Peter Boghossian is a philosophy professor at the University of Portland State, an atheist, and a martial artist. In this episode, we discuss critical thinking in jiu-jitsu and martial arts, and why you should try jiu jitsu if you don't believe in God. He also talks about how he got into jiujitsu, and what it means to be a skeptic in the martial arts world, and how he became a believer in reason and rationality through his training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. We also talk about the importance of critical thinking and how it can be applied in martial arts and other aspects of life, and the role it plays in the development of the mind and the mind-body. He's a great guy, and I'm excited to have him on the podcast. If you're interested in learning more about his background, check out his YouTube channel, where you can find him, and his articles, here. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast, and for supporting it! I really appreciate it. Peace, Blessings, Cheers, EJ & Rory. -Jon Sorrentino Jon & Rory <333 -Jon & Rory <3 Jon & EJ -Rory Evan Cheers Jon & Rachael Mikey Tim Chris Chad Matt Paul #: Jake Justin Andrew Ian James Joe Jason Michael Matthew Sam Patrick David Julian Daniel Alex John Ben Brian Dan Chacho Mark Will Kevin Steven Kieran Brett Can Shane Jordan Christian Kacz Jack Isamu Conor Josh Dave Ryan Andru Luke Greg Thanks, Jon Stephen Don t forget to tweet us about it? and the podcast What s your thoughts on this episode? We'll be posting it on the next episode can you tweet us on insta or your thoughts about it & your views on it or any of your favorite moments from the podcast? )
00:01:30.000Well, Kempo's got some good striking techniques.
00:01:33.000They just don't have an overall comprehensive system to deal with grappling.
00:01:37.000Yeah, I tried Jeet Kune Do, I tried Taekwondo, I tried Tai Chi, so I tried them all, and then I actually, one of my turning points was when Ron Van Cleef, who was in the original UFCs, early UFCs.
00:01:51.000Yeah, he was in like UFC 3 or 4 or something like that.
00:02:31.000Well, I started in New York City before the UFCs came along, and I trained there, and then I trained in New Mexico, and now I train with Matt Thornton from Straight Blast, who's John Kavanaugh's coach, who's obviously Conor McGregor in Nelson's.
00:03:07.000Yeah, and I saw those guys, like I saw Hector Santiago fight in real life, and he is a very dangerous person.
00:03:15.000You saw him fight like in a street fight?
00:03:16.000Yeah, so I used to live in the Lower East Side between A and B. So all of this, this was just part of my...
00:03:25.000My experience and I thought a lot of this stuff was real and it just turned out to be fantasy.
00:03:29.000It just turned out to be make-believe, you know?
00:03:31.000Well, I think that's an interesting parallel.
00:03:33.000When we were talking before the podcast, we were talking about critical thinking in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and martial arts in general.
00:03:40.000And there are a lot of people that have very distorted ideas of many things, not just of their ability to handle themselves physically, but Just of the world in general.
00:03:50.000And I think martial arts sort of highlights a lot of those critical thinking issues.
00:03:56.000Yeah, and I think that's one of the reasons I was so excited to come on this podcast today, is because I think you're ideally situated to have that conversation with me.
00:04:06.000Jiu Jitsu Brazilian Jiu Jitsu specifically aliveness training training against resisting opponents We don't talk about this is a huge area that nobody is talking about we can understand all of reason and rationality Through Jiu Jitsu through corrective mechanisms through aligning your beliefs with reality I mean little things from you know testing ideas yourself not having to take it on faith I was talking to one I was talking to...
00:04:46.000So you've been tapped thousands of times.
00:04:49.000Sure, probably if I counted them all up.
00:04:51.000Yeah, I've been tapped thousands of times.
00:04:53.000There's something about the type of person who would either, if you frame it in terms of subjecting yourself to that, there's something about that that fundamentally differentiates us, if you will, from people in fantasy-based martial arts.
00:05:10.000It develops a kind of character, it develops a kind of attitude when you place yourself in situations and get tapped.
00:05:23.000It can help you align your beliefs with reality.
00:05:26.000And I'd love to explore that with you today and talk about what that means.
00:05:30.000Just in the case that some people might not know what that means, what I mean by tap is submit.
00:05:34.000When you do jiu-jitsu, believe it or not, I just assume that people know what we're talking about, but I've talked to people and go, okay, what is jiu-jitsu?
00:05:45.000Submission grappling which is jujitsu is one style of it, but it's all about using leverage and technique against joints or chokes against arteries like choke holds to Cut off the blood to your brain or neck cranks and when you train jujitsu as opposed to other martial arts Other than wrestling which I consider martial art you can go full speed on that you go you go a hundred percent and that's the difference between those martial arts and striking based martial arts where
00:06:15.000you really shouldn't go a hundred percent because You only have so many punches your head can take before your body just stops working.
00:06:23.000That's just a fact You could train sparring hard for you know a certain amount of years, but You're gonna you're gonna your mind is gonna turn into mush.
00:06:33.000There's just no doubt about it We know that for a fact people do jujitsu into their 60s.
00:08:06.000So the reason that we can test these things, we can take people and hopefully later on we'll talk about the difference between Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Japanese Jiu Jitsu, right?
00:08:16.000Same techniques, different pedagogy, different training method.
00:09:49.000And so you call up, unbeknownst to me, you call up, you know, like I heard a show, your buddies with Eddie Bravo, right?
00:09:56.000You call up and say, look, we got this guy in here.
00:09:59.000He says that he has this technique, pinky blitzkrieg.
00:10:02.000I'm gonna send them over there put them up against your good purple belt get it on video and we'll see what happens So it's a it's a way to test it now now if that works You'd be like holy shit like I can't this is awesome.
00:10:15.000Like we nobody ever thought of the pinky blitzkrieg.
00:10:17.000It's incredible But what you've done there is you that's a core component of critical thinking it's a willingness to revise your beliefs and It may sound like bullshit, but you're completely open to the possibility if this works against a resisting opponent,
00:10:51.000Eventually you can test it with, you know, your friends.
00:10:53.000So this idea of testability and people can figure out things for themselves.
00:10:57.000They don't have to go on the history of tradition or, you know, some guy punched a bull in the head or there was a blind nun walking through this and she killed all these guys.
00:11:05.000That's what we always had to deal with.
00:11:06.000That was the history of martial arts was always Masoyama killed a bull with a punch.
00:12:57.000It's a waste of time, but I'd argue it's even worse than a waste of time.
00:13:02.000If it were just a waste of time then you know you could have been staring at a wall But you thought that you were doing something to help you achieve a goal and the goal was to win a fight So you thought you were engaged in activity that the whole There's no resisting opponent.
00:13:19.000So when there's no resisting opponent, it's not a it's not testable You can't bring the tools of science to write so So you thought you were engaging in activity that brought you closer to your desired objectives, but it didn't.
00:13:34.000Here's the argument against that though.
00:13:36.000What it does do is it helps your precision movement.
00:13:41.000And you could argue that learning how to execute these patterns in a very beautiful way shows control and it shows precision movement.
00:13:52.000The problem with it is that there's some of those movements that are completely ineffective like double knife hand block or thrusts, knife hand thrusts.
00:14:01.000There's movements that are not applicable to MMA. But the concept behind it is actually something that a lot of really good mixed martial artists like Carlos Kahn did or even Conor McGregor are doing.
00:14:13.000They're doing a lot of like movement training.
00:14:16.000And although I don't think kata is the best way to achieve those kind of goals, I think that there is something to be said for not just Martial arts techniques, but other things is like yoga I think is extremely effective in enhancing your ability to To control and manage your body in movements.
00:15:06.000I don't know anything about basketball.
00:15:08.000You run up to the net thing and you throw the ball in that hole and everybody gets crazy.
00:15:13.000Okay, but think about, don't think about, so I think thinking about kata like a layup in terms of precision is the wrong way to look at it.
00:15:22.000Think about kata as a layup without a basketball.
00:15:28.000Think about the practice of basketball, the practice, quote-unquote, of basketball without a basketball.
00:15:39.000And shadowboxing, in a sense, is a form of kata.
00:15:43.000Shadowboxing, including not just boxing, but kicking and punching and kneeing, is a long accepted, excellent form of training and visualization.
00:15:54.000Yeah, so one of the things that shadow boxing, you can warm up with shadow boxing.
00:15:59.000Like, when I warm up in jits, and just to be upfront, I suck.
00:16:05.000I've been doing it for a long time, but I'm not very good.
00:17:12.000Well, you used the example of shadowboxing.
00:17:14.000So you're saying with shadowboxing that you need another body in order for it to be effective?
00:17:19.000No, I'm saying that, like, so let's say that you shadow box a hammer punch, right?
00:17:23.000Okay, so stuff that doesn't work, like kata things, like double knife hands.
00:17:27.000Yeah, or even if you shadow box jabs and crosses and uppercuts and stuff, even if you do that, you could not be doing it correctly and then you'd be practicing the wrong thing over and over again.
00:17:44.000That will take you away from your goal.
00:17:46.000That's why you have to have some kind of a resisting opponent.
00:17:49.000Resisting opponents are the corrective mechanisms for everything.
00:17:53.000And just as they're the corrective mechanisms in the physical domain, they're the corrective mechanisms in the cognitive and intellectual domains as well.
00:18:03.000It's because people think that they're They're doing something that's in their own well-being.
00:18:08.000They're doing something that's good, but they're just talking to themselves Mm-hmm, but there is some aspects and I would agree with I don't know if I would I don't like labels I have a real hard time with labels even labels for things that I think are good things like I think that Some people get a lot out of prayer,
00:18:30.000and not necessarily because they're praying to a non-existent deity, or they really truly believe that if they wish for a new car, it's gonna come to them.
00:18:39.000But I think that the mind, when focused on positive thinking, And and and focused on love and focused on that the tenants of Christianity like of Godly behavior and compassion and all these different things and look You truly are looking out for your fellow man and wanting to be a good person all those things I think there is merit in that I think you can you can you can certainly find benefit in that as a tool for mental management I mean does that mean there's a guy in the clouds
00:19:09.000with a harp and all that jazz and Of course not.
00:19:12.000But I think that it's, in a sense, like Tai Chi.
00:19:15.000I mean, if a guy thinks that he's going to take Tai Chi only and get into the UFC, it's hilarious.
00:19:23.000But if a guy in the UFC, like Conor McGregor, for instance, who's so concentrated on movement, really gets involved in Tai Chi, I think he would probably get at least some benefit out of it.
00:19:38.000This, like, rhythmic pattern, what you're doing is you're exercising your body in an unusual way and expanding the possibilities of your interactions with opponents, expanding what your body can and can't do.
00:20:27.000I don't know about now anymore, but certainly when I... I think there's some people that teach Tai Chi and even practice Tai Chi that are just doing it for their health.
00:21:37.000It's highly unlikely, but I could get lucky.
00:21:40.000The problem is that if you look at the way that people engage these rituals in their lives, what these people are doing is they think it's taking them towards an end.
00:21:52.000It's exactly identical to fantasy based martial arts.
00:21:56.000They think it's taking them towards an end.
00:22:00.000I think also a parallel, like in fantasy-based martial arts, the benefits of it, like I was, like I said, I did Taekwondo for a long time, and I got really good at it, and I competed a lot, and I was essentially in a cult.
00:22:17.000I mean, Taekwondo, although it's a beneficial cult and it helped me a lot and in a lot of ways it made me the person that I am today because in training and doing really difficult things and competing and overcoming nerves and fear and all that stuff, there's a lot of benefit in it.
00:22:33.000But then I had a distorted perception of reality because of it.
00:22:37.000And that distorted perception of reality was shattered once I started boxing.
00:22:48.000And then I had to learn all the other aspects of martial arts.
00:22:51.000Like one of the most sobering moments of my life.
00:22:54.000I trained at Carlson Gracie's on Hawthorne in Hollywood in 1996. And this is before Vitor Belfort made his debut in the UFC. And I had this long,
00:23:10.000History of competing in Taekwondo tournaments and I had kickboxed and I'd done quite a bit of boxing training and I wrestled in high school I thought I was a pretty good martial artist and I just got fucking mauled like I had never exercised like I had no idea what I was doing and I just remember the feeling of helplessness and the guy who one of the bunch of people mauled me but one of the guys that mauled me I'll never forget is this Brazilian kid who was a purple belt who was basically my size He wasn't
00:23:40.000any bigger than me, and he wasn't like some super Mario Sperry black belt guy.
00:23:45.000He was just some guy who just beat the fuck out of me.
00:23:48.000I mean, almost disdainfully, and he was a nice guy, but I mean, when he was training, he was training really hard, and he didn't give me any slack.
00:24:34.000Well, I mean, if you're in a place where the bullets are all gone and no one knows how to make a gun, bows and arrows haven't been invented.
00:24:40.000That's where I was going to go with this.
00:24:42.000Where I was going to go with this is I, so I thought I was, like you, I thought I was a pretty good martial artist.
00:25:37.000Yeah, so that's like Matt Thornton's meme.
00:25:40.000And it's a combination of, that's a whole other discussion.
00:25:44.000It's like timing energy and motion, resisting opponents, ways to figure out what's true and what works.
00:25:53.000This gets back to our discussion about shadowboxing and about training other ways.
00:25:57.000I had trained with a stick, and I had learned all these kind of basically these kata things, but I also trained against a willing opponent.
00:26:05.000Like, when you watch these stick demos, the key to look for is what the UK does, the feeder, you know?
00:26:12.000UK? I think this is a Japanese word for, like, the guy who's feeding in, you know, like...
00:26:17.000If I'm going to go like this, I do this, and then I go...
00:26:21.000Most of the people are listening to this.
00:26:23.000It's probably 90%, even though a lot are watching it.
00:26:27.000So what you're demonstrating for those who are listening is there's these drills that you do where someone will pretend to throw a punch, and another person will step aside and do their counterattack.
00:27:25.000Yeah, so also the the key deliverable I think in this call one of those in this conversation is that Whether it's shadow boxing or whether it's kata or whether it's taking a knife and doing a drill when I used to do those train with sticks I was really really good,
00:27:41.000but I always knew the angle So it was fantasy based if you took the angle out of it.
00:27:46.000I would just get beaten to death I mean people what do you mean by angle?
00:27:49.000So, like in De Robio or Screamer, there are 12 angles.
00:27:52.000It goes like 75 degrees, 75 degrees the other way, baseball swing, reverse baseball swing, stab, overhand stab, attack to the knees, attack to the other knees.
00:28:04.000So when you do those, when you train, you know, guys just do the numbers.
00:28:11.000One, two, three, and, you know, you get so good at it.
00:28:24.000It's fantasy-based martial arts because the opponent isn't resisting.
00:28:27.000You have to have a resisting opponent.
00:28:29.000But here's the deliverable for this conversation, I think, is that if you train in a certain way, absent a corrective mechanism, but you think that corrective mechanism is an actual corrective mechanism.
00:28:42.000In other words, you think you're training in a way that will bring you closer to reality, but you're becoming further from reality.
00:28:48.000What that does is that's devastating because you need that corrective mechanism.
00:28:56.000You need to bring your thoughts in alignment with reality.
00:29:00.000And that was the great thing about the UFCs is because now we have all these people and we can see what works.
00:29:06.000So think about the guys, you know, I listened to your show with Eddie Bravo, I think, and he said he was just practicing the The rear naked on his leg.
00:29:17.000Well, that's not going to work because there's no corrective mechanism.
00:29:20.000I don't think you understand what you're saying.
00:29:59.000So if the idea then is that we'll work on your squeeze, then that's different from thinking that if I train...
00:30:07.000What if you practice, think about like practicing shadowboxing, to use your example, and your hook is always wide or you can stand here.
00:30:16.000And then when you get into a fight, you deal with a resisting opponent and you do that.
00:30:20.000So you would have gone down a path to make you worse in the action.
00:30:24.000But that's assuming that you're doing it incorrectly.
00:30:26.000If you train correctly and you learn the techniques correctly and then you apply them in your shadowboxing correctly, it's going to benefit you.
00:30:36.000The question is, and I mean, the great thing about this conversation is that we can test this stuff, right?
00:30:42.000I mean, this is the ultimate, we have people, we have, so for that we need to look at, the only big word I think we need here today is pedagogy, like the training method.
00:30:59.000What I think you would need for that is, well here, I guess here's my question to you.
00:31:04.000Would it be better in your mind to train shadow boxing or to do some light boxing with guys with your focus mitt over there, guys holding up focus mitts at the same speed that you were shadow boxing?
00:31:19.000This is where I think the conversation is going awry.
00:31:30.000Yoga is not going to teach you how to be a better fighter.
00:31:32.000But if you learn all the techniques of jujitsu and you incorporate yoga into your training, it will likely elevate your jujitsu.
00:31:40.000I have absolutely no question that that's true.
00:31:43.000And I think that that goes along with shadowboxing, especially if you're a striker.
00:31:47.000If you're a striker and you don't shadowbox, I think you're doing yourself a disservice.
00:31:51.000I think there is a benefit to visualization and to movement and to...
00:31:57.000There's things that happen when you throw combinations in the air as far as your dexterity, especially with kicking.
00:32:06.000And your ability to even do combinations without any resistance or without anybody trying to counter you, there's benefit in stringing together those reps, those repetitions.
00:32:22.000So I think there is a benefit than that.
00:32:24.000And I think, so sometimes if I go in to straight blast and there's nobody on the mat, there's nobody to roll with, sometimes what I'll do is I'll just go through the motions.
00:32:33.000Like I'll do rolls or I'll go over my back shoulder or I'll just, you know, fall down.
00:32:40.000There's merit to that in that I think I already know how to do it.
00:32:46.000I'm sure that I could improve on it without any question at all.
00:32:53.000Your example of yoga is a really good one.
00:32:56.000I think it's certainly true that you can use muscles in yoga that you don't in another activity.
00:33:02.000And I think that those have benefits to MMA. In fact, I'm sure they have benefits to a lot of other things.
00:33:09.000Not just the flexibility aspect and the body maintenance.
00:33:16.000I Probably should but if I would I just spend that hour doing jujitsu to be blunt with you But I think that you can get things out of yoga and get things out of these other activities but you have to be conscious about the reason why you're doing these things and The way to get better ultimately like yeah,
00:33:34.000so you could shadow box at a certain level And again, I guess, I think we can think about it in terms of the layup example again.
00:33:43.000It's not necessarily, the ball is the corrective mechanism with the layup.
00:33:47.000The person is the corrective mechanism in the fight.
00:33:50.000And as long as somebody knows what they're doing and they're training in a certain way, it's not necessarily that shadowboxing will take one away from one's goal, if it's being practiced correctly.
00:34:00.000I think Kata would take one away from one's goal.
00:34:03.000But I think that the whole project like if you think about and that's why I think the shadow boxing is such a good example of this What is it that...
00:34:14.000Okay, so when someone shadowboxes, the point is to warm up, that accomplishes that.
00:34:20.000You could do that with squats too, right?
00:34:22.000Or, you know, you could do that in any whatever number of, you're looking at me like you're lost.
00:34:42.000Yeah, well, if you think I'm off track, let me know.
00:34:46.000You might be a little off track in that I think you think there's very little benefit in a lot of these activities that I think aren't primary activities.
00:34:56.000I think, yeah, if you wanted to break it down to what is the only...
00:35:01.000There's a broad range of things you could do to improve all sorts of athletic endeavors.
00:35:07.000Like, there's a lot of people that don't believe you should do any strength and conditioning training.
00:35:11.000You should just do technique, and you should just do sparring.
00:35:15.000There's a lot of people that go that route.
00:35:17.000And then there's other people that think that's absolutely foolish.
00:35:20.000You should primarily, especially once you learn the skills, If you're competing, you should focus primarily on strength and conditioning because really it's just about burning your body out and reaching an incredibly high level of cardio so that when you compete, you know all these techniques already,
00:35:36.000you will now have a gas tank that's superior to your opponents and that will lead to victory.
00:35:41.000There's a lot of modalities and there's a lot of schools of thought.
00:35:47.000So it's interesting to me, I see guys who come in who are just super strong.
00:35:54.000And I think to a certain extent, we need to be careful because strength, and again, I'm not speaking from experience so much, I'm speaking just conceptually.
00:36:04.000I think there's a tendency for strong guys or big guys to over rely upon their strengths and their size.
00:36:10.000Small man jiu-jitsu is the best jiu-jitsu.
00:37:17.000And Nick does a lot of plyometric exercises, a lot of sprinting, a lot of box jumps, and all these really unorthodox techniques.
00:37:26.000And the idea is to improve your ability to execute things.
00:37:30.000Improve your ability to close the distance.
00:37:32.000Improve your ability to get out of the way.
00:37:35.000Improve your ability to maintain a high workload through the rounds.
00:37:40.000If you can only throw, let's say, 50 kicks in a round before you get exhausted, and if you can improve that through strength and conditioning, make it 75 or 80, you're going to have a significant advantage over the pace that you can push on your opponent.
00:37:54.000And that is, in his opinion, and many other people's opinion, and this is...
00:38:00.000This is a really open debate right now in the world of martial arts because it has not been solved because it relies on so many variables.
00:38:07.000It relies on the athlete themselves, their mental fortitude, their dedication to their craft, how good is their technique in the first place before they embark on a strength and conditioning program.
00:38:20.000I think to unbox all this and to make it a little bit easier for people that are going, what the fuck are they talking about?
00:38:26.000What we're saying is there's a lot of people that have distorted ideas about reality itself and a method for exposing that kind of thinking which is like this sort of Dogmatic religious thinking,
00:38:44.000which is ultimately accepted by all the people around you, but never critically judged.
00:38:57.000And the reason why jujitsu is such a good method is because jujitsu is one of the few martial arts that you could practice at any age.
00:39:05.000And you could also watch those techniques being applied by other people.
00:39:11.000Yesterday I went to the Eddie Bravo Invitational, which was at the Orpheon Theater in downtown LA. Some of the best jiu-jitsu fighters in the world were going at it, and it was really amazing to watch.
00:39:24.000It was a crowd filled with thousands of people who are fans of jiu-jitsu and practitioners So it was a really educated crowd and what was cool about that is we all understood like when a guy got to a position like oh And you know the crowd would cheer when someone would get out of a heel hook or they would cheer when a guy would be able to Tap a guy with a rear naked choke and we were watching all these things play out so there was lessons for me and As someone who's not competing and sitting in the audience,
00:39:53.000because I've spent so much time doing Jiu-Jitsu, I was watching these interactions take place in a very logical and trackable...
00:40:06.000When the techniques work, the techniques work.
00:40:09.000By the way, what's interesting is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, as it was first created or first sort of established, It came from Japanese Jiu Jitsu and Elio Gracie and Carlos Gracie who were probably two of the most important people ever in the history of martial arts.
00:40:25.000They sort of manipulated those techniques and improved upon them and made the art more about the submissions than it was about the stand-up and the bringing the fight to the ground.
00:40:38.000And in doing so they established a series of techniques and you know we refer to those techniques as the basics.
00:40:45.000There are some people in that world that think that the basics are all you need.
00:40:49.000And they don't accept the new techniques.
00:40:52.000And it's really fascinating because that's essentially how jujitsu became effective in the first place.
00:40:58.000It's because the new techniques that were established by Carlos and Elio Gracie and all these different movements, like the guard, like learning how to do triangles off your back, all these different things, which people had no idea in the early UFCs.
00:41:47.000And if, as a result of this being proven, somebody doesn't change their mind, So, the core piece, what's really important is belief revision.
00:41:59.000Critical thinking is all about, I made a mistake, I was wrong, I thought this, you know what, I made a mistake.
00:42:05.000And so, if they don't do that, then they're somehow deficient in that attitude and disposition of critical rationality.
00:42:14.000But it would seem to me, if it could be demonstrated, people who want to seek the truth, in this case, they want to win against a resisting opponent.
00:42:26.000And my good friend Eddie Bravo is a perfect example of that.
00:42:29.000I went with Eddie de Brazil in 2003, and he competed in the world championships, and he beat Gustavo Dantes, who was a world champion at the time.
00:42:38.000He tapped him in his first fight, and then after that, he fought Hoyler Gracie, who is one of the greatest Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu competitors of all time.
00:43:44.000And, you know, they really criticized his whole movement and his techniques, what champions did he produce, all this.
00:43:50.000This doesn't really work on Real Fighters.
00:43:52.000Until he had a rematch with Hoyler many years later, and just wrecked him.
00:43:56.000I mean, it was worse than the first time because Hoyler didn't tap, but he got his knee destroyed.
00:44:02.000I mean, if you watch that video, Hoyler just deals with the fact that his knee is getting ripped apart while Eddie is mangling it.
00:44:08.000But it was never a moment where Eddie was in trouble.
00:44:12.000He dictated the entire match, and we played the fight on the TV, on the podcast, and had Eddie explain what he was doing.
00:44:21.000And even when it looked like Hoyler was improving the position, And he was like, no, I let him do that so I could do this, and then I would adjust.
00:44:30.000I pulled him back on top of me, because I knew if I did that, I would be able to move his arm higher up on my shoulder, then I rolled him back onto his back, and then I can get deeper in on it.
00:44:40.000And when he was explaining that, it was even more humiliating.
00:44:43.000Because you've got this guy, Hurley Gracie, who's a multiple-time world champion, who just did not learn these new techniques.
00:44:50.000Feels like he's got these old techniques, and that's it.
00:44:53.000So this is the application of it in action.
00:44:55.000And if you don't learn it, and if you're not willing to revise your beliefs, and if you're not willing to test this and accept the conclusion, you might think something's common sense.
00:45:06.000Common sense is irrelevant, which relevance is what works.
00:45:10.000Yeah, these new techniques that are constantly being innovated, they're constantly changing, like it's almost impossible to stay up on all of it unless it's a monster part of your life and you're absorbing them every day.
00:45:23.000Element that over the last like few years has really come into play in a major way thanks to a bunch of guys John Donaher, Eddie Cummins, Gary Tonin who won the Eddie Bravo Invitational yesterday.
00:45:35.000These like really high-level practitioners and instructors are Constantly adding new improvements to approaches and techniques so it's all applicable It's all you can watch it happen in real time and even as someone who's not competing like me sitting in the audience I understand the positions and the movements So when I see all this new stuff and I see all these new approaches is like wow this game just continues to grow and evolve Yeah,
00:46:00.000and what amazes me is when I watch kids' classes, kids are doing the craziest stuff.
00:46:05.000I mean, they really have stood on the shoulders of giants.
00:46:08.000And they're doing stuff that's just so advanced.
00:46:10.000And I look at that now and I think, wow, it's like speed would be the great thing.
00:46:15.000How quickly these techniques and this game has been advanced.
00:46:20.000In a very, very short period of time, there has literally been in my lifetime a revolution in the martial arts.
00:46:26.000I've been saying this for a while, but I'll say it again.
00:46:29.000The UFC has changed martial arts so radically that there's been more improvement since 1993. There's been more evolution than there have been in the last 10,000 years.
00:46:51.000The difference is, of course, when you talk about jiu-jitsu being applicable, it's applicable inside jiu-jitsu.
00:46:59.000The problem is when you get someone who's a really good wrestler who's an awesome kickboxer and you can't use your jiu-jitsu, you're still going to get fucked up.
00:47:06.000Like a guy like Chuck Liddell, who you're not going to take down and he's going to knock you dead.
00:47:14.000Okay, but even that, look at that, I gave five things that work.
00:47:18.000Boxing and wrestling were two of the five.
00:47:20.000They train against resisting opponents.
00:47:22.000So it's no surprise then, and maybe sometimes...
00:47:26.000But he comes from a Kempo background, you know.
00:47:27.000I mean, you listed that as one of the martial arts that don't really work, but that's the martial art that Chuck Liddell learned for striking under John Hackleman.
00:48:20.000Right, but then that highlights the problem that we brought up earlier that you really can't resist.
00:48:25.000You can't train 100% resisting with kickboxing if you want to be a healthy member of society.
00:48:32.000You're gonna get fucking brain damage.
00:48:34.000I mean, I'm pretty sure I have brain damage and I stopped really getting hit in the head when I was 22. I mean, I really haven't been hit in the head that much since then, but I'm for sure something's fucked up in there.
00:48:44.000Yeah, I was watching a guy hit the pads about a brown belt a couple weeks ago, and I just thought to myself, I mean, the whole thing was moving, and I thought to myself, like, wow.
00:48:53.000Like, if that guy ever hit me, I mean, that would be it.
00:48:56.000I mean, it would just be over, and I watch people kick the heavy bag sometimes.
00:49:01.000Have you ever seen Melvin Manhoof kick the pads?
00:49:03.000Jesus Christ pull up Melvin manhoof trains with I forget his trainer's name Mike Mike's gym and I forget how to say his last passing year passing year I forget how to say it cuz he's their daughter Dutch they're from Holland But there's a bunch of videos of Melvin,
00:51:47.000It was like one wake-up call and then another one and then deeper and deeper and deeper and then the UFC comes along and you're like, oh, fuck.
00:51:54.000You know, oh, this is this and then you get this understanding like I live my life under this illusion.
00:52:01.000Yeah, and the other thing that's interesting to me about that is those are culturally reinforced, right?
00:52:07.000There are these rituals, there's the bowing, the master, there are other people that you're friends that you come to do these things with.
00:52:19.000To religions, the way that religions focus, with the difference being that people in religions, people who have faith, they think there are better people as a consequence of them having faith.
00:52:29.000Whereas very few people in the delusional martial arts think that.
00:52:33.000They think they're good fighters, but, oh, the techniques are too dangerous to test, or, you know, we can't do this.
00:52:42.000But those cultures of delusion keep people trapped in thinking about things that remove them from reality.
00:52:50.000Yeah, there's definitely some of that, but I think there's some good to the idea of respecting a dojo as a place where you, when you walk into it, like one of the things, stupid, but it's true.
00:53:04.000When I was a kid, I used to have keys to the dojo.
00:53:07.000It was a dojang, because Taekwondo is the Korean word.
00:53:11.000Even when no one was there, I would bow when I would walk in.
00:53:15.000I would go to work out in the middle of the night.
00:54:14.000For me, it was an execution of discipline, of my mind.
00:54:17.000Like, it was very hard for a 17-year-old boy to not have sex with this hot, I think she was 16, 16-year-old girl who wanted a bang in this karate or taekwondo gym.
00:54:30.000For me, it was like, what martial arts meant to me at the time Was it was the first thing that I had ever done that made me feel like I wasn't a loser So my whole life I'd been insecure and we had moved around a lot when I was a kid I didn't really have a whole lot of friends and I never felt like I fit in and I always felt You know,
00:54:50.000I didn't know my dad and you know, my stepdad is a little distant There was all this stuff going on, right?
00:54:55.000There's all these things that just didn't feel right didn't didn't make me feel good And then this one thing came along that made me feel good.
00:55:04.000This one thing came along that I had gotten really proficient at really quickly and was absolutely obsessed with.
00:55:28.000I mean do you have that notion of sacred with regard to these things?
00:55:31.000I don't have that notion of sacred when it comes to like a space but I do in terms of like my approach to things Like, if I'm focused on something, like, I don't allow myself to get distracted if something is critical.
00:55:46.000Something's, like, really important to focus on, and I decide, this is what I'm doing now, now I'm doing this, you know?
00:55:52.000Like, if I may, I don't want to be overly personal, but, like, your marriage.
00:55:57.000You've decided to do it, you're focusing on it, so it's taken a kind of a...
00:56:01.000Well, see, marriage is a contract, okay?
00:56:05.000Like, the way you engage with someone, like, if you care about someone, here's a good way, not just relationships as far as, like, sexual relationships, but friendships.
00:56:13.000If you care about someone and you really enjoy being with them and they're one of the most important people in your life, like, when you interact with them, I think you should interact with them under that...
00:56:25.000Provision or with that thought in mind with that with that intention with what?
00:56:30.000I missed you the intention that you care about them very deeply These are important people in your life.
00:56:36.000Yeah, yeah Like you don't you don't ever want like I don't I would never like like really good friends.
00:56:41.000I would never yell at them and You know call them a piece of shit I never want you in my life or say say crazy things to people that sometimes people say to hurtful hurtful things Yeah It doesn't mean don't be critical.
00:56:54.000It doesn't mean don't correct someone if you see your friend doing something stupid.
00:57:03.000I think because marriage is not something that like it's like something you're trying to do You know marriage is like or even relationships friendships are just there.
00:57:14.000Those are those are their interactions Relationships are it's different like it should be fun and enjoyable and all that good stuff What I'm talking about is a discipline.
00:57:23.000Yeah, what I was trying to tease out from you is that when you were 17 You had this idea of the dojo being a sacred place.
00:57:29.000Yeah You talked about what that meant to you and I'm curious if there's anything that you hold sacred now That's a good question like that No.
00:57:45.000I've definitely changed my ideas about what that even was at the time.
00:57:50.000I think what that was, that need for that sacred space and this like intense concentration and purity of that environment, was really like my...
00:59:01.000You know I'm saying like that was my thoughts Matt now my I mean if there's anything I would think that The world like life itself is that environment life itself is that that dojang life itself is that thing so You don't ever want to You don't want to steal you don't want to commit crimes against people you don't want to do things to hurt people all those those those Those terrible things that we see
00:59:31.000out in the world, if the world was your dojang, if the world was your church, if the world was your sacred place, you would never want to commit bad acts in your sacred place.
00:59:53.000I wish we could come up with some way, especially when we see what's going on in the Middle East and we see what's going on in the world, we see the way we're treating our environment, our climate.
01:00:02.000I wish there were some way to make that real and palatable to people.
01:00:07.000So that we would start being more authentic and more sincere with someone.
01:00:12.000And I think what you said, it's not about criticism the way I look at it.
01:00:19.000You can be forthright in your speech with somebody and not be an asshole, not be a jerk.
01:00:27.000I think those kinds of relationships, for me, Aristotle talks about that too.
01:00:32.000But for me, I think that the most meaningful relationships are those People with whom I can be authentic and be myself and be real and those are kind of I don't like the word sacred though It's I guess that's the one kind of nitpick I have Because you attach that to religion well because I attach it to the inability to revise something right I attach it to the utmost respect Yeah,
01:00:57.000so if we replaced a sacred for respect, I think we'd be on the same page.
01:01:27.000I don't say it in terms of harps and the clouds and all that kind of jazz.
01:01:32.000And when we were talking about don't be an asshole to people you care about, Doesn't mean, it certainly doesn't mean I'm some sort of a perfect person.
01:01:41.000It doesn't mean that I haven't been an asshole.
01:01:43.000And then sometimes when you're responding to someone else being retarded or someone being ridiculous, you can be an asshole because you don't have the patience for it anymore.
01:01:51.000Because you don't have the, at the moment, you don't have the temperament to...
01:02:39.000And if you are alive and if you are thinking, all those numbers that you keep attaching, well, you know, when Einstein was 30, shut the fuck up.
01:03:12.000We don't say a prayer in my household, but we go around every night, we have seven people living with us, and we say what we're grateful for.
01:03:40.000No, but I, you know, we go around, we talk about what they're grateful for, everyone's grateful, and I think that there's something, it's an opportunity to be authentic at that time, but it's also, like, I think verbalizing those things are important.
01:03:52.000So it's not just the negative, oh, I shouldn't be doing this, but it's the positive.
01:03:55.000Look, as a general rule of thumb, if you ever have any doubts about it, just be kind to people.
01:04:00.000Also, it's great when you reinforce it with your friends, verbalizing it.
01:04:23.000And, you know, we're always hugging and always saying, I appreciate you.
01:04:28.000You know, I think it's really important.
01:04:29.000I have a very tight-knit group of friends that I care about very much, and they're all very motivated, and they're healthy, and, you know, they're not without flaws, but they've got shit going on, and it empowers me.
01:04:47.000Because you got the tattoos, you got the build, you've been in the ring, you're friends with whoever you're friends with, and I think that whether you like it or not, you're in a position, particularly with young people, to look up to you.
01:05:02.000And that is exactly the kind of behavior that we want to see modeled.
01:05:06.000It's not emotionally immature for a guy to cry at a tragic event.
01:05:11.000I tell people, I tell my buddy over there, I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity to stay his house, etc.
01:05:17.000And I think that that kind of, we live in a culture that's suppressed these, particularly males, this ability for men to communicate in an authentic way.
01:05:27.000Also to experience emotion, like this idea of somehow or another being stoic has virtue to it, especially in the face of tragedy or even joy.
01:05:39.000Like I sometimes cry more for happy moments sometimes than I do for sad moments.
01:05:45.000But I'll cry at fucking cartoons, man.
01:05:57.000I think that that journey from you as a 17-year-old to now...
01:06:01.000I mean, there's some really core lessons for people out there struggling with maybe issues of sexuality or issues of feeling they hate the world or they're not good enough or their self-esteem issues.
01:06:21.000I'm 49. I'd much rather people say about me, hey, Pete's a really good guy than Pete's a really smart guy.
01:06:32.000You know, I want to embody those virtues.
01:06:35.000But more than that, I think that the story that you told there, it's something that's accessible to people, and it's a type of thing that we need to do.
01:06:47.000We need to figure out how to move our culture towards these more humane ways of dealing with people.
01:06:53.000And my own opinion is that we don't need superstitions to do that.
01:06:58.000You're a perfect example of that, right?
01:08:32.000And I think that that's ultimately the benefit that...
01:08:36.000Religion does provide is in in these insane beliefs in the sky gods and all these different things and we show reverence to these These deities and they have these rules and we must follow otherwise we'll be punished in those rules There becomes order and in the order becomes society and that's that's something that people always like to fall back on like we are a Judeo-Christian Sound founded society and our Judeo-Christian ethics like I saw some woman who was arguing about Muslim terrorists and that was like one of the big things that this is a This
01:09:06.000country was founded on Judeo-Christian ethics.
01:09:10.000Monkeys were founded on eating bananas, and we're not monkeys anymore.
01:09:14.000You know, it's like, it's such a stupid fucking, like, just because something's founded on something that's illogical doesn't mean you should have reverence for that illogical thing.
01:11:02.000Now we just cling to these absurd notions of this one that's watching us all the time, and you've got to sort of peripherally mention it and casually reference it without going into detail, and you're allowed to do that because it makes people think,
01:11:42.000Even if there is some all-knowing entity that is controlling everything and is filled with love and has a grand plan for the universe, they have yet to show themselves.
01:11:53.000So this is all just a concept and an idea with no basis in fact and as we have Found more facts about the nature of reality in the world itself It seems more and more preposterous with every day every day the scientists come up with these new equations that show the Way the universe could have possibly be been formed and that every day that these fucking guys at the CERN laboratory the large hadron collider
01:12:24.000Are discovering these what were at one time theoretical particles, showing them to be true, and their calculations to be correct.
01:12:32.000We have a deeper and deeper understanding of the universe.
01:12:36.000But we think now, we love to think that right now that we're filled with knowledge, and we love to look at ourselves now and look at the past as, well, they didn't know back then, but we know now.
01:12:46.000But if we looked in the past, they would have the same ideas.
01:12:49.000They would look back at those poor monkey people with the bananas and they go, those fucking dummies, they didn't even know houses yet.
01:12:55.000We will one day look back at 2015, like what a bunch of fools.
01:13:01.000What a bunch of ridiculous people that were still, they had this incredibly complicated society and this wonderful access to information, but yet they were still shackled down by ideology and killing each other over religion and ancient superstitions that That dictated their behaviors,
01:13:20.000like what a weird time to be in, they'll look at.
01:13:24.000They'll look at us now in 2015, they'll say, what a strange time, this adolescent period of enlightenment, where they're still concentrating on stupid shit, and the fucking president of the United States can openly talk about God,
01:18:49.000Well, you know, did you see that video?
01:18:51.000It's a fantastic video that's just been put out recently.
01:18:54.000I think by some guys in Holland, where they were, because it's in another language.
01:19:00.000Oh, the Bible, yeah, yeah, I saw that.
01:19:02.000They put a cover of, they put the Quran's cover on the Bible, and they read passages to people in the street, and they asked them, what do they think about this?
01:19:11.000And, you know, they were like, well, you know, this is ridiculous, and this is outrageous, and it was all from the Bible.
01:19:47.000I've had conversations with people where they're fucking furious at me because I don't believe in their death touch.
01:19:53.000I've had conversations with people where they're like, you know, you are arrogant, and your belief in martial arts, and you're in a position of influence because of your work for the UFC, and what you're doing is you're fucking up because you're not telling the truth about certain...
01:20:12.000But if you're like me, who, like I said, martial arts and the dojang was so sacred to me, I wouldn't even have sex with my girlfriend there.
01:20:22.000That represents such an important part of their life.
01:20:25.000It's just so lucky for me that it happened during my formative period, where I was exposed to reality at a young age, where I had to accept it.
01:20:35.000I had to accept that these techniques don't really work all the time.
01:20:39.000Some of them work, but you have to learn all the other stuff for them to work at all.
01:20:43.000Yeah, I wonder about, again, so few people have written about this, I wonder about the experience that you had of that, and I had of that, we were in the same boat, realizing over time that these things just didn't work and we had wasted our time,
01:20:59.000and I wonder how similar that is to someone's escape from a faith.
01:21:19.000And he won't accept any stupid shit now.
01:21:24.000Because he's like, no, when it comes to the regressive left and some of these ideologies where you have to look at something in a certain way and you can't look at it in any other way, it's like a dogma.
01:21:36.000And he's like, no, no, no, I've seen this before.
01:22:38.000You'd deny people the opportunities that they need to figure out things for themselves.
01:22:43.000Yeah, a hundred percent a hundred percent and I think martial arts is an excellent vehicle for that though one of the things that was Explained to me when I was really young that really did sink in my instructor I was a disciple of General Chae Hyung Yi,
01:23:03.000He taught it to troops, and he was one of the guys who really honed the techniques for maximum power and efficiency and leverage.
01:23:16.000They had this idea that martial arts was a vehicle for developing human potential, and I read that when I was like 15, and I've always used that phrase, because I think that's such a massive...
01:23:30.000Yeah, what do you mean by such a massive what?
01:23:40.000When you go through life, life is filled with...
01:23:44.000Questions, adversity, puzzles, different things you have to figure out, the questions you have to ask of yourself, examining your own behavior, objective reasoning.
01:23:53.000There's all these different variables that come into play when it comes to life.
01:23:56.000And I think those are highlighted in the realm of martial arts because if you can land a kick and you knock someone out, then that happened.
01:24:09.000Especially the Ultimate Fighting Championship is a perfect example of that, but there's no higher level of problem solving than problem solving with dire physical consequences.
01:24:21.000Because your emotions are on the line, your fears, your anxiety, there's so many fight or flight mechanisms in place.
01:24:41.000Most people go through life without even coming close to their full potential and they live life in this this weird fog of uncertainty and of regret and of Just this feeling that they're not accomplishing what they want to,
01:24:58.000that they're not achieving their full potential and that martial arts is a vehicle for developing potential because through the very difficult training and through pushing yourself when you don't think you can and through this Overwhelming desire for comfort where you don't want to get out of bed,
01:25:17.000where you don't want to do the training, where you would rather just blow it off and don't go to class.
01:25:22.000By forcing yourself to do that, it engages the muscles of discipline.
01:25:39.000So when you defeat somebody, like if you work really hard and you tap someone out, you get a sense of, you get a little, I'll speak for myself.
01:25:54.000I work on my baseball bat choke now and I feel pretty good.
01:25:57.000So, that activity, your hard work brought you to a point in which you would tap somebody out and as a consequence of that, you feel self-esteem.
01:26:11.000What we have done is we have inverted the system.
01:26:14.000We tried to teach self-esteem absent any accomplishments.
01:26:36.000And the test is like, hey, all these people in the world, you know, the Koreans, the industrialized world, the Japanese, Germans, etc., they took this.
01:26:43.000How do you think you did in relation to them?
01:26:46.000Americans consistently score in the bottom quartile in terms of their math and science, how well they did comparatively.
01:26:53.000But they score extraordinarily high, number one, almost always in terms of self-esteem.
01:27:12.000You could teach someone all the selfs that you walk in, they get a white belt, you teach them to feel good about themselves, do this, do this, do this, but does it work?
01:27:21.000You could get a lot of the lessons from martial arts out of a lot of difficult endeavors.
01:27:28.000I just don't think you get the problem-solving aspect at such a high level.
01:27:33.000Some people find that in rock climbing because it's scary.
01:27:37.000And in accomplishing that and then getting through that, you learn about yourself.
01:27:43.000You learn about your ability to overcome adversity and to face your fears.
01:27:47.000But I just think that martial arts is a more intense version of it because there's all this connected to combat and to the physical challenge of overcoming another human being.
01:28:01.000One of our biggest fears, other than falling off of a mountain, is being dominated by another human being, getting your ass kicked in conflict, where we have this long history of war.
01:28:18.000But we were talking about the conversation that I had with my friend Duncan Trussell, where I said that, and it was kind of a revelation for the both of us, human history is a history of the wars.
01:28:29.000When we talk about human history, it's like the stuff that happened in between the wars and some inventions, but it's mostly the wars.
01:28:38.000Whether it's World War I or World War II or Vietnam, there's all these different conflicts that happen, and those are the bulk of our history.
01:28:48.000When we consider the eras in the past, When we consider the ages of the different things that happened, we consider Genghis Khan and Napoleon, Alexander the Great, and all these different things that happened.
01:29:06.000I've been thinking about talking to my buddy over there about life and the universe and this thing called the Fermi Paradox, where is everybody?
01:29:15.000The Fermi Paradox being the amount of life that must be out there.
01:29:19.000Yeah, like why haven't we been contacted yet?
01:29:22.000I consider that to be just an extraordinarily interesting question.
01:29:25.000But I wonder if what you just said, that our history has been a history of war, I wonder if, inherent in every species that has evolved, they've had a similar history of war.
01:29:39.000Because they've been subject to different evolutionary mechanisms and pressures and such, different atmospheres.
01:29:45.000But I wonder if it's conflict over resources, conflict over...
01:29:51.000Whatever, maybe they have another gender or something.
01:29:53.000I wonder if that's just intrinsic in the nature of life.
01:29:59.000I think what's intrinsic in the nature of life is that sort of problem solving and that nature wants to find the best Method of achieving a goal and so the methods that are ineffective die off and that's why 90% of the living species that have been on this planet are extinct They no longer exist because they weren't effective enough to be to keep reproducing and And you can say,
01:30:24.000no, a lot of them because people wipe them out.
01:30:26.000People are evil and people are horrible.
01:30:32.000I mean, many animals have wiped out animals.
01:30:35.000You know, there's a real issue right now with wild pigs and ground nesting birds because wild pigs being an invasive species, they're dealing with these birds that nest on the ground that didn't have these animals hunting them.
01:31:54.000Like, if I started to talk about that, some of that stuff in class, that's when you get the whole trigger warning safe spaces and stuff again, like...
01:32:07.000You're talking about taking care of the planet.
01:32:10.000And, you know, how do we weigh the concerns of the spotted owl against the loggers?
01:32:14.000I mean, you're talking about some really important things.
01:32:16.000And the recourse to, oh, I'm offended or I can't think of what makes me upset, makes me think that maybe...
01:32:23.000Soon, universities won't be the place.
01:32:25.000I mean, we'll have to have these discussions out of the universities, which would really be, it's great for you in your show, but it's terrible for the society, it's terrible for the university, it's terrible.
01:32:35.000Universities, in a sense, have ceased to have these sorts of conversations.
01:32:38.000When you watch those children scream at that professor at Yale, and then you find out that that guy was disciplined, and like, weren't they fired?
01:32:58.000Yeah, that's a good point, because liberals in terms of...
01:33:04.000Social change and progress and you know acceptance of various different people I think that's wonderful.
01:33:10.000It's great But I think that this regressive left with this very rigid ideology of what you can and can't say and the the behaviors in which they they engage in enforcing these things I think it's preposterous and I think that ultimately what's going to happen is you're not going to have these kind of Structures these these these places where people go and you're going to be learning things online and Yeah,
01:33:34.000and it's going to be a lot worse before it gets better.
01:33:37.000And the hard thing is that many of your listeners are not in academia.
01:33:41.000And when we tell these stories, people, they think that this guy's just making this.
01:34:16.000Well, see, here's what happens, because I was actually just brought up in charges again, and if you don't do that, then, you know, people can say, well, you didn't warn me.
01:39:14.000She is incapable, and I don't want to pick on her because, in a sense, she's just a victim, right?
01:39:20.000She's a victim of this malicious ideology that's running across campuses now.
01:39:25.000But people like that are not capable of engaging and entertaining ideas because they have this, the university protects them They can say they've been aggressed.
01:39:37.000They can say they've been kind of violated, if you will, like cognitively, intellectually violated.
01:39:44.000But what's really interesting about that, two things.
01:39:47.000One, she thinks that she can arbitrate everybody else's reality.
01:39:51.000So she thinks, I can understand if I say something and he's offended by it, or I say, you know, Taekwondo and so on.
01:39:56.000But she thinks that The regressives think that they arbitrate people's reality and they know what other people should be offended by, which is amazing.
01:40:05.000But here's the really interesting part.
01:41:32.000When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
01:41:36.000When you're a regressive leftist, every single thing you think of is race, gender, oppression, intersectionality, which is parenthetically...
01:41:49.000Any time you hear someone use that word you can automatically assume they're an aggressive leftist and the next thing out of your mouth their mouths will be some kind of smear campaign.
01:41:57.000There's a hilarious video of Steven Crowder going up to people and asking them what their preferred gender pronouns are.
01:43:30.000Like, we're adding all, here's the thing about, like, adding all this extra shit to define things that are already defined by the original word, we don't need, you're doing it to prop up transgender.
01:44:22.000They don't mean in terms of ideological diversity.
01:44:24.000They're not out there hiring, you know, Republicans and libertarians or conservatives.
01:44:30.000But the other thing that's interesting is that You know, I think it was on Sam's podcast with Douglas Murray, he said, we're going to be talking about pronouns are the big thing now.
01:44:39.000We're going to be talking about pronouns while these people are sneaking nukes in our cities.
01:44:46.000It is a system-wide failure that's trickled down to individuals within the system to make it almost impossible for them to make discerning judgments about things.
01:44:59.000And so we have this consequence now of an entire generation of students who's being trained not only to suspend moral judgments, but to think they're better people as being a result.
01:45:11.000And it's also beautiful that this is all coming from academia, because if you think about what a university is in academia, like a lot of people that are in academia, went to college, Went on to grad school, got their masters and their PhD, started teaching, never entered the real world, stayed in a sheltered environment,
01:45:27.000and now they're dictating this sort of behavior and thinking.
01:45:30.000It's like a dojo in which everybody's training with everybody else in the dojo, right?
01:45:40.000And then this radical ideology coming in this area and wanting to redefine reality in this area, they're not going out into the real world and experiencing the Congo and all these crazy Fucked up parts of the world and understanding like you're dealing with like an inherent problem with the human race like you can't redefine it by Changing pronouns and cisgender.
01:46:06.000It really is the most insidious form of cultural myopia like they think they have latched on to some timeless.
01:46:15.000They're just making shit up and They think they've latched onto some universal truth about reality, and now they have this moral—and I think that the underlying moral impulses that they have are pretty good ones.
01:46:28.000You don't treat people differently on the basis of their race in general.
01:48:03.000I think I can find parallels when I was talking about, again with martial arts, is that like the dojo to me was sacred because this was something that was transforming me and changing me from a loser to someone who had like a possible Or
01:48:37.000Had horrible experiences with bad people, or, you know, maybe abused in high school, bullied, fucked with, and now they've found some culture where they're being not just accepted, but it's invigorating to them.
01:48:52.000Like, we're gonna change this world, and we're gonna make things awesome for people, and we're gonna, you know, we're gonna make...
01:48:58.000Ask people what their preferred gender pronouns are.
01:49:03.000And they're living in this environment, and again, you're dealing with really young people, like I was when I was young, and I was looking at this stage of my life as this transformative journey that I was on, and I was wholeheartedly dedicated to it.
01:50:44.000You know, those things tend to have a life of their own, and then it's like, oh, Boghossian, he's the guy who hates Asians, right?
01:50:51.000He's the guy, whereas, no, I'm just the guy who, and this is the earlier point I was going to make, the very thing that these regressives One of the things that they don't understand, perhaps the most important, is that reason is liberatory.
01:51:06.000We can emancipate ourselves through reason and rationality.
01:51:09.000But the only way to do that, the way that reason acts as a lubricant, is in social discourse.
01:51:15.000We need to be able to have conversations.
01:51:24.000And so these people, they want to disinvite people if they don't agree with them as opposed to having, you know, an alternative speaker for their point of view or debate.
01:51:33.000I'm not a fan of debates, but, you know, or debate.
01:51:35.000But what they want to do is they want to shut down the discourse.
01:51:38.000But let's take that at a deeper level and take a look at that.
01:51:41.000Part of the problem with that is Is that I Firmly believe and I think I have evidence for this overwhelming evidence actually is a Pedigree and long pedigree in Western intellectual thought we can derive our values We can sit down and I can talk to you and we can figure out look at the black statue there are Hendricks there we can figure out Why we shouldn't discriminate against people on the basis of their skin color.
01:52:08.000But the only way that we can do that, it doesn't come from a wand, is that you need to be able to ask questions, right?
01:52:17.000So we can figure things out in discourse and dialogue.
01:52:38.000And the only way, they're taking away the one thing that we need to figure stuff out.
01:52:46.000It's like, in jujitsu, they're taking away the resisting opponent.
01:52:50.000In this case, they're taking away the dialectic, the dialogue, free speech, open inquiry, the ability to say things on campuses without being smeared as a racist or a homophobe or a bigot.
01:53:30.000I mean, and again, I'm thinking about guys at the top, like Reza Aslan, Glenn Greenwald, Cenk from the Young Turks.
01:53:38.000Like, when you have to make shit up and lie, it makes me think that you're not genuine about your beliefs, that you're not authentic.
01:53:47.000Like, I just mentioned to someone the other day, I have no problem Talking to someone who tells me with total sincerity, hey, you know what?
01:54:20.000It's incredibly frustrating on an individual level, but then when they have institutional support of this stuff, then when they have woven their tentacles into academia, into, you know, very high positions,
01:54:35.000and it's across the United States, Western Europe, and again, remember, there is a hierarchy of things you can't talk about.
01:54:42.000You know there is and if you you want to figure something if you can figure out the relationship You mean this would be epic you figure out why?
01:54:53.000I love my freedom of language with you here on the show you figure out why feminists are in bed with Islamists and then we got something because this to me is one of the most bizarre fascinating disturbing Grotesque I mean,
01:55:11.000if there were ever a group who actively...
01:55:14.000I mean, it's even worse than the former Baltic states and the Soviet Union, the only military alliance in history, their primary objective was to attack themselves.
01:55:23.000I mean, these people, you could not possibly find a group of people who are more antithetical to the most rudimentary feminist values than the Islamists.
01:56:14.000These people, the only people who care, this isn't my line, I read this somewhere, but the only people who care about race are racists and regressive leftists.
01:56:25.000The regressive left really are the new racists.
01:56:28.000They're really looking at everything in terms of race.
01:56:31.000And I think there's a lot of sexism in the regressive left because they don't really like men.
01:56:36.000And there's a lot of anti-masculine ideology that gets perpetrated on people The point where you're thinking, like, you're supposed to be more soft-gendered.
01:56:46.000Gender's supposed to be a fluid thing.
01:56:48.000Like, you're not supposed to be overtly masculine.
01:56:51.000How come you can be overtly feminine once you become transgender?
01:56:55.000How come you, if a woman wants to wear, like, a push-up bra, have her tits poking out, and a short skirt, and high heels, and a lot of makeup, and do her hair up, that girl's giving in to the patriarchy.
01:57:07.000But, if a transgender does it, you go, girl.
01:57:10.000If a transgender man all of a sudden adopts those traditionally feminine views.
01:57:15.000It's hypocrisy, but it's even worse than hypocrisy.
01:57:19.000Because if it just stopped there, it would be something.
01:57:21.000But it's this idea that these people, they think that they can dictate to other people how they should live.
01:57:27.000Yeah, when you see a guy who's a power lifter, okay, some big fucking giant, like, you know that Game of Thrones?
01:58:50.000And they subscribe to ideas that are just not in accordance with reality.
01:58:56.000And I think, and I'm not using the term regressive here, I think liberals in general tend to believe that if we can change social systems somehow, and I think that there's a lot of truth in this, Steven Pinker kind of, in the blank slate,
01:59:12.000deconstructs some of these ideas, but liberals kind of think if you could only change the institutions in society, then things would, by definition, be more fair and more equal.
01:59:20.000We're all born blank slates, and all of these disparities and inequalities come about as a result of problems within the system, inequalities within the system.
01:59:33.000Unless you're really an ideologue on the right, you would be hard-pressed to say, why shouldn't we try to do our best to create systems of justice that are more fair?
01:59:50.000But these people, they don't believe in differences between They think that the differences between men and women are not biological.
02:00:02.000They think that they're cultural artifacts.
02:00:04.000They think that, you know, and I don't know if you want to get the whole race thing, but the race thing is another thing, but they think that race is only skin deep.
02:00:11.000It's a social construct, you know, rather than saying, well, why do Jewish women get Tay-Sachs syndrome?
02:00:16.000Why do black people get more sickle cell anemia?
02:00:19.000But again, you know, I noticed my hesitancy in discussing these things because I know that anytime you bring this up, this is an opportunity for people to smear you, tell you you're a bigot, a racist, a homophobe.
02:00:32.000And it's also the pinnacle of identity politics.
02:00:37.000Where the things that I say are discredited or they look at me because I'm situated in the body that I am for the sexuality I had no choice over whatsoever and they use that as an opportunity to discredit my speech.
02:00:51.000I mean the whole thing is just, it is literally, if you could say, well let's make a list of all the things that we can write down to make it impossible to solve our problems.
02:01:36.000And it's hard for people to do that because we have this rigid set of ideas that we have in our head and we would like to reinforce those on everybody because it makes life simpler.
02:01:43.000Well, if you think the way I think and I think the way you think, it's perfect.
02:02:25.000You really need to listen to, challenge, and engage yourself by opening yourself up to these experiences and starting with the possibility that you could be wrong.
02:02:34.000So if you're a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and you walk into someone's school and the blue belts are routinely tapping you, you've got to do some thinking.
02:02:43.000You've got to be honest with yourself.
02:02:45.000And it doesn't matter how much time you've put into it.
02:02:47.000It doesn't matter what your commitment is.
02:03:01.000And it's hard to do that when it comes to ideas like compassion and justice and getting along and how you should treat people and how people should be accepted.
02:04:11.000I've tried so fucking hard to get along with people that are unmotivated, or lazy, or they have constant problems in their life, they don't look at themselves objectively, and you talk to them about things that happen in their life, and they have a fucking myriad of excuses.
02:04:26.000It's overwhelming, and if you have those people in your life, they will overwhelm you with their issues, and you will never get anything done.
02:04:34.000And so, my take is, try until you can't try, and then get the fuck out of there.
02:04:40.000Yeah, and you're already doing, what you're doing is that you're modeling those behaviors.
02:04:44.000You know, when I was just talking to my buddy the other day, he's upset that all the aggressives are attacking him.
02:04:50.000And I just said, just I'll publish everybody.
02:04:57.000And explain your thoughts in a way that will inspire debate and inspire thought.
02:05:02.000Explain your thoughts in a blog in a way where people can read it and like it and share it with friends.
02:05:09.000And that's one of the beautiful things about today is that you have this ability that's never...
02:05:16.000Literally unparalleled access to other human beings.
02:05:19.000It's never been like this where you could just write something you put it on Facebook you could be a Carpenter in Kansas and you write something beautiful on Facebook and it'll be shared across the world within minutes Yeah, I'll add one more thing to that and don't treat people if you've been treated negatively by people don't stoop to that.
02:06:04.000He's a film about his life and he went back and liberated the same concentration camp.
02:06:09.000He told me the story about chickens that was very profound in my life.
02:06:13.000Basically, I think he was on the study, if not, but it does make a difference.
02:06:18.000Basically, they wanted to see if they could reverse the pecking order among chickens.
02:06:22.000And there's something that's a literal pecking order in that if you put chickens in a coop, seven chickens, chicken one will peck chicken two.
02:06:31.000Chicken one will peck chickens two through seven, but never be picked.
02:06:34.000Chicken two will not peck chicken one, but will peck chicken three.
02:08:13.000But when you really start to think about the implications of that, of what kindness will do, of what, of why being, There's your word again.
02:09:03.000A buddy of mine is a prosecutor for the state and you know how you have to Say, hey, I know this guy.
02:09:09.000Well, he knew another guy who's also a friend of mine, and they did jujitsu together, and he told the judge and the lawyer, and they said they don't have a problem with it.
02:09:17.000Neither one of those people do jujitsu, right?
02:09:20.000Because there's no freaking way that I would let someone do jujitsu sit on a Jury with somebody else who's either the prosecutor the defender because those people trust each other Because you have to trust each other when you do jiu-jitsu or people will break your arms They'll choke.
02:09:45.000Yeah, you're practicing breaking each other's arms Yeah, so I think that that that chicken story and I told that because often we think that the best response to be When we're being mistreated or we perceive an injustice or unfairness is to lash out.
02:10:00.000And a type of emotional maturity is just to not lash out.
02:10:05.000You know, maybe a really good strategy, which I've adopted, it's certainly much easier than attempting to do the emotional work of being kind and compassionate, is to just ignore people.
02:10:15.000You don't have to meet their nastiness with nastiness.
02:10:56.000And I believe your body has a certain...
02:10:58.000Amount of requirements for the expenditure of energy and when you don't meet those requirements your battery overflows and I think that's what road rage is and I think that's what Irrational responses and I know personally from my own experience in my own shortcomings when I have had irrational responses is because I have not maintained my body correctly and I have not taken care of that battery and And then when it comes up,
02:11:21.000especially when you're someone like me, it's even more consequential because I've done it my whole life.
02:11:26.000So my whole life has been about exploding, punching, kicking, wah, wah, wah, just all the kettlebells, wah, jujitsu, wah.
02:11:33.000It's all this, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.
02:11:35.000And in doing that, if I get it out of my system, I'm tranquil.
02:14:27.000Yeah, you can pretend in some martial arts.
02:14:29.000I mean, there's guys that invent moves that they think, like, one of my favorite videos is these guys in Harlem.
02:14:37.000It's not videos is a series of them who practice some sort of fake kung-fu and like one guy will Will be like he'll throw a punch and then the other guy will go well someone does that to me What I'm gonna do is I'm and they don't say it like this they say it in a very urban way like No,
02:14:55.000no, no, no, no, that shit ain't gonna work cuz I'm gonna step over here and I'm attack with a chicken wing and then I got a I got a monkey paw and they invent all this stuff I'm attack your ribs from this position and then there guys also in on it because they're also practicing bullshit Choreograph like oh, yeah.
02:15:10.000I see how that would work What's hilarious is sometimes these guys actually have fights And when they have fights, it becomes like two kids in a fucking schoolyard.
02:15:28.000There's no attack the ribs with your knife point fingers and all this stupid shit, but you watch these guys do it and me as a person who studied martial arts my whole life, I know I don't practice kung fu, but I know what is actually kung fu and what is some shit that someone's making up.
02:15:45.000They're just practicing and making things up.
02:15:47.000Well, they could go to even a kung fu dojo and pretend that that stuff's real, and the kung fu guy would go, like, what are you talking about?
02:16:01.000I think that a lot of those guys, if they had just found the correct path, Would benefit greatly if they just found a real martial arts school.
02:16:10.000Okay, so here's what I think part of it is.
02:16:13.000I think that they engage and I'm really interested to hear what you think about this.
02:16:18.000I think that they engage in a willingness to self deceive.
02:16:50.000You're saying what I know, yes, tribalism and also I know that at least in the moment you are gonna engage in some very predictable behavior.
02:16:59.000You're gonna engage in, you're a God-fearing Christian man, so you're gonna behave like a God-fearing Christian man.
02:17:38.000And it's also very much, it reinforces your own, like if you have a lack of Willingness or ability or whatever it is to question the reality that you've been Shown that you have subscribed to if you've if you're not willing to question it Yeah,
02:17:55.000you find someone else who's also not willing to question it There's some comfort in that and if you reassure each other there's some come no, that's absolutely right and that's why it's so important for people to be honest with themselves and How do we promote those values of people of self-honesty?
02:18:32.000I wonder if, you know, everyone's like, oh, you know, what comes...
02:18:34.000After postmodernism, I wonder if this comes after postmodernism.
02:18:37.000I mean, I wonder if these truth-telling conversations come after postmodernism.
02:18:42.000Well, I certainly think there's a great benefit to talking to people and having people be honest, and even in an uncomfortable way, where when you listen to it, it makes you think, oh, like, there's lights that go on in my head when I hear someone say something.
02:18:57.000Maybe they'll be vulnerable, or maybe they'll be, like, introspective in almost a painful way.
02:19:02.000When I hear it, there's lights that go on in my head where I go, wow, okay, I'm getting some real shit from this person, and I'll find in myself these moments that relate to what this guy's saying, and I try to see themselves from this point of view as opposed to a newscaster.
02:19:55.000These patterns are like they protect you from having to be vulnerable and real.
02:20:01.000By adopting these predetermined patterns of behavior that we all are comfortable with and we all know, as a God-fearing Christian man, I'm a God-fearing Christian man myself, so I understand where you're coming from there, sir.
02:20:36.000Well, I don't get sad at cartoons, but I do feel the impetus to help people like that.
02:20:41.000Like, I do feel that it's important that people are laboring under beliefs about reality, like, again, fantasy-based martial arts, that just simply aren't true.
02:21:04.000It becomes a real problem when you start blocking people's access to certain medical procedures and deciding what can and can be done based on...
02:21:12.000I mean, look at what was happening during the Bush administration when it came to stem cell research.
02:24:00.000The one thing we've always had is we've had strong institutions and strong universities, and now we're seeing those being undermined, at least in the humanities in general, and even to a certain extent in the sciences.
02:24:27.000But anecdotally, can you come up with specific examples?
02:24:30.000That's where I haven't heard it interfered with, except for the idea of promoting more women in science, and there's somehow or another some sexism involved in science.
02:25:48.000They're pretty straightforward, and you either live up to the metrics or you don't.
02:25:52.000But now, this is why I was talking about the sciences, when you try to put people in positions who are not qualified for those positions, you undermine the meritocracy.
02:26:04.000So when you're trying to put people, if you say, well, there's not enough women here, we need to find more women.
02:26:09.000There are not enough African-Americans, well, enough, it's a trickier, but there are very few African-Americans who study philosophy.
02:26:15.000If you're an African-American with a PhD in philosophy, man, you are your gold.
02:26:29.000Because they want to promote more African Americans, get involved in philosophy, and then perhaps that will sort of engage more people into pursuing that?
02:26:38.000Now this is a really interesting conversation that we should have.
02:26:42.000This is the kind of thing, at this point, In academia, we have to shut down the discourse because someone's going to be offended.
02:26:49.000But I think that's an important question, because your question is basically, it's a kind of utilitarian calculus.
02:27:31.000Like, that whole thing undermines the meritocracy.
02:27:34.000But the moment that you start talking about putting a diversity requirement on, for example, my discipline, philosophy, in essence, I think what you're saying is, it's not important.
02:27:53.000So we're not looking for the best candidates.
02:27:56.000What we're looking for is to bring people into these disciplines that may not have had the opportunity and that might be bad for the overall discipline.
02:28:10.000Yeah, it's bad for the overall institution.
02:28:35.000Look, that's not bad in and of itself...
02:28:39.000But we need to have a conversation about what that means.
02:28:41.000See, part of the problem with regressives is they look at outcomes instead of opportunities.
02:28:47.000We need to construct systems to give everybody, regardless of their skin color, their ethnicity, an equal opportunity and an education of the first rate.
02:28:56.000And what we're seeing instead is systems being created to orchestrate or engineer outcomes.
02:29:02.000Produce this many black, you know, African, whatever it is, or Hispanic, whatever it is.
02:29:07.000The First of all, that's a bad way to think about it.
02:29:10.000It's a horrible way to think about it.
02:29:12.000But the other problem is, meritocracy matters.
02:29:18.000If anything should be institutionalized, it should be systems that are raced blind.
02:30:05.000The problem is that we can't have a conversation to ask people if they're thinking about it because if they say yes, they'll be smeared as a racist.
02:30:11.000Okay, so then how do you address the issue with inequality inside of these marginalized communities?
02:30:22.000Look, this is what I think we need to do.
02:30:24.000When you look at surveys of So I think that these lines are primarily drawn upon class, which is something else no one wants to talk about, instead of race.
02:30:36.000It just so happens that fewer African Americans, or you could frame it the other way, more African Americans are born to poverty than white folks.
02:31:14.000You were talking about trying to get more addressing the issue of inequality.
02:31:21.000So what we need to do is, well, we need to start thinking about opportunities.
02:31:27.000Well, the other thing is we need to think long-term and not short-term.
02:31:31.000We need to look at the problem and be honest.
02:31:33.000And there are some structural issues with our electorate and the way that we've established politics in this country of offices of four years and then eight years renewable.
02:31:42.000We need to have a longer-term vision and a look at what this wants to be.
02:31:48.000Right now, we face a problem in that we're not adequately educating poor people in our country, and the majority of those happen to be black.
02:32:30.000And what about all the poor people that live in West Virginia or Kentucky?
02:32:33.000Those families have been generations and generations of coal miners.
02:32:36.000I mean, just because other white people have made it into universities and made it into certain institutions, you're being racist if you think that those people shouldn't get an equal shot at things as well.
02:32:49.000And so the way we fix it is, again, this is John Rawls' idea, public education of the first rate.
02:32:53.000However, every time I would say that, people would say two things.
02:33:51.000So if you want to put a proposal forward that says, or an idea, well, I don't think, you know, hiring should be this way, you need to have that conversation.
02:33:58.000But there's one other issue, there's one other tactic that the regressive left use, and that's the idea of privilege.
02:34:06.000Oh well, you know, you don't even see your privilege.
02:34:09.000Privilege is yet another thing that's used.
02:34:12.000And look, I think the impetus for that is good.
02:34:16.000The danger here is that because these people are so nasty, so mean-spirited, and so generally insane, that we discard everything that they're saying.
02:34:27.000We throw the baby out with the bathwater.
02:34:29.000Now we need to be conscious and careful that we don't do that.
02:34:32.000We need to acknowledge that they're saying some important things.
02:34:36.000They're, you know, racial treatment of people on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, not discriminating against someone because they don't feel comfortable in a male body or female.
02:34:47.000Or a guy, Mark Fisher, I roll with, is a gay and has this gay jiu-jitsu thing.
02:35:14.000Well, here's how you don't talk about them.
02:35:17.000You don't talk about them by constantly smearing people with privilege, saying, you have privilege in Portland State, my university.
02:35:24.000They had an event where minority students could speak about all these things, but students who were, I can't remember the exact phrasing, not of color, were invited to listen.
02:35:48.000It's certainly racism in that sense, but isn't it an opportunity for people that have been marginalized to express themselves in a platform that maybe a lot of people that have been marginalized haven't had that opportunity?
02:36:02.000Isn't there room for people of a specific race to speak about some issues that maybe they would understand intimately that you or I wouldn't because we're white folks?
02:36:14.000There's no question at all that that's true.
02:36:17.000So is it bad, though, to have someone have the opportunity to, like, let's allow African Americans to speak and let's allow these white folks to listen to what they have to say.
02:36:26.000And then maybe you have another conference or maybe a debate or maybe a conversation where you allow someone to have a retort.
02:36:34.000So the first problem with that is if you frame it in terms of an opportunity, then if I say, yes, it's bad, then it'd be like I'm denying people an opportunity.
02:36:42.000So I don't think that's the best way to frame it.
02:36:46.000The problem with that, one problem, I asked my buddy who's an appellate court judge, and he said he thinks it's unwise, or his son actually said this, he didn't say this, his son is on the, he clerks for some Supreme Court, I don't even know what he, but somebody, he's a lawyer,
02:37:56.000But the idea is that shouldn't people of any race then be allowed to ask people questions about those experiences?
02:38:03.000Shouldn't we then say, oh, you've had this experience of gay and jiu-jitsu again, or whatever it is, or being black in the academy, or being...
02:38:09.000Like, you said this, like, I don't understand.
02:38:49.000But that should be clear to everybody.
02:38:51.000And the only way that's going to be clear to everybody is if you allow open thinking and open speech and allow people to express themselves and you accumulate all that data and you get an understanding of what is okay and what's not okay, what's hurtful, what's not hurtful.
02:39:04.000And if you're constantly in an environment where you don't even, you know, the monkey hear no evil, you can't even hear a bad idea.
02:39:12.000When someone does something legitimately horrible, what would the reaction be?
02:39:17.000Your threshold will constantly be decreasing if you're not hearing ideas.
02:39:22.000If you're not hearing ideas that run contrary or, you know, challenging, then your threshold for what you find offensive will constantly lower.
02:39:32.000I had Thaddeus Russell on who's a great guy and he teaches at Occidental and we were talking about that issue where there was a young man and a young woman who got together and they got drunk and they had sex and the girl decided that Either she decided,
02:39:50.000her friends convinced her into it, that she had been raped, even though she had sent him a bunch of text messages saying, are you coming over, bring condoms, told her friends I'm getting laid, lol.
02:40:00.000And he had gotten to her, they were both intoxicated, but because he's a man, he was kicked off the campus.
02:40:40.000Also, it's ridiculous because how come you are responsible for your own actions in every other realm?
02:40:45.000If you drive a car and you're drunk, you can't say, well, hey, I was drunk, I'm not responsible for plowing in that fucking school bus full of kids.
02:41:27.000And maybe you're around a bunch of fucking nutty people who are trying to convince you that anytime you have sex and you're drunk, you've been raped.
02:42:44.000And so you can get out of it if you have jury duty, military orders.
02:42:50.000Doctor's note, excuse from my boss's boss, the dean or whatever.
02:42:54.000So that way, just in case I'm audited, right?
02:42:56.000If I'm audited, I can say, or if I say, hey, why did this person get off of this, but I didn't, you know, do anything, and then next thing you know, she's paying me, I'm sleeping with her, who knows?
02:43:50.000You're being transphobic or whatever it is.
02:43:53.000So people have been choosing their own pronouns, but the craziest thing that happened to a colleague of mine is he was told that, and again, I call anybody any pronoun you want.
02:44:05.000You want to be called Z, I got no, I got biggest shit to worry about.
02:44:49.000You know, I was listening to a Radiolab podcast, and they were interviewing this guy who, a guy, sometimes, sometimes he's a girl, sometimes goes back and forth, and his gender is fluid, and in the middle of the conversation's like, I just switched.
02:45:48.000People feel different at different times of the day.
02:45:50.000If you feel different sexually, if you're pansexual, you're just thinking too much and projecting that off on other people.
02:46:01.000If you really think that you become transgender, cisgender, and it switches back and forth all throughout the day, you're probably fucking crazy.
02:46:11.000Was it you who tweeted the link about the guy who was a six-year-old girl or eight-year-old girl?
02:49:07.000I mean, when you have a bunch of people that are hypersensitive and that are trying to enforce these ridiculous ideas on people, and they're trying to pound these things down, they're looking for these moments where they can...
02:50:44.000If people want to find you on Twitter, it's Peter Boghossian, B-O-G-H-O-S-S-I-A-N. He's probably going to be fired from his job at Portland State University after this podcast.
02:50:56.000So please, you're going to open up a Patreon page and ask for requests.