The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 457. God, Marxism, and the Fall of the West ｜ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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00:00:57.420 Hello, everybody.

00:01:10.360 I had the privilege today to speak with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who, I don't know, if you took the ten bravest people in the world, she'd be one of them, as far as I can tell.

00:01:20.060 And she made a remarkable splash years ago with her first book, Infidel, which talked about her experience about moving from Somalia to the Netherlands, which is like the center of Western civilization.

00:01:32.100 And so that was a great book.

00:01:34.120 And Ayaan has had a very storied political career, to say the least, and a threatened life in many ways, standing up against the Islamic fundamentalists.

00:01:43.920 She's recently converted to Christianity, which is also a stunningly brave move for someone in her situation.

00:01:50.040 And she's launched a new enterprise called Restoration, which is a substack media enterprise designed to make a case for the necessary primacy and, what would you say, bedrock, foundational necessity of the presumptions of Western civilization.

00:02:09.040 And so we had a chance to talk about all that, and so I would say it'll be 90 minutes well worth your while with the additional conversation that I had with her as well on the Daily Wire side.

00:02:23.340 So welcome, everybody.

00:02:26.400 Listen to Diane.

00:02:27.400 That's always worthwhile.

00:02:29.000 She's a real force of nature.

00:02:31.660 And so, as I said, it was a privilege to talk to her again.

00:02:35.140 All right, so you've recently announced a new writing and media endeavor, and I've been following that quite avidly, particularly on Twitter, and so called Restoration.

00:02:49.620 And so do you want to tell us how that came to be and what it is and what you're hoping to accomplish with it?

00:02:57.260 Well, Restoration, I think the word says it.

00:02:59.840 My mission is to restore our institutions that you and I love to their original missions, ideas, our culture, the origins and history of our culture,

00:03:16.560 institutions like the family, schools, the university, democratic institutions, what political parties are supposed to do, what our governments are supposed to do, what they're not supposed to do.

00:03:34.880 And then discourse, a lot of us have been talking quite a bit about freedom of speech and the institutions that protect freedom of speech, the free press, all of these have been, in my view, they've been subverted.

00:03:57.700 There's been an effort to subvert our institutions, and we're in a place now where we cannot communicate with people we disagree with or we have a different perspective from without immediately seeing an enemy status in them.

00:04:18.840 And I think the first and I think the first and I think the first and I think the first and most important thing to do is to bring back that civic discourse.

00:04:26.620 When I came to Europe in 1992, and over the course of the first 10 years of my residence there, conversations between people who disagree with one another were seen as what defined Europe and what defined the West and what made it different from other places.

00:04:45.920 And now look at where we are, and so restoration is an attempt to awaken people, to recognize what's at stake, and then to restore, yeah, in one word, to restore sanity.

00:05:04.700 Okay, so you brought up a lot of points there, and I want to delve into them one by one.

00:05:10.060 And I guess I'll start with an overarching question and then drill in a little bit.

00:05:19.520 Do you find yourself surprised to have developed the beliefs that you have developed?

00:05:29.580 I mean, in your description of your project, you pointed to the dissolution of civic discourse, the threat to democratic institutions, the threat to our culture, the collapse of freedom of speech.

00:05:48.020 And those are all, all of those are serious charges, right?

00:05:57.480 Especially, let's say, the observation of subversion.

00:06:02.120 And it's difficult to, it's easy for, let's see, it's easy for the apprehension of something like subversion to be tossed into the conspiracy theorist bin, let's say that.

00:06:21.320 I mean, in the things that you've been writing about in Restoration and pointing to, they're quite dramatic.

00:06:26.900 And so, let's do two things.

00:06:30.160 The first is, why don't you talk a bit more about what you mean by subversion, where that might be stemming from, right?

00:06:38.660 Because that's, well, that's a mysterious question.

00:06:41.980 And then also address the issue of whether or not you find yourself surprised to be in the position that you're in, having to say the sorts of things, let's say, that you're saying to be now.

00:06:52.440 So, let's start with subversion.

00:06:53.860 I start, the opening essay in Subversion, the bulletin, so my platform on Substack, has to do with, I start by describing the fact that many of us feel that something is off.

00:07:10.120 And that, like in the parable of the Buddhists, we're all trying to figure out what is it that is off.

00:07:18.300 So, we're all these blind people, we're touching different parts of the elephant, and we're trying to figure out what this hole is.

00:07:24.120 But when I look at these, you know, take any list, I'm in the academic world, and I see what has happened to academia from the time I came as a student in 1995 in the University of Leiden to my present role at Stanford.

00:07:43.440 And there is just this churning out of very expensive, useless degrees in gender and race and you name it.

00:07:56.220 That's the university's K2-12.

00:08:01.500 There is this crisis that I see, because I'm a parent.

00:08:05.720 Parents around me, homeschooling their children, going from A to B, just completely confused about what is it that's going on with our education systems.

00:08:16.360 They're on the brink of collapse.

00:08:19.340 There are these statements that are contrary to reality that there is an endless number of genders.

00:08:27.220 There's this whole, what seemed like in, you know, 10, 15 years ago when I first heard about terms like intersectionality and oppressor and oppressed and all the rest of it.

00:08:39.120 It just seemed like some, to me, juvenile, intellectual mishmash, nonsensical, the sort of things that first year freshmen students dapple in, and then they grow up and they grow out of it.

00:08:56.700 And then along comes 2020, and we have that incident with George Floyd in the United States of America.

00:09:04.080 And what then happens is what I only see, can't describe as a revolution, because we went full on with the defund the police, let's abolish SATs and other standardized tests, mathematics is racist, everything is racist.

00:09:25.040 And this demolition, clearly demolition of ideas and institutions like the family education.

00:09:34.180 And I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, this is familiar.

00:09:40.100 And let's pay attention to the people who are leading the charge in these projects to destroy the structures and the institutions that have served us so well.

00:09:55.040 And on the one hand, you have this identity politics, cultural Marxists that have developed this elaborate theory, theories, that they call critical theory, critical theories.

00:10:08.400 And it's not a conspiracy theory, Jordan.

00:10:11.800 They state it as clearly as possible, that they want to bring down, they point to all of these injustices and they say the answer to all of this is to bring down these structures and destroy them.

00:10:22.440 And then on the other hand, I see the Islamists and the Islamists have never really been dishonest.

00:10:29.820 It was always in your face, but they first tried many years to bring down our system through terror and terrorist threats and relentless terrorist attempts.

00:10:41.460 And they failed at that.

00:10:42.640 We are militarily and economically and technologically superior to them.

00:10:47.720 And so, obviously, they went down the path of dawa, which is religious subversion, which is, it has a much longer timeline. 0.95

00:10:58.720 And then, of course, you look at the CCP and Putin, and these are external adversaries, and they're looking at what's going on on our soil domestically. 0.99

00:11:09.080 And they would be stupid not to take advantage of that. 0.92

00:11:13.440 So, as I try to look into and analyze, again, think of me as one of the blind men touching the elephant, is to say, where have we seen this before? 0.99

00:11:26.160 Now, communist attempts at subverting the West are as old as communism.

00:11:33.280 They're as old as, you know, the times of the Bolsheviks and Lenin and all the various Marxists.

00:11:42.640 And when the Soviet Union was established, they had programs to subvert us. 0.95

00:11:47.440 And it was mutual.

00:11:48.920 We had programs to subvert them.

00:11:50.980 So, when you listen, I quote Yuri Bezmenov at length, where he describes their length.

00:12:00.360 You just listen to him and the institutions that he describes and the intended effects of that kind of subversion.

00:12:07.680 And it's right before your eyes.

00:12:09.240 You don't really need a conspiracy theorist for that.

00:12:12.580 The Islamists, it's the same thing. 0.99

00:12:14.220 So, what's interesting about all of this is to see this collusion between the Islamists and the neo-Marxists or cultural Marxists, what is called the unholy green-red alliance. 0.91

00:12:28.740 Some people describe it as the watermelon.

00:12:30.600 And you think, okay, where is this going?

00:12:32.800 Queers for Palestine looks nice in Colombia on a plaque that students hold up.

00:12:43.360 But what would queers look like if they were actually in Gaza or the West Bank? 1.00

00:12:48.020 We know what happens.

00:12:51.360 But that aside, the question of is there subversion and has it been effective?

00:13:00.300 Are we on the brink to all of that?

00:13:02.800 The answer is yes.

00:13:04.140 And my remedy for that is restoration.

00:13:08.540 Recognize the institutions, the ideas.

00:13:11.380 You know, it's our elites.

00:13:13.820 And then we have to come together and restore this.

00:13:18.580 And so, not together in these empty sort of platitudinous ways, but to say we used to, what made us different as Western societies is that we used to disagree.

00:13:29.720 And actually, we used to think it was fun to disagree.

00:13:32.020 The other day, I had a debate with what I didn't think of it as a debate.

00:13:36.500 I thought it was a lovely conversation with Richard Dawkins, where, I mean, we live in a world where a lot of people who watch that discussion, their takeaway was not, oh, how interesting.

00:13:48.080 This one has to say that, and, you know, what are the arguments that they're making, et cetera.

00:13:54.240 No, it was, you know, there was suddenly this enemy friend thing.

00:14:01.020 And, yeah, I think, for me, the greatest takeaway from that whole thing was the hug at the beginning and the hug at the end, that it is possible to disagree on fundamental issues and continue to have that affection for one another.

00:14:19.920 And if you don't want to have affection for one another, still, you know, peaceful handshake.

00:14:27.160 Well, with Dawkins in particular, like I've met him a couple of times, and I've read his books, and I learned a lot from his books.

00:14:36.860 And one of the things that I've thought about Dawkins all along, and I think this is reflected in the fact that he described himself as a cultural Christian recently, is that he is a good scientist, and a good scientist is someone who strives to seek the truth.

00:14:55.960 And I think that truth-seeking is a religious enterprise, and so a true scientist is embedded in a religious enterprise, and I think that's why Richard Dawkins understands that he's a cultural Christian.

00:15:09.220 But it's very—there's many things that Dr. Dawkins and I don't see eye-to-eye about, but some of that is because we don't understand each other, like a fair bit of it.

00:15:21.960 And some of it is that the issue at hand is insanely complex and difficult to figure out, and neither of us should be presuming that we've got the right answer.

00:15:32.800 And then the discourse that you're describing, which is competitive discourse, should be conducted in a manner that enables both of the participants to further seek the truth.

00:15:42.620 And then you actually want that enmity, so to speak, you want the person you're talking to to come at you with ideas that you haven't heard and positions that you haven't thought through, because in principle, they move you closer to the truth.

00:15:59.340 And so, hypothetically, Dr. Dawkins and I will be speaking at some time in the next few months.

00:16:08.240 We're trying to arrange that now, and I'm really looking forward to it, because—

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00:17:48.060 I think that we can talk because I think that he's trying to pursue the truth.

00:17:58.680 And I found the same thing with Sam Harris, and I recently spoke to Dan Dennett, which went very well.

00:18:04.020 I've managed to speak to him in a few short weeks before his demise, and we had a very productive conversation.

00:18:10.700 And you want conversations between people who don't hold the same viewpoint, if they're reliable people, because that's where the real thinking takes place.

00:18:21.040 And so for me, what you just described was the defining feature of Western civilization.

00:18:30.040 I came from, I was born in Somalia, and I lived in Saudi Arabia, and I lived in Kenya, and I lived in Ethiopia, and then I landed in the Netherlands in 1992.

00:18:38.980 And there were so many differences between the world, the non-Western world I grew up in, and the Western world that I came to.

00:18:48.680 But the one thing that I would say was really different, and was this, that you can't really have these radically different views.

00:18:59.500 Because you can be religious, you can be atheist, you can be pro-market, you can be anti-market, you can, in fact, in the streets of America, shout the most anti-American things, even burn the American flag.

00:19:15.540 And that that is protected.

00:19:18.040 That for me was, wow.

00:19:20.660 And when I say, let's talk about restoration, I'm now seeing a breakdown for that, a near collapse of that.

00:19:30.360 On the political level, on the academic level, on the civic level, on the journalism level, we are breaking up into tribes, like the world where I came from, where you have not the pursuit of the truth, but ownership of the truth.

00:19:48.380 My truth versus your truth and that kind of nonsense is now a serious, serious, deep-rooted problem in the West.

00:19:57.560 And that, I think, is an outcome of subversion.

00:20:01.800 Well, okay, so let's take that apart further.

00:20:05.920 So, you talk about a relapse into a kind of tribalism of idea ownership.

00:20:14.120 So, there's a disintegration of something that was unified into a more pluralistic tribal landscape.

00:20:20.940 Okay, so that's one of the things.

00:20:22.260 Let's identify some of the other characteristics of the collapse.

00:20:27.000 So, we could talk about purposeful and accidental subversion.

00:20:31.340 So, let's start with the Marxists with regard to purposeful subversion.

00:20:36.440 Okay, so Karl Marx split the world into oppressor and oppressed in an envious manner, presuming that all the moral virtue was with the oppressed and all the evil was with the oppressor and that that all could be understood from within the framework of economics.

00:20:57.660 So, the primary axis of oppression and oppressed for Marx was the economic axis.

00:21:05.320 And he presumed that the reason that that inequality between oppressor and oppressed exists was because of the structure of capitalism.

00:21:15.420 At least, that's what he claimed.

00:21:17.280 Now, whether or not he believed that is a whole different issue.

00:21:20.280 Okay, so now I want to take that in two directions.

00:21:23.280 I want to point to how that's metastasized into what I think is less than ideally conceptualized as cultural Marxism.

00:21:34.020 And I want to also discuss its precursors, its archetypal precursors.

00:21:38.440 Okay, so what seems to me to have happened, and I want your thoughts on this, is that Marx established the framework for an elaborated victim-victimizer narrative.

00:21:52.140 But he basically stuck to the economic realm when he made that case.

00:21:58.880 Now, as the revolution unfolded, what we found out was that the subversion of the capitalist order in favor of the oppressed only produced the universalization of poverty and produced no viable redistribution of equity or income. 0.81

00:22:17.440 And so, by the 1970s, the hollowness of the economic approach to the victim-victimizer had been demonstrated so thoroughly that even idiot Marxists in France were forced to accept it. 0.59

00:22:34.700 And so, you know the proof is compelling when a French intellectual is forced to swallow it.

00:22:40.640 And so, then what happened, as far as I could tell, is the postmodernists, who were all Marxist at their core, decided that there was no utility in beating the economic inequality drum anymore,

00:22:54.820 but that they could fragment the victim-victimizer narrative into a metastasis and say, well, the basic idea that it was a power dynamic that ruled everything was correct.

00:23:10.100 But we underestimated the seriousness of the power dynamic because it shows up in the relationship between men and women,

00:23:20.440 and it shows up in the patriarchal structure of the family, and it shows up in the dynamic of sex, and then the dynamic of gender and race and ethnicity.

00:23:30.120 So, all of a sudden, you had the same victim-

00:23:31.460 And colonization between countries.

00:23:34.780 Sure, sure, between races, between tribes.

00:23:37.200 You can understand the postmodern claim was that even though they purported to dispense with the idea of a superordinate meta-narrative,

00:23:50.780 they smuggled in the power narrative as the fundamental exploratory concept,

00:23:57.860 and then metastasized it to account for, to explain the relations between human beings, regardless of how they categorized themselves,

00:24:08.040 so that every group categorization became a locus of power and exploitation.

00:24:15.240 Right, and so now we have a metastatic Marxism.

00:24:17.880 Okay, so that's bringing it forward.

00:24:19.560 Now, I want to bring it backward, and you tell me what you think about this,

00:24:22.980 because I think Marxism itself is a variant of something deeper, much deeper.

00:24:31.200 So, there's a Marxist-like spirit that inverts the French Revolution soon after it occurs.

00:24:40.800 And so, and that was well before Marx, and I've been thinking more archetypally, let's say,

00:24:47.360 in relationship to fundamental stories, that Marxism is a variant, Marxism versus capitalism, let's say,

00:24:57.820 as a variant of the story of Cain and Abel, right?

00:25:02.500 Because Cain and Abel is really the first victim-victimizer narrative,

00:25:06.800 and it basically presents the human moral landscape,

00:25:11.980 because it's the first story about human beings in history, right?

00:25:16.320 Because Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, let's say.

00:25:19.860 Cain and Abel are the first two human beings that are born in the world of history,

00:25:24.880 and they develop modes of being that are antithetical to one another,

00:25:29.540 with Cain being the oppressed, angry, bitter, malevolent, murderous, and then genocidal victim,

00:25:36.420 and Abel being the successful, right, the successful individual who strives forward,

00:25:44.760 aims up, and makes the proper sacrifices.

00:25:47.100 Now, that's presented in the biblical corpus as the fundamental spiritual division,

00:25:54.240 and Cain's failure to make the proper offering, and then his rebellion against God,

00:26:00.140 like there's a Luciferian touch to that, and it's definitely something that attracted Marx.

00:26:06.420 Because Marx was an admirer of Mephistopheles, of Goethe's Mephistopheles,

00:26:13.760 and Mephistopheles was the variant of the usurping spirit whose motivation was nothing but destruction.

00:26:23.060 You know, you talked about the attack on all the levels of subsidiary society simultaneously, right?

00:26:30.900 I mean, the Marxists definitely planned that.

00:26:33.640 We can't have marriage because men and women are in a power battle. 1.00

00:26:37.540 We can't have families because the family is a patriarchal, oppressive institution.

00:26:42.300 We can't have communities because all powers should be ceded to the state, etc.

00:26:47.900 But it seems to me that all of that has that roots in that fundamental antagonism that's laid out initially in the story of Cain and Abel.

00:26:59.820 And what we are seeing is we're seeing variants of that story play out and also at an accelerated rate because of the rate of technological change.

00:27:08.840 So, well, so, I've been thinking about those things a lot.

00:27:13.160 That's what I've been lecturing about on this last tour.

00:27:15.440 And in part, that's what my new book is about.

00:27:17.940 So, I'm curious about your reaction, first of all, to the idea of a metastasizing Marxism.

00:27:23.960 And then to the idea that Marxism itself is a variant of a, it's a retelling of a more fundamental story.

00:27:33.520 So, fascinating.

00:27:35.100 And I'm glad you're doing this.

00:27:36.840 Okay, so, my two reactions then, just as I was listening to you, one thing that has occurred to me is Marx and his work and his legacy and what we've done with it.

00:27:54.980 So, you know this history better than I do.

00:27:58.540 But the reaction he was hoping for, he had created a new religion, Marxism, it failed because instead of people sticking, his followers, his own disciples sticking with his revolutionary goals, what sprung up is the reformists.

00:28:25.280 Basically, what I'm getting at, I'm schooled in political science, you're a psychologist, but it was, you know, the left and the right, the left divided up into these two branches.

00:28:34.480 And one branch is fully Marxist and revolutionary and committed to the revolution and the other one becomes reformist.

00:28:42.180 And I think that is the first defeat of the Marxist idea, that instead of overturning the capitalist system, you work within the capitalist system.

00:28:52.380 And through incremental means, everybody's life gets better.

00:28:56.760 So, that was the first defeat.

00:28:58.620 Up until 1989, that whole economic argument of take from the rich, give to the poor, falls apart when it becomes, I think, obvious.

00:29:11.760 If you stick with the material economic, the economic topic, that the Soviet Union collapses.

00:29:21.120 And not only does the Soviet Union all have satellites everywhere that these five-year plans touch, you have devastation, you have masses of deaths, you have concentration camps, you have starvation.

00:29:37.440 And then you look at the West and there's growth and so on.

00:29:44.560 So, in 1989, I think there's this sense, the winners, the victorious, those who are victorious, maybe you want to say, you were comparing Cain and Apple, you could say, those who are victorious make one big mistake in my view after 1989, which is they forget about it.

00:30:05.060 They think, they think, we've won this.

00:30:07.400 Right. History is over.

00:30:09.300 History is over.

00:30:10.580 Let's move on. 0.89

00:30:13.480 The loser, for the loser, history is never over. 0.96

00:30:17.780 For the loser, history begins when he loses. 0.97

00:30:20.460 He has to shake off all of this and come up and come back.

00:30:24.080 And they come back now with this idea of identity groups, of culture.

00:30:29.380 The person who can tell this way better than I can is James Lindsay, who has been through all of their creeds and screeds and is really eloquent in the way he tells this.

00:30:40.200 Right, right.

00:30:40.940 But they divert towards the culture thing.

00:30:43.040 But my takeaway as a relatively new Westerner is I come into this world of ideas, good ideas, bad ideas.

00:30:53.240 I'm 22 years old.

00:30:54.760 I'm trying to find an explanation for why are these rich countries rich and powerful?

00:30:58.960 Why are poor countries poor?

00:31:01.020 I was a Muslim, so it's like if we have the, as a Muslim, if I have God's last prophet, God's last book, God is on my side, then why are we poor and miserable and so on?

00:31:13.040 And so in that world of ideas, in the 1990s, when I'm going to university, I'm acquainted with the idea of national socialism that nearly destroyed European society and Western society.

00:31:26.160 And what follows after the defeat, listen to this, Jordan, after the defeat of national socialism, what happens is an intense process of de-Nazification.

00:31:38.680 In fact, using some of the tools of subversion that Bezmanov speaks about.

00:31:44.520 And after the process of de-Nazification, what follows is another reckoning of what was national socialism.

00:31:51.820 Why would a society as advanced as Germany fall victim to ideas that later on we all understood to be so destructive?

00:32:01.740 This is in my classrooms, okay?

00:32:04.700 This is what's happening.

00:32:05.720 I come into the West just as it's going through that reckoning of the idea.

00:32:11.160 And the idea is forensically scrutinized, and it becomes, after we fully understand what Hitler's ideas were, that this is something that would never and should never happen again.

00:32:28.980 Now, this is something we did not do to communism.

00:32:33.260 Right, right, right, right, definitely not, yeah.

00:32:36.160 After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was no campaign of de-communicization or de-Marxification of everything and anything.

00:32:47.020 There was no reckoning.

00:32:48.320 So up until, I think, 2002, 2003, we were still finding individuals who had been found to be active or sympathizers with Hitler.

00:33:00.800 We were trying them still.

00:33:02.500 We were still trying to go after them and put them in jail.

00:33:05.260 But we never did anything of the sort with Marxism.

00:33:10.080 So the first thing I noticed, the big thing is, of course, this terrible idea keeps recurring, and it metastasizes, and it manifests itself in different ways.

00:33:20.660 Because for the young generations, it never really has been here.

00:33:26.240 This is what Marxism led to the death toll.

00:33:29.460 I mean, we all have been schooled in how many people actually died.

00:33:33.420 But more interesting, I think more fascinating is the Nazi psyche. 0.69

00:33:38.980 Do you know, we explored it to the point that right now, there are conversations we can't have without everyone referencing Nazism.

00:33:50.380 In fact, I think one of the reasons why Europe is completely paralyzed when it comes to the issue of immigration is because there is this terror, this fear that they might fall again into that nasty collective madness of putting people in concentration camps.

00:34:08.040 We haven't done that to Marx.

00:34:11.940 We haven't done ideas of Marx and communism.

00:34:14.380 And I think it's a bit, we are a bit on the later side, but we should do it.

00:34:20.100 Well, okay.

00:34:21.060 So, well, you've got two issues there that run in parallel because, okay, three.

00:34:26.360 So, the first is your observation that we assumed too prematurely after 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union that the spirit of communism was dead and buried.

00:34:41.540 Right.

00:34:42.540 Right.

00:34:43.000 Now, if that spirit is a reflection of something far deeper, say, like the internal antagonism between Cain and Abel, then it's not going to be dead and buried, or at least it's not going to stay buried without a lot of work.

00:34:57.760 And your point is, well, we didn't do that work.

00:35:00.700 Now, we might have thought that the object lesson of the collapse of the Soviet Union, plus the capitalist transformation of China and the triumph of the democracies, was enough evidence that the West had something right. 0.86

00:35:16.080 But apparently, no.

00:35:18.360 No, the house cleaning wasn't deep enough.

00:35:21.400 Well, then you point out, though, that there's an additional problem, which is that we're not exactly sure how to handle internecine conflicts at a deep ideological level without falling prey to something like the worst excesses of the Nazi regime. 0.61

00:35:39.840 It's like, well, let's imagine, for example, that we did do something like a demarxification of the institutions.

00:35:46.380 I've been thinking about this in relationship to universities.

00:35:51.560 So, you know, when Musk took over Twitter and demarxified it, he fired like 80% of the people.

00:36:01.320 Now, I do not believe for a moment that an institution like Harvard can be reconstituted or restored when all of the same players are still in place,

00:36:14.780 and they're doing the same thing with different words.

00:36:18.260 Now, you know, I just met a couple of Harvard professors last week when I was in Boston who are at the forefront of the genuinely active free speech movement at Harvard.

00:36:29.540 They have, I think, 140 professors.

00:36:32.740 That number may be wrong, but it's a substantial number of professors who are pushing the administration hard.

00:36:38.880 Harvard and Harvard have, and Harvard has proclaimed in the last couple of weeks, like Stanford, I believe,

00:36:45.980 they've adopted an official position of institutional neutrality, at least with regard to their public utterances.

00:36:53.300 But there's all sorts of machinations still going on behind the scenes.

00:36:57.540 Okay, so what's my point?

00:36:58.880 Well, if 80% of the institutions are corrupt, and that's the accusation from the conservatives,

00:37:08.320 well, first of all, that risks falling into the hands of the radical leftists who say,

00:37:13.480 well, the institutions are corrupt, we told you so, and so that's a big problem.

00:37:18.060 But even worse, it's like if the corruption is as pervasive as you indicate, and I have every reason to agree with you,

00:37:27.000 then how is it even possible that these institutions can be restored and reconstituted?

00:37:32.740 And how is that possible without us falling into something like ideological persecution?

00:37:38.060 You know, like I watch Chris Ruffo in Florida, and I think Chris is aiming up,

00:37:44.320 and I like Ron DeSantis and think he's got a good moral keel,

00:37:48.560 but I could easily see that their attempts to exert legislative control from the top over the universities

00:37:57.340 could easily devolve into a counterproductive witch hunt.

00:38:02.120 And so, okay, so now what we're doing about what I'm doing about that, for example,

00:38:08.120 is we're launching Peterson Academy at the end of June,

00:38:11.040 and I'm involved with Ralston College in Georgia trying to generate institutions that offer an alternative,

00:38:21.120 but I don't have any idea at all how the institutions that are already in place can be demarxified.

00:38:29.220 So, you have your restoration enterprise, and that's devoted to the same thing,

00:38:35.500 but that doesn't help us with the nitty-gritty here.

00:38:38.240 It's like the K-12 education system is completely dominated by the worst possible students

00:38:45.520 of the worst faculty at the university, the faculties of education.

00:38:50.920 That's been going on for four generations, and it's completely corrupt at every possible level.

00:38:58.060 So, okay, what the hell do you do about that in a manner that, you know,

00:39:04.260 doesn't become oppressive and tyrannical in and of itself?

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00:40:14.780 Have at her. 0.99

00:40:19.360 What are your thoughts about that?

00:40:21.380 What I found wonderful about Besmanov's layout is that it allows you every time to take a step back

00:40:31.980 so that you don't become part of the subversion process yourself with what you're doing.

00:40:36.940 And I think that's what you're worried about is we don't want Christopher Ruffo,

00:40:43.960 who I think is doing admirable work by exposing the corruption and by showing he's—I just love his grit.

00:40:55.620 How do we stop—where do we stop?

00:40:59.500 You know, how do we not become part of—

00:41:01.680 I mean, he—

00:41:02.360 Right.

00:41:02.740 How do we not go too far?

00:41:04.620 How do we not go too far?

00:41:05.820 So I think if we just have—if we step back from that table that Besmanov lays out and you say,

00:41:15.840 okay, we are an open society.

00:41:19.180 He makes a distinction between open societies and closed societies.

00:41:22.320 And we know that the characteristics of an open society is that it's easier for the forces of subversion to access our institutions.

00:41:35.880 And not only to access those institutions, but actually to use the laws and the conventions of open societies to establish themselves within universities, K2, 12, and all the various—just within our society.

00:41:51.540 And so, we don't want to become closed societies.

00:41:58.580 We have to pay the price of being an open society and remaining an open society.

00:42:04.560 And one of those prices is this permanent vigilance where we can never forget what these ideological threats are.

00:42:12.600 But also, we must not allow ourselves to fall into this trap of everything is gone.

00:42:21.500 Because I think if you say all of these institutions are corrupt beyond repair, in a way, you do sort of propel the subversion further and you validate it.

00:42:35.280 And I think we have to look at what our strengths are.

00:42:41.120 And let's not forget, we have enormous resources.

00:42:46.760 For instance, the markets.

00:42:49.160 So, when the meltdown of our mainstream media, which is really a meltdown, the open society, what we responded is this independent media.

00:42:58.960 Obviously, Elon Musk is this giant who stood up to, not just by establishing Twitter, but using his power and his leadership to say, this is what I stand for.

00:43:12.740 So that his millions of followers know what his morals are and what his principles are.

00:43:19.200 So, for me, Elon Musk is the definition of courage, standing up to all his different forces, putting his own, almost his life at stake and his life's earnings.

00:43:31.580 And Elon Musk is this big visible guy, but there's so many people like that.

00:43:36.580 And I come across them every day.

00:43:38.940 So, we have all of these resources and starting new things like new universities, new media, I think that's a good thing, if only even to catch some of those people who despair of the existing institutions.

00:43:59.380 The brand Harvard is now tainted.

00:44:02.380 I think in many ways the brand Harvard is ruined.

00:44:05.520 But I don't think we should throw the baby with the bathwater.

00:44:08.200 We should not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

00:44:10.980 We should not declare that the Ivy League and all of the universities that we have in America and beyond in Western societies are beyond repair.

00:44:21.340 I think some of them are terminal and have stage four cancer.

00:44:25.640 And it will probably cost more to try and rescue them than to just let them die.

00:44:30.960 But I think there are many that can be rescued.

00:44:33.260 Ben Sass has made this very clear in Florida.

00:44:36.240 You just have to change the leadership in some of these places.

00:44:41.760 In other places, you have to go much deeper and turn around the demoralization process.

00:44:51.960 The places that are actually on the level of destabilization try to turn those things around.

00:44:57.000 But all of that starts with leadership.

00:44:59.180 Have you talked to John Chalmers by any chance?

00:45:07.100 I don't think I have.

00:45:08.640 Okay.

00:45:09.080 Well, he's a military strategist at West Point.

00:45:13.460 Yeah.

00:45:13.660 We just had a very interesting discussion, which you might want to check out, about how—see, it's very much related, for example, to this idea of denazification that you described.

00:45:26.160 So, in his analysis of the history of military endeavor, he's also thought through, from a strategic perspective, some of what's necessary in the transformation of institutions.

00:45:40.480 Because certainly it was the case that after Nazi Germany, most of the Germans—it wasn't like all the Germans who participated in some ways in the Nazi regime were all tried and executed or confined to perdition.

00:45:55.620 And most of them, except for a few leaders, were regarded as redeemable.

00:46:05.100 And the leadership transition happened at the top.

00:46:08.020 And Chalmers told me, you know, I asked him what he thought about the situation in Gaza, because so many of the Palestinians purport to support the Hamas regime and its aims.

00:46:22.920 And so, a pessimist might say, well, that has to be dealt with in the most severe possible manner.

00:46:31.240 And an optimist and hopefully a realist would say, well, no, if you're careful in analysis of the key people, you can produce a leadership change and then a transformation of spirit, let's say, that redeems people who've been possessed by these pathological ideas.

00:46:50.420 And then, like Germany or like Japan, which are stellar examples of this, obviously, and, well, South Korea, for that matter, at least in terms of economic transformation, that great things are still possible without institutional devastation.

00:47:09.620 So, that is a good vision of optimism, and I suppose Rufo did that to some degree by focusing his attention, for example, on Claudine Gay, which was an object lesson that perhaps many institutions took to heart.

00:47:25.460 And it's also, that is why the trajectory of restoration is, I hope, is one that is going to be fruitful.

00:47:34.780 And it's, I think we are in a place where, Jordan, I've never been more optimistic.

00:47:41.220 And the reason is because people are waking up, and they're waking, people who are, I mean, busy with their industries, busy with their art, with their music, with whatever it is that they were doing.

00:47:58.440 This subversion virus is touching on everyone's lives. 0.99

00:48:03.120 There are people who are happy to ignore these things because they hate trouble, they don't like politics, they don't want to be involved in other fields.

00:48:11.840 I'd say the general public in the West is, just loves going about their lives.

00:48:18.940 And, by the way, that is, you know, when we talk about freedom, most of us really think about that.

00:48:26.380 You know, we elect people who represent us, and we pay taxes, and I just want to get on with my life.

00:48:35.600 And that's no longer possible.

00:48:37.780 People are feeling affected in every way, shape, and form.

00:48:41.100 October 7th opened the eyes of many people.

00:48:46.000 Our friend Barry Wise, I remember, she said everyone went to bed on October 7th and was, what did she say, went to bed as a liberal and woke up as a conservative.

00:48:57.500 Yeah, well, we'll see.

00:48:59.940 You can put it as...

00:49:00.540 You know, it's funny, like, well, I wrote an article, which I'm going to read on my YouTube channel and publish on my blog.

00:49:09.600 I wrote an article, I'll just lay it out for you very quickly, because I guess it's a bit of a pushback against your optimism.

00:49:16.460 Although I share that optimism in a fundamental way, I don't want to get optimistic too early.

00:49:23.000 So, here's the basic outline of the argument.

00:49:26.220 So, and I sent it to the National Post in Canada, which always publishes what I wrote, and they took it and then rejected it.

00:49:36.120 And then I sent it to the Telegraph, which also always publishes what I send them.

00:49:41.060 And they took it and edited it and then rejected it.

00:49:44.100 So, this is what I said, you know, it's a very contentious piece.

00:49:49.720 So, I pointed to the fact that in the United States, something approximating 75% of the Jewish population supports the Democrats.

00:49:58.560 Now, the problem with that is the Democrats have allowed themselves to be infiltrated by the radicals, who they will not attend to and whose existence they deny.

00:50:11.800 And I know this full well, having worked on this issue for like five years and talked to hordes of moderate Democrats.

00:50:20.200 Oh, they don't really exist.

00:50:22.040 Oh, they don't really mean that.

00:50:23.680 It's like, yeah, they mean exactly what they're saying.

00:50:27.800 The radicals have adopted the victim-victimizer narrative.

00:50:32.260 Now, the problem with that for the Jews is that if we're going to play victim-victimizer,

00:50:38.920 and the victims are the people who are the victimizers, are the people who are successful,

00:50:44.640 then the Jews are first on the firing line, like they always have been since the time of Exodus, 0.99

00:50:52.620 because the Jews are the perpetually successful minority.

00:50:56.100 And I think that's why they're the canary in the coal mine,

00:50:59.220 is that when a society flips and the successful become the criminals, let's say, in the eyes of the ideologues,

00:51:07.980 the first criminals identified are the Jews, because they are overrepresented in positions of success.

00:51:16.980 And so part of what I suggested, and this is what Barry Weiss has realized, let's say,

00:51:23.140 is that the worst possible game for the Jewish community to play is any game that has anything to do with a victim-victimizer narrative.

00:51:33.340 Now, there's something also very interesting about that, like I've spent a lot of time looking at the Old Testament in recent years,

00:51:41.240 and there's something very interesting about the Israelites, at least insofar as they maintain their alliance with the prophetic tradition and the laws,

00:51:51.380 is that every time something untoward happens to Israel,

00:51:56.280 the prophets call upon the Jews to take personal responsibility for that and not to regard themselves as victims,

00:52:05.420 no matter what, to reestablish their covenant, so that would be this restoration,

00:52:11.600 and to proceed with cleaning up the, what would you say, the cancer in their own souls first.

00:52:18.500 And that always works.

00:52:21.140 And so, well, now you said that, you know, things shifted dramatically after October 7th,

00:52:27.360 but I'm wondering, like, and this is with regards to your optimism,

00:52:31.540 after October 7th, we saw the universities go so absolutely out of their mind that Kamani himself,

00:52:38.260 the president of Iran,

00:52:40.200 congratulated them on their efforts on his behalf and suggested that they started reading the, start reading the Koran.

00:52:49.660 We saw these encampments and occupations everywhere,

00:52:53.300 and that, man, I was just in D.C. this week, and there were huge pro-Palestine, pro-Iran demonstrations everywhere.

00:53:03.040 So, okay, so with all of that, what, why is it, do you think, that you're still optimistic?

00:53:12.000 Because it's outrageous like that.

00:53:14.580 The supreme leader of Iran, who shouts and compels his population to shout,

00:53:21.340 death with America for years, and who's been trying to achieve exactly that,

00:53:25.500 and been trying to achieve the destruction and annihilation of the state of Israel,

00:53:29.540 finding supporters in our Ivy Leagues and on our streets,

00:53:34.140 it's exactly these outrages that force the left in general,

00:53:42.200 and in particular the Democratic Party,

00:53:45.240 to face the reality that you have been trying to draw their attention to,

00:53:51.040 and that we've all been trying to draw.

00:53:52.960 So there is, there are two branches of the left,

00:53:57.140 the revolutionaries and the other reformists,

00:53:59.840 and the revolutionaries now seem to be on top,

00:54:04.520 because this, you call them moderates.

00:54:08.740 I think in academic jargon, they're the ones who are for reform.

00:54:13.520 They wouldn't say, defund the police,

00:54:15.980 they would say, let's see what's wrong with the police,

00:54:18.060 and let's tweak the institution, not bring the institution down.

00:54:21.220 So those moderates, most moderate lefts, moderate Democrats,

00:54:25.520 those who are for reform,

00:54:27.220 I think they're having reality rubbed in their noses now.

00:54:31.260 And it's happening not because of what you and I say,

00:54:35.360 but because of what these outrages that we're witnessing,

00:54:39.560 these so-called pro-Palestine protests,

00:54:42.340 they are not pro-Palestine protests,

00:54:44.180 they're pro-Hamas protests.

00:54:46.520 And they're seeing this for themselves,

00:54:48.440 the slogans, things that these people are shouting.

00:54:52.660 And not only just what they shout,

00:54:55.200 but I think even the tiniest amount of curiosity

00:54:58.880 will take you to go and take a peek at these syllabi,

00:55:04.080 the syllabuses that are taught in these universities.

00:55:07.720 What is it that these kids are learning?

00:55:09.700 And you go through these books, courses, images

00:55:12.220 that they are taught,

00:55:13.320 and you see immediately, left or right,

00:55:16.480 that there is something there that shouldn't be there.

00:55:19.080 And so I see this awakening.

00:55:21.040 I see these mega donors

00:55:22.820 who are giving billions and billions

00:55:25.820 to what they thought was social justice,

00:55:28.460 coming around and saying,

00:55:29.600 hang on a minute,

00:55:30.300 and many of them are Jewish.

00:55:32.700 And looking at this and thinking,

00:55:34.240 hang on a minute,

00:55:35.140 this is not what my philanthropy was about.

00:55:38.000 So I think there is a long-awaited audit

00:55:42.640 that is about to happen,

00:55:47.780 that is happening.

00:55:49.000 And so in order to get to this point of restoration,

00:55:51.880 we have to do the audit first.

00:55:54.380 And we have to do it together.

00:55:56.760 That is, the moderate lefts,

00:56:00.340 the moderate Democrats,

00:56:02.480 the moderate Republicans and conservatives,

00:56:04.260 it is those people on either side

00:56:07.220 of whatever the argument is of the moment

00:56:10.400 to actually freeze for a moment

00:56:13.980 some of these issues and say,

00:56:15.840 hang on, how do we cope with this enemy

00:56:19.240 that really wants to rip things apart,

00:56:21.880 these revolutionary groups?

00:56:24.900 And I see more and more people

00:56:27.240 asking these questions.

00:56:29.100 And what I find delightful

00:56:31.040 is that every time one of the people

00:56:33.580 who wasn't aware of these things

00:56:35.520 who wakes up,

00:56:37.160 he says,

00:56:37.840 I'm the fastest you see it.

00:56:40.140 And it doesn't matter.

00:56:41.380 It's great.

00:56:42.480 It's great.

00:56:43.080 Because they think,

00:56:43.860 why didn't I see it in the past?

00:56:45.520 I was having conversations

00:56:46.820 in 2005, 2006,

00:56:51.480 that if the Islamist-driven antisemitism

00:56:54.660 continues unchecked

00:56:56.800 in that infrastructure of da'wah,

00:57:00.300 where they're building mosques

00:57:01.440 and madrasas and preaching,

00:57:02.720 and then it went online,

00:57:04.420 if that goes unchecked,

00:57:06.400 all you have to do

00:57:07.520 is compare the numbers,

00:57:09.100 the number of Jewish people

00:57:10.160 in the West versus the number,

00:57:11.380 the increasing number

00:57:12.380 of Muslims that are being radicalized

00:57:15.020 through these da'wah efforts 1.00

00:57:16.260 and people who are converted

00:57:17.640 into Islam.

00:57:19.580 And down the road,

00:57:21.000 you are going to have

00:57:22.240 a huge problem.

00:57:24.360 And some of the people

00:57:25.980 I was talking to...

00:57:26.480 Well, we have it now already.

00:57:27.820 But I was saying this

00:57:29.540 in 2004, 2005.

00:57:31.860 Oh, yes.

00:57:32.240 Yes, yes, of course.

00:57:33.840 So, and the reason

00:57:35.400 for having those conversations

00:57:36.720 was they were making demands.

00:57:38.860 The political Islamists 0.88

00:57:39.960 were making demands

00:57:40.960 that the Holocaust 0.93

00:57:42.100 cannot be taught in school.

00:57:44.100 They're not talking

00:57:44.620 about Muslim schools.

00:57:45.840 They're talking about

00:57:46.340 public schools,

00:57:47.220 public schools

00:57:47.880 in the Netherlands,

00:57:49.060 in France,

00:57:49.680 in Germany, etc.

00:57:50.480 And the leaders

00:57:51.760 of that time

00:57:52.740 were through consensus,

00:57:55.020 trying to be nice

00:57:56.340 and accommodating,

00:57:57.540 were saying,

00:57:58.540 all right then,

00:58:00.400 we'll just not teach that.

00:58:02.620 That is 2004, 2005.

00:58:04.800 They were shouting

00:58:05.380 Hamas, Hamas, 0.91

00:58:07.180 Jews to the gas. 0.94

00:58:08.860 They were disrupting 0.96

00:58:10.100 the commemorations

00:58:13.980 to the death

00:58:14.860 of the people

00:58:15.360 who died during

00:58:15.960 the Second World War.

00:58:16.900 And all of that

00:58:19.480 was at that time,

00:58:21.480 15, 20 years ago,

00:58:23.360 it was seen as

00:58:25.060 it's going to pass.

00:58:28.580 The longer they live here,

00:58:30.300 the more they will

00:58:31.200 integrate and assimilate.

00:58:32.680 They will become like us.

00:58:35.000 Now, 20 years on,

00:58:36.420 no, we are becoming

00:58:37.600 like them.

00:58:39.240 And the people

00:58:39.660 who are waiting

00:58:40.060 Well, the same thing's

00:58:40.840 true of China.

00:58:42.320 Oh, yes.

00:58:43.100 We assumed that

00:58:43.820 if we brought China

00:58:44.740 into the West,

00:58:45.620 that China would become

00:58:46.580 Western.

00:58:47.220 And what's happening

00:58:48.240 instead is that

00:58:49.160 at the first hint

00:58:50.420 of serious trouble,

00:58:51.820 let's say,

00:58:52.380 the pandemic,

00:58:53.580 the so-called pandemic,

00:58:55.180 we became China.

00:58:56.940 And it's not obvious

00:58:58.680 at all that the

00:58:59.380 CCP is budging.

00:59:01.580 And it is absolutely

00:59:02.740 obvious that they're

00:59:03.820 building the eye

00:59:04.540 of Sauron

00:59:05.240 and would like to

00:59:06.340 produce a totalitarian

00:59:07.480 state so absolute

00:59:08.640 that we can hardly

00:59:09.940 even comprehend it.

00:59:11.580 And they're a long

00:59:12.440 way ahead

00:59:13.520 with doing that.

00:59:14.280 Okay, so let me

00:59:16.540 let me

00:59:17.240 to ask you

00:59:18.140 let's turn a bit

00:59:19.260 here.

00:59:19.900 We've done a bit

00:59:20.760 of diagnosis.

00:59:22.060 We've talked about

00:59:23.060 the pervasiveness

00:59:23.740 of the problem.

00:59:24.920 We've talked about

00:59:25.900 your hypothesis

00:59:26.980 that we have

00:59:28.780 to do a very

00:59:29.420 careful consideration

00:59:30.800 of the current

00:59:31.600 circumstance

00:59:32.200 and identification

00:59:33.120 of the leaders.

00:59:34.420 Let's say

00:59:34.920 we have to

00:59:37.480 confront

00:59:38.540 face-to-face

00:59:39.760 the pervasive

00:59:40.780 subversion

00:59:41.560 of our institutions.

00:59:43.100 We have to

00:59:43.660 separate the wheat

00:59:44.440 from the chaff

00:59:45.120 and re-establish

00:59:45.980 them.

00:59:46.720 And we have to

00:59:47.420 move towards

00:59:47.980 restoration.

00:59:49.240 You can see in

00:59:49.960 that sort of

00:59:50.520 a confession

00:59:51.580 what would you

00:59:53.480 say?

00:59:53.760 A confession

00:59:54.420 and a move

00:59:57.580 towards atonement.

00:59:59.540 And so

00:59:59.960 on the

01:00:01.120 restoration side

01:00:02.160 so let's

01:00:02.660 delve into that.

01:00:03.660 Now

01:00:03.820 the first

01:00:05.440 question might

01:00:06.260 be

01:00:06.660 well what

01:00:07.600 exactly are

01:00:08.560 we restoring?

01:00:09.380 And I've been

01:00:10.440 talking to

01:00:11.140 some of the

01:00:11.700 principals at

01:00:12.660 the Alliance

01:00:13.200 for Responsible

01:00:14.120 Citizenship

01:00:14.920 about exactly

01:00:16.400 this in the

01:00:17.160 last weeks

01:00:17.780 trying to

01:00:18.460 plot our

01:00:19.280 way forward.

01:00:20.100 And so

01:00:20.500 in the

01:00:22.080 Alliance for

01:00:22.680 Responsible

01:00:23.300 Citizenship

01:00:24.020 we identified

01:00:26.000 six or seven

01:00:27.120 key domains

01:00:28.060 right?

01:00:28.780 Restoration of

01:00:29.660 the nuclear

01:00:30.160 family

01:00:30.740 unapologetic

01:00:33.180 support for

01:00:33.940 the idea

01:00:34.420 that the

01:00:35.140 nuclear family

01:00:36.620 is the

01:00:37.020 minimal viable

01:00:38.040 social unit.

01:00:39.380 right?

01:00:40.600 We support

01:00:41.840 for the

01:00:42.180 notion that

01:00:42.740 energy should

01:00:43.500 be made

01:00:44.460 as low

01:00:45.340 cost and

01:00:45.920 freely

01:00:46.200 accessible

01:00:46.780 and what

01:00:48.080 easily

01:00:48.580 accessible to

01:00:49.420 people within

01:00:49.960 a market

01:00:50.400 framework as

01:00:51.060 possible so

01:00:51.820 that we can

01:00:52.360 work towards

01:00:53.400 eradicating

01:00:54.200 absolute

01:00:55.100 poverty.

01:00:56.500 Environmentalism

01:00:57.260 as stewardship

01:00:58.200 and not as

01:00:59.360 what would you

01:01:00.500 say apocalyptic

01:01:01.820 fear mongering

01:01:02.920 in the service

01:01:03.640 of the tyrants.

01:01:05.080 Concern about

01:01:06.000 globalization

01:01:07.240 and regulatory

01:01:08.680 capture and

01:01:09.620 fascist

01:01:10.420 corporate 0.95

01:01:11.000 capitalist

01:01:12.200 collusion.

01:01:15.220 The telling

01:01:16.140 of a better

01:01:16.640 story.

01:01:17.580 And we've

01:01:18.040 more recently

01:01:19.260 agreed that

01:01:20.020 all of that

01:01:20.660 is integrated

01:01:21.320 into something

01:01:22.180 approximating,

01:01:23.620 let's say,

01:01:24.120 your vision of

01:01:24.820 restoration is

01:01:25.720 that we're

01:01:26.020 trying to put

01:01:26.500 the underpinnings

01:01:27.680 of Western

01:01:29.840 civilization back

01:01:31.140 in place and

01:01:31.780 trying to make

01:01:32.380 a very strong

01:01:34.080 case,

01:01:35.340 including to

01:01:36.100 people like

01:01:36.640 Richard Dawkins

01:01:37.440 and Douglas

01:01:37.940 Murray,

01:01:38.420 and even

01:01:39.400 you in

01:01:40.060 some ways

01:01:40.720 until recently,

01:01:42.040 let's say,

01:01:42.860 that there is

01:01:44.080 a relationship

01:01:44.920 between the

01:01:45.720 foundations of

01:01:46.580 Western culture

01:01:47.300 and something

01:01:47.820 that's even

01:01:48.340 deeper that's

01:01:49.040 not political.

01:01:50.380 And so that's

01:01:50.960 the next thing

01:01:51.540 I wanted to

01:01:52.060 talk to you

01:01:52.560 about.

01:01:53.420 And maybe we

01:01:54.360 could approach

01:01:54.880 that,

01:01:55.940 I guess we

01:01:57.220 could approach

01:01:57.660 that personally.

01:01:58.680 Now, for a

01:01:59.700 long while,

01:02:00.560 in my

01:02:00.980 understanding,

01:02:02.140 after you

01:02:02.920 moved to the

01:02:03.740 West and

01:02:04.760 you became

01:02:06.540 more acutely

01:02:08.080 aware of the

01:02:09.000 advantages of

01:02:09.800 free discourse

01:02:10.520 and of the

01:02:12.060 tyrannical aspect

01:02:13.840 of the

01:02:14.680 philosophical

01:02:16.400 milieu that

01:02:17.380 you'd been

01:02:17.820 raised in,

01:02:18.900 you were

01:02:19.560 an admirer

01:02:21.580 of the West

01:02:22.800 but also

01:02:23.580 attracted towards

01:02:25.160 the more

01:02:25.560 atheistic

01:02:26.200 philosophy,

01:02:27.060 let's say,

01:02:27.480 that was put

01:02:27.940 forth by Dawkins

01:02:29.040 and Harris

01:02:29.680 and Hitchens

01:02:30.340 and the

01:02:31.660 horsemen of

01:02:32.320 the atheist

01:02:33.380 movement.

01:02:34.300 And so,

01:02:36.040 do you want

01:02:36.380 to walk us

01:02:36.900 through that

01:02:37.320 a little bit

01:02:37.820 if you would?

01:02:38.480 Before that,

01:02:39.040 I had Jonathan

01:02:39.820 Israel.

01:02:41.820 Yeah, I

01:02:42.540 mean, we

01:02:44.020 don't have

01:02:44.400 much time.

01:02:45.520 And I don't

01:02:45.980 want to make

01:02:46.520 a caricature

01:02:47.320 of this,

01:02:48.960 of what I

01:02:50.800 believe is

01:02:51.660 a very

01:02:52.260 important,

01:02:52.880 if not the

01:02:53.440 most important

01:02:54.420 aspect of

01:02:55.360 the restoration

01:02:56.680 is the

01:02:59.340 roots,

01:02:59.940 to seek

01:03:00.680 the roots,

01:03:01.760 I say

01:03:02.220 Christian,

01:03:02.860 sometimes we

01:03:03.460 say Judeo-Christian,

01:03:05.240 roots of

01:03:06.240 what has

01:03:07.160 made,

01:03:08.440 you know,

01:03:09.180 the foundations

01:03:09.900 on which

01:03:10.480 these societies

01:03:11.300 are built.

01:03:13.280 Yeah, well,

01:03:13.800 we'll take the

01:03:14.420 time, I'm not

01:03:15.040 going to rush

01:03:15.680 you, for sure.

01:03:16.500 I'd like to let

01:03:17.220 this unfold

01:03:17.880 because it's

01:03:18.320 crucially important.

01:03:19.920 Yeah.

01:03:20.760 On the

01:03:21.460 personal side,

01:03:22.420 as I have

01:03:23.060 told it a

01:03:23.940 few times,

01:03:24.860 and it's

01:03:25.260 very, very

01:03:26.000 personal,

01:03:26.480 I have

01:03:29.240 had

01:03:29.840 my own

01:03:32.960 awakening

01:03:33.920 that has

01:03:34.580 to do

01:03:35.080 with

01:03:36.000 mental

01:03:38.720 breakdown,

01:03:41.440 depression,

01:03:44.540 anxiety,

01:03:45.180 all of these

01:03:45.860 things, the

01:03:46.280 meaning and

01:03:46.780 purpose of

01:03:47.280 life,

01:03:48.520 and not

01:03:49.280 finding,

01:03:52.680 I just

01:03:53.660 couldn't find

01:03:54.300 it, I

01:03:54.600 didn't find

01:03:55.220 it in

01:03:56.200 the

01:03:56.360 material

01:03:56.800 world.

01:03:58.700 And to

01:03:59.100 give you

01:04:00.120 an example,

01:04:01.540 if you think

01:04:02.060 of someone

01:04:02.480 like me

01:04:03.080 who comes

01:04:03.700 from,

01:04:05.720 you know,

01:04:06.160 I grew up

01:04:06.580 in a

01:04:06.820 childhood

01:04:07.200 where there

01:04:07.700 was very

01:04:08.020 little,

01:04:10.080 little of

01:04:11.000 everything,

01:04:11.680 little food,

01:04:13.160 little water,

01:04:14.200 no water,

01:04:14.680 I mean,

01:04:14.880 we didn't

01:04:15.260 have running

01:04:15.800 water,

01:04:18.100 scarcity,

01:04:21.380 not,

01:04:22.500 there were

01:04:22.780 people who

01:04:23.120 were poorer

01:04:23.480 than us,

01:04:24.080 but we

01:04:24.360 were poor.

01:04:26.220 I remember

01:04:26.960 books,

01:04:27.500 I loved

01:04:28.120 books,

01:04:28.720 and they

01:04:29.000 weren't

01:04:29.220 books,

01:04:29.640 so,

01:04:29.800 you know,

01:04:30.000 sometimes

01:04:30.380 I would

01:04:30.840 finish a

01:04:33.180 book that

01:04:33.780 I borrowed

01:04:34.320 or that

01:04:35.060 we borrowed

01:04:36.040 from the

01:04:36.380 library,

01:04:36.880 and the

01:04:37.160 last few

01:04:37.620 pages,

01:04:38.320 which is

01:04:38.640 where the

01:04:38.920 resolution of

01:04:39.540 the story

01:04:39.980 is,

01:04:40.840 would have

01:04:41.400 fallen out

01:04:41.880 of that

01:04:42.220 book,

01:04:42.500 and I

01:04:42.740 would go

01:04:43.060 to a

01:04:43.480 bookshop,

01:04:44.180 pretend I

01:04:44.660 was buying

01:04:45.140 the book,

01:04:45.580 actually read

01:04:46.300 the last

01:04:47.360 pages in

01:04:48.860 the bookshop,

01:04:49.420 and then

01:04:49.640 leave, 0.75

01:04:49.980 until our

01:04:51.420 Indian

01:04:52.460 booksellers

01:04:54.280 noticed what

01:04:54.780 we were

01:04:55.020 doing and

01:04:55.360 chased us

01:04:55.780 out of

01:04:56.100 that level

01:04:57.940 of poverty,

01:05:00.200 and so

01:05:00.380 then I

01:05:00.700 come where

01:05:01.820 there's

01:05:02.140 plenty,

01:05:03.260 and I

01:05:03.600 find myself

01:05:04.280 in my

01:05:04.840 40s and

01:05:05.500 50s,

01:05:06.760 surrounded by

01:05:08.700 absolutely

01:05:09.100 everything,

01:05:09.540 materially,

01:05:10.000 completely

01:05:10.360 satiated,

01:05:12.440 happily married,

01:05:14.040 two children,

01:05:14.880 everything that you

01:05:15.600 would describe

01:05:16.180 would give

01:05:16.880 meaning and

01:05:17.760 purpose,

01:05:18.180 and yet

01:05:18.900 there I

01:05:19.320 was completely

01:05:20.240 depressed and

01:05:22.960 unhappy and

01:05:23.820 terrified and

01:05:25.140 all the rest

01:05:26.720 of it,

01:05:28.460 and I

01:05:30.940 was self-medicating,

01:05:31.960 I was self-medicating

01:05:32.880 with wine,

01:05:34.540 with alcohol,

01:05:35.640 and that was

01:05:36.680 where my

01:05:38.300 go-to

01:05:38.980 was that

01:05:40.040 actually

01:05:40.680 itself brought

01:05:41.800 me on the

01:05:42.220 brink of

01:05:42.540 destruction,

01:05:44.680 and I

01:05:46.040 sought

01:05:46.580 help,

01:05:47.660 and I

01:05:48.180 the help

01:05:49.660 went from

01:05:50.380 obviously

01:05:50.900 with me

01:05:51.840 focusing on

01:05:53.180 the material

01:05:55.860 again,

01:05:56.780 scientific

01:05:58.300 help,

01:05:59.360 I'm going

01:05:59.780 to see

01:06:00.400 people who

01:06:01.620 I trust

01:06:02.360 to be,

01:06:03.460 the professionals

01:06:04.280 who will

01:06:05.800 fix me,

01:06:07.420 and fix

01:06:07.920 this need,

01:06:08.820 and that

01:06:09.340 didn't happen,

01:06:11.080 they were

01:06:11.760 good people,

01:06:12.500 I learned a lot,

01:06:13.320 I learned a lot

01:06:14.120 about the human

01:06:14.780 brain,

01:06:15.340 the human

01:06:15.660 psyche,

01:06:16.140 I respect,

01:06:18.200 and I'm

01:06:18.940 still a

01:06:19.920 huge

01:06:20.720 admirer of

01:06:21.280 some of

01:06:21.580 the people

01:06:21.900 that I

01:06:22.280 saw,

01:06:23.220 but the

01:06:23.600 one person

01:06:24.360 who made

01:06:24.760 a change

01:06:25.260 was,

01:06:25.680 you're

01:06:26.280 looking in

01:06:26.780 the wrong

01:06:27.080 places,

01:06:28.680 her diagnosis

01:06:29.940 was,

01:06:31.780 what you're

01:06:32.200 going through

01:06:32.700 is,

01:06:33.600 it's

01:06:34.080 spiritual

01:06:34.600 bankruptcy,

01:06:35.060 and once

01:06:38.620 in my

01:06:39.460 sort of

01:06:40.380 last

01:06:40.880 moment

01:06:41.320 of

01:06:41.520 despair,

01:06:42.000 when I

01:06:42.280 allowed

01:06:42.820 that

01:06:43.240 to

01:06:44.100 come in

01:06:44.760 and to

01:06:45.340 register,

01:06:47.240 and I

01:06:49.620 surrendered

01:06:50.720 to that,

01:06:52.340 it's only

01:06:53.460 after that,

01:06:54.600 literally

01:06:55.360 on my

01:06:57.320 knees

01:06:57.760 in prayer,

01:06:59.640 that

01:07:00.120 things

01:07:00.740 started

01:07:01.140 to change,

01:07:01.940 and so

01:07:03.760 on a

01:07:04.220 personal

01:07:04.680 level,

01:07:05.540 and this

01:07:05.880 is

01:07:06.140 extremely

01:07:06.860 subjective,

01:07:07.620 I'm not

01:07:08.000 imposing it

01:07:08.640 on anyone

01:07:09.300 else,

01:07:10.700 I have

01:07:12.160 undergone

01:07:12.800 this change

01:07:14.000 that has

01:07:14.760 transformed

01:07:15.340 my life.

01:07:15.980 if you

01:07:20.320 allow me

01:07:20.880 to go

01:07:21.140 a little

01:07:21.540 bit

01:07:21.780 beyond,

01:07:22.480 it is

01:07:23.000 when I

01:07:23.660 look around

01:07:24.360 and talk

01:07:25.340 to the

01:07:26.260 same

01:07:26.640 people

01:07:27.180 who are

01:07:28.260 in the

01:07:28.480 same

01:07:28.700 boats

01:07:29.120 as I

01:07:29.920 am,

01:07:30.780 or as I

01:07:31.400 was,

01:07:32.880 the stories

01:07:34.840 we share

01:07:35.600 are stories

01:07:36.640 of this

01:07:38.580 abiding

01:07:39.220 success

01:07:39.960 over many

01:07:40.660 years,

01:07:42.280 and it's

01:07:42.920 the people

01:07:43.660 who went

01:07:44.440 down the

01:07:45.240 path of

01:07:45.760 spirituality

01:07:46.420 to fix

01:07:47.940 what it

01:07:49.660 was that

01:07:50.820 bottomless

01:07:51.540 of void,

01:07:52.800 the cravings,

01:07:53.960 the endless

01:07:54.820 thoughts that

01:07:56.260 colonize your

01:07:57.060 head and

01:07:57.480 never go 0.90

01:07:57.900 away.

01:07:59.460 So,

01:08:00.420 again,

01:08:01.180 this isn't

01:08:01.780 a statistical

01:08:02.760 empirical

01:08:05.460 study,

01:08:07.040 this is

01:08:07.660 purely

01:08:08.240 anecdotal.

01:08:09.260 I see

01:08:09.700 people who

01:08:10.360 keep on

01:08:10.900 failing,

01:08:11.920 I see

01:08:12.220 people who

01:08:13.100 I think

01:08:13.480 have some

01:08:14.380 success,

01:08:14.940 and I look

01:08:15.340 at them,

01:08:15.740 and it's

01:08:16.020 the ones

01:08:16.320 who went

01:08:16.600 down that

01:08:17.040 spiritual

01:08:17.480 path.

01:08:18.640 And when

01:08:19.080 I say

01:08:19.720 that,

01:08:20.180 when I say

01:08:20.700 spiritual

01:08:21.140 path,

01:08:21.560 I'm not

01:08:21.880 saying it's

01:08:22.420 Christianity

01:08:22.980 or any

01:08:24.500 other faith

01:08:26.000 or organized

01:08:26.560 faith,

01:08:26.900 it's just

01:08:27.340 for some

01:08:27.820 people,

01:08:28.380 it's

01:08:28.900 Buddhism, 0.94

01:08:29.520 for some

01:08:29.840 people,

01:08:30.380 it's

01:08:31.880 mindfulness

01:08:33.080 happiness.

01:08:36.080 Like

01:08:36.480 Harris,

01:08:36.980 for example.

01:08:38.460 Yeah,

01:08:39.020 and I

01:08:39.380 don't

01:08:39.540 think,

01:08:39.820 I don't

01:08:40.000 know,

01:08:40.240 I mean,

01:08:40.760 I haven't

01:08:41.040 really talked

01:08:41.440 to Sam

01:08:41.840 Harris about

01:08:42.360 his spiritual

01:08:43.280 welfare.

01:08:43.680 habit.

01:08:45.960 I've talked

01:08:46.620 to him a

01:08:46.940 bunch about

01:08:47.460 it,

01:08:47.680 you know,

01:08:47.960 and it's

01:08:48.320 clear that

01:08:48.820 Sam,

01:08:49.680 you know,

01:08:50.060 Sam has

01:08:50.640 found in

01:08:52.260 the realm

01:08:52.720 of something

01:08:54.320 approximating an

01:08:55.500 ineffable and

01:08:57.080 non-articulate

01:08:58.720 Buddhism, 0.94

01:09:00.120 the spiritual

01:09:01.000 succor that

01:09:02.080 materialist

01:09:03.500 atheism lacks.

01:09:04.600 And I think

01:09:05.380 the reason that

01:09:06.080 Sam was

01:09:06.760 attracted to

01:09:08.120 the more

01:09:08.840 abstract

01:09:11.500 religious

01:09:14.640 domains of

01:09:15.660 experience,

01:09:16.420 the ones that

01:09:17.020 aren't articulated

01:09:17.900 into a creed,

01:09:19.020 which is

01:09:19.300 something he

01:09:19.760 really still

01:09:20.300 rejects,

01:09:20.900 is because

01:09:21.240 Sam knows

01:09:21.860 perfectly well

01:09:22.620 that if

01:09:23.800 the transcendent

01:09:25.760 that he's

01:09:26.180 making contact

01:09:26.900 with through

01:09:28.060 his meditative

01:09:28.680 practice was

01:09:29.520 transformed into

01:09:30.380 a creed,

01:09:31.020 that his

01:09:31.540 ravenous

01:09:32.660 Luciferian

01:09:33.960 intellect would

01:09:34.680 just shred

01:09:35.400 it in a

01:09:35.840 moment and

01:09:36.320 he'd be right

01:09:36.860 back where he

01:09:37.540 started.

01:09:38.500 This is also

01:09:39.140 why I think

01:09:39.740 I am,

01:09:40.240 like,

01:09:40.720 if you look

01:09:41.220 on the

01:09:41.540 Christian

01:09:41.860 revival

01:09:42.360 side of

01:09:42.960 things,

01:09:43.840 that the

01:09:44.400 Christian

01:09:45.080 denominations

01:09:46.220 that are

01:09:46.560 growing most

01:09:47.300 rapidly

01:09:47.980 aren't the

01:09:49.640 more explicit

01:09:50.680 Protestant

01:09:51.440 formulations,

01:09:53.560 they're the

01:09:54.140 really conservative

01:09:55.360 branches like

01:09:57.620 Orthodox

01:09:58.080 Christianity and

01:09:59.080 even Latin

01:09:59.640 Mass Catholicism

01:10:00.820 because those

01:10:02.660 religious practices

01:10:03.700 are so

01:10:04.400 densely embedded

01:10:05.620 in the

01:10:06.280 ritual and

01:10:07.820 the ceremonial

01:10:08.720 that they're

01:10:09.240 almost impervious

01:10:10.220 to rational

01:10:11.040 critique,

01:10:12.120 right?

01:10:12.400 Because how

01:10:12.680 do you,

01:10:13.100 you can't

01:10:13.680 criticize a

01:10:14.460 hymn,

01:10:15.380 you can't

01:10:15.880 criticize a

01:10:16.580 beautiful building,

01:10:17.640 like,

01:10:18.000 they speak for

01:10:18.760 themselves.

01:10:20.220 And so,

01:10:21.440 and so,

01:10:22.100 so let me ask you

01:10:23.420 a personal

01:10:23.900 question if

01:10:24.680 you're perfectly

01:10:26.360 welcome not to

01:10:27.140 answer.

01:10:27.380 on Sam and

01:10:28.860 see,

01:10:29.780 I think,

01:10:30.380 I think

01:10:30.940 Sam is,

01:10:32.540 he's just

01:10:33.560 got this

01:10:34.080 commitment to

01:10:35.460 the pursuit

01:10:35.940 of truth.

01:10:37.340 And so,

01:10:38.200 I haven't spoken

01:10:38.840 to him since

01:10:39.660 my conversion,

01:10:40.600 and I'm going

01:10:41.080 to make the

01:10:41.620 effort,

01:10:41.780 I've been very

01:10:42.280 busy,

01:10:42.660 I know he's

01:10:43.500 also very,

01:10:44.120 very busy,

01:10:44.840 but I would

01:10:45.200 be really

01:10:45.640 fascinated to

01:10:46.340 have a

01:10:46.600 conversation with

01:10:47.280 him about it

01:10:48.000 because,

01:10:48.420 yes,

01:10:50.240 that's necessary.

01:10:51.480 He is just

01:10:52.100 so,

01:10:52.700 so committed

01:10:53.360 to it,

01:10:53.840 and so when

01:10:54.340 we talk

01:10:55.120 about these

01:10:55.580 different levels

01:10:56.340 of consciousness

01:10:57.160 and different

01:10:58.360 levels and

01:10:59.020 planes of

01:10:59.580 perception,

01:11:00.660 I am so

01:11:01.440 curious to

01:11:02.140 know what

01:11:02.960 he thinks

01:11:03.480 of that,

01:11:03.860 what he

01:11:04.140 would say

01:11:04.580 about that.

01:11:05.240 I've spoken

01:11:05.820 to Richard,

01:11:07.060 Richard is

01:11:07.560 also another

01:11:08.420 pursuer of

01:11:09.160 truth,

01:11:09.580 and I think

01:11:10.000 in many ways

01:11:10.660 that's why

01:11:11.200 Richard has

01:11:12.060 come to the

01:11:12.700 conclusion that

01:11:13.380 he is a

01:11:14.480 cultural Christian

01:11:15.680 and that

01:11:16.240 Christianity

01:11:16.640 has a value

01:11:18.960 in that sense.

01:11:20.540 But again,

01:11:20.980 I really do

01:11:21.480 want to

01:11:21.920 separate these

01:11:23.100 two things

01:11:24.460 where I'm

01:11:26.480 still at

01:11:27.000 heart a

01:11:27.380 classical

01:11:27.780 liberal in

01:11:28.380 the sense

01:11:28.720 I really

01:11:29.300 do want

01:11:29.700 to respect

01:11:31.100 people's

01:11:32.820 conscience

01:11:33.740 and people's

01:11:34.940 perceptions

01:11:37.980 and the way

01:11:38.680 people live,

01:11:39.360 and so I'm

01:11:40.620 in no way

01:11:41.500 imposing anything

01:11:43.080 saying,

01:11:43.660 oh,

01:11:44.300 you know,

01:11:45.100 I've gone

01:11:45.820 through this

01:11:46.700 terrible

01:11:48.520 experience and

01:11:49.320 I've come

01:11:49.800 out of it

01:11:50.380 and now,

01:11:51.500 heavens,

01:11:52.180 everybody has

01:11:52.740 to come

01:11:53.020 to Christianity.

01:11:54.100 That's not

01:11:55.500 what I'm

01:11:56.060 saying.

01:11:57.440 I'm saying

01:11:58.360 in my

01:11:59.100 work,

01:11:59.640 in the

01:12:00.020 realm of

01:12:00.720 ideas and

01:12:02.120 in this

01:12:02.980 quest to

01:12:03.740 understand

01:12:04.520 subversion,

01:12:05.380 who is

01:12:05.620 subverting

01:12:06.080 us and

01:12:06.540 all of

01:12:06.940 this,

01:12:08.700 Christianity

01:12:09.460 is one

01:12:12.520 of probably

01:12:13.600 the most

01:12:14.400 important

01:12:14.860 idea for

01:12:15.880 us to

01:12:16.520 grasp.

01:12:17.780 Even if I

01:12:18.460 were an

01:12:18.840 atheist,

01:12:19.340 I would

01:12:19.600 say that.

01:12:20.140 the most

01:12:21.320 important

01:12:21.700 ideas to

01:12:22.580 grasp because

01:12:23.660 it takes

01:12:24.600 us to

01:12:25.640 the roots

01:12:26.320 of our

01:12:28.080 civilization.

01:12:29.220 And if

01:12:29.440 you want

01:12:29.880 to reject

01:12:30.600 parts of

01:12:31.460 it,

01:12:32.140 that's

01:12:32.580 okay,

01:12:33.300 but I

01:12:33.800 think the

01:12:34.220 wholesale

01:12:34.700 rejection of

01:12:36.060 Christianity

01:12:36.700 and its

01:12:37.240 legacy is

01:12:38.540 precisely what

01:12:39.400 brought us

01:12:39.840 where we

01:12:40.180 are.

01:12:41.220 That's why

01:12:41.920 we're in

01:12:42.280 the sorts

01:12:42.680 of trouble

01:12:43.080 we are

01:12:43.480 in.

01:12:43.640 One of

01:12:46.280 the things

01:12:46.660 that I've

01:12:47.020 come to

01:12:47.360 realize,

01:12:48.120 tell me

01:12:48.500 what you

01:12:48.760 think about

01:12:49.200 this,

01:12:49.640 this took

01:12:50.920 a lot

01:12:51.220 of thought

01:12:51.640 to conjure

01:12:52.260 up.

01:12:53.520 I guess

01:12:54.300 it was

01:12:54.940 brought home

01:12:55.520 to me

01:12:56.000 with particular

01:12:57.640 force.

01:12:59.020 I did a

01:12:59.740 documentary

01:13:00.240 with Jonathan

01:13:01.080 Paggio in

01:13:02.200 Jerusalem,

01:13:03.620 and we

01:13:05.020 walked the

01:13:05.740 stations of

01:13:06.420 the cross,

01:13:07.200 and then we

01:13:07.820 ended up in

01:13:08.780 the Church

01:13:09.640 of the Holy

01:13:10.160 Sepulcher.

01:13:10.800 and I

01:13:12.320 learned some

01:13:12.940 things about

01:13:13.480 that church

01:13:14.140 that I

01:13:14.640 didn't know

01:13:15.340 historically.

01:13:17.600 So I

01:13:18.300 didn't know

01:13:18.800 that it was

01:13:19.280 founded by

01:13:20.080 Constantine's

01:13:20.960 mother,

01:13:21.980 and I

01:13:22.560 didn't know

01:13:23.080 that it

01:13:23.400 was really

01:13:23.900 the first

01:13:24.720 Christian

01:13:26.640 church,

01:13:28.200 and it's

01:13:29.100 on the

01:13:29.480 site,

01:13:30.020 it purports

01:13:30.600 to be on

01:13:31.060 the site

01:13:31.440 of the

01:13:31.740 crucifixion.

01:13:33.060 Okay,

01:13:33.260 so when I

01:13:34.000 was there,

01:13:34.500 a bunch

01:13:34.780 of images,

01:13:36.620 so I was

01:13:37.000 in the

01:13:37.320 church,

01:13:37.700 and then I

01:13:38.020 was in the

01:13:38.440 center of

01:13:38.880 the church,

01:13:39.240 and then I

01:13:39.660 was in a

01:13:40.400 small room

01:13:41.160 at the

01:13:42.060 very center

01:13:42.740 of the

01:13:43.060 church that

01:13:43.660 contained a

01:13:44.800 cross,

01:13:45.620 a very

01:13:46.020 elaborate

01:13:46.760 cross,

01:13:47.380 and so I

01:13:47.820 was in

01:13:48.200 the center

01:13:49.360 of the

01:13:49.880 center of

01:13:50.860 the center

01:13:51.380 of the

01:13:51.800 center,

01:13:52.260 let's say,

01:13:53.160 and a

01:13:54.240 bunch of

01:13:54.580 things fell

01:13:55.160 into place,

01:13:55.820 realizations

01:13:56.360 fell into

01:13:56.920 place.

01:13:57.340 So the

01:13:58.020 first thing

01:13:58.440 I understood

01:13:58.960 was that

01:13:59.700 European

01:14:00.760 towns were

01:14:02.780 based on

01:14:03.600 the model

01:14:04.060 that was,

01:14:05.420 if not

01:14:06.240 established,

01:14:06.940 at least

01:14:07.340 substantively

01:14:08.520 elaborated upon

01:14:09.780 by Constantine's

01:14:10.660 mother,

01:14:11.200 we have

01:14:11.640 a ceremonial

01:14:13.220 building in

01:14:13.820 the shape

01:14:14.200 of a cross

01:14:14.880 at the

01:14:15.480 center of

01:14:16.020 the town,

01:14:17.200 and so it's

01:14:18.380 the staff in

01:14:19.140 the ground

01:14:19.520 around which

01:14:20.040 the town is

01:14:20.940 organized,

01:14:21.980 and in the

01:14:23.080 center of

01:14:23.660 the church,

01:14:25.400 we have an

01:14:26.280 altar that's

01:14:26.940 the center,

01:14:28.040 and on that

01:14:29.080 there's a

01:14:30.080 ritual of

01:14:31.080 sacrifice being

01:14:32.120 conducted,

01:14:32.840 and so what

01:14:33.900 we're acting

01:14:34.440 out is the

01:14:35.120 proposition that

01:14:36.240 sacrifice is the

01:14:38.480 core of the

01:14:39.220 community.

01:14:40.520 And so now

01:14:41.000 I've been

01:14:41.400 thinking about

01:14:42.020 that biologically

01:14:43.040 because I'm

01:14:44.140 an evolutionary

01:14:45.040 psychologist,

01:14:46.540 let's say,

01:14:47.260 at least in

01:14:47.940 part, and

01:14:49.080 what I've

01:14:50.040 come to

01:14:50.420 understand is

01:14:51.200 that there's

01:14:52.580 no difference

01:14:53.600 between the

01:14:54.280 process of

01:14:55.060 true cortical

01:14:55.960 maturation and

01:14:58.060 the process of

01:14:59.000 self-sacrifice.

01:15:00.360 They're the

01:15:01.060 same thing

01:15:01.700 because to

01:15:03.040 be in a

01:15:03.780 community,

01:15:05.440 you have to

01:15:06.240 give up what's,

01:15:07.080 you have to

01:15:07.780 offer up

01:15:08.540 what's narrowly

01:15:09.640 individual,

01:15:11.860 right?

01:15:12.240 So when you

01:15:13.240 socialize a

01:15:14.460 toddler, you

01:15:16.260 help the

01:15:16.840 toddler integrate

01:15:18.680 his or her

01:15:19.780 primordial

01:15:20.620 biological urges,

01:15:23.080 their intrinsic

01:15:25.680 hedonism, you

01:15:27.220 help them

01:15:27.660 integrate that

01:15:28.680 into a

01:15:29.780 framework that

01:15:30.620 enables them to

01:15:31.680 understand that

01:15:33.160 they have a

01:15:33.700 future and can't

01:15:34.820 act to destroy

01:15:35.720 that and

01:15:36.760 understand that

01:15:37.560 they have to

01:15:38.080 exist in

01:15:39.440 relationship to

01:15:40.380 other people.

01:15:41.960 And so that's

01:15:42.360 a kind of

01:15:42.800 harmony, it's a

01:15:43.540 sacrificial harmony.

01:15:44.820 And so what

01:15:45.780 that means, if

01:15:46.840 that's true, and

01:15:47.600 I can't see how

01:15:48.620 it can be not

01:15:49.840 true, is that

01:15:51.220 society itself is

01:15:53.420 based on the

01:15:54.540 principle of

01:15:55.100 sacrifice.

01:15:56.140 Work is

01:15:56.720 sacrifice because

01:15:57.600 you sacrifice the

01:15:58.600 pleasures of the

01:15:59.720 moment to the

01:16:00.700 community in the

01:16:01.480 future, right?

01:16:02.640 And the

01:16:03.000 community itself is

01:16:04.060 a form of

01:16:05.040 sacrificial

01:16:05.760 organization.

01:16:07.060 So then if you

01:16:07.740 accept that, and

01:16:09.040 I can't see how

01:16:10.120 you can formulate an

01:16:11.100 argument to the

01:16:11.700 contrary, if you

01:16:13.060 accept that, the

01:16:14.200 next question that

01:16:15.380 emerges is, well,

01:16:17.180 what's the ultimate

01:16:18.140 or ideal form of

01:16:19.580 sacrifice?

01:16:20.440 And the

01:16:21.140 Christian passion is

01:16:22.360 a portrayal of

01:16:23.740 something approximating

01:16:27.140 the final sacrifice,

01:16:28.480 right?

01:16:28.700 It's a union of

01:16:29.720 sacrifice of child

01:16:31.020 and self, so

01:16:32.600 those are the two

01:16:33.240 most brutal forms

01:16:34.200 of sacrifice.

01:16:35.640 It's a rejection

01:16:37.900 of power in

01:16:40.020 relationship to that

01:16:41.080 sacrifice, so

01:16:41.960 there's no

01:16:42.680 indication whatsoever

01:16:44.680 that the

01:16:45.180 fundamental uniting

01:16:47.520 principle of

01:16:48.600 the Christian world

01:16:51.340 is power.

01:16:52.280 Quite the

01:16:52.820 contrary, because

01:16:53.680 Christ never

01:16:54.380 resorts to power

01:16:55.320 regardless of the

01:16:56.240 provocation.

01:16:57.740 And so what we

01:16:58.340 have at the core of

01:16:59.160 our culture is the

01:17:00.520 recognition that

01:17:01.360 sacrifice is

01:17:02.240 central, and then

01:17:03.860 the elaboration of

01:17:05.140 a pattern of

01:17:05.760 ultimate sacrifice

01:17:06.860 that involves

01:17:07.680 something like

01:17:09.960 exposing yourself to

01:17:11.320 the full force of

01:17:13.320 mortal vulnerability

01:17:14.280 and the full reality

01:17:15.800 of evil.

01:17:16.460 That's the harrowing

01:17:17.480 of hell.

01:17:18.460 And as far as I can

01:17:19.340 tell, I've written

01:17:19.980 all this out in great

01:17:20.880 detail in this new

01:17:21.820 book of mine, by the

01:17:22.660 way, as far as I can

01:17:24.020 tell, I can't see

01:17:25.920 anything about that

01:17:27.120 that's not in keeping

01:17:28.680 with what we know

01:17:29.640 at the deepest

01:17:30.260 levels in the

01:17:31.700 world of evolutionary

01:17:32.720 psychology, and I

01:17:34.320 can't see anything

01:17:35.260 about it that's

01:17:36.020 erroneous on the

01:17:36.780 conceptual side.

01:17:38.000 Because how could

01:17:38.720 community be anything

01:17:39.880 other than the

01:17:40.580 result of the

01:17:42.680 sacrificial gesture

01:17:43.720 on the part of the

01:17:44.460 individual?

01:17:44.940 I mean, if you're a

01:17:46.160 wife, you sacrifice

01:17:47.940 your whims to the

01:17:49.520 marriage.

01:17:50.560 If you're a mother,

01:17:51.580 you sacrifice your

01:17:52.720 narrow self-interest

01:17:53.680 to your children.

01:17:54.840 If you're a family

01:17:56.040 in relationship to

01:17:56.980 other families, you

01:17:58.420 sacrifice the narrow

01:17:59.900 interest of your

01:18:00.700 family to the harmony

01:18:01.740 of the community, and

01:18:02.960 so on, all the way up

01:18:04.260 the subsidiary hierarchy.

01:18:05.980 And, you know, at the

01:18:07.680 end of Tolstoy's

01:18:08.740 Confessions, I don't

01:18:10.240 know if you ever read

01:18:10.940 that, but it details

01:18:13.700 something very much like

01:18:15.940 what you described

01:18:16.700 happening to you.

01:18:18.520 So, Tolstoy became

01:18:20.520 suicidally desperate at

01:18:22.500 the height of his fame

01:18:23.580 and earthly material

01:18:25.900 success.

01:18:27.180 He was an unbelievably

01:18:28.300 rich man.

01:18:29.100 He was known all over

01:18:30.000 the world.

01:18:31.220 He was a great literary

01:18:32.220 figure.

01:18:32.780 People compared him to

01:18:33.740 Shakespeare.

01:18:34.520 He had a wife and a

01:18:35.440 flourishing family.

01:18:36.560 Like, on the purely

01:18:38.140 material front, Tolstoy

01:18:40.240 had it nailed.

01:18:41.780 And he was so suicidal

01:18:43.380 that he was afraid to

01:18:45.200 walk alone around his

01:18:46.760 estates.

01:18:48.440 And he had a dream.

01:18:51.840 And this is how

01:18:52.480 Confessions end.

01:18:53.340 He dreamt that he was

01:18:54.840 suspended in an immense

01:18:56.120 space and he was

01:18:57.000 looking down into the

01:18:58.760 abysmal, bottomless pit

01:19:00.860 of despair, let's say.

01:19:02.740 But he was suspended.

01:19:04.840 And he turned around and

01:19:06.600 looked up and realized

01:19:07.700 that there was a cord

01:19:08.720 around his waist made of 0.78

01:19:10.600 gold.

01:19:11.380 And the cord extended

01:19:12.620 upward into the sky,

01:19:14.580 past where he could see.

01:19:16.700 And so he was suspended

01:19:18.020 over the abyss of despair

01:19:20.160 by a relationship with what

01:19:22.600 was transcendent and

01:19:24.280 highest, right?

01:19:25.520 It's like an image of

01:19:26.340 Jacob's ladder.

01:19:28.680 That extends up into the

01:19:30.780 ineffable stratospheres

01:19:33.080 that is our ally, you

01:19:35.320 might say, is our ally

01:19:36.560 against what?

01:19:38.800 The terror of mortality and

01:19:40.420 malevolence.

01:19:41.620 And as far as I can tell,

01:19:43.280 too, that that's not some 0.92

01:19:45.440 ignorant superstition. 0.99

01:19:47.080 That's a foolish way of 1.00

01:19:48.200 considering it. 0.96

01:19:48.900 It's actually the way the

01:19:50.620 proper order of the cosmos

01:19:52.580 is constituted.

01:19:53.960 And, okay, now you talked to

01:19:56.120 Dawkins, right, publicly in

01:19:58.460 New York.

01:19:59.060 And you were friends, I believe.

01:20:01.240 Yes, we are friends.

01:20:02.160 And I presume still are.

01:20:02.720 And so, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:20:04.340 So tell me about that

01:20:05.980 conversation and how it

01:20:07.940 went and what you

01:20:08.820 concluded.

01:20:09.620 And it's such a fascinating

01:20:11.360 thing to have happen.

01:20:12.500 And I'd love to see you

01:20:13.380 talk to Sam Harris.

01:20:15.040 Well, what I concluded is

01:20:16.280 what I started off with when

01:20:17.800 we started this

01:20:18.900 conversation, which is

01:20:20.380 that I think it is

01:20:24.640 always a wonderful

01:20:26.000 experience to have,

01:20:28.940 to come at a subject

01:20:32.140 from these radically

01:20:33.700 different viewpoints

01:20:34.820 and hold your

01:20:37.760 viewpoints and argue

01:20:38.740 for your viewpoints

01:20:39.760 and maintain the level

01:20:41.880 of mutual affection

01:20:44.700 and respect and

01:20:45.980 friendship.

01:20:47.820 And so, for me,

01:20:49.360 that was really,

01:20:51.380 it was very, very

01:20:52.400 important that Richard

01:20:54.040 and I demonstrated

01:20:55.920 that.

01:20:56.880 And, again, that's

01:20:58.280 what we're trying to

01:20:59.000 restore.

01:21:00.380 What else?

01:21:02.140 Richard ended with a

01:21:06.320 sentence, if you watch

01:21:07.500 that, where he says,

01:21:09.020 okay, so he's not

01:21:12.480 convinced.

01:21:13.380 He thinks, of course, 0.98

01:21:14.280 it's a heap of nonsense. 0.91

01:21:16.120 But still, he says, 0.62

01:21:17.520 he does recognize the

01:21:20.780 difference between

01:21:21.760 Islam and Christianity.

01:21:23.880 He does recognize the

01:21:25.660 threat of political Islam. 0.95

01:21:27.120 and his conclusion was,

01:21:29.860 maybe we should take

01:21:30.920 something small to

01:21:32.560 inoculate us against 0.90

01:21:33.740 the larger virus.

01:21:35.660 Now, different people may

01:21:36.740 take that differently,

01:21:38.680 but I think that's coming

01:21:41.100 from...

01:21:41.120 You mean, like a wafer,

01:21:42.520 something small like a

01:21:43.600 wafer.

01:21:44.160 Like that small, you mean?

01:21:45.660 Yeah, well, that's...

01:21:48.340 But that's exactly the

01:21:49.560 symbol.

01:21:50.480 That's the mustard seed that

01:21:51.900 Christ talks about, right?

01:21:53.080 That's something small.

01:21:54.240 It's like, it's small,

01:21:55.400 right, but it's alive.

01:21:56.660 And don't underestimate

01:21:57.720 its power.

01:21:59.300 And so, see, the thing

01:22:01.480 that I see as telling

01:22:04.020 about Dawkins, I

01:22:05.420 wouldn't say admission,

01:22:06.480 but realization, right,

01:22:08.340 that he's a cultural

01:22:09.040 Christian.

01:22:09.480 It's like, okay, when

01:22:11.220 you're pushed against the

01:22:12.440 wall, would it be the

01:22:14.300 Christians or the Islamic 1.00

01:22:15.500 fundamentalists that you

01:22:16.860 choose?

01:22:17.860 And Dawkins looks at that

01:22:19.000 and he thinks, well, I

01:22:19.700 can't even talk about the

01:22:20.760 Islamic fundamentalists,

01:22:22.020 and at least I can 0.89

01:22:22.840 criticize the Christians. 0.99

01:22:24.020 So, there's something

01:22:25.200 they're doing right.

01:22:26.520 It's like, okay, there's

01:22:28.300 something they're doing

01:22:29.280 right.

01:22:30.340 Yeah, okay, that means

01:22:31.500 there's a right there

01:22:33.140 that isn't in the other

01:22:34.480 domain, the domain of

01:22:35.640 fundamentalist power,

01:22:36.760 let's say.

01:22:37.200 Well, what is that

01:22:38.780 leaving, that small

01:22:41.860 thing that makes

01:22:43.880 Christianity in its

01:22:45.180 Western form preferable 0.78

01:22:46.500 to fundamentalist

01:22:47.660 tyranny?

01:22:49.260 Well, it's not

01:22:49.880 something little, it's

01:22:50.760 something absolutely

01:22:51.840 fundamental and vital,

01:22:53.800 right?

01:22:54.100 And so, it seems to me

01:22:55.120 that it's incumbent on

01:22:56.200 Dawkins to really

01:22:57.240 understand just exactly

01:22:59.120 why, when push comes

01:23:00.560 to shove, that he's a 0.61

01:23:01.540 cultural Christian.

01:23:03.140 And so, well, I'll

01:23:04.460 leave that. 0.85

01:23:05.620 Well, yeah, and I

01:23:07.760 think also, so, my

01:23:09.820 other takeaway was that

01:23:10.980 he, we were coming

01:23:13.840 at it from, I had, I

01:23:16.200 was an atheist just

01:23:17.200 like him, and then, and

01:23:18.540 I didn't, when I was an

01:23:19.540 atheist, did not accept 0.97

01:23:21.040 the existence of these

01:23:24.120 different planes of

01:23:25.500 consciousness or

01:23:26.540 perception or what have

01:23:29.180 you, didn't have the

01:23:29.940 language for it.

01:23:30.640 And by the way, I was

01:23:31.460 also in a state of

01:23:32.520 rebellion.

01:23:34.460 I was, and I didn't

01:23:36.880 want that, and so, the

01:23:39.040 statements, all religions

01:23:40.360 are the same, were ones

01:23:43.280 that I sort of lazily

01:23:44.660 accepted.

01:23:47.300 And I think Richard now

01:23:49.560 recognizes, no, not all

01:23:50.780 religions are the same.

01:23:52.400 A, and B, I hope, I hope

01:23:54.880 that he also recognizes, I

01:23:56.240 don't know, we didn't get

01:23:57.020 anywhere with that, but I

01:23:58.560 think the conversation

01:23:59.400 started with, there are

01:24:01.300 different ways of

01:24:02.140 appreciating reality, and

01:24:04.360 you know, we cannot

01:24:07.380 have an experiment

01:24:12.720 that will measure as

01:24:15.260 accurately as possible

01:24:16.580 the impact of music

01:24:18.820 on your psyche, on your

01:24:22.480 perception, or the

01:24:24.080 appreciation of works of

01:24:25.660 art, or there are so

01:24:27.380 many ways of appreciating

01:24:29.280 reality that is not, you

01:24:32.000 know, the purely

01:24:34.060 reducible, naturalistic,

01:24:36.800 yeah, empirical science,

01:24:39.620 the falsifiable and the

01:24:41.460 verifiable.

01:24:43.200 There's that whole story

01:24:44.180 of what if we rewind the

01:24:45.360 tape, would things look

01:24:47.820 the same or not?

01:24:48.860 We can't do that.

01:24:51.240 And so, it's also, we've

01:24:54.080 got to be very careful

01:24:54.940 because I think we are

01:24:58.800 having discussions about

01:25:02.520 religion and history and

01:25:06.460 so on, and we're using

01:25:07.860 the standards of today.

01:25:10.100 This is one of the things

01:25:11.380 that I think is

01:25:12.240 despicable about the woke,

01:25:15.220 is they haul people from

01:25:17.180 the past and judge them by

01:25:19.440 the merits and by the

01:25:20.320 standards and by the

01:25:22.640 insights of today.

01:25:23.840 Yes.

01:25:25.080 Well, and the people doing

01:25:26.220 that comparison always come

01:25:27.540 out ahead on the personal

01:25:28.800 side, which is, you know,

01:25:30.440 a little bit on the

01:25:31.360 suspicious, you might

01:25:32.840 regard that as a rather

01:25:33.860 suspicious endeavor.

01:25:35.360 If you're playing a game

01:25:36.220 you always win, you might

01:25:37.980 ask yourself whether or not

01:25:39.140 you're just playing it so

01:25:40.240 that you always win rather

01:25:41.920 than to get at the truth.

01:25:43.680 I mean, it's pretty fun for

01:25:44.740 an undergraduate to presume

01:25:46.040 that they're the moral

01:25:46.840 superior of George

01:25:47.940 Washington, let's say, or

01:25:49.160 Winston Churchill.

01:25:50.480 I mean, what a deal.

01:25:51.660 You're 18, you have an 1.00

01:25:53.120 idiot professor who talks 1.00

01:25:54.300 to you for 10 minutes 1.00

01:25:55.120 and your first revelation

01:25:56.140 is that you're better than

01:25:57.400 the best men of the past.

01:25:59.300 Now, that's a little bit

01:26:00.200 too attractive for my

01:26:01.540 liking, I would say.

01:26:03.520 Yeah.

01:26:03.680 So I don't know how we

01:26:05.200 veered from this, but I

01:26:06.140 think what you just said

01:26:07.060 also goes to the classics

01:26:08.420 in general, the ditching of

01:26:09.780 the classics, where we

01:26:11.380 said, oh, well, okay,

01:26:12.680 look at the list of books

01:26:15.420 that students are to read,

01:26:17.800 and it is, Maya Angelou,

01:26:20.500 Shakespeare, Maya Angelou,

01:26:22.020 Shakespeare, Shakespeare

01:26:22.940 out, let's read Maya Angelou.

01:26:25.700 Right, right, same thing.

01:26:27.500 That's part of the death

01:26:28.420 of God.

01:26:29.360 Yeah, yeah.

01:26:29.940 Yeah, I don't want to say

01:26:31.020 anything, I'm not saying

01:26:32.320 there's anything wrong

01:26:33.140 with Maya Angelou.

01:26:34.000 I think she's done a

01:26:34.940 fantastic work, but she's

01:26:36.480 no Shakespeare, and, you

01:26:38.500 know, we should be able

01:26:39.360 to have the courage to say

01:26:40.700 we are not going to remove

01:26:42.720 Shakespeare or Dante.

01:26:45.260 Well, right, well, that's

01:26:47.280 part of the undermining of

01:26:48.500 the fundamental traditions

01:26:49.580 that's part and parcel of

01:26:50.900 this decimation of the

01:26:52.280 institutions at every

01:26:53.360 level.

01:26:53.960 It's part of total

01:26:54.900 revolution, the total

01:26:56.360 revolution Marx called for,

01:26:57.960 and the upending even of

01:26:59.760 the norms of sex identity

01:27:03.180 by the queer activists,

01:27:05.180 let's say.

01:27:05.800 It's complete chaotic

01:27:06.880 revolution, yeah, and it's

01:27:08.080 got to stop.

01:27:09.160 So let me ask you another

01:27:10.860 difficult question, if you

01:27:12.260 don't mind, maybe we'll

01:27:13.120 close with this one.

01:27:14.000 I was ill during the time

01:27:17.600 the Abraham Accords were 0.89

01:27:18.880 established, and when I

01:27:20.660 kind of woke up and was

01:27:22.480 healthy again and saw what

01:27:23.660 had happened, I thought it

01:27:24.620 was something approximating

01:27:25.780 a miracle, and I was

01:27:27.180 amazed that it wasn't

01:27:28.120 front-page headline news in

01:27:29.700 every country in the world

01:27:30.800 because I think what the

01:27:32.640 people who formulated the

01:27:35.120 Abraham Accords achieved was

01:27:36.640 the closest thing to a

01:27:38.140 foreign policy miracle that

01:27:39.360 I've seen in, like, 70

01:27:40.500 years.

01:27:40.980 And so now, and then part of

01:27:44.840 the reason I'm optimistic at

01:27:46.260 the moment, like you are, is

01:27:47.640 that despite October 7th, the

01:27:50.240 Abraham Accords have held, and

01:27:53.060 I've heard from behind the

01:27:54.380 scenes that the Saudis are

01:27:55.720 still quite willing to

01:27:57.040 contemplate signing it, even

01:27:58.940 under the present conditions.

01:28:00.500 There's political issues that

01:28:01.880 have to be sorted out, but

01:28:03.020 they're still on board.

01:28:04.500 Okay, now I'm going to add to

01:28:05.840 that one other thing.

01:28:07.780 One of the connection points

01:28:09.300 between Islam and Christianity 0.90

01:28:10.980 is the figure of Jesus, is the

01:28:14.060 figure of Christ.

01:28:15.560 And so what I see happening on

01:28:17.600 the optimistic side in the

01:28:19.040 Islamic world is that there are 1.00

01:28:21.200 actors like the leaders, let's

01:28:24.060 say, of the UAE and some of the

01:28:27.160 other Islamic states who appear to

01:28:32.020 want to establish something like

01:28:35.480 an entente and a dialogue, and

01:28:38.540 that it might be possible that

01:28:41.260 there could be at least the

01:28:44.060 exploration of cooperation or a

01:28:48.660 competition of invitations between

01:28:51.340 Islam and Christianity instead of 1.00

01:28:53.340 this all-out, drag-down, knock-em-dead 0.97

01:28:56.120 fundamentalism.

01:28:59.220 It seems to me as well that the

01:29:01.620 cluster B psychopath types are 0.70

01:29:04.220 very good at weaponizing Islam, and 0.98

01:29:06.980 that we need to separate out the 0.97

01:29:08.880 psychopathic types, who are

01:29:10.660 basically Pharisees, who claim

01:29:13.000 religious motivation while pursuing

01:29:15.040 nothing but their own aims.

01:29:16.560 We need to separate that out on the

01:29:18.300 Islamic side, too, and see, maybe

01:29:21.080 see if, because there is such

01:29:23.240 admiration in the Islamic world for

01:29:25.060 the figure of Christ, if there's

01:29:26.420 something there that would enable

01:29:28.540 us to establish the beginnings of a

01:29:31.480 deep Abrahamic dialogue.

01:29:33.840 And so, I'm wondering, this is a

01:29:36.140 world you're more familiar with in

01:29:37.580 many ways than me, although also

01:29:39.460 more hurt by than me.

01:29:42.500 I mean, what do you think of the

01:29:43.740 Abraham Accords, and do you have any

01:29:45.600 optimism on the side of entente,

01:29:49.120 let's say, between Islam and 1.00

01:29:50.540 Christianity, or between Islam, 0.86

01:29:52.320 Christianity, and Judaism, to 0.87

01:29:54.000 broaden the net appropriately?

01:29:56.160 So, what do I think of the

01:29:58.600 Abrahamic Accords?

01:29:59.500 I think if we lived in a farewell,

01:30:01.900 the people who brought about the

01:30:03.560 Abrahamic Accords would get the

01:30:05.640 Nobel Peace Prize, but we don't live

01:30:07.620 in a farewell.

01:30:07.760 Yes, for sure.

01:30:08.520 Yes.

01:30:09.620 Yeah.

01:30:10.520 And what I find, I really admire

01:30:16.320 Jared Kushner in the sense that he

01:30:19.700 tried something new.

01:30:21.160 He, and this is why sometimes it's

01:30:24.360 good to have people come in from

01:30:26.400 the outside and break open

01:30:29.460 something.

01:30:30.660 So, our State Department has been

01:30:32.660 doing the same thing over and over

01:30:34.000 again for the last 50 years, if not

01:30:35.780 the last 70 years.

01:30:38.220 And this man whose politics is not

01:30:41.360 his thing comes into this realm and

01:30:43.320 says, let's try something new.

01:30:45.840 And that's, again, part of the

01:30:47.260 American spirit, by the way.

01:30:48.540 Let's try something new.

01:30:49.600 Yes, definitely, definitely,

01:30:51.320 definitely.

01:30:52.060 And something new yields the

01:30:54.900 Abrahamic Accords.

01:30:56.780 And, yeah, the people who didn't get

01:30:58.840 anywhere all those years, obviously,

01:31:00.540 they don't take kindly to that, which

01:31:02.180 is unfortunate because it shouldn't

01:31:04.220 have been.

01:31:04.800 That's for sure.

01:31:05.860 Yeah, it shouldn't have been

01:31:06.820 condemned as, oh, we hate Trump,

01:31:08.800 anything that Trump does, we

01:31:10.560 deplore.

01:31:11.480 It should have been claimed as an

01:31:12.940 American victory.

01:31:15.200 It didn't.

01:31:15.740 That's right.

01:31:16.260 That's an opportunity Biden had.

01:31:17.960 I think he could have given Trump a

01:31:19.660 medal and a ceremony, and he might

01:31:22.160 have ridden off into the sunset.

01:31:24.360 But that is, yeah.

01:31:25.420 Because Trump deserved an award for

01:31:27.440 that.

01:31:27.680 He deserved the Nobel Prize for the

01:31:29.300 Abraham Accords.

01:31:30.520 Absolutely.

01:31:31.020 And so, and the figure of Jared, I think.

01:31:36.040 Yep, yep, definitely.

01:31:37.980 So, we go from there to, you know,

01:31:43.840 is there, what, in Christian theology

01:31:46.820 and Islamic theology, can we find points

01:31:50.000 and things that we have in common?

01:31:51.720 You know, I remember Bernard Lewis, who I

01:31:58.200 think died at the age of 103, and one of

01:32:02.700 the, I would say, best scholars of all

01:32:08.540 three of the Abrahamic, but he was a

01:32:10.020 historian, and he had really spent a good

01:32:12.040 long time studying the Middle East and

01:32:14.380 spent years and years there.

01:32:16.280 And he kept saying, we have more in

01:32:19.140 common than meets the eye, and especially

01:32:22.960 with al-Pajir.

01:32:24.340 So, there's a lot we have in common.

01:32:27.300 From a theological perspective, the

01:32:31.660 Takfir wal-Hijra people, you know, these, 1.00

01:32:34.980 you call them, what if you call them,

01:32:37.220 cluster B-bombs or whatever, these

01:32:38.960 radical groups have done something, that

01:32:45.160 if you did it to Christianity, you would 1.00

01:32:47.600 say, this is what Martin Luther did during

01:32:50.200 the Reformation, they say, let's go back

01:32:52.380 to Scripture.

01:32:53.380 We don't want the church and interceptors 1.00

01:32:55.280 between us.

01:32:57.200 So, when someone who identifies as Christian 0.72

01:33:00.980 goes back to Scripture pure and simple,

01:33:04.580 what they find there is radically different

01:33:08.800 from what, you know, an average Muslim, when 0.74

01:33:12.960 he's told to go back to Scripture, let's go 0.90

01:33:15.740 back to the beginnings of Muhammad, let's go 1.00

01:33:17.520 back to the time of Medina, let's go back 0.91

01:33:19.600 to the time of the conquests, what they

01:33:22.800 find there is a different message.

01:33:25.280 So, I think for leaders like the leaders of

01:33:27.760 the UAE, of Saudi Arabia, for them, they

01:33:33.780 realized after the Arab Spring, with the rise

01:33:38.640 of ISIS, but even before the rise of ISIS, when

01:33:44.440 bin Laden was in Afghanistan and they supported 1.00

01:33:47.200 him and they knew, you know, these radical

01:33:49.240 elements kept coming and they would just bash 1.00

01:33:52.080 them or export them elsewhere or accommodate

01:33:55.360 them, that over time they actually came for their

01:33:59.320 own seats of power and for their own families.

01:34:02.360 And their response was, we define Islam.

01:34:09.040 So, it is the crown prince right now of Saudi

01:34:13.060 Arabia who defines what Islam is for the Saudis and the

01:34:18.180 world beyond.

01:34:19.760 And living in the society they live in, they round up the

01:34:25.600 subverters and the insurgents who operate in the name of

01:34:30.540 Wahhabism and Salafism and the various flavors of political

01:34:35.180 Islam.

01:34:35.740 And they domesticate them. 0.61

01:34:37.960 They can do that.

01:34:39.280 And the same with the UAE. 0.56

01:34:41.620 And they then, the crown prince and the sultan and the king and

01:34:46.360 the leader of the day, they decide in their definition of what

01:34:52.940 Islam is, that we want to recognize the state of Israel and we

01:34:56.460 now want, we think we have more in common with our Jewish neighbors

01:35:00.920 and brothers and our Christian neighbors and brothers, the new

01:35:05.780 disruptors and the world that you're leading us to, towards the

01:35:11.060 path of Hamas, of Al-Qaeda, of ISIS, of the Muslim Brotherhood. 0.77

01:35:17.060 That is a path of destruction.

01:35:19.620 And they've given us a taste of it when the Islamic State was 0.99

01:35:23.160 established in Iraq and Syria.

01:35:25.080 So we know where that goes and they reject it.

01:35:27.740 That doesn't mean that they've, yeah, that doesn't mean they've

01:35:30.740 accepted liberal democracy or that they've become like us.

01:35:33.940 Right, right, right.

01:35:34.540 No, no, no, right.

01:35:35.980 Right, okay, okay.

01:35:37.300 But their conclusion for their own survival has led them to accept the

01:35:42.400 Abraham Accords and to say, we can recognize and we can make our

01:35:47.240 societies recognized.

01:35:48.180 Now, I think, Jordan, the next thing that has to happen, and maybe is

01:35:52.380 happening, is there has to be not just on the political level that we want

01:35:58.860 to establish the Abraham Accords and sign peace and trade deals.

01:36:05.680 I think the next level is to de-harmacify Muslim societies. 1.00

01:36:12.000 The propaganda that Muslim societies were fed about the Jews and about the

01:36:17.140 Christians and about modernity in the last 70 or so years, it has to be undone. 1.00

01:36:23.840 And so there has to be a new information and knowledge warfare, not propaganda, but

01:36:32.800 a counter-propaganda.

01:36:34.040 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:36:35.120 That emphasizes for people in the Middle East, for Muslims, a life, a narrative and

01:36:41.880 a story and a theology that emphasizes a life of a death.

01:36:45.720 Well, yeah, well, that's what we've been trying to do with this ARC enterprise in

01:36:52.440 London, right, is to formulate.

01:36:55.020 So, you know, you talked about it in terms of counter-propaganda, but I think it's more

01:37:00.060 appropriately formulated, pardon my objection, as a, what would you say, a far more

01:37:08.000 attractive invitation?

01:37:10.120 You know, like, if, so my students used to ask me about what I was teaching at Harvard

01:37:15.700 and at the U of T.

01:37:17.120 They'd ask me, well, why isn't this just another form of the ideology that you reject?

01:37:22.460 And, you know, that's a very good question.

01:37:24.800 It's the postmodern question, fundamentally.

01:37:27.280 Why isn't this just another power game, let's say?

01:37:29.680 Well, I think, well, I think I figured that out, I am.

01:37:33.100 So, I think the spirit of play is the antithesis of the spirit of tyranny.

01:37:41.160 And play can only occur if the players are playing voluntarily and with their full assent.

01:37:47.760 And so, you can tell an ideology from an invitation because an ideology manipulates and compels,

01:37:56.520 but an invitation offers the possibility of joint mutual voluntary play.

01:38:02.340 And so, you know, what we've been struggling with at ARC and what I'm trying to do in my

01:38:06.320 lectures is to formulate an invitation, right, a story that's attractive and believable enough

01:38:14.140 so that all other competing ideologies, ideological stories are revealed as corrupt, inadequate,

01:38:24.280 and what would you say, anxiety-provoking and hopeless.

01:38:28.300 Yeah.

01:38:28.540 And so, right.

01:38:30.320 And so, I think we could, in this restoration project, let's say,

01:38:34.680 because I think we share the same vision on that front,

01:38:37.800 it's very useful to understand that the best form of counter-propaganda

01:38:42.440 is a much better invitation that's actually real and believable.

01:38:46.920 You know, for example, well, why, who would oppose, if they had any sense,

01:38:51.360 the idea that we should drive energy costs down so that we could eradicate absolute poverty?

01:38:57.600 Like, what, you might say, well, that's not practical, and fair enough,

01:39:01.040 we could have that discussion, but I think it is highly practical and also completely possible.

01:39:07.360 And so, I can't see why left and right alike can't get on board with that.

01:39:13.340 It's not like right-wingers who have any sense like the fact that there are poor people.

01:39:18.600 You know, they might be inclined to deserve, to presume that some of the poor deserve to be poor

01:39:24.720 because they're really not putting their best foot forward.

01:39:27.560 But, by the same token, most conservative types are perfectly cognizant of the fact that,

01:39:34.300 to some degree, economic fate is arbitrarily distributed,

01:39:37.460 and we should do some work to try to ensure that the poor thrive.

01:39:41.920 And so, the restoration should be an invitation, right?

01:39:45.420 This is a better way.

01:39:47.160 Yeah.

01:39:47.320 Here's the better way.

01:39:48.440 I think the best way, the first step of restoration is to bring these people together in the same room.

01:39:56.760 I think, for me, the assumption is the moderates on either side, they have more in common than some of these problems.

01:40:05.780 Imagine, we're not talking about, you know, Harry Truman had to consider whether or not to throw the bomb.

01:40:14.900 When Roosevelt had to consider whether he wanted to enter the war or not.

01:40:22.760 When St. Churchill had to consider whether to declare war or not,

01:40:26.280 because Chamberlain was there saying, let's accommodate and appease and so on.

01:40:30.600 The Soviet Union, Pigs of Bay, remember the leaders in the Oval Office,

01:40:35.860 some of the considerations that they had to make, we're not there.

01:40:39.900 Our problems compared to that of previous generations is so, these things are so easy to address.

01:40:50.300 The problem is, I don't know, part of it is subversion,

01:40:53.420 and part of it is this re-tribalization of Western society,

01:40:57.400 is that we hate the other one so much that we're willing to destroy.

01:41:03.420 It's not even about the issue anymore.

01:41:05.160 It's about the person.

01:41:07.180 And so I think the first step is to restore the humanity of the person on the other side.

01:41:16.120 Yeah, well, that's a turn-the-other-cheek ethos, right?

01:41:20.860 Is that what you want to work for, if you can, if you have any sense,

01:41:24.360 is not the eradication of your so-called enemy, but what would you say?

01:41:29.260 His redemption in a manner that allows you both to cooperate and compete peacefully and productively.

01:41:34.420 That's a much better aim.

01:41:37.440 And your point is, well, we're not so much at each other's throats that there's blood in the streets,

01:41:42.900 and so we could still have the conversations, the difficult conversations and the negotiations,

01:41:49.000 and extend the accords across the warring tribes.

01:41:56.360 And I do think that's possible.

01:41:59.960 Absolutely.

01:42:01.100 But look at where we are with our technology and where we are with our economy and where we are.

01:42:07.200 We just have, for me, I think we just have an overflow of resources and even human resources,

01:42:14.260 the smartest people in the world.

01:42:16.780 And still, again, look at the whole world still wants to come here,

01:42:20.400 regardless of the problems we have.

01:42:24.560 So it's easy, I think, right now to come back from these stages of demoralization

01:42:33.500 and to some degree destabilization.

01:42:37.900 That's a very good place to end, I would say, this discussion, at least.

01:42:42.380 For everybody watching and listening, I'm going to continue talking to Ayanne on the Daily Wire side.

01:42:48.940 We'll delve into what's more autobiographical and continue to elaborate the ideas that we're discussing here.

01:42:55.900 So if you're inclined to join us behind the Daily Wire paywall, well, that would be potentially useful to you.

01:43:03.400 And also, what would you say?

01:43:05.600 Welcome from our perspective.

01:43:07.400 The Daily Wire, in their collaborations with me, have certainly extended my ability to have conversations like this

01:43:14.040 and to make them freely available and have been really good and forthright partners in that endeavor.

01:43:21.140 So anyways, Ayanne, Will, thank you very much for talking to me today.

01:43:25.280 It's a pleasure to see you.

01:43:27.680 And it was really good to hear what you had to say and to delve into these things more deeply.

01:43:34.340 And, well, I'm looking forward to the next half an hour of our conversation

01:43:38.300 and also to seeing you again in the future.

01:43:40.400 And to everybody who's watching and listening and to the film crew here in Fairview, Alberta,

01:43:46.420 which is my small hometown in the middle of nowhere, up on the frigid plains of the Northwest.

01:43:53.540 Thank you guys for coming in from Saskatoon and doing this.

01:43:56.520 And thank you again, Ayanne.

01:43:58.120 Much appreciated.

01:43:59.740 Jordan, you're welcome.

01:44:00.740 Thank you very much.

01:44:01.580 Thank you.

01:44:01.640 Thank you.

01:44:02.140 Thank you.

01:44:02.640 Thank you.

01:44:03.640 Thank you.

01:44:04.640 Thank you.

01:44:05.640 Thank you.

01:44:06.640 Thank you.

01:44:07.640 Thank you.

01:44:08.640 Thank you.

01:44:09.640 Thank you.

01:44:10.380 Thank you.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - June 20, 2024

457. God, Marxism, and the Fall of the West ｜ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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