In our modern world, it s very common to conflate motives we don t understand with some form of mental illness. This is understandable when it comes to horrific crime. Someone like a serial killer is so violent and twisted that it s hard for us to comprehend their actions. And there s certainly a fair amount of mental illness that plays a factor. But today, people often use this explanation when they come to political disagreements. Abortion, hatred for Christians and white people, the mutilation of children to turn them into girls... these beliefs are so horrible that they can only possibly be explained by a malfunctioning brain.
00:00:30.180In our modern world, it's very common to conflate motives we don't understand with some form of mental illness.
00:00:37.420This is understandable when it comes to horrific crime.
00:00:40.400Someone like a serial killer is so violent and twisted that it's hard for us to comprehend their actions.
00:00:46.080And there's certainly a fair amount of mental illness that plays a factor.
00:00:49.660But today, people often use this explanation when it comes to political disagreements.0.82
00:00:54.700Abortion, hatred for Christians and white people,
00:00:57.900the mutilation of children to turn boys into girls,1.00
00:01:01.500these beliefs are so horrible that they can only possibly be explained by a malfunctioning brain.
00:01:07.900Of course, that's not the only explanation.
00:01:10.180The other option is that some people have a very different set of values
00:01:14.600that drive them to pursue goals that we view as evil.
00:01:18.940The average American would like to avoid this truth because it comes with an unnerving conclusion.
00:01:24.340Your political enemies aren't crazy, they're sane people who hate you and want to hurt you.
00:01:31.780As very sophisticated and modern people, we tend to avoid language that implies some form of objective metaphysical truth.
00:01:39.860Evil is a concept that conjures up images of old churches, judgmental Sunday school teachers, and medieval peasants trying to explain a drought.
00:01:48.620We're sophisticated and scientific people who have the technology and understanding
00:01:53.080to explain everything in the world that we see.
00:01:56.380Explanations that call for unseen forces or divine intervention are no longer required.
00:02:02.020In this thoroughly materialistic view, humans are simply animals with more sophisticated brains
00:02:08.200and any undesirable behavior can be understood as a malfunction of that brain.
00:02:13.720There's no evil. There's only mental illness.
00:02:17.320Modern Americans are also universalists in a very strange sense.
00:02:22.320We assume that our values, beliefs, and customs are the default for all humans everywhere.
00:02:28.520Americans believe that all of our assumptions about the way life ought to be lived
00:02:33.340are arrived at through individual human rationality.
00:02:36.700So if another person has a functioning brain, they'll of course come to the same conclusions.
00:02:43.180When we're confronted with someone who has a very different understanding or different goals,
00:02:48.960then it's assumed that something has happened to their faculty of reason.
00:02:53.800First, we try to argue in hopes that rational debate will help them see the error of their ways.
00:03:00.560If debate doesn't work, we begin introducing therapeutic language,
00:03:04.320diagnosing dissenting individuals with all kinds of pathologies
00:03:08.300which will explain why they don't see the world the way we do.
00:03:11.640Re-education is a popular tactic, assigning some kind of procedural rehabilitation with defined steps that will help the defective individual rewire his brain.
00:03:22.020The explanation for divergent morals or goals is always a defective mental process, never a genuine difference in how we view the world.
00:03:31.840The obsession with material explanations accounts for half of this phenomenon, but the other half is explained by our desperate need to avoid real conflict.
00:03:41.640One of the major selling points of liberalism was that it reduced the need for violent conflict while removing existential questions from the political arena.
00:03:50.960Who's right about God? What is the ultimate good? To what end should we orient our society?
00:03:56.360These are all important but very dangerous questions. The answers are exclusive and all-encompassing.
00:04:02.960These are things that people are willing to kill and die for.
00:04:06.280So better to make them off-limits and focus on something everyone can agree on, making more money and increasing the standard of living.
00:04:13.920The desire to end the terrible wars that were fought over religion or identity, that's entirely understandable.
00:04:20.800And it's difficult to argue that the focus on economic cooperation didn't produce significant benefits, but this is always a trade-off that couldn't last.
00:04:29.720We may like to pretend that we're too advanced and sophisticated to get hung up on all these primitive concerns,
00:04:35.560but under the surface they continue to define us.
00:04:39.000A society that abandons discussion of good and evil for economic benefit
00:06:05.140Rational discussion can be used to persuade one side or the other of the correct course if they're both heading the same direction.
00:06:12.340But if there's a fundamental difference in what is considered good or bad, if two groups seek radically opposed outcomes,
00:06:19.420then no amount of rational debate will ever resolve the core issue.
00:06:23.780All rational discussion is based on some kind of fundamental axiom, something that is not up for debate, that can't change, that's assumed.
00:06:31.720If one side is assuming that it is good and right to mutilate children, that anyone who won't mutilate a child who thinks that they're in the wrong body, that person should lose custody of their child or should go to prison.
00:06:46.000They can't coexist with somebody who believes actually mutilating children is wrong.
00:06:51.360And if you try to do that, even with the justification of trying to fix something about their mental state, then you need to go to jail.
00:06:58.440These are fundamentally opposed views.
00:07:00.600There's no arguing past them, and they can't exist inside the same system.
00:08:13.640We're at least two societies with mutually exclusive understandings of morality and purpose, trapped in one country.
00:08:20.600The theoretical neutrality of the liberal system allowed this drift to occur under the surface, but the differences have become too extreme to ignore.
00:08:30.160Both sides have their own internally consistent understanding of the world, but they're entirely incompatible with each other.
00:08:37.880Again, one side is going to win, and one side is going to lose, and the winning side is going to impose its way of life on the other.0.54
00:08:45.280There is no way to avoid this reality and obscuring the truth with comforting fictions about mental illness only ensures that you'll be on the side that loses.
00:09:15.280algorithm magic if you want to follow me on twitter or gab or substack or instagram if you
00:09:21.600want to watch these episodes on rumble or odyssey the links to do that are down below in the
00:09:26.000description and don't forget my book the total state is out in its second edition it's a paperback
00:09:30.560and it's got a new chapter so if you were waiting to get the paperback or you want to read the new
00:09:35.600chapter you can go over to amazon and pick that up today and of course you can watch all of my
00:09:41.520shows and read all of my columns over at The Blaze.
00:09:44.400Thanks for watching as always, I'll talk to you next time.