West in order to escape that.
00:57:13.000May I offer that it seems to me that also masked within that ideology is that the consensus and teaming out that you described was predicated on a set of materialistic ideals.
00:57:24.000I don't just mean materialistic in terms of commodity, I mean materialistic in terms of rationalism and that which is measurable.
00:57:30.000That it was devoid of a spiritual dimension in so much as that collaboration was only based on productivity And even Marxist critiques, one of the areas where that analysis remains absolutely verifiably true, is that, as you have said in your own description of this problem, is prone to boom-bust cycles.
00:57:50.000And if that becomes the raison d'etre and determining principle of an entire culture, when it inevitably falls into decline, it's exposed as if not nihilistic, then somehow, I don't know undeniably, Entropic.
00:58:04.000And it feels to me, Brett, that part of the failure is that while the lineage traditions are plainly tribalized and conflict is baked into them, I feel like that Schmittian dialectic of othering becomes germane here, that in order for the in-group to be valuable, we have to have this other group.
00:58:25.000And that feels to be getting metastasized under some new terrible global Dominion or domain, rather.
00:58:33.000Now, what I have long felt is a challenge, whilst I feel that you're entirely right about subsidiarity.
00:58:46.000The thing that I like, I like subsidiarity because I like the idea of power being as close to the individuals affected by it as possible.
00:58:53.000That we let go of the idea of progress being about pace and efficiency, as if there's some Immutable, incontrovertible telos, this thing that we're trying to get to, when plainly that is baked into the models of commodity and built-in obsolescence and disposability and materialism and individualism.
00:59:11.000If all that matters is that which is measurable, then in the end what I'm left with is the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain.
00:59:18.000And it seems interesting to me that many spiritual doctrines are about Caution when it comes to pleasure and suffering being the determinants, your own preferences becoming your default ideology.
00:59:33.000So like it was interesting you said at the beginning of that, that people sort of mimicked it without inscribing some of its constitutional principles and it still worked anyway because it's an effective system.
00:59:45.000But where it has failed, it has failed monumentally and it has failed sort of in historic terms, Quite quickly in terms of empire like it's like it's rattled itself into annihilation indeed if what we're experiencing now is some sort of burgeoning end time pretty rapidly and I feel Brett and I do and it's not who gives a shit what I feel I'm asking you
01:00:07.000Don't you feel that there's a requirement for a set of values and principles that go beyond materialism and individualism and somehow capture something arcane, divine, unitary, and sort of that respects the sanctity of the individual and the community?
01:00:21.000And when we rebuild out of this, it's not just built on, why don't we buddy up so as we can trade shit?
01:01:04.000Its objective is to have us get our genes as far into the future as we can.
01:01:09.000It would be wise of us to recognize that one of the – that's a sentence you could say for any species, literally, any species that has ever existed.
01:01:17.000The objective is to get genes that are contained by the organisms in that species as far into the future as possible.
01:01:26.000It is not something that any reasonable person should want to honor.
01:01:30.000You are a robot with that goal, but it's like being a cyborg that has discovered you have a mission that you don't think is a good idea.
01:01:39.000So we need to override our program and say actually the capacity to engage in rational evaluation, to establish values that are meaningful, to pursue objectives that are not fundamentally genetic, that's actually the better part of what we are.
01:01:59.000That's something that we cannot say other species are capable of.
01:02:04.000And so the part of us that is special is a means to an end, a genetic end that is not interesting and not honorable.
01:02:12.000What we should do is we should turn the tables on evolution and we should say, how do we take the stuff that's actually really cool that we're uniquely capable of and provide an environment that fosters it?
01:02:24.000Which does go directly to, I don't know if you want to call it a religious perspective or a spiritual perspective or whatever it is.
01:02:34.000The way we live has to satisfy that need in us.
01:02:41.000And I won't say I don't know what it is that would satisfy that need and function in the long term to stabilize what I'm calling the West, this ability to collaborate.
01:02:52.000But I'm not arguing that the reason to do it is because it produces lots and lots of growth and because, you know, it's productive.
01:03:02.000I'm arguing that it should be done because of all of the auxiliary things that it allows to take place.
01:03:08.000We want a world in which warfare is less likely, in which violence is less likely, in which people are truly liberated to do meaningful things.
01:03:17.000And the best hope we have of doing that is putting aside our lineage differences and collaborating, which is what has happened in the West.
01:03:28.000We've never completely gotten rid of racism, for example, but we have done better than any alternative.
01:03:34.000So that's why I'm arguing we should do it, is actually to foster the best characteristics that humans have and allow those things to spread.
01:03:44.000Within the limits of rationalism it's difficult to continue to advocate only for rationalism when we've seen where rationalism has brought us and it feels to a degree that that's what you're attempting to do.
01:03:58.000Lewis's claim or observation The rationalist scientist in the laboratory observing a far-off nebulae posits that the rules that are applicable locally to the scientist would be applicable here, using the rationalism that he himself claims is the result of a set of chaotic processes with no teleology or intention, no trace of divinity,
01:04:25.000that the temporal is absolute and the spatial is absolute and not necessarily abstract but
01:04:30.000potentially sort of localised customs that may not be absolute across the entirety of
01:04:38.000the universe. And what I feel, and then I would, wouldn't I, is that we're buttressing
01:04:45.000against some precipice that's going to require a new resource.
01:04:50.000In a sense, this is kind of, I suppose, the Christian idea, is it?
01:04:55.000Maybe that you can't get beyond here now unless there is some transformational, transcendent experience.
01:05:02.000Unless the individual is willing to somehow...
01:05:06.000It's not only in Christianity, it's sort of in Stoicism, certainly Marcus Aurelius and within Buddhism.
01:05:11.000The idea of death of self, the idea that there is a purpose that is greater.
01:05:14.000Now, from your perspective and your field of obvious expertise, evolutionary biology, where you can demonstrate the efficacy and the function of genes and how they behave and how they mutate and how they succeed and how they fail.
01:05:25.000Of course, I recognize that that is the sort of track that you will use as the dominant frequency for formulating your opinions and perspectives.
01:05:37.000But I wonder if within that, isn't it necessary for us to collectively invite the possibility that the reason for our distinction as a species is, you're going to have to get quite close to saying there is something sacred about human beings or important or special or different or something, and that there is something unitary between us, something shared between us, Otherwise, I think it's easier to make the argument for domination.
01:06:05.000It's easier to say this set is better than that set, which is the argument, you know, American hegemony, provoking China into a South Seas war, saying that Russia caused this war themselves, when there's an obvious argument that there was provocation.
01:06:22.000In a way, to deny, to somehow say America should get out of these conflicts, that we should be looking at maximum democracy, maximum subsidiarity, in order to make that argument, you have to somehow... I don't know if it's enough to do that on the basis of economics or that the West was a Great success and look at these pillars and columns or look at Michelangelo or whatever.
01:06:47.000I don't think we're going to have to reach deeper into somehow the mystery of consciousness, somehow the limitations of some inkling of the divine, some dormant near silent spark that perhaps may yet feed us something that you might find in the Tao or in Meister Eckhart.
01:07:29.000And, you know, I freely talk in terms of miracles.
01:07:33.000I refer to a god that I do not believe is a literal creature that would be recognizable to us.
01:07:38.000But I don't hesitate to use the metaphor because I think it's very powerful, right?
01:07:42.000So I'm comfortable with the idea that the proper way to bring everybody on board with the story that we can rationally deduce must be the way forward is not a rational It's not going to work.
01:08:00.000For one thing, it's just going to strike everyone as too cold to be meaningful.
01:08:05.000So, yes, the problem, though, is that when you say, OK, we have all of these traditions and they contain some sort of metaphysics that is fundamentally about the divine.
01:08:42.000If you look carefully at Bibles, you will often find, especially the farther back you go, the more dominated by lineage against lineage violence that they are, you will find perfectly immoral things spelled out very clearly in these texts.
01:08:57.000You could make the argument that the purpose then should be to select the stuff that we should honor and, you know, downregulate the stuff that's no good.
01:09:05.000But there's a more fundamental problem.
01:09:08.000Because those belief systems evolved, They are adapted to the environments in which they came about.
01:09:21.000Any ancient tradition is now placing those who adhere to it in a kind of limbo where our traditions are not a good match for the problems of modernity.
01:09:31.000So we have to, to the extent that there is a fundamental human need to think of these things in terms of something deeply spiritual, it can't be some version that we reboot from ancient history.
01:10:01.000Although the accoutrements are doubtlessly cultural, what else would they be?
01:10:05.000I mean, it would be odd if they weren't written in Hebrew or Aramaic or Arabic, given, you know, and that they didn't bear reference to shepherds and goat herds and the things that were sort of prevalent in that time.
01:10:17.000What interests me, I suppose, Brett, And in particular where there seems to be an invitation to examine the relationship between that which is apparently external and that which is apparently internal.
01:10:32.000The fact that there are metaphors and nomenclature that you would anticipate being localized to conjecture otherwise would be pointless and implausible.
01:10:44.000What I feel We're perhaps moving towards together is that when this becomes, you know, when I consider evolution to be kind of linear, and I suppose one would because it's generational, like, you know, it would be sort of split in and diverse and invisible.
01:11:02.000And I'm sure there are all sorts of patterns that you're aware of that I can't even begin to conceive of.
01:11:06.000One of the things I'm noting is that Customised and customary traditions that were necessarily local because of the way the world was then are now being not only applied to a different time, and that's an interesting idea because what does that mean?
01:11:21.000Culture has evolved, things have moved forward, have they regressed?
01:11:25.000Are the false markers of technology and medicine being used to present an idea of progress that perhaps is not absolutely true?
01:11:32.000Aren't many of the problems we're experiencing now from diet to screen time the result of the fact that we're fundamentally similar to the pre-agricultural beast that we once were?
01:11:42.000Certainly from a biological perspective, if you dumped me 10,000 years ago, mightn't I adapt?
01:11:50.000So what I'm saying is, These ideas don't work.
01:11:55.000The areas where we find challenges, it seems, in one way, I'm inviting us to consider it, is when you globalise it, and when you try and advocate for a kind of a unipolar position, when you say that the world should be Islamic, or the world should be Judaic, or the world should be Christian, or the world should be secular, it becomes tense, and taut, and fraught, or the world should be Zen, or the world should be Tao.
01:12:20.000Isn't it that This position of subsidiarity has to be deployed.
01:12:25.000And in order to do that, could it not be argued that within all of these traditions that it
01:12:29.000could be argued, but certainly it should not be imposed, that there are very peculiar local
01:12:34.000customs and beliefs that seem somewhat out of step with our sort of what you're posing
01:12:40.000as a sort of a Western ideal for all its problems has many successes, which in a way is what
01:12:45.000we're criticizing for those biblical traditions.
01:12:47.000They've got some great ideas and wisdom traditions, but they've also got throw someone off a tower
01:12:51.000or throw stones or all of that stuff that we point out, the violence and brutality and madness.
01:12:55.000What I'm saying is that unless the real problem is an attempt to centralize authority to a
01:13:01.000degree that whatever it is, even if you just didn't some weird Icelandic thing that you
01:13:05.000wouldn't recognize as a religion or new emergent progressive gender identity type of
01:13:10.000Like, unless we get to a point where it's like, what is it that's driving this tendency to centralise and coalesce power?
01:13:54.000But that could happen sort of en masse as people start to recognize that the central hegemonic forces are not beneficial.
01:14:00.000So even though there are things in religions as there are in the Western tradition that are at odds with the principles that one might encourage and present as defining, it's Wouldn't matter, would it, if there wasn't this sort of idea that we're all progressing together and the general trajectory of that progression is one centralised set of interests that are able to dominate and that you can observe because you saw in the pandemic where all the money went.
01:14:50.000We've got two kinds of people on Earth today.
01:14:52.000We've got those who are basically up for the idea that we should get along, right?
01:14:57.000Now, that's not a competition-free view of the world.
01:15:01.000That is, hey, let's cooperate to compete.
01:15:04.000Let's do this without violence, and let's not rig the world in favor of people who happen to carry our genes, which, frankly, we shouldn't care about at all.
01:15:12.000So, I'm not arguing that The West should impose itself on everybody.
01:15:18.000I'm arguing that we have a de facto problem, which is that some of us are on board.
01:15:23.000And this cuts through, I think, every nation.
01:15:25.000It cuts through every population that I'm aware of.
01:15:28.000That there are some people who are on board for the idea of, you know, swords into plowshares and Not using violence between lineages to settle stuff.
01:15:40.000And there are those who aren't, who see the world in terms of my people need to dislodge other people in order to continue.
01:15:47.000And the world is going to have to settle on this superior way of being.
01:15:52.000And I mean superior by virtue of the fact that it takes all of the things that we would describe as honorable values and it augments them.
01:15:59.000That does not mean that people have to pick the same system that we have to live under
01:16:50.000This might be better done through a spiritual portrayal.
01:16:55.000But nonetheless, I'm going to use the tools that I've got.
01:16:58.000And the way to do this is to illustrate the advantages that come to people by embracing these sometimes counterintuitive principles.
01:17:13.000And then the trick is to figure out how to stabilize a world so that the ebb and flow, as you point out, the natural tendency, boom and bust, does not trigger us to fall back into that violence.
01:19:18.000Those temple complexes, and really I encourage you You should see these things, and you should go to some of them that are not well known, some of them that are still somewhat embedded in the juggle, and walk on these complexes.
01:19:30.000You know, you've got a temple that you see because it sticks out of the canopy, but it's on some giant platform with other structures.
01:19:40.000That is to say, if, you know, the archaeologists have gone in and they find layer after layer, these things were built up over the course of hundreds of years.
01:19:49.000What that implies is that this was a culture that had surplus, and what they were doing with the surplus was they were investing it in these public monuments, right?
01:19:59.000They were investing it also in an elaborate system of roads, right?
01:20:03.000Stone roads that went between these city-states, through the jungle.
01:20:08.000So, if you do that, if you commit yourself to taking surplus and putting it into public architecture, One thing you are not doing is allowing your population to grow in proportion to the amount of food available.
01:20:23.000And the problem with letting your population grow, which is naturally what evolution will do to you, if you have a surplus, your population will grow until you don't have a surplus.
01:20:31.000That's part of where the boom and bust comes from.
01:20:32.000If we've got a surplus, we're going to burn it, and then we won't have one, and then we got to find another.
01:20:37.000So, if instead of allowing that to happen, if instead of allowing, you know, suppose you have 10 good agricultural years in a row because the weather's been hospitable.
01:20:45.000Well, then your population would tend to grow.
01:20:47.000And then as soon as you have ten bad years in a row, you're going to have violence because you're not going to have enough food to go around.
01:20:52.000And when people don't have enough food to go around, they do the natural thing, which is they try to get it for themselves and their family.
01:20:58.000But if you invest in the years that are really good in the growth of this, you know, if you make a public investment of these giant structures, which Creates work for people it creates an impression that you are part of something very durable much more durable than you are Then in the bad years, you don't have to build them up and nobody has to starve so You can imagine from a Western perspective that if we were to take an enlightened view of the relationship between you know market forces and our well-being and we were to optimize for something like our resistance to violence
01:21:35.000That we could invest in something that was publicly available, that enriched us as a people, and in bad times we could invest less or nothing in it, and we would not have to resort to any of these other mechanisms.
01:21:52.000That does suggest that the Maya, this long-lived population, had a means for Basically flattening out those boom and bust cycles, which would have been agricultural in their case, in a way that would have reduced violence.
01:22:19.000Yeah, I'm sugge... I mean, we don't know.
01:22:21.000We actually know more about the Maya than any of the other New World cultures because they also, among other great accomplishments, had a written language.
01:22:47.000But I think what must have happened is that they had a religious story in which the gods
01:22:53.000undoubtedly wanted them to build up these temples.
01:22:56.000that those stories, you know, evolved.
01:23:00.000And the reason that they stuck and were elaborated was because they insulated these populations from the natural boom and bust violence cycles that they would otherwise have faced.
01:23:28.000But these things were metaphorical portfolios of beliefs that if you followed them, you did well.
01:23:38.000And they have all, you know, the example I often use for metaphorical truth.
01:23:42.000Is in the Old Testament you will find that the deity does not want you shitting in camp.
01:23:50.000He's disgusted by this and you don't want to piss him off so you don't do it, right?
01:23:54.000That is a metaphorical belief that gets you to behave as if you understand the germ theory of disease more than 2,000 years before anybody knew what a germ was, right?