434. The Darien Gap & Postmodernism ｜ Bret Weinstein
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 42 minutes
Words per Minute
144.86494
Summary
In this episode, Dr. Brett Weinstein joins me to talk about the Darien Gap, immigration, and shamanism, and how they can work together in order to unify a diverse society in the face of a diverse plurality. We also talk about his new book, The Sacred and the Shamanic, and why he thinks shamanism might be the key to unifying a society, even in face of diverse plurality, so that it becomes maximally productive, generous, and sustainable across time. And, of course, we take a look at the COVID disaster, and its impact on our understanding of what happened, and what we can do to prevent it from happening in the future. This episode is sponsored by Viking. Viking is committed to exploring the world in comfort, journey through the heart of Europe on an elegant Viking longship, with thoughtful service, cultural enrichment, and all-inclusive fairs. Discover more at Viking.co.nz/Viking. Viking is a company committed to discovering, caring, and celebrating all things Viking and all things related to Viking and Viking culture. Viking's mission is to explore, understand, and celebrate Viking culture and the Viking legacy through all mediums of knowledge and information. Viking s mission statement is simple: to make Viking a place where people can learn, experience, and share Viking's knowledge and experience. Viking Viking is an all inclusive festival and fair, with all inclusive fairs that celebrate the Viking way of life, and fairs where they celebrate Viking s Viking's Viking's connection with the Viking past and their legacy. Viking, Viking s journey to Viking's past and present. Viking has a mission to help others understand Viking s knowledge and understanding of the Viking's own history, and to help them understand Viking's legacy, so they can learn from Viking s past and learn more about Viking s connection with Viking s own past and past and future, and help them apply Viking s legacy to their own culture and their own story. It s mission to make the Viking culture to the world, and the world. the best way to understand the Viking story, Viking's story, and their impact on the world Viking s relationship to Viking s story and their future Viking's role in the Viking experience of Viking s work, and beyond Viking s experience, the Viking s contribution to the Viking tale, Viking tells us more about the Viking sagas, and so on, so we can be a little more inclusive and more.
Transcript
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Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort, journey through the heart of Europe
00:00:05.480
on an elegant Viking longship with thoughtful service, cultural enrichment, and all-inclusive
00:00:30.180
I had the great pleasure today of speaking with Brett Weinstein, who I've talked to a fair
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bit and who has mediated some of the debates I had with Sam Harris.
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And, you know, our conversations have been very productive across the last, it's getting
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We started today by talking about the Darien Gap and the problem of immigration, and we
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moved from that to the solution to that problem after analyzing not least the fact that immigration
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conducted in this manner is very hard on the people who are immigrating, you know, traversing
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the jungle as they have to, being robbed and raped in consequence.
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It's a very haphazard way of going about whatever the hell's going on.
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We talked about that then in broader terms with regards to the relationship between the
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fact of that uncontrolled and unrestrained immigration, like that's a pathologization
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of something that's necessary and something that's also producing a somewhat of a constitutional
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We talked about that in relationship to broader conceptions of multiculturalism per se, and
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talked about the advantages and disadvantages to that diversification of society.
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And we went from there deeper, I would say, into a discussion of what it is that might
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necessarily be key to unifying a society, even in the face of a diverse plurality, so that
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it becomes maximally productive, generous, and sustainable across time.
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And that led us into a discussion of, as Brett put it, the sacred and the shamanic as two
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Sorry to hear about your troubles up in Canada.
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People bring that up, and it kind of surprises me, because I forget about it fairly quickly.
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It's so absurd and preposterous that it's hard to take it with any degree of seriousness.
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I think it's partly because it's more serious for other people in some ways than it is for
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I think they're probably fueling your reputation.
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But, you know, it's a badge of honor that they would go after you this way.
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Yeah, well, at some point, too, it becomes necessary to stop your association with people
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who have deviated from the appropriate course too dramatically.
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So, and I have to figure out how to negotiate that.
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What sort of problems are you and your wife trying to solve intellectually, practically?
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At the moment, my mind is racing having just come back from Panama and looking at the migration
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That was a shocking experience, even though I was pretty well-versed in the details of what
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I'm also quite focused on the fact that the COVID disaster, whatever its actual nature
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was, is something that we've reached a lot of clarity at great cost.
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But because we are not having a final discussion about what took place, the folks who made this
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happen, the folks who orchestrated it, seemed to be building the structures that would have
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And most people are not paying attention to those changes.
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And I have the sense that we're being set up for a rematch.
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And it will not go well if we don't derail their efforts.
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Well, okay, so let's put those together a little bit.
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You were down in Panama with Michael Yon, if I remember correctly.
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I was thinking about coming along, although that became impossible at the present time
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Not least because I'm trying to finish up my most recent book.
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Tell me what the advantages were of actually being there and maybe also the potential disadvantages.
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I mean, looking at it from a distance obviously has its costs, but looking at it close makes
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And so I'm curious about what you've concluded, how you've recalibrated your views, what you
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And then we'll talk more perhaps about, well, let's start with what's going on.
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My understanding is that essentially the migration levels into the U.S. from the south have doubled
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So there were something like 1.3 million people coming across the border in various forms,
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And then it declined quite precipitously for a number of years, and now it's doubled from
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Well, that's exactly the kind of thing that is impossible to assess based on direct observation.
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Obviously, you want data over a long period of time at every place where people are crossing,
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I felt very strongly that I needed to see it, but I couldn't explain to myself what that
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was going to change because I had seen so much of the documentation before.
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And what I discovered was that my intuition that I should see it in person was quite right,
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that what changed was not so much looking through one's own eyes versus looking through
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a camera lens, but the understanding of physically how things are distributed in space is not something
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You have to traverse some of these distances in order to see what's taking place.
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And to give you an example of what that changes, there's obviously a terminology problem.
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We have lots of people talking in terms of an invasion of the U.S., and we have other
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And what I came to understand in looking at this is that it's actually both things, and
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They are fleeing poverty and the collapse of their societies.
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And this becomes quite apparent when you talk to people in the camps.
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There are these transit camps where people who have just walked out of the jungle in the
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Darien Gap are spending time recovering and, in large measure, accumulating enough money
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Almost everybody gets robbed walking through the Darien Gap, and so they arrive with nothing.
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And, anyway, they spend time in these camps, and you can walk around and speak with them.
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But the interesting thing is everybody seems eager to talk, and they all say the same thing
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Obviously, many of our ancestors migrated because of the poverty of their home countries and the
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comparative opportunity they found in the new world.
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But what it isn't is people seeking political asylum.
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That's the excuse that's used at our southern border in the U.S.
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Not a single person said anything remotely like the idea that they were being oppressed or
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So, on the one hand, there is this large migration of people understandably looking
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And the problem is that the rules of our system say that that's not a justification for entering
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the country because to the extent that people are entering the country for economic reasons,
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they do so at the cost to Americans who are already here.
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And it's obviously the obligation of our government to protect the interests of the citizens.
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But what becomes apparent when you look at this migration, it has a certain character to
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It's recognizable and not so different from the waves of migration that we used to see come
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But there is this other movement of large numbers of people.
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This is the thing that's really hard to understand, is that they effectively mix into this massive
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migration of economic refugees, having traveled a different route.
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Most of the Chinese migrants are actually skipping the tribulations of the Darien Gap by boat.
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And when one attempts to go talk to them, there are two obstacles to getting any information.
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One is that the border authorities, the Sena Front, forbids access to the camp where the Chinese
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Now, some of the members of Sena Front are clearly not happy about the job that they have
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It is effectively the Panamanian Border Authority.
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And do you want to tell people exactly what the Darien Gap is?
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The Darien Gap is a 60-mile gap in the Pan-American Highway.
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The Pan-American Highway runs 17,000 miles from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to the southern tip of
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And there's only one place where you can't traverse it by road.
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And that's in the Darien province of Panama, where Panama meets Colombia.
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It is an extremely treacherous place, even just at the physical level of crossing it.
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It's something that requires a great deal of skill to get across it.
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And most of the migrants do not have the requisite skills.
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And there's a human tragedy unfolding in the Darien Gap as a result of the fact that these
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But that piece of road has never been completed, in part because the jungle is difficult, but
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in large measure because that part of Panama is effectively ungoverned.
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It's a no-man's land, in addition to being an ecological treasure, unique on Earth and
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even more special because so much of the more accessible jungle in the neotropics has been
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devastated by various processes, mining, illegal lumber extraction, etc.
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Well, you were talking about the Chinese migration, which, you know, sounds to me like a complete
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You said there were obstacles to talking to them.
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So, let's continue with the discussion of the Chinese.
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So, the other obstacle is the Chinese themselves, who are absolutely not forthcoming in a way
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Now, I've been to many places on Earth, some of them dangerous.
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I've encountered people who were reluctant to talk because they feared some authority would
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get wind of what they had said and that they would be punished.
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These were people who were not interested in conveying information about why they were migrating.
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And, in fact, their tone, to the extent that one interacted with them at all, was mocking
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In fact, there was one incident where Michael Yan, who has spent time in China and all over
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the world, was trying to strike up a conversation.
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And this one gentleman pretended to be Korean and not Chinese.
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And there was laughter amongst all of the folks sitting there.
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But, nonetheless, the Chinese migration is not entirely men, but it is heavily biased in
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They appear to be young and fit, military age for the most part.
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But the Chinese camp, I realized only after I had left, that I did not see children there.
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That's very different than the other migrants, many of whom have children.
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So there's something very special about whatever is going on with the Chinese migrants.
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And it is very odd that the very same border authority that would not allow us into the
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Chinese camp, a place called San Vicente, were perfectly happy to have us walk around
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We were free to walk around and take photographs.
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It was night and day different how they treated the two groups and for no obvious reason.
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Is there any sense, do you have any sense of comparative numbers, say, of the economic
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migrants versus the mysterious Chinese migrants?
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And what does Michael Yan think about that difference, just out of curiosity?
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Michael is obviously quite concerned about the meaning of the Chinese migration as a separate
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And, you know, I must say, just for the benefit of clarity to your audience, my view is that
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it is one of compassion for the Chinese people who I view as living under an oppressive regime.
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And to the extent that that oppressive regime is an enemy of my country, I view people who
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But I did not have the sense that I was looking at people fleeing that regime.
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I had the sense that I was looking at people who were migrating at the encouragement of that
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Now, I can't say that that's definitely true, but that was definitely the flavor of it as
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we were attempting to understand what we were saying.
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I know that we're talking about thousands of people a day, sometimes 10,000.
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That's a number that I heard described by people in a position to know.
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I also know it's very clear on the ground that the expectation is for those numbers to
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That there are elaborations of these camps being constructed.
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And what does considerably mean, do you suppose?
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Because that's about, we bandied around the figure of about three, three and a half million
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And my understanding at the moment is that that's the case.
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I've looked into the data to some degree and tried to update myself and to also view this
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So what do you think substantive increase means?
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And you don't have any real idea what percentage of those so-called migrants are the Chinese
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I don't, and I also find it fascinating that the two migrations appear to fuse in Derry
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To the extent that the Chinese are coming in by boat, it's almost, to me, it feels like
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the familiar economic migration is cloaking something else, that there's a deliberate
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choice to blend these two things so that people trying to discuss what's taking place will
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Now, I hope that's just my imagination running away with me, but the distinction in the demeanor
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of the migrants and the behavior of those in charge of these camps was unmistakable.
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Well, so what you have there for hard data, so to speak, is the fact of the difference in
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the response of the authorities to the presence of the two types of camp, right?
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It's like, well, if it's nothing but one thing, why are there two processes?
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And I should also, just for the sake of completeness, say that we did see some Chinese folks in
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Now, I don't know what the meaning of that exactly is.
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We saw signs that were in Chinese, and the migrants in the main camps were not forthcoming either.
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So I can't say what's taking place, but I can say that one of these migrations appears
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to be highly organized and careful, and the other one is so disorganized as to be tragic.
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The number of people who are being beckoned to cross the Darien Gap, who are being robbed,
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that's virtually all of them, raped, which is a large fraction of the women crossing through
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and dying in the gap because they were unprepared or victims of violence.
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It's really, it's an unspeakable horror that anybody would be encouraging people to join that
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I want to leap up the ladder a bit conceptually here.
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So, as you pointed out, the United States as being an immigrant country, it isn't obvious
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It isn't obvious at all how much immigration is too little, optimal, or too much.
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It's certainly the case that it's a straightforward thing to be sympathetic for people who are
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moving merely because they want better economic opportunities for themselves and their children.
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It's interesting that you observed there were very, there was almost no claim of necessity
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Now, what you would hope, possibly, is that we could have an intelligent discussion about
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Now, you pointed out that a rapid influx of poverty-stricken people into a stable society
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potentially produces a situation where those people compete, especially with the people
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who are struggling hardest in the current state for relative economic opportunity.
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And so, that migration is typically not a detriment to people who are in established positions of
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But they're definitely, or you could make the strongest case that they are genuine competitors
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for people at the lower end of the socioeconomic distribution.
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Now, we seem to be experiencing something akin to that in Canada.
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We have the highest migration rate in the world at the moment, if I have my fingers correct,
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or at least in the Western world, which is where people generally want to immigrate.
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And one of the consequences of that, apparently, is an absolute explosion in housing prices.
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And obviously, that's going to hurt people who are poorest the most.
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Okay, but there is some utility in migration, let's say.
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And it is also the case that the U.S. economy depends to some degree on the availability of
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Now, what you would hope, in my estimation, is that that would be handled with some degree
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And that wouldn't be the kind of handling that would result in a constitutional crisis
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in the U.S., which seems to be unfolding in a manner that's absolutely jaw-dropping.
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But even perhaps more directly relevant to your story is, well, if we're being driven by
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sympathy with those who are struggling to be free and to pursue economic opportunity in
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the spirit of the great American dream, it's still immoral to have those people enter the
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country, first, illegally, and second, second, at great risk to themselves in this haphazard
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manner, and third, in a manner that's absolutely and 100% of clear benefit to cartel criminals.
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Like, and this opens up an even wider topic of discussion.
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I mean, I would say from our discussions previously that your political views, such as they are,
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were likely to be more liberal than mine have become.
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I never regarded myself as a particularly conservative person until, well, until whatever's happened
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And, but, but I do believe that on some issues, at least, you're on the more progressive side
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Now, you've been battled around in all sorts of interesting ways over the last decade, and
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you've seen some very strange things transpire.
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And it's clearly the case that your trip to the Darien Gap was one of those experiences.
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And so, what do you make of the immigration issue?
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And then, what do you think's going on, and why?
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And what has this done in the long sequence of things that have exposed you to the kinds
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of information that might require people, at least at some level, to modify their views?
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All right, I'll try to remember all those questions.
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Um, the first thing to say is there is some rate of immigration that makes sense.
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I don't really see this as an issue of carrying capacity because the number of migrants might
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well, that is desirable, might well vary with the economic era.
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But the problem here is that, A, we never had the discussion.
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We are simultaneously facilitating this migration.
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The American flag is visible on projects in this migration in the Darien of Panama.
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The international community is facilitating it through the IOM, the International Organization
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of Migration, an entity that appears to believe that migration is simply in and of itself
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IOM, the International Organization of Migration for Migration.
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Um, the, the idea that these, uh, presumably well-intended people are inviting people into the horror of the, the Darien Gap, uh, is mind-blowing.
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But nonetheless, if we were to decide that some level of migration was desirable at this moment
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in history, you certainly wouldn't go about it this way.
00:27:07.160
For one thing, we are in effect repeating the error that we've seen in Europe, where a huge
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wave of migration arrived and nobody thought to ask the question of the migrants if they
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And so, a large number of people entered Europe who appeared absolutely hostile to the values
00:27:30.380
And my feeling is, if you're going to bring people in, then you bring people in who want
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It's the obvious question, and not asking it is such a dangerous mistake to make.
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Now, I did not see the migration at the southern border, but many others have.
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And they report that nobody is being asked anything.
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People are effectively asked their, their identity, their name, and their birth date.
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Even if the majority of people arriving at our southern border are simply people looking
00:28:10.940
for a better way of life, who are disproportionately likely to be hardworking and to behave themselves,
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that is certainly going to provide a mechanism for people who are not going to behave and
00:28:22.100
don't want to be part of the U.S. to arrive unannounced.
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There's no way that doesn't turn into a disaster in the near term.
00:28:34.280
Now, you pointed to one thing, which is the general problem of integration.
00:28:39.080
And that brings up a whole wealth of potential issues.
00:28:42.620
Like, are we contemplating this through the lens of something like the classic melting pot?
00:28:48.620
Are we making the assumptions that there is a core set of Western values and even more
00:28:53.360
specifically American values that must and should be abided by people who come?
00:29:00.060
Are we abandoning the radical multicultural project that proclaims in the postmodern way that
00:29:10.720
So, that's more on the side of just the issue of integration per se and the issue of national
00:29:19.660
But then there's the darker part of that too, which is...
00:29:22.640
It's one thing to want to maintain your own culture.
00:29:25.740
It's another thing to be actively hostile to the culture that you are migrating to or invading.
00:29:37.280
I mean, at the worst, the former people are xenophobic.
00:29:41.580
At the worst, the latter people are armed enemies of your society.
00:29:47.880
Or psychopathic adventurers who are out to cause as much bloody mayhem for their own personal
00:29:53.940
satisfaction, including sadism, as they can possibly manage.
00:29:57.920
And if you don't think there are people like that, you're exactly the kind of idiot they
00:30:06.640
It sounds like you have concerns on both those fronts.
00:30:13.720
I mean, this is grounds for the deepest part of this discussion, potentially.
00:30:18.420
What might constitute the core values of the identity that people who would want to come
00:30:29.740
Because it's certainly the case that it doesn't look like Americans can come to any agreement
00:30:37.620
And, you know, I'm not saying that as someone who isn't from a country where exactly the same
00:30:51.760
There's a problem of unregulated and badly planned economic migration.
00:30:58.060
And then there's a parallel problem of just exactly who is using that opportunity to do whatever
00:31:09.340
Seems like at least a reasonable proposition or something to be apprehensive about.
00:31:13.700
Subsidiary problem, which is even if migration is good...
00:31:17.460
And as I said, historically, the allowance has been about a million people a year in the illegal
00:31:36.700
And so, you pointed to this IOM, an organization, International Organization of Migration.
00:31:47.720
And you said it is apparent to you and perhaps to them that unrestricted migration, and so
00:31:53.740
that would be like economic mobility, is that's what's driving us, is a philosophy of economic
00:31:58.700
And that unrestricted migration is just a good thing in and of itself.
00:32:02.900
And there are, what, a variety of organizations who are pushing that proposition forward and
00:32:10.620
And are they, like, advertising in the countries where these people are coming from?
00:32:14.460
How is this actually, how and why is this occurring, and how is it organized?
00:32:23.000
I want to come back to the question of what are American values, what this has to do with
00:32:31.860
But I also want to address the question you just asked.
00:32:35.140
And so, there's a structure to this migration, which is not apparent to an outsider.
00:32:40.680
Most of the migrants are arriving in Quito, Ecuador.
00:32:49.020
Geographically, it's not the right place to start because Ecuador does not border Panama.
00:32:55.120
It happens that Ecuador has a policy of not requiring visas.
00:32:59.200
So, when people come from the Middle East, and there are many migrants in this migration
00:33:02.940
coming from the Middle East, odd as that sounds, they arrive in Quito, Ecuador.
00:33:12.760
They enter the Darien Gap, and they cross over into Panama, at which point their journey
00:33:20.320
north is facilitated by these organizations very directly.
00:33:26.040
There are large buses, a huge fleet of them, that is constantly circulating.
00:33:31.580
And migrants are, as I've mentioned, they're almost always robbed as they cross the Darien.
00:33:40.020
It takes time for them to earn enough money to buy a bus ticket.
00:33:42.940
And if they don't earn enough money to buy a bus ticket, though this is not widely publicized,
00:33:47.940
they are given a ticket in order to speed them north.
00:33:51.180
And then, the strangest thing happens, which is all of the countries between Panama and the
00:34:01.960
Now, Heather and I crossed through all of those borders, except the last one, between Panama
00:34:10.740
Every one of those borders was tightly controlled.
00:34:17.420
But now, if you're going north and you're in one of these buses, all of these countries
00:34:20.980
seem to have agreed that as long as you keep going, they're not going to say anything about it.
00:34:25.080
That's an odd fact, and it suggests a kind of international coercion in order to establish
00:34:36.200
So, the information about how to make the journey is being circulated, such that people know where
00:34:47.380
Although, I met a young woman, Jennifer, who had just crossed through the Darien Gap, had
00:34:56.420
She was a college student, and she was fleeing the collapse of Venezuela.
00:35:01.120
She, in fact, said that she was headed to Costa Rica, where she intended to stop.
00:35:07.340
But, in any case, the fact is, she had all of her money taken.
00:35:18.060
I did not ask her, though we spoke in oblique terms.
00:35:21.860
I'm quite convinced that she was raped while she was in the Gap.
00:35:27.360
And she was waiting to accumulate the money to get a bus ticket north.
00:35:34.680
I'm hoping that she will contact me and tell me how her journey is going.
00:35:39.960
But, nonetheless, yes, international organizations are creating the route and distributing information
00:35:49.360
These people start with cell phones that they're able to get up-to-date information.
00:35:59.280
The Chinese camp San Vicente apparently involves lots of people having money wired to them from
00:36:10.220
So, anyway, this is a different, it's a hybrid between the most low-tech slogging through jungle
00:36:18.400
and high-tech contact and exchange of funds and things that allows people to join these buses,
00:36:33.300
I mean, most Panamanians that I talk to, people in Panama City, were aware that there was some
00:36:38.880
migration but did not have very good information about it.
00:36:42.700
So, largely, this is just people passing through these societies.
00:36:48.240
Let's go back to the question you asked about political orientation and what the values are.
00:36:55.480
And I've done a lot of thinking about this long before I went to Panama to see this.
00:37:00.460
And I've come to the conclusion that we've been sold a bill of goods, and the bill of goods was called multiculturalism.
00:37:11.220
And the problem with multiculturalism is that it sounds like something that those of us who like to interact with people
00:37:18.320
from many different cultures should appreciate.
00:37:23.800
But it's, in fact, the opposite of the thing that we, the value that we actually hold.
00:37:28.660
The value that we actually hold, I would call Western cosmopolitanism.
00:37:35.320
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00:38:42.960
Western cosmopolitanism, it's the opposite, right?
00:38:46.960
Multiculturalism is the idea that people should not join our societies,
00:38:53.000
but they should maintain their own traditions in an isolated pocket,
00:38:59.460
and that we should effectively reject the idea of becoming one people in the West.
00:39:05.200
It's just a reduplication of the situation that obtains in the world at large with no appreciation
00:39:12.840
for the fact that if you bring people together and reduplicate the situation of the world at large
00:39:19.520
with no uniting meta-narrative, let's say, you also bring in all of the conflict.
00:39:27.360
Like, obviously, because the delusion seems to be that now just because they're,
00:39:33.620
and I think maybe it's fueled by this underlying materialism,
00:39:38.460
so maybe the notion is if you bring diverse people from all over the world,
00:39:43.180
regardless of their culture, and you provide them with sufficient economic opportunity,
00:39:47.740
given that conflict is driven fundamentally by economic need, let's say,
00:39:55.660
or economic differences, that that will just vanish somehow magically.
00:40:00.660
Now, I'm not saying anyone necessarily thought this through,
00:40:05.000
that the systems of ideas that are motivating these mass occurrences,
00:40:09.240
is they have their own internal spirit and forward-moving impetus,
00:40:17.780
and they can be full of internal conflict, and no one really sorts that out.
00:40:23.680
It's got to be something like, well, we bring everyone together like they are where they already are,
00:40:29.140
but now because they're rich, it's going to work out fine.
00:40:31.800
And there isn't any universal system of values that needs to be preferred
00:40:36.440
other than the plenitude of economic opportunity.
00:40:39.880
And so why do you think there's something to that, right?
00:40:45.400
although it's not obvious that people who are in comparative poverty
00:40:51.180
although I don't think the relationship is one-to-one.
00:40:53.740
What do you think is wrong with that theory of peace bequeathed by economic opportunity,
00:41:15.060
The most primary reason is genetic relatedness.
00:41:20.280
The second reason is the value that is created through reciprocity.
00:41:27.060
And if you'll allow me to paint with a broad brush,
00:41:34.020
is most fundamentally about the agreement to put aside our lineages
00:41:38.580
and collaborate because there is wealth to be produced.
00:41:43.460
And this notion, which, you know, it has its roots in antiquity,
00:41:50.880
but I believe that this was accidentally invented in its current form
00:41:58.800
That in essence, in order to confederate the colonies,
00:42:02.740
they built a set of rules that didn't put anybody at particular advantage.
00:42:08.540
There's obviously some glaring defects in our founding documents and things.
00:42:12.840
But in general, they solved this tremendous problem.
00:42:15.880
And over the course of the next couple hundred years,
00:42:24.220
By putting the people who were in the best position to collaborate into contact
00:42:29.380
and facilitating their putting their racial differences aside,
00:42:35.400
And so the American experiment became contagious
00:42:57.800
I think it is the thing that we should rally around.
00:43:01.100
And what it means is that we should take on this cosmopolitan notion
00:43:10.160
It's really a question of whether they have the right insight and values,
00:43:21.900
That is under attack from people who would fetishize our differences
00:43:27.560
and make it impossible for that kind of collaboration to happen.
00:43:42.620
I think the world is in great danger if that idea is lost,
00:43:53.600
I guess we're probably approaching it obliquely anyways,
00:43:56.460
to the transformation of your ideas about political and economic structure.
00:44:01.720
But there's an element of the argument that you just formulated
00:44:05.680
that I can't easily distinguish from the proposition
00:44:10.160
that mere material opportunity will bring peace.
00:44:15.060
So let me walk through your argument and summarize it.
00:44:20.280
And then let's delve more deeply into that possible paradox.
00:44:30.020
the default social organization for human beings is kin relation, right?
00:45:04.900
that are least likely to be broken with the ravages of time.
00:45:24.700
a more general appreciation for the possibilities
00:46:07.580
on a more diverse range of talents and abilities,
00:46:17.880
would be useful because of diversity of opinion,
00:46:46.180
independent of any other overarching framework.
01:22:22.480
Maybe they outnumber the secularists considerably
01:22:26.980
But I've been thinking about why that might be.
01:22:37.280
say, among the COVID dissidents, there are quite a
01:22:40.260
number of religious people who stood up at great
01:22:46.540
personal cost and said what needed to be said in
01:22:55.620
And I think the reason for that is because if you have a
01:23:02.060
religious structuring to what you're, I've forgotten what
01:23:06.420
term you use, but I would say that we have this
01:23:10.480
I would say it's a model which we take in, we build it
01:23:18.480
We build up a model over a lifetime and we're very
01:23:20.800
reluctant to pull a piece out on which much depends
01:23:23.660
because then suddenly our model doesn't work, right?
01:23:26.140
So people who have a religious model of the universe
01:23:30.840
where they actually believe, they're not just going
01:23:33.300
through the motions, have a motivational structure that
01:23:38.560
upends the game theory that causes so many people to
01:23:43.280
If you believe that you are being watched and perhaps
01:23:49.300
guided by an intelligence that if you do the right thing,
01:23:55.400
then whatever pain your enemies may inflict upon you will
01:24:00.820
be dwarfed by the reward that you will get in the end.
01:24:08.680
Then the point is you're in a lot better position to stare
01:24:11.380
down tyrants and bullies than somebody who is trapped in
01:24:24.440
So there are lots of traps that people who have a deep
01:24:28.440
relationship with this sort of thinking can avoid.
01:24:33.640
But the number of, let's put it this way, every religious
01:24:38.780
scientist has an utterly idiosyncratic way of holding
01:24:44.060
those beliefs in the mind so that they don't trip over the
01:24:47.340
parts that conflict with what they know from the laboratory.
01:24:55.760
And mostly, there's something about it that actually reminds me of
01:25:00.800
the way Jews often hold religious belief, which is its purpose isn't
01:25:09.460
A congregation holds their belief structure at a great range of distances from themselves.
01:25:18.840
Some people absolutely believe this is the literal word of God, and other people have
01:25:27.680
It's just one in which it doesn't impinge directly on their analytical thinking.
01:25:34.640
So that freedom to hold that relationship in a uniquely generated fashion that doesn't
01:25:43.080
conflict with the rest of the model one uses to deal with the universe is, I think, necessary.
01:25:49.700
And it, again, speaks to a strength of the West, right?
01:25:55.900
The separation of church and state allows that to some degree, right?
01:25:59.420
Because what you're pointing to, to some degree, is the optimization of stability and play, right?
01:26:09.540
And some people are going to vie for more stability and less play, probably in accordance with their temperament
01:26:18.380
And others are going to, as a consequence of that distancing, let's say, allow for a wider range of experimentation
01:26:25.260
within what is still a walled enclosure, right?
01:26:32.800
The territory that they're allowed to range through is broader.
01:26:37.680
Now, the price they might pay for that is a little more entropy in the system, right?
01:26:44.120
But the advantage would be that they can experiment.
01:26:58.020
So you know that, for all intents and purposes, that the molecular alterations that facilitate
01:27:09.640
And there's real good reasons for that randomness.
01:27:12.620
Partly because, to the degree that mutations are caused by radiation,
01:27:22.500
However, there is a hierarchy of repairability.
01:27:31.380
So what that means is, and I haven't been able to reconcile this entirely with my understanding
01:27:36.760
of evolutionary biology, but that means there's a core set of principles by which the system
01:27:44.460
And then out on the fringe, there's allowable room for variation and experimentation, right?
01:27:51.120
And I think that that's the pattern of all conceptual structures.
01:27:58.440
And those are religious principles, and I don't care if you're religious or not, is that they
01:28:04.280
serve the function of the deepest mechanisms of orientation.
01:28:13.600
And then experimentation can take place on the fringe.
01:28:16.580
Now, temperamentally, some people would be inclined to experiment at deeper levels, right?
01:28:22.880
And that would be the difference between someone who's less or more fundamentalist in their
01:28:29.160
So what do you think of that as an analogy on the biological side?
01:28:35.000
Well, I've been playing with that analogy from the biological side, and I have a framework
01:28:41.920
So I refer to these two poles as the sacred and the shamanistic.
01:28:47.920
And the idea is that even within a religious tradition, right, there is the sacred, which are
01:28:52.760
the things that one is most loathe to upend because they are most fundamental.
01:28:58.920
And then there's the shamanistic, where, you know, depending on the tradition, the monks
01:29:04.220
may be experimenting with, I don't know, hallucinogenic substances.
01:29:09.960
And the point is, we don't ask them too much what they're doing.
01:29:14.560
And if they find something important, they report it out in a way that we can disavow
01:29:21.140
But the point is, both of these processes are there for a reason.
01:29:25.280
And the fact is, we see exactly this in the genome.
01:29:29.980
And it even extends beyond what you've suggested.
01:29:34.040
So we have the ability, for example, let's take immunity.
01:29:41.860
The way immunity develops when you encounter a disease is something called clonal selection,
01:29:49.500
in which a subset of your cells literally evolves on the scale of hours to days in order to defeat
01:29:59.020
So this is a part of the body that has become genetically experimental because it is necessary
01:30:08.160
to do so in order to fight an enemy that your body has never seen.
01:30:12.160
So anyway, yes, sacred to the shamanistic, that exists in the genome.
01:30:22.220
We are not realizing that much of, that basically culture is a means to an end, that genes have
01:30:31.200
produced a mind that is fundamentally cultural because it can evolve more rapidly than if
01:30:38.380
But the problem with that is that much of the stuff that is generated in the moment is noise,
01:30:45.180
You can look at longstanding genes and say, I know they must have served the interests of
01:30:49.820
the lineage that carried them because they stood the test of time, right?
01:30:54.440
They have a cost and yet they stood the test of time.
01:30:56.380
But culture, you don't know that something is useful until it's lasted for at least hundreds
01:31:03.200
of years, which means that most of the new stuff that we see is probably bad for us and
01:31:09.320
Yeah, well, that's actually why I think there's variability in trait openness.
01:31:13.020
It's like some of the new stuff is absolutely vital.
01:31:24.740
Now, if you're high in openness, it's a high risk, high return strategy.
01:31:29.180
You're very, very likely to fail, which is generally the fate of most would-be entrepreneurs
01:31:34.080
unless they repeat the experiment multiple times.
01:31:37.300
If you do succeed, you can succeed unbelievably radically, right?
01:31:42.400
And then you might say, well, to hell with openness.
01:31:45.120
So that would be no shamanic tradition, let's say.
01:31:48.080
But the problem with that is then there's no variability or experimentation and that doesn't
01:31:54.640
work either because the future is actually different from the past, right?
01:31:59.340
So there has to be experimentation because otherwise you can't keep up.
01:32:03.520
So this is also, so this, as far as I can tell, Brett, this seems to be a place where the
01:32:07.780
evolutionary biology and these new models of theological thinking can dovetail perfectly.
01:32:13.620
We can say something like, well, the relationship between ideas is akin to the relationship between
01:32:18.840
the relationship that obtains that governs mutation.
01:32:25.060
It's logically enough because idea of proliferation is the analog to mutation.
01:32:32.640
And it implies that on both those levels, there's a core set of axiomatic principles that you
01:32:40.520
violate very rarely and at your extreme danger.
01:32:43.920
This is, by the way, that this is the reason that Uzzah dies when he touches the Ark of the
01:32:51.080
So the Israelites are packing the Ark of the Covenant across the desert and they trip a
01:32:55.400
little bit and this soldier reaches out to steady the Ark and God strikes him dead.
01:33:00.160
And David is unhappy about that, believing it to be unjust.
01:33:04.960
But the moral of the story is there are certain things that you touch at your peril, regardless
01:33:10.800
of the potential benevolence of your motivations.
01:33:17.480
This is probably not going to make a tremendous amount of sense yet.
01:33:20.460
We'll have to unpack it another time because it's a deep discussion.
01:33:24.100
But it's not really that culture is like the genome.
01:33:32.420
It does have a superficial resemblance in the way it evolves.
01:33:36.360
But the way to see it most clearly is that culture is one of several epigenetic mechanisms.
01:33:44.600
And as much as it is strange to think of it this way, all the epigenetic mechanisms
01:34:00.680
The idea is that epigenetic phenomena are more powerful than genes because they are more
01:34:08.320
rapidly adapting, but they are subservient to the genes' motivation.
01:34:16.600
In other words, they have to serve genetic ends, at least historically.
01:34:20.840
Now, I do wonder, and one of the things I worry about in the revival of religious belief
01:34:28.200
that we are watching, the thing I'm concerned about is that actually we are at a unique moment
01:34:34.800
in history where we have to turn the tables on the genes.
01:34:44.500
They've produced a mental structure which is capable of morality, but they've done that
01:34:51.640
And my feeling is that what is best about humans, what distinguishes us from all of the
01:35:07.020
Those are the things which should be in the driver's seat, but they're not.
01:35:11.340
And you and I have talked before about the danger of tragedies of history reoccurring, that
01:35:19.200
these are spasms that tap into predispositions inside the human character that people don't
01:35:26.920
expect because they grow up during times when they're not visible and then suddenly they emerge.
01:35:33.400
And I'm not, there's no way that it can be safe to experiment with such a fundamental change, but I'm
01:35:42.680
concerned that if we don't figure out how to put our better angels in charge, that we are going to be
01:35:50.760
condemned to that same pattern reoccurring with ever more ferocious weaponry.
01:36:02.660
Not, not, not only weaponry, not only the, I mean that term generally, the technology.
01:36:11.440
Well, this is, see, one of the things that really, maybe we can close with this because
01:36:17.700
One of the things that Carl Jung pointed out at the end of the Second World War, I think
01:36:24.080
actually it was when the hydrogen bomb was developed, to tell you the truth.
01:36:27.000
And this is what he was pointing to in his work on alchemy, by the way, which is why he
01:36:33.440
He was trying to understand the substrate of intrinsic value that even guides the scientific
01:36:41.900
Now, the reason he was doing that was because he believed that we had rapidly expanded our
01:36:48.000
technological capacity since the dawn of the scientific revolution, but had failed to do
01:36:53.780
the same with our understanding of our underlying ethos.
01:36:58.280
And so now we were as primitive ethically as we were in 1450 with the tools of the 21st century.
01:37:06.960
And that there is no, if you're going to have big toys, you better be a wise player.
01:37:15.460
And my sense is that, and I would say the positive consequence of this hypothetical revival that
01:37:22.660
you're describing would be that I think we can actually become conscious of these things
01:37:27.480
explicitly in a way that wasn't possible before.
01:37:33.060
I think that that's what's making itself manifest to people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and like Neil
01:37:39.100
Ferguson and like Douglas Murray and like you, and we can see, and Jonathan Paggio, we can
01:37:46.160
see a shift, a tectonic shift at the level of conceptualization.
01:37:51.340
It might even be that the entire culture war is a manifestation of that emerging shift,
01:37:58.540
Because we're at war to some degree with the idea that there isn't anything other than
01:38:10.800
Certainly the postmodernist proposition was that, especially emanating from people like
01:38:15.620
Foucault and Derrida, was that there was, especially Foucault, there wasn't anything other than
01:38:21.700
And power is always utilized in the service of a short-term hedonism because why the hell
01:38:29.760
So maybe let me try to summarize those things because I think we've arrived somewhere very
01:38:43.260
But what you're pointing to, we are somewhere new in history because of the power of our
01:38:51.200
technology, which takes off the table the traditional way that terrible problems like this have been
01:38:58.760
Evolution was a process in which people whose belief structures or orientation or models
01:39:05.520
were dangerously off could go extinct, leaving behind those whose models weren't so broken.
01:39:13.240
That tool, as terrible as it was, at least worked.
01:39:16.180
What we have now is a system where we are all tied together such that the bad folks may get what
01:39:25.100
they deserve, but we're also going to get what they deserve. And the tool for thinking your way
01:39:30.760
out of such a puzzle without actually having to go through extinctions of various populations
01:39:36.240
is consciousness. Consciousness evolved, I would argue, for this exact purpose, for addressing novelty
01:39:43.600
and being able to see, to follow through what will happen if I behave in a certain way so that
01:39:48.500
you don't have to suffer that consequence selectively.
01:39:54.460
Right. And I guess this does bring us back to the question of the Darien Gap, because what
01:40:00.700
we see going on in Panama really looks like an old model that is now taking on tremendous new
01:40:13.740
power and putting us in global jeopardy by deciding to move people and resources to dispense with the
01:40:24.460
consent of the governed. And that is going to end very badly. So the message to us is that the peril we
01:40:33.860
detect in places like Darien, it's telling us something, which is that we need to rise to a kind of
01:40:41.260
collective consciousness. We need to realize that what is binding us together is not genetic
01:40:47.740
relatedness. It is common purpose that we all, if we think clearly, should want to bequeath to our
01:40:55.120
descendants a marvelous world. And instead, we are going to give them a world that is greatly diminished
01:41:01.940
even to the one that we were given. So I think it is that moment.
01:41:13.220
All right, sir. Well, everybody, for everybody watching and listening, I'm going to delve further
01:41:17.400
into these ideas with Brett in the half an hour that we'll spend together on the Daily Wire Plus
01:41:22.280
side of the platform. So if you're inclined to join us there, then please feel more than welcome to do so.
01:41:28.860
Can I add something? For those who are interested in a deeper look into the questions raised by what's
01:41:34.320
going on in Panama, if they go to the Dark Horse, Dark Horse is one word, the Dark Horse Locals
01:41:40.980
community, there's a discussion between myself and Chris Martinson there in which we explore this stuff
01:41:47.740
All right, excellent. So everybody's enjoined to go do precisely that.
01:41:52.340
Right, yes. And to also take up Brett's challenge to view these political events and economic events,
01:41:59.180
these practical on the ground events in light of the broader reality of the culture war that is tearing
01:42:05.440
us to pieces. So, all right. So, well, thank you very much, Brett. And to everybody watching and
01:42:11.620
listening, thank you very much for your time and attention. And on to the next challenge.