The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 317. Radical Leftist turned Conservative Activist ｜ Amala Ekpunobi

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00:00:57.420 Hello everyone on YouTube and its associated platforms and podcasts.

00:01:14.060 I'm talking today to Amala Epinobi.

00:01:18.040 She was a radical leftist activist as a young person and has undergone quite a political and philosophical transformation in recent years.

00:01:28.420 And so we're going to talk to her about that and about her work with PragerU today.

00:01:33.500 She's an American YouTube commentator, as I said, working under the PragerU brand.

00:01:37.500 Her channel, Unapologetic, has amassed over half a million subscribers in a very short time, by the way, spearheaded initially by her story.

00:01:45.240 Her mother is a left-wing pundit who works on professional fundraising.

00:01:49.480 Amala grew up fully believing in leftist ideology before having a radical change in thought.

00:01:54.180 Recognizing the hate coming from those around her who were tolerant, she made a hard choice to confront her bosses in a leftist organization on these thoughts

00:02:04.200 and was not only shut down but belittled by being told, you don't even realize how oppressed you are.

00:02:10.060 And this was the final straw.

00:02:11.840 From here, she left her workplace, dived into her own education on the founding fathers and the institutions as they were originally designed in America

00:02:20.840 and how social media works.

00:02:23.360 Using these new skills in tandem, she launched a conservative TikTok channel, of all things, and found herself going viral regularly.

00:02:31.560 It wasn't long after she joined PragerU as the host of her own show.

00:02:37.100 Raised in a far-left activist household, 22-year-old Amala Epanobi was once a student organizer for the left.

00:02:44.880 Unanswered questions and a search for the truth led her to a complete ideological transformation.

00:02:52.580 Passionately sharing her new conservative values online, Amala became a viral social media sensation.

00:02:59.460 She is now the host of PragerU's popular show, Unapologetic, with Amala.

00:03:04.680 She inspires millions of young people every day to discover the truth, defend their values, and lead better lives.

00:03:11.060 I met her at a PragerU gala about a month ago.

00:03:16.560 It's December 2022 at the moment, so a month ago would have put us in November.

00:03:21.080 I think that's about right.

00:03:22.320 And I was there talking to Dennis Prager, and she had a speech after me, and it was really quite compelling.

00:03:31.820 And I thought it would be very interesting to talk to Amala on my podcast as a consequence.

00:03:36.800 She's quite young. She's made a bit of a splash online, maybe more than a bit.

00:03:44.560 And so when I listened to her talk, I thought, well, here's someone who seems to have a clue and who's probably going somewhere.

00:03:49.960 So let's find out exactly who she is. 0.89

00:03:53.740 And so that's the plan today. I want to get to know her a little bit and to walk all of you through it.

00:03:57.640 So let's start with what you're doing now.

00:03:59.980 You're working for PragerU, and that's a very evil thing to do, as you know full well.

00:04:04.840 And so I'm quite curious about how that came about.

00:04:09.620 And how old are you?

00:04:11.680 I'm 22 at the moment.

00:04:13.900 Right. Okay. Okay. Okay.

00:04:15.360 So you're not a pup.

00:04:17.360 But you're out of that. You're out of puphood a little bit anyways.

00:04:20.600 Yeah.

00:04:20.760 So, okay. How did you come to start doing videos for PragerU?

00:04:26.160 Tell me exactly what you're doing at PragerU.

00:04:27.860 Sure. Yeah. So at the moment, my job title is PragerU Personality, which I guess assumes that I have some sort of personality.

00:04:36.140 And what that involves now is I do podcasting and social media content and just talk about cultural issues, today's politics and news from a young person's perspective and particularly a young conservative-leaning perspective.

00:04:52.360 So that's what I do now. And PragerU found me because I started making videos on the internet about a journey that I had from being what I consider to be a really radical leftist to a now sort of right-of-center person.

00:05:06.180 Right, right. So you're a conservative personality.

00:05:10.140 Those two words haven't gone together that well during the entire span of my life.

00:05:14.360 So that's kind of a funny thing altogether.

00:05:16.420 And so how often are you making videos for Prager?

00:05:21.480 Every single day, we put out content.

00:05:23.480 So we're constantly staying on our toes and keeping up with everything that's going on in the world.

00:05:28.300 And that's our daily life right now is just looking at what's happening, looking at the conversations that people are having and what's trending, and then hopefully giving a reasonable perspective on it.

00:05:39.140 Right. So how much content are you producing every day?

00:05:42.420 At least, I would say, three short-form videos that are about 60 seconds long, as well as one long-form video that will be anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour.

00:05:55.620 And then we do a live podcast on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays that goes for about an hour.

00:06:03.080 Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. And on the short form, so those are about 60 seconds long?

00:06:07.980 Yep. Yep. We'll pick a trending topic or a news story and then just give you a 60-second rundown of what's happening, as well as a little bit of opinion on it.

00:06:17.260 Right. And so what platforms are you using for the short forms?

00:06:21.380 Everything. We're on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook. You name it, we're there.

00:06:26.880 Are you on TikTok?

00:06:29.120 Yes, TikTok. I have an up-and-down relationship with TikTok as I get banned probably every other week for the content that I put out.

00:06:36.900 Well, congratulations. Being banned by the Chinese communists is always a really good thing. 1.00

00:06:41.940 Yeah, yeah. We should return the favor in spades.

00:06:45.040 Yes.

00:06:45.280 I agree.

00:06:46.060 Yes. Yes, definitely. And so where do you have the biggest following?

00:06:51.460 My biggest following is now on YouTube. My TikTok account is currently banned. That would have been my biggest following at about 640K, I believe.

00:07:00.500 But now we've reached that on YouTube.

00:07:03.400 Oh, well, congratulations. And how fast are you growing on YouTube?

00:07:06.900 Well, we started our channel, I want to say, about in April of this year. So that's how quickly. It's been about nine months.

00:07:15.940 Ah, and you said you were making videos before Prager picked you up.

00:07:20.740 Yes.

00:07:20.900 And what platforms were you using for those videos? When did you start doing that?

00:07:25.380 I started out on TikTok of all platforms, and I want to say I started there at the end of 2019.

00:07:33.520 And I, in a matter of months, managed to amass a few hundred thousand followers because I think I was speaking to a perspective that people weren't used to on the platform.

00:07:43.800 And I have a particular look being a biracial female. I think that's not to be ignored in it having a factor in me growing so quickly on these platforms.

00:07:51.580 But TikTok is where things really started to take off.

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00:09:30.660 Yeah, so what do you think you were doing that made what you were saying relevant and vital to people?

00:09:41.600 I mean, you pointed to a couple of things, eh?

00:09:43.480 Your youth and your biracial status.

00:09:46.400 And I suppose the combination of those two things and the fact that you were offering a counter-narrative.

00:09:51.640 But that doesn't seem to me to be enough.

00:09:53.680 Like, when you see that kind of explosive growth across multiple platforms, you have to think that you're saying something in the right way for the moment.

00:10:04.660 And so what is it about what you're doing that is attracting attention?

00:10:09.780 Is it mostly positive attention?

00:10:11.720 Are you getting a lot of trouble?

00:10:15.340 And so that would also be in your personal life as well as your online life because those aren't the same thing.

00:10:21.100 So what are you doing right?

00:10:22.100 What am I doing right?

00:10:24.360 That's a big question.

00:10:25.540 You know, when I started out on the platform, it was just a leisurely thing.

00:10:29.100 I unfortunately had downloaded TikTok as a form of entertainment and started scrolling through this curated for you page,

00:10:35.600 which of course takes in your demographics and realizes somewhat of who you are as a person and then feeds you videos that they think you'll like.

00:10:42.480 And the videos that I was being fed were just a lot of leftist radical ideology, really reducing me down to my gender, my race, talking about how pivotal it was that I was to be a member of the feminist movement or of Black Lives Matter.

00:10:56.300 And I saw that and thought, wow, it's very interesting that this app took in my demographics and this is what it fed me.

00:11:03.200 I wonder if there's anybody saying anything contrary to this.

00:11:06.620 So one day I took out my phone and I filmed a video talking about how I used to be a former leftist and now I'm on the other side of things.

00:11:16.220 And that part of me sort of died off but spoke to it a little bit.

00:11:20.100 And my videos started taking off purely due to hatred.

00:11:24.020 People were very upset at me espousing these views. 0.94

00:11:27.740 I was called a race traitor, an Uncle Tom, a coon.

00:11:30.540 I got every single name you can think of for what I was doing. 0.96

00:11:34.960 And then with that, my hatred came.

00:11:37.640 Yeah, yeah.

00:11:38.400 It was something that I expected by virtue of having been on that side of things already.

00:11:43.460 I knew what I was going to walk into with that.

00:11:45.780 But with that came just this wave of support of people seeing the hate that I was getting and wanting to be a part of the counter-narrative of that.

00:11:56.040 Right.

00:11:56.500 Well, that's interesting because it's certainly been the case that in respect to my rise to notoriety, let's say, the most vitriolic attacks have been the ones that have done me the most good.

00:12:12.640 Certainly.

00:12:13.480 And that's pretty weird, you know. 0.97

00:12:14.800 It isn't necessarily how you look at life, but the first video that really went viral in relationship to my political activity, I had put up a couple of videos criticizing the University of Toronto's idiot HR policies, you know, predicated on diversity, inclusivity, and equity, and their half-begotten, dimwit interpretation of human psychological functioning. 0.73

00:12:38.540 The idea that you could use explicit anti-racist training to overcome implicit bias, which is like the most preposterous thing ever from a psychological perspective.

00:12:50.260 I criticized that in this compelled speech law in Canada.

00:12:53.260 And then some activists cornered me.

00:12:55.960 I'd been speaking at a free speech rally, which I didn't arrange, by the way.

00:13:01.020 And I got a lot of trouble there.

00:13:03.080 A lot of white noise generation.

00:13:04.740 A lot of almost violent pushback from the hypothetical radical left.

00:13:11.160 And then a bunch of activists cornered me on the way in to my building, my office building.

00:13:17.380 And they filmed it, the encounter, talking about all the Nazis that were at my free speech rally.

00:13:24.180 And first of all, I don't know what it's like in the United States at the moment, although I've been there quite a bit.

00:13:29.680 There aren't any Nazis in Canada.

00:13:31.720 That's just not a Canada thing.

00:13:33.500 I don't know anyone who knows anyone who's ever met anyone who claims to be a Nazi.

00:13:38.200 Like, it's just not an issue.

00:13:40.320 And so that was completely preposterous.

00:13:42.200 Anyways, they filmed this encounter, you know, claiming that I was attracting all sorts of demented right-wingers.

00:13:52.700 And that went viral.

00:13:55.100 The idea was to damage my reputation, but exactly the opposite happened.

00:14:00.480 And then I've had a number of encounters with journalists that have been definitely, the journalists were just, they're real vipers, you know.

00:14:09.320 They're the sort of people, in fact, one of them eventually admitted that this is what she was doing.

00:14:14.380 This was Nellie Bowles, who used to work for the New York Times. 0.99

00:14:19.040 She actually wrote an apology, a public apology, although not specifically to me,

00:14:22.980 saying that as a New York Times journalist, she made her career by going out to purposefully destroy people. 0.98

00:14:33.280 And so talking to journalists like that, it's really like, it's like walking through a nest of vipers.

00:14:39.600 Because the people who do that sort of thing ask their questions in a way that is designed to make you say something that will be fatal to your reputation permanently,

00:14:51.540 so that their status can be elevated as the person that outed you.

00:14:56.400 But interestingly enough, just to wrap this story up, is every time that's happened,

00:15:00.600 although it made things shaky for a couple of weeks or a couple of months afterwards,

00:15:06.360 the positive consequences have eventually been far greater than the negative consequences.

00:15:12.880 And so that being attacked, you know, that can be a, well, first of all, it forces you to get your arguments in line.

00:15:20.560 But it also can be a real, well, as you said, you know, your sense is that had you not been subject to all that abuse,

00:15:27.920 you probably wouldn't have grown as quickly.

00:15:31.600 Yeah, all of the pivotal moments in what has been a very, very short career so far

00:15:36.740 have been when people have come at me with hatred and vitriol and painted this really evil picture of me.

00:15:43.740 And then people who want to believe that and want to see what I have to say in order to throw hate at me

00:15:48.900 end up finding my message and eventually having this reaction of, wow, she's really not that bad.

00:15:54.780 Because I understand the people that I speak out against,

00:15:58.540 I come forward and say, here's why you believe what you believe.

00:16:02.000 And with everything you're seeing right now, I completely understand it because I was there. 0.99

00:16:05.680 I'm not going to shout at you about how you're stupid or brainwashed because, you know, that was me four years ago even. 0.99

00:16:12.240 And so I try to approach all the conversations I have with that perspective. 1.00

00:16:16.120 So people are expecting to meet this really evil, bulldog, abrasive individual.

00:16:21.440 And then they find my videos and go, oh, it's not at all what these hate comments were saying.

00:16:27.080 It's totally different.

00:16:27.800 Yeah, well, so when this first viral video went out, I already had about 150 hours of YouTube content up because I posted a lot of my lectures because I was playing around with YouTube at that point,

00:16:40.300 trying to figure out how useful it was as a broad communication platform.

00:16:44.260 And so what happened, again, parallels your experience, was people went to check out my YouTube video because they were assuming that I was, you know, foaming at the mouth and found out that,

00:16:55.180 well, this is actually literally the case.

00:16:57.180 I probably have 200 hours of lectures up.

00:17:00.420 Might be more than that now.

00:17:01.820 And the people who've been interested, say, in mischaracterizing me and also in taking me out haven't been able to find in all of those hours one single statement

00:17:13.860 that even taken out of context would indicate that, you know, I have any of the nefarious notions or motivations that have been ascribed to me.

00:17:22.740 And so what's so interesting about that, it's really powerful in a paradoxical way because people go looking for you, let's say, assuming that you're some kind of junior monster.

00:17:35.560 So not only do they find out that's not true, they find out that the opposite is true.

00:17:43.840 And so then they find out that you're being pilloried not only by people who are lying and who are corrupt and malevolent because of their lies,

00:17:51.880 but they're doing something worse than lying because, you know, if you're a skillful liar, you tell a lie that's very close to the truth, right? 0.88

00:18:01.600 Because it can kind of slip by.

00:18:03.960 But there are anti-truths which are different than lies, and an anti-truth is something that couldn't be farther away from the truth if you tried to make it farther away.

00:18:13.800 And so you had the benefit of that is that you were pilloried by people who were telling anti-truths about you.

00:18:19.940 And then people come and see, oh my God, she's nothing like I was led to believe, and then that starts to raise serious doubts in the back of their mind.

00:18:29.380 It's like, just what the hell is going on here?

00:18:31.760 Because this isn't just a lie.

00:18:33.600 This is the complete opposite of reality itself.

00:18:37.580 So that's very interesting to watch that emerge.

00:18:41.340 All right, so you started working on TikTok, and you started to get a lot of hatred and then a lot of attention.

00:18:47.020 What happened after TikTok?

00:18:50.180 Within a matter of months, I received a message on my Instagram from somebody working here at PragerU, and they said, you know, we've seen your videos, and we're very interested in you coming out here and telling your story.

00:19:03.840 Is it possible that we could get you on a call?

00:19:06.300 And I got on a call and told my story over the matter of a couple of minutes.

00:19:10.080 And they said, let's fly you out to Los Angeles, and we want you to do a video for a series we have called Stories of Us, where you sit for an hour, you tell us your story, and we will chop that up and put that out to the internet.

00:19:23.120 And I got here.

00:19:24.540 I met with many of the higher-ups who were working here.

00:19:27.240 And on the second day of my trip was offered a job, and they said, would you like to come here and do this full-time?

00:19:35.360 Start making your videos and putting them out on social media, and we'll support you and resource that for you.

00:19:39.800 And at the time, that had really not crossed my mind.

00:19:42.820 I was working at a medical clinic as a tech and had every intention of continuing my schooling and going into nursing and midwifery. 0.51

00:19:53.220 So I thought about it for a second and thought, you know, this is a pretty important opportunity that I get and that is just sitting at my feet right now, and I'd be pretty dumb to not take them up on it.

00:20:04.000 So I dropped everything and moved out to L.A. within a matter of weeks.

00:20:08.000 Yeah, well, good for you.

00:20:10.700 I mean, yeah, when opportunity comes knocking like that, then, you know, it's sensible to take advantage of the situation in the most positive possible way.

00:20:21.280 What's it been like working with the Prager crew?

00:20:24.380 Oh, it's been great.

00:20:25.320 I think the best thing about working here is that I have freedom to really talk about whatever I want to talk about on any given day.

00:20:30.880 And I think it's very rare to have a job that supports you in that sense.

00:20:34.680 So I really wake up every day and get to look at things that I'm passionate about speaking about and then bring that to the forefront for other people to hear.

00:20:43.680 There's certainly a lot of pressure that comes with it, as I'm sure you feel as well.

00:20:47.460 You want to be on the right side of things.

00:20:50.360 You want to speak to things that are true.

00:20:52.820 And that can be difficult because we make mistakes and sometimes we're wrong.

00:20:56.660 And I'm very young to be doing this, so that's something that stays on my brain a lot.

00:21:00.840 But other than that, it's a really great job.

00:21:03.860 How do you keep your ego under control?

00:21:08.220 Because I know how fallible I am as a human being.

00:21:12.440 I think that's what keeps me in control.

00:21:16.160 And I try to stay hyper-aware of my shortcomings and my blinders.

00:21:20.640 And I really approach things with the sense that I could be wrong about anything I'm saying on any given day.

00:21:27.700 And I want to have that sort of care for myself, so I'll give that care to other people.

00:21:33.500 And it really keeps me humble because there's many times where I'm wrong or I'll come at a subject matter feeling super defensive about it or needing something to be right.

00:21:42.540 And I don't realize that until far later.

00:21:44.740 So I try to keep that in mind whenever I'm doing anything.

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00:22:55.580 Yeah, well, it hasn't been that long since you've done a 180 on your belief system, and so that's also got to be kind of paramount in your mind.

00:23:08.920 Let's talk about that a little bit.

00:23:10.280 When I was a kid, 14, I worked with a woman named Sandy Notley and her husband, Grant Notley, and Grant was the member of the Legislative Assembly for my home constituency, my riding in Fairview.

00:23:27.340 And he was the only opposition member in the entire Alberta Parliament, essentially, and he was a socialist.

00:23:37.160 The entire province was conservative, except for him.

00:23:40.480 He was a socialist.

00:23:41.500 Now, the reason he was elected in that riding wasn't because he was a socialist.

00:23:46.000 In fact, he was elected, I would say, in spite of the fact that he was a socialist.

00:23:50.660 He was actually a good man, and everybody knew that and trusted him.

00:23:54.540 And so I worked for the NDP, the New Democratic Party, for about three years, and I was a good friend of his wife.

00:24:04.740 She was the librarian at our local junior high school, and she introduced me to serious literature, and I really liked her.

00:24:11.080 She was a real good mentor, kind of an eccentric New England woman, quite well-educated by the standards of the little town that I grew up in.

00:24:18.180 And so she pointed me to Huxley and Orwell and Solzhenitsyn and Ayn Rand as well, to her credit, because, of course, Rand is no socialist.

00:24:28.060 And then, you know, because I had access to her and her husband, and her husband, Grant, was the leader of the socialists in Alberta,

00:24:36.000 he had access to premiers of Alberta provinces and the national leader of the NDP.

00:24:43.020 And over about a three-year period, I got to be a fly on the wall in many meetings between senior labor leaders and senior socialist leaders.

00:24:52.260 It's this kind of Fabian socialism that's got a British twist.

00:24:55.400 It isn't really derived from the same, say, school of thought that the communists were derived from.

00:25:00.840 And I stopped working for them when I was about 17, for reasons that I'll go into.

00:25:06.740 But I got to say a few things about the socialists of that time.

00:25:11.980 First of all, most of them had been labor leaders.

00:25:16.460 You know, so a lot of them were working-class guys, mostly guys, not all, mostly,

00:25:22.000 who, and this was the leaders, who had worked themselves up the working-class hierarchy

00:25:26.760 and then had adopted political responsibilities of one form or another.

00:25:30.280 And most of those guys, when I listened to them, I actually had a fair bit of respect for them and admired them.

00:25:36.220 I actually thought that they were genuinely doing their best to put forward the interests of the working class.

00:25:46.660 And at that time, the Conservative Party in Canada was pretty much middle-class,

00:25:51.200 upper-middle-class guys in three-piece suits, you know, banker types.

00:25:55.220 It was clear the Conservative Party was a voice of the corporate world.

00:25:59.420 And then the liberals, who were genuine centrist liberals, sort of played both ends against the middle,

00:26:05.080 and they did that quite successfully.

00:26:06.680 So everybody knew where the political parties stood in some real sense.

00:26:11.060 They were different, and the socialists did advocate for the working class.

00:26:15.760 But even then, you know, I used to go to the party conventions, and there were a lot of activists there.

00:26:25.280 And I didn't like the activists at all.

00:26:27.740 They really made me nervous.

00:26:29.200 I thought, and then I read George Orwell, and George Orwell talked about socialist activists back in the 1930s in the UK.

00:26:37.040 What did he call them?

00:26:37.960 Tweed-wearing, leather patch, jacket, champagne socialists.

00:26:42.920 It's like, well, what the hell do you guys have to do with the poor?

00:26:45.940 And the answer was, nothing.

00:26:47.280 You don't love the poor.

00:26:48.800 You just hate the rich.

00:26:50.780 Now, the leaders I saw, they liked the working class.

00:26:53.980 You know, they were advocating on their behalf.

00:26:55.740 But these activist types, they were motivated by pretty much nothing but resentment.

00:27:00.060 And that really grated on me.

00:27:02.220 And I stopped, well, I stopped working in anything that was political,

00:27:06.200 well, pretty much from that point onward.

00:27:08.180 And so, I think it's really easy for young people to be attracted to leftist ideas.

00:27:16.100 Because, first of all, young people are looking for a cause.

00:27:19.700 And second, without much reflection, it seems obvious that we should be advocating for the oppressed.

00:27:28.900 And then, of course, the leftists always say that that's what they're doing.

00:27:32.240 And so, given that your first moral impulse might be to advocate on the part of the disaffected,

00:27:40.400 then it seems appropriate that if you were attempting to be moral,

00:27:44.320 that you would gravitate towards those who claim to be speaking for the dispossessed.

00:27:49.780 The question is, are they really speaking for them?

00:27:52.120 So, why do you think, now, you also have said, and you need to explain this to people,

00:27:57.140 that your mother was and is a left-wing political activist.

00:28:04.280 So, you have that reason for having been hooked into the ideology, let's say.

00:28:09.960 Do you want to expand on that a little bit?

00:28:11.540 Let's walk through your biography a bit here and talk about the philosophical reasons you were attracted to it

00:28:17.160 and also the personal reasons that this particular ideology.

00:28:19.980 Sure. Yeah, absolutely.

00:28:22.380 So, I was raised by a single mother for much of my life.

00:28:25.420 My parents divorced when I was around six years old.

00:28:28.140 So, my mom took care of me and two siblings.

00:28:31.480 And through her single motherhood, really, I was super involved with her work.

00:28:37.000 If we got a day off school, we were going to go to work with mom,

00:28:40.020 and I was going to see exactly what she was doing.

00:28:41.960 And what she was doing was fundraising for a left-leaning organization out in Orlando, Florida.

00:28:48.040 So, that was her day in and day out.

00:28:51.080 She's politically quite obsessed with virtually everything that's going on in today's day and age.

00:28:56.800 So, I would go to work with my mom, and she would give me markers to write on posters.

00:29:02.240 Little did I know those posters were going to be used in protests that they were staging in the city.

00:29:06.860 So, very deeply entrenched in that from a really young age.

00:29:10.780 And my mom happens to be white, which I don't find to be particularly important, 0.95

00:29:15.600 but it is important in that she taught me from a really young age that because I was biracial,

00:29:20.900 life might be a little bit harder for me living in this country due to its history

00:29:24.600 and how that history is reflected in the present.

00:29:26.980 So, I think more so than doing good for the world, I was attached to this sense of victimhood,

00:29:34.640 and I thought that it was really pivotal to my identity.

00:29:38.840 So, I was a really angry young person.

00:29:41.040 I was getting into arguments all the time with kids who knew nothing about politics,

00:29:45.880 about political issues.

00:29:47.200 And I grew up in a very small, rural, conservative town.

00:29:52.180 So, arguments were ripe for the picking with anybody I chose.

00:29:57.400 And anger was the first thing that I think got me attached to the movement.

00:30:02.480 But then it was going to my mother's work.

00:30:05.080 And like you said, there was a lot of working class people involved.

00:30:08.620 During the hurricanes in Florida, they would do food banking and give out food to the needy.

00:30:14.080 So, it was a lot of very radical policy prescription mixed in with pretty pragmatic helping of people

00:30:21.680 who happen to be lower income and living in lower income communities.

00:30:25.580 So, I think I just got my wires crossed in thinking that because we were doing good on a small scale,

00:30:31.700 that meant that these radical prescriptions that we were calling for were also good.

00:30:36.540 Yeah, well, that's a critical point, you know, because...

00:30:40.540 Okay, so let's delve into that a little bit and think it through.

00:30:43.040 So, look, it's definitely the case that one of the sources of sophisticated morality is compassion, right?

00:30:53.340 Although, we're making a big mistake in the modern world by elevating compassion to the,

00:31:00.400 what would you call, status of unique virtue.

00:31:03.080 Because there's lots of other more primordial building blocks of virtue that are as important as compassion.

00:31:10.640 So, for example, everyone's enjoined now to not be judgmental.

00:31:16.480 And that really means to be casually dismissive.

00:31:19.380 And I do think casually dismissive is a mistake.

00:31:22.180 But judgmental, discriminating, that's not a mistake, that's a virtue.

00:31:26.720 Because to be judgmental and to be discriminating means that you dispense with what isn't worthy

00:31:32.740 and you pursue what is worthy.

00:31:37.140 And truthful is a virtue.

00:31:40.880 And, well, we can start with that.

00:31:45.540 Sensitive to beauty is a virtue.

00:31:48.240 All of those things have to be melded into higher order virtues.

00:31:51.580 But compassion leaps out to dominate.

00:31:54.360 And so, it's easy to assume that if you're motivated by something like a reflexive compassion,

00:32:02.460 that everything you think and want is therefore both good, practical, necessary, and morally justifiable.

00:32:11.940 Worse than that, and this might be the most toxic element of it,

00:32:15.920 is that if you believe that you're motivated by compassion, and compassion is the highest virtue,

00:32:21.280 and then you run into anyone who opposes your views, then it's super easy to demonize them.

00:32:28.800 And that's also a huge problem.

00:32:31.500 Now, I think that's rooted to some degree in the neurology of maternal compassion.

00:32:38.360 So, think about it this way.

00:32:40.280 You know, when you're a mother of a young infant, you should be 100% compassionate.

00:32:47.040 So, let's say zero to six months, because the infant is completely helpless, they can't move,

00:32:53.500 so an infant can't be autonomous at all before that young person is capable of voluntary movement, right?

00:33:03.080 So, there's just no autonomy without voluntary movement.

00:33:05.760 So, until children can crawl, they're completely dependent on their mother.

00:33:09.600 And what that means is their mother has to be 100% compassionate.

00:33:13.940 Because everything the child wants, when it's in that infantile stage,

00:33:17.900 has to be dealt with, with no argument, 100% of the time.

00:33:23.100 And so, and more than that,

00:33:27.000 so because the child is so vulnerable,

00:33:30.060 the cost of labeling something as a predator that isn't a predator is very low.

00:33:35.740 But the cost of labeling something that is a predator, not a predator, is very high.

00:33:42.180 And so, along with that overarching compassion,

00:33:45.280 comes this proclivity to over-label things as predatory.

00:33:49.420 And that's protective.

00:33:50.960 But it does not scale well into the political landscape.

00:33:54.980 Like, I don't think that we can scale an ethos of compassion.

00:33:58.200 I don't think you can actually scale it beyond the family.

00:34:00.980 Ben Shapiro, I was talking to him about this recently,

00:34:03.780 and he said something quite witty, which was that,

00:34:06.800 well, at home, he's a communist.

00:34:09.700 Right?

00:34:10.160 With his kids.

00:34:10.880 Well, it's from each according to their ability,

00:34:13.420 to each according to their need.

00:34:14.940 Sure.

00:34:15.560 And that's right.

00:34:17.460 Because with your children,

00:34:18.540 you're trying to keep things equitable,

00:34:20.520 in terms of outcome even.

00:34:22.180 And you are calling on them to deliver what they can.

00:34:24.940 And you provide to them what they need.

00:34:27.260 And so, and then it's an open question,

00:34:29.880 especially if you're not particularly mature in your thinking.

00:34:32.260 It's an open question, well, why can't we use exactly those principles

00:34:37.120 to govern, well, large corporations or educational institutions

00:34:41.920 or the world as a totality?

00:34:45.200 And the answer to that seems to me to be something like

00:34:48.000 the fundamental, the most fundamental feminine ethos does not scale. 0.94

00:34:54.680 It's a local ethos.

00:34:56.140 It's for infants and family members, fundamentally.

00:34:58.960 And I think that's associated on the personality front

00:35:02.480 with the distinction between agreeableness and conscientiousness.

00:35:07.860 So agreeableness is the compassionate, temperamental dimension.

00:35:14.220 And women are more agreeable than men, quite reliably.

00:35:17.180 Although the difference isn't huge.

00:35:18.560 It's big at the extremes.

00:35:19.840 But it's not huge.

00:35:21.320 It's not particularly large in the middle.

00:35:23.480 If you pick a random man and a random woman out of the population 0.78

00:35:27.080 and you asked which one was more compassionate,

00:35:29.460 if you pick the woman, you'd be right 60% of the time. 1.00

00:35:33.180 But you'd be wrong 40%.

00:35:34.920 So you can see that there's still a lot of overlap.

00:35:37.720 But agreeableness does not predict success in the broader world.

00:35:42.180 Conscientiousness does.

00:35:43.440 And conscientiousness is a much colder virtue.

00:35:45.840 Because a conscientious person will call you out on your misbehavior

00:35:52.580 even if it hurts your feelings, let's say.

00:35:55.200 And a conscientious person is someone who will forestall immediate pleasure

00:36:00.640 or even undergo a certain amount of immediate discomfort

00:36:04.700 for a longer-term gain.

00:36:07.400 And our well-functioning institutions seem to be predicated

00:36:12.140 on an ethic of conscientiousness and not an ethic of compassion.

00:36:15.840 And I don't think we've got that straightened out at all.

00:36:18.660 Like, we certainly don't communicate that idea to young people.

00:36:21.900 Say, look, there's a place for compassion.

00:36:23.860 But it's a little local.

00:36:25.500 And it's the local and infantile in some sense.

00:36:27.880 And then that brings up another question, you know.

00:36:29.800 And nobody's been able to have a serious discussion about this.

00:36:33.680 Women have really entered the political sphere en masse 1.00

00:36:36.440 in the last 60 years, let's say.

00:36:38.500 I don't think anybody would dispute that particular idea.

00:36:41.100 And we know there's all sorts of masculine political pathologies, right? 0.99

00:36:46.560 Maybe overt proclivity towards a kind of aggressive narcissism 1.00

00:36:51.680 that might result in the creation of stupid wars for egotistical reasons. 1.00

00:36:56.560 That might be an expression of masculine psychopathology on the political front. 1.00

00:37:00.620 But no one...

00:37:01.300 We haven't had a serious discussion at all about feminine psychopathology on the political front.

00:37:06.700 And I think we miss a whole...

00:37:09.640 I've been trying to formulate it as something like narcissism of compassion.

00:37:14.220 You know, the idea that just because you're feeling maternal,

00:37:17.700 that your love can envelop the whole world.

00:37:20.000 And now, by fiat, all your political opinions are correct

00:37:23.300 merely because, you know, you feel sorry for kittens.

00:37:26.940 So I'm not making light of that, right?

00:37:29.360 Well, you get that, exactly.

00:37:31.080 That sort of...

00:37:32.820 That reflexive compassion is not a moral virtue.

00:37:35.960 And the reason for that is that moral virtues are a lot more sophisticated.

00:37:40.300 Okay, so we've gone over some of the ideas

00:37:41.960 why young people might be attracted to the compassionate ideal.

00:37:46.320 Now, you used to go to work with your mom.

00:37:48.640 You were pulled into this.

00:37:50.420 She had... 0.99

00:37:52.180 Do you...

00:37:53.120 Okay, and then...

00:37:54.960 So when did the cracks start to show?

00:37:56.680 And you were getting in a lot of arguments.

00:37:58.160 That's interesting, too, as an activist type.

00:38:00.140 Because that's a weird loop to be in, too.

00:38:02.460 Because your mother was teaching you, according to your own testimony, let's say,

00:38:06.740 to view yourself as a victim, let's say, for your racial status,

00:38:10.480 even though she was white herself.

00:38:12.060 And that also compelled you to argue with people.

00:38:16.780 And my suspicions are that...

00:38:19.320 Why wouldn't that reinforce your feeling of alienation and isolation?

00:38:23.460 You know what I mean?

00:38:24.700 So were you in a loop because of that?

00:38:26.920 Yes.

00:38:27.780 Oh, absolutely.

00:38:28.680 It was a complete loop of believing this,

00:38:32.140 getting into an argument with somebody

00:38:33.600 that reinforced the ideas that I already had.

00:38:36.200 And at every fork in the road that I had come to with, 0.86

00:38:40.140 that was a little hypocritical. 0.56

00:38:41.780 Or maybe there's something wrong there.

00:38:43.520 I didn't seek out trying to find the cracks in what I was believing.

00:38:47.600 I just sought reinforcement.

00:38:49.440 So whenever I was in an argument with somebody,

00:38:52.140 it wasn't really about the crooks of what I was saying

00:38:55.520 or what I was advocating for. 0.99

00:38:56.980 It was always, they're a racist. 1.00

00:38:58.860 They're a misogynist. 0.99

00:38:59.840 So anything that they say doesn't even matter.

00:39:02.320 And I shouldn't even take into account

00:39:04.740 as far as questioning my own self

00:39:07.420 and having a healthy degree of skepticism.

00:39:09.640 So I was in this constant loop of,

00:39:12.360 yes, I believe this is what my identity is.

00:39:15.060 If somebody argues with me,

00:39:16.640 it's because they're not on the same page as me

00:39:18.600 and they in fact hate something about my identity

00:39:21.200 and it just looped back and forth for years.

00:39:24.060 Well, people who are listening might be asking,

00:39:27.720 well, why should you subject your own beliefs to criticism?

00:39:32.040 And when I wrote my first book,

00:39:35.080 which was called Maps of Meaning,

00:39:37.280 I spent a lot of time writing it.

00:39:38.760 But then I spent a lot of time with hammer and tongs 0.80

00:39:41.520 trying to break every sentence.

00:39:43.580 So I'd read a lot of Nietzsche by that point.

00:39:45.660 And Nietzsche described himself as someone

00:39:47.400 who philosophized with a hammer.

00:39:49.940 And so what he meant by that,

00:39:51.700 first of all, was that he was capable of delivering

00:39:54.660 devastating philosophical blows,

00:39:57.360 which is certainly the case.

00:39:58.660 I don't know if there's ever been a philosopher

00:40:00.260 who was more explosive than Nietzsche

00:40:03.680 in the psychological and social sense.

00:40:06.840 But it also meant that whenever he put forward a proposition,

00:40:10.860 he would spend a tremendous amount of time

00:40:13.480 trying to throw every possible argument

00:40:16.780 he could formulate at that proposition

00:40:18.900 to see if he could break it.

00:40:20.820 And then he'd only keep the propositions he couldn't break.

00:40:23.440 So I tried to do that with Maps of Meaning.

00:40:25.360 I figure I rewrote every sentence about 50 times

00:40:28.160 trying to see, is there any way,

00:40:31.320 is there any argument I can come up with

00:40:33.320 that will get underneath this proposition

00:40:35.500 and make it feel weak and unsteady to me?

00:40:39.740 And I only kept the...

00:40:41.680 Now, you might say, well, why bother with all that?

00:40:43.920 Why not just be comfortable in your beliefs?

00:40:46.120 And the answer is, look, there's going to come in your time

00:40:48.420 in your life, for sure.

00:40:50.940 It might happen every day to some degree,

00:40:53.240 where what you believe and how you predicate your actions

00:40:57.940 is going to be subjected to unbelievably severe stress.

00:41:02.460 And that might be in an argument, you know,

00:41:04.580 or especially if the argument gets vicious and intense,

00:41:08.700 or if it's a long-term argument in a relationship,

00:41:11.420 or it might be that you encounter something tragic in your life.

00:41:14.840 If your beliefs aren't stress-tested,

00:41:18.900 like in some serious manner,

00:41:21.180 then they're going to fall apart just when you most need them,

00:41:23.760 and then you're going to be in serious trouble.

00:41:25.980 So finding yourself in one of these loops

00:41:28.420 where you don't test your beliefs,

00:41:30.160 and you just discount everything that might be a challenge

00:41:33.800 because of the hypothetical, you know,

00:41:36.340 quasi-satanic nature of the person who's questioning you,

00:41:39.800 means that you're allowing yourself to live inside a house of cards, essentially.

00:41:45.780 And then as soon as you are stressed,

00:41:47.720 in some real sense, you're going to just fall apart.

00:41:49.720 Now, you said you were miserable and angry.

00:41:52.380 And so was that most of the time?

00:41:55.860 Yeah, it was most of the time,

00:41:57.860 and that could have been due to other factors,

00:41:59.760 but I do think what I believed was really a part of that,

00:42:02.740 and the lack of true testing of what I believed.

00:42:05.640 I think a lot of people misconstrue a test with having a cause of stress,

00:42:11.220 and I think the more you test your beliefs,

00:42:12.800 the more comfortable you will be in them.

00:42:14.580 So now I'm way more comfortable going into back and forth with people

00:42:18.300 and debating, whereas before I wasn't.

00:42:20.640 And I think it's because I was really insecure in what it was that I believed,

00:42:26.280 but so confident in espousing it

00:42:29.320 and just so strong in being really forthright.

00:42:33.480 I was the person who would wear those activist T-shirts to school every day,

00:42:37.720 knowing that it was going to rile people up

00:42:39.660 and that it was going to cause some sort of discussion to happen.

00:42:42.580 So what really had made me upset in the life that I was leading

00:42:47.200 was just waking up every day,

00:42:48.660 looking at the world through this lens of injustice.

00:42:51.560 You know, every cross look was racist.

00:42:54.700 Every off comment was misogyny.

00:42:57.940 And when you view the world that way,

00:42:59.920 and you're looking for those things,

00:43:01.800 not just saying that you believe that they are real,

00:43:03.920 but looking for them,

00:43:05.420 everything you see is going to be that thing.

00:43:08.480 So the world was a really evil place.

00:43:11.360 Right, well, you also put yourself in a position,

00:43:13.680 yeah, that's interesting too,

00:43:14.960 because you put yourself in a position then

00:43:16.520 when casual interactions,

00:43:19.400 let's call them microaggressions,

00:43:21.340 for lack of a better word,

00:43:23.160 and casual misunderstandings,

00:43:25.540 are instantly elevated in your perception

00:43:28.740 to the status of high moral crimes.

00:43:31.560 So it isn't just that someone's annoyed at you

00:43:34.420 or someone's just having a bad day,

00:43:36.620 it's that you're dealing with a racist or a misogynist,

00:43:39.580 right, which is a core evaluation of their character.

00:43:42.800 And I can give you an example of just how bad it was,

00:43:46.680 because people will think about things and go,

00:43:49.940 well, that probably was a microaggression,

00:43:51.460 and that probably was racism,

00:43:52.520 but I was so obsessed with it that as a kid,

00:43:55.740 I had learned that if somebody wanted to touch my hair,

00:43:59.060 which was very curly and very odd

00:44:00.920 for the place that I was living in,

00:44:02.140 because I was surrounded by a lot of white people

00:44:04.620 with straight hair,

00:44:05.540 I was told that if somebody asked to touch my hair

00:44:07.960 or somebody came and wanted to look at my braids,

00:44:10.620 that was racism being played out in real time

00:44:13.780 and that they were trying to express

00:44:16.080 how different I was and really belittle me.

00:44:18.740 So this would happen all the time to me in school.

00:44:20.980 Kids would walk up and go,

00:44:22.320 oh, I love your curly hair, can I touch your hair?

00:44:24.600 And that was evil to me.

00:44:26.740 That was racism shining right in my face.

00:44:29.120 So you can imagine probably how bad that was for me,

00:44:32.820 believing these things as a young person.

00:44:35.560 Yeah, yeah, well, that, yeah, that's definitely,

00:44:39.740 now, interesting, that tone of voice that you used there

00:44:42.780 when you were talking about those kids

00:44:45.100 that would come up to you,

00:44:46.820 when you mimicked them,

00:44:48.460 the way you mimicked them was by,

00:44:51.880 what would you call it,

00:44:53.300 acting out the vocal intonations of a curious kid,

00:44:57.440 not as someone who's being mean.

00:44:59.520 And so what do you now think those kids were doing?

00:45:03.840 How do you look at how,

00:45:05.100 and what do you think would have been a better way

00:45:06.780 for you to look at that when you were a kid?

00:45:09.720 Oh, the best way I could have looked at that as a child

00:45:12.240 was, oh my gosh, somebody is displaying interest in me.

00:45:15.420 How wonderful a thing that somebody saw something

00:45:18.400 that was different to what they normally saw

00:45:20.340 and felt the need to point that out

00:45:22.460 and to ask me about it.

00:45:23.580 They were genuinely curious about

00:45:25.060 how my hair came to be this way.

00:45:27.040 And if I had viewed the world in that light,

00:45:29.140 I would have been such a happy little child.

00:45:32.260 And unfortunately, I had the exact opposite experience.

00:45:36.340 Yeah, you know, I read a great book a long while back

00:45:39.820 called Bullying, What We Know and What We Can Do About It.

00:45:42.560 And, you know, we have this idea that bullies find kids

00:45:45.820 who have something abnormal about them

00:45:47.660 and then target them because of that abnormality.

00:45:50.620 But this gentleman, Dan Olwes, great psychologist,

00:45:55.400 pointed out that at least 75% of kids

00:45:59.840 have some obvious, let's call it,

00:46:04.660 deviation from the norm

00:46:06.820 that could be picked out by a bully.

00:46:09.480 You know, it could be something as simple as wearing glasses

00:46:11.760 or having red hair or being a little short

00:46:14.600 or being a little tall or being a little thin

00:46:16.420 or being a little fat.

00:46:17.380 You know, you can just multiply the peculiarities endlessly.

00:46:20.640 And that that in and of itself isn't enough

00:46:24.040 to generate bullying.

00:46:25.720 The bullies tend to focus on an identifiable anomaly,

00:46:30.460 but then they're looking for kids

00:46:34.100 who overreact when they're teased a little bit.

00:46:37.880 And then it's that combination of sensitivity,

00:46:40.580 hypersensitivity to provocation,

00:46:42.960 plus perhaps an anomaly

00:46:44.400 that makes someone into a bully victim.

00:46:46.620 And so, well, you can kind of see there,

00:46:50.680 you had this situation

00:46:51.860 where there was something about your hair

00:46:54.000 that made you identifiably different,

00:46:56.240 but the kids could have been both testing you

00:46:59.120 and checking you out in a curious way.

00:47:01.520 And then whether that would spiral

00:47:03.380 into something that would be true bullying

00:47:05.540 and intimidation

00:47:06.580 would be dependent in large degree,

00:47:09.140 to a large degree on your own reaction.

00:47:10.840 Yeah, and I've struggled with a long time,

00:47:15.960 for a long time of just going back

00:47:17.740 and taking accountability for my part in things.

00:47:20.720 And when I went through this journey of realizing,

00:47:23.880 oh, maybe I don't believe

00:47:25.000 in this leftist sort of woke dogma,

00:47:27.680 a lot of that time I spent blaming other people.

00:47:30.380 Why were people teaching me these things?

00:47:32.100 What institutions were at play

00:47:33.560 when it came to me getting this information?

00:47:35.460 And I took no accountability for my part

00:47:38.540 in being susceptible to the information.

00:47:40.120 And what made me want to believe these things?

00:47:42.780 Why was I ripe for the picking

00:47:44.400 as far as a person who was willing to fall

00:47:46.680 for some of the stuff that I was hearing?

00:47:48.400 And that's still something

00:47:49.380 that I'm thinking through to this day.

00:47:51.260 Well, you did say something interesting,

00:47:53.100 and this is probably worth diving into too.

00:47:55.380 You said that despite the fact

00:47:57.920 that your knowledge was shallow,

00:47:59.520 well, you're not very old,

00:48:00.880 and you weren't, you know, 10 years ago,

00:48:02.800 particularly you weren't very old.

00:48:04.260 Despite your knowledge being shallow,

00:48:06.220 and despite it not being your knowledge,

00:48:08.400 you were very confident

00:48:10.920 about displaying it,

00:48:13.340 and displaying it in some sense proudly.

00:48:15.680 And, you know, pride has always been regarded

00:48:17.980 as one of the cardinal sins.

00:48:19.500 And so it seems to me that

00:48:21.240 part of what set you up for this,

00:48:24.740 apart from the characteristics

00:48:28.100 of your particular background,

00:48:29.960 was also that there was something in it

00:48:32.600 that was an appeal to,

00:48:33.920 like, a prideful narcissism, right?

00:48:35.840 And I'm not diagnosing you as a narcissist, right?

00:48:38.760 Sure.

00:48:39.300 Don't get that wrong.

00:48:41.520 I'm really not.

00:48:42.620 I'm trying to understand why.

00:48:44.740 Well, as you said,

00:48:46.140 Carl Jung said, you know,

00:48:47.640 that every projection needed a hook.

00:48:51.540 And so you always have to ask yourself,

00:48:54.840 even if you were enticed down the garden pathway

00:48:57.120 by woke educators,

00:48:59.840 and by your own mother to some degree,

00:49:01.540 what was it in you that helped you respond

00:49:06.180 in a way that made you even more vulnerable

00:49:09.020 to that kind of propagandization

00:49:10.960 than you might have otherwise been?

00:49:12.860 And you said you wore these shirts proudly.

00:49:15.020 You were looking for a fight in some sense.

00:49:16.840 So what do you think was at the bottom of that pride?

00:49:21.780 What were you taking pride in?

00:49:23.580 Was it you standing up for the underdog?

00:49:25.500 Like, what is it that wearing those shirts

00:49:28.340 was doing for you, do you think?

00:49:30.200 Yeah, I think I felt really different as a child

00:49:34.720 growing up in the environment that I grew up in.

00:49:37.140 And I always felt like I had sticked out

00:49:39.320 regardless of what I did.

00:49:40.980 So I think I just leaned into that a little bit more

00:49:45.160 and thought, okay, well,

00:49:46.300 if I'm going to stick out for these things

00:49:47.880 that I can't control,

00:49:48.840 I'm going to take control of something

00:49:50.080 and I'm going to stand out even more.

00:49:51.920 And couple that with feeling very virtuous for doing it.

00:49:56.820 I think it was just a recipe for disaster

00:49:59.560 because it made me feel like I'm a good person

00:50:02.260 doing a good thing, plus I'm standing out,

00:50:04.780 plus all these other people aren't willing

00:50:06.780 to do this good thing that I'm doing

00:50:08.300 and I get to tell them about it at any given moment.

00:50:11.320 And it was just a mixture of feeling really insecure.

00:50:15.640 Yeah, well, so that's an interesting thing, eh?

00:50:18.080 Because we all do believe, I think,

00:50:21.300 in some real sense that a good person

00:50:24.340 should do good things.

00:50:25.960 And some of that would be a certain amount

00:50:28.820 of self-sacrifice for the benefit of others.

00:50:32.340 You know, and if you're sensible about that,

00:50:34.040 you would say, well, you shouldn't sacrifice yourself

00:50:36.460 to the point of being a martyr

00:50:37.640 because that becomes counterproductive.

00:50:39.620 But the problem with that goodness,

00:50:41.660 I guess this is why there's an injunction

00:50:43.660 in the Gospels against praying in public.

00:50:46.420 The problem with that virtue or that goodness

00:50:48.860 is that you can start to trumpet it

00:50:51.140 as a differentiating moral virtue, right?

00:50:54.660 And so you can start to use your hypothetical care

00:50:57.960 for the poor and oppressed as a marker

00:51:00.460 for your superior social status

00:51:03.780 and the inviolability of your beliefs.

00:51:07.700 And so then it starts to move.

00:51:09.440 You can see that there's a slippery slope there

00:51:11.340 from compassionate virtue to overweening pride.

00:51:15.020 And you said in your case,

00:51:16.020 it was also exaggerated by the fact that,

00:51:18.380 well, man, if you were going to be different,

00:51:20.140 you know, if you were fated to be different in some ways,

00:51:23.000 then by God, you were going to play that hand to its fullest.

00:51:26.320 And that's also an attraction, you know, and an adaptation.

00:51:30.900 Sure, yeah, and that's exactly what happened.

00:51:33.720 It was just me playing into something,

00:51:35.880 but also being reinforced that it was right all the time.

00:51:39.280 I was super involved in the activism that I was doing.

00:51:43.060 So when I wasn't at school,

00:51:44.120 I'd go to work with my mom and volunteer there.

00:51:46.540 And I ended up graduating high school

00:51:48.340 and I was so involved that I got a job at her organization.

00:51:51.200 So when we go back to that loop,

00:51:53.860 it was just my own negativity and insecurity,

00:51:57.500 my own willingness to want to be different

00:51:59.500 for the sake of just being different,

00:52:02.040 making myself feel virtuous in doing so,

00:52:04.200 and then being reinforced by the adult structures

00:52:07.020 that were around me for being a young person

00:52:09.220 willing to do the work,

00:52:10.660 which is really so often what we see

00:52:12.760 with the David Hoggs out of March for Our Lives

00:52:15.500 and the Greta Thunbergs.

00:52:16.780 It was just older people saying,

00:52:18.660 this is so great that you're doing it

00:52:20.060 and you're just like Obama.

00:52:21.340 Oh, yeah.

00:52:21.920 A lot of people told me at the time.

00:52:23.200 Oh, my God.

00:52:24.020 Oh, my God.

00:52:24.600 Yeah, well, you know,

00:52:25.140 I was thinking about Greta last night,

00:52:26.820 so it might be worth just talking about her a little bit.

00:52:29.300 So I was trying to put myself in her shoes.

00:52:32.960 So imagine, first of all, that you're 13.

00:52:36.300 And then imagine that you're a little on the autistic side.

00:52:38.880 And then imagine that you have a very domineering mother 1.00

00:52:42.260 who's perfectly willing to use you for her political purposes. 1.00

00:52:46.700 And then, so now she's instilled this terror into you

00:52:50.420 that the world is coming to an apocalyptic end

00:52:53.640 and that there are evil and malevolent forces

00:52:58.300 conspiring to make that happen.

00:53:00.100 And that basically constitutes the entire patriarchal structure

00:53:04.180 of Western civilization and all of its industry

00:53:06.640 and all of that.

00:53:07.380 So that's the background you come out of.

00:53:09.480 And now you're 13 and you start to parrot

00:53:12.140 some of your mother's ideas.

00:53:14.360 Of course, they're not really her ideas,

00:53:15.960 but they're ideas that have possessed her too.

00:53:17.700 You start to parrot them.

00:53:19.200 Okay, and then what happens?

00:53:20.800 You're 13.

00:53:21.760 Well, what happens is,

00:53:23.420 like 50-year-old adult male leaders

00:53:28.080 all over the world fall at your feet

00:53:32.020 and treat you like you're the Oracle of Delphi.

00:53:34.940 And so then what the hell do you think 0.96

00:53:37.880 if you're 13 and confused and a bit autistic 0.90

00:53:40.700 and your mother's a bit domineering? 1.00

00:53:42.280 You think, oh my God,

00:53:44.920 all these things she's telling me

00:53:46.660 that are so terrifying must be true

00:53:49.080 because all these well-positioned men

00:53:52.480 who run the world

00:53:53.640 are treating the revelations of my childhood fear

00:53:57.160 as if they're so important

00:53:58.920 that they should be broadcast on every news station

00:54:01.600 and should start to become fundamental government policy.

00:54:05.700 And so, like, how the hell would you possibly respond

00:54:09.740 if you were 13,

00:54:10.900 except with a massive magnification of your terrors?

00:54:14.160 Like, oh, the world's in such bad shape

00:54:16.100 that I, the 13-year-old autistic child from Scandinavia,

00:54:21.040 now seem to be the leading Oracle in the world

00:54:24.100 on the environmental and economic front.

00:54:27.080 It's so, it's so sad for her.

00:54:29.540 Like, I can't imagine how someone in that situation

00:54:32.300 couldn't be on the edge of existential terror constantly.

00:54:37.800 Yeah, I relate to her a lot.

00:54:39.560 And, you know, I feel a lot of compassion

00:54:41.460 and sympathy for her mother as well

00:54:43.280 because from my perspective with my mom,

00:54:45.360 having gone through this really twisted journey

00:54:48.040 of having to come to her and say,

00:54:50.020 you know what?

00:54:50.800 That stuff that I learned when I was younger

00:54:52.420 really did have a negative effect

00:54:54.280 and here's how and her just being shocked

00:54:57.540 in that, oh, I'm so, you know,

00:54:59.340 I thought I was doing the right thing.

00:55:00.660 I thought I was doing the compassionate thing

00:55:02.220 and I thought I was alerting you

00:55:04.160 to the snake that's sitting out in the front yard

00:55:06.040 and that's my responsibility as a mother to do that.

00:55:09.720 So, I feel for Greta's mother.

00:55:11.640 I feel for her.

00:55:12.860 And I also feel for the people

00:55:15.660 who look at a young person and say,

00:55:17.760 look at this young person leading the way

00:55:19.520 and using the power of a 13-year-old,

00:55:22.280 which is just really very much misplaced

00:55:24.980 to push forward a movement.

00:55:27.040 But it is just a twisted, twisted cycle.

00:55:30.740 Yeah, well, I mean, she's in an impossible situation 0.92

00:55:33.320 because I don't see how she could possibly

00:55:36.240 question herself or her doubts

00:55:38.460 given the unbelievably overwhelming response

00:55:42.800 to her revelations.

00:55:45.580 So, yeah, she's in an awful situation.

00:55:47.740 Okay, so we talked a little bit about the role

00:55:50.380 that your own temptations played

00:55:52.240 in setting you up for this propaganda,

00:55:54.880 although you were pretty much surrounded by it too,

00:55:57.060 which is, you know, that makes it also very difficult

00:55:59.660 to, let's say, escape from.

00:56:01.900 So, how old were you when you started working

00:56:04.600 after schools at your mom's organization?

00:56:06.860 And then how old were you when you started working

00:56:08.480 for her full-time?

00:56:10.500 I was 15 when I had started volunteering

00:56:13.360 and 17 when I started working full-time.

00:56:17.740 Okay, and you did that after you graduated from high school?

00:56:22.240 Yes, as soon as I graduated from high school,

00:56:24.080 I thought, no college for me.

00:56:25.860 Let's make myself a full-time activist.

00:56:28.520 And that's what I did, yeah.

00:56:30.200 Right, well, okay, that's, okay,

00:56:32.040 a couple of things there.

00:56:32.960 So, another thing that really used to bother me

00:56:35.120 at the universities,

00:56:36.020 and I started to discuss this

00:56:37.420 with some of my professional peers

00:56:39.860 just before it became impossible

00:56:42.920 for me to continue working at the university.

00:56:46.120 We have this idea that we tell young people all the time,

00:56:49.680 and I really do think this is an insidious invitation

00:56:52.660 to their prideful narcissism,

00:56:55.320 that the way, first of all,

00:56:56.720 that they should be changing the world,

00:56:59.520 you know, which is a lot to change

00:57:01.140 for people who haven't even been able

00:57:03.520 to live independently yet.

00:57:05.000 And also that if you do want to change the world,

00:57:07.760 which is what you should do

00:57:08.860 and what you could do,

00:57:10.320 the way you do that is by being an activist.

00:57:13.580 And activist has become professionalized

00:57:16.220 since the mid-60s.

00:57:17.600 And so an activist seems to me

00:57:19.440 to be someone who hypothetically advocates

00:57:22.480 for the oppressed,

00:57:23.440 which is already a moral danger.

00:57:25.140 It's because, like,

00:57:25.700 what the hell made you advocate for the oppressed?

00:57:28.000 Did they elect you?

00:57:29.480 Why are you the spokesman?

00:57:31.120 And what gives you that moral virtue?

00:57:32.880 So, you know, those are major questions.

00:57:35.000 But also, it comes with it, this temptation,

00:57:38.980 because if you're an activist,

00:57:40.220 you're almost always against something, right?

00:57:42.580 You're against industry,

00:57:43.680 you're against fossil fuels,

00:57:44.980 you're against the patriarchy,

00:57:46.280 you're against the racists.

00:57:47.600 Like, you're always identifying the problem

00:57:49.860 with the world as being something

00:57:52.620 that some other person

00:57:53.820 who isn't good like you is doing.

00:57:56.420 And then what we do is we present young people

00:57:58.720 in high school and in university

00:58:00.160 with the notion that,

00:58:01.380 well, if you really care about the world,

00:58:03.180 there's nothing more honorable

00:58:04.200 than you could do,

00:58:05.220 that you could possibly do,

00:58:06.560 than to become an activist.

00:58:08.020 And I really kind of think

00:58:09.240 that in some sense,

00:58:10.400 there is almost no lower calling

00:58:12.360 than activist.

00:58:14.560 Yes, I would agree with you.

00:58:16.700 And I think it's within our nature,

00:58:19.860 especially as young people,

00:58:20.760 to get obsessed with this idea

00:58:22.040 of radical transformation

00:58:23.000 and this lure of transformation.

00:58:25.800 And it wasn't until I met Dave Rubin,

00:58:28.580 who I'm sure you're familiar with,

00:58:29.640 and he put out this quote of,

00:58:31.620 you know, when I was on this side of things,

00:58:33.560 I was trying to control the world.

00:58:36.200 Now that I'm out of it,

00:58:37.180 I'm trying to understand the world.

00:58:38.880 And that's something that a lot of young people

00:58:41.300 are not obsessed with.

00:58:42.520 They don't want to understand the world

00:58:43.880 and their place within it.

00:58:45.960 They feel a sense of discomfort

00:58:47.860 and they want to attribute that sense of discomfort

00:58:50.640 to something else

00:58:51.460 and find what is a common enemy.

00:58:53.320 And it's really easy to find a common enemy

00:58:55.180 if you listen to anybody

00:58:56.900 who is obsessed with this woke ideology.

00:59:01.620 Okay, so maybe someone might level a criticism at you

00:59:05.800 and say, okay, look, you know,

00:59:07.600 for a long time you were a left-wing activist,

00:59:09.660 but now you're just a right-wing activist.

00:59:12.360 And so what, how would you defend yourself?

00:59:15.180 How do you defend yourself?

00:59:16.620 Because I'm sure that idea has occurred to you.

00:59:18.840 How do you investigate that charge?

00:59:20.980 And what do you think is different

00:59:22.600 about you working for Prager, you know,

00:59:25.400 which is a well-known, hypothetically right-wing,

00:59:28.520 you know, conspiratorial organization,

00:59:30.940 which seems in some sense activist on its surface.

00:59:33.960 How do you distinguish between what you're doing now

00:59:36.060 and what you were doing before?

00:59:37.940 And how do you know that you're not equally deluded,

00:59:40.440 but on the other side of the political spectrum?

00:59:45.340 Yeah, sure.

00:59:46.220 The way that I know I'm not as deluded as I was before

00:59:50.020 is that I did go through a period of delusion

00:59:52.120 when I recognized that I was not a leftist.

00:59:57.120 I immediately went, oh, well, I must be on the right then.

00:59:59.820 And I self-subscribed myself to the right-wing talking points

01:00:04.280 for quite some time.

01:00:05.940 And then I don't know what happened,

01:00:07.660 but a moment came to me where I went,

01:00:09.620 wait a second, I must have this propensity

01:00:12.000 to just latch myself onto things

01:00:14.640 because I've just done the same thing on the other side.

01:00:16.960 And I really had to look within myself and find

01:00:19.080 where do I truly disagree with my previous self?

01:00:24.480 And where do I agree with my previous self?

01:00:27.640 And there are plenty of back and forth

01:00:30.140 that we'll get into with the employees here at PragerU

01:00:33.280 where we disagree on many things.

01:00:35.280 And that was certainly not an experience that I had

01:00:38.020 when I was working for that left-leaning organization.

01:00:41.220 Now that could be that organization on its own,

01:00:43.840 making people subscribe to themselves all over nothing?

01:00:47.880 No, I don't think so.

01:00:48.860 Even the New York Times wrote an article this week

01:00:51.540 talking about how leftist organizations

01:00:53.980 all across the United States are collapsing into themselves

01:00:58.040 because they can't handle any internal dissent.

01:01:01.060 So I think that, okay, so one of the things you said

01:01:03.380 about Prager was that you get to say what you want

01:01:06.480 and that you can disagree.

01:01:08.040 And so, and you also implied that,

01:01:10.340 imagine that you're trying to make your way.

01:01:12.140 So first of all, you're on the left,

01:01:13.900 you have an oversimplified worldview

01:01:15.600 and then you find out some errors

01:01:17.160 and then bang, you vacillate over to the right

01:01:20.540 and an oversimplified view and you find some errors.

01:01:23.560 Like what you're doing is you're trying to develop

01:01:25.940 a much more differentiated

01:01:27.780 and detail-oriented political philosophy, right?

01:01:31.460 Because that's part of being mature and wise.

01:01:34.360 And so you're going to oscillate back and forth like that.

01:01:36.700 Now, you said,

01:01:37.960 you don't think you're merely being an activist now

01:01:41.720 because you're working for an organization

01:01:43.260 where disagreement is actually,

01:01:45.840 is it tolerated or encouraged?

01:01:48.120 And do the Prager people actually,

01:01:50.540 do they let you say what you need to say?

01:01:53.360 Do they encourage you to do that?

01:01:54.920 And how do you know that you're not just

01:01:57.200 pulling yourself into alignment with their views

01:02:00.180 for instrumental reasons?

01:02:01.760 I mean, people have asked me the same questions

01:02:03.360 about my work with The Daily Wire, let's say.

01:02:05.300 Yeah, I'd say it's both tolerated and encouraged

01:02:09.540 and we can be both at the same time.

01:02:12.100 And when I come and do my show,

01:02:14.140 I know that my show is my words

01:02:17.460 and I know that it's my thoughts

01:02:19.100 and I feel comfortable now,

01:02:21.560 whereas I didn't before saying,

01:02:23.120 you know what, I don't agree with maybe

01:02:25.000 that five-minute video that we put out this week

01:02:27.060 or I don't want to have a certain guest on the show

01:02:30.660 to discuss this sort of view of things.

01:02:33.560 And that is always encouraged and taken to heart

01:02:36.460 and they go, okay, great.

01:02:37.800 We don't ever want you to put your name

01:02:39.740 on something that is not your thinking

01:02:41.480 or your belief.

01:02:43.200 So I have much more freedom today than I had before.

01:02:48.320 When I was working for that left-leaning organization

01:02:51.020 and I was having these thoughts

01:02:52.760 that were dissident to the subscribed narrative,

01:02:56.060 I didn't feel comfortable even saying that

01:02:59.160 or even coming to a point of confrontation with anybody

01:03:02.000 because I knew that my job was contingent upon me

01:03:05.840 believing the list of things that I was meant to believe.

01:03:09.240 And now I get to come and say,

01:03:10.720 eh, I don't think I agree with you on that.

01:03:12.720 And it's actually taken in stride

01:03:14.120 and people want to talk about it.

01:03:16.280 Okay, okay.

01:03:17.140 So one of the ways you know

01:03:18.520 that you're not merely towing the party line now

01:03:21.060 is that you have a wider range of play

01:03:24.260 available to you without getting into trouble.

01:03:27.660 Okay, so how else do you know?

01:03:29.580 Here's a good question.

01:03:30.820 How have you learned to distinguish

01:03:33.480 between those words that are yours

01:03:36.800 and those words that merely make you

01:03:39.340 a mouthpiece of an ideology?

01:03:43.320 Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm not afraid to disagree.

01:03:48.220 I think if I was your typical right-leaning conservative person,

01:03:51.980 I would be talking about, I don't know, Christianity.

01:03:55.740 I don't happen to be a religious person.

01:03:57.860 I'm agnostic atheist, I guess is what you would say.

01:04:01.940 And I always just try to take in information

01:04:05.160 and really deduce down where people are right,

01:04:08.840 where people are wrong on both sides of things.

01:04:10.620 Like I'll take in both narratives,

01:04:12.740 both the left and the right,

01:04:13.840 and see, okay, where are they right on this?

01:04:17.060 And where are they wrong?

01:04:17.980 And why is that the case?

01:04:19.280 And on the right, where are they right on this?

01:04:20.700 And where are they wrong?

01:04:21.520 And that's the case.

01:04:22.300 And I take it upon myself to hopefully be even-handed

01:04:25.960 in criticism of both sides.

01:04:28.480 So there will be episodes that conservatives watch my show

01:04:31.420 and they go,

01:04:32.040 I absolutely do not agree with anything you said,

01:04:34.640 and here's why.

01:04:35.440 And there's episodes that I put out

01:04:37.160 where leftists disagree with what I have to say.

01:04:39.380 So I don't know that I have a particular process

01:04:42.400 for discerning whether or not I'm truly using

01:04:45.980 the words that come from my own mind,

01:04:48.600 but I can certainly tell that with reaction

01:04:51.520 to the content that I'm saying that,

01:04:53.260 well, I must be saying what's true to myself

01:04:56.820 because I'm pissing off two groups of people equally.

01:05:00.440 Okay, well, that seems to be a reasonable marker.

01:05:03.520 I mean, you said, you also implied something as we talked.

01:05:07.780 You said that when you were a mouthpiece

01:05:09.940 for the party line as a young person, 0.94

01:05:12.480 a lot of the time you were miserable and angry

01:05:14.680 and you had a chip on your shoulder

01:05:16.280 and you saw a lot of hostility in the world.

01:05:19.240 And so, and there isn't any evidence of that

01:05:22.700 in the way that you conduct yourself,

01:05:24.360 certainly not in this discussion

01:05:25.960 and not when I saw you on stage.

01:05:28.040 Like you don't seem to be carrying around

01:05:29.960 a lot of bitterness and resentment.

01:05:31.660 And so, you know, I have this byline on my email response.

01:05:36.680 Truth is the antidote to suffering.

01:05:40.320 And, you know, one of the things that I think is reasonable

01:05:43.780 is to note that if you are using your own words,

01:05:48.300 that gives you a sense of solidity,

01:05:51.780 internal solidity and confidence in what you're saying.

01:05:55.120 Like there's an element that's foundational there.

01:05:59.480 It doesn't have that sense of falseness

01:06:01.820 and narcissistic pride that go along

01:06:04.120 with claiming false moral virtue

01:06:06.380 for merely mouthing the dictates of a given ideology.

01:06:11.720 Sure. You know what?

01:06:12.600 That's a very great point.

01:06:13.480 And that's something that hadn't come to mind.

01:06:15.060 Yeah, I would say I'm far more sound in myself

01:06:18.380 and far more comfortable, I think,

01:06:20.520 with admitting that I was wrong

01:06:22.360 or saying I don't know when it comes to something.

01:06:24.560 Right, right, right.

01:06:25.060 Whereas before, you would never hear me say I don't know,

01:06:28.900 which is really scary to think about in retrospect.

01:06:31.600 And now I'm so comfortable looking at an issue

01:06:33.560 and going, you know what?

01:06:34.500 I don't know.

01:06:35.540 I don't know.

01:06:38.220 Yeah, well, there's two terrors there, right?

01:06:40.640 That there is a terror in not knowing

01:06:42.960 because it means you have to face your ignorance

01:06:44.920 and there's no shortage of that.

01:06:46.420 But there's also the totalitarian terror,

01:06:50.140 which is the opposite to that,

01:06:51.520 which is, well, if I had my act together,

01:06:53.780 I would have an answer for everything.

01:06:55.980 And that's a hell of a burden,

01:06:57.340 especially when you're 15.

01:06:58.900 Because, or 16, it's like,

01:07:00.580 well, what the hell do you know?

01:07:02.460 And it's hard to understand

01:07:04.500 that there's actually a relief

01:07:05.820 in being able to throw up your hands and say,

01:07:08.240 well, I don't know what the answer to that is

01:07:11.140 and I could go investigate.

01:07:13.160 But that it's also okay that I don't know

01:07:15.400 and that that opens up doors of exploration for me.

01:07:18.080 But, you know, this is something I learned

01:07:21.220 when I was probably about your age, you know,

01:07:23.200 and maybe you'd find it useful.

01:07:24.660 So I understood, it was in 1982, 83, something like that.

01:07:31.900 So I was about 21.

01:07:32.880 Yeah, just about exactly your age.

01:07:35.780 I like to win arguments, you know,

01:07:38.000 and I had got a lot of positive attention

01:07:40.060 for being smart and being verbal when I was a kid.

01:07:43.100 And so I had a fair bit of, let's say, intellectual pride,

01:07:47.080 which I doubt I've shaken completely.

01:07:49.800 And I like to be able to win arguments

01:07:53.460 and I could usually win an argument if I set out to do so.

01:07:56.360 And so I thought that if you won an argument,

01:07:59.740 you were right.

01:08:01.320 And certainly being married has disabused me

01:08:03.820 of that notion, by the way.

01:08:05.840 And then I realized that I was often saying things

01:08:11.580 just so that I would win arguments and be right.

01:08:15.480 And then I also noticed that when I was doing that,

01:08:19.360 I had a deep sense of falsehood and disquiet, right?

01:08:23.920 And I felt that when I was really paying attention,

01:08:26.160 I could see that doing that made me weak.

01:08:28.520 It made me weak and defensive and prideful

01:08:30.980 and narcissistic, all of those things.

01:08:32.880 And then insistent that I was right

01:08:34.900 and kind of totalitarian.

01:08:37.240 And so then I started to listen to what I was saying

01:08:40.420 and to feel it out.

01:08:41.880 Now, I was reading Carl Rogers at the same time

01:08:44.060 because I was starting to get interested

01:08:45.480 in the clinical world.

01:08:46.400 And he talked about the necessity of authenticity.

01:08:49.220 And he believed that your actions

01:08:50.900 and your words should be in alignment.

01:08:52.600 But not only that, that your physiological being

01:08:56.080 and your words should be in alignment.

01:08:58.360 He said, if you paid enough attention,

01:08:59.800 you could tell when you were,

01:09:01.140 let's say, not being true to your core self,

01:09:04.360 something like that.

01:09:05.400 And for me, that manifested itself

01:09:07.260 as a sense of weakness.

01:09:08.560 And so I kind of learned to feel my way along.

01:09:11.220 I always think about it as sort of trying to find,

01:09:15.140 imagine you're walking across a giant swamp

01:09:17.300 and there are stones under the surface,

01:09:19.760 but you can't see them in the murky water.

01:09:22.220 But you can feel them out.

01:09:24.100 So you can feel where you could step.

01:09:26.080 You could take the next step and find solid ground.

01:09:28.320 And you can do that with your words.

01:09:31.780 You know, you can feel.

01:09:33.580 And I think that's a test for the authenticity

01:09:37.780 and the truth of the words,

01:09:41.320 is that they're not prideful.

01:09:43.880 They're not designed to win.

01:09:45.760 They're designed to provide you

01:09:47.340 with a firm foundation under your feet.

01:09:49.860 And I think to some degree,

01:09:51.800 well, I'm wondering, I suppose, to some degree,

01:09:53.420 if that's how you know,

01:09:55.680 to what degree that's how you know,

01:09:58.200 for example, at PragerU,

01:09:59.540 when you should hold your ground

01:10:01.580 and say what you need to say.

01:10:05.400 Certainly.

01:10:06.160 And it's interesting because I think I've managed

01:10:08.760 to learn that,

01:10:10.720 at least in the political sense,

01:10:12.120 when it comes to the job that I do.

01:10:13.560 But in a personal sense,

01:10:14.480 I still struggle with exactly what you were talking about,

01:10:16.560 sort of feeling the stones

01:10:17.640 and recognizing things in yourself

01:10:19.820 before the words come out of your mouth.

01:10:21.920 So now politically,

01:10:23.540 because I've gone through all of this back and forth

01:10:25.980 and really having to contend with myself

01:10:28.140 and with other people,

01:10:29.280 now I'm fine and I'm calm

01:10:32.200 and I'll listen to a story

01:10:33.780 and I'll have this idea of,

01:10:35.400 well, let's wait.

01:10:36.080 Let's wait to find more information,

01:10:37.380 even though something immediately

01:10:38.740 wants to attack somebody else.

01:10:40.540 Let's wait and hear more.

01:10:41.960 Whereas sometimes in my personal life,

01:10:43.900 my turnaround on recognizing my defensiveness

01:10:46.840 is about a 24-hour period,

01:10:48.320 which my boyfriend is struggling with right now.

01:10:50.720 Right, right.

01:10:51.300 Well, that's interesting.

01:10:53.040 You know, like that's played itself out in our marriage.

01:10:56.560 And I would say,

01:10:58.300 I'll talk about my wife momentarily.

01:11:01.020 I would say that when we first got married,

01:11:03.200 the turnaround for her was about 24 hours.

01:11:05.740 And she's got that down to about 30 seconds now. 0.94

01:11:09.640 Yeah.

01:11:10.280 And that's, I hope to be just like her.

01:11:12.780 Well, you know, well, if you practice that,

01:11:14.760 you know, and if you practice,

01:11:16.480 and it is that kind of,

01:11:17.400 that's humility, by the way, really.

01:11:19.040 It's like, if you listen with humility,

01:11:23.420 you're always listening with the idea 1.00

01:11:26.480 that you're probably still pretty stupid, 1.00

01:11:29.400 and maybe this person will say something 1.00

01:11:31.740 that will make you slightly less stupid 1.00

01:11:34.440 if you listen hard enough. 1.00

01:11:36.420 Right.

01:11:36.900 And that's such a gift, right? 1.00

01:11:38.320 Because if you're stupid, 1.00

01:11:40.340 you're going to run into a wall 1.00

01:11:41.880 because of it at some point.

01:11:43.260 And so if someone who's talking to you 1.00

01:11:45.260 can tell you where you're stupid, 1.00

01:11:47.660 well, what a deal for you. 1.00

01:11:49.240 And the thing that's so interesting about that, too,

01:11:51.740 is that you're way more likely to be told 1.00

01:11:54.220 where you're stupid by someone 1.00

01:11:55.440 who doesn't agree with you. 1.00

01:11:56.700 Yes, 100%.

01:12:00.260 It's interesting that when I meet people

01:12:02.980 like protesters who have this very shallow depiction

01:12:05.980 of myself and are telling me 0.99

01:12:07.780 that I'm stupid or racist or all these things, 0.99

01:12:10.380 for some reason, 0.98

01:12:11.480 I treat this person who is so far removed from my life

01:12:14.380 with far more compassion

01:12:15.820 than if somebody who I care about

01:12:17.700 is coming forward and saying, 1.00

01:12:19.040 hey, you did this stupid thing. 1.00

01:12:21.080 And I don't know if it's because 1.00

01:12:22.200 the relationship that I have with the person

01:12:24.320 that is deep and caring

01:12:26.300 has a little bit more sting

01:12:28.000 when criticism is given.

01:12:29.940 And that's why I immediately jumped to defense,

01:12:33.180 whereas with this person,

01:12:34.360 it doesn't truly matter all that much

01:12:36.620 what somebody on a college campus thinks.

01:12:38.920 So it's something that I continue to struggle with.

01:12:40.980 But I've turned a two-week period of turnaround

01:12:43.500 into a 24-hour one.

01:12:45.880 Okay, well, that's pretty good.

01:12:47.740 Well, no, it should.

01:12:50.080 If you practice that diligently,

01:12:51.720 you can get the turnaround really quick.

01:12:53.260 You know, and that's really,

01:12:55.160 we were talking about the religious front.

01:12:56.760 You know, that's really confession and repentance,

01:12:59.840 by the way.

01:13:01.160 That's a compressed confession.

01:13:02.340 Well, because the confession is,

01:13:04.760 so first of all,

01:13:05.580 you can think about it as recognition of sin.

01:13:08.180 Okay, so what does sin mean?

01:13:09.780 Technically, it means to miss the mark.

01:13:11.980 There's two derivations.

01:13:13.340 There's hamartia from the Greek,

01:13:15.400 which was an archery term.

01:13:17.160 So to sin means to miss the mark.

01:13:18.760 And there's one from the Hebrew,

01:13:20.160 which was chet, if I remember correctly.

01:13:21.980 And it also meant to miss the target.

01:13:24.320 So imagine that the religious transformation 0.74

01:13:26.540 in its microstructure is something like

01:13:29.140 admission of sin,

01:13:30.680 which is, well, I missed the target.

01:13:32.860 And then there's a confessional element to it,

01:13:35.180 which is, well, here's how I missed the target.

01:13:38.260 You know, I wasn't aiming at the right target.

01:13:40.180 I wasn't careful enough, et cetera.

01:13:42.320 And then there's the repentance,

01:13:44.940 which is, well, I'd rather not do that again.

01:13:47.380 And then the religious vision,

01:13:49.300 at least on the Christian side,

01:13:50.540 and it's not unique to Christianity,

01:13:51.940 is that if you go through that process

01:13:53.860 of recognition of sin and confession and repentance,

01:13:58.940 then there's redemption.

01:14:01.340 And that is, I really think that's the cycle of growth, right?

01:14:04.700 I don't think you ever learn anything important

01:14:06.320 without going through those four things.

01:14:08.220 That's sort of been routinized

01:14:10.580 and made mythological in the religious context.

01:14:15.300 But it's a useful thing to know

01:14:16.760 because that's a place where the learning

01:14:19.360 that you're undertaking

01:14:21.580 and your explicit description of the learning

01:14:24.060 and that religious system of ideation,

01:14:26.660 that's a place where they dovetail.

01:14:29.220 Yeah, and I can imagine pride is the one thing

01:14:31.400 that is standing as a barrier

01:14:33.440 to all of those steps.

01:14:36.180 Yeah.

01:14:36.420 Yeah, well, good.

01:14:37.200 Well, that's a very astute observation

01:14:38.680 because the precondition for that cycle

01:14:41.260 of transformation is humility.

01:14:43.580 And, you know, my wife prays this Jesus prayer

01:14:46.780 and I'm going to mangle it

01:14:47.940 because I don't know it that well,

01:14:49.200 but it's something like,

01:14:50.040 Jesus Christ, have mercy on my soul, a sinner.

01:14:53.680 And the Orthodox Christians,

01:14:56.480 some of them pray that continually.

01:14:58.380 And you might say, well, what exactly are they doing?

01:15:00.480 And the answer is, well, they're trying to remind themselves 1.00

01:15:02.860 that they're stupid and fallible. 1.00

01:15:04.900 And you might say, well, that sucks 1.00

01:15:06.140 because who wants to be reminded constantly 1.00

01:15:08.080 that they're stupid and fallible? 1.00

01:15:09.380 But if that makes you more attentive 1.00

01:15:13.380 and more able to go through this cycle of transformation,

01:15:17.440 because now you're attending to the places

01:15:19.480 where you might be in error,

01:15:21.260 then it's a facilitator of growth.

01:15:24.400 And it is a facilitator of growth

01:15:26.420 to understand that there's a lot more possibility

01:15:30.160 in what you don't know

01:15:31.260 than there is power in what you do know.

01:15:35.260 Yeah.

01:15:35.400 I'm curious, did you ever struggle

01:15:37.700 with pride getting in the way

01:15:39.320 by virtue of having the job that you have?

01:15:41.300 Because so many people are looking to you

01:15:42.900 and taking in your words as very much right

01:15:45.940 in this very dedicated fashion.

01:15:49.240 Does that ever come as a barrier

01:15:50.900 in your personal life with your own arguments?

01:15:53.360 Well, I think that I was fortunate,

01:15:57.040 you know, in some sense,

01:15:58.460 because I didn't become well-known

01:16:01.220 until I was pretty old.

01:16:02.440 Like, I was in my mid-50s, you know?

01:16:04.220 And I'd been a professor at Harvard

01:16:07.220 and at the University of Toronto for 20 years.

01:16:09.340 And so I had a pretty good reputation

01:16:11.260 among my students.

01:16:12.700 And I had some practice at what that was like.

01:16:15.680 And then I developed a bit of a media following

01:16:18.020 in Ontario.

01:16:18.720 And I got a bit of experience

01:16:20.420 on the broader social landscape

01:16:22.960 before things burst, you know,

01:16:25.500 things burst forward around me.

01:16:27.780 Now, so I was older when this all happened.

01:16:31.700 And that was helpful.

01:16:32.600 But I also, as I indicated in our conversation,

01:16:35.780 I started to sort a lot of this out

01:16:37.360 when I was about your age.

01:16:38.640 And I realized that I had a lot of intellectual pride.

01:16:41.600 You know, and that's the problem with being smart,

01:16:43.520 is that when you're smart,

01:16:46.600 because you get a lot of positive attention for it,

01:16:49.520 it's really easy to overvalue it,

01:16:51.480 to confuse intelligence with virtue.

01:16:54.140 And to confuse the fact that you're intelligent,

01:16:56.520 let's say, with the idea that you're valuable and good.

01:16:59.580 And that's dangerous,

01:17:01.640 because it means that people who aren't as intelligent

01:17:03.700 aren't as valuable and good.

01:17:05.120 And that's not a very good conclusion to draw.

01:17:07.860 But it also draws you in, in a prideful way.

01:17:10.400 And like I said, I like to win arguments.

01:17:12.000 And I always thought, well, if I won the argument,

01:17:14.080 I was smarter and better.

01:17:15.900 And I realized around your age

01:17:17.740 that not only was that not true,

01:17:20.760 like seriously not true,

01:17:22.320 because just because someone can't formulate an argument

01:17:24.840 doesn't mean they don't have a point.

01:17:26.460 This is something you definitely learn when you're married.

01:17:29.900 You know, because your partner might be upset with you

01:17:31.600 and unable to articulate it.

01:17:33.620 And you might be able to mount a pretty damn good defense,

01:17:35.920 but they still might be right.

01:17:37.500 And you should listen.

01:17:39.040 So because maybe they'll stop you from falling into a pit.

01:17:42.240 But I also started to understand too,

01:17:44.060 that in that intellectual pride,

01:17:46.340 well, the figure of Lucifer and Satan,

01:17:48.740 Lucifer in particular,

01:17:49.860 so he's a variant of the idea of what's satanic and evil.

01:17:53.340 Lucifer is the morning star

01:17:54.740 and the spirit of enlightenment.

01:17:56.520 And Milton characterized Lucifer

01:17:58.500 as God's highest angel gone most spectacularly wrong.

01:18:03.060 And Lucifer is like Scar in The Lion King.

01:18:05.360 You know, Scar's smarter than Mustafa.

01:18:07.660 But he's alienated and isolated and bitter.

01:18:10.860 And part of that's intellectual pride,

01:18:12.520 a huge part of it.

01:18:14.040 And there's a tremendous intellectual pride

01:18:17.380 in the totalitarian impulse.

01:18:19.520 And so I started to understand that

01:18:21.140 to the degree that I was characterized by intellectual pride

01:18:26.820 and capitalizing on, you know,

01:18:29.860 a talent that was given to me in some sense by God,

01:18:33.480 let's say, you know, by the transcendent,

01:18:35.300 because I'm not responsible for my own intelligence,

01:18:38.780 whatever it might be, right?

01:18:40.360 That's just who I am.

01:18:41.780 I didn't do that.

01:18:42.840 It's just,

01:18:43.800 I had no more to do with that in some sense

01:18:45.980 than how tall I am.

01:18:47.800 It's just how it is.

01:18:49.520 And then I started to understand

01:18:51.160 that being prideful in that manner

01:18:52.800 was participating in the same process

01:18:55.640 that led to totalitarian atrocity.

01:18:57.780 And then that just scared the hell out of me.

01:18:59.440 I hope.

01:19:00.500 You know, I hope.

01:19:01.360 I hope it scared me better.

01:19:03.500 Well, I hope.

01:19:04.220 Well, you do hope.

01:19:04.920 Well, you know,

01:19:05.780 my house for years was covered with Soviet paintings,

01:19:10.140 these realist paintings.

01:19:12.000 And a lot of them featured Lenin and Marx and Trotsky,

01:19:18.700 a lot of the real intellectual acolytes

01:19:20.880 of the communist movement.

01:19:22.200 And they were huge paintings.

01:19:23.600 Some of them were nine by 12.

01:19:24.940 And literally, my house was covered with them.

01:19:26.720 And, you know,

01:19:27.720 much to the chagrin of my wife,

01:19:29.360 to some degree,

01:19:30.100 although she played along.

01:19:32.220 But part of that was to remember,

01:19:35.380 you know,

01:19:36.740 to remember how attractive

01:19:38.780 these totalizing ideologies can be,

01:19:42.240 how much of a temptation they are to pride, 0.61

01:19:45.240 especially allied with something like compassion,

01:19:47.560 and how unbelievably brutal and terrible that is.

01:19:51.340 And so I try to have that

01:19:52.700 in the back of my mind all the time.

01:19:54.120 I want to step forward carefully.

01:19:55.920 I don't want to fall prey

01:19:58.500 to that intellectual or moral pride.

01:20:00.680 And like I said,

01:20:01.920 I'm old enough,

01:20:02.540 so I think I can handle it.

01:20:03.880 And then I would also say,

01:20:05.060 you know,

01:20:05.380 I have a lot of people around me

01:20:06.700 who keep me in check.

01:20:10.480 I have good friends,

01:20:12.160 many of whom have been,

01:20:14.400 have had incredibly successful careers,

01:20:16.740 extremely intelligent people,

01:20:18.420 and capable and blunt.

01:20:20.600 And if I deviate,

01:20:22.660 some of them on the left

01:20:23.560 and some of them on the right,

01:20:24.560 and if I deviate,

01:20:25.540 they phone me and say,

01:20:27.140 you know,

01:20:27.820 I don't think you handled that very well.

01:20:29.520 You should get your act together.

01:20:30.720 And then we fight about it.

01:20:31.660 I did a video with Greg Hurwitz

01:20:33.280 and Jonathan Paggio

01:20:34.180 about the tweets that got me banned,

01:20:36.760 you know,

01:20:37.040 where we tried to delve into

01:20:39.080 the utility and morality of my behavior.

01:20:44.600 Twitter makes you impulsive,

01:20:46.000 and, you know,

01:20:46.500 I can be impulsive on Twitter.

01:20:47.940 And so,

01:20:49.440 and I made some nasty comments on Twitter.

01:20:52.460 And I spent a lot of time

01:20:55.340 talking to my friends and my family about,

01:20:58.960 you know,

01:21:00.020 was that straight and right?

01:21:01.940 Or was it prideful and impulsive?

01:21:05.320 And,

01:21:05.920 well,

01:21:07.280 so I have lots of people around me who help.

01:21:09.680 And then I'm also,

01:21:10.520 I'm hoping I'm terrified enough

01:21:11.880 of where intellectual pride goes to,

01:21:14.100 you know,

01:21:15.960 to keep my ego in check.

01:21:18.920 Sure.

01:21:19.400 And there's,

01:21:19.780 there's also this element of being a person

01:21:22.200 who thinks you're always trying to do the right thing.

01:21:24.980 And trying to do the right thing

01:21:26.280 is different from doing the right thing.

01:21:27.640 And I've,

01:21:28.340 I've learned that very recently.

01:21:29.540 And as far as having people,

01:21:31.480 having people who keep you in check,

01:21:33.480 it's been,

01:21:34.000 it's been majorly important for me as well.

01:21:36.340 I mean,

01:21:36.740 I've been with a man for a year

01:21:38.800 who now,

01:21:39.420 whenever I do something that is wrong

01:21:41.200 or could even be misconstrued is wrong.

01:21:42.760 He goes,

01:21:43.120 Hey,

01:21:43.380 you know,

01:21:43.640 I saw that you did this thing

01:21:44.720 and having so much of your life being filmed,

01:21:47.820 which I'm sure you're accustomed to.

01:21:49.240 It's a really,

01:21:50.220 it's really something that you have to keep in mind

01:21:52.380 because one 30 second moment you've had,

01:21:55.780 which would normally be seen by nobody

01:21:57.600 can be seen by millions.

01:21:59.280 And you will be held to that belief

01:22:01.500 or that statement

01:22:02.500 for the rest of your life,

01:22:04.060 whether or not that's a rightful thing to do or not

01:22:06.160 with,

01:22:07.080 with the cancel culture

01:22:07.920 that we're dealing with right now.

01:22:09.080 So to have somebody there to say,

01:22:11.440 you could have said it this way,

01:22:13.200 or I know what you meant to say,

01:22:15.140 but here's how it could have been done better

01:22:17.100 is just such an important thing to have for everybody.

01:22:21.520 Yeah.

01:22:22.040 Yeah.

01:22:22.300 Well,

01:22:22.680 you know,

01:22:22.940 there's advantages to that.

01:22:24.400 I mean,

01:22:24.720 I've been required,

01:22:27.160 let's say,

01:22:27.600 to temper my public behavior

01:22:29.440 more in a more civilized manner

01:22:32.840 since I've been in the situation

01:22:35.220 that you described,

01:22:36.300 which is,

01:22:36.860 so there's two elements to that.

01:22:38.100 First of all,

01:22:39.080 if I'm ever rude to anyone who knows me,

01:22:42.000 who knows of me,

01:22:43.660 first of all,

01:22:44.320 they will never forget that

01:22:45.640 for the rest of their life

01:22:46.540 and they will tell everyone they know.

01:22:49.740 And you don't need that to happen

01:22:51.100 very many times

01:22:51.880 before your reputation

01:22:53.000 deservedly takes a major hit.

01:22:55.820 So I do my best to be hyper alert

01:22:59.020 when I'm in public

01:22:59.980 in places that I might be irritated normally,

01:23:02.360 like airports and so forth,

01:23:04.080 because I really don't like airports.

01:23:05.760 And not that anybody particularly does.

01:23:09.160 But it is kind of useful

01:23:11.560 to be called to be on your best behavior

01:23:14.320 all the time like that.

01:23:15.680 But it is definitely useful

01:23:16.980 to have someone around

01:23:17.880 who is watching you

01:23:19.600 and helping you,

01:23:20.500 you know,

01:23:21.220 modify your behavior

01:23:22.380 so that you aren't being impulsive

01:23:24.500 and prideful

01:23:25.700 any more than is absolutely necessary.

01:23:27.880 Yeah,

01:23:28.120 you're going to be in a rough situation,

01:23:29.640 because you're really young

01:23:30.780 and you do have to,

01:23:33.600 assuming that your career trajectory

01:23:35.600 stays upward,

01:23:36.560 which seems,

01:23:37.080 you know,

01:23:37.380 reasonably probable

01:23:38.300 barring catastrophe,

01:23:39.740 you're really going to have to

01:23:41.080 watch yourself constantly.

01:23:43.200 And so that could be good,

01:23:44.980 but it's not nothing

01:23:46.300 to have to do that.

01:23:48.520 Yeah,

01:23:48.760 I think the moments

01:23:49.580 where I'll find the most pressure in it

01:23:51.260 is probably when we're doing live shows,

01:23:52.940 because you never know

01:23:53.700 what's going to come out of your mouth

01:23:54.960 for the most part

01:23:55.660 when you're live.

01:23:56.660 And I have been known

01:23:58.360 to be a very fast-paced person,

01:24:00.380 and that is helpful

01:24:01.560 and hurtful in so many ways.

01:24:03.120 But as far as meeting people,

01:24:04.880 you spoke to something interesting.

01:24:06.620 There are times

01:24:07.460 where you meet people

01:24:08.440 in your most uncomfortable moments in life.

01:24:11.180 And there have been moments

01:24:13.220 where, you know,

01:24:13.980 I've been at the hospital

01:24:14.740 seeing a loved one

01:24:15.660 and someone walks in

01:24:16.800 and wants to say hi

01:24:18.460 or a nurse or something like that. 0.99

01:24:20.060 And it's just so interesting

01:24:21.160 to have to take that in

01:24:22.760 and go,

01:24:23.300 well, this is a moment.

01:24:24.000 And you have to make this moment

01:24:25.320 for this person

01:24:26.060 despite what's going on

01:24:28.480 in your personal life.

01:24:29.760 And there's something so powerful

01:24:30.920 about having to do that as a person,

01:24:32.620 not to, you know,

01:24:34.120 step out of the realm of humility,

01:24:36.160 but it's very meditative

01:24:38.120 to take on an uncomfortable moment

01:24:40.560 and make it comfortable

01:24:41.660 for somebody else.

01:24:42.940 It's a very powerful thing

01:24:43.820 to be able to do

01:24:44.480 and a skill

01:24:45.380 that I hopefully have learned.

01:24:47.800 Yeah, right.

01:24:48.420 Well, you know,

01:24:48.920 it would be a good skill

01:24:49.760 for everyone to learn,

01:24:50.760 you know,

01:24:51.020 because the idea there

01:24:53.540 is something like,

01:24:54.480 you are required

01:24:56.240 to be good

01:24:57.760 regardless of whatever tragedy

01:25:00.360 happens to be unfolding

01:25:01.640 in your life at the moment.

01:25:03.060 And I think that's right.

01:25:04.340 I mean,

01:25:05.100 you know,

01:25:05.500 part of the reason

01:25:06.100 that people are inclined

01:25:07.020 not to be good

01:25:07.880 so they become resentful

01:25:09.020 and bitter

01:25:09.380 is because terrible things

01:25:10.620 have happened to them.

01:25:11.820 And that's genuinely the case.

01:25:13.680 Now, you know,

01:25:14.320 you can blow out of proportion

01:25:16.760 something

01:25:17.280 and find a reason for resentment,

01:25:18.920 but lots of times

01:25:19.640 people have been really hurt.

01:25:20.840 And you might say,

01:25:22.160 well, don't I have a reason

01:25:23.220 to be resentful and bitter?

01:25:24.600 And the answer is,

01:25:25.580 bloody well, right,

01:25:26.440 you have a reason

01:25:27.080 to be resentful and bitter.

01:25:28.380 And it might be a good reason,

01:25:30.280 but two things.

01:25:31.840 First of all,

01:25:33.200 that doesn't mean

01:25:34.040 that you get to stop

01:25:34.980 trying to be good.

01:25:36.760 And second,

01:25:37.580 it also doesn't mean

01:25:38.500 that everybody's had a rough time

01:25:40.200 is now no longer good.

01:25:41.640 Now, you know,

01:25:42.880 in my life,

01:25:43.520 I've met lots of people

01:25:44.520 because I was a clinician

01:25:45.520 and a professor.

01:25:46.600 Well, now, you know,

01:25:47.980 I've met literally

01:25:49.000 hundreds of thousands of people.

01:25:50.980 But I learned

01:25:52.660 at least 25 years ago

01:25:56.400 that it's often

01:25:59.600 the best people

01:26:00.480 who've been through

01:26:01.400 the worst things.

01:26:02.520 Now, if you go through

01:26:03.360 something terrible,

01:26:04.000 it can really embitter you

01:26:05.120 and take you out

01:26:06.140 and make you malevolent. 0.98

01:26:07.660 And you have your reasons.

01:26:09.120 But I've met people

01:26:10.100 who had lives so brutal

01:26:11.940 that they're almost

01:26:12.800 beyond imagining

01:26:13.680 who were so deep and good

01:26:15.820 that it was literally

01:26:16.600 a miracle to meet them.

01:26:18.180 And I met a lot of people

01:26:19.280 like that.

01:26:19.720 I had people in my clinical practice

01:26:21.300 who were just,

01:26:22.620 Jesus, I had this one woman. 1.00

01:26:24.000 She didn't have anything

01:26:25.760 going for her.

01:26:27.280 Like, her family 0.97

01:26:28.200 was utterly insane. 0.99

01:26:29.560 Her mother was a delusional, 1.00

01:26:31.000 alcoholic, schizophrenic 1.00

01:26:32.300 whose boyfriend

01:26:33.500 was paranoid

01:26:34.440 and used to torture her 0.91

01:26:35.900 to death

01:26:36.260 about being possessed,

01:26:38.260 literally possessed.

01:26:39.400 She was very intellectually impaired.

01:26:42.160 She was overweight. 0.99

01:26:43.920 She was unattractive. 1.00

01:26:45.040 She dressed like a street person. 0.99

01:26:47.020 She just,

01:26:48.140 Jesus,

01:26:48.920 she had a rough life,

01:26:49.960 man,

01:26:50.180 in every way.

01:26:50.880 She'd been in a mental hospital,

01:26:52.800 inpatient ward

01:26:53.680 for, like, years.

01:26:55.340 And she came to me

01:26:56.520 hypothetically

01:26:58.400 because she was afraid

01:27:00.200 of other people.

01:27:01.840 She used to kind of

01:27:02.540 walk up to people like this.

01:27:03.940 You know,

01:27:04.140 she was so shy

01:27:04.900 she couldn't even look at people.

01:27:06.560 And it turned out

01:27:07.340 that the real reason

01:27:08.160 she came,

01:27:08.700 this outpatient clinic

01:27:09.740 that I was working at

01:27:10.860 at a place called

01:27:11.420 the Douglas Hospital,

01:27:12.180 she'd been in an inpatient ward

01:27:13.880 and, man,

01:27:15.260 the people in those

01:27:15.960 inpatient wards,

01:27:16.820 they were so devastated.

01:27:17.980 They'd been there

01:27:18.500 for, like, 30 years.

01:27:19.620 These were people

01:27:20.100 who hadn't been let back

01:27:21.120 on the streets

01:27:21.660 during deinstitutionalization.

01:27:23.380 And so it was like

01:27:23.920 Dante's Inferno

01:27:24.900 walking through those wards,

01:27:26.660 man.

01:27:27.460 And one flew over

01:27:29.380 the cuckoo's nest

01:27:30.060 had nothing on that place,

01:27:31.260 I tell you.

01:27:32.240 And she had been in that ward

01:27:33.820 and she had a dog

01:27:35.180 that she took care of

01:27:36.160 and she had this idea

01:27:37.460 that she could take her dog

01:27:38.720 out for a walk

01:27:39.360 and that maybe she could

01:27:40.120 take some of those

01:27:40.760 inpatients out for a walk.

01:27:42.740 And that's why

01:27:43.500 she'd come to see me.

01:27:44.640 So you had this woman

01:27:45.520 whose life was,

01:27:47.120 Jesus, man,

01:27:48.000 she was facing

01:27:50.120 an impenetrable wall

01:27:51.420 everywhere she looked

01:27:52.720 and yet her attitude was,

01:27:54.760 you know,

01:27:55.000 I've met some people

01:27:55.680 who had it worse than me

01:27:56.660 and maybe there's something

01:27:57.360 I could do to help.

01:27:58.620 It was stunning.

01:27:59.400 Yep.

01:28:00.840 And so...

01:28:01.580 Those type of people

01:28:02.300 that you meet

01:28:02.720 are so powerful.

01:28:04.420 Yeah, well, you know,

01:28:05.760 the fact that you're suffering

01:28:07.480 doesn't justify

01:28:08.400 your immorality.

01:28:10.140 And that's...

01:28:10.800 Yeah.

01:28:11.680 You're called upon

01:28:12.780 to act nobly

01:28:14.200 regardless of your catastrophe.

01:28:16.660 And...

01:28:16.780 And not only is that

01:28:17.920 better for the world.

01:28:18.660 That's a good thing to learn.

01:28:18.740 Better for the world.

01:28:19.800 Yeah, it's going to be better

01:28:20.840 for the world around you

01:28:22.000 and it's going to be better

01:28:22.920 for you.

01:28:23.640 I mean, I don't know

01:28:24.380 that this has been studied

01:28:25.280 or anything,

01:28:25.920 but feeling hatred

01:28:27.160 and being super reactive

01:28:29.580 or sensitive to things

01:28:30.900 that have gone wrong

01:28:31.580 in your life,

01:28:32.100 I truly believe,

01:28:33.060 eats away at your body

01:28:34.560 and mind as a person.

01:28:36.020 And all the people

01:28:37.200 that I've met

01:28:37.780 who have been

01:28:38.260 the most powerful in my life

01:28:39.600 have had some of the worst

01:28:41.060 things happen to them

01:28:42.000 and they approach people

01:28:43.240 with a smile

01:28:43.940 and they are calm

01:28:44.960 and they are collected

01:28:45.800 in some of the worst moments

01:28:47.500 you could possibly imagine.

01:28:49.100 And to be able to master

01:28:49.940 that as a person

01:28:50.620 I think is probably

01:28:51.360 one of the most powerful journeys

01:28:53.300 that I will go on

01:28:54.660 or anybody will go on

01:28:55.660 in their life.

01:28:56.640 Well, it has been studied,

01:28:58.100 I would say,

01:28:58.660 to some degree.

01:29:00.320 You know,

01:29:00.540 it depends on how you...

01:29:01.840 It depends on

01:29:02.660 how broadly

01:29:03.820 in some sense...

01:29:05.860 It depends on how far

01:29:07.240 you can see

01:29:07.800 the research extending.

01:29:09.040 So here's an example.

01:29:11.360 There is a trait,

01:29:13.580 neuroticism,

01:29:14.340 which is sensitivity

01:29:15.060 to negative emotion.

01:29:17.300 And that's anxiety

01:29:18.940 and pain, let's say.

01:29:20.320 And people differ

01:29:21.180 in their sensitivity

01:29:21.860 to those at baseline.

01:29:23.960 One of the things

01:29:25.040 that makes people

01:29:26.080 more neurotic,

01:29:27.460 so experience negative emotion,

01:29:28.880 is self-consciousness.

01:29:31.120 And so really

01:29:31.620 what that means is,

01:29:33.300 literally what it means

01:29:34.620 is the more you think

01:29:35.760 about yourself, 1.00

01:29:37.400 the more miserable you are. 0.99

01:29:40.180 And so that's worth knowing. 0.98

01:29:41.620 So if you're always wondering

01:29:42.780 how the world's treating you,

01:29:44.460 and if you're a victim,

01:29:45.960 and if you're always concerned

01:29:47.360 about your emotional state, 0.98

01:29:48.960 you will be miserable. 0.88

01:29:50.400 Because those concerns

01:29:52.040 are the same thing

01:29:53.100 as being miserable.

01:29:54.900 And so there's that bit

01:29:56.060 of research

01:29:56.620 that bears on this issue.

01:29:57.820 But it's also the case

01:29:59.500 that we know

01:30:00.080 that if you take

01:30:01.000 a stance in life

01:30:03.380 that's predicated

01:30:05.300 on the idea

01:30:06.000 that what you're doing

01:30:07.080 is voluntarily

01:30:07.960 confronting a challenge,

01:30:10.480 then that's completely different

01:30:12.080 psychophysiologically,

01:30:14.140 neurologically,

01:30:15.620 pharmacologically.

01:30:16.460 That's completely different

01:30:17.460 from having a stress

01:30:18.600 thrust upon you.

01:30:20.420 So if you're

01:30:20.940 an active contender,

01:30:22.680 you're actually

01:30:23.220 a different

01:30:24.040 psychophysiological organism

01:30:26.820 than you are

01:30:28.140 if you're a passive recipient,

01:30:29.840 even if it's

01:30:30.440 the same level

01:30:31.340 of challenge.

01:30:33.160 You know,

01:30:33.340 and that'd be the difference

01:30:34.000 between stress and challenge.

01:30:35.360 That's clearly documented

01:30:36.760 all the way

01:30:37.320 to the cellular level.

01:30:39.720 Ah, okay.

01:30:40.320 So sitting in the ice bath

01:30:41.900 willingly is better

01:30:42.940 than having ice water

01:30:44.140 thrown at your face.

01:30:45.640 That's what I'm hearing.

01:30:47.020 Well, in fact,

01:30:48.660 they're not only different,

01:30:49.800 they're opposites.

01:30:49.940 They're opposites.

01:30:51.480 So, and the ice bath idea

01:30:53.020 is an interesting one.

01:30:54.100 I mean, Wim Hof,

01:30:55.160 who's the world's master

01:30:56.420 at ice baths,

01:30:57.800 I mean, he's been

01:30:58.400 plunging himself

01:30:59.180 into cold water

01:30:59.980 for decades

01:31:00.580 and he is so resistant

01:31:02.180 to cold

01:31:02.860 and so in control

01:31:04.520 of his autonomic

01:31:05.260 nervous system

01:31:05.840 that it's kind of miracle.

01:31:07.180 And so, you know,

01:31:07.980 we actually don't know

01:31:08.900 the limit here.

01:31:09.880 Like, so here,

01:31:11.140 I'll tell you something

01:31:11.780 on the religious front

01:31:12.760 that's worth thinking about too

01:31:14.020 in relationship

01:31:14.780 to this discussion.

01:31:17.160 You know, there's an idea

01:31:19.640 that's deep in Western culture

01:31:22.160 insofar as Western culture

01:31:23.720 is Christian

01:31:24.300 is that the world

01:31:27.680 is founded on a sacrifice, right?

01:31:30.980 And that's what

01:31:31.860 the crucifix represents.

01:31:33.140 And European towns

01:31:34.580 were built around a church

01:31:36.560 and the church was built

01:31:37.820 around an altar

01:31:39.400 and the altar was built

01:31:40.620 around the idea of sacrifice.

01:31:42.980 So the sacrifice,

01:31:44.940 the proper sacrifice

01:31:45.920 is at the center

01:31:46.980 of the community.

01:31:48.200 That's what that idea means.

01:31:49.880 Now, you might ask,

01:31:50.880 well, what's the proper sacrifice?

01:31:52.660 And the answer is

01:31:53.580 something like

01:31:54.280 the voluntary willingness

01:31:56.260 to bear your cross.

01:31:58.500 And then you might say,

01:31:59.560 well, what is your cross?

01:32:01.300 And the answer to that is,

01:32:02.320 well, that's the catastrophe

01:32:03.200 of your life, right?

01:32:05.120 That's the fact

01:32:06.360 you'll be betrayed, 0.80

01:32:07.340 the fact that you're going to die, 0.63

01:32:08.780 the fact that you're going

01:32:09.500 to be in pain,

01:32:10.180 the fact that your loved ones

01:32:11.720 will see you suffer,

01:32:12.980 the fact that the mob

01:32:13.940 will come after you,

01:32:14.920 the fact that criminals

01:32:16.140 might be preferred to you,

01:32:17.780 et cetera.

01:32:18.300 It's all the potential

01:32:19.220 catastrophes of your life.

01:32:21.340 And then the sacrifice

01:32:22.640 is the idea that you

01:32:24.240 have to let your,

01:32:27.480 what would you say?

01:32:28.640 You have to let your

01:32:29.420 narrow ego go enough

01:32:31.380 so that you pick

01:32:32.740 all that up voluntarily.

01:32:34.700 All of that.

01:32:35.840 And then that transforms it.

01:32:37.660 And I think

01:32:38.180 that's literally true.

01:32:40.140 I think that's what all this,

01:32:41.360 that's what all the

01:32:42.020 psychological evidence points to,

01:32:43.500 is that if you adopt

01:32:44.500 a stance

01:32:45.840 of voluntary challenge,

01:32:47.380 even in relationship

01:32:48.620 to tragedy and malevolence,

01:32:50.600 that that's the pathway

01:32:51.740 to transcendence,

01:32:53.640 like truly.

01:32:54.340 Yeah, it's interesting.

01:32:55.420 It's interesting

01:32:55.880 that you say that

01:32:56.660 because my mother, 0.84

01:32:58.280 she struggles

01:32:59.040 with borderline

01:32:59.940 personality disorder.

01:33:01.460 And in a lot of the therapy

01:33:03.400 that she's underwent,

01:33:04.740 they talk about

01:33:05.660 this deep attachment

01:33:06.780 to traumatic events

01:33:08.160 and not only

01:33:08.800 the traumatic events

01:33:09.740 of your own life,

01:33:10.940 but of other people's lives.

01:33:12.180 And her attachment

01:33:13.980 to that

01:33:14.560 is often

01:33:16.240 from the perspective

01:33:17.200 of being somebody

01:33:18.100 outside of the traumatic event

01:33:19.740 and bearing no responsibility

01:33:21.600 or accountability.

01:33:22.800 Now, whether that's

01:33:23.900 the illness to blame

01:33:25.220 or your own personal

01:33:27.120 ability to contend

01:33:28.920 with yourself,

01:33:29.600 it truly does change

01:33:31.300 your entire outlook

01:33:32.320 on life.

01:33:32.820 And it can be

01:33:33.280 a very powerful thing

01:33:34.400 to take accountability

01:33:36.220 for actions

01:33:36.960 that maybe had nothing

01:33:37.900 to do with you.

01:33:38.560 Well, okay,

01:33:39.540 so I've got a practical

01:33:41.360 example of that

01:33:42.300 that might be helpful

01:33:43.140 with your relationship.

01:33:44.740 So, and maybe not,

01:33:45.900 but maybe it'll be helpful

01:33:46.800 to someone.

01:33:47.300 So, now and then

01:33:48.380 when my wife get into 1.00

01:33:49.460 an intractable battle,

01:33:51.640 you know,

01:33:51.960 we'll both have that

01:33:52.900 proclivity to want

01:33:53.860 to be right.

01:33:55.100 So, you want to be right

01:33:56.020 because you don't want

01:33:56.700 your beliefs to fall apart

01:33:57.860 and you want to be right

01:33:58.720 because then you don't

01:33:59.460 have to go through

01:34:00.120 the inconvenience

01:34:00.940 of having to change.

01:34:02.520 So, you have your reasons

01:34:03.880 for wanting to be right.

01:34:05.200 The problem with that

01:34:06.000 is you might not be right

01:34:07.460 and plus you have to live

01:34:09.040 with this other person

01:34:09.940 and so you better

01:34:10.740 sort out your differences.

01:34:12.600 I don't think

01:34:13.020 that's compromise,

01:34:13.980 by the way.

01:34:14.460 I think that's joint union

01:34:15.800 and a higher vision.

01:34:16.740 But one of the things

01:34:17.400 we learn to do

01:34:18.220 if we can pull ourselves

01:34:19.720 away from the fight,

01:34:21.400 you know,

01:34:21.640 because you think things like,

01:34:22.960 well, you know,

01:34:23.820 some of the time I'm wrong

01:34:24.940 but this time

01:34:25.880 she's definitely

01:34:26.980 in the wrong

01:34:28.080 and I'm going to make

01:34:29.060 that point.

01:34:29.740 She feels the same way

01:34:30.880 and so, you know,

01:34:31.520 then we, you know,

01:34:33.440 come to loggerheads.

01:34:34.620 We learn to

01:34:35.540 leave each other

01:34:37.060 and go into

01:34:37.980 our separate rooms

01:34:39.120 and then to meditate

01:34:40.540 for some period of time

01:34:42.320 and here's the meditation.

01:34:43.580 It's like, okay, 1.00

01:34:44.540 we're having this stupid argument. 1.00

01:34:46.540 Definitely my wife 1.00

01:34:47.520 is wrong this time,

01:34:48.760 for sure.

01:34:49.500 But,

01:34:50.160 there's some possibility

01:34:52.160 that I've done 1.00

01:34:52.880 something stupid 0.99

01:34:54.060 sometime in the 0.99

01:34:55.740 recent past

01:34:57.040 or maybe even

01:34:57.660 in the distant past

01:34:58.480 that made this argument

01:35:00.180 somewhat more likely,

01:35:02.340 you know,

01:35:03.060 somewhat,

01:35:03.840 even though she's

01:35:04.520 mostly wrong.

01:35:05.540 And so,

01:35:06.300 what's so interesting

01:35:07.260 about that is

01:35:07.880 if you sit

01:35:08.420 and you ask yourself

01:35:09.380 that,

01:35:10.480 it's like,

01:35:10.860 what did I do

01:35:12.380 imperfectly

01:35:13.360 to increase

01:35:14.420 the probability

01:35:15.160 of this event?

01:35:16.360 You will absolutely

01:35:17.560 get an answer.

01:35:18.900 You'll get

01:35:19.260 some little fantasy,

01:35:20.500 some memory,

01:35:21.420 some thought

01:35:22.080 about something

01:35:23.020 you did

01:35:23.520 and then

01:35:24.300 if you go

01:35:25.220 tell the person

01:35:26.020 that,

01:35:26.980 then it takes

01:35:28.060 all that pride

01:35:28.720 out of it.

01:35:29.240 So she'll say,

01:35:30.160 you know,

01:35:30.420 what she did wrong

01:35:31.200 and I'll say

01:35:31.640 what I did wrong

01:35:32.640 and then we're

01:35:33.700 both confronting

01:35:34.940 the situation 1.00

01:35:35.740 like stupid people 1.00

01:35:36.840 who have something 1.00

01:35:37.460 to learn

01:35:37.920 instead of like

01:35:38.800 intellectually prideful

01:35:39.880 people who are

01:35:40.400 definitely right

01:35:41.120 and then we can,

01:35:42.660 well,

01:35:42.820 so far,

01:35:43.740 inevitably,

01:35:45.400 we've been able

01:35:46.500 to construct

01:35:47.620 a joint vision

01:35:48.520 out of the argument,

01:35:50.240 you know,

01:35:50.560 that's better

01:35:51.200 than either of our

01:35:52.440 a priori positions

01:35:53.920 and that's also

01:35:55.980 a hallmark

01:35:56.520 of a healthy relationship.

01:35:57.540 It's not like

01:35:58.120 you meet in the middle

01:35:58.860 or that you compromise.

01:35:59.980 It's that

01:36:00.320 you bring the conflict

01:36:02.100 together.

01:36:03.420 It's thesis,

01:36:04.380 antithesis,

01:36:05.080 synthesis,

01:36:05.660 essentially.

01:36:06.300 You bring the conflict

01:36:07.340 together

01:36:07.840 and you bring

01:36:08.840 your two viewpoints

01:36:09.640 together

01:36:09.980 and you meld

01:36:10.740 a third viewpoint

01:36:11.560 that's better

01:36:12.280 than either

01:36:12.820 of the viewpoints

01:36:13.560 you brought

01:36:14.000 to bear on the problem

01:36:15.000 and you can generally

01:36:16.560 do that

01:36:17.100 and having that

01:36:18.400 humility

01:36:18.900 that enables you

01:36:20.300 to examine 1.00

01:36:20.900 what stupid thing 1.00

01:36:22.040 you did 1.00

01:36:22.580 to muck up

01:36:23.720 the relationship,

01:36:25.140 that's,

01:36:26.820 you can,

01:36:27.140 you can meditate

01:36:27.760 on that

01:36:28.180 pretty much forever,

01:36:29.100 right? 1.00

01:36:29.380 What stupid thing 1.00

01:36:30.220 did you do 1.00

01:36:30.720 to muck things up?

01:36:32.180 That's,

01:36:32.620 that's an inexhaustible

01:36:34.780 treasure trove

01:36:36.080 of wisdom,

01:36:36.540 that is.

01:36:37.460 Right.

01:36:38.100 And one of the worst

01:36:39.000 and most uncomfortable

01:36:39.800 things that we'll have

01:36:40.920 to go through

01:36:41.380 in our life too

01:36:42.160 is that's yet another

01:36:43.480 challenge to face

01:36:44.680 in full force

01:36:45.700 and something

01:36:46.500 I will admittedly

01:36:47.820 say I struggle with.

01:36:49.320 Well, you know,

01:36:50.020 here's something

01:36:50.800 I learned as a therapist.

01:36:52.300 This is also useful

01:36:53.240 to know.

01:36:54.520 Um,

01:36:55.060 it's not surprising

01:36:57.260 that people shy away

01:36:58.200 from conflict,

01:36:58.980 especially if they're

01:36:59.800 agreeable and somewhat

01:37:00.760 neurotic because

01:37:01.620 you don't want to have

01:37:03.300 conflict with someone

01:37:04.100 if you're agreeable

01:37:04.900 and if you're

01:37:07.000 higher in neuroticism

01:37:08.320 it makes you

01:37:08.780 pretty upset.

01:37:09.920 So you have your reasons

01:37:11.020 not to want to have

01:37:12.000 the discussion.

01:37:13.800 But here's the rub,

01:37:15.180 man,

01:37:15.420 and this is something

01:37:16.020 I learned as a therapist.

01:37:18.700 Conflict delayed

01:37:19.580 is conflict multiplied.

01:37:21.040 Like if you have

01:37:23.020 a problem

01:37:23.580 with you

01:37:24.660 or with your partner

01:37:25.720 then if you don't

01:37:28.000 sort it out

01:37:28.720 then you're going

01:37:30.280 to have that

01:37:30.660 bloody problem

01:37:31.260 for the rest

01:37:31.700 of your life.

01:37:33.580 And maybe it'll

01:37:34.720 be a problem

01:37:35.240 that comes up

01:37:35.860 every week.

01:37:36.520 So that's like

01:37:37.100 50 times a year

01:37:38.440 and you're married

01:37:39.340 for 30 years

01:37:39.960 so that's going to

01:37:40.520 you're going to

01:37:40.720 have that problem

01:37:41.240 1,500 times.

01:37:43.720 1,500 times.

01:37:44.980 And maybe it'll

01:37:45.460 take an hour

01:37:46.240 per time.

01:37:47.700 So that's

01:37:48.460 1,500 hours.

01:37:49.720 And so that's

01:37:50.880 30 work weeks.

01:37:52.100 That's basically

01:37:52.820 a year of work

01:37:53.860 of your life.

01:37:54.500 That's like

01:37:54.900 2% of your life.

01:37:56.640 So then you think

01:37:57.340 well should I have

01:37:58.020 a fight?

01:37:58.880 And the answer is 0.70

01:37:59.580 damn right.

01:38:01.140 Right now man 0.98

01:38:02.280 four hours.

01:38:03.640 Let's hash this out.

01:38:05.380 Right?

01:38:05.620 Let's figure out 1.00

01:38:06.240 how we're stupid. 1.00

01:38:07.680 And then let's figure out 1.00

01:38:08.560 how we can not

01:38:09.300 do this again.

01:38:10.820 Right?

01:38:11.280 And that we're

01:38:11.580 both buy into.

01:38:12.740 Right?

01:38:12.940 Because you have

01:38:13.560 to both buy into it.

01:38:14.440 It has to be voluntary.

01:38:15.980 But you see

01:38:17.760 so you have that

01:38:18.780 fear of not

01:38:19.780 being right

01:38:20.440 and you have

01:38:20.860 the fear maybe

01:38:21.460 of having the fight

01:38:22.240 and you have

01:38:22.580 the fear of

01:38:23.020 discovering what's

01:38:23.680 wrong with you

01:38:24.360 and fine

01:38:25.140 those are all

01:38:25.720 valid fears.

01:38:26.720 But you need

01:38:27.260 to balance that

01:38:28.000 against the fear

01:38:28.700 of having the

01:38:29.280 same fight

01:38:29.740 1,500 times.

01:38:32.440 Yeah that's

01:38:32.900 not good.

01:38:34.400 Yeah even worse

01:38:35.460 is just remaining

01:38:36.540 silent and never

01:38:37.440 making that person

01:38:38.340 aware of the

01:38:39.740 problem that you

01:38:41.020 have.

01:38:41.320 I mean what a

01:38:41.700 disservice to whoever

01:38:42.600 you're in a

01:38:43.220 relationship with

01:38:44.060 for them to remain

01:38:44.980 ignorant to something

01:38:45.780 that you are 1.00

01:38:46.500 having such

01:38:47.000 trouble with.

01:38:47.540 It's just a

01:38:48.000 really difficult

01:38:49.040 thing to do

01:38:49.500 but it must be

01:38:50.000 done.

01:38:50.980 Yeah well you

01:38:51.620 know yeah it is

01:38:52.440 kind of polite to

01:38:53.540 you know one of

01:38:55.060 the things I often

01:38:55.760 hear people say

01:38:56.800 couples used to say

01:38:58.320 this to each other

01:38:59.000 because now and

01:38:59.500 then I had couples

01:39:00.240 in my therapy

01:39:00.860 session I was

01:39:02.020 always concentrating

01:39:02.760 on a particular

01:39:03.440 individual but

01:39:04.240 sometimes it was

01:39:04.960 useful to have

01:39:05.620 their partner in.

01:39:06.860 You know people

01:39:07.360 would often say

01:39:08.100 something when they

01:39:08.740 were talking to

01:39:09.140 their partner like

01:39:09.700 well if you loved

01:39:10.900 me you'd know

01:39:11.600 what I wanted.

01:39:13.540 It's like well

01:39:14.480 sometimes that's true

01:39:15.620 and you're not

01:39:16.020 just paying

01:39:16.460 attention but

01:39:17.080 you know first

01:39:18.200 of all you don't

01:39:18.800 even know what

01:39:19.320 you want so how

01:39:21.060 the hell would you

01:39:21.640 expect someone else

01:39:22.600 to know and maybe

01:39:24.460 you could be polite

01:39:25.300 enough to let them

01:39:26.040 in on the secret.

01:39:27.820 You know that'd be

01:39:28.300 kind of nice.

01:39:28.940 Now you have to

01:39:29.480 make yourself

01:39:29.980 vulnerable right?

01:39:30.740 Well here's the

01:39:31.260 problem with that.

01:39:32.500 If you let me know

01:39:33.600 what you want and

01:39:34.500 need then I can

01:39:36.760 manipulate you and

01:39:37.760 I can deny that to

01:39:39.320 you.

01:39:40.220 Right?

01:39:40.840 See if I don't know

01:39:41.940 what you want and

01:39:42.740 need then if I'm 0.99

01:39:44.080 going to torture you 0.96

01:39:44.780 it's kind of hit

01:39:45.320 or miss but if

01:39:46.520 you let me in on

01:39:47.420 the secret then I

01:39:48.300 know where you're

01:39:49.180 vulnerable and I

01:39:49.860 can really misuse

01:39:50.700 that and so you

01:39:51.740 have to trust

01:39:52.640 someone to let

01:39:54.380 them know what you

01:39:55.080 want and need.

01:39:55.640 You really have to

01:39:56.120 trust them and then

01:39:57.220 you might say well

01:39:57.780 that's naive to trust

01:39:59.120 like that but it's

01:40:00.580 not unless you're

01:40:01.780 naive.

01:40:02.820 Once you're past

01:40:03.580 being naive that

01:40:04.440 sort of trust is

01:40:05.240 courage not naivety.

01:40:06.780 It's like I know

01:40:07.300 you could hurt me.

01:40:08.300 I know it.

01:40:09.520 Especially if I

01:40:10.180 tell you this but

01:40:11.780 I'm going to do it

01:40:12.360 anyways because that's

01:40:13.980 an invitation to the

01:40:14.940 best in you.

01:40:16.700 Right?

01:40:17.200 And then maybe we

01:40:17.880 could sort out this

01:40:18.620 problem and maybe you

01:40:19.760 know you'll have the

01:40:20.480 same luxury with me.

01:40:21.980 You'll be able to tell

01:40:22.600 me something that you

01:40:23.380 need and want.

01:40:24.880 And so that's the

01:40:25.760 sort of trust you have

01:40:26.640 to have in a

01:40:27.200 relationship in order

01:40:28.180 for it to progress

01:40:28.900 properly.

01:40:30.220 And if you don't I

01:40:31.260 mean what is what is

01:40:32.140 your relationship?

01:40:33.080 Who is the person

01:40:33.980 dating if they don't

01:40:34.800 know you?

01:40:35.280 If they don't know

01:40:35.780 your wants and needs?

01:40:36.900 I mean so so often

01:40:38.040 people reach out to me

01:40:39.600 on the political end

01:40:41.060 of the spectrum and

01:40:41.920 say I'm so scared to

01:40:43.340 come to my friends

01:40:44.140 and tell them that I

01:40:45.340 agree with some of the

01:40:46.140 things that you say

01:40:46.920 and I'm sure you run

01:40:47.620 into this a lot but to

01:40:49.580 that you just say well

01:40:50.640 what friends are they

01:40:51.580 if they don't know you

01:40:52.440 and they don't know how

01:40:53.120 you think and feel

01:40:53.900 about certain things

01:40:54.820 and what are you

01:40:55.760 truly giving people

01:40:56.880 in this relationship

01:40:57.680 and what are they

01:40:58.540 getting from you in

01:40:59.200 this relationship if

01:41:00.380 they don't know who

01:41:00.940 you are?

01:41:02.560 Yeah well that's the

01:41:03.360 thing you know if

01:41:04.060 you're in the grip of

01:41:04.840 an ideology and you're

01:41:07.240 falsifying your own

01:41:08.400 experience to be an

01:41:09.900 agent of that

01:41:10.660 ideology then it's

01:41:12.460 the ideology that has

01:41:13.600 your life and not you 0.87

01:41:14.720 right and that's and

01:41:16.800 that really is a form

01:41:17.760 of possession it's like

01:41:18.880 you don't get to say

01:41:19.760 what you want to say

01:41:20.980 you don't get to feel

01:41:21.820 what you need to feel

01:41:22.760 you the friends you

01:41:24.480 have don't know who

01:41:25.800 you are they're not

01:41:26.700 really your friends

01:41:27.600 they're allies they're

01:41:29.480 ideological allies

01:41:30.560 they're really

01:41:30.980 comrades you know in

01:41:32.620 some real sense and

01:41:34.180 it's a lot better to

01:41:35.300 have friends than

01:41:36.100 comrades by any

01:41:38.060 stretch of the

01:41:38.720 imagination so

01:41:40.600 absolutely all

01:41:42.880 right well we're out

01:41:43.720 of time that went

01:41:45.140 by very quickly and

01:41:46.220 so for everyone who's

01:41:47.620 listening I'm going to

01:41:48.540 go over to the Daily

01:41:49.380 Wire Plus platform and

01:41:51.120 talk to Amla some more

01:41:52.160 on the more

01:41:52.920 biographical front and

01:41:54.900 in the meantime I'd

01:41:56.900 like to thank all of

01:41:57.720 you who are watching

01:41:59.180 and listening for doing

01:42:00.520 exactly that and hope

01:42:02.140 you found especially

01:42:03.340 you young people who

01:42:04.160 might be listening hope

01:42:05.960 you found this

01:42:07.160 discussion useful in

01:42:08.960 guiding you through

01:42:09.780 the swamps of your

01:42:11.680 of your philosophical

01:42:13.160 journey you know and

01:42:15.280 and and I hope you

01:42:16.560 found it helpful in

01:42:17.380 terms of helping you

01:42:18.680 find the courage to

01:42:19.780 have your own voice and

01:42:20.840 to find your own

01:42:21.540 friends and to make

01:42:22.400 your own way you know

01:42:24.400 in truth and to be

01:42:26.500 very careful about the

01:42:28.240 pride that goes along

01:42:29.380 with ideological

01:42:31.360 possession it's a very

01:42:32.720 bad thing it is

01:42:33.840 definitely the cardinal

01:42:34.840 sin and so anyways

01:42:36.380 thanks to all of you

01:42:37.380 who are watching and

01:42:38.040 listening thanks Amla

01:42:39.180 it was good talking to

01:42:40.160 you we'll continue on

01:42:41.700 the Daily Wire Plus

01:42:42.440 platform I'm going to

01:42:43.400 ask Amla a bunch of 0.51

01:42:44.620 biographical questions

01:42:46.840 and delve a little bit

01:42:48.020 more into the dark

01:42:48.840 secrets of her past

01:42:49.980 thanks everyone

01:42:51.480 thank you for having

01:42:52.820 thank you very much

01:42:53.540 yeah yeah you bet

01:42:55.140 you bet it was a

01:43:03.840 dailywireplus.com

01:43:05.680 you

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - December 26, 2022

317. Radical Leftist turned Conservative Activist ｜ Amala Ekpunobi

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