Ep 32 | Arthur Brooks | The Glenn Beck Podcast
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 24 minutes
Words per Minute
185.83977
Summary
In this episode, former French hornist Arthur Brooks joins us to talk about what it means to be an American at a time of deep political polarization, and why it s important to remember that we are still Americans, even though we ve lost much of our sense of who we are.
Transcript
00:00:00.200
This is going to be a podcast you will want to listen to all the way to the end.
00:00:06.480
For 12 years, our guest was a professional French hornist,
00:00:11.480
which I don't even know if that's what you call it.
00:00:17.700
Anyway, he was with the Annapolis Brass Quintet,
00:00:25.420
After that, he worked as a professor at Syracuse University,
00:00:28.860
where he taught economics and social entrepreneurship.
00:00:34.380
Currently, he is the president of the American Enterprise Institute,
00:00:40.980
and he's going to begin teaching at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School.
00:00:48.740
How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt.
00:00:54.700
He's a bestseller on the USA Today and New York Times list.
00:01:04.900
bestselling author of 11 books on topics including the role of government,
00:01:14.680
Don't miss a minute of this episode with Arthur Brooks.
00:01:43.400
It's a hard time because after a financial crisis and all the stresses and strains,
00:01:49.500
the belief that people in Washington, people who are in charge, have left us behind,
00:01:57.320
There's a lot of despair when you travel around this country,
00:01:59.740
and that despair is metastasized into something really dangerous,
00:02:05.140
The belief that somebody who disagrees with you is utterly worthless.
00:02:07.860
The populism in Washington, the despair in the country,
00:02:11.880
the fact that economic growth has largely been focused on just the top 20% of the income distribution,
00:02:17.800
this has kind of made up nasty mix of circumstances,
00:02:27.060
All this together has created this environment that we see today
00:02:42.540
I'm convinced that the cry for a border wall is not really a cry for a border wall.
00:02:51.740
It's a, I have trusted you to take care of our problems.
00:02:57.900
I've trusted you that you cared about somebody coming in with ill intent,
00:03:05.060
um, people coming in and, and doing nefarious things.
00:03:09.340
I trusted you for so long and you keep telling me you want to fix it.
00:03:13.080
And then you don't, I want a wall, not because I'm afraid of America, because of Mexicans.
00:03:18.620
I want a wall because I don't believe you actually mean this.
00:03:24.140
And if I don't have a permanent wall, you can do whatever you want.
00:03:29.000
But when the next guy comes in or when you don't have to be reelected,
00:03:32.960
you're going to stop taking care of these things.
00:03:35.820
And, and I think a lot of the frustration that's happening that is being,
00:03:43.380
Is actually, I don't trust the government anymore.
00:03:53.380
And I want something fixed that used to be common sense.
00:03:59.340
You know, there are a lot of issues like this that happen in times of real political polarization,
00:04:03.680
where it's not about the specific political case at hand.
00:04:09.080
You know, you'll see, by the way, the left on the political left in America,
00:04:15.600
You know, the Democratic Party doesn't want open borders.
00:04:18.500
They've never talked about open borders before,
00:04:20.520
but the reason they are is to be in contrast to what they think Trump is talking about.
00:04:25.320
And the people who support Donald Trump are saying what they're saying about the wall,
00:04:28.520
to be in contrast to what they believe the other side believes.
00:04:32.040
And, you know, in these times of incredible polarization, we, we do theater.
00:04:37.140
I understand it's important to have sovereignty.
00:04:39.320
I understand it's important to have rule of law,
00:04:41.580
but a lot of the times in the discussions that we have,
00:04:44.300
we're trying to set ourselves apart from the other side.
00:04:47.420
We're actually making issues that have traditionally not been at the center of the American conversation
00:04:52.180
into those that are, because we can get the daylight,
00:04:55.180
the maximum amount of daylight between the two sides.
00:05:02.580
We're more polarized as a country than we've been at any time since the Civil War.
00:05:05.940
A lot of data show this one in six Americans have stopped talking to a family member,
00:05:11.100
a close friend because of politics since the 2016 election.
00:05:13.700
And, and here's the kicker, Glenn, 93% of Americans hate it.
00:05:24.160
So I say this, I mean, you and I are on the same, I mean, I think not, not just the same book,
00:05:36.280
Right. And, and, and lift yourself up above this and encourage people by having courage.
00:05:46.040
That's contagious and encourage others to do the same.
00:05:52.000
I don't need a poll to tell me, I know people in America are tired of this.
00:05:58.440
But when you talk to them, they will all say, well, they're not going to stop.
00:06:05.220
And I look at the two sides and I think they're right.
00:06:13.620
Right. But most of us are kind of weirdly in the middle on this.
00:06:18.280
So when I say 93% of Americans hate how divided we become as a country, that's true.
00:06:22.600
That doesn't mean 93% of us don't have opinions.
00:06:28.460
I go hammer and tongs after the stuff that I think about.
00:06:31.000
But I don't think that people who disagree with me are stupid and evil.
00:06:35.220
On the contrary, I mean, everybody listening to us, everybody watching us on YouTube right
00:06:39.000
now, they love somebody with whom they disagree politically and they're bitter and they're
00:06:43.240
angry about the fact that they're being told that they have to repudiate their mother-in-law
00:06:47.140
or somebody who, you know, somebody, their mother, their sister, they don't like it.
00:06:55.160
And furthermore, there's, there is a little bit of a culprit here.
00:06:58.520
The 7% that don't hate how divided we become as a country are dining out on it.
00:07:03.960
You know, we have a whole outrage industrial complex and politics and media on campuses.
00:07:09.900
You know, people who are basically getting rich and powerful and famous saying the other
00:07:14.960
Look, I disagree strongly because with other people, because disagreement is the essence
00:07:19.320
of the competition of ideas makes America great.
00:07:23.260
We shouldn't agree because agreement leaves a stagnation and mediocrity.
00:07:26.960
And, you know, one candidate elections and terrible, you know, one product in the stores.
00:07:35.100
But I don't want to hate the people who disagree with me because I don't hate the people who
00:07:43.200
And basically when we have 7% or whatever minority ginning up the hatred between the
00:07:47.600
two sides, then you can be in this disequilibrium where 93% of the people say they don't like
00:07:53.740
Don't like how we're fighting each other all the time and hating each other all the time,
00:07:58.480
But at the same time, they don't know what to do.
00:08:04.180
The first thing to remember is that it's really not about just getting a better president
00:08:11.740
What's going to happen is we need an interior revolution, Glenn.
00:08:15.540
You know, I was thinking about this for a long time.
00:08:23.340
You know, I talk to, I've known presidents of the United States.
00:08:27.520
And I always think there's got to be an institutional answer.
00:08:30.620
Whenever it comes to hatred, whenever it comes to relationship problems, that's an interior
00:08:36.680
That's a social movement that starts inside each person's heart.
00:08:41.460
Look, nobody in history has ever been insulted into agreement.
00:08:46.100
And that means when we're saying that I'm right and you're stupid and evil, that's a
00:08:51.500
It's a very, it's a, it's an ineffective way of arguing.
00:08:54.880
Now, there are people getting rich making those arguments, but we will never prosper on
00:09:04.420
We find that actually the current climate where we treat each other with contempt in this
00:09:07.860
country with a bitter polarization is leading to higher levels of depression, higher levels
00:09:11.440
of loneliness, higher levels of anger, higher levels of stress.
00:09:15.760
In other words, when we are treated with contempt and we treat other people with contempt, we're
00:09:20.940
And number three, we hate how it's turning the country apart.
00:09:25.620
The answer to that is not that I am going to change the whole country.
00:09:29.440
The answer to that is that Arthur's going to change Arthur.
00:09:32.980
So I wrote Love Your Enemies as a way to say, this is my declaration of independence, man.
00:09:40.400
Independence, independence from the outrage industrial complex, independence from the contempt
00:09:45.180
that's ripping my country apart because I refuse not to love my fellow Americans.
00:09:56.720
So I've, you know, after I left Fox, the year I joined Fox, I was at-
00:10:07.440
So in 2008, I'm voted the third or fourth most admired man in the world.
00:10:19.180
I was, it was in between Nelson Mandela and the Pope.
00:10:33.240
I'm hated by half of the country saying the same things that I said on CNN, just a different
00:10:42.960
So I'm there for a couple of years and I leave and, and I really do some soul searching
00:10:49.660
on, okay, so if you had to do it all over again, cause you see the result, what would
00:10:55.720
And if I had the same knowledge, exactly the same thing.
00:10:59.600
But if I had today's knowledge, if I knew now or then what I know now, I'd do it differently.
00:11:06.700
Um, I would, um, uh, I would never point the finger.
00:11:15.940
I would never, um, uh, make declarative broad statements on movements or people.
00:11:27.340
So, so let me see if I'm, if I'm stating this right, you would separate more ideas that you
00:11:34.500
I would try everything I could to not talk about people, but ideas, right?
00:11:40.560
That's really hard to do when you're talking about the news, but that's where we go wrong.
00:11:45.480
So I, I, I say to people, cause I've really reflected and I thought, okay, I spent two
00:11:52.580
years talking about the things that were coming right on a lot of them, right?
00:11:57.700
Talking about what is happening, how this system works.
00:12:02.260
And it, it didn't make a dent with anyone who is except on my team.
00:12:18.720
And I'm watching it and I'm saying, guys, this doesn't work.
00:12:24.780
So when I say this to people, they say, but you have to, and I say, you don't have to
00:12:33.620
Convince, you don't have to convince me, convince somebody that pretend I'm that person who says,
00:12:42.280
Somebody on the, let's say somebody on who agrees with us in politics, somebody on the
00:12:46.320
And they say, look, the people who say these things on the left, they are evil people.
00:12:56.060
And I'm going to stand up and I'm going to say it.
00:13:00.140
And my answer to that is, okay, what's your objective?
00:13:05.760
Are you grateful to not live in a one party state?
00:13:08.480
Then you just told me you're grateful for the other party.
00:13:11.420
Are you grateful that you live in a place where there can be a competition of ideas?
00:13:15.720
Then you're grateful for the other side on that competition of ideas.
00:13:19.200
Furthermore, what if you could do anything you wanted and there were wicked people?
00:13:27.760
I'm going to say, no, I know what you really want.
00:13:32.560
I bet that you really in your heart of hearts, don't hate them.
00:13:36.660
You want them to think differently because you love your ideas so much and you think they're
00:13:44.620
How many people have you persuaded this week, this month, this year, this decade?
00:13:51.220
It has never persuaded anybody in the history of humanity.
00:13:54.200
And by the way, it's morally bereft because you love people with whom you disagree politically.
00:14:00.000
So to say that people on the other side are stupid and evil, you're talking about your
00:14:04.340
And furthermore, you're putting up with some talk show host saying that about your mom.
00:14:10.460
So if it's impractical and it's immoral, it's time to change.
00:14:16.340
Let's be persuasive for the, for, for what don't agree.
00:14:20.940
I mean, agreements for chumps agreements for mediocre places and mediocre people, unless
00:14:29.180
But if you can't actually disagree with respect and love, look, we're not talking about terrorists
00:14:35.300
You're talking about Americans who disagree with you and maybe strongly disagree with
00:14:39.780
But this is the freest, most prosperous country in the history of the world built by people
00:14:45.260
who risked their lives running away from the jackbooted thug and the knock in the night
00:14:49.460
so that they could have a competition of ideas.
00:14:51.900
Shame on us if we can't pursue that competition.
00:14:53.860
Don't you understand that these are the jackbooted thugs that are coming?
00:15:01.580
They're talking about getting into bed with people like Google and monitoring everybody
00:15:08.180
and taking away our health care and our choices.
00:15:12.600
They actually are talking now about killing children after right after they're born.
00:15:20.640
You know, the problem that we have when I talk to people on the hard left, they can't
00:15:26.120
tell the difference between an average Trump supporter and a Nazi.
00:15:29.980
And the reason is because they're in their silos and they have been hearing from their
00:15:33.120
media figures and from the college professors and they've been hearing from their from the
00:15:36.640
politicians in the extreme wing of their party that there's no real difference between
00:15:41.100
people who have strong views with which they disagree and in historically murderous, tyrannical
00:15:47.760
And you know what is happening on the right to, you know, we're saying that any run of
00:15:51.980
the mill Bernie Sanders supporters is no supporters no different than a Stalinist.
00:15:55.740
Well, man, we got to get out of the house more.
00:15:57.940
We got to remember that that is just that's a that it's a it's a huge distinction between
00:16:09.140
It's OK to say on anything from the border to abortion to say, no, no, you're I believe that
00:16:13.780
your ideas are completely wrong, but that's different than saying so, therefore, you're
00:16:17.720
a Stalinist or a Nazi because you foreclosed any possibility of making any progress.
00:16:22.540
And you basically said, I got I got basically only two scenarios, either I lose or you lose.
00:16:29.680
And in America, we can't make progress when we have that Manichaean situation, when we have
00:16:34.240
that black and white situation just won't work.
00:16:39.160
I don't know how, though, is I talked about the Nazis a lot.
00:16:57.940
It's it's whoever in the end grabs the pendulum because of so much chaos that has been created
00:17:09.340
This is the perfect ecosystem for us to actually lose our our ability to have a competition
00:17:13.800
of ideas in the first place, because somebody will say, look, this is chaos.
00:17:16.460
And sooner, sooner or later, people will throw up their hands and say, all right, all right.
00:17:26.600
They take everything and make these wild promises and nothing gets done.
00:17:32.160
I'm not so sure about the democracy thing anymore.
00:17:35.060
You know, it's interesting because, you know, you talk about you wish you had when you were
00:17:38.920
at Fox in those Fox years that you had separated people from their ideas more.
00:17:55.940
I mean, people who have never spoken on television or radio, just in their own home.
00:18:03.460
And, you know, contempt is the conviction of other worthlessness of another person.
00:18:09.080
You know, anger, according to specialists in marital reconciliation, anger is uncorrelated
00:18:16.700
But it's it's contempt where you take anger and you mix it with disgust that becomes a
00:18:23.320
It's kind of like, you know, chlorine and bleach.
00:18:25.540
You put it together, you get chlorine gas and it kills you.
00:18:29.860
There's a guy named John Gottman who teaches the University of Washington in Seattle.
00:18:32.660
He's the world's leading expert on bringing couples together.
00:18:35.120
He's a hero and he has a marriage laboratory and he can predict with 94 percent accuracy
00:18:39.560
if a couple will be divorced within three years with one session.
00:18:45.400
He's looking for these expressions like eye rolling, sarcastic jokes, derision, dismissal
00:18:51.280
That's how the that's how people are talking on television.
00:18:54.080
That's how people are talking about the Thanksgiving table around the Thanksgiving table.
00:19:00.820
You know, and so the big problem, if we want to declare war on this, we actually have to
00:19:04.380
declare war on the communications habits that have been cultivated within us such that we
00:19:08.780
can listen to other people really listen to what their moral principles are and engage
00:19:17.940
If you listen, really listen, not trying to win, not trying to not listen while thinking,
00:19:26.060
OK, I got to remember that because I have to say this.
00:19:35.640
That both the right and the left, I'm not talking about the fringe crazies, both the
00:19:41.420
right and the left generally outside of Washington are saying the same thing.
00:20:02.140
That is that we're all saying this isn't working because we're not following certain
00:20:07.940
And we've lost the mooring of those principles in our own self, in our own home.
00:20:14.140
That we can't recognize when somebody when the system has lost it.
00:20:26.980
The reason that Jordan Peterson is so, in my view, is such a big phenomenon right now,
00:20:31.680
particularly among young men, is because he calls people to personal revolution.
00:20:34.660
This is the point of my book is calling people to personal revolution.
00:20:37.600
Jordan Peterson basically says, you know that evil out there with the other guys, the other
00:20:43.620
If you want to take on evil and you want progress, if you want things to be better, be the master
00:21:06.260
And the only way that you do that is willing the good of the other, even if you disagree with
00:21:13.420
We haven't been represented well with leaders in Washington.
00:21:19.300
You know, there are people all over this country that have lost the frontier spirit,
00:21:23.220
the entrepreneurial startup life that basically says that when things aren't right, I got
00:21:30.400
You know, it's it's it's in the United States goes through phases like this.
00:21:35.020
Every 50 years or so, we go through a phase like this where we have a bad economic
00:21:39.540
circumstance, people who are demobilized, people who blame leaders.
00:21:43.280
We get populism and the whole thing falls apart and we start again.
00:21:47.360
And this is not the first time that this has happened.
00:21:49.340
So let's watch to the end of the movie and say, what is the personal revolution I need
00:21:55.480
How can I be more persuasive, happier, more successful and help my country?
00:21:59.380
And if we can start that social movement, Glenn, I actually am more optimistic than I've
00:22:08.320
It starts with the revolution within asking ourselves, what am I trying to do?
00:22:14.900
You know, what is the outcome that I want to see?
00:22:17.560
Do I actually want people to be more bitter, angrier or hostile?
00:22:25.600
Now, for most of us, that's a question that answers itself.
00:22:29.600
I want to experience more love and I want other period people to experience more love.
00:22:36.260
I have found, and what's amazing to me, I have found so many diehard Christians who
00:23:03.180
People of faith have lost their faith that love is the most revolutionary.
00:23:11.340
Now, most of the people who are making that argument, it's one of two things happening.
00:23:15.500
The first is that they're in a very short term time horizon.
00:23:17.820
If you've only got three weeks, then you'll get out the negative power tools all day long.
00:23:22.820
But if you're playing the long game, if you're playing for five years, 10 years, the rest
00:23:30.000
They'll say, I know, but they'll say we don't have that.
00:23:35.380
But I also recognize that, you know, the people who were most effective were the people who
00:23:41.920
You know, Martin Luther King, it was, you know, he was playing, look, when he, when he
00:23:45.680
died, when he was assassinated, he was at 33% popularity of his ideas.
00:23:53.180
Are we trying to have satisfaction in the next four weeks?
00:23:59.720
Try to convince people, because I've tried to do it, that Bonhoeffer won.
00:24:10.680
If you read the second letter of St. Paul to Corinthians, it's got that desperate language, and you
00:24:15.780
can tell St. Paul is going like, I don't know if this is working.
00:24:20.660
And he's frustrated, and he's angry, and he created Christian theology.
00:24:28.260
Christianity is, we understand it as a religion comes out of the way that St. Paul taught.
00:24:33.680
We can't expect to win in the time horizon that we are going to most enjoy.
00:24:45.100
Do I want America to continue to be a gift to the world or not?
00:24:48.520
Look, you and I have talked many times about capitalism.
00:24:53.700
The reason I came into the free enterprise movement is because poverty is the thing that
00:24:57.460
I care about the most, because I recognize that since 1970, two billion of my brothers
00:25:01.380
and sisters have been pulled out of poverty by one thing, which is the American free enterprise
00:25:07.100
If I had gone three weeks to three weeks, or four weeks to four weeks, or even year to
00:25:11.140
year, I would have said, yeah, big government programs and socialism, they work better.
00:25:15.560
They work better as the short-term power tools.
00:25:18.520
But I'm saying, dude, I got a 50-year time horizon because I want two billion fewer people
00:25:25.440
If that's our gift to the world, you have to think on a long time frame.
00:25:30.560
And if you want more love in the world, hating on the short-term is not going to get you there.
00:25:35.640
And if you're actually trying to practice the gospel of Jesus Christ, then short-term hatred
00:25:49.240
He turned over the tables of the money changers.
00:25:51.460
But at the same time, he was working, what he wanted was to change the hearts of the
00:25:57.200
Because he had love for everybody, including his tormentors.
00:26:04.500
He didn't say kill your enemies, hate your enemies.
00:26:09.640
Because that was the ultimate long-term strategy.
00:26:21.460
I can tell you that I have a hard time relating to Christ.
00:26:40.920
And I read, um, just, just reading, uh, letters of Peter or, or, or, or just reading, um, um,
00:26:50.560
the opening of, of acts, the first two chapters where he lays out, you got to be together.
00:27:01.660
You all come together, make sure you're going to be influenced and things are going to happen,
00:27:27.760
He's waiting to be taken to the steps to be whipped.
00:27:34.100
I just, I want to talk to these people for a second.
00:27:36.440
And he's amazing because he, he has the same pattern over and over again.
00:27:44.300
You know, I really like when he's on Mars Hill, you know, I come here.
00:27:50.440
It's, I think it's in the scripture where it says you're too religious.
00:28:02.360
I even found a God, I haven't found a temple dedicated to a God with no name.
00:28:08.100
And he used, he is, he talks, I read it even in your poetry.
00:28:19.260
Then he finds the door of the unknown God and says, by the way, I know who that one is.
00:28:29.800
But, but Glenn, there's also, you know, people listening to us are going to be like, yeah,
00:28:32.980
Glenn and Arthur, you know, those guys are really lucky guys.
00:28:37.240
Easy for those guys to stand up there and say, love your enemies.
00:28:43.320
It's an incredibly practical self-interested argument that I'm making too.
00:28:47.520
Because the one thing that I know is that you'll never persuade anybody who doesn't already
00:28:52.900
If you, if you treat other people with hate, you will be more stressed out, more frustrated
00:29:01.960
And you're getting a country that if you're like the 93% of the rest of us, we don't like
00:29:09.600
If you turn it around, if, if when people treat you with contempt, which they're going
00:29:13.200
to, if you go on social media, go on Twitter, you go and I go on Twitter, 20 seconds from
00:29:16.420
now, we post a picture of Glenn and Arthur doing a podcast, right?
00:29:19.880
We're going to get just rained on with contempt.
00:29:27.960
Like if you, if you stimulated a slug with a, you know, an electrode, it'll react, right?
00:29:33.380
If you can react to that, you can react to that contempt with contempt, or you can choose
00:29:38.080
your action because you're the master of yourself and choose to react with kindness
00:29:44.120
People who are watching that interaction, they're going to say, huh, I think I know which, which
00:29:53.280
This is especially with social media now where we could make a group statement by being
00:30:00.160
It's like if you're walking in, you're, you're invited to this ball party, whatever, and you
00:30:06.020
walk into a giant ballroom and there's 70 people over on one side and they're just yelling
00:30:13.040
and screaming at each other, taking both sides, all sides is just awful.
00:30:18.660
And there are five people on the other side and they're laughing and they're, they might
00:30:25.000
even be going, these guys are crazy and laughing about how crazy they are and they're all getting
00:30:31.340
I guarantee you, you walk into that room, you do not go to the 70 people.
00:30:36.860
You go to the five and you at least observe what's happening in that safe area.
00:30:48.200
If we were just five, eventually those 70, that those numbers would dwindle down because
00:30:54.740
they either kill each other or some people would just go, I'm tired of this, man.
00:31:01.840
And, and, you know, that's what a lot of people are actually starting to figure out about
00:31:04.740
They're starting to figure out that it's not neat.
00:31:14.100
I've made a public commitment that I'm going to say five nice and loving things for every
00:31:21.820
John Gottman, the guy I talked about before, the marriage counselor, he makes his couples do
00:31:26.700
So they can't criticize each other until they've said five loving things.
00:31:36.020
So if I'm ever a jerk, boy, am I ever going to hear about it fast, right?
00:31:38.760
When you write a book and it's on the bestseller list and it's called Love Your Enemies.
00:31:41.840
Well, you know, you know that if 10 years from now I'm acting like a jerk, I'm going to hear
00:31:50.000
Because I haven't been right in the past consistently.
00:31:56.040
And the interesting thing about this, this is not just about me as a public figure and
00:32:00.720
This is about every single person watching us who is a leader.
00:32:05.420
Do I want to be a coercive, divisive leader who goes anonymously into a forum and hates
00:32:10.640
on somebody else and persuades no one and winds up more stressed out?
00:32:14.500
No, no, for a little tiny bit of dopamine, for a little bit of this neurotransmitter,
00:32:20.760
Or do I want to be the guy that people are watching and saying, huh, that's actually the
00:32:26.860
Am I the kind of person I would want my kids to be?
00:32:29.000
You know, and when we do that, by the way, we coalesce around a philosophy that Americans
00:32:34.220
like the best, which is frankly kind of a center right philosophy, pro-capitalist philosophy.
00:32:38.680
So let's do that on the basis of love, as opposed to trying to pretend that we're going
00:32:43.280
to browbeat the whole country into it, because it's not going to work.
00:32:54.180
Speak directly to somebody, left, right, doesn't matter, that they're afraid.
00:33:03.360
And I want to talk to you about tech in a minute, but they see what's on the horizon.
00:33:09.940
They feel whichever side, they feel like they no longer matter.
00:33:16.320
And the one thing that they can do to matter is to pick a side and be part of a team,
00:33:25.560
because you're even more ostracized when you won't pick a team, when you won't.
00:33:37.720
And so, and I hear this from people all the time.
00:33:42.460
I'm glad you say something, because I can't say anything.
00:33:45.800
And I think all the time, you know, that's a very big possibility for me, too.
00:33:54.760
It's not like, you know, you stayed in one job for your whole life.
00:34:03.200
And that's the answer to this whole conundrum where people are afraid.
00:34:10.240
The big, you know, it's like love drives out fear.
00:34:14.720
Because the fear is the ultimate negative emotion.
00:34:25.440
And so what do you need to do if you want to have more love in your life?
00:34:33.660
But when we have a culture where our leaders on right and left are telling us to be afraid of the other side.
00:34:42.560
You know, I'm looking at a lot of data these days about people in the 20s.
00:34:45.300
They're a third less likely to be in love than we were when we were that age.
00:34:51.100
It's like I asked my one of my sons, a junior in college.
00:34:59.200
And the reason for this is because there's a culture of fear of personal rejection.
00:35:06.960
So when people are afraid, they're afraid of being rejected.
00:35:09.260
They're afraid of being ostracized because of politics.
00:35:24.220
And if we do that, that's the interior revolution within.
00:35:26.720
To love your enemies is the ultimate subversive tactic.
00:35:33.360
I mean, I tell a lot of stuff in this book about the Dalai Lama because I've been working with the Dalai Lama for seven years.
00:35:37.940
It's the weirdest relationship because, you know, the president of the American Enterprise Institute with his holiness, the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist, you know, the most respected religious leader in the world.
00:35:45.440
And people sort of associate him with the political left.
00:35:48.320
But what he is, is he's a man fully alive because he is he has stood up ultimately to fear.
00:35:57.140
And we talk about how how ultimately you you you're responsible for living your one life.
00:36:02.740
And when you do that, then it's the ultimate satisfaction.
00:36:07.180
I mean, look, if you need to don't look at Twitter, delete the app on your phone.
00:36:13.240
And if you want to, if you're really willing to take a big bite out of life, then stand up and say, I refuse to hate.
00:36:20.740
I refuse to hate people just because they disagree with me.
00:36:25.100
I refuse to have people in my own political party telling me that I'm one step away from a jackbooted thug because I don't believe it.
00:36:35.760
I still believe it doesn't mean I'm going to get everything I want.
00:36:38.220
We're going to get a bunch of laws that I ever get tax is going to be all screwed up.
00:36:41.300
And, you know, abortion laws are never going to be what I like or they're not going to be for a long time.
00:36:45.520
But but but for Pete's sake, this is not Nazi Germany.
00:36:49.520
It's not you know, we're not about to have a knock in the night in this country.
00:36:53.160
So we have to stop being afraid and we have to stop start living our lives as people who are not afraid.
00:36:57.780
That's that's why Jordan Peterson right now is so popular, because Jordan Peterson is telling particularly young men, take control.
00:37:07.700
Recognize what you have within you, good and bad.
00:37:09.660
And maybe you can actually start start being as alive as you're supposed to be.
00:37:14.660
Just spent a weekend with Tony Robbins a couple of weeks ago.
00:37:35.140
I mean, it's a Tony Robbins has an incredible ministry.
00:37:43.260
I mean, that's just like he's actually literally a giant.
00:37:46.100
It's amazing that you use that word because he he is so deeply spiritual.
00:38:00.860
And when we what we are doing in public life, when we talk about public policy and politics
00:38:05.260
to hurt this country is by telling people that they're victims to telling people that
00:38:12.600
Their master should be their grievance that they need to band together to fight somebody
00:38:16.700
as opposed to being able to to stand up on their own.
00:38:19.200
I mean, Tony Robbins, when you know, when you see him and he's talking to people who
00:38:24.320
feel that they've been oppressed and they've been held down, he says, throw off your chains,
00:38:31.420
And it's the ultimate freeing experience that that's what Americans need to do, too.
00:38:36.100
We're the ultimate non-victim country like the Becks and the Brookses came to this country
00:38:40.940
as ambitious riffraff and running away from some.
00:38:55.140
The ultimate act of subversive riffraff is to stand up against the outrage industrial
00:39:00.620
complex and say, I refuse to hate because I refuse to live in fear.
00:39:05.100
That's the ultimate message and it's the how to guide on how to get past the fear.
00:39:12.920
He was with the Royal Marines and some elite, you know, kill you with a toothpick and a spoon
00:39:24.220
And he was, uh, we were talking about, uh, curse words cause you know, you watch British
00:39:30.580
television and they can use the C word like there it's running out of style and it's so
00:39:40.240
And he said, it doesn't mean it, that doesn't mean the same thing over there.
00:39:45.340
You know, it's, it's, it's just, it's, it carries a different connotation over here.
00:39:51.520
Um, he said, but you guys have a word that I cannot get used to.
00:39:57.880
He said, you guys will call your, you call each other.
00:40:07.680
But I, but it makes sense that it means nothing here, but over there where it's all hierarchy,
00:40:29.580
And, and, you know, it's for, for us to remember, it's funny, you know, Glenn, when I, when I
00:40:33.560
talked to Americans and asked them about their families, they always brag about how poor their
00:40:40.760
There's no country in the world, except maybe Israel, where it's also a point of pride that
00:40:45.720
your family came from nothing and built itself up.
00:40:48.120
And, and what that is, is the, in the time in American life that's so inspirational where
00:40:53.400
this really became a thing was after the civil war, after this time of incredible polarization
00:40:57.520
in the United States and the country had to come together and it did spontaneously around
00:41:01.700
the self-improvement movement where, you know, the Baptist and the Methodist and the tent
00:41:05.260
revivals and the abolitionists who, who before had gotten rid of slavery, then we were talking
00:41:10.340
about temperance and, and, and, and others like Andrew Carnegie building English speaking
00:41:16.340
libraries and Dale Carnegie, no relation that I'm aware of, was writing how to win friends
00:41:21.420
This was the civic religion of what, of riffraff being his or her own CEO.
00:41:32.480
I, I just performed, uh, at a, a Carnegie theater.
00:41:38.900
And it was adjoined to a library and I, I'm sitting inside, I read a lot.
00:41:46.260
I have a pretty big library, but you know, bigger than most people cause nobody reads anymore,
00:41:51.160
but you know, it's not an, it's not some wealthy, you know, crazy library full of books.
00:41:57.840
Uh, and my library is probably bigger than that original library.
00:42:07.460
He built these libraries all over, all over the country, English speaking libraries all
00:42:20.900
So that every man, so that every man can lift himself up.
00:42:24.160
He said, not everyone will use the ladder, but there is a ladder to pull yourself out.
00:42:34.140
So he wanted these libraries to be fit for a King.
00:42:37.580
So if you had the desire to pull yourself out, you had the capability.
00:42:42.820
So the shoeshine boy has equal opportunity with the son of a wealthy man.
00:42:52.900
Are the pathways to earn success always going to be perfect?
00:42:57.400
And, and, and in point of fact, they've been blocked too much over the, over the past few
00:43:03.480
There's not been enough income mobility, both going up and also frankly coming down.
00:43:07.860
You know, there's just not, there's been, you know, people create moats around their
00:43:11.140
castles and we have to fight against that all the time, but to basically throw in the
00:43:14.440
towel and say, and, and have populists tell us, you know, somebody's got your stuff and
00:43:20.740
Whether it's a, whether it's a foreigner or a banker or a capitalist or an immigrant,
00:43:26.440
it's not right to say that somebody's got your stuff and I'm going to get it back.
00:43:30.520
And the reason that things are not right in your life is entirely because of somebody
00:43:40.800
Things are hard in people, in the lives of people who are listening to us.
00:43:43.800
And there is skepticism about this, but I tell you one thing that will never get the
00:43:47.800
job done is complaining about it and banding together and saying that some other side that
00:43:53.000
disagrees with us is inherently stupid and evil.
00:43:55.260
All we're going to get after that is a cold civil war and a cold civil war is in a country
00:43:59.680
that's weak and a cold civil war is in a country that's vulnerable to people who wish us ill.
00:44:44.420
When Rockefeller was building Rockefeller Center, I don't know if you've ever noticed, really
00:44:50.320
looked, I'm, I'm very into art and, and the architecture of, of Rockefeller Center.
00:44:58.440
And, uh, I used to drive to Radio City Music Hall every day.
00:45:11.560
Uh, and as I'm driving up, I noticed one day that building is an old 1800s building.
00:45:19.400
And there's another one on the other side of 30 Rock.
00:45:24.600
Now that's this old 1800s building out of all these blocks of these perfect art deco.
00:45:32.080
There's two buildings that stand alone and they don't match.
00:45:42.320
So he bought blocks and blocks and blocks and blocks, like 12 blocks.
00:45:52.460
He offered him, I think a million dollars during the depression, sell it.
00:45:56.380
He thought Rockefeller was going to keep going up.
00:46:04.400
The other guy was a guy who owned an Irish bar.
00:46:14.460
And he said, this is going to be my family's bar again.
00:46:36.640
America loses its de Tocqueville that at some point people get powerful enough and rich enough that they kick the door behind them.
00:46:47.460
Only when, and this, I can't believe I'm saying this in the 1930s, but only when things like eminent domain, I'm sorry, man, that's his property.
00:47:01.100
But when you have people like Google, when you have Apple, you have these gigantic corporations with all this money,
00:47:10.320
and they spend all of that money in Washington to write laws, they're closing the opportunity, kicking the door behind them.
00:47:20.860
So I don't want to ever live in a place where I, that I would say, well, there's only so much money you can make.
00:47:32.840
How do you stop these, and not everybody's like this.
00:47:41.240
How do you stop people who are that wealthy from dictating the terms for everybody else?
00:47:50.360
So the problem with corny capitalism, forget particular companies, the problem with corny capitalism is that the really, really rich guys have a lot of power.
00:47:59.680
And they have power not just to add to their own wealth, but to protect themselves from startups, to protect themselves from new companies.
00:48:09.920
So the way that we need to generate better policy, to engineer policies in this country, is to block that.
00:48:23.820
Block the fact that they can buy another company?
00:48:26.040
Block the fact that they can actually generate regulations.
00:48:29.680
They have perfect capability with their vast armies of lawyers and accountants and specialists and consultants to cope with, but the little guys can't.
00:48:42.140
I mean, we have an over-regulated economy and huge companies like an over-regulated economy because it doesn't hurt them.
00:48:53.260
So we need fewer barriers to entry in an economy that's more capitalistic.
00:48:57.340
And then capitalism will take care of itself, you know.
00:48:59.960
Doesn't that require a public that is educated enough to know we don't have anybody that really understands high tech?
00:49:14.560
We are on the verge of something entirely different.
00:49:18.020
And when I talk to people in Congress, they'll say, I'll tell them about something that's on the horizon in the next two years, and it'll be completely new to that.
00:49:27.860
And they'll be like, well, we've got to pass a lot.
00:49:32.140
By the time you get your head out of your butt, it's totally different again.
00:49:50.440
And they develop all these rules because the guys in Washington don't know.
00:49:55.620
So they just go to the experts and they close all the doors for everybody.
00:49:58.660
Well, that's always the problem is when there's more regulation, start to get suspicious.
00:50:02.820
When there's more regulation, particularly that's being proposed by business, get twice as suspicious.
00:50:09.620
I mean, one of the beautiful things about capitalism is you don't have to know everything.
00:50:14.260
And one of the things that we need to do is to is to take barriers away from people in productive activity.
00:50:19.740
It's the same thing, Glenn, is barriers away from people to doing what they need to do in their own lives.
00:50:23.940
You know, the big problem that we have in the United States of happiness is that is faith, family, friends and work.
00:50:31.100
And so we don't need government to actually create regulations, a pro religion bureaucracy that's the worst thing ever, pro, you know, the Department of Families or something.
00:50:41.980
And we don't certainly don't need, you know, the friends bureaucracy.
00:50:44.940
What we need is to take away the disincentives for people to do those things.
00:50:49.040
And that means getting out of the way of those things.
00:50:50.780
And, you know, the government is in the way of faith, family, community and work.
00:50:54.100
The government is in the way of productive activity and in the way of entrepreneurship all the time.
00:50:59.920
But they will say that, for instance, it's not scalable.
00:51:08.360
Once you have a company over one hundred and fifty employees, it changes.
00:51:16.680
We as individuals, we're built to have 30 maybe really good friends.
00:51:25.060
We are not capable of having, you know, a thousand followers and a thousand friends on Facebook.
00:51:39.580
So that's the problem that they'll say, because because it's coming now.
00:51:45.820
We haven't really regulated the Internet until recently.
00:51:52.520
But now you're starting to have problems because now who do I trust?
00:52:08.860
And I say, yeah, you have to choose to get over it.
00:52:13.120
Or you have to choose not to participate in it, which is exactly what we're talking about here is protecting ourselves by opting out.
00:52:20.600
In a lot of cases, opting out of that part of the economy in the same way that I opt out of cigarettes.
00:52:27.140
I opt out of pornography because those things are bad for me.
00:52:31.240
And so what we need to do is individuals like all progress.
00:52:37.040
I'm glad that there are some institutional solutions.
00:52:38.920
But all progress comes from the heart of the individual.
00:52:44.420
You know, when we and what we're talking about with antitrust, with very large tech firms, for example, these are sophisticated problems, to be sure.
00:52:51.660
But to the extent that we are victimized by the Internet, this is really because we're abusing the product.
00:52:59.060
And this is basically say, you know what we need.
00:53:01.240
You know, Glenn, man, I just can't stay off Twitter.
00:53:12.060
You know, it's like there's too much hatred in my life.
00:53:20.980
Whenever we get into a very bad place in the United States, whether it's in the Civil War or whether it's today, we must follow it with a self-improvement revolution.
00:53:31.560
That's how we're if anybody's watching us wants to save America, start by acting in a different way.
00:53:40.580
We need a million social movements that will come together.
00:53:43.980
You know, the politicians, you know, the outrage industrial complex that are ginning up this hatred.
00:53:50.620
It's because they're followers and their demand signals that are coming from us.
00:53:56.080
And they're like, I got to get in front of that parade.
00:53:58.140
In democratic capitalist societies, there are no true leaders.
00:54:01.380
There are only followers who look like leaders.
00:54:05.600
And each one of us who wants to make it better to say, basically, I'm just not I'm not part of that parade, man.
00:54:11.580
And then if enough people start doing it, I want to I don't want to be about 70 people yelling at the other side of the ballroom.
00:54:16.760
I want to be the five people laughing over here.
00:54:19.240
And that's when when when the politicians and the media and the and the, you know, the academics and all the people who are part of the outrage industrial complex to go, huh?
00:54:32.820
I know a lot of people who want to do this, everybody I talk to.
00:54:40.040
If I had written a book, I would be, you know, mega bestseller.
00:54:42.640
You know, Republicans are stupid or liberals are evil.
00:54:45.360
If I'd written that book, you know, mega bestseller.
00:54:48.400
So I said, you know, as a calculator risk, I spent the last two years praying and writing and thinking about how to write a book called Love Your Enemies.
00:54:54.900
It's a self-improvement, personal revolution book for me and for people who want to think this way.
00:55:04.100
You know, and the weirdest thing is this book has been out for a couple of weeks now and it sold tens of thousands of copies a week.
00:55:13.140
And this is selling better than any book I've ever read.
00:55:24.900
This is selling better than any book I've ever written.
00:55:27.560
And what that means is it doesn't mean that this is the best book ever written.
00:55:37.900
And if we grab it, I mean, then there's a lot of politicians that you and I love that we really like.
00:55:59.560
So I want to make sure that our audience understands.
00:56:02.720
My Glenn Beck, conservative guy, thinks that the tech economy is interesting and is promising and is optimistic and is fun.
00:56:16.400
Because, you know, conservatives are always like, ah, no, it's all bad.
00:56:31.580
And it's going to be based on moral sentiments.
00:56:41.600
It's going to be the worst or the best, but it's all going to be up to us.
00:56:54.680
And the amplification, like a giant, like a giant mirror out in the sun, it'll vaporize
00:57:11.260
So I look at tech and I see the unlimited potential ahead of us.
00:57:29.780
You know, they're already doing it in China or headed that direction.
00:57:39.120
I see a world where we can pursue the things that we want to pursue freedom.
00:57:44.920
Like we've never, the one time I could ever say the founders never envisioned this would
00:58:01.440
Then there is the darker side of the prison that it could build.
00:58:07.520
But I think the first one, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.
00:58:11.380
The first trouble that will come is unemployment.
00:58:15.100
And we have a, we have a disconnect from Washington and Silicon Valley and the American people.
00:58:22.680
Washington is saying we're going to get the unemployment rate to zero.
00:58:28.220
Well, the people who are building the next economy are saying we're going to get unemployment
00:58:39.960
And the American people who are not involved in this and really don't see that the industrial
00:58:47.460
revolution that took a hundred years is going to happen in the next 10.
00:58:51.840
And when that happens, the pressure is going to come down.
00:58:56.320
The politicians are going to do one of two things that we know they're going to do this.
00:59:04.500
When the when they start to say that and they really realize those jobs aren't coming back.
00:59:13.180
They have really only one thing to do, and that is to team up with Silicon Valley.
00:59:18.320
Otherwise, we're going to go with torches and kill those those evil scientists that are
00:59:41.100
In a time where we would have 30 percent, according to Bain Capital, 30 percent permanent
00:59:50.820
You got to have something in that transition because you got a lot of people like me that
01:00:02.280
Snapchat thing that just do not adapt real fast.
01:00:07.420
They won't be able to shift and it will cause all kinds of strife.
01:00:12.760
How do we solve the upheaval, that 10 year upheaval as a bridge?
01:00:22.400
I mean, the obvious answer is we don't know or we don't know.
01:00:25.900
I mean, we're we're we're we're it's going to happen and we're going to get through it.
01:00:30.700
The question is how much pain and what the pain looks like and how can we attenuate threshold
01:00:37.240
And that's a big reason why some people are pushing for socialism in a UBI, UBI by unlimited
01:00:46.520
OK, so to begin with, I actually don't agree entirely with the premise that we're going
01:00:56.300
Because what traditionally happens is that when there's a technological revolution and all
01:01:01.540
the technology means is that we use inputs differently.
01:01:05.620
There's labor, there's land, there's capital and there's entrepreneurship.
01:01:08.820
Those are the only inputs into any production process in the whole economy.
01:01:11.700
And the way that those things work together differently, that's a change in technology.
01:01:15.700
You know, it might be a machine or it might be, you know, a new way of thinking or, you
01:01:19.660
It might be college, you know, whatever it happens to be.
01:01:21.960
So when there's a technological revolution that changes the way that we do things, generally
01:01:33.040
I mean, Glenn Beck's job is like 700,000 things.
01:01:37.600
But most people's jobs are literally like 25 things that they know how to do that require
01:01:43.700
What technology does is it pulls all of those 25 things apart and puts them in a box and
01:01:50.160
then mixes in everybody else's 25 things, shakes the box and takes out handfuls of 25 new
01:01:57.860
The reason that young people do better is they're trained up in the new bundles of 25.
01:02:02.540
And so that's the challenge is not because we have become overtaken by events that we've
01:02:07.700
We basically only know how to do eight of the 22 things in our jobs.
01:02:12.320
And so that's what we need to do is we need to disintermediate those and learn how to train
01:02:17.180
people in different parts of what the new collection of jobs happen to be.
01:02:22.540
That's not just career and technical education or technical school, vocational school.
01:02:34.860
That's a much easier job than saying you used to be a driver and now there's driverless trucks.
01:02:40.160
And so now we're going to teach you how to fix air conditioning systems when you're 60.
01:02:45.640
But that's not actually how the job is going to change.
01:02:48.260
The job is going to change in many different ways.
01:02:51.160
And so you're going to have to learn how to do this with a computer slightly differently
01:02:54.760
while you continue to do this as part of your old job.
01:02:57.980
And that's how we need to be thinking about it.
01:02:59.780
That's how the best research that I've seen says that that's the challenge.
01:03:23.320
And I think part of that challenge is getting people to realize that nothing will be the
01:03:31.980
Nobody's ever going to be really comfortable with it.
01:03:34.040
But if we had a more entrepreneurial culture, we could be much more comfortable than we currently
01:03:38.900
If we didn't have leaders on both parties that were telling people to be afraid of the future
01:03:43.080
and afraid of each other, it would be a lot better.
01:03:46.700
We shouldn't be afraid of each other and we shouldn't be afraid of the future because this
01:03:49.840
is America and we're a strong country that's dealt with a lot worse.
01:03:53.340
When you said that there's, you know, only five things that happen, you know, for jobs.
01:04:01.460
It was, uh, um, the five things that happened for, you know, for, for, uh, a market to work.
01:04:22.880
Well, and that's a substitution of capital for labor, but it changes the relationship of
01:04:27.700
labor to capital because you're still going to need people that is doing different things.
01:04:34.920
You'll actually, in a weird way, you know, it's funny thing.
01:04:37.500
In the industrial revolution, everybody thought that, that cap, that capital was going to substitute
01:04:40.980
for labor and labor was going to be just like overtaken by events and never do anything.
01:04:45.040
And it turns out we needed more labor in the end.
01:04:47.600
We need more people, more people doing more stuff because the whole economy, that was
01:04:53.320
It's a bigger and bigger and bigger pie, but we have to make sure that people have expertise
01:04:58.000
such that they can work with this expanded capital and the way that they can't currently
01:05:07.160
Um, the problem is you read, uh, demon haunted world by Carl Sagan.
01:05:12.100
Um, you know, he talked about, there will be a time when all of this will be Latin to
01:05:19.420
And so they'll just be going to the high priest of tech and going, make this work.
01:05:29.100
We are, we are a, a, um, we are becoming calcified.
01:05:35.840
See, if we were actually expanding our knowledge and we're expanding our confidence and we were
01:05:40.720
less fearful than we could actually have expanding human capital, education, skills, jobs that
01:05:47.860
would match with the changing physical capital, which is the machines and the software that
01:05:51.920
are coming into our world such that, that, that labor could be appropriate to it and up
01:05:59.100
I mean, right now, I mean, there are seven and a half billion people alive.
01:06:02.040
Only a hundred billion people have ever lived and died before the current in humanity that
01:06:08.140
And you know, all those people that are, that are alive today, that's their, their workforces
01:06:14.840
And yet everything's automated, particularly compared to what it was 200 years ago.
01:06:19.000
And that's because when, when you're more productive, you have more productive capacity,
01:06:23.440
you have more capital, you actually need more labor and everybody gets richer and more stuff
01:06:28.720
If, if you're not calcified, if you're actually willing to learn and change.
01:06:33.080
And that's the main task of our leadership today.
01:06:36.000
Look, we have, you and I have both railed against education systems that are appropriate
01:06:40.660
to the 1950s that are teaching the same stuff that you and I learned in the 1970s as school
01:06:47.020
I mean, not exactly, but, but for all intents and purposes, that's actually, that's rigid
01:06:51.800
and, and doesn't have any choice and, and is, you know, the, the, the way that the structure
01:06:56.800
it's, it's kind of like education systems a lot for the benefit of the, of the educators
01:07:02.000
as opposed to the students in the future of the country.
01:07:04.080
I mean, that's, that's, that's the problem, you know, to a certain, and unless we can modernize
01:07:09.300
that, then we can't improve the human capital and we can't improve the human capital.
01:07:14.560
You described, do you believe, uh, in AGI and ASI?
01:07:26.140
Um, I was talking to a guy, the guy was, it was in my, my hometown, I grew up in Seattle
01:07:31.420
and I was back there for some, some speeches I was given.
01:07:37.060
Queen Anne Hill, North side of Queen Anne Hill.
01:07:38.740
Born in Everett and lived in Mount Lake Terrace and then moved to Mount Vernon.
01:07:46.960
And it may be why we connect with our heart because there's something different in the
01:07:50.920
It's gone nuts now, but there's something different.
01:07:55.720
I was talking to this guy and we were driving, uh, it was at night and, and he was driving
01:07:59.660
me, um, up, uh, uh, one South past the old Sears building.
01:08:06.280
And I said, oh, you know, we're near Boeing field.
01:08:08.180
And I said, go over there because I saw, I said, let's go, let's get on the I five and let's
01:08:14.500
Cause I want to see if I can see from the freeway into the, it was at night, the open
01:08:19.180
hangar where they're building the seven 87 because it's such a beautiful plane.
01:08:24.680
It turns out he's really into innovation attack.
01:08:26.600
And, and I said, I just, I just read an article and I said, give me your impression of this.
01:08:30.620
He was a, he was a very, very pious religious Muslim guy.
01:08:35.820
I just read an article since you're really into tech that in 40 years, you'll be able
01:08:42.620
And this is basically some combination of AGI and ASI.
01:08:51.340
It says, cause you can't download the soul and that's how people see it.
01:08:58.640
There's a, there's a, the frontiers of technology are vast.
01:09:03.340
We don't know where they go, but humans are fundamentally different.
01:09:16.020
But the way it's going to be perceived and here's why, um, uh, you know who Stephen Hawking
01:09:23.280
So, uh, I've talked to him several times and this is one of the main things that scares
01:09:38.460
Silicon Valley, uh, started the university of, uh, Peter Thiel.
01:10:02.560
So Ray is leading this and, and I think in a kind of a creepy way, he's, you know, he's
01:10:08.440
looking for the singularity and I think he's trying to recreate his dad quite honestly,
01:10:12.980
He's basically that, that was behind this whole concept of downloading the mind.
01:10:19.800
But he sees the mind just as, or the person just as a, a, a, a map of how you think.
01:10:30.740
He basically says the mind exists inside the brain.
01:10:36.980
But you know, well, I mean, not only that, he doesn't believe in the soul.
01:10:43.440
So I've had some, I've said some interesting exchange.
01:10:46.740
I so respect him and I believe him that he can accomplish some of the things that he talks
01:10:54.600
Um, because he, he looks at humanity differently than I do.
01:11:01.280
He believes, he believes we'll come to a time when if you get cancer, we'll just download
01:11:15.220
But doesn't, that's a distinction without a difference to him.
01:11:20.440
When you pass the Turing test, when you get AI, look at how people already will treat
01:11:31.100
Right now, you have people, just with Siri, you have people like me who are like, shut
01:11:37.800
But actually, Siri makes you a little mad or something irritates you.
01:11:42.840
There are others who are like, don't, don't, don't talk to Siri.
01:11:48.860
I talked to a research psychologist, a sexual psychologist, and she said, I heard her on
01:11:57.820
a podcast and say, you know, we should get, we can get AI and we can put that into a body
01:12:05.300
and maybe a body of a robot of a child and give them to pedophiles to see if they can take
01:12:12.000
out their aggression on those because it'll be a lifelike experience.
01:12:15.500
And so they know they can get it out there and not on real children.
01:12:18.860
And I'm thinking to myself, Hey, that sounds nuts to the minute that that machine claims
01:12:26.840
to be conscious because it will, and it will not be human, but it will be convincing enough
01:12:34.660
to a human that you will start to have compassion for it.
01:12:39.860
Hey, I don't want to be enslaving something that claims to be alive.
01:12:43.900
B you and I know it's not alive, but when it becomes convincing enough to be alive,
01:12:57.680
People attribute human characteristics to animals all the time.
01:13:01.660
And yet we haven't gotten to the point where we give equal human rights to animals.
01:13:06.160
There are some people who want to, but it's not going to work.
01:13:09.360
It's never going to get to the point where we say it is.
01:13:12.560
I mean, we might get to the point where we can grow animal protein in the laboratory such
01:13:18.520
And we decided that's not the most ethical thing to do, but we're still not saying that
01:13:23.360
But we feel doesn't have, we don't feel relate to a chicken.
01:13:30.180
We don't believe that they're in sold as people, people naturally, not everybody, not,
01:13:35.720
not, you know, a lot of atheists and a lot of materialists and a lot of, you know, philosophers
01:13:41.940
But most of us believe that we are in sold as people.
01:13:45.780
And there's something different about the human soul than any other being living or pseudo
01:13:58.180
We have to decide whether or not the robot is more like a person or more like a dog.
01:14:02.100
And then I'm telling you, it's going to be more like a majority of people because it will
01:14:07.560
become so lifelike and it will be very persuasive.
01:14:10.860
I think it's, Glenn, I think it's going to be more like my dog, Chucho.
01:14:14.140
I think because that, because we can, we can distinguish, you know, the fact that it isn't
01:14:20.880
So, um, you know how Pixar, when they, any, any animation company, they, they take the
01:14:29.520
features and they make the eyes right big or they change them.
01:14:32.600
So, you know, it's not human because of something called the uncanny valley and you like something
01:14:41.440
And then all of a sudden it gets close enough to where it nose dives and people are like,
01:14:50.640
So we're still nose diving, but they think, and this is a big if they think if they can
01:15:02.780
And it's a question we don't know the answer to, but I, I, you know, I, again, a part of
01:15:06.760
this is, is informed by my Christian faith that they're, this, the insolvent is inherently
01:15:12.020
known unless, I mean, there are going to be cases in which we become confused.
01:15:16.240
There are going to be cases in which we confuse ourselves on person because on purpose because
01:15:22.020
But I can't even say it's male and female anymore.
01:15:26.640
Well, we can, because most people still do, I think, I think most people do and people
01:15:34.980
People are afraid to say it, but I think that in the end, particularly when we're talking
01:15:39.340
about what is the essence of humanity, that we're not going to cross that line because
01:15:49.320
Because the guy who said, you can't download your mind because you can't download the soul
01:15:53.160
in the end, he recognized, I mean, he inherently knew it.
01:15:59.220
But you started with, he is a deeply, you didn't use religious Muslim, he's deeply.
01:16:09.400
So you started with the premise that he's coming from a soul based point of view.
01:16:18.500
You know, unless there's a reconnection to that.
01:16:22.220
So therefore you have just defined what we need to do.
01:16:25.660
What we don't need to do is to try to put, you know, head to brakes on technology because
01:16:32.200
And it's, it's, what we need to do is if we really, if, if what the world that I think
01:16:37.700
is going to be and you want to be, even though you're not sure it's going to be, is where
01:16:41.080
we can tell, where we can distinguish the ensoulment of a being versus that, which is a simulacrum
01:16:48.440
I, I'm going to pretend I, I of course know what a simulacrum is, but there are probably
01:16:55.060
some people in the audience that don't know what something, something that simulates something
01:16:59.300
else, something that looks like it, but it isn't.
01:17:02.200
So it's a, so you know, the, the, the, the super lifelike, you know, dumb it down here.
01:17:13.120
Hey man, you, you, you were giving me the acronyms, AGI and ASI.
01:17:16.920
I'm like, oh man, it's like, you're killing me, man.
01:17:20.440
So the, you know, one way or the other, whether or not I'm right or your fears come to pass
01:17:29.360
or whether or not my confidence is more appropriate, one way or the other, the world's going to be
01:17:40.060
How about my confidence and your lunatic utopian, loving your enemies, man, and the robots
01:17:52.240
So, so one way or the other, if we don't like the idea where people can't distinguish and
01:17:58.760
where people are no longer fully human because humanity is now, is now manufactured.
01:18:03.800
If we don't want that, then we have to actually fight it.
01:18:07.020
And the only way that we can fight it is by, by remembering the one thing that the robot
01:18:14.260
And if we believe the divinity actually exists, we have to make sure that people continue to
01:18:22.940
We need a revolution of the heart that nothing else is going to do it.
01:18:26.800
You know, tech is not going to take care of us.
01:18:28.640
If, if, if, if Christians and Jews and Muslims and Hindus, and they actually believe that
01:18:33.240
these things are true, then they need a re-evangelization.
01:18:37.340
And, and the good news is that traditionally throughout American history, these enlightenments,
01:18:42.540
these, these times of, you know, great religious fervor, they come along with self-improvement
01:18:47.360
You know, the temperance movement was fundamentally religious and it had to do with evangelical Christianity
01:18:53.180
And, you know, you know, the, the, the, the big burst of activity of the, the church
01:18:57.140
of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, your church was during the self-improvement
01:19:01.140
It was part and parcel of the self-improvement movement.
01:19:03.360
And so you can't disentangle, you can't, uh, uh, to take apart self-improvement from religious
01:19:12.260
What we need then is we need religious entrepreneurs that are reminding people of the divinity that
01:19:27.240
I was talking to Billy Graham and I said, where, where, where do you, where do you see this
01:19:37.240
And he said, um, the next great awakening is not going to happen with one guy.
01:19:45.040
It's going to be individuals, all of the individuals just rising up and doing it themselves.
01:19:58.540
And I think the church, unless the church, and I say that as a whole body wakes up to
01:20:07.160
reality, you know, what people are really feeling, what people are really struggling with, what
01:20:15.660
And I got, I got more out of, uh, you know, a couple of hours with Tony Robbins.
01:20:25.180
Then you get in a lot of churches and some of these churches are violating their own principles.
01:20:32.460
Um, my own church, I'm a Catholic and it's, it's in crisis.
01:20:37.780
The people are in the Southern Baptist to have that terrible report that talked about
01:20:41.820
sexual abuse and, you know, we're not living up to our own standards for sure.
01:20:45.700
And people are, you know, the, the biggest rise in religious activity, you know, the category,
01:20:49.960
Nuns, not N-U-N-S, N-O-N-E-S, the non-affiliated people.
01:20:54.420
That's a huge crisis because it just means people are walking away.
01:21:01.800
It's, you know, the kind of thing where it's funny.
01:21:03.280
I was in, on, on Christmas day, I was in Barcelona, which is where I go a lot because my wife's
01:21:06.800
from Barcelona and, uh, I went to Christmas mass in Barcelona and there were like 12 people
01:21:26.840
So, but, but, you know, I have 20 years ago, you know, went to the same church and had
01:21:32.060
my son, my oldest son was baptized 21 years ago in that same church.
01:21:39.720
And that's what, that's the real threat that we face.
01:21:42.060
And that's, you know, what we need is a revolution of interest and of each person actually finding
01:21:49.440
You know, it's interesting because when you look back at Poland at the end of the, at the
01:21:54.640
end of the cold war, when the nine days in Poland, when JP two, when John Paul II, he
01:21:59.560
went there and you know, the communists, they had to, they had to let him come and there was
01:22:03.680
just no, nothing that they could do, but they could keep, they were trying to keep control.
01:22:06.680
And a third of the country saw him in person during those nine days.
01:22:13.560
And in, and finally in, in Warsaw, in the central square that on the last day, when in unison,
01:22:19.340
a million people started to chant, we want God.
01:22:24.260
That was the heart of each person in unison saying, I demand divinity.
01:22:38.840
It makes us into homo economicus, you know, where we're nothing more than an economic
01:22:44.660
It makes us into the, you know, the dystopian fears that we have about tech, about being
01:22:49.620
able to distinguish between the people and the machines and, and the machines substituting
01:22:54.100
for the people that, you know, communism is like kind of, it's a little, it's like a
01:23:04.520
That was beaten through two things where Ronald Reagan showed the rest of the world.
01:23:13.700
And John Paul II said, and you want God because you have the divine within you.
01:23:18.640
And those two things, they brought down the iron curtain.
01:23:24.520
So maybe the iron curtain is going to be the silicon curtain.
01:23:28.080
Maybe that's what we're going to be talking about.
01:23:29.960
Maybe the dystopian future is one where there are these alternatives, but there's
01:23:34.500
there's still only going to be one future, which is defining the divine within and finding
01:23:40.440
the liberty of what it means to be fully alive and to be living my own life because I'm a
01:23:47.800
I am somebody who's, you know, who has incarnated soul.
01:23:51.520
And, you know, and, and if we actually, as those of us who are leaders who believe these
01:23:54.900
things, if we're going to do one thing, it's that we have to propagate this and we have
01:24:00.460
And we have to show people how to live that and then they'll be free.
01:24:23.340
I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it