In this episode, I share a story from when I was a student in a socialist political science course at McMaster University, and how I failed a class on socialism. It's a story about the three types of people you'll find on this planet and the three different ways of apprehending knowledge.
00:00:00.000so I'd like to tell you guys a story it's a story from many years ago back
00:00:09.240when I was still a dashing young rake enrolled at McMaster University it's a
00:00:15.720story whose punchline I only recently figured out you see back then I was
00:00:27.160taking all manner of elective courses one of which one of which was a understanding
00:00:37.480society political science in retrospect it was a course on socialism and the
00:00:47.480professor gave the students an option for your final grade you could write a
00:00:54.660really boring essay or he also gave us the option of participating in some
00:01:02.400social activism so of course I picked the latter now the activism in particular
00:01:10.900that we were engaged with was trying to establish more funding for halfway houses
00:01:16.680in the city so we went out and we interviewed some of the men at these
00:01:22.500halfway houses who outright said that while they didn't have everything they
00:01:27.340wanted it was a lot better than living on the street which to my mind at the time
00:01:34.180said well we're doing our due diligence by these people aren't we we're getting
00:01:41.040indigents off the street what more do you want do they should they be getting
00:01:45.660filet mignon for every meal it wasn't until years later just recently that I
00:01:56.960figured out that that was a test a test that I failed a test that I'm proud to have failed
00:02:08.660let's talk for a moment about the different the three different types of people you'll find on
00:02:22.460this planet and the three different ways of apprehending knowledge the hilux the psychics and
00:02:30.620the pneumatics or the appearance of reality the symbolic reality and the
00:02:41.100true reality now your high look can only see what's right in front of them they
00:02:49.300mistake the map for the territory and so they embrace these truisms as if
00:02:58.420they're true they embrace their sensory impressions as if those sensory impressions
00:03:05.140are reality itself and so the high look might say something like if you don't
00:03:13.120work you don't eat and they'd look at these halfway houses and be quite upset
00:03:18.040about it another one might say it's our duty as a society to take care of each
00:03:24.380other and so they want more funding for these halfway houses but that would be the
00:03:32.420full extent of their pondering on the matter what you see is what you get with no
00:03:41.660understanding of what symbols are so now we get to these psychics we get to those who do understand
00:03:56.460that there are these abstract symbols which can be manipulated there's the reality as we perceive it
00:04:06.460it but if we manipulate the symbols of reality then we could look at it another way a lot of the empty
00:04:20.120platitudes and affirmations of the new age movement a lot of this fits into symbol manipulation instead of a
00:04:31.840negative experience it was a growing experience these are the people become very clever with
00:04:38.500their words very good at being manipulative with their words they they make fantastic attorneys
00:04:45.400but they're unaware of the truth behind the reality the pneumatic is where you understand that there's your sense perception
00:05:00.840your sense perception your sense perception which can be encoded into symbols symbols which can be moved
00:05:09.840around rearranged experimented with but behind these symbols is the true reality itself there's what we perceive
00:05:26.840there's how we draw meaning and symbol from it and then there is the truth
00:05:35.840and thus you get the half wit mid wit full wit mean where the full wit and the half wit often have far more in common
00:05:53.840with each other than the mid wit who just plays around manipulating symbols
00:06:00.840now what's the point of talking about this what does this have to do with some socialist professor trying to raise money for poor people
00:06:14.840you see at the time at the time I thought he was just a misguided socialist
00:06:26.840right maybe it died in the wall socialist and there are complex arguments there there's there's a good there's quite a bit of space for the psychics to have arguments about whether we should do a free market capitalism or a protective socialism
00:06:41.840there's times and places for both you can argue till the cows come home I thought it was just an intellectual disagreement that I had with this professor
00:06:59.840and of course I myself and you align far more with the school where we realize that there is this world of inequality
00:07:15.840there is the symbol of money which is an abstracted form of wealth
00:07:24.840but behind behind that past that is production that you cannot have wealth without people producing and simply playing around with these symbols moving them around moving money from the wealthy to the poor
00:07:44.840the poor is not going to increase production all it's going to do is make everybody broke
00:07:53.840I thought that was the disagreement I was having with this professor
00:08:02.840that this misguided old socialist was simply trying to help people that didn't need help
00:08:15.840it never once occurred to me that this man does not give a damn about old loser men in a halfway house
00:08:28.840no what this professor was doing was scouting for talent the hilux which is at the time 20 years ago it's probably worse now
00:08:47.840probably about 30% of the university students at minimum they just go along to get along you know professor tells them something is good
00:08:57.840they believe it's good the psychics would be aware of counter arguments and so they would have performed this project to come up with good counter arguments to people that don't want their tax dollars being taken away from them
00:09:16.840these people were ready to be middle management
00:09:23.840but what he was really looking for was the pneumatics the people that could see the truth behind the argument
00:09:35.840and I guarantee that he identified me as one of these but the wrong type
00:09:42.840I'm the type you're the type that we see this nonsense fundraiser that's not going to help anybody
00:09:54.840and we say you know maybe instead of having a diversity seminar what we should actually do is open up a textile plant in the poor country
00:10:07.840maybe the textile plant will help get those people out of poverty as opposed to the diversity seminar
00:10:13.840you say that as a student who's hoping to be recruited well you just said the wrong damn thing
00:10:24.840no what he was looking for was the people that figured out that he didn't give a damn about the impoverished indigents
00:10:40.840but that there's a lot of money to be made pretending to care about them
00:10:49.840that every time there's a transfer of wealth between the productive to the unproductive
00:10:54.840there's somebody in the middle getting a paycheck
00:10:58.840and if you're really smart about it it can be a very large paycheck indeed
00:11:04.840that's what he was looking for a protege in fundraising a protege in charity manufacturing
00:11:20.840somebody that he could work with to transfer even more funds from rich to poor while siphoning out of the middle
00:11:32.840i've often felt as if well to be fair i didn't work as hard as i could have in university
00:11:45.840i did treat it as a free dating app to a certain extent
00:11:50.840i got by in my intelligence a little bit too much as opposed to actually working and studying as i ought to have
00:11:57.840but even if i'd done that even if i had busted my hump