A high school principal in Texas has been suspended over accusations that he held extreme views on race and was pushing critical race theory. In Virginia, more parents are seeking to join a lawsuit over trans pronouns, and that just goes to show: along with mask mandates, critical race theories, and critical gender theory, it s something well beyond one thing right?
00:00:34.000There's a development in the Loudoun County school protests.
00:00:37.000More parents are seeking to join a lawsuit over trans pronouns.
00:00:41.000And that just goes to show, along with mask mandates, critical race theory, and critical gender theory, It's something well beyond one thing, right?
00:00:50.000You hear from conservatives all the time, it's like, oh, critical race theories in school.
00:00:52.000I'm like, well, that doesn't explain the protests over masks and the similarity between the, you know, the groups of parents that are for or against these ideas.
00:00:59.000It's like an overarching culture war or tribalism.
00:01:03.000So how about we talk about all of this and talk about potential alternatives?
00:01:07.000And with that, we are being joined by Chloe Valdery.
00:02:17.000Yeah, I think a lot of like there's an interesting thing where they use the phrase anti-racism all the time Yeah, typically referring to like CRT ideas or whatever.
00:02:24.000Yeah, and I think most people in this country don't like racism So yeah approaching that we had we had Papa John on you know Papa John and he kept saying that he was anti-racist but it sounds like a direct reference to Ibram Kendi and very specific ideologies and more like how do we navigate that so I It'll be fun.
00:02:43.000But before we get started, my friends, go over to TimCast.com, become a member, and you'll get access to exclusive members-only segments from the TimCast IRL podcast, this one, and you will support our journalists.
00:03:07.000So, like, last year we were like, no, I'm not taking a day off for Labor Day, and then, like, there's no news, no one's working, nobody's talking, nobody wants to come on the show, and I'm like, okay, we're taking Labor Day off.
00:03:18.000So, yeah, we'll be going on an adventure, and we'll be having that on the Castcastle vlog, so thank you for all your support.
00:03:22.000Don't forget to like this video, subscribe to this channel, share this show with your friends.
00:03:25.000Let's talk about this first story I found particularly interesting from just the other day.
00:03:30.000CNN reports this Texas high school principal was put on administrative leave after being accused of promoting critical race theory.
00:03:38.000James Whitfield, principal of Colleyville Heritage High School in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, was placed on leave Monday, a month after a community member at a school board meeting publicly accused him of having extreme views on race and called for him to be fired.
00:03:54.000Now the school district says he wasn't removed due to complaints by community members.
00:03:59.000At a July 26th school board meeting, Stetson Clark, a former school board candidate, said he was concerned about the implementation of critical race theory in our district, and named Whitfield as someone with extreme views on race.
00:04:11.000Because of his extreme views, I ask that a full review of Mr. Whitfield's tenure in our district be examined, and that his contract be terminated effective immediately, Clark said at the meeting.
00:04:20.000Clark said a friend shared a letter that Whitfield sent to parents and students last year, which Clark claims showed the principal promotes a conspiracy theory of systemic racism.
00:04:32.000The controversy at the high school and around Whitfield comes as a number of parents and community members across the state have urged that critical race theory not be taught in schools.
00:04:54.000Teaching critical race theory, what does that mean?
00:04:56.000Does that mean that they are teaching it like the philosophy of the critical race theory, like a philosophy of communism course, where they're teaching this as a philosophy?
00:05:34.000I think there's actually three different views over what it means to teach critical race theory.
00:05:40.000And depending on the politics of the individual involved and what they're trying to achieve, they'll adhere to one of them.
00:05:45.000So you have Teaching critical race theory, which is the left always jumps on this one and says no one is reading Derrick Bell and Kimberly Crenshaw to children.
00:06:07.000There is the implementation of the principles, meaning they take action in the schools that are rooted in critical race theory and this idea of inequities and Marxist ideology.
00:06:19.000So they're actually applying the teachings of critical race theory to the kids and having the kids exist in this environment.
00:06:24.000And then there's teaching critical race.
00:06:26.000So that would be critical race praxis, I would say.
00:06:29.000And then you have the teaching of critical race theory through surreptitious means, whereas in the math questions, they have injected theories of critical race theories, but it's not a quote, right?
00:06:41.000Like, assuming that white people have, or whiteness is a problem, how would you get from point A to point B?
00:06:47.000And you're like, they're like inserted as part of the assumption is the part of the theory, the theory is part of the assumption.
00:06:53.000The example actually was this viral video, viral, sorry, photo, where it showed a picture of like a cartoon of a white guy and a black guy.
00:07:00.000And it said, you know, Daryl is a white man who gets stopped by police 17 times every year.
00:07:04.000You know, Daryl is a black man who gets stopped 236.
00:07:06.000What percentage, you know, so they do things like that.
00:07:25.000That's where they're like teaching the thing, what critical race theory claims, but doing it not through the books.
00:07:32.000Like you don't know you're learning it.
00:07:33.000And then what I mean about the third way is when they say things like progressive stack and the teachers are like, I want all the kids to say their race and what they feel and things like that.
00:08:04.000And how common do you think the praxis is as opposed to the other?
00:08:11.000How would you describe the other one where like, so there are stories where the teacher will say, okay, or there's one viral right now where it's like, she put the skin color tabs on a chart.
00:08:22.000And then like had the kids line up by.
00:08:44.000When it comes to teaching the theory, I don't think it happens that much yet.
00:08:48.000A nice 10th grade course on the philosophy of critical race theory where you learn about from 1911 or 1920 when it began, and all the things James Lindsay talks about with the history of the theory, that'd be cool.
00:09:00.000If they knew they were learning it and they were interested in studying it, as opposed to just being told whiteness is a thing when you're 7.
00:09:10.000The classrooms don't have cameras in them.
00:09:11.000It's kind of disturbing that it's happening in secret.
00:09:14.000It is kind of crazy to imagine there'd be cameras in classrooms and all the kids are being watched or whatever, but... All these body cams on cops, you know what I'm saying?
00:09:38.000Should teachers who implement critical race theory or engage in the praxis, should they be fired?
00:09:44.000Well, it's interesting because if an institution is being inconsistent, meaning if an institution has decided to bring upon a policy where they're teaching this to their staff, and they're saying, you know, this is what is in vogue now, and this is what we're doing, and then, let's say, a new culture cycle occurs, and people rail against it, And from there, teachers who were already in that institution, who were, let's say, inculcated in critical race theory, continue to teach it.
00:10:21.000It's a bit inconsistent for an institution to sort of switch gears.
00:10:26.000So I think it's, obviously, this probably didn't happen in Texas with this particular teacher, because schools in Texas, I imagine, aren't teaching critical race theory.
00:10:34.000So I don't know about this particular case.
00:10:36.000But for other schools and other states, I think it might be wrong to place the burden upon the teacher if the institution brought this to itself in the first place and then switched gears.
00:10:51.000But isn't there a deeper problem, I guess, if parents hate this stuff?
00:10:56.000If you have the average person saying, we don't want this for our kids, how is it that a school comes to be teaching this?
00:11:05.000The institution not actually being in community with its parents and really not even caring about what parents have to say and the input of the parents.
00:11:14.000And I think that probably goes beyond critical race theory.
00:11:17.000And it's probably been an issue for a long time.
00:11:19.000So you have a startup that teaches anti-racism?
00:11:24.000But define your anti-racism because it's not the same as like Ibram Kendi's, right?
00:11:29.000So, Ibram Kendi defines racism as basically the presence of inequity.
00:11:35.000So, he defines inequity as material outcomes between groups.
00:11:40.000So, if there's a difference in outcomes between different races, then that's proof of racial inequity and that's proof of racism.
00:11:47.000Whereas our understanding of racism is psychological.
00:11:50.000We understand that racism or supremacist ways of thinking occur when an individual or group of people experience some kind of insecurity and then project that insecurity onto others in order to feel worthy.
00:12:02.000And our approach teaches people how to practice dealing with themselves in a holistic, healthy way so that they will be less likely to overcompensate.
00:12:17.000I mean, I really don't think about critical race theory, I have to be honest with you.
00:12:20.000And there are probably many different reasons for that.
00:12:25.000You know, as I said, I've said this before the show, but I try not to be counter-dependent in my identity because that's also a form of dependence.
00:12:33.000People tend to think that co-dependence is the only form of dependence, but actually counter-dependence is also a form.
00:12:39.000So counter-dependence is when your identity is dependent upon countering someone else or something else.
00:12:44.000I, you know, I'm not a fan of critical race theory because I'm not a fan of post-modernism.
00:12:48.000I think that there's no transcendence at the heart of post-modernism.
00:12:51.000I think that post-modernism has a point in that it critiques dominant structures in society which are susceptible to corruption just by nature of being.
00:13:04.000But the problem is that it becomes parasitic and begins to eat itself and so there's no actual transcendence at the heart of it.
00:13:09.000So I'm critical of critical theory in general.
00:13:12.000But I don't really think about critical race theory because I'm just trying to get our anti-racism program out there.
00:13:19.000If you avoid counter-dependence, why do you say you're anti-racist?
00:14:28.000You have the dictionary definition of prejudice or discrimination, positively or negatively, on the basis of race.
00:14:33.000Yeah, I would say that we're more of that ladder definition, but we're also more interested in psychological underpinnings of what causes that prejudice, what drives that prejudice in the first place.
00:14:45.000And where's that prejudice coming from?
00:14:47.000From, again, a deep psychological perspective.
00:14:49.000So like, if a guy was walking down the street in LA and He kicked a piece of the sidewalk that was up and busted his toe and was like, ah, who's supposed to fix these sidewalks and looks?
00:14:59.000And it's like, I bet it was this race of people and looks.
00:15:01.000And those workers in the city tend to be percentagely, mostly a certain race.
00:15:40.000Because it doesn't matter whether you're black or white, you could be feeling some kind of weird self-worth issues and project, and it can manifest in different ways, but that's ultimately what's at the heart of it.
00:15:51.000So in a way we're kind of addressing critical race theory also.
00:15:55.000Yeah, because when you think about these young people and their animosity and the things they project, you know, it's rooted in this misunderstanding of what race is and then a projected anger towards a certain race.
00:16:07.000So when I look at critical race theory and applied principles, I think they're overtly racist.
00:16:13.000They want, they certainly against Asian people who are a small minority in this country, but yes, also against white
00:16:34.000His belief is basically that if there's a law or policy that creates an unequal outcome based on race, it's a racist, systemically racist policy.
00:16:42.000Yet when it comes to New York's vaccine mandates, which disproportionately impact black people in New York, he's nowhere to be found.
00:16:58.000I think he's sitting there going, yeah, but I'm not going to challenge this one instance where it's happening because the people who pay me also like that too.
00:17:06.000I don't know, but what I'm wondering is, I get all that, but you just said critical race theorists are tribal and they're anti-white people, but a lot of the people who buy into this are white.
00:17:21.000They're tribalistically espousing an ideology regardless of their own race.
00:17:26.000And in fact, they say things like, as a white person, I recognize these things because they care more about what their tribe says than about who they are, what they experience, and what the actual problems are.
00:18:11.000Yes, but it may actually just be authoritarian versus libertarian in a large way, not completely.
00:18:18.000Because you certainly have people on the right who are authoritarian, who are, you know, defying critical race theory, you know what I mean?
00:18:25.000But there's like a big component of it is authoritarian versus libertarian.
00:18:30.000It may have a lot to do with individualist versus collectivist, but again, not absolute because there are elements of the fringe far right, ultra, you know, Nationalists, they're collectivists to a certain degree.
00:18:43.000So it really is hard to figure it out, but I would say it's kind of like yin-yang, you know what I mean?
00:18:49.000It's not like there's two equal spaces that are opposing each other.
00:18:53.000It's like they actually swirl around and have similarities and differences.
00:18:57.000When I look at Kendi and I look at Rob and D'Angelo, Yeah.
00:19:03.000but also just the democratic party there's something that's very you know
00:19:05.000very obvious in that there's a substantive lack of principle substantial lack of
00:19:10.000principles and you know to all shot shout out texas for instance for
00:19:14.000instance they did the the the heartbeat bill
00:19:17.000and all of a sudden we have people screaming my body my choice
00:19:37.000But I look at Texas and I'm like, yeah, I understand the exemptions.
00:19:41.000I don't like having to go to the government for a medical, you know, something that has to do with a very serious, embarrassing, humiliating or troubling medical procedure.
00:19:48.000I'm gonna say the same thing about New York City, but all of a sudden now I see this establishment and this like left
00:19:53.000faction in the culture war has no interest in defending bodily autonomy or racist policy, which is the vaccine
00:20:07.000I think it's mostly because they don't care about the ideas.
00:20:11.000If they did, my buddy, my choice would mean Vax Mandate's too.
00:20:15.000What they care about is just being part of a collective that vies for power.
00:20:20.000It kind of, it makes me think of self-flagellation, like a religious, because we tend to talk about a metaphor like this sort of religion.
00:20:26.000There's this lack of religion in society.
00:20:28.000So we've kind of, some people have adopted a new faith and People would beat themselves on the back with whips and stuff as part of this self-flagellation.
00:21:04.000There are several prominent activists who were always on the left, but the left as of
00:21:09.000today is fundamentally different from the left of 10 years ago.
00:21:12.000So my favorite shoutout is to Rap News by Juice Media.
00:21:16.000They had a video 10 years ago, if it was end of 2010, where, oh man, it's almost 11 years ago now, where they say, you know, Hillary Clinton is bad, Alex Jones is calling out the commie Nazi fascists, the Democrats and the Republicans, the establishment are trying to turn back the clock on freedom of speech and all that stuff, and I'm like, wow, if you were to make that today, you'd be a Trump supporter.
00:21:38.000If you said Hillary Clinton is bad and we need free speech, Julian Assange is good,
00:21:42.000and Alex Jones is speaking the truth, that was 10 years ago.
00:22:55.000Just to mention, so the first group I think are people who are scared.
00:22:57.000I shouldn't say the first group, but there's a group of people who are scared and they'll just be like, whatever you say, leave me out of it.
00:23:02.000Then you have true believers who are just white people who are like, wow, I can't believe this is what, you know, has really happened and I'm woke, I've awakened to the world.
00:23:34.000And so that's a cognitive dissonance where I will challenge someone's, you know, whether they actually believe something.
00:23:40.000And boy, do people go nuts when they realize it.
00:23:44.000One example of the difference between me and someone like that is I had been saying for a while that, I think if a business wants to mandate vaccines, depending on the scale of that business, I think it's actually fine because I don't want to impose my will on a mom-and-pop shop where it's like an older guy and he's like, look, I'm hiring two or three people.
00:24:05.000Then, a week later, I said, it is the people of New York who are upholding the edict, making this happen.
00:24:12.000If the regular people said no to the mandates, all of this would stop, and then I said, well certainly both of those ideas can't be true, so perhaps it's wrong for businesses to mandate their employees get the vaccine.
00:24:21.000As opposed to what we see with the, you know, My Body, My Choice people, where they completely just say, F you, I'm not gonna argue about New York, it doesn't exist to me, or they won't even bring it up.
00:24:30.000Yeah, but I don't think that makes a person a grifter.
00:24:35.000I just, I, that doesn't make you a grifter.
00:24:37.000I suppose, I suppose I can then say about D'Angelo is that based on what I've heard from her and seen from her, I just believe she's lying.
00:24:45.000Like I do not feel that what she says is genuine.
00:25:02.000Well, I read in passing somewhere that she, her father wasn't in the picture, abandoned the family.
00:25:07.000She grew up in going from like moving constantly and also her mother was sort of incompetent and she dealt with issues of abandonment and identity issues at a very young age.
00:25:19.000And I am like, I have almost no doubt that that is playing a huge role in, in all of this.
00:25:26.000So it's possible she's just not that smart.
00:25:30.000Or, and or, it's possible that she is spiritually suffering, and this is how it's manifesting.
00:25:35.000High intelligence, but with a lot of pain.
00:25:43.000You have very prominent people, very wealthy people, and big institutions that are implementing these ideas at an ever-escalating rate of, you know, Well, I think one of the ways you deal with it is you guard yourself as much as possible from falling prey to some of the shortcomings and I guess blind spots.
00:26:13.000But you don't do that simply by propositional exposition of facts, who's right, who's wrong, but you actually do it by recognizing the complexity of the human condition, your capacity to fall prey to that, your capacity to become susceptible to that way of thinking, and giving yourself the practices required to not fall prey to it, because it's so easy to fall prey to it, in a way.
00:26:48.000Shadow work is when you recognize what's triggering your ego.
00:26:53.000Usually our egos are triggered by other people when they're doing something that we don't like, and that thing is present within us.
00:27:01.000Now, there's a difference between saying to a person, your behavior is reckless, your behavior is problematic, and saying to that same person who engaged in that reckless behavior that you're trash.
00:27:13.000Once you start engaging in the latter kind of vocabulary, you set yourself up on a pedestal.
00:27:19.000And you set yourself up as better than that person.
00:27:22.000As if that behavior is foreign to you.
00:27:25.000As if you're not capable of engaging in that same behavior.
00:27:28.000And you've actually started down the path of supremacist ways of thinking.
00:27:31.000In the literal sense, you think that you are supreme.
00:27:34.000You think that you're superior to that person.
00:27:36.000So you do shadow work by, you can do it in many ways, but one of the ways you can do it is noticing when your ego is triggered and recognizing how the behavior that someone else engaged in or the impulse that someone else is operating out of is also existing within you.
00:27:52.000And you'll see that same behavior the next time.
00:27:54.000You'll still say it's reckless and problematic, but your ego won't be triggered by it.
00:27:58.000So you'll be less likely to other that person when you critique that person.
00:28:02.000And then I would imagine your criticism will be more likely to be taken by them.
00:29:46.000You don't have to name the companies or anything like that, but do you want to give us an example?
00:29:51.000I mean, I can just tell you, in general, we do demo interviews with companies all the time, and they report back to us.
00:29:59.000It's a very simple script that they report back to us, and it's repeated all the time.
00:30:04.000We brought in this very typical approach to diversity and inclusion training, and it did not go over well, and now we are trying to figure out what to do, and we heard you on some podcasts.
00:30:18.000That is the life cycle, in many cases.
00:30:21.000Just like what happened in specifically like like people were self segregated.
00:30:25.000The diversity consultant told them to segregate themselves based upon race.
00:30:32.000The consultant tells them or just assumes the lived experiences of all these people based upon skin color.
00:30:38.000A lot of people black and white don't like that.
00:30:40.000So I wouldn't underestimate the amount of rumblings that may be happening in these companies, even though they're not necessarily, you're not necessarily seeing that on Twitter, but it's definitely happening.
00:30:53.000That makes me laugh and it kind of makes me happy.
00:30:56.000Like to hear that the things that we see as bad for the reasons we see it as bad are being reported back to you as that they are bad and they don't work.
00:31:30.000And our workshops are pretty dope, I have to say.
00:31:32.000But it's like a full-day workshop, and that doesn't translate into sustainable practice.
00:31:37.000It's just not the nature of a workshop.
00:31:39.000So what we want to ultimately do is get our stuff into, as of training, into the learning management systems of corporations so that when they're onboarding their employees they can use our practices, eventually be able to service them with some of our coaches who can check in to make sure they're doing those self-awareness practices throughout the months, weeks, quarters, etc.
00:32:02.000So, ultimately, we want people to start practicing.
00:32:05.000I mean, the emphasis is on the practice.
00:32:08.000I had a conversation recently with someone who was talking about policy and they were like, we wrote a statement, because this is also very popular, as I'm sure you know, like, let's make a statement about how we are super anti-racist and we'll And I'm like, that's not a policy.
00:32:25.000A policy is a set of practices that an institution operates according to.
00:32:30.000So we can have a long-term conversation about what those practices should look like, again, with the objective of affording that sense of self-awareness, not overcompensating for your insecurities, creating a culture of belonging.
00:32:45.000We can actually talk about how to create those practices, but this is not a policy.
00:32:52.000I remember that famous George Carlin sketch where he just goes on stage and says every single racial slur he can think of, and then he actually calls Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor the N-word, which like- Before my time.
00:33:03.000Yeah, I mean, I think it was like early 90s.
00:33:34.000So I made that up because I wonder, in a lot of these corporate settings, someone might say an off-color joke, you know, without the intent to actually demean someone.
00:33:44.000But then someone might get offended by triggering these sessions.
00:34:07.000I just mean like, uh-oh, someone said a naughty word, we might get sued, quick, put them in a diversity training to protect ourselves.
00:34:14.000Yeah, but I don't think, I agree, but unfortunately or fortunately, whatever, the end of critical race theory doesn't solve for that problem, because institutions will always be like that.
00:35:12.000But so I bring this up too because I'm just curious as to the way, uh, I have people who make Asian jokes, you know, at me throughout my whole life.
00:35:23.000Because I know my friends are just like ribbing on me or, uh, the, you know, they're just making fun of the stereotypes and the absurdity and it doesn't affect me because I'm secure in who I am.
00:35:33.000And I'm just like, oh, that's a funny, funny thing.
00:35:35.000Like if there's a stereotype about Asian people and then I ended up doing something and then people point that out, I'll be like, ah, geez, you know, it's like, it's fun.
00:35:42.000I'm only a quarter Korean, part Japanese and Korean.
00:35:44.000But I'm curious as to what would your approach be in circumstances where someone might be like, someone made a racist joke, I'm upset about it.
00:36:30.000Central removes Diversity Day episode from schedule. Are you a big fan of The Office?
00:36:34.000Yeah, especially that episode. That is one of the most brilliant episodes of The Office.
00:36:39.000So they say Diversity Day is the second installment of the first season,
00:36:43.000second installment of The Office US, and follows Michael as he forces the
00:36:48.000staff at Dunder Mifflin to undergo a racial diversity seminar.
00:36:51.000A consultant, Larry Wilmore, arrives to teach staff about tolerance and diversity, but Michael insists on imparting his own knowledge, aggravating both the consultant and the entire office staff, and creates his own diversity seminar.
00:37:03.000He eventually assigns each staff member an index card with a different race on it, causing tempers to slowly simmer until they finally snap.
00:37:10.000Comedy Central is removing diversity episode from the rotation is so corporate and stupid.
00:37:52.000It's tough to say because when it comes to comedy, if you're making someone the butt of the joke, that in general is kind of hard for me to swallow.
00:38:17.000See, this is why I ultimately think so much that's happening with regards to critical race theory, broadly speaking, is going to lead to the death.
00:38:32.000And we at Theory of Enchantment use the arts to teach everything.
00:38:36.000So like if you enroll in our online course, we use philosophy and music and poetry and film to actually teach people our three main principles.
00:38:50.000Because we know that the purpose of the arts is to remind people of the complexity of the human experience.
00:38:56.000As opposed to, in my opinion, politics these days which reduces and stereotypes and caricatures human beings to one label or the other.
00:39:04.000The entire purpose of the arts is to be expansive and so I'm not surprised if in fact this is the reason why that happened with the office.
00:39:13.000I'm not surprised because that is the inevitable, that's the logical conclusion and what's ultimately ironic about this is that that means that a lot of things that are coming out of critical race theory or critical race theory light or whatever you want to call it are ultimately antithetical to the african-american ethos and that is one of the greatest scandals that no one is talking about what do you mean the african-american ethos what is that like so there's a great author albert murray who wrote this book the omni americans or alternatives to the folklore of white supremacy he wrote it in like the 70s or something like that he was this really dope jazz critic
00:39:47.000And he talked about how within African-American culture there is what he calls a kind of idiomatic expression which he defines as impromptu heroism culture.
00:39:58.000Another synonym of this is the hero's journey.
00:40:01.000So if you're familiar with like Joseph Campbell or Carl Jung and that sort of thing.
00:40:06.000And he talks about how in jazz as an art form and in There's this philosophy that affords musicians the ability not only to literally play with the music, but metaphorically, play with anything that life brings them.
00:40:23.000Both the negative potential and the positive potential.
00:40:27.000And that is a part of the artistic art form that is central to African-American culture.
00:40:32.000And so once you start going down the path of the death of metaphor, the death of context, and all of these things, you're talking about the death of art, and you're talking about the death of something very central to African-American life.
00:40:46.000I love this about jazz is because you'll start on a note, you're in a key, and you'll hit all the wrong notes that aren't in the right key, and then you'll end on the right note in the key, And that's like the hero's journey.
00:40:56.000All the mistakes along the way and then you're- Which are necessary!
00:41:01.000There's this recording I was listening to recently of Norm Macdonald.
00:41:05.000He was on a radio show apparently with like a woke producer or radio host.
00:41:10.000Or maybe she's just one of those people who's like, I'm just gonna say what I'm supposed to say because I'm on the radio and it went cancelled.
00:41:14.000And Norm Macdonald, have you ever listened to this guy?
00:42:08.000Shocked and offended people they started getting calls and people were calling in like you can't say that you know I went to school with two black people and they were they were way richer than I was and then he goes Yeah, and a guy in a wheelchair could probably be faster than me but if I said I'm typically faster than people in wheelchairs I'd be telling you the truth.
00:42:26.000Yeah And so what I found really fascinating about what he said when he said that is, we often hear from the critical race theorists things like, systemic racism is a real problem, which creates generational wealth gaps, which results in a disproportionate amount of black people being impoverished relative to white people.
00:42:42.000However, there are more white people who are impoverished.
00:42:56.000But when Norm Macdonald just says it that way, it actually made them argue against him because the way he said it was so blunt, it came off as kind of offensive or racist, you know what I mean?
00:43:06.000I don't know, I was curious about it when you had mentioned something before the jazz thing came and kind of threw me off track.
00:43:29.000I guess the reason I wanted to bring up this Norm Macdonald thing is that I think it shows that there's something about the way you say things.
00:43:37.000It's less to do with what the idea is for a lot of these people who are claiming to be, like, anti-racist or whatever.
00:43:43.000That the way Norm Macdonald could come out and say this offended people.
00:43:47.000So you think if he would have said it differently, it wouldn't have offended people?
00:43:51.000I think if Norm Macdonald said, you know one of the challenges we face is systemic racism, which has resulted in a disproportionate amount of the black community being impoverished.
00:44:00.000And then you find that racists blame them when the poverty leads to crime.
00:44:04.000And people say, oh yes, I agree with that.
00:44:30.000It's like he's the kind of guy who's just gonna whittle it down very basically, and then he was kind of shocked that they were like, you can't say that.
00:45:16.000It also depends upon that person's state of mind, which is why it's complicated to put all the onus on the person who is presumably giving offense.
00:45:26.000It could be that a person is actually empty inside, and so because they're empty inside, they will take everything to offense because they have low self-esteem.
00:45:36.000I think we see that very prominently among the woke, the establishment left.
00:45:44.000I think they're very insecure, and that's why they tend to be more collectivist.
00:45:49.000Do you think more insecure people are collectivists?
00:46:29.000And that results in, you know, kind of chaos.
00:46:33.000If you have, you know, an element of what we would refer to as the left and the culture war, that are absolutely willing to just say whatever the tribe says even if the you know the change of the wind or whatever like one day they're making fun of asian people the next they said stop asian hate yeah yeah and they started canceling their own activists because a year ago it was okay to hate on asian people and call them white adjacent right and so for them their willingness to stand up and speak up and yell no matter what because they seek validation from others results in them gaining territory in institutions
00:47:02.000I guess what I'm wondering is though, Reinhold Niebuhr has this wonderful quote in one of his essays, I forgot the name of it, everyone should read Reinhold Niebuhr though, he's awesome, where he says, man needs liberty, but also man needs community.
00:47:16.000And there will always be a tension between those two.
00:47:18.000So I'm just wondering what, where does community in and collectivism begin for you?
00:47:24.000Um, collectivism in my critique is more about disregarding fundamental principles and values for the sake of just fitting in.
00:47:31.000Finding your value in someone else because you don't find any within yourself.
00:47:35.000So I think I would say something like, hey, here are the things that I believe in.
00:47:41.000I believe there's, you know, intrinsic rights that human beings have no matter what, even if you try to take them away.
00:47:47.000And I think we should protect those rights.
00:47:49.000But I also recognize at a certain point, we have to have common missions.
00:47:53.000One of the big problems we have in the United States is actually the right has lost their sense of collective in a lot of ways.
00:48:00.000And the left has lost their sense of principle.
00:48:03.000You know, so now it's just like, People on the right don't protest.
00:48:07.000They've started to more so in recent times, but it's still typically the same groups and not the average person who finds themselves on the right, as it were.
00:48:15.000The left protests for anything, even if it makes no sense.
00:48:17.000Like when Antifa comes out and says, we're against fascism, but then actually beats people in defense of state mandates, which is like, what?
00:48:26.000So, I don't know, I think, obviously, one of the greatest times in American history, like the space race going to the moon, we had a national mission.
00:48:36.000We all came together, we all believed in it, and now we have lost social cohesion.
00:48:39.000The left has some kind of weird social cohesion, but it's not rooted in... I don't know about that.
00:48:45.000I mean, you know the way I... I wouldn't call that cohesion.
00:49:14.000I went to a Black Lives Matter protest last year in Brooklyn and I held up a sign that had a Kendrick Lamar quote that said on it, a fatal attraction is common and what we have common is pain to try to spark a conversation about how in many cases the same fears, traumas, what have you, that communities are
00:49:32.000experiencing also exists within the police officers that are policing those
00:50:33.000One of the things I think we see that I bring up often, what the root of the culture war,
00:50:37.000in my opinion, or one of them was how algorithms were feeding people shock content for money.
00:50:43.000And so what happened is, let's say you're 10 years old in 2009, and you get on Facebook, even though you're not supposed to because it's for 13-year-olds and up, but kids are on it anyway.
00:50:53.000All of a sudden you see in your Facebook feed a police brutality video of black men being beaten by a cop.
00:50:59.000There were websites that were making millions of dollars posting nothing but police brutality videos because it's shocking and it gets clicks.
00:51:09.000You see these videos and you click on it.
00:51:11.000So Facebook says, let's give you more.
00:51:13.000Then, 10 years later, these videos have become dominant because it made so much money for people that now there's someone who's voting who genuinely believes the world is nothing but police hunting down black people.
00:51:26.000Their whole worldview is built upon this fictional reality of these extreme instances that are actually exceedingly rare.
00:51:33.000They're bad and we should stop them, no doubt.
00:51:35.000But exceedingly rare, then they show up at a protest and quite literally verbatim they say, police are hunting us down.
00:51:48.000And then how do you calm someone down whose whole life has been built into this broken worldview?
00:51:53.000Well, that's not the space, first of all, to try and calm someone down.
00:51:58.000For sure, but I don't mean, like, go to a protest and walk up to somebody who's angry and screaming and say, hey, you're wrong.
00:52:02.000I mean, like, even my friends, where it's like, I've been, I would hang out at their house and I would say things like this, they'd be like, you're wrong, you don't understand, and I can't believe you would say this stuff.
00:52:11.000Like, I thought you, I can't believe you're a racist.
00:52:13.000And I'm like, dude, why are you getting angry?
00:52:48.000Oh, hands down, I knew absolutely the emotional pitch was always better than the factual pitch.
00:52:53.000When I was working for a homeless shelter, I didn't go up to people and say, did you know that 17 children per day are found blah, blah, blah.
00:53:00.000And if we work together, the average annual budget of the homeless shelter will come.
00:53:31.000When you're honest with someone, you can be nice to them, you can be compassionate, empathize, and say, I am going to lead you to water, and I'm gonna be nice about it.
00:53:43.000But if you've got someone who's like, fervently locked in a worldview over a decade of believing that cops are hunting down black people, and you try to say to them, you know, listen, I understand these things are horrible.
00:53:58.000I would like to help you in stopping them from happening.
00:54:01.000I would also like you to consider that, you know, these instances are exceedingly rare.
00:54:07.000And though we definitely should focus on fighting them, we should try to do it from a level-headed perspective.
00:54:12.000And they'll be like, no, you're wrong.
00:54:19.000But why should your reaction be dependent upon theirs?
00:54:23.000Meaning, just because they're maybe lost in a worldview, you're not changing your reaction because they're going to be stuck or paralyzed.
00:54:36.000You're changing your reaction or you're responding in a way that's empathetic because you believe in empathy.
00:54:41.000You're responding in a way that's compassionate because you believe in compassion, not because You say, oh, well, compassion didn't work, so I'm just gonna throw it all out, throw my hands up.
00:54:50.000Imagine trying to tell someone 2 plus 2 equals 5.
00:54:52.000I don't think that's a good comparison.
00:54:54.000Telling some- I think you're comparing, like, a mathematic equation to, like, things that fundamentally involve human beings, and which goes beyond the abstractions.
00:55:04.000I'm not talking about the equation, I'm talking about the reaction people would have to being told something that they hold is fundamentally true, and you're contradicting it.
00:55:12.000So I think if you look at a person like Daryl Davis, the guy who successfully got dozens of members of the KKK to leave the KKK, right, by going to their rallies and being literally in community with them, his approach was not simply to go up to them and say, let me tell you why you're wrong.
00:55:31.000His approach was to genuinely, deeply listen to them.
00:55:35.000and to hold space for them for the purpose of holding space for them.
00:56:43.000I think when you look at someone like Daryl Davis, there's a certain kind of realization about who those people were who were nasty and racist, because not all of them were converted.
00:56:53.000And the people who were converted were the people who weren't necessarily true believers, but they were in a community and they just held things to be true because that's all they ever heard.
00:57:00.000Many of the guys that Daryl Davis met with never even met a black person before.
00:57:04.000And so when they were like, oh, I know about this, but they weren't like evil.
00:57:09.000So they were like, by all means, you can, I believe in freedom and you can talk and say what you want, but I hold these views.
00:57:14.000And then they realized a lot of those things weren't true just by talking to them.
00:57:17.000One of the challenges is there's an, when it comes to like the wokeness and the culture war, you can't even get through to these people.
00:57:25.000When we, we did this event in, uh, it was in, it was in, I can't remember the name of the town.
00:57:31.000So I lived in I used to live in South Jersey, okay, and we there was this little theater Just it's about an hour outside of Philadelphia at the very last minute Self-proclaimed anti-fascists threatened to burn the theater down because we were holding an event called Ending Racism, Violence, and Authoritarianism.
00:57:53.000We had an array of speakers, libertarians, conservative, we had no identitarian speakers, either left, actually no, we had some progressive, you know, CRT activists, we invited them, but we didn't invite any right or white identitarian types.
00:58:45.000However, a very brave couple Or, I'm sorry, they had divorced a very brave man and woman who had a bar across the street, refused to cancel the after party in the face of threats and violence and protest, and we told them, like, we are here for you, we got your back, we, you know, don't worry, we will take care of you no matter what happens, like, we're in this together.
00:59:07.000And they said, we're having the after party. No one's gonna bully us. We know who you are.
00:59:12.000We know who Darryl Davis is. We're we're proud. We agree.
00:59:15.000And this is insane. Antifa and CR like, you know, woke activists, Black Lives Matter showed up. And
00:59:21.000Darryl Davis. This is the craziest thing.
00:59:25.000A black man who walked into Klan rallies, shook the hands with white supremacists and converted them, walked across the street to Antifa, and they all started screaming Nazi at him.
00:59:40.000He ended up posting on Facebook a very viral post where he said, I am shocked in all of my efforts meeting with white supremacists as a black man.
00:59:48.000They have at least given me the chance to speak, to have the conversation, to become friends.
00:59:53.000But by simply walking across the street, they won't even let him talk at all.
01:00:03.000I guess what I'm trying to emphasize here is there's something fundamentally different about what's going on now versus... I disagree.
01:00:09.000I mean, I knew that that is what you were saying, but I mean, I feel it's necessary that our mind people of the civil rights movement and of the circumstances of the civil rights movement I mean churches were being bombed and Ruby Bridges had to walk to school where white people were yelling racial slurs and coming to her with literally ropes around a black doll's neck to tell her that they wanted to hang her and schools were being threatened with all of the very similarly and so I disagree with this notion that
01:00:54.000Woke fervor is somehow radically different from, say, the things that were happening during segregation in the Jim Crow South.
01:01:04.000I mean, I think it's just not objectively true.
01:01:08.000And, you know, you brought this point up earlier about history.
01:01:11.000I think we tend to forget how intense that was.
01:01:14.000And equally intense and philosophically undergirded the response to it, and it needed to be because of the intensity of the circumstances that many of the civil rights leaders found themselves in, but it was absolutely similar, if not worse, to everything you're describing.
01:01:29.000But in this story where, you know, you reference Darryl Davis and his ability to go and talk to... Sure.
01:01:33.000But the Klan is in disarray and... Sure.
01:01:35.000It's in a weakened state, they have no strong tenets, and so it's very different.
01:01:39.000So the stronger argument is the civil rights movement.
01:01:42.000But then you mentioned this young woman who had all these white people screaming at her.
01:01:46.000Do you think she could have walked up to one of them and shook their hand and said, we ought to have a conversation?
01:01:50.000I don't think that the proper thing to do, strategically, is to try to go shake- like, when people were protesting segregation in the Jim Crow South, they weren't going up to white supremacists to try to shake their hands.
01:02:07.000No, I mean like if you went to a white rally, like a Klan rally, and they were saying, don't allow- No, because I'm saying that at that time, at that time, the circumstances were similar to what you're describing with Antifa.
01:02:22.000Yes, but you said it's very hard to persuade these kinds of people, but I'm saying the civil rights movement, the philosophy of the civil rights movement understood that what was at bottom fundamentally of what these racist people were doing was a lack, a vapid lack internally that they were
01:03:35.000Oh, yeah, there are people who have tried to exploit the show and we're like, I know their game, we're not gonna, you know, because they don't like us.
01:03:43.000And I think the other is there's a fear of, I guess, excommunication, cancel culture.
01:05:22.000And I posted about it saying, look, me and this guy, we argue all the time, but I have no animosity or hard feelings towards him.
01:05:28.000I actually enjoy, you know, having these discussions and it's never, uh, I think in this instance, we're not screaming at each other and insulting each other because we're good people.
01:05:36.000And there are bad people on Twitter who just want to say nasty words.
01:05:39.000But my point was like, if we focused on the things that we had more in common, maybe we'd actually better understand each other on the things we don't have in common.
01:05:47.000Or actually just learn how we can live together to get through these certain things.
01:05:51.000But I gotta tell you, it's really, really challenging with a mainstream media apparatus that would say something like, Joe Rogan took horse medicine.
01:05:57.000That kind of stuff, the example I always use, sorry audience for beating a dead horse.
01:07:11.000I agree with you on a lot of what you said about meeting people as just a person, not for the sake of winning or persuading, but how do you navigate people who are constantly inundated by lies and deception to keep them away from you?
01:07:25.000You understand that you are not and cannot be omnipotent, and you cannot control everything, and you accept the good and the bad, and you roll with the punches.
01:07:37.000But what if you're trying to make sure and you're like, I mean, look, it's, I suppose I agree.
01:07:47.000Like as if to say that I'm watching a building fall down knowing there's nothing I can do to stop it.
01:07:51.000You see, that's very interesting because I do think that I'm pretty optimistic.
01:07:56.000And I know there are no guarantees with anything, but I do believe in culture.
01:08:03.000I actually believe in culture these days far more than I believe in politics.
01:08:07.000And I think that the culture is actually far more robust and gives us the space to have conversations with people with whom we disagree and And I think that maybe if you, in addition to meeting
01:08:21.000people in order to get to know them and things like that, leaned into the culture more
01:08:25.000than the politics, I would be curious where that would get you in terms of how you
01:08:29.000perceive others and how others perceive you.
01:10:15.000You know, what really was like a knife in the heart was when I'm watching, I think it's like the third episode and Tina Fey, or no, maybe it's like the, I don't know what episode it is, but, um, Jenna is doing a photo shoot for Maxim and there's like loud noise and a fan or whatever.
01:11:44.000No, but the reason why I'm optimistic is because it's starting to eat, like, so much of the art that we love, and I think that artists, like, will revolt against that.
01:11:54.000We have to now, because if it gets eaten, and it's gone, they won't know that it existed in the first place, and then they won't be able to... So we gotta do it now.
01:12:29.000Now they've become the band of, F you, you better do what they tell you.
01:12:35.000Well, I think that's because we're moving through a liminal... I just want to give context because I think it helps us to empathize with people.
01:12:44.000We're going through an incredibly liminal phase, stage, right now with the pandemic and everything on top of the pandemic, whether it's, you know, race relations, polarization, constant outrage from social media.
01:13:03.000We're going through a liminal stage where people's rituals have been upended, where people have lost their sense of being connected and things like that.
01:13:14.000And so we're dealing with an incredible amount of emotional scarcity.
01:13:17.000And in a time of emotional scarcity, people become extremists.
01:13:22.000And so on some level, what's happening is like, It's horrible.
01:13:26.000But on another level, it's also expected from like a 10,000 foot level.
01:13:32.000And so the question for me is more, how can we adopt, sorry to keep reiterating this word, how can we adopt certain practices?
01:13:42.000This is certain relational ways of being so that we can deal with this very difficult time.
01:13:47.000And I think a lot of what you're seeing is ultimately a misdirected or misapplied flailing for air in response to many crises, whether that's identity crises, you know, pandemic related crises, all of the above.
01:14:06.000And I think that's why you'll see there's protests over masks, there's protests over gender, there's protests over race, and it seems like the culture war is a million things at once and one thing.
01:14:20.000Like, there's a left and a right and they're fighting each other, but then you hear people like, oh, parents are protesting.
01:14:25.000Which reason is it they're protesting now?
01:14:27.000Why does the left have these tenets that are, you know what I mean?
01:14:29.000It's like, it seems like there's a bigger overarching Yeah, it's an emotional vacancy.
01:14:34.000I thought that was pretty insightful that you said that.
01:15:08.000To walk into a school and have a serious conversation with a bunch of young students just about the great questions of life and humanity.
01:15:18.000Everything that's going on fundamentally has to do with the great questions of life and hardly anyone is tuned into that.
01:15:26.000That is what is at the center of all of this, I believe.
01:15:29.000And I agree, we need some shamans up in here to, like, help us figure this stuff out.
01:15:34.000But I was thinking, first and foremost, just like a straight-up shaman.
01:15:37.000Because they could ask so many questions to people that would challenge their perceptions.
01:15:43.000But I actually, before I even, I was thinking, I'm like, man, you know, because you mentioned psilocybin and stuff.
01:15:48.000But then I was like, you know what, but a monk, you know, would also, and a priest, and a rabbi, and an imam, and like, a Buddhist teacher, I don't know, what do you call a teacher of Buddhism?
01:16:43.000Yeah, or eating it, probably more likely eating it all.
01:16:45.000And then they would like make big bushes of it and they'd all sit in a sweat lodge and light this huge bush of it on fire and just chill in the sweat lodge and get really hot.
01:16:52.000Apes probably were eating it back in the day and slowly evolved over time, got more intelligent.
01:16:56.000Did you ever hear that thing about like apes ate mushrooms?
01:16:59.000Um, I do think that the story of Adam and Eve is fundamentally a story about like two, like, it's the story of the development of, of self-consciousness among human beings.
01:17:08.000And like the fruit that they ate were like mushrooms or something.
01:17:12.000And then they saw themselves and then they were, uh, paranoid, which is why they were ashamed.
01:17:17.000And that's what, but actually it was necessary to go, it's necessary to go through that phase.
01:17:33.000That's interesting that people, you know, there are people who believe like, you know, some primates ate some mushrooms, started tripping out and like looking at their hands like, wait a minute.
01:17:49.000No, I actually think it's incredibly deep.
01:17:55.000I think it's a deep and profound story, and I think it's more true because it's symbolic, not because it's literal.
01:18:01.000I think the fact that it's a symbolic story makes it more true, not less true.
01:18:06.000There's more likely lots of apes around the world were consuming psychedelics and kind of realizing that they were what they were over time.
01:18:16.000Well, it's interesting because like in the West, our tradition is Hebraic and Greek and Adam and Eve, whereas in the Far East, it's the Buddha.
01:18:27.000But both stories, there's a garden involved and like, I actually think that like, just as an aside, I think that the Far East is in theory, like their wisdom tradition is more equipped to deal with abundance as a curse because the Buddha originally was a prince who was born into a palace and had everything and his father wanted to keep him from the truths of the world.
01:18:56.000He's gonna get old, he's gonna die, he's gonna age and all these things.
01:18:59.000So, you know, eventually he discovers this and this is the part of his path to enlightenment.
01:19:04.000But I do think it's interesting that, like, many stories in different cultures across space and time have an origin story that takes place in the garden.
01:19:12.000And it's this perennial idea of what happens when you discover that there is something outside of yourself.
01:19:20.000People need, like, some kind of fundamental religion.
01:19:23.000Well, what do you mean by fundamental?
01:19:25.000Right, right, right, that's a good point.
01:19:44.000I mean that they're never gonna it can never be taken away from them like they believe it no matter what It's it's the Substrate of reality of how they understand reality.
01:19:56.000I think I grew up in a religious home Definitely beautiful also dogmatic in many ways very grateful for that experience because of where it brought me today, but I I at this point I'm seeing everything that's happening in the world.
01:20:11.000I'm like my future kids will definitely be raised with some kind of wisdom tradition.
01:20:17.000There's no way like it's gonna be like vapid or like purely secular.
01:20:30.000And you can check out the discussion debate we had on religion.
01:20:33.000We did a bonus segment with Sydney Watson and Elijah Schaeffer.
01:20:36.000So I'm not saying this to be disrespectful to anybody, but a lot of atheists have a very, very limited understanding of great questions.
01:20:45.000And so often they'll say something like, you know, I don't believe there's a bearded man in the sky watching over us.
01:20:50.000And I'm like, I don't think that's what Christians or Muslims believe.
01:20:54.000I think that's like, you actually haven't sat down and had a conversation with a theologist or experienced any kind of wisdom tradition as you describe it.
01:21:03.000And so they have this like, I don't know, Diminished, or maybe that's not the right word, but very, very... Malnourished.
01:21:15.000Maybe a misinterpretation of what God is.
01:21:17.000You've got to kind of define what God is.
01:21:18.000Lack of understanding in these great questions.
01:21:21.000Because I think when you start to think about some of the... I remember when I was like 18, and I'm hanging out with my friends, and they were just stoned off their asses.
01:21:27.000And I don't smoke, I've never been a smoker.
01:21:29.000And it was one of the craziest conversations about time, the origins of the universe, religion... And you remember it!
01:21:38.000And then my contacts were in too long, and my eyes were getting bloodshot, so everyone thought I was stoned anyway, so I fit in.
01:21:44.000No, but just asking these questions, and then someone pulled up a picture showing a linear Big Bang timeline, and then I started thinking about it, and just imagining the vastness of the universe, and then we were talking about how the known universe looks very similar to a neuron when we map out, and I'm like, Yeah, I was actually... But I bring that up because there's a lot of people who haven't had those tripped out conversations that make them... expands their mind's eye, as it were, to be like, why would I ever stop and think that God was like a dude with a beard sitting in a cloud?
01:22:19.000I was thinking yesterday about individualism and collectivism a lot, and I'm like, I think I'm that what I write, I wrote on mines. I posted this,
01:22:27.000that it seems like life is like a subjective experience. Each person is like life is for me and for you,
01:22:32.000life is for you. But then I'm like, but I feel for like the slaves in China and like the kids
01:22:37.000being trafficked around the world. So there's like, yeah, it's like I'm part of this greater
01:23:10.000We need to take babies, and then, even when they can't talk or anything, have them just do five years of philosophy trainings and teachings.
01:23:31.000Obviously, I'm not saying go to a baby and pull up, you know, lock and start talking about liberalism.
01:23:36.000No, I mean like, starting with a baby and just being with a baby and doing what you want to do.
01:23:41.000If you want to instill some good philosophy in kids, tell them they're intelligent, tell them you're good at learning, and you're really good at that.
01:23:46.000That is a deep belief, a religious belief, that you can instill in a human from an early age.
01:23:50.000I just mean like, you know, asking questions of the things like, what did you see today?
01:24:02.000You know, like, just very simple things.
01:24:04.000And then once they're a little bit older and about to go into kindergarten and they're actually talking and they're learning basic math and reading, now you can start asking them more serious questions.
01:24:13.000Like, where do you think I go every day?
01:24:22.000And then as they get older, you start laying on the deep, deep philosophy.
01:24:26.000And I imagine if you did that, we would have an individualist nation that works as a collective when there's emergencies that needs to, that people trust each other.
01:24:35.000My problem was learning about philosophies didn't make me philosophical.
01:25:10.000He has a podcast series on Spotify called Awakening from the Meaning Crisis where he goes through the whole history of the West from the end of the Bronze Age all the way up to like the 90s.
01:25:20.000Oh man, I wonder if you want to come out.
01:26:33.000But, I say this because I genuinely believe people, and well, I'll be careful about how I say it, but there are certain psychedelic experiences people have had that I think have greatly benefited them.
01:26:46.000Specifically the research they're doing on, you know, like PTSD and other, you know... Molly with PTSD.
01:27:32.000I'm talking about medical research and the data we've got so far and I think it's promising and that's why I think this extended state DMT research is fascinating because I feel like this research could lead to helping people a whole lot with breaking down the barriers, the walls, their own insecurities and all that stuff.
01:28:27.000I'll tell you this, I remember when I was a teenager, when I was a kid and I was a teenager, that quote, the only thing, like true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.
01:29:14.000Well, one of the reasons why some of these drugs are super cool is because they result in ego loss.
01:29:19.000And the reason why people have a hard time thinking that they don't know everything is because their identity is attached to how much they know.
01:29:27.000And their sense of self is attached to how much they know.
01:29:30.000And if they have to wrestle with the thought, oh, I don't know something, does that mean my life is meaningless?
01:29:35.000And then they go down this rabbit hole.
01:29:36.000So that's ultimately like, that's why like acid is like a great drug because it affords you a sense of ego loss.
01:29:42.000I also discovered fashion when I did acid.
01:29:48.000One of the reasons I've been a big fan of Jordan Peterson for a while was when he went on that Jim Jefferies show.
01:29:54.000And he said, you know, he's like, I don't think that, you know, you should be forcing a person to say certain words and, you know, like telling them how they should run their businesses and who they should invite in.
01:30:03.000And then he was like, but don't you think it was a good thing that they forced businesses and civil rights movement to desegregate?
01:31:13.000I've not read the book, I've seen the movie.
01:31:15.000I have never done either, but I played the video game.
01:31:18.000So basically, in the movie, Earth is destroyed to make way for a superhighway, and they're given like, only like an hour's warning, like, your planet will be destroyed to make way for the galactic superhighway, we're sorry for the inconvenience, have a nice day, and then they kill everybody.
01:31:34.000But then later, like, I guess later, I can't remember, like a group of aliens realize Earth was actually a special project to calculate the answer to the question, so they have to rebuild the Earth.
01:31:45.000Remake it and everyone comes back and whatever.
01:33:52.000He can like... Well, I mean, you could burn your body alive, too, if you wanted.
01:33:56.000I'll spoil the movie for you guys, alright?
01:33:58.000He actually, so the aliens, you think the test is that they want to see what you do with absolute power.
01:34:05.000And Earth fails the test because Simon Pegg ends up being a good guy who gives the power away and doesn't want to be this powerful entity.
01:34:14.000And the aliens are outraged because of course the only thing someone should do with absolute power is cause pain and suffering and control and dominate.
01:34:22.000And only a few races have ever actually used the galactic power in this way.
01:34:25.000So then they try to destroy the Earth, but I guess, like, I can't remember exactly what happens.
01:34:30.000He made his dog intelligent, and then the dog... He made his dog intelligent?
01:34:35.000He gave the power to his dog, he didn't want it.
01:34:38.000Basically what happens is the power actually destroys the source of the power itself, and kills all of the evil aliens before they can destroy Earth.
01:36:13.000In this version of the Doctor Strange story, for those that aren't familiar, in the movie, Doctor Strange is this egotistical, super famous neurosurgeon, and he's driving to get an award, and he tries to bypass a semi on the highway in a storm, and then, you know, there's an accident, he flies off the road, crashes, and his hands get crushed.
01:36:35.000So he spends all of his money trying to get surgeries, and then finally, once he's broke, he seeks out the mystic arts, and then becomes the Sorcerer Supreme.
01:36:43.000In the What If Show, Christine goes with him.
01:36:46.000Christine, of course, is his love interest.
01:36:49.000In the car accident, he survives and she dies.
01:36:52.000Because of her death, he questions his life and decides to seek out answers in the mystic arts as to the nature of life and becomes Sorcerer Supreme and then saves the planet and everything as the movie goes.
01:37:05.000But with the Time Stone, the Eye of Agamotto, he can go back in time and save Christine.
01:37:12.000But every time he tries, she dies in a different way.
01:37:16.000She gets shot, a building explodes, something happens.
01:37:18.000And then the Ancient One comes to the past, because he keeps interfering, and she's still alive in the past, and says, this is an absolute point in time that can't be changed.
01:37:26.000If she doesn't die, you don't pursue the mystic arts.
01:40:56.000Because if he's really doing it, deep down, because he's not egotistical, No, no, no.
01:41:02.000Like the driving and the thing happens when he's like in his egotistical state.
01:41:06.000He would go back in time and set the path forward where he destroys his own life, erasing his timeline and creating a new timeline where he's still egotistical.
01:42:16.000I just love the idea of this narcissistic doctor who's like fundamental belief in science and then he discovers hidden meaning and truth after he lets go of himself and goes and becomes a monk and then becomes this great and wise hero.
01:43:32.000We went a little bit late because we don't do the bonus segments anyway, and I really wanted to talk about that Doctor Strange episode because it was eating me alive.
01:43:44.000I want to believe that in the end he like he became corrupted but then truly realized what it meant to be a hero and then created a new timeline.
01:43:51.000Is it that you can't take one of your favorite people like descending into evil darkness?
01:46:33.000Because the Sith Lord was also like an elected member.
01:46:35.000So the problem is they're religious zealots who would throw out the rule of law for their own personal religious drive of what is truly evil.
01:47:40.000The Chancellor used the attempted assassination to justify the extreme expansion of powers and to hunt down the Jedi.
01:47:45.000If I'd been a Grey Jedi... That one incident that caused that, that's absurd.
01:47:50.000If a Grey Jedi had walked in and slaughtered the Emperor in that moment and ended the Sith Chancellor and ended the Sith, what would have been the problem with that?
01:48:02.000You have to, so you're coming at this point, this situation from a state of absolute knowledge.
01:51:32.000Andrew Lage says South Australia is forcing returning citizens to download an app that will send them a
01:51:39.000notification and within 15 minutes They must go to the specified place and take a photo with
01:51:42.000their face on it. If not, the cops come. Do you hear this?
01:51:45.000It's crazy However, my understanding is how it works is you have the app, you'll get a notification saying you have 15 minutes to post a photo from the location you're at using geolocation, which means if you claim to be at a house in this particular area, you take a picture of yourself, it's geotagged with the area and your face confirmed, you're good.
01:54:33.000Yeah, I was gonna say I don't know about that.
01:54:35.000Yeah, I think that actually will just... Like, when you approach someone as an enemy, you solidify their position.
01:54:40.000If a person already is acting out of a lack of self-worth and you slap them, so to speak, You're actually going to deepen that sense of low self-esteem.
01:54:52.000You can't make a change like that unless you're slapping yourself in the face.
01:55:38.000I'm also critical of the Marxist take or what seems to be Marxist take on Like, saying that, like, what's driving certain people in elite institutions to CRT or to wokeness is because it's financially successful.
01:55:57.000I don't think that that's actually what's happened.
01:55:59.000I don't think that's a sufficient driver.
01:56:02.000And that's a very Marxist idea, ultimately.
01:56:07.000Joshua Hickey says white CRT people are white supremacists.
01:56:10.000They believe they're inherently above the level due to their skin color.
01:56:14.000Usually they're just undisciplined and spoiled people who haven't earned what they've been given and they know it.
01:56:20.000One of the things that I've said and Carl Benjamin has said is that many of these white woke people are white supremacists with guilty consciences.
01:56:41.000I mean, what is the role of guilt in this particular context?
01:56:46.000The self-flagellation that we spoke about?
01:56:49.000So one of the stories I tell a bit too much, sorry audience for beating the horse, but was when I was in the North Dakota pipeline protests.
01:57:56.000I said, I am not going to sit here and listen to a white supremacist tell me that my culture, which was thousands of years more advanced than, a thousand years more advanced than yours, is responsible for everything that my ancestors did.
01:58:20.000One of my objections to, like, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote an article in Atlantic a few years ago called The First White President, I think that was the name of it, where he's talking about Donald Trump, and he basically argued that white supremacy was, I forgot the particular line, so apologies if I misquote, this is a paraphrase, but he was basically like, white supremacy is cosmic in nature.
01:58:46.000And my thing was, if you actually believe that, then you actually believe in white supremacy.
01:58:51.000You would have to believe that white people are, in fact, omnipotent in order to believe that it is cosmic and everywhere in nature.
01:59:03.000And so, yeah, that story resonates with me.
01:59:08.000And I think it's one of the blind spots and the ironies going on in a lot of these arguments.
01:59:13.000Yeah, I see a lot of people mentioning we in the chat because I said we invented it.
01:59:18.000Is that I was sitting in front of a guy who was overtly white, and yes, I am still mostly white, German, Irish, British, and I think that's it for the most part.
01:59:26.000But the point I was making was like, this dude was directly insulting my Asian heritage.
01:59:30.000And so I'm like to reference my ancestors and the work they did for you to come here.
01:59:34.000Obviously, I understand, you know, like European colonization.
01:59:38.000This guy was just a white supremacist.
01:59:40.000All right, Scott James Pilkington says, Greetings Chimcast.
02:00:23.000And the problem is we can't expedite it.
02:00:25.000So it's like, yeah, we're not going through Eric on this.
02:00:27.000We're going to go through the company to get, so we're not getting Potemkin phones, basically.
02:00:31.000We don't want things that has been tweaked to look right.
02:00:34.000But, but maybe there's an easier way to do it is if somebody gets a Freedom Phone, we can work with you, uh, or your phone or whatever and something like that.
02:00:43.000The issue is that if we go to them and say, hey, can we get phones? Well, then we're getting phones
02:00:47.000from them and you can't trust it. We can't ask them for phones and we can't even ask for an
02:00:51.000expedited phone. Hey, here are the people we're getting phones delivered to. And you know,
02:00:54.000because then they're going to send them clean, you know, fixed phones or whatever, or it's,
02:00:59.000it's compromising the security. So yeah, well, it just could take some time.
02:01:03.000Well, that's a good sign that they're, they're on back order doing extremely well.
02:02:24.000They proposed removing the non-discrimination clause from their constitution that barred discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, sex from their... Why?
02:02:33.000Because they argued that it inhibited their ability to engage in anti-racism.
02:02:37.000Yes, because anti-racist discrimination is good in Ibram Kendi's book.
02:02:45.000All of the National Democrats were endorsing it.
02:02:49.000Many national Democrats and Democrats from other states were endorsing.
02:02:52.000So you think that it says Democrat is more of a warning, like, hey, check this guy, vet this guy, because he's identifying with this weird party.
02:03:00.000Not that if someone puts Democrat on their shirt, they're necessarily a bad person.
02:03:03.000What happens to people like Kimberly Klasick and Billy Prempeh?
02:04:23.000I feel like the Americans were like, we're going to set up a system where we have what we think of as like rules, like rights based on the Christian Bible.
02:06:27.000Yeah, because the way you said the deer has the right to defend itself is kind of a misuse of the word right in the term of natural rights that we're talking about right now.
02:06:44.000If a person was being beaten in the street and a guy was just pummeling him and then he grabbed a wrench off the ground and smacked the guy in the face and killed him, would you blame the guy who was being beaten?
02:07:22.000But are you saying that if a person, if the government didn't support a person defending themselves, then that person no longer has the right to defend themselves?
02:07:48.000You said ethics in the definition, and then you didn't say ethics when you were redefining it.
02:07:52.000I read a large paragraph giving you a very intricate explanation of where natural laws apply and why, and then you started nitpicking it, so I broke it down to, like, fundamental Truths that are inherent freedoms that are inherent to living beings because no matter what definition I give you you would change the definition This is a clearly a great question.
02:09:09.000If a man was selling Lucy cigarettes outside of a bodega and the cops came up and put him in a chokehold and he was screaming, I can't breathe.
02:09:15.000And then he grabs a wrench and swings it, hits the cop, killing him instantly.
02:09:48.000And you still... But okay, fine, he defends... I mean, self-defense isn't... It's not okay... Self-defense, I'm not saying that the reason it's okay to defend your life is because you have a right.
02:09:57.000You have to defend your life to survive.
02:09:59.000Now we built a legal... Now you understand what rights are.
02:10:16.000I don't want to waste these Super Chatters times because people are giving us money right now.
02:10:20.000The reason why I asked the question about the cop is because you recognized you wouldn't blame someone for defending themselves if a cop was mercilessly beating them and they took the person's life and their intent was to defend themselves.
02:10:31.000But the state would probably still arrest you and charge you.
02:11:45.000You still can do those things, but you don't have a right.
02:11:47.000There's no... I still don't understand what your definition of right is.
02:11:50.000A right is like, it's like, well what is the definition of rights?
02:11:54.000Things that are, abilities that are given to you by God.
02:11:56.000This is what natural, you're talking about natural rights.
02:11:58.000It's something inherent to the dignity of what it means to be human.
02:12:02.000Freedoms that are inherent to life, fundamental, like.
02:12:06.000It's like a part of the sacredness of what it means to be human.
02:12:09.000In this society, but in Afghanistan it's not.
02:12:10.000In order for life to function, there are, It is.
02:12:13.000In order for life to function, certain things have to happen.
02:12:16.000And as human beings, and as all life strives to survive, we recognize that life does certain things.
02:12:21.000In fact, in the definition of life, when they describe it, it propagates, and I believe defense, or the attempt to survive, is one of them.
02:12:32.000The challenge I have with your understanding is it seems that it would be easily devolving into relativism.
02:12:40.000And that's why people are going crazy right now and railing against the US government because the government's like blindly being like, like, okay, I get it.
02:13:33.000There are some limits on causing harm to others because now you're infringing on their right to life and they have the right to defense.
02:13:40.000But when a massive multinational corporation takes up all the land, we actually have battled this out in the courts.
02:13:46.000We've decided that publicly owned private spaces, you are required to allow free speech.
02:13:51.000So Occupy Wall Street, for instance, was only possible because the people went on private property and the private company said, you have no right to free speech on my property.
02:13:59.000And the government The people and the precedent in the courts was, actually, if you're occupying the common space as a private owner, you can't take away someone's right to free speech.
02:14:10.000So YouTube bans people, banks debank people, the US government hasn't done a thing about it.
02:14:15.000Welcome to the argument against censorship.
02:14:32.000Republicans were too stupid to do anything about it from 2016 and on, and now they're all being banned and blacklisted, and they don't care because most of them were neocons unipartists anyway.
02:14:41.000Now, you have the issue of just enforce Section 230.
02:14:45.000Never was this law intended to allow Twitter to arbitrarily create editorial guidelines on what opinions are allowed to have.
02:14:52.000YouTube doesn't come to me and say, we're concerned about the safety of individuals, so you can't talk about Donald Trump's election.
02:15:03.000But if there is a massive major stadium, or all of the space in the center of the town is being occupied or owned by one person, we have already determined that privately owned public spaces must protect the free speech rights of an individual.
02:15:17.000All we need now is for the willpower in any politician to enforce it.
02:15:24.000That's why Facebook has been having meetings with politicians trying to be like, please don't regulate us because we know you can do it.
02:15:29.000People begging for daddy to fix it is freaking me out.
02:15:32.000The people like a politician could fix it for me.
02:15:35.000The government could do it for like, dude, these are your rights.
02:15:38.000This is not Alexandria Cortez's Version of your rights. This is yours and no no corporation
02:15:44.000or government state is gonna make that is gonna keep that for you
02:15:47.000That's up to you and your friends Reading you'd have to do for us to like make a substantive
02:15:52.000conversation I'm sure we should have experts on but I mean we like I
02:15:55.000think the people who have watched this have Researched too much and for you to enter this conversation
02:16:01.000with this lack of understanding would be like, you know Someone who's never read a math book trying to explain or
02:16:07.000ask about math to someone who's in advanced out like algebra or calculus
02:16:10.000But I think if people constantly complain about their rights being taken away, it's going to devolve into their rights being gone, as opposed to actually projecting their rights.
02:16:20.000Then you realize, oh, your rights are there because you projected them, not because it was written on some paper and given to you from somewhere else.
02:16:26.000You created that in your in your behavior.
02:19:02.000Martin the Panda says, the fundamental problem is an increasing lack of faith in something outside the human experience.
02:19:08.000When there's nothing greater than yourself to answer life's big questions, it's much easier to see yourself as divine and those against you as evil.
02:19:16.000Well, I would agree halfway with that.
02:19:20.000I think that, I do believe that human beings are divine, but that doesn't, I don't mean that in the, I think that human beings are, you know, I'm spiritual, so I think that human beings are made in the image of the divine.
02:19:31.000Um, and this idea that comes from Genesis is like being made in the image of God is like something that I subscribe to.
02:19:37.000I don't think that's the problem, but I do think that that doesn't mean, um, actually John Verveke has this, has, has this interesting riff That has influenced my thoughts on the idea of the sacred.
02:19:51.000What do you mean when you call something sacred?
02:20:27.000We were talking about the perfection of the universe and how it just functions so perfectly, but how you're defining perfection is that it's static.
02:20:34.000And the changing imperfections in the universe seem to give it this inexhaustible quality.
02:20:39.000The heat death of the universe is, as far as we know, an inevitability.
02:20:44.000yeah if untouched but of course we we are the wardens of this space this is one thing i've talked i think the expansion of space right now it's beyond our understanding how to revert reverse this but it's entirely possible at least Well, I could be wrong about this, but I believe it's possible.
02:21:02.000Life in the universe comes to a point where, sure, there's heat death of the universe, but maybe we create extremely advanced machines, extremely advanced AI, super intelligent, that just floats for billions of years until it interacts with that one electron and absorbs it, and then just keeps going without, you know, losing any.
02:21:18.000And then it may take trillions of years, but it's eventually collecting all the matter and still functioning as some form of complex system.
02:21:27.000Or maybe, by that point, we learn how to collapse and control space-time, and the universe just, we just, you know, whatever's created.
02:23:56.000So it's like, even if there is only one sacred timeline, in fact, the Loki timeline, where there's only one timeline, the sacred timeline, actually exists in a superposition of infinity with all the other timelines, just somewhat isolated from them, because they're, as he mentions, the moment you kill me, there will instantly be all these other, you know, conquerors who will be around you.
02:24:19.000That's why I think there's an issue with the Loki show trying to do the Sacred Timeline, because we've already referenced the multiverse and other timelines, and they have no explanation for how this interferes with those ideas, other than to say, it was inevitable that the one that remains would be killed, shattering the Sacred Timeline, creating infinite timelines, and changing the past, and thus all those alternate universes could have existed anyway.
02:24:41.000And the show, what if, actually explores these other universes, which exist anyway.
02:25:50.000Okay, Mickey Mouse says, Ian, rights aren't the ability to defend oneself, they are what gives you the moral high ground when you have to defend yourself.
02:25:58.000Yes, rights are what give you the legal, essentially legal authority.
02:26:24.000You can follow the show at TimCastIRL.
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02:26:45.000Do you want to shout out your social media or anything else?
02:26:47.000Sure, check out theoryofenchantment.com.
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02:28:00.000Exertus, you've seen his shirt on me before.
02:28:03.000Andreas was saying so many crazy things to Steve Bannon, but Steve Bannon was into it, and, you know, Andreas was talking about transhumanism and, like, cyber-Marxism or whatever, and, like, after the show, Bannon's like, who is that guy?