Episode 1229 Scott Adams： I'll Tell You What Keeps America Together and How the #GoldenAge Can't be Stopped
Episode Stats
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Summary
Trump pardons innocent people, Congress rejects a $2,000 direct check to the poor on Christmas Eve, and Congress rejects the idea of sending a direct check on Christmas Day to the elderly, the disabled, and the elderly.
Transcript
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Well, happy Merry Christmas Eve. We made it. We made it at least to Christmas Eve. If 2020
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wasn't the hardest year of your life, you've had some hard years. But we're here. We made it.
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And let's see if we can make it to summer. Then we win. And if you would like to maximize your
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experience of the best part of the day, what's the best part of the day? That's right. That's right.
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It's this. This is the best part of the day. The rest of your day might be pretty good. Could be
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excellent. In fact, the rest of your day might be extraordinary. But it won't be as good as this.
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Are you ready? All you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen
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jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite holiday liquid I like, coffee.
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Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes
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the holidays extraordinary. It's called the simultaneous sip. Heard around the world. And
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Well, in the news, President Trump is issuing pardons. It's outrageous. Can you all join me
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in being outraged at the people that the president is pardoning? Are we good? Are we done with the
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outrage? There's something I've been explaining to people on Twitter this morning, and it goes
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like this. You don't pardon innocent people. I mean, if you can, that's great. It would be
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great if you knew someone were innocent, but they were in jail. Yeah, maybe pardoning them
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would be the right thing. But that's not exactly what pardons are for. The pardon is to give the
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president an unfettered ability to pardon. And a big part of that is you can't question it.
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You can say to yourself, why are these people on the list? But that's going to be true for every
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president. Probably there are favors involved or whatever. But our system allows us. And so I
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refuse to be outraged by the system working exactly the way it was designed to work.
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The president has this power. Had it been a different president, pardoning different people
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who I liked more or less than this group? Same response. I'm not going to get outraged about
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the system working the way it was designed. The other news is that apparently the GOP has rejected
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the call for the $2,000 direct checks to people instead of the $600.
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And I guess Trump vetoed the omnibus bill, but it looks like they have a veto proof.
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They can override the veto, so it's going to happen anyway. But I would rank as the biggest mistake
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of 2020, this, I don't even know if it's a decision, but this action by Congress to deny the $2,000
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check on Christmas Eve. Just let that sink in. Now, many mistakes have been made in 2020 because
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we're humans. And especially when you introduce the pandemic and you have this fog of war and
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so many unknowns. And scientifically, we didn't exactly know what was right to do. It took us a
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while to crawl our way through it and learn enough that we can get on top of the virus,
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which were almost there. But here's the thing. There are some kinds of mistakes
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that you can forgive quite easily. And I'll remind you again, and Christmas Eve is a good time for
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this, that at the beginning of the pandemic, I said, we should forgive in advance all of our leaders.
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We should forgive in advance all the mistakes that they are about to make. Because the mistakes
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that they were going to make, and they did, you know, various leaders, experts made a variety of
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mistakes. Up till this point, there'll be more. They weren't the kind of mistake that you should,
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you know, want to destroy somebody over. They were the kind of mistake that you make because you don't
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know what is the right thing to do. Now, if your mistakes are because you don't know what is the
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right thing to do, you wish the mistake had not happened. But it's hard to criticize somebody
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for trying hard and having the right intentions, but it didn't go well. That's not what's happening
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here. With Congress rejecting the $2,000 checks, and yes, I understand that they didn't just reject the
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checks. It was about the bulk of the rest of the stuff they didn't like, like foreign aid and
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whatever else they didn't like in the bill. Those were the reasons, okay? But here's the thing.
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You don't tease the public about maybe getting enough money before Christmas and then yank it back.
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I get that there were reasons, and I'm not even going to argue that the reasons were good or bad.
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I'm saying the entire situation, not just the rejecting of the $2,000 when it was rejected,
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but the whole situation that Congress got us to where they would reject the bigger check
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on Christmas Eve is the biggest mistake I've seen in 2020. And it's a year of a lot of mistakes.
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Now, the reason it's the biggest mistake is that it's not because anybody didn't know something,
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right? Pandemic mistakes were legitimate mistakes. People didn't know what to do.
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There were smart people disagreeing on what to do. I forgive those mistakes. I don't forgive this
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mistake. This is not the kind of mistake you forgive because they knew what they were doing.
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Every single person involved knew the result of their actions would bring us here.
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It's almost not even a mistake. It's almost just a slap in the face of the American public.
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So congratulations, Congress. I didn't think you could be worse, but you did it. You got there.
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You got to the only thing that could have been worse, yanking that money away from the people who
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desperately need it on Christmas Eve. The only thing that's stopping me from massive profanity
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is that I'm trying to keep things positive today. It's Christmas Eve. But unambiguously and without
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without any question, the biggest mistake, blunder if you want to put it, is this. There's nothing even
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close to this because of the intention problem. But let's talk about something a little bit more
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positive. Are you with me? Would you like me to take it up a little bit? Come with me.
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You'll like it. You'll like it. Here's a little bit of positivity that dropped recently. You've all
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heard of Naval Ravikant. And what you might know is that his Twitter feed is unusually valuable.
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So the things that he tweets and has tweeted over the recent years are so valuable that even my publisher
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asked me to contact him and say, would you please convince him to do a book? Because if he ever does
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a book of this content, it's so freaking good and useful, like actually directly changes your life kind
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of information, that it would be the number one bestselling book in the world. And I think that
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actually would be easily true, that if Naval wanted to make a book, it would be probably number one in the
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world. I think it would be easy to predict. But he was not interested and is not interested in
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a book. And his reasons support why you should pay attention to him.
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Who could read? Can you think of any other situation in which someone knows they could have a number one
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bestselling book with not really even a lot of work? Because the material exists, you could just have a
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ghostwriter, assemble it, put your name on it, you're good to go. But there's something
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about the value of, let's say, products or content, in his case, content. If you make something in the
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world that a lot of people like and want, you could probably sell that thing and become rich.
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So making something that's bad and nobody wants, well, nobody buys it and nobody's better off.
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If you make something that's really good, people are going to pay a lot for it. And a lot of people
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are going to pay a lot for it. But here's the weird part. If you make something even better than
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that, something that somebody is willing to pay a lot for, if you make something that's even better
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than that, you can't sell it because it would be immoral. It would be immoral to keep something
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from the public that would have that much benefit. If you put a friction between this thing, whatever
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it is, and the public, you're just not a good person. If the thing that keeps poor people from
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Naval's content is that they can't afford the book, is that a place you want to be?
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No. No. Naval's content is so valuable that he understood from the beginning that it would be
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immoral to sell it. And so somebody, Eric Jorgensen, decided to put Naval's, I think with Naval's
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approval, put it together in a book that is free. So it is a book. It's free. You can download it. It's
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called the Navalmanac. N-A-V-A-L-M-A-N-A-C-K, like almanac. It's like a Naval almanac put together.
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Navalmanac. And so this is available for download. And now everybody everywhere has the benefit of
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this. There's another example of this. Can you think of another example of something that's a
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product that's so good, you can't charge for it? Can you think of another one? The vaccinations.
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Yeah, the coronavirus vaccinations are so important to society that you can't charge for them.
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If we charged for those vaccinations, that would be the height of immorality. Nobody would be in
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favor of that. So just look for that phenomenon. If something is too good, you can't charge for it.
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You just can't. Now, I'd say that we've reached D-Day for vaccinations, meaning that the war against
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the virus just turned into an offensive war. And you remember, well, maybe you don't remember,
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but in World War II, the big swing in momentum was D-Day, the invasion of Normandy and the troops
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coming in. And eventually that cleared out Europe of the Nazi scourge. And it seems to me that we've
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reached D-Day. I don't know what day you want to call it the first vaccination, I guess. And now a
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million people have already received it. A million people already got the vaccination. It's pretty good,
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isn't it? You have to read a Sam Harris article that I tweeted. So it's in my Twitter feed from
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yesterday. Sam Harris breaks down how the decision was made about who gets the shots and who doesn't.
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And you really have to read that article. So this is, I would say this is Sam Harris doing a real solid
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benefit for the country. Because I didn't really understand everything that went into deciding who
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gets the shots first and who, you know, what the order is. But let me tell you, when you find out
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how that was decided, you're not going to like it. You're not going to like it. But you have to see
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Sam Harris's description of it. I don't want to ruin it. Just look at it. The bottom line is that
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the determination of who got it first was not made based on saving the most lives.
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It was made based on a wokeness. So you got to read the article. It's mind-boggling.
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But the good news is that we're on the offensive now. It looks like the number of deaths,
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according to one model, by April 1st, we could have 567,000 people died from the coronavirus.
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That number is, it's so shocking that it's hard to even read it. Honestly, I didn't think it would
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get that high. And I'm still optimistic it won't get that high. But I think we're going to blow
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low past 400,000, no matter what. So let's think positively on that.
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So Trump vetoed that defense bill. I'm kind of glad he did, because it was really on principle.
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You know, it'll still get passed, because there's a veto-proof majority, I guess, for it. But I like
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the fact that Trump vetoed it on principle, because it was filled with pork and crap.
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There's a new poll from USA Today that says that history will judge Trump's presidency,
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that 50% of people said that they thought he would be judged as a failed president,
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which is suspiciously the number of Democrats who listen to fake news. But as I've said,
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they are wrong. And the history, the further you get away from 2020,
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the better Trump will look. And in 50 years, I think Trump will be regarded as one of the top
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three presidents. But it might take a long time for us to get that kind of perspective. Because then
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you're just looking at what he did. Your feeling about his personality and what you felt during this
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year will fade over time. And simply the decisions he made and the things he accomplished will be left
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behind. So his reputation is going to climb. Not right away, but it will. So Andrew Yang has
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apparently filed to run for mayor of New York. That's one of the best things I've heard today.
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Isn't that kind of cool? Can you think of anybody off the top of your head who would be a better
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choice to be mayor of New York than Andrew Yang? I mean, you know, even if you're not the same party
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as Andrew Yang, it's kind of a great choice. Because what we like about him, regardless of
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your party affiliation, what people like about Andrew Yang is that he's not a dogmatic, you know,
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he's not just going to make decisions because it's what the team does. He's actually someone who
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looks at the facts and is smart and does reasonable things, doesn't seem to be tied to any specific
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way of being. He just seems smart and capable. I think he'd be a great choice. We'll see how he
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goes. Well, I'm going to go into my positive part of my live stream now, right? And I want to give
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you a little story. Maybe some of you have heard it before, because I've told it before. I'm going to
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give you a little story that's just the base, sort of setting the table for what I'll be telling you
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next. All right. So later, I'll connect the stories, but I'll just start with this. So several years ago,
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I was asked to give a speech for Salesforce. Now, Salesforce is a big multi-billion dollar fast
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growing company created by entrepreneur and now CEO, Mark Benioff. And prior to giving the talk to
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Salesforce, I got to hang out with Mark Benioff for a bit, and we were just sort of chatting.
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And at some point, the conversation turned to, and I don't know how it got there, but sort of
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methods for success. And Benioff told me his, I guess you'd say his main theme or principle for
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success. And I'd never really heard it before in those terms. And the word he used was intentions.
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And the way he, I think I'll try to explain it as best I can. Maybe I'll get it a little bit wrong.
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But the idea is that it's one thing to want something, but it's more powerful to put your
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intentions in a clear package and put it out in the world. And his kind of way of seeing the world is that
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clear, clean intentions attract everything you need to make them work. So that people are attracted
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to, let's say, confidence and certainty and intention well described. Because we live in this world that's
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sort of ambiguous and, you know, you don't know exactly what's the right thing to do, what's going
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to get you in trouble, what's going to work. So anytime you see somebody who's a leader, and a leader
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gives you a clear intention, and it looks like a good one, and it's, and what they want is very
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unambiguous, people are drawn to that. And so that was his secret. Now I would make the distinction
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between intention and affirmations is whether you put it into the world. An affirmation is something
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maybe that you're chanting or writing down about a something that you would like to accomplish.
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That's sort of an internal process. So your affirmations are you talking to yourself.
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An intention, if you do it right, is something you put into the universe, and other people see it,
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and then they're drawn to it. Now I saw it, I saw him play out that theme minutes after we talked.
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It was a dinner for the staff, and I got to sit at the table with the executives. And so while I was at
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the table for dinner, one of the executives used his moment of access with the CEO to talk with him
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about a PowerPoint presentation he was going to give to some important group. And so the top executive
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shows Benioff the PowerPoint thing. And Benioff's first comment, and I'm going to paraphrase the
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conversation so this is not exact words or anything. And Benioff looks at it, he goes,
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put on the front page, on the top of it, make sure you tell the audience about our 1% plan.
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Roughly speaking, they have this deal where Salesforce gives, I think, 1% of their profits to
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charity, and the employees donate 1% of their time to charity, something like that. And so Benioff says,
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put that on the front. And his executive says, oh, I've got that, I've got that information, and it's
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in the body of the thing, I think it's page three or something. That's sort of the best place for it
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to be, you know, given the flow of the presentation, it belongs in the body of it. And Benioff listens to
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his explanation, and he says, put it on the first page. And then the executive tries again. He says,
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yeah, it's very important, of course, and, you know, we've put it right in the best possible
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place it could be in that third page. You know, that's the flow. And Benioff looks at him, and he
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goes, put it on the first page. And he argued again, third time. The executive says, yeah, yeah,
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it's right where it belongs. And Benioff looks at him for a third time and says, put it on the first
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page. And you could see it finally hitting this guy. Intention. Benioff was very clearly saying,
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no, our intention is to help the world. We're going to do that by making money. That's good for us too.
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But our intention is to help the world. And that's going to be on the first page.
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So our intention is to be good people, help the world. And we're going to do that by making money
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and having a strong business. The executive wanted to show how the business was going to be great.
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And because the business was great, hey, we'd make some extra money. We could do this 1% thing.
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That was backwards. Intention was backwards. Benioff, unique among his people, I think,
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understood the power of that. And that by putting the intention out, he could, you know, he could
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attract what he needed. And sure enough, one of the fastest growing companies in the world,
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amazing success. Hold this story in your mind. I'm going to circle back to it.
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I've been asked a lot about my past prediction from over a year ago that we would be entering
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the golden age. And then instead of the golden age, we entered a pandemic. That looks very
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different from the golden age. In fact, it looks a little opposite. If you had to say,
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what's a golden age? You would describe it very different from a pandemic.
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So, am I wrong? Is the golden age not coming? I think it's definitely coming. I'm more certain
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than at any point. And it's because every construction phase starts with demolition.
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We're in the demolition phase. Was it possible to get to something that is extraordinarily better
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without demolition? No, not if there's already a building there. If there's already a building
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there, which is society as it's evolved, you can't build the new thing until you do something
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about the old thing. They occupy the same space. So there is no such thing as upgrading a thing
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unless you can destroy the old thing. Now, it was not our choice to destroy the old thing. The pandemic
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made that choice for us in a way. But demolition had to happen. Don't think that the demolition is the
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sign of where we're going. The demolition is your signal. And I'll make the case a little bit stronger
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here. It's your signal that it is maybe the darkest before the dawn. And that the way you can tell
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that something good might be coming often is because it looks really dark. And that's what happens before
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good things happen quite often. So the fact that things look dark at the moment, do not take that as
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a signal that that's the direction. We're going through a phase that had to happen. There wasn't any way
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around it. There was no way around. We had to destroy what was there to build something better. Is that what
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we're doing? Well, I can't speak to the experience for other countries. So I know we have an international
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audience here. So I'll just speak to an American experience. I think you'll find maybe a lot of this
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applies everywhere else. But there's a lot of things we learned this year. And when I tell you what I think we
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learned, it might blow you away. Because you probably haven't thought of it in these terms before.
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And it goes like this. If you had asked me a year ago, what is it that makes America, America?
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What is it that binds us and holds us together? I would have given you answers such as, I would have said,
00:25:40.040
well, it's about the Constitution. It's about a shared values. I'd say it's about the way we've been
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socialized. I might say something about a culture. Somebody might throw in religion.
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But you'd probably have a big, complicated answer. Yeah, liberty. Somebody would say freedom.
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You'd have a big, complicated answer of what it is that holds America together. Why doesn't America
00:26:13.640
just fly apart? For 200 years, we've not only held together, but gotten stronger. Why? What's the
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glue? Now, here's what's mind-blowing. In the past year, everything that I would have said holds America
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together, dissolved. All of the connecting structure, all of the glue that I believed was holding the
00:26:43.080
country together, just fell apart. For example, do we have a democracy, a democratic republic?
00:26:52.540
No, we don't. The Constitution just sort of failed this year. We don't have, because of the way the
00:27:00.740
system worked, nothing that you could identify as the will of the people being expressed in the form of
00:27:07.300
a republic that turns into a government. We don't have that. How about freedom of speech?
00:27:16.420
Nope. Apparently, social media censorship, if you go too far in the wrong direction, you don't have
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freedom of speech anymore, at least in a practical sense. You have it in a legal sense, but you don't
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have it in a practical sense. So we sort of lost our freedom of speech. How about our freedom in general?
00:27:35.880
Well, we kind of lost that too with the pandemic. So we found out that our press, which was one of the
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most important parts of keeping our liberties together, the free press. We found out we don't
00:27:50.380
have a free press. I mean, it's free if you're not paying for it, but it's so illegitimate that you
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can't even say we have a press in the way that, you know, we imagined it even a year ago, I would say.
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So we don't have a press. We don't have an election process. We've got, you know, we don't have the same
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shared beliefs. Even the idea of patriotism completely disappeared. There are still patriotic
00:28:24.980
people, but the idea that it was a shared value, that patriotism was something we all stood for the
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flag, nobody knelt, doesn't exist. How about our shared history? At least we have a shared history,
00:28:37.780
right? Not anymore. Now we have the 1619 Project, which is an alternate history. I'm not saying it's
00:28:45.040
right or wrong. It's just saying it's a different history. So we don't have a history anymore. We don't
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have the Constitution, you know, exists, but it's not really guiding us in the way we thought was
00:28:57.060
holding us together. We don't have a free press. We don't even have freedom. We don't have a freedom.
00:29:01.900
We don't have freedom of speech. So everything that I would have said is essential to holding America
00:29:09.340
together. But what happened? Did America fly apart? When everything that held it together, that you
00:29:21.660
thought held it together, and I thought held it together, it all disappeared in the last year.
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And America got stronger. Everything that makes America, America disappeared. And America got stronger.
00:29:43.040
Now I'm saying stronger because if you look at the stock market, which I know doesn't represent all
00:29:48.100
people, but it's a good proxy for how strong the nation is, right? It gets reflected in the stock market.
00:29:55.240
So there's lots of work to do and to take care of people who are disadvantaged in every way,
00:30:00.300
especially during the pandemic. But the country got stronger. So what are we missing?
00:30:09.840
Apparently, and not even apparently, I'll say obviously, there is something that keeps America
00:30:16.340
together that was not those things. Now you could say it's the economy, maybe. But I haven't
00:30:25.220
a different opinion. I think what keeps America, America is intention. It's intention. When people
00:30:36.640
were talking about America is going to fly apart, and there's going to be a civil war, and I told you
00:30:44.220
there wouldn't be. I told you emphatically, there wouldn't be, and there can't be. And the reason that
00:30:53.420
there won't be, there won't be, and there can't be, I'm not talking about, you know, some unrest in
00:30:58.640
some city or something. But the reason that we won't go completely into anarchy and civil war
00:31:04.300
is we intend not to. That's it. The entire country, in my opinion, is held together by an intention.
00:31:19.900
Our intention is to stay together. That's it. Our intention is to stay together. Now, let me say a
00:31:28.480
little bit more about that. I've told you before that in your personal life, it doesn't matter what
00:31:35.320
you say you want. That's not the thing that will change your life. Your wants will not change your
00:31:42.260
life. But what you decide will. Your decisions are what does change your life. You decide it, and then
00:31:49.420
you do it. Wanting something is inactive. It's a decision. And that's also, the decision is also a
00:31:57.400
clear statement of intention. Because once you make a decision, your intention is solidified, right?
00:32:03.740
And I believe that all of us individually, for our own reasons, maybe, we have an explicit intention
00:32:15.120
to stay together. And so I would like to give my Christmas message to everyone here. This is my Christmas
00:32:25.300
message to the country. And it goes like this. So I'm speaking to, you know, America now. Now, the rest of
00:32:33.540
you, I know there's lots of international viewers. But just bear with me for a moment. Maybe some of this will
00:32:39.060
apply to your country as well. And I'm going to speak directly to black Americans. I'm going to speak
00:32:45.720
directly to Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, every other kind of ethnic Americans. Talking to all my
00:32:53.780
friends in the LGBTQ community and everybody else that I don't know in the LGBTQ community. Talking about
00:33:00.300
all Democrats, independents, Republicans, my friends, my critics, every religion, and every belief. I'm talking to
00:33:12.560
every single one of you right now. And I just have one thing to say. Just one message. I choose you. I choose you to be in
00:33:25.740
my country. Now, I don't mean it's up to me, obviously. I just mean that it's my intention to remain in this
00:33:32.780
country, an American, as part of an American country. It's my intention to be part of this great experiment
00:33:41.300
with everybody. No exceptions. Be you in jail, be you free, be you my critic or my enemy, it is my intention
00:33:53.060
to remain American. And I don't really ask anything in return. Because the moment you ask something in
00:34:03.920
return, you're doing it wrong. I don't ask anything in return. I just choose you. That's it. Anything more
00:34:15.660
than that makes it less, I think. So Christmas Eve is sort of a time for a gratitude. I think it's a good
00:34:25.940
reminder to be grateful. So I am grateful to all of you. I'm grateful to my critics for making me
00:34:34.060
stronger. I'm grateful to everybody who's ever disagreed with me for making me, you know, work a little bit
00:34:40.520
harder. I'm grateful to my audience. I'm grateful to all of you who have good intentions. Keep it that
00:34:49.240
way. And so I tell you that the golden age is not only coming, it can't be stopped. And we're in the
00:34:59.800
demolition phase. It's not the fun part. It's not the fun part. But we will get through this. And let me
00:35:08.160
tell you what's happening that maybe you've missed. Because you're looking at the coronavirus, you're
00:35:13.800
looking at whatever Trump is doing. But there's a lot of stuff happening that you're just not noticing.
00:35:19.600
It's slower. And it's taking us to the golden age in a way that is unstoppable. There's nothing that
00:35:28.840
can stop it. And let me say more about this. Of course, what the pandemic did was accelerate all
00:35:36.860
trends. That's the demolition phase. You've accelerated the trend toward things that were
00:35:41.940
going to go on a business and stop anyway. And so a lot changed. But there are some things
00:35:50.100
that I don't think you noticed. There has been a rewrite of the operating system
00:35:56.840
for the United States for sure. But I think maybe for people, maybe for reality. Here are some examples
00:36:06.080
of how the operating system of our entire reality has changed just in the last few years. Every bit
00:36:15.240
of this is newish in the last few years. Number one, when did you hear the idea of a talent stack?
00:36:25.160
Think about it. Think about the idea of a talent stack, the idea of combining talents so that you're not
00:36:31.420
the best in the world at any one thing. But you've collected some talents that work together well.
00:36:37.040
The way I collected my meager talents to be a cartoonist, I don't draw well. I'm not the funniest
00:36:42.560
person in the world. But there aren't too many people who can do all of that. So that was my talent
00:36:47.240
stack. So instead of trying to be the best in the world, have you noticed that the idea of a talent
00:36:53.620
stack has gone from something I wrote about in a book in 2013, how to fail at almost everything and
00:36:59.900
still win big, that one you see over my shoulder? From that book, have any of you noticed how influential
00:37:06.120
that's been? Have you noticed that the idea of a talent stack went from something in a book to something
00:37:14.440
like common knowledge in just a few years? And it's transformative. Because if you're, if you thought the
00:37:22.000
only way you could succeed was to be the best in the world at something and you knew you couldn't, and you
00:37:27.060
were right, because how many people can be the best in the world at anything, that was kind of
00:37:31.480
demotivating. But as soon as you realize that success is just a matter of assembling parts that
00:37:37.260
are available, skills, things you can learn quite easily, that's a whole new way of looking at the
00:37:43.640
world. How about the idea of systems versus goals? How many years ago was it that that wasn't a thing?
00:37:51.760
Now, I think people have talked about it in various ways forever, but when it came out in
00:37:57.020
that same book, how to fail at almost everything, it started to creep into the consciousness of the
00:38:03.460
world in a way that it had not until then. Now, part of that is because I'm a hypnotist as well as an
00:38:09.220
author. So if I write something, it has more chance of being influential just because I have the,
00:38:15.860
I've learned the skills in my skill stack of how to make things, you know, sticky. But have you noticed
00:38:22.840
that the idea of both talent stacks and systems being more important than goals have become
00:38:30.920
common knowledge? And when I say they've become common knowledge, I say that's when it becomes part
00:38:36.880
of the operating system. It's one thing when it's something that's in a book, but once it gets out of
00:38:42.740
the book and it, you know, takes over our minds, then it's the operating system. Now, what would the
00:38:50.140
world look like with just those two changes? That's it. Because before this, you had to, you had to have
00:38:57.460
enough money or whatever to get into a good school and college. And there were a few ways to succeed,
00:39:03.900
but they weren't available to everybody in the way that you'd want them to be. But now people know that
00:39:09.440
talent stacks and systems versus goals can be transformative, not just to society, but to
00:39:15.500
people. That's a big difference. How about this? A few years ago, you would have said facts are more
00:39:22.200
important than persuasion. Do you still say that? I think we understand now in 2020, something that I
00:39:31.260
said in 2013, and same book, had it failed almost everything. And it was, and in my book, Win Bigly, I said it
00:39:40.820
more clearly, and emphasize that persuasion is what is moving us, not facts. Facts, of course, are the most
00:39:48.860
important thing to the outcome. But we don't make decisions based on facts. We're just not that species. We
00:39:55.700
thought we were. 10 years ago, if I said, how do people make decisions? You'd say, well, they look at the facts,
00:40:01.000
they use their reason. What would you say today? Today, you'd say, well, they'll look at the facts,
00:40:06.680
and then they'll use their bias to make the decision, right? That's a big difference. We
00:40:11.960
understand now we are an irrational species in a way we didn't really know 10 years ago. I mean,
00:40:18.400
you always sort of knew it, but you thought it was other people, didn't you? Yeah, people are irrational,
00:40:24.520
specifically other people. But what you've learned recently is that, yeah, people are irrational,
00:40:29.760
you know, specifically other people, and also you, also you, also me. There's no, nobody gets an
00:40:39.640
exemption. We're all, we're all irrational. We're just trying to, we're trying to up our game. But
00:40:46.520
realizing you're irrational is the base requirement for improving your game, your thinking game, as it
00:40:54.740
were. That's a big difference. Imagine a world that went from thinking facts matter to our decision
00:41:00.460
to understanding they don't. How big is that? It's really big. It's really big. It's completely
00:41:08.060
transforms your entire experience of reality. How about this? How much do you trust your narrative
00:41:16.180
keepers? How much do you trust the news? You don't. 10 years ago, you probably said, well, if it's in the
00:41:24.680
news, it's probably true. Yeah, they can make some mistakes. But if it's in the news, it's probably
00:41:31.920
true. Now, what do you think? Now, you know, it's not true. You don't wonder if the news is accurate.
00:41:40.560
You know, it's not. And that's now common knowledge. President Trump did that for you.
00:41:47.460
President Trump took an illusion we were all under that the news was something like a legitimate
00:41:53.420
organization. And he taught us that it wasn't, that it was always an illusion, that the news is
00:42:01.120
a propaganda, you know, sort of experience. How about this? Do you trust science the way you used
00:42:12.120
to? Because I think what we've learned recently is that, yeah, you can, you can trust science as a
00:42:19.160
process. But number one, you don't know where you are in the process. It's a big problem, right?
00:42:25.380
We love science as a process of going from the unknown to, you know, learning something useful.
00:42:31.880
But you never quite know where you are on that journey. Are you in the middle, where you're still
00:42:38.540
confused, but it's different from where you started? Or have you reached the end, where you actually know,
00:42:44.720
you know what's going on, and it's not going to change? You don't really know. But there's a bigger
00:42:49.000
problem. We don't really trust science. We end up trusting scientists. And while I love science
00:42:58.720
as a process, what do we know about people who are explaining to us anything? Whether it's the news
00:43:06.840
they're explaining to us, or science they're explaining to us. Well, what we know now is that
00:43:11.100
it's being filtered through humans who are so flawed and so biased that it doesn't matter how good science
00:43:18.180
is, you're never going to know. Because the only thing you know is what a scientist tells you.
00:43:25.380
You don't know anything about science, unless you're directly involved in it. We know what the
00:43:30.920
scientists tell us. And we now learn to distinguish, right? I would say 10 years ago, you would have said
00:43:39.180
that the scientist and the science, while different concepts, you could treat them like they're the same,
00:43:45.480
right? Because if the scientists told you something 10 years ago, you'd say, oh, that's what
00:43:51.980
science says. What do you say now? Today, if a scientist tells you something, you're far more
00:43:59.720
likely to say, wait a minute, that's not necessarily science. That's a scientist who may be biased,
00:44:07.960
may be bought off, may be wrong, may disagree with people. But it's a different level of credibility.
00:44:13.520
And now we understand that. We didn't understand that before. Of course, there are big changes in
00:44:19.420
society. Commuting will never be the same. I don't think people will go back to the commuting ways
00:44:25.180
that they had, because it just was so unpleasant. The only reason that commuting was the thing that it
00:44:30.580
was, where it was not unusual for people to spend an hour each way to get to work at home,
00:44:36.740
two hours in many cases. I know people who commute two hours each way, every day. I think that's going
00:44:45.860
to go away, right? I mean, I don't see people going back to that. And here's the reason. I've taught you
00:44:51.880
before that one of the best ways to predict the future, just one of the things that's a good variable
00:44:57.500
to understand, is that people can get used to anything. If it sort of creeps up on you, you can
00:45:05.580
get used to it. It wasn't always that a commute took forever and you sat in traffic. You just sort of
00:45:11.520
got used to it. You hated it. You never got used to it in the sense that you didn't hate it.
00:45:17.440
But you sort of accepted it, because you got used to it. Then the pandemic comes,
00:45:23.260
and then suddenly you don't have to commute. Now you're not used to it, are you? Now commuting's
00:45:30.180
a big problem, because you're not used to it. After the pandemic's over, you're going to say to
00:45:35.280
yourself, what the heck did I ever, why was I doing that? It was crazy. I mean, now that we have the
00:45:42.520
right technology that you can work remotely, it just doesn't make any sense. So I don't see that ever
00:45:47.700
going back. Likewise, I don't see cities going back to what cities were. I don't know what cities
00:45:54.260
will become, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to live in one, especially because commuting doesn't
00:46:01.140
make sense either. So cities will change. I don't know how. But again, I'll go back to the Andrew Yang
00:46:08.000
running for, I think he's going to run for mayor of New York City. Nothing would be better for the
00:46:14.980
United States. And forget about what you think of Andrew Yang's, you know, party affiliation. Let's
00:46:20.880
say you're not a Democrat, so you just can't get on board with a Democrat thing. But who would be
00:46:28.940
smarter, better, more trusted, more qualified to do a little A-B testing and find out what a city can
00:46:36.340
become? Not what a city used to be, but what could a city become? What is the thing that's after the
00:46:43.280
pandemic? Can you think of anybody in the public domain who would be, who you would trust to wrestle
00:46:51.600
with that question? Because there's no right answer. Somebody's going to have to have some intuition,
00:46:56.920
some skills, some real ability to dig in and be creative and take some chances and all that stuff.
00:47:04.220
He's perfect. He's perfect. New York City, New York City, if you don't elect Andrew Yang,
00:47:11.200
you're crazy. You'd be absolutely crazy. I don't care who he's running against,
00:47:19.100
Republican or Democrat. I don't care who he's running against. You need to do this,
00:47:25.240
not just for New York City. You need to do it for the country. Because whatever New York City does,
00:47:31.240
everybody's going to watch, right? And it's the biggest thing. So if you can make it work in New
00:47:37.120
York City, there's a good reason you might be able to reproduce it. So I see just the fact that
00:47:43.420
there is an Andrew Yang, that he just exists. Just the fact that he exists and that he just paired
00:47:50.800
himself with this specific problem, one of the most important levers for the future.
00:47:56.820
You don't get to the golden age without re-engineering some basic stuff. As basic as UBI,
00:48:05.180
which, by the way, we just got used to. That's what the direct payments are for the coronavirus.
00:48:10.440
It's kind of a UBI, in a way. So that's coming. I think that the future, we will be able to beat
00:48:18.020
pandemics better. I think that what we learned from all of this, what we learned from the pandemic
00:48:24.420
probably will put us in really good shape for future pandemics, but also future viruses and
00:48:30.560
future collaborative science and collaborative medicine. I think we took a gigantic step forward
00:48:37.360
in terms of medical science, not to mention telehealth and things that changed because of
00:48:43.060
the pandemic. So now you can get a doctor on a video call, no matter what state you're in.
00:48:48.400
You know, shopping will always be different. Here's another big change. The rise of independent
00:48:55.880
voices. Let's say independent journalists, the Tim Pools of the world, independent voices,
00:49:03.420
the Joe Rogans of the world, independent... I'm not sure what you would call me. Does anybody have a
00:49:09.960
label for me? What would you call me? Tell me in the comments. I'll look for it. If you were to label me,
00:49:18.400
pundit? I'm not sure that pundit quite fits. Because when you say pundit, you're usually
00:49:25.400
thinking of somebody who's advocating one side or another. I don't know. Maybe that's me.
00:49:32.020
But the rise of independent voices to replace a broken corporate media is probably a really good
00:49:39.120
thing. It's probably a really good thing. And here's another thing that I don't think you quite
00:49:46.240
understand how important it is. Have you noticed that through my books and these live streams
00:49:54.400
primarily, that I've trained an army of better thinkers? I know that sounds like a pretty, I don't
00:50:03.760
know, egomaniac thing to say. But if you've experienced the last few years with me, I think
00:50:10.240
you'd agree. I think you would agree that I have succeeded in training a whole bunch of people. I
00:50:19.040
don't know how many. It's probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions. But at least hundreds
00:50:24.240
of thousands of people who have learned a different way to approach problems, and maybe a better way.
00:50:31.640
So I think that's bigger than you think. Because you don't have to get everybody on board to know
00:50:40.440
something is going to work. If you get a critical mass, and I think we're maybe there, of better
00:50:47.380
thinkers, that stuff will spread. So that's something to look forward to. I feel that television and
00:50:55.120
movies are being replaced by other entertainment, live stream, for example. On Christmas morning,
00:51:01.680
what will be the only live content that's new original content that's available for you to watch
00:51:10.540
on Christmas morning? Well, there'll be some news programs, right? But they're all going to be the
00:51:15.160
special holiday stuff you don't want to watch. But then there'll be me, because I'll be here
00:51:20.380
Christmas morning. I'll see you then. And I think that the independent people like me,
00:51:27.620
who just have some benefits that they can transmit, are a big deal in the world. Not just me, but
00:51:36.400
the whole idea of it. I think we're entering a phase where wokeness is jumping the shark like crazy.
00:51:44.160
Now, I'm in favor of wokeness. But like everything, there's such a thing as too much. I'm in favor of
00:51:55.620
ice cream. But if you ate a barrel of ice cream, you'd be sick and you might die. There's no such
00:52:02.120
thing, except for maybe money, I guess, or good looks. There are some things that you just can have
00:52:10.280
too much of. And wokeness is one of them. So I love the idea that any group of people can say,
00:52:19.700
hey, we would rather be referred to by this term. Please don't use this other term. We don't like
00:52:26.120
that. I'm okay with that. I think everybody should, just a basic element of respect is that
00:52:35.860
you should be able to be referred to in a respectful word or way that you like. But of
00:52:46.680
course, that can go too far and then it becomes coercive. And I think we're seeing that. So I think
00:52:51.260
the wokeness stuff is starting to hit the wall. It can't go forever. There's nothing that really
00:52:57.640
goes forever. Everything hits a resisting point. And I think the wokeness is near, but not at.
00:53:04.640
It's very near the point of resistance where it just won't go further than that because it can't.
00:53:10.620
It's just too stupid. So it's already reached a level of pure stupidity. And once everybody
00:53:18.320
realizes that, we'll say, all right, that's far enough. We like the fact that we don't have
00:53:23.540
insulting words for people, but let's keep it to that. But like I say, a lot of the wokeness
00:53:30.780
stuff is all positive. You just can't go too far with it. And then it becomes negative. We're also
00:53:35.580
entering a phase that I'll call a holographic reality, enhanced reality. We are right on the
00:53:41.880
cusp of merging the non-real and the real into one reality. It might be because you're wearing some
00:53:49.580
special glasses that show things in your reality that didn't exist. And it's going to change
00:53:55.460
everything. You'll be able to put on 3D glasses and attend a meeting almost in person. So those
00:54:02.520
technologies, which we always knew were coming, right? You know, 20 years ago, you knew all these
00:54:08.060
technologies were coming, but it just takes a while. We're almost there. This is sort of the coming
00:54:15.080
year. This enhanced reality and virtual reality stuff is going to go to another level. We also have
00:54:22.000
a shift of awareness about things such as the role of China in the world. Now we understand China as a
00:54:28.520
malign influence. I think we probably thought of them more as a, let's say, a friendly competitor or
00:54:35.900
something. And our understanding of what China really is and what their intentions are, because
00:54:43.000
they've made their intentions very clear too, unfortunately. Understanding that is a big, big
00:54:49.600
psychological and mental shift. But it was necessary to keep us safe.
00:54:57.400
And here's another one. Hallucinogens are being normalized, or in some cases legalized,
00:55:05.080
but at least normalized. Now, if you don't think it's a big deal that the safer kinds of hallucinogens are
00:55:14.660
being normalized and sort of being incorporated into medical science as well as our general
00:55:20.540
understanding of how to live, it's gigantic. It's gigantic. It's so gigantic, I don't even think I
00:55:30.940
can explain it. Because if you haven't experienced the hallucinogens, if you haven't experienced them,
00:55:40.340
to know what they do to your understanding of reality, it becomes permanent. And here's the way
00:55:46.700
I describe it. If you live a world, let's say you do mushrooms as an example, and you experience life
00:55:54.000
in a completely different subjective reality, while understanding that life didn't change.
00:56:00.640
That the actual stuff that was bothering you before, none of it changed. But you're a different
00:56:06.220
person for a while. Once you realize that you can live a completely different life with the same
00:56:12.940
world, it changes you permanently. Because then you understand how subjective your actual life is.
00:56:20.020
It's not the thing you're locked into. Your life, you are not locked into it, or the way you process it
00:56:26.680
in your mind. You can really change that. And that one experience teaches you that, and then that lesson
00:56:33.320
becomes something that reinforces itself through your life. So what seems like a smallish little
00:56:39.220
corner of the reality is, oh, by the way, some hallucinogens are being normalized. It's a little
00:56:45.960
bit at a time. Feels like not a big thing. It's a really big thing. It's a really big thing. And you
00:56:53.660
don't know. And by the way, if you want to find out how exaggerating, how much exaggeration there is
00:56:59.720
here, talk to somebody who has tried these things. That's all. Just talk to somebody who has the
00:57:06.960
experience and ask them if the change is permanent. And they'll probably tell you yes. They might not,
00:57:13.060
but they probably will. So this is what I would like to leave you with today. In summary,
00:57:22.680
in summary, United States is not held together by the stuff we thought held it together. It's not
00:57:33.140
because of the Constitution. It's not because of freedom. It's not because of our free press. It's
00:57:38.880
not because of any of it. We just intend to stay together as a country. And none of that's changed.
00:57:47.540
You know, you hear people talk about blah, blah, blah. Texas is going to spin off. But it doesn't want
00:57:53.860
to. Right? Not really. Texas doesn't really want to be its own country. It's something you say,
00:58:01.360
something you talk about. But given, you know, if the rest of the country just played fair,
00:58:08.520
Texas wants to be part of the United States. And keep this one message with you. The intentions
00:58:16.960
you put into the world will create your reality. And the intention that I put into the world right
00:58:24.980
now is that I want everybody in the United States, and again, you can generalize this to the world,
00:58:34.200
but let me just talk to Americans and in the United States. Black, Hispanic, Asian American,
00:58:42.940
old, young, rich or poor. LGBTQ, abled, disabled, differently abled. Every one of you. I choose you.
00:58:57.100
I hope you choose me. And that is my New Year's, actually Christmas Eve message for you.
00:59:05.920
Have a great Christmas. I will see you in the morning.
00:59:14.680
And that's all for you too, YouTube. I will see you tomorrow.