Based Camp - Can Jewish Cultural Technology Fix the Downfall of Modern Universities？

00:00:00.000 Hello, Simone. 0.69

00:00:01.100 Sorry, I'm late.

00:00:03.200 Horrible nightmare visions.

00:00:05.900 It's called life, Dib. 0.94

00:00:07.360 Education as it exists today seems to believe one of its primary drives is to induce pessimism

00:00:16.840 and self-hatred into the student from a cultural perspective.

00:00:22.760 Children, your performance was miserable. 0.77

00:00:24.860 Your parents will all receive phone calls instructing them to love you less now.

00:00:30.680 You know, I feel like normally when I hear statements like this, either from you or in

00:00:38.560 media, my default reaction is always to say, it's not really that bad.

00:00:44.020 But yet one more parent wrote to us today.

00:00:46.320 I don't know if you saw their email.

00:00:47.840 I haven't yet.

00:00:49.080 I'm not going to name them for their confidentiality, but they were writing from a personal perspective

00:00:53.960 about the experience that drove them to take their kids out of, yeah, I'll read this just

00:01:01.780 because it's one of those things where like, I can hear about it abstractly and think, well,

00:01:07.900 that's not really happening.

00:01:09.460 And yet here's this parent saying, what pushed my wife and I over the line was a worksheet

00:01:14.480 our daughter brought home, which asked kids to match values to white people, black people,

00:01:19.480 et cetera, drawing lines between the group and what was valued.

00:01:22.840 White people were supposed to be matched with money and a picture of a clock. 0.89

00:01:27.460 I assume it indicated being on time.

00:01:30.060 Between that worksheet and another take-home worksheet involving pronouns and gender stuff,

00:01:35.300 we contacted the public school they went to and asked who was giving our daughter the material.

00:01:40.900 It turned out to be a consultant, which they subsequently refused to fully name or state

00:01:45.460 what exactly they were contracted for.

00:01:47.880 After that event, we pulled our oldest daughter. 0.64

00:01:49.840 What does identifying blotches have to do with determining our future careers?

00:01:53.960 Oh, you poor doomed child.

00:01:56.280 I just, to hear that, and we know, I can know factually that that's happening because

00:02:01.820 we talked about that one insane unhinged DEI consultant.

00:02:05.740 Oh yeah, this is from the Smithsonian, where like, being white is associated with hard work

00:02:10.380 and personal responsibility and being on time.

00:02:14.020 Yeah.

00:02:14.280 And it's like, well, that sounds super racist to me.

00:02:17.560 Like, how are you guys?

00:02:20.200 How do you think you're the good guy?

00:02:21.780 When me and Brad first met, I didn't think we'd get along, but turns out we kind of agree

00:02:25.060 on everything.

00:02:25.760 Your racial identity is the most important thing.

00:02:27.760 Everything should be looked at through the lens of race. 0.98

00:02:29.480 Jinx, you owe me a Coke. 1.00

00:02:30.440 Damn. 1.00

00:02:30.820 We both think minorities are a united group who think the same and act the same. 1.00

00:02:34.220 And both the same.

00:02:35.120 You don't want to lose your black card.

00:02:36.320 Sorry, I don't know.

00:02:36.880 I just think we should roll back discrimination law so we can hire based on race again.

00:02:40.060 Jinx, now you owe me a Coke. 0.78

00:02:41.540 Hey, tell them what you told me yesterday. 0.64

00:02:43.040 White actors should only do voices for white cartoon characters. 0.98

00:02:45.900 I've been saying that for years.

00:02:46.680 But continue.

00:02:47.820 Well, no, I was actually thinking about the DEI consultant who works specifically with

00:02:51.980 kindergarten programs and has that curriculum.

00:02:55.480 But it just did it.

00:02:57.720 Oh yeah, Woke Kindergarten.

00:02:58.200 Check out that episode.

00:02:59.420 We are contacted by people who are themselves experiencing this.

00:03:04.280 Makes me realize that you saying this, as much as I want to chalk it off to exaggeration

00:03:10.460 and storytelling, it's not.

00:03:14.240 It's reality.

00:03:16.000 Oh, absolutely.

00:03:16.820 This is, I think where this is seen most right now is in the university system.

00:03:20.680 The machine will now decide your fate.

00:03:23.640 Recently, just 36% of Americans now tell posters that they have significant confidence in education,

00:03:35.020 specifically in higher education, down from 57% less than a decade ago.

00:03:40.260 Oh gosh.

00:03:41.520 So consider, 36%, that's all of the population that has confidence that higher education is

00:03:47.220 doing a good job.

00:03:47.960 There was something written by someone who really helped frame this and put it in perspective

00:03:53.960 to me.

00:03:54.320 And I want to read it with you and talk through it because it had me rethink some things.

00:03:58.760 And it reminded me, we were on a recent call with a pronatalist group in France, right?

00:04:02.980 And they're trying to promote traditional French ways of doing things.

00:04:06.520 And I consider us so blessed that we grew up in the United States and that we intrinsically

00:04:11.520 look at a pluralist way of doing things because it means that we look to other groups.

00:04:16.540 You know, they were trying to fortify their religion, Catholicism, right?

00:04:22.040 And I was like, well, so surely you've looked at the religions that are more resistant to

00:04:25.760 fertility collapse, like Protestantism and Jewish groups. 0.98

00:04:28.560 And they're like, I never thought to do that.

00:04:31.680 And I was like, well, you should.

00:04:33.800 You better start now.

00:04:34.740 Because there's something that they're doing that's working that you could adapt.

00:04:37.860 And I was reading something by a Jew recently.

00:04:40.960 When have I ever ripped on you for being a Jew? 1.00

00:04:43.200 Oh yeah, well, you're a stupid Jew. 1.00

00:04:44.880 You're a Jew. 1.00

00:04:45.420 Such a goddamn Jew mask. 1.00

00:04:47.120 Good job, Jew. 1.00

00:04:48.060 Jews. 1.00

00:04:48.740 Shut up, Jew. 1.00

00:04:49.380 You're Jewish. 1.00

00:04:50.080 Dude, he's Jewish. 1.00

00:04:50.740 Jew. 0.90

00:04:51.140 Jew. 0.90

00:04:51.560 Jew. 0.90

00:04:52.040 Jew. 0.90

00:04:52.540 Jew. 0.90

00:04:52.920 Jew. 0.90

00:04:53.340 Jew. 0.99

00:04:53.640 I told you Jewish people don't have rhythm. 1.00

00:04:55.440 F*** off, Carmen! 1.00

00:04:58.120 Okay, except maybe for that one time. 0.99

00:05:00.060 And I was like, this is a really interesting point that I don't just think matters for our

00:05:07.460 educational system.

00:05:08.400 But at the end of this discussion, I want to talk through with you how we can update the

00:05:13.940 Collins Institute, our free educational system, CollinsInstituteDeck.org.

00:05:18.280 You can go check it out.

00:05:20.180 I kind of want to rethink some parts of it, especially as we're dealing with older kids

00:05:24.280 and the way that we do our sort of homeschooling system.

00:05:27.940 Hmm.

00:05:28.180 Okay.

00:05:29.600 So this was written by a Jewish first semester Columbia student.

00:05:35.500 Okay.

00:05:37.140 In some classes, professors started having us read key passages of the text together, either

00:05:42.700 aloud or during quiet in-class reading time.

00:05:45.520 I joined them at first, imagining that a second read was a deeper read.

00:05:50.440 As to analyze together, I might notice that my group partner had no understanding of Descartes'

00:05:57.140 ontological argument.

00:05:58.520 I tried to ignore it so as not to seem unkind.

00:06:01.480 As our final exam neared, my classmates' study habits came into sharp relief.

00:06:06.240 They seemed to be learning the material from scratch, scrambling to flip through entire

00:06:12.020 swaths of the Western literary canon in a single week.

00:06:15.980 Take a good look, children.

00:06:18.100 It will prepare you for your adult lives in our nightmarish corporate system.

00:06:23.400 It was then that I understood that, for the past few months, I had been participating in

00:06:28.620 a show class in which I was one of the only students who actually bothered to read any of

00:06:33.860 the books.

00:06:34.640 Apparently, the opportunity to explore the supposedly foundational text of Western civilization

00:06:39.540 didn't matter as deeply to my peers as I expected.

00:06:43.140 Oh my gosh.

00:06:43.940 Could you imagine going through that?

00:06:45.500 I mean, some of the most meaningful elements of my college experience was, I took this one

00:06:52.020 class on the Divine Comedy and going through that with a small group of students and everyone

00:06:57.640 was so engaged in it.

00:06:59.560 Well, that's because you were with all the Catholics in that and they really care about

00:07:03.180 that.

00:07:03.680 And this is when she was-

00:07:04.480 No, no, no.

00:07:04.960 There was a Jew.

00:07:07.000 There was a Catholic, a Jew, an atheist.

00:07:08.840 It was really great.

00:07:10.080 Oh boy.

00:07:10.740 Here's a start to a bad joke.

00:07:12.220 Would you happen to be a man of faith?

00:07:13.420 Yeah, I'd say so.

00:07:14.240 And would that faith happen to be of a certain chosen people?

00:07:17.120 I actually can't see myself more spiritual than religious.

00:07:19.860 Oh, you're one of those?

00:07:20.680 Oy, hey.

00:07:21.420 Well, my door's open and on Fridays we get to eat meat, something my friend wouldn't

00:07:25.360 know much about.

00:07:26.140 Coming from the guy who can't mix dairy and meat on the same plate.

00:07:28.860 I was just talking to my wife about that.

00:07:31.500 You know, I'm glad you brought her up because I just saw Esther yesterday.

00:07:34.180 She was at Culver's getting a double cheeseburger with bacon.

00:07:36.720 The Catholic I had a crush on was the only Catholic in it. 0.98

00:07:39.920 And then the rest-

00:07:40.760 What?

00:07:40.980 No, he works at the Vatican now, right?

00:07:43.040 I had seen him in Vatican City.

00:07:45.420 No, I think he's in like Maryland now.

00:07:47.480 No.

00:07:47.940 But, no, it was a very religiously diverse class, but everyone had read the text and

00:07:53.060 in detail.

00:07:53.740 And there was spicy conversation in that class.

00:07:55.940 Can you imagine going to a class where no one had actually read the text except for

00:07:59.400 you?

00:08:00.120 Yeah, I did that all the time.

00:08:01.960 What?

00:08:02.960 Maybe the virus was worse in the UK.

00:08:04.800 I did my undergrad in the UK, but a lot of people just didn't really care.

00:08:08.560 Oh, my gosh.

00:08:08.860 And I've heard it's getting worse now.

00:08:10.860 Like, this is an increase in me.

00:08:12.000 Oh, my gosh.

00:08:12.020 And this is at Columbia where he's describing this experience.

00:08:15.020 But you'll understand why they didn't care as we go deeper. 0.99

00:08:18.400 Damn. 0.99

00:08:18.800 I was slow on the uptake for a specific reason. 0.99

00:08:22.560 Like many modern Orthodox American Jews, I attended a gap year in Israel between high

00:08:27.560 school and college.

00:08:28.600 The particular program I attended, Yeshvat Har Estazoyin.

00:08:33.740 Of course, I'm mispronouncing that.

00:08:35.820 I ain't no J-O-O.

00:08:37.420 You know, maybe we're not seeing heaven because one of us is a J-O-O. 0.71

00:08:41.320 You know, I don't know how to speak this language.

00:08:44.540 It's known for intellectually rigorous traditional Talmud study.

00:08:49.640 It was my first experience with higher learning in which I and a cohort of like-minded peers

00:08:55.320 spent our days immersed in the demanding study of text.

00:08:59.160 In this case, the Talmud and its commentaries.

00:09:01.680 Experiencing these two vastly disparate educational cultures, one after the other, left me wondering

00:09:08.180 what it was that brought about the baffling divergence between one culture that treated

00:09:13.680 learning as the ultimate sacred endeavor and the other that treated it as a boring formality.

00:09:18.660 And I think here he's a little misstating what he ended up discovering, but I think what

00:09:22.760 he did end up discovering is really clear here.

00:09:25.420 On a typical day at the Yashkiva, we would show up to class having already spent a number

00:09:31.660 of hours pursuing and analyzing the material among ourselves.

00:09:35.600 We knew that if we had not studiously read the relevant Talmudic passages and commentaries

00:09:40.160 in advance, we'd be completely unable to follow the lecture.

00:09:43.440 So as we sat in the classroom and waited for our Rebbe or teacher to arrive, in addition 0.80

00:09:48.600 to the usual small talk, my friends and I would often discuss the relevant questions that

00:09:53.920 were on our minds.

00:09:55.180 We had read that Maimonides, a 12th century Egyptian Talmudist, maintained that the Torah

00:10:00.640 requires all testimony to be received orally.

00:10:03.500 As the verse states, at the mouth of two witnesses shall the matter be discussed.

00:10:09.800 But how would he resolve the objection raised by Necmonides, the 13th century Spanish sage,

00:10:16.940 who highlighted that the Torah clearly allows for written testimony when it legislates divorce

00:10:22.040 to be achieved through the use of a written document alone.

00:10:25.660 After the lecture, my peers and I continued the conversation, comparing notes, debating our

00:10:30.920 Rebbe's approach, and developing our own ideas.

00:10:33.940 We would also be sure to find time in the evenings and late nights to explore topics outside our

00:10:40.080 general curriculum, studying, among other things, great works of Jewish philosophy, poetry,

00:10:45.060 and mysticism.

00:10:46.240 What motivated us to labor so tirelessly to understand these arcane and complex subjects?

00:10:52.080 There were no grades given at the yeshiva, and our future careers would hardly be determined

00:10:57.140 by our understanding of the laws of Jewish divorce.

00:11:00.700 So why did we sit at the edges of our seats to be sure we understood every word the Rebbe spoke? 0.73

00:11:10.240 And I'm sure you already begin to guess probably what the differences are between the two systems,

00:11:16.820 but this is just so aspirational to me of an educational paradigm.

00:11:22.420 How do you get children to value what they are learning for its own sake, right?

00:11:29.720 Make a school for artists?

00:11:31.720 Because this was me.

00:11:32.800 Before every single class, I'd show up and I'd be like,

00:11:35.100 well, what did you think about this passage in the text?

00:11:37.360 And I didn't know.

00:11:37.780 I think it's more than, I think part of it he's actually giving away here.

00:11:41.100 Okay, what is it?

00:11:41.660 Is that he wasn't learning this stuff for grades, or for a job, or for secular world things.

00:11:52.760 He was learning it for internal class status within the Jewish cultural hierarchy.

00:11:57.520 Yeah.

00:11:57.960 And because he believed, believed.

00:12:01.840 And this is the thing about belief.

00:12:03.100 Belief is the thing you choose.

00:12:04.960 And this is the thing I didn't really realize until I started becoming more religious,

00:12:08.400 is you choose to believe in God.

00:12:10.800 It's not like a, there's some religions who are like, well, God called to me. 0.96

00:12:14.620 And I'm like, well, then you're just a schizophrenic.

00:12:17.100 I believe in God.

00:12:17.760 No, wait, there's some insanely high proportion, you told me, of people actually hear his voices, right?

00:12:23.300 That's 25%.

00:12:23.980 Wait, 75%?

00:12:25.880 25.

00:12:26.800 25 is insane.

00:12:28.320 That's, yeah.

00:12:29.060 But I was like, no, no, no, no, no.

00:12:30.560 I'm going to choose to believe this stuff.

00:12:32.900 He was from a culture that chose to believe that there was some intrinsic value to their

00:12:40.940 progenitor texts, to their history and their ancestry and ancestors.

00:12:46.580 But to go further, to better understand how they convinced or brainwashed, if you want

00:12:53.940 to go with an urban monocultural interpretation, brainwashed their children to not be ashamed

00:12:59.960 of their ancestors and to believe that their culture has value and their lives has value.

00:13:06.180 What a horrible brainwashing, right, Simone? 1.00

00:13:08.980 The yeshiva succeeded in cultivating a culture of erudition and studiousness in its students

00:13:14.920 in large part because they taught their students to be proud of their inherited tradition, which

00:13:19.800 they were studying.

00:13:21.020 We were told we were studying the uniquely special wisdom of the Torah, which was divinely gifted

00:13:26.860 to us and our ancestors.

00:13:28.560 We learned how the Talmudic sages of the past endured unbearable persecutions, even death,

00:13:34.620 in order to preserve and study the Holy Torah and its exigenical tradition.

00:13:39.900 We were taught that the sages, whose words we would painstakingly pour over, were among

00:13:46.520 the greatest geniuses and most pious men who ever walked the earth, and that their works

00:13:51.220 contain crucial lessons which remain relevant today.

00:13:55.740 The pedagogical culture I encountered at Columbia was entirely different.

00:13:59.220 Officially, Columbia prides itself on century-old curriculum, a series of classes every student

00:14:06.120 is required to take, which present an overview of the best works of the Western canon.

00:14:11.880 But when I actually entered Columbia's classrooms, I found that this outward pride was hollow.

00:14:17.360 In fact, it camouflaged a much deeper pervasive shame which most Colombians felt about their

00:14:23.440 inherited intellectual and artistic traditions.

00:14:25.720 Sorry, I'll note here, I'm actually cutting out a lot of this just to make it quicker to

00:14:30.560 get to the key points, so this is not like a direct quoting.

00:14:33.880 On more than one occasion, in fact quite regularly, a professor of a core curriculum course, be it

00:14:39.120 focused on literature, philosophy, music, or art, would be sure to note in his or her introductory

00:14:44.420 lecture that, in truth, there was nothing special about the Western Canyons' approach to a topic.

00:14:49.660 Their spiel would include some version of the following disclaimer.

00:14:52.640 If I had it my way, we would study African art, Eastern philosophy, or Hispanic literature.

00:14:59.260 Unfortunately, due to the oppressive constraints imposed upon us by the prejudiced alumni and 1.00

00:15:04.600 agenda-based donors, we will have to study the works of these mostly irrelevant dead white men

00:15:12.720 instead. 0.98

00:15:14.680 Irrelevant dead white men. 0.99

00:15:16.880 Right? 0.98

00:15:17.360 Honestly, though, I mean, I'm a very mercenary person.

00:15:21.380 Whoever's relevant is whoever's bankrolling the school, so if that's what the donors want.

00:15:29.580 Well, there's been a major crisis now.

00:15:31.540 The donors don't want to donate anymore because they're like...

00:15:33.560 Yeah, obviously.

00:15:36.000 But you... 0.97

00:15:37.360 White men! 1.00

00:15:38.360 Last time I did a Peter S. pumpkin, but this time I'll do something else for my spooky...

00:15:58.260 I should have our kids dress up as white men for Halloween. 0.99

00:16:03.980 I mean, I don't know how...

00:16:05.200 No, they're going to.

00:16:06.140 They're going to.

00:16:06.740 They're going to wear...

00:16:07.760 They're going to be ghosts.

00:16:09.520 Oh, yeah.

00:16:09.860 She's literally cutting holes out of sheets and creating Halloween costumes for them. 1.00

00:16:13.840 They're excited for it.

00:16:15.660 That you don't accidentally make the sheets a little too pointy.

00:16:18.620 Or we're going to get in a lot of trouble, Simone.

00:16:21.760 No, they're going to look like little ghosts from Charlie Brown.

00:16:24.980 And, except this is the thing, here's the twist, is if they don't receive rocks, they're

00:16:29.500 going to be sad.

00:16:30.380 And Charlie Brown, did they receive rocks?

00:16:34.740 I got five pieces of candy.

00:16:36.680 I got a chocolate bar.

00:16:38.240 I got a quarter.

00:16:39.760 I got a rock.

00:16:42.020 Yeah, no, there's this whole scene.

00:16:43.800 Come on.

00:16:44.340 Do you know...

00:16:44.740 Have you not watched It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown?

00:16:47.500 The whole thing is when they go trick-or-treating, everyone else gets all this great candy.

00:16:51.980 And then this one kid, it's like, well, I got a candy bar.

00:16:56.180 I got a lollipop.

00:16:57.320 I got a rock.

00:16:58.400 And if our kids did not receive rocks, they would be devastated because they don't like

00:17:03.880 candy.

00:17:04.620 So it's...

00:17:05.660 I don't know.

00:17:06.080 I find it poetic and perfect.

00:17:07.480 They have to be little Charlie Brown ghosts.

00:17:10.680 Who would reasonably be excited to study the greatest works of a civilization defined by

00:17:16.240 the greatest evils it has committed?

00:17:17.740 For the next several months, as we made our way through the greatest works Western civilization

00:17:22.900 had ever produced, we would be periodically reminded that Western canon was built upon

00:17:28.020 fundamentally bigoted principles.

00:17:30.220 When we were taught about democracy in essence, our professors emphasized that like America's

00:17:35.380 democracy today, the Athenian democracy ideals were far from realized.

00:17:39.320 Women were not given an opportunity to vote.

00:17:41.440 And the Parthenon was built using slave labor.

00:17:45.500 I recall my surprise when we studied Rembrandt, our assigned readings focused on exploring how

00:17:52.520 the Dutch master benefited from his homeland's colonialist ambition.

00:17:57.400 At every possible juncture, the great thinkers and artists of our syllabi were put on trial

00:18:04.500 and they were always convicted.

00:18:08.120 This seems like a comedy bit.

00:18:10.160 Like every single...

00:18:11.560 Like, well, this white man was...

00:18:13.120 No, I think university today is a comedy bit from the young people we know on campuses.

00:18:17.200 It's literally like, oh, we got to study this guy.

00:18:20.760 But did you...

00:18:21.720 Have you thought about how maybe he might have been a racist?

00:18:25.260 Yeah, no, yeah.

00:18:26.140 Have you thought about how maybe he benefited from their...

00:18:29.680 And let's not talk about colonialism.

00:18:33.220 It's like they act like white people invented colonialism. 0.87

00:18:37.640 I'm going to do like a series of maps on screen tiers of like historic empires, whether it's

00:18:42.260 the Mongol Empire, the Chinese Empire, the Japanese Empire, the Muslim Ustah's Empire.

00:18:48.120 Like everybody did this.

00:18:50.480 The strong conquer the weak.

00:18:52.280 That's history for you, buddy.

00:18:54.300 That's not a sign of sin.

00:18:56.780 That's a sign of reality.

00:18:59.120 It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.

00:19:03.220 Symbolic of his struggle against reality.

00:19:05.560 It's like, it's like you found out...

00:19:07.740 It's almost like, it's like one of those people who's like, did you know that when you go to

00:19:13.100 a grocery store and you buy groceries, the store profits?

00:19:17.700 They don't sell you the food for the price they bought it for.

00:19:22.060 Did you know? 0.99

00:19:23.780 And it's like, are you retarded? 0.99

00:19:27.800 Plaque is a figment of the liberal media and the dental industry to scare you into buying 1.00

00:19:32.560 useless appliances and pastes.

00:19:34.440 Now, I've read the arguments on both sides. 0.95

00:19:36.980 And I haven't found any evidence yet to support the need to brush your teeth.

00:19:42.060 I don't know how you'd know you ain't got no teeth.

00:19:44.360 Well, I got rid of my teeth at a young age because I'm straight. 0.98

00:19:49.360 Teeth are for gay people. 1.00

00:19:50.560 That's why f***ies come and get them. 1.00

00:19:52.740 If teeth make me gay, then sign me up. 1.00

00:19:55.640 Because I wish I had them. 0.98

00:19:57.160 You doubt me?

00:19:58.160 Yeah.

00:19:58.460 Come on, to the crime lab.

00:20:01.100 Computer, search for teeth and plaque conspiracy and Metallica and Justin Timberlake.

00:20:13.180 Do Justin Timberlake.

00:20:15.180 Please hush up.

00:20:17.000 The search needs complete silence to work.

00:20:19.380 Oh, shoot, I forgot.

00:20:22.700 Anyway, got to continue here.

00:20:24.560 These comments were not limited to judgments of individual artists and philosophers.

00:20:31.360 Over and over again, we were told how terrible it was that Western canon as a whole, and seemingly

00:20:36.880 as a condition of its being, silenced the voices of women and minorities and included only those

00:20:42.740 of European Christian heterosexual men, which, by the way, it effing didn't.

00:20:48.040 There's a lot of famous gay people in the European canon, but like, okay, whatever. 0.95

00:20:52.660 A lot, actually. 0.91

00:20:55.460 Europe was very gay. 0.99

00:20:56.860 Honestly, it's not right. 0.97

00:20:58.300 Look at that tan, well-tended skin.

00:21:00.360 Look at the killer shape he's in.

00:21:02.360 Look at his slightly stubbly chin. 1.00

00:21:04.120 Oh, please, he's gay. 1.00

00:21:05.260 Totally gay. 1.00

00:21:06.260 I'm not about to celebrate. 0.99

00:21:08.280 Every trait could indicate a totally straight expatriate.

00:21:12.080 This guy's not gay. 0.58

00:21:13.040 I say not gay. 0.99

00:21:14.180 That is the elephant in the room. 0.94

00:21:16.160 But it's irrelevant to assume that a man who wears perfume is automatically by the fake.

00:21:21.740 But look at his cropped and crispy locks.

00:21:23.700 Look at his silk translucent socks.

00:21:25.700 There's the eternal paradox.

00:21:27.560 Look what we're seeing.

00:21:28.660 What are we seeing? 0.99

00:21:29.700 I see gay. 0.99

00:21:31.080 All Europeans. 0.75

00:21:32.500 A lot of people know that one of the most famous Muslim poets, like, talked openly about gay stuff.

00:21:47.560 There's streets named after him in Baghdad still.

00:21:49.960 There's like, yeah.

00:21:51.760 What do you mean by gay?

00:21:53.200 What's gay stuff? 1.00

00:21:54.780 Like, sex was men? 0.96

00:21:56.120 Oh.

00:21:58.800 Okay.

00:21:59.540 I don't know.

00:22:00.540 Like, I'm just thinking, like, Broadway and drag brunches. 1.00

00:22:04.440 There's a bit before that.

00:22:05.600 Okay.

00:22:06.200 Yeah.

00:22:06.600 No, obviously.

00:22:07.420 But, like, I don't know.

00:22:08.160 Like, I just figured you weren't being as explicit about non-heterosexual sex.

00:22:13.800 It's very – I mean, maybe not explicit explicit, but as explicit as – what's that Western guy from ancient Britain – not ancient Britain, but, like, Victorian Britain?

00:22:22.720 Oliver –

00:22:23.600 What is there?

00:22:24.200 I don't know if any famously gay – 0.56

00:22:25.840 Oh, I didn't post.

00:22:26.900 Oscar Wilde is who I was thinking of. 0.70

00:22:29.380 Anyway, that is to say that there were plenty of historical figures that were gay.

00:22:33.420 But, like, yeah, I guess this is still – and it doesn't seem like it's been that long since we were in school.

00:22:39.880 And yet, I don't remember any of this.

00:22:42.080 There has been a complete siege.

00:22:43.580 And this is a thing that many parents don't realize.

00:22:45.580 It is not the same.

00:22:47.320 Yeah.

00:22:47.940 I mean, I remember some things being broadly PC, as they called it back in the day.

00:22:53.520 But –

00:22:53.960 It's a whole new ballgame on campus these days, and they call it PC.

00:22:57.840 And it's not just politics, it's everything.

00:23:00.560 And if you don't watch yourself, you can get in a buttload of trouble.

00:23:03.160 Save the whales!

00:23:04.400 Those women? 1.00

00:23:06.240 Those aren't women, Tom. 1.00

00:23:08.940 Those are womenists. 1.00

00:23:10.720 Hey, Sam, isn't that the guy that you used to, uh –

00:23:13.500 You went out with a white male?

00:23:15.820 I was a freshman.

00:23:17.100 Fresh person.

00:23:18.080 What's that supposed to mean? 1.00

00:23:19.140 Yeah, cock man, oppressor. 1.00

00:23:21.380 You know, this place is kind of insane. 1.00

00:23:23.160 These, Tom, are your cause heads.

00:23:24.920 They find a world-threatening issue and stick with it for about a week.

00:23:27.620 What happened to the ozone layer?

00:23:28.820 It was last week.

00:23:29.680 Now it's meat.

00:23:30.780 I think, yeah, that's the problem, is parents are assuming that it's like what they experienced when they grew up.

00:23:36.900 And they did grow up broadly progressive to a great extent.

00:23:40.120 And the school system was broadly progressive.

00:23:42.840 But progressive now means something much more bigoted and hateful than it used to, I think.

00:23:49.500 And that's the problem.

00:23:50.460 Ask him about interracial dating. 0.96

00:23:52.620 All I said is that black men who date white women have internalized racism, and white men that date ethnic women are fetishizing them.

00:23:58.400 Guys against interracial dating now. 0.96

00:23:59.840 Like, am I being pranked?

00:24:00.880 Did Boomer put you up to this?

00:24:02.880 Ugh, you know that taco place is white-owned? 1.00

00:24:04.940 White people should be making white foods, like crap macaroni and cheese, no seasoning, not even salt. 1.00

00:24:09.100 It's like he's a mind reader. 1.00

00:24:10.060 I mean, I've been pushing for segregation forever, and my man does what?

00:24:12.820 And bigoted and hateful are the word for it.

00:24:16.600 There really is nothing else.

00:24:17.820 If you treated any other cultural group this way, people would be like, you, sir, are a bigot.

00:24:23.800 Where such verbal grievances proved insufficient, the few pre-modern female or minority artists who could be excavated from the historical record were messily grafted onto our syllabi.

00:24:34.160 We studied Sofana Sibba instead of Da Vinci, fragments of Sappho rather than Sophocles.

00:24:40.580 What? Sappho versus Sophocles people?

00:24:43.500 I don't even know if Sappho was a real person or lesbian.

00:24:47.200 It's just like, it might be from one line, but there is actually a lot of evidence that she probably wasn't.

00:24:54.620 And that the way that she structured these few lines that are seen that way was a normal way to structure plays at the period.

00:25:01.820 So Sappho isn't even gay, people.

00:25:05.020 I'm sorry.

00:25:06.440 Christine de Pizan in the place of Spinoza.

00:25:10.580 What a shame.

00:25:12.340 Such substitutions were celebrated as a reparative maneuver and therefore as a necessary improvement over the thinkers and artists who had been replaced.

00:25:22.780 Now open up your textbook and begin memorizing the copyright information.

00:25:26.780 You will be quizzed on this.

00:25:28.600 The practice was always increasing.

00:25:31.720 In the 2024 literature humanities, Cervantes and Milton were replaced by Mere de France and Ibn Arabi.

00:25:40.480 Now, I want you to contrast this with the conversations.

00:25:44.180 Oh, this is me actually.

00:25:46.220 Because I want to, I've been watching recently some conversations that Samo, Samo Berger, who runs Bismarck Analytics, really smart guy.

00:25:54.000 He's been having Rubyard, who runs What Have All Hissed.

00:25:56.240 And so people thought that I was throwing shade at What Have All Hissed in a previous video, that he was the YouTuber with more subscribers that I was comparing us against.

00:26:03.440 He is not.

00:26:04.180 I really respect the guy's work.

00:26:07.520 He, I don't agree with him on anything, but I think what a lot of people miss is he's a...

00:26:12.140 You don't agree with him on everything, but you actually agree on quite a few things.

00:26:15.580 Yeah, he's 22 years old, okay?

00:26:18.120 Cut him some slack.

00:26:19.320 I actually, when a young person is too buttoned up, I actually respect them less than when they make mistakes.

00:26:27.840 A great example of this is, like, Brett Cooper versus Pearl Davis.

00:26:32.060 I think of Pearl Davis was a lot more respect than I think of Brett Cooper.

00:26:37.460 Even though Brett Cooper has a lot more followers and everything like that, she seems to be operating off of some script.

00:26:43.300 No one, and Brett Cooper was, like, 18 when she became famous.

00:26:46.280 No 18-year-old girl becomes famous without, you know, questioning a few things they're not supposed to question, having a few ideas they're not supposed to have.

00:26:56.080 She's been so, like, a bowling lane where you put the two, like, things in the aisles so that, like, no ball can ever go in the gutter with every idea she's pitching.

00:27:06.100 I'm like, oh, she's got a team betting everything she does and says.

00:27:10.240 And, yeah, Rubyard says some silly things, but it's just because he doesn't have any guardrails on what he says or thinks.

00:27:16.840 He's, like, willing to do it.

00:27:18.440 It was the same with Pearl Davis.

00:27:19.780 I'm often, like, yeah, that was probably a foolish thing to say, but it shows to me that you're a young person willing to think outside the box. 0.96

00:27:29.500 And that, to me, is a higher order thing than always not looking foolish.

00:27:35.840 But I'm sure that we look the same way to people, you know, maybe it's old people who might push the boundary too much. 1.00

00:27:41.080 But anyway, so he was talking with Sam Obergia, which is this really famous analytic company, and they're just, like, talking about history.

00:27:49.280 They're talking about different cultures, and there's no benefit to them of doing this. 0.99

00:27:54.280 Like, these interviews only get a couple south-infused, like, less than a regular episode of ours.

00:27:58.420 But it's clear, and I'll post a little bit of one of these episodes here, that they, like these Jewish students who pair off like this, and we'll talk more about how their education system works, that they're just interested in the information.

00:28:12.600 They're, like, what does this tell us about the future?

00:28:14.840 What does this tell us about what we should do?

00:28:16.400 They're nerds.

00:28:17.100 What does this tell us about society?

00:28:19.500 They are studying and discussing information that gives them an existential understanding of reality from their perspective.

00:28:25.900 Much has been lost to the mists of history.

00:28:29.340 We don't actually know how you can handle such a volume of mail, right?

00:28:33.980 And those are the sort of main arguments that people use related to the literacy of the empire.

00:28:39.580 That's a very good point, and I'm of two minds.

00:28:42.440 The first is that France in 1800 had a 20% literacy rate.

00:28:46.800 And if you're looking at France in 1800, you're looking at one of the very most developed societies in history.

00:28:51.440 England was close to 100%, I think. 0.58

00:28:55.220 70% to 100% in 1800.

00:28:57.300 And you bring up, you brought up a couple of interesting points I want to tease out.

00:29:01.160 So I'm going to hit this, like, bullet points.

00:29:02.780 The first is, I agree with your thesis that the Catholic Church created modern science.

00:29:07.300 You look at the scientific method.

00:29:08.760 It was made by monks in the 1300s.

00:29:11.260 And I'm one of the people who will agree with that thesis the most.

00:29:14.100 The second thing is that, as to your classical literacy, Jesus Christ was literate, and he was a carpenter.

00:29:22.400 And so what that signifies is that the middle classes in the Roman Empire at least were literate.

00:29:26.920 And for the third point, I think one of the biggest things people should know about history is whatever thesis you have about a particular era of history is true.

00:29:36.300 But the opposite is also true.

00:29:38.420 And an example of this that I like to use because it just shatters people's conceptions of history is that people would have sex in public in the Middle Ages.

00:29:46.600 And we see medieval Europe as this very puritanical religious society.

00:29:50.880 And it was significantly more religious than us.

00:29:54.600 But what religion meant in that society is a very different thing, where the things that we associate with Protestantism today, like sexual purity or cleanliness or reading the Bible, medieval Christianity was totally different.

00:30:10.340 And that is a critical part of an education system.

00:30:13.520 And I want to talk about how we can work that in.

00:30:15.280 Do you have anything to say before I keep going?

00:30:17.720 No, I want to see where you take this.

00:30:20.840 My friends showed up at classes each day to preserve their GPA, not to uncover truths about the world, and it showed.

00:30:27.680 After being shown the fault of each of the great thinkers of the West, my friends showed little respect for their ideas.

00:30:34.880 If a particular claim in the text did not resonate, it was dismissed rather than grappled with.

00:30:39.600 Isn't it silly, a student might remark, that Augustine made such a big deal out of a few stolen pairs.

00:30:48.300 This was the fruit of pedagogical shame.

00:30:51.660 At its finest, a cohort of students uninterested in and repulsed by the values and creations of the culture they were supposedly being educated to join.

00:31:04.300 Wow. Okay.

00:31:11.860 So, not that we had college funds for our kids, but if we did, we would be dissolving them.

00:31:17.360 Yeah, what?

00:31:18.040 Not that we have college funds for our kids, but if we did, we would be dissolving them at this point.

00:31:24.380 Oh, absolutely.

00:31:25.120 Yeah, colleges teach kids to hate their ancestors, and nothing hurts fertility more or the intergenerational survivability of a culture more than having pride in your identity.

00:31:38.100 And these individuals were taught, one, they're not even really taught their identity, and this is one of the things I find about American culture.

00:31:49.980 It's one of the reasons why we talk about the Backwoods Peoples. 0.67

00:31:51.980 One of the reasons we talk about the American nations and the different immigrant groups to America is people don't realize, even within our country, that we're – America's a continent, bro.

00:32:02.480 We are as different as the Europeans in terms of our perspective and our cultural history.

00:32:08.780 And every one of us has something to have pride in when you study, when you learn about it.

00:32:14.440 And I think that one and the most important thing is how do you impose an understanding of sacredness in your ancestors?

00:32:26.900 I think first, there's two things here, is to focus on your ancestors' sacrifices.

00:32:34.820 This is something that Judaism has done very well.

00:32:38.020 Almost all of their holidays are focused on some sort of sacrifice that one of their ancestors made to preserve their traditions, you know, Passover, for example, or Monica.

00:32:48.920 No, but they're all about some trial that they went through, right?

00:32:53.060 Yes, yeah.

00:32:53.680 It's a very powerful mechanism.

00:32:56.340 And when you actually study your real ancestors, and better if you have books about your ancestors and what they did, you can learn from them that the trials that you experience today are childish and trivial in comparison.

00:33:14.260 There's that joke about, oh, I walked five miles uphill through the snow.

00:33:19.460 And in our parents' generation, that was a joke, but people did used to walk five miles to school through the snow.

00:33:27.140 You know that, right?

00:33:28.840 Like, it's not a comedy.

00:33:30.940 The comedy is that they told you it.

00:33:33.500 It's not that they didn't suffer through that.

00:33:36.760 They did.

00:33:38.460 Our ancestors suffered in ways that we cannot begin to conceive.

00:33:43.840 Women lost one tooth for every pregnancy, on average.

00:33:47.420 We live in a—and before penicillin, the level of pain that people went through every day, you know, as we talked about, like, the King of France had, like, an additional anus that was just rotted through.

00:34:03.340 This was—

00:34:03.680 Oh, hey, yeah. 0.97

00:34:04.580 Serious anal fissures. 0.99

00:34:05.880 We'll just leave it at that, okay?

00:34:07.880 But the level of pain he must have felt every day.

00:34:10.280 Well, King Henry VIII, too, of his leg wounds that just got infected and never healed.

00:34:15.440 Every day they lived in astronomical pain, and yet they pushed through for us, for the future, for their kingdoms.

00:34:24.100 Yeah.

00:34:25.220 And so we all have these stories.

00:34:27.420 Every culture has these stories of the Jews.

00:34:29.620 I don't even feel like the Jews do a particularly good job of showing—because their stories are told in a way that was meant to seem challenging to people 500 years ago.

00:34:38.420 They're like, oh, they were huddling, afraid of, like, an invader who could kill them.

00:34:42.800 But today, just talk about, like, basic medical stuff to understand the challenges of our ancestors.

00:34:48.760 Seriously, yeah.

00:34:49.840 And then the second thing, and this is where the progressives, their entire ideological trick—and you can say, why do they do this?

00:34:58.940 They do it because if you can lower somebody's connection to their ancestral culture, it's easy to convert them into something new.

00:35:06.920 And because they're peddling this mimetic virus, this totally new cultural tradition, the urban monoculture, the best way to do that, to get people to ignore all of their ancestral tradition, is to paint their ancestral tradition as evil.

00:35:21.680 Or to lie to them about what their ancestral tradition was.

00:35:25.900 As we pointed out in our Black culture video, that, you know, if you go back to the 60s, Black people had a higher marriage rate and a lower out-of-marriage birth rate than white people by a significant margin.

00:35:38.780 And yet today you have movements like the BLM movement saying, this is a traditional part of Black culture.

00:35:44.480 And it's like, no, but the way that you fight the progressives on this, okay, is you admit what they are unable to admit.

00:35:57.600 My ancestors didn't create the culture I venerate.

00:36:04.580 I name my children things like Octavian.

00:36:07.380 When my ancestors in England were taken as slaves, they were colonized by the imperialist Roman Empire.

00:36:19.820 But the Roman Empire brought civilization.

00:36:26.080 That civilization, you know, when I look, just so people understand, like, how backwards my people were.

00:36:32.900 Because I wasn't just a British, it was, you know, especially it was you, a lot of Norwegian, Viking ancestry.

00:36:37.840 Beowulf.

00:36:38.820 And some people were like, oh, Beowulf.

00:36:40.380 I remember I was talking down to Beowulf in a previous video.

00:36:43.720 And they're like, it has themes.

00:36:46.640 It has, like, metaphors to their state and society.

00:36:50.220 And I was like, yeah, some of the earliest literature has themes.

00:36:55.960 Beowulf, at the level of education that it was written at, the level of civilization it was written at, I would say is similar to the theming of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

00:37:06.180 Except the Epic of Gilgamesh was written 26,000 to 28,000 years before Beowulf.

00:37:17.200 Nah, Gilgamesh is better because it has a good bromance.

00:37:20.120 All good literature has a good bromance, my good sir.

00:37:24.380 When I read something like Beowulf, I am reminded that while some people can't own this, that my uncivilized ancestors, before civilization reached them, were half beast and half child.

00:37:40.100 Wow, you're really just digging in with the commenters.

00:37:46.160 I don't have the hubris to pretend.

00:37:49.180 And I will say, we took their civilizational architecture and we did better than them.

00:37:58.260 The Italians, the Greeks today, they're a backwater, nothing of a people. 1.00

00:38:02.780 They're a decaying culture.

00:38:04.660 So you're not, what you're saying here is that you are not for ancestor worship.

00:38:08.980 You are for celebrating tactics that win.

00:38:11.440 And in the end, that's what should be celebrated in universities.

00:38:15.720 And I would say that this probably gets at the heart of what Columbia was trying to do with their classic series, which was to say, here are texts that over time have proven themselves to be foundational to Western civilization.

00:38:29.860 Which is what we happen to occupy.

00:38:31.740 I mean, don't blame us for not doing a ton of Eastern stuff.

00:38:34.460 We occupy a civilization that has been conquered by a festering wound of bacteria, a memetic virus that has eaten.

00:38:44.880 And it happens many times throughout history when a civilization becomes too indolent.

00:38:49.800 One of the things-

00:38:50.780 Oh, okay, okay.

00:38:51.160 You're referring to the urban monoculture.

00:38:52.820 I'm referring to pre-urban monoculture, the era in which this classics program was established.

00:39:00.540 For example, one of the things, you know, I was talking about Ruby Yard recently talking about something really interesting.

00:39:06.140 And one thing I didn't know about is they were saying when the Persians reached the decaying remnants of the Babylonian Empire, they just opened the gates.

00:39:14.640 They didn't even fight.

00:39:16.520 And they were going over multiple times in history where this happened, where an empire had become so decadent that it had lost the vitality to survive.

00:39:24.460 And is that not what the West is doing right now with the giant waves of immigration?

00:39:30.360 Just opening the gates.

00:39:31.680 We are just saying, I give up, replace us.

00:39:35.080 That is the state that we are in at this point.

00:39:37.940 That we lack the ability to intergenerationally motivate our survival because we have no pride.

00:39:47.340 Well, that's the point is this is, again, a very happy cause.

00:39:52.020 Prenatalism is the collective group of people who have chosen to inherit the future, who have chosen to be there and to show up and to have kids.

00:40:02.940 And so I think the bigger question is, I think most people who are prenatalists are probably going to opt out of the university system or at least approach it with great skepticism.

00:40:13.320 The question is, what kind of internal culture does one want to create?

00:40:17.580 And how will one make that internal culture one that doesn't just celebrate the ancestral values of the culture, but winning values that impart fitness, however you want to define it, to your kids, right?

00:40:30.640 Well, no, I think that you need to find an intellectual architecture that, one, resists the urban monoculture's attacks, which is really important that you're able to do.

00:40:44.980 And I think the biggest point to resisting the urban monoculture's attacks is, for example, if I am an American black family, right?

00:40:53.740 And they're like, oh, well, this civilizational technology of Christianity, you know, as the Smithsonian spreadsheet said, that's not black. 0.69

00:41:04.140 Monogamy, they'd say, that's not black. 0.99

00:41:06.200 Being on time, they say, that's not black. 1.00

00:41:07.980 And it's like, well, it is.

00:41:09.100 They took this civilizational architecture.

00:41:11.640 And if I am a black family in the 1960s, I can say, well, look at white culture, right?

00:41:17.600 Look at how indolent they've become.

00:41:19.540 We have higher marriage rates than them. 0.98

00:41:21.660 We have lower rates of out-marriage kids, of kids being born to single families in them.

00:41:27.880 We took their civilizational architecture, and we did better than them.

00:41:33.020 In the same way that I'm able to say that about, like, my Victorian ancestors, right?

00:41:36.500 Like, they took the civilizational architecture from the Romans, and they did better.

00:41:40.660 And this actually brings me to one of the books that always sort of chilled me as a kid.

00:41:46.840 Because I, even as a kid, I realized how far society had already fallen.

00:41:52.700 When they were trying to teach us to have more empathy for pre-colonial black culture, 0.99

00:41:59.000 they had us read a book called Things Fall Apart by Chinchse Achebe, which talks about the Igbo culture.

00:42:06.320 I think I read that.

00:42:07.820 Yes, that title sounds so familiar, but I have no memory of the reading.

00:42:11.380 I remember one scene that just like, wait, so then the colonists were right, right?

00:42:17.580 Like, they helped you.

00:42:18.660 In which, in the protagonist Okonoko-wa's village, twins were considered an abomination.

00:42:26.000 So they were customarily abandoned in the evil forest to die.

00:42:30.160 They took infants, and they left them to starve to death or be eaten by animals alive in the forest.

00:42:37.840 And the colonists stopped this practice.

00:42:41.060 The imperialists stopped this practice.

00:42:43.540 Correct.

00:42:43.940 And I'm like, oh, so, like, why am I supposed to think that imperialism was a bad thing?

00:42:49.420 When I look to my own ancestors, the Kels, what did they do? 0.88

00:42:54.120 They would make child sacrifices, and we have found the bodies of children under bridges.

00:43:00.760 Nope.

00:43:01.000 And they would construct something as simple as a bridge.

00:43:03.880 Nope, stop it.

00:43:04.520 Just to ensure its stability.

00:43:06.600 Bad, wrong.

00:43:07.420 We have evidence of human sacrifices at Stonehenge.

00:43:11.000 Wrong and bad.

00:43:12.220 To be buried in that ditch at Stonehenge with the injuries he has suggests we have a sacrificial victim.

00:43:19.820 Prepare to defend the eagle!

00:43:20.940 Civilization uplifted us, and we don't need to shame our ancestors for embracing that.

00:43:45.760 When I look to the ancestors within my own culture that I admire, they are the ancestors after we adapted to them.

00:43:54.300 Yeah, they're the ones who rose above, who learned better, who did better, and who learned and iterated and, yeah, overcame their previous generation's shortcomings.

00:44:07.580 And that's what good culture is all about.

00:44:09.900 I'm totally with you on that.

00:44:11.160 That's so funny.

00:44:12.120 I don't remember things fall apart at all, though.

00:44:14.080 I did read it.

00:44:14.940 The only, like, I think the only good racism-based education I got, actually, was they had us watch Roots, which was great.

00:44:23.920 Did you watch it?

00:44:25.400 I've watched some of Roots, yeah. 0.98

00:44:26.580 The only part I remember of it, though, was them warning people, like, about white people, and they're like, they smell like a wet chicken. 0.99

00:44:37.920 And there's something about that that, like, sticks with me forever. 0.90

00:44:42.540 Like, every time I see our chickens in the rain, I just think of this line, they smell like a wet chicken. 1.00

00:44:49.140 And they smell like shit, so I'll tell you that. 0.99

00:44:52.940 So I'm going to go over one snippet from another article, and then I want to think through with you how we can educate our kids better with this information. 0.99

00:44:59.580 Okay.

00:44:59.840 My optimism about higher education's recovery, of course, is based on my pessimism about the future of sheep raising in the governs of academia. 0.93

00:45:10.720 At the moment, the higher education-

00:45:12.200 Oh, sorry.

00:45:12.440 He means, like, I was thinking, like, animal husbandry.

00:45:17.820 Sorry.

00:45:18.760 That would have been more appropriate, probably.

00:45:20.280 The establishment shepherds extraordinaire act as though things will go much as they have for the last 50 years.

00:45:27.340 By things, I mean the mass production of haphazardly educated but heavily indoctrinated graduates who have absorbed the core ideas that America is very bad and that multiculturalism is very good.

00:45:39.160 In 2016, when Donald Trump was campaigning for president, he caricatured higher education's business model as we'll take $200,000 of your money, and in exchange, we'll train your children to hate our country.

00:45:50.680 We'll make them unemployable by teaching them courses in zombie studies and underwater basket weaving and, my favorite, tree climbing.

00:45:58.340 Though the higher education establishment detests Trump, with every holy fiber of its being, the professional bureaucrats and administrative careerists increasingly recognize that Trump's deflated view of colleges and universities resonate with many Americans.

00:46:14.460 So how can we build something like this Jewish system? 0.99

00:46:18.260 And to describe how this Jewish system works is you have an education system with no grades that isn't necessary for a person's job outside of what they learn, which can help them with in Jewish intellectual circles.

00:46:31.380 So, like, what they learn is the point, not how it grades what they learn.

00:46:36.720 And they're expected to have these one-on-one conversations or debates about the information with other scholars in their class, which in part influence their class status.

00:46:49.220 I think that maybe we can create some sort of daily part of our education system where our kids can talk with other kids in our network, right?

00:47:00.720 Like, okay, take somebody like Scott Alexander's kids, right?

00:47:03.640 Like, I would love it if every day we had one lesson plan where our kids would debate their kids.

00:47:11.080 Yeah, to make it about, yeah, fun interchange and status hierarchy.

00:47:15.220 And then when you're reading something, you're reading it with the motivation of getting to discuss it and hash it out with other people in an enthusiastic format.

00:47:24.480 I think a lot of people, for example, who watch anime or consume other fan universes don't necessarily enjoy every single series they watch, but they watch the series because they love discussing it with their friends.

00:47:38.420 And I've seen this with other genres as well.

00:47:40.840 Like, a lot of people, when I went to college, loved watching The Office together.

00:47:44.640 Not all of them loved The Office, but they loved the ability to talk about it in a really animated way with others.

00:47:50.900 Well, and I think that this is sort of like our track series.

00:47:53.940 So, like, a lot of our track series' biggest fans are actually Haradi Jews, which I think would surprise some people.

00:48:01.840 This is like ultra-Orthodox Jews. 1.00

00:48:03.720 But not really.

00:48:05.820 See, Jews and ultra-Orthodox Jews specifically, when they are discussing their religious traditions, they are allowed to have crazy takes. 0.98

00:48:17.100 They are allowed—I mean, if they can back it up with logic, that is actually something that has some level of credibility to it, right?

00:48:27.940 Too many Christians today—and I think this is part of why Christianity is failing, and I think it's part of why Catholicism is failing more than Protestantism, and Orthodoxism is failing more than, you know, I think even Catholicism at this point. 1.00

00:48:44.140 It's the Orthodox Christian churches, the Greek Orthodox Christian churches, and it's because if you sort of rate churches by how much are you supposed to, like, read the text and interpret it yourself, the ones that lean more to that are doing better.

00:49:00.880 And I want my kids to do that.

00:49:02.420 I want my kids to read the text and tell me, Dad, your interpretation is wrong.

00:49:06.820 Yeah, no, the point is taking ownership, and I think that's the whole point of literary analysis, when done right.

00:49:13.100 When done wrong, it is, okay, tell me the text and tell me what it means.

00:49:18.520 And that's what a lot of school has become.

00:49:21.040 And I did get some of that in some of my classes when I went through school.

00:49:25.320 But when done right, it's, let's read it, and you tell me what you think, and you make your argument.

00:49:31.680 And that's where it gets super fun.

00:49:33.540 What it should mean, I mean, if this text is imbued with some sort of supernatural, and we would argue that all of the ancestral texts that have been elevated by God through their impact on our civilization have a divine inspiration in a way.

00:49:48.420 Well, if it has a divine inspiration, then you're supposed to be able to take something from it, relevant to your time.

00:49:53.380 And I think that that's a problem with a lot of these classics courses, is they're like, learn the classics, but learn them was in their context.

00:50:02.900 Yeah, only within their context, yeah.

00:50:04.740 And that's too much.

00:50:05.960 Don't assume that they are relevant to you specifically.

00:50:09.580 Don't assume that Caesar was writing for you.

00:50:13.200 Yeah.

00:50:14.960 Yeah, and that's wrong.

00:50:16.260 That's wrong.

00:50:16.700 I, by the way, I just want to say to those who do not, you know, who think that Trump was making up the fact that they were tree climbing courses, to Trump's credit, yes, there are absolutely tree climbing courses.

00:50:29.680 But-

00:50:29.800 Are they paying 200K a year for that?

00:50:31.920 Not 200K a year.

00:50:33.200 However, I would argue personally that if our children took tree climbing courses, I would be very proud of them because that is a trade.

00:50:41.480 That is tree maintenance.

00:50:42.620 And as you know all too well, we get charged insanely high prices for tree maintenance.

00:50:48.840 These people make money.

00:50:49.920 Oh yeah, we quite like to do how to climb our trees and cut them.

00:50:52.280 I mean, we would make bank, all right?

00:50:55.560 So that is, I'm not saying it's $200,000 worth it.

00:50:59.960 It is not a bad investment.

00:51:03.920 And I'm seeing like three-day extension courses with the University of Pennsylvania or whatever.

00:51:08.040 Like this is not, you know, this is not a $2,000 course.

00:51:11.020 So he's technically right.

00:51:12.560 He was just exaggerating it in a way that putting it in a context where it didn't make sense.

00:51:17.480 I just want to say that.

00:51:18.660 So Trump was right, but I'm all for tree climbing courses because that's a trade and I want people to actually create value.

00:51:24.280 And my big argument about universities is we also need to parse out what the different things you're buying are.

00:51:31.140 And what you're discussing here with this classics course for a while and like for why Columbia was offering it in the first place is to impart high social class.

00:51:40.560 Understanding the classics, being able to discuss them intelligently, being able to reference them.

00:51:45.260 A purely social class thing based on memorization, not on argumentational ability.

00:51:50.780 Well, an argumentational ability is the core of the social class.

00:51:53.320 So what they have is a program that was originally meant to help students signal social class, which is why many people send their kids to university.

00:52:02.340 Then they stripped it of that because they got the kids disinterested in the actual texts, not capable of actually discussing them because they weren't freaking reading them.

00:52:11.180 And then put them in all this additional context that makes them utterly useless from a class signaling standpoint.

00:52:17.140 So you are totally wasting people's time.

00:52:19.480 And then we also need to parse out.

00:52:20.700 So are you going to university to signal class?

00:52:23.700 Okay, maybe we can find some other way to do that, you know, to show that you are high class.

00:52:27.900 Well, and be relevant how class signaling is done within a culture in a modern context.

00:52:31.720 Right now, class signaling is primarily done through woke virtue signaling.

00:52:35.560 Yes, yes.

00:52:37.080 Depending on the social network you're trying to rise within.

00:52:39.600 This is why intergenerational wealth has completely fallen to the urban monoculture, as have the higher echelons of big business.

00:52:45.740 You are being naive here if you think anything else.

00:52:50.440 That is why, because these are class signaling classes.

00:52:53.440 They're teaching you that, oh, you signaled class.

00:52:56.760 No, personally, I'm just going to say this.

00:52:58.980 I'm sorry.

00:52:59.580 But personally, I think that woke status signaling is extremely middle class.

00:53:05.360 It's extremely middle class. 0.54

00:53:06.620 I would say that crazy wealthy people, oh, okay.

00:53:12.180 No. 0.85

00:53:12.660 We've seen some that are very.

00:53:14.640 There is a wealthy class that is anti-woke, but they are not intergenerational wealth.

00:53:20.040 They are not blue blood.

00:53:21.400 The blue blood class has been completely tuxified. 1.00

00:53:25.340 That's fair.

00:53:26.300 Actually, it has.

00:53:27.320 Yeah.

00:53:28.000 It's big.

00:53:28.700 Only new money is anti-woke.

00:53:31.400 Except for like us.

00:53:32.540 No, we also know new money that's super woke, so.

00:53:36.180 Well, no, no, no, no, because they're trying to signal to old money that they're one of them.

00:53:39.880 Maybe.

00:53:40.380 I don't know what's going on.

00:53:40.860 That's how you signal.

00:53:41.700 This was the whole problem with Classically Abby. 1.00

00:53:43.700 Watch our Classically Abby video.

00:53:45.560 She's trying to be upper class when upper class is being woke. 1.00

00:53:50.220 You can't be upper class and anti-woke.

00:53:52.800 Yeah.

00:53:53.160 You can be a dissident class like Elon Musk that the media will like make fun of.

00:53:57.540 But you are a rebel in the minds of everyone else.

00:54:02.260 You are the, can you believe?

00:54:05.780 But let's go back to the, what do you do based on this?

00:54:10.000 I think the big takeaway for me is the kind of cultural indoctrination and pride I want

00:54:16.220 to give to our children is not, it's not our inherited pride.

00:54:20.860 It's not our ancestors.

00:54:21.860 It's not, in our case, like broadly European.

00:54:24.880 It's the pride of civilization.

00:54:25.860 Yeah.

00:54:26.460 And that's, so I'm thinking like, as I, as I think about what kind of pride I want them

00:54:32.120 to have, it's what you see in the, literally the Civ game preview.

00:54:38.360 Yes.

00:54:39.100 The Civ game preview.

00:54:40.220 That's what I wanted to think about.

00:54:41.260 Look at what the pinnacle of humanity has done at any given point in history and take that

00:54:47.020 and your obligation in your rung of, of the chain of humanity is to take that and make

00:54:54.220 it even better.

00:54:55.600 And that's a big burden to shoulder, but it, what, what pride you can hold knowing that

00:55:00.940 that's something you are capable of taking on by standing on the shoulders of giants.

00:55:04.820 You're plotting a new course again, aren't you?

00:55:07.480 Occurrents before us are ever changing.

00:55:10.140 We must adapt, press forward if we are to see our journeys end.

00:55:22.480 It is the nature of humankind to push itself toward the horizon.

00:55:30.840 We test our limits.

00:55:34.820 We face our fears.

00:55:39.660 We rise to the challenge and become something greater than ourselves.

00:55:47.140 I agree.

00:55:47.720 But the big thing I want to send them into for middle school is I really like this Jewish 1.00

00:55:52.540 practice of finding a single debate partner and maybe mixing it up a bit, but we can do

00:55:57.340 this within an online context, right?

00:55:59.460 You can even do it with AI in, in the absence of, why not?

00:56:03.640 They need to have pride in winning and they need to build social connections and cohesion

00:56:11.360 through it that will be of utility to them.

00:56:14.500 We need to look for other influential thinker families who I think will have created some

00:56:20.660 of the best of the best of the generation, like sharpest knives to cut our kids against.

00:56:26.380 Yeah.

00:56:27.820 Put them into rotating daily debates, like a half hour, an hour a day on subjects where

00:56:35.540 they will be humiliated if they haven't actually studied it.

00:56:38.980 Okay.

00:56:40.340 I'm kind of, I'm kind of there for it.

00:56:41.800 Actually, that sounds great because so much research does indicate that peer pressure is

00:56:46.880 extremely effective and shame is extremely effective.

00:56:51.280 Well, they need to know, they need to know that these people will be talking about them

00:56:54.120 with the other friends on discord or whatever and be like, oh yeah, well, you know, they're

00:56:57.340 not really a good debater on, they don't even understand. 0.74

00:56:59.700 Those Collins midwits.

00:57:03.120 Yeah.

00:57:03.280 Our kids won't go for that.

00:57:05.020 They would hate that.

00:57:05.980 That's how you get it.

00:57:06.680 You got to get them a little bit of social pressure here.

00:57:09.160 Oh, and what if they're debating a cute boy or girl?

00:57:12.280 Oh, they need to know their stuff.

00:57:13.920 And what a way for courtship.

00:57:15.620 That's, I think, one of the true failings of the courtship.

00:57:17.660 Oh, yes.

00:57:18.420 That it is gender unique, right? 0.99

00:57:22.320 So that you're not going to end up having to impress a cute boy or girl with your knowledge

00:57:26.500 of the Torah, but, or the Talmud, but in our system, I actually think that's a really

00:57:32.720 good system for mate sources.

00:57:34.180 Well, I would say pitting any different gender diets against each other is great fodder because 1.00

00:57:40.300 one of the most common tropes in romance, especially for women, is enemies to lovers.

00:57:45.220 It's a very, like, that's a turn on for, like, oh, he's actually pretty good at this.

00:57:49.860 Women love this. 1.00

00:57:51.200 You know, they love the, I hate you. 0.99

00:57:53.560 I'm going to feed you.

00:57:54.940 I also love debate without an external moderator.

00:57:58.340 The idea is your goal is to convince the other side that your perspective of the text

00:58:03.840 is right.

00:58:04.600 Their goal is to convince you that their perspective of the text is right.

00:58:08.280 Well, this also takes us back to some of the oldest forms of education, which were debate,

00:58:13.240 which were rhetoric.

00:58:14.300 And you go back to the Cambridge Union, the Oxford Union.

00:58:17.320 These are some of the most notable, memorable, and powerful aspects of the oldest university

00:58:24.280 systems.

00:58:25.100 Yeah, I'm all for it.

00:58:25.980 I love it.

00:58:26.480 That's really great.

00:58:27.320 This is a fun takeaway, and I'm glad that you read that essay.

00:58:30.160 By the way, a fun thing, 25K subscriber fact that I found really fun before we move to the

00:58:35.740 next episode is, I was going through this meme that was like a political meme of the different

00:58:42.860 factions of like the way people might relate to falling fertility rates.

00:58:47.800 And this wasn't even on like a fertility rate sub.

00:58:50.300 This was on a sub for like political map memes, right?

00:58:54.380 Okay.

00:58:54.780 People in it were like, well, do you watch Malcolm and Simone?

00:58:57.480 And other people were like, oh, I love Malcolm and Simone.

00:58:59.900 And I was like, this is just like a random thing that I'm checking now.

00:59:03.580 And people are like, oh, Malcolm and Simone.

00:59:05.680 And you know what they said?

00:59:08.600 Do I want to know? 0.99

00:59:10.460 Malcolm's such a blowhard. 0.98

00:59:14.520 No, sweeties. 0.99

00:59:16.440 No.

00:59:16.820 You are the star.

00:59:18.900 She keeps her mouth shut for a reason.

00:59:21.960 You know what's up.

00:59:23.500 You are the reason people come back.

00:59:26.720 Well, maybe if I drink more.

00:59:29.040 Another drink.

00:59:29.680 We drink more to begin with the next video.

00:59:31.360 Okay.

00:59:31.820 All right.

00:59:32.800 Sounds good.

00:59:34.100 Love you too.

00:59:37.860 Congratulations.

00:59:39.400 It's official.

00:59:41.480 25,000 followers.

00:59:43.840 Subscribers on YouTube.

00:59:44.980 So you're going to have a drink.

00:59:46.160 Which actually undersells how popular our channel is.

00:59:48.660 Because I've seen we've been more popular than a few other.

00:59:52.740 What?

00:59:53.460 We were like, what episode do we want to do for the 25K subscriber special?

00:59:58.740 Oh, actually.

01:00:00.280 Do you want this to actually be the opening?

01:00:02.280 Then you should just start with your normal hello.

01:00:04.100 No, it won't be the opening.

01:00:05.200 I'll put it somewhere near the beginning, but not at the actual opening.

01:00:08.540 Okay.

01:00:09.220 So hold on.

01:00:12.160 Can I first just say cheers?

01:00:14.940 Cheers.

01:00:15.920 Oh, yes.

01:00:16.620 I've got to do my.

01:00:17.660 Cheers.

01:00:18.980 Cheers.

01:00:20.020 Okay, subscribers.

01:00:21.540 Subscribers, cheers.

01:00:22.700 It's so good to have you here.

01:00:24.280 Tip 25K and to have Simone actually drinking in one of the episodes. 0.66

01:00:29.360 Yeah, finally.

01:00:30.080 You guys are going to get drunk Simone for two episodes if we're able to film two today.

01:00:34.580 Maybe I'll pour a little more.

01:00:35.880 And we'll see.

01:00:36.520 But yeah.

01:00:37.440 Cheers.

01:00:37.720 Oh, so tasty.

01:00:43.780 Do you like the, what type is it?

01:00:45.560 It's just a space-eyed whiskey.

01:00:47.420 12 year, single malt.

01:00:49.720 But remind, it tastes like honeymoon.

01:00:52.660 You know what I mean?

01:00:54.480 We went there on our honeymoon.

01:00:55.980 You learned something new.

01:00:56.780 I learned something interesting.

01:00:58.000 Let me find the name of the paper that I thought was really interesting.

01:01:00.700 So it is called, If the Face Fits, Predicting Future Promotions from Police Cadets' Facial

01:01:07.980 Treat, which I'll get to the punchline of the research.

01:01:11.480 When selecting for leadership potential based on police cadet photographs, respondents predict

01:01:15.960 correct promotional choices at levels well above chance as measured by an AUC score of 0.7.

01:01:23.360 Further, respondents' evaluations successfully discriminate both between no promotion and

01:01:28.400 lieutenant promotion and sergeant versus lieutenant promotions.

01:01:31.980 So basically, just by looking at someone's face, you can get it fairly accurate.

01:01:35.880 You can actually tell a lot about a person genetically by looking at their face.

01:01:39.100 You can tell IQ by looking at face.

01:01:40.740 You can tell voting patterns by looking at face.

01:01:42.520 You can tell personality by looking at face.

01:01:44.460 Yeah, can we get, maybe we can find those composite images of a leftist versus a conservative, 0.96

01:01:50.480 which are, they're just really screwed up.

01:01:54.780 It's very clear.

01:01:55.780 I, in a lot of these, I look very much like the conservative type, I think.

01:02:00.160 And I look more leftist because I'm misshapen. 0.83

01:02:02.760 We're the perfect.

01:02:03.760 It's not misshapen.

01:02:05.080 It has to do with softness of features.

01:02:07.860 Versus hardness of features. 0.90

01:02:09.180 And sort of a witless look. 0.98

01:02:12.240 Do you look like a witless woman? 1.00

01:02:14.240 We'll find the images and the audience can decide. 0.99

01:02:17.140 Probably in the middle to Tradwife.

01:02:19.240 You don't have that.

01:02:20.100 I'll put it on the screen here so the audience can make a decision.

01:02:22.500 I still, it's, what's interesting to me though, is it makes me wonder if one then can manipulate

01:02:28.560 one's face to look more promotable.

01:02:32.240 Is that enough?

01:02:33.100 It wouldn't change anything.

01:02:33.780 It wouldn't change anything.

01:02:34.900 What they're measuring are genetic correlates.

01:02:38.380 Individuals attribute far too much to bias and far too little to genetic correlates.

01:02:44.900 That's fair, though some people were in comments on this.

01:02:50.660 This was posted on Marginal Revolution, the Tyler Cowen blog.

01:02:55.560 Okay.

01:02:55.940 Some people were commenting that this can be cumulative.

01:02:59.600 If you're the tallest kid in the yard, people are probably going to look for you, to you,

01:03:04.060 for leadership.

01:03:04.800 Oh, come on. 0.87

01:03:05.820 This is nothing like height.

01:03:07.580 People want to believe that humans have more free will than we do.

01:03:16.320 We are mostly genes and then a little bit our environment, and that's what makes us who

01:03:21.460 we are.

01:03:22.300 That's why when you have people raised in different families, the adult IQ difference

01:03:26.960 is only 8% for his siblings.

01:03:30.440 So it's just, it's just, you're so much, so much is, is just genetics and stuff like that

01:03:36.160 and people don't want to admit it.

01:03:38.560 It is inconvenient.

01:03:40.280 But that's something we're going to be talking about on this episode, so I will get into

01:03:43.500 a start.

01:03:44.120 Are you sure this isn't too much light?

01:03:45.980 I feel like it washes me out.

01:03:48.800 No, I think it's, it's, it's the correct amount of, I mean, it's, it's a lot.

01:03:55.800 I want better lighting for you in general.

01:03:57.720 You don't have this much light on you.

01:04:01.300 Probably I do, because I'm sitting right with the window shining on me.

01:04:04.240 Okay, no, you, you definitely don't. 0.99

01:04:05.680 This is ridiculous. 0.95

01:04:06.640 I'm just looking at the contours of my face. 0.94

01:04:08.280 You couldn't see any on this side.

01:04:09.600 Okay.

01:04:10.300 Well, that's, yeah, that's a little better.

01:04:12.480 At first it was so dark.

01:04:14.200 So I'm just trying to correct for that.

01:04:15.760 I don't believe you.

01:04:17.420 The commenters can let us know what they preferred, the more light or the less light.

01:04:21.200 Okay.

01:04:21.440 And I'll put this at the end of the video.

01:04:22.680 So let us know.

01:04:23.400 All right.

01:04:23.680 Is it my fault for wanting to see your beautiful face?

01:04:26.640 Is this your wife's crime? 1.00

Based Camp - October 08, 2024

Can Jewish Cultural Technology Fix the Downfall of Modern Universities？

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