Ep. 133 - Why Mass Shootings Happen
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Summary
On this episode of the Matt W. W. Williams Show, Matt takes on the question: Why does anti-Semitism seem to be so rampant among Christians? And why does it seem particularly prevalent among professing Christians? Plus, why does a Christian hate Jews?
Transcript
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, after a horrible week last week, ending with the slaughter of 11 people at a synagogue,
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we are all asking again, yet again, why does this happen? Why does it keep happening?
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Also, a column on the Daily Wire this weekend pointed out that young people, millennials, tend to be shallow and unmotivated.
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Well, I'm a millennial myself, and I want to talk about why young people tend to be that way.
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Hint, hint, it's the education system. Sorry for the spoilers.
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Well, last week was not a good week, to put it lightly, ending with the horrific slaughter of 11 worshipers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh,
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beginning with the mail bombs apparently sent by a clearly insane Trump supporter.
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And midway through the week, there was a shooting at a Kroger in Kentucky carried out by a racist white man targeting black people.
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So I have a few things, a few things I want to say here.
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And let me first say, speaking specifically about the 11 killed at the synagogue for a moment,
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and I know that this is not exactly a bold statement, not exactly a statement that requires great courage or insight to say,
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but it must be said all the same, but it must be said all the same, that anti-Semitism is evil and incredibly stupid.
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Bigotry towards any racial group or ethnic group or any group at all, religious group, is evil and stupid.
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Bigotry is an evil, stupid thing for evil, stupid people.
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But I think especially anti-Semitism among professing Christians, and this scumbag killer claimed to be a professing Christian.
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He's not really a Christian, but that's what he claimed to be.
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Christianity, and especially among professing Christians, it is evil and idiotic to an extreme.
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For I would think a rather obvious reason, which is that Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, was a Jew.
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In fact, I heard someone say once that the thing that really kind of is strange about Christianity,
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the thing that's one of the things that separates it from other religions,
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one of the very unique things about it is that it is the only religion in the world that agrees with one other religion.
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Christianity affirms all of Judaism, in that it affirms the Old Testament.
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Now, we have the New Testament, which rests upon the pillars of the Old Testament.
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We have that additional Testament then, of which, on that point, we certainly do not agree,
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It is the center point, the centerpiece of the Christian faith, but we are in full agreement on the Old Testament,
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which I would think is rather significant, right?
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How do you think that conversation will go when you stand before your Lord on Judgment Day?
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How are you going to explain to your Jewish Lord that you hate his people?
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An anti-Semitic Christian, to me, seems a bit like a racist white jazz musician or something.
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I mean, how could you possibly hate the people who founded the thing that you've given your life to?
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You do sort of hate yourself in that case, and I think that bigotry, what lies at the root of bigotry,
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much of the time is a kind of self-loathing in all forms of bigotry,
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but particularly when it comes to any Christian who hates Jews.
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But with bigotry in general, to deny, to reject the dignity of an entire group of human beings
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is to deny and reject the inherent dignity of all human beings,
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which is to say that you reject your own dignity as well.
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Now, we should also stipulate, I think it's important to note and to be clear,
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that anti-Semitism obviously is a huge problem around the world, has been throughout history, has always been.
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And in America, there are fringe, whack job, crazy, but clearly dangerous groups that also share that anti-Semitism.
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But I think we can say safely that anti-Semitism is not at all common among modern American Christians.
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Bigotry in general, I would say, is not common among modern American Christians,
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because we understand that Jesus condemns all forms of hatred.
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But when it comes to Jewish people, I think it's true that, and I'm biased, but I don't think anyone can really disagree,
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that the biggest supporters of Jewish people and of Israel outside of Judaism itself are Christians,
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Now, when this event was unfolding, I wanted to see what was going on, of course, stay up to date.
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So I could either watch cable news or I could go online.
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That's the choice that we all have, and that's the ultimate lose-lose, the ultimate no-win situation.
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But I usually go with the Internet, and that's usually where I go for my news,
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and especially when there's a breaking news thing, I'm on the Internet not really watching TV,
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because I can't stand the theatrics of cable news in the wake of tragedy or at any other point.
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But the problem with being online, on social media, when something like this is happening,
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is that you get a view of humanity at its absolute worst.
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So as per usual, as to be expected, if you were online when this was all going on,
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you would have seen that people were immediately politicizing the tragedy without any hesitation,
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the narratives were being formed, the mud was being flung,
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the sickening, almost gleeful fervor of people who believe that a mass killing
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will be useful to them politically and ideologically, all of that was on display.
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And we're so used to that display, we're so used to that spectacle,
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that there's almost no point in bringing it up or complaining about it at this point.
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It's not going to change, it's never going to change,
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but I do bring it up here because I think it speaks, in some ways,
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to the question of why this stuff happens, which is the question that we always have.
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And these mass killings do seem to be happening with a certain terrible frequency.
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It's true that the media may exaggerate the frequency of mass killings for political reasons.
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They'll tell you that there have been, whatever, 200 school shootings in a year,
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some crazy number like that, which simply is not true.
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And there's no reason, not only is it cynical and awful to lie about something like this,
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but there's no reason to lie about it because it is, there are plenty of real examples that you can use.
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And so no matter how frequent it is, no matter how that stacks up compared to other points in history,
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But that's not the whole story, because even the average rabid bigot probably isn't going to go and kill anybody.
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You've got a subset of bigots, and among those bigots, there's a smaller subset of bigots who are willing
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and who may actually go out and do something like this.
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There's bigotry, there's hate, but there's something else.
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There's another ingredient, I think, that's needed in order to make a mass killer.
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And I think you can see that ingredient, you can observe it,
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by looking at the kinds of people who excitedly exploit these kinds of events
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and practically cheer when the culprit ends up being someone from the other side.
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Because those people, I mean, it really seems like they are happy when this happens.
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They are happy when it happens, if it's something that they can use.
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There are people like this, that's really what it seems like.
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They would never say that, they would never be explicit about it, they would never admit it.
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But when you listen to them, when you see the way they carry on, there doesn't appear to be any sadness.
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There is no moment of somber reflection or compassion.
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It is just, I'm going to grab this thing right after the bodies have hit, a second after the bodies hit the ground,
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I'm going to grab it and I'm going to use it as a club to beat my political enemies with.
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A person who does that, I think that's a person who has a complete lack of empathy.
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That is a person who is callous, who is empty, who is unable to recognize, it would seem, the humanity of their fellow humans.
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They don't see, they don't see the cost in human life.
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They don't really, that doesn't register on them.
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They just see, oh good, well that, here's a point I can raise in an argument.
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I think among the ingredients that make a mass killer, the indifference to human life, this sort of hollow, unhuman disposition, this emptiness,
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this all is, if you will, the yeast that makes the bread rise.
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And my point is that you find that ingredient, and this is the really terrifying truth,
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but you find that ingredient in the hearts of many people, of apparently normal people.
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Of, of every person who goes on Twitter seconds after the bodies hit the ground and cheerfully uses a mass killing to their advantage in an argument,
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all of those people have a bit of this ingredient within them.
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Now, do I think that all of them are going to become mass killers?
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No, because they need the other ingredients, right?
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But, but they do have, they are part of the way there.
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And I would even say a significant part of the way there.
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To make, to cook up a mass killer, the main thing, more than anything else, is indifference, callousness, lack of empathy, emptiness.
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Because with that ingredient, you don't even, you don't necessarily even need the hatred and bigotry.
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There have been plenty of mass killers who don't, don't appear to really, it would seem they have hatred,
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but they don't appear to have any special bigotries.
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And it's easy to, it's easy, I think, to become like that in this country.
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It's easy to become, at a minimum, desensitized to the loss of human life because we hear about it so much.
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And it just becomes, it can become, if we're not careful, part of the background noise.
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It can become just a thing, a news cycle that you read about and then move on.
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But then, even more than that, I think, when we're, we spend so much time online,
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it's never a surprise to me with these mass killers that, you know,
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you find that they spend so much time staring at screens, so much time online,
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And that's no surprise to me because when you spend so much time immersed in this world,
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in this kind of insulated, anonymous world where you're interacting with a lot of different people,
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but it's very easy in those interactions, in that artificial cyber world,
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it's easy in those interactions to forget that that's an actual other human being.
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And, um, I think if you, if you are in that environment enough, too much,
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and you don't keep a proper perspective, eventually you may find yourself,
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even when you're outside of that environment, walking around in the real, real world,
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you still have that same desensitized, um, compassionless mentality.
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Just look at, we get, again, we get so used to it.
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Uh, but look at any of the horrible comments that you see under news articles or YouTube videos,
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people telling other people to kill themselves and so on and so forth.
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It may be normal for, for the internet, but it's not a normal thing for people.
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You say something like that to someone, it doesn't matter that you're online saying it.
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That is a horrible, horrific, evil, wicked, disgusting, despicable thing.
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And the fact that you're saying it online makes no difference.
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But the fact that we think that, well, you're online and you're saying these things,
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I think people can, it, it, it builds a kind of mentality that I think can ultimately contribute
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One other thing I want to talk about, uh, switching gears.
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Dennis Prager had an interesting column on the daily wire yesterday.
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He was talking about his experience car shopping recently and, uh, what it taught him about,
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And he says that, um, that the, the young salespeople that he encountered, uh, while he
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was car shopping, they were, they were friendly.
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They were very sweet, but they, they knew nothing about cars.
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He said, and, um, they didn't appear very anxious to actually land a sale.
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And he, he, he pointed out that young people, millennials tend to be less ambitious and less
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And, um, so he was using this anecdote as a way of illustrating that point.
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I do think for the record that the, that the problem is not confined to, uh, millennials and
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I have also encountered plenty of not very knowledgeable, not very ambitious, not very
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helpful customer service people in my day and people in general.
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And, um, I would not for a moment say that a significant majority of them have been millennials.
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I I've dealt with plenty of older people who fall into that same category.
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I was at a restaurant a few days ago, the waiter, um,
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And he was one of the worst customer service people I've ever come across in my entire
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Um, and so, you know, that's not uncommon, right?
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Um, so, and I've, and I've had plenty of customer service interactions with people that
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are about my age or younger, and they're very knowledgeable, very ambitious, very energetic
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So it's, you know, you get it across the board.
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I do think a lack of ambition is a problem among millennials more than it's a problem
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I don't think that's uniquely a millennial problem at all.
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I, I have, I have, I have run-ins with ignorant people all the time, all the time,
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um, mostly online, but also in the real world quite a bit.
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I find plenty of incredible ignorance and, uh, frankly, stupidity among older people and
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So I think, I think, again, that's kind of, kind of even, but lack of ambition.
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Yeah, that's, that's more uniquely a young person problem.
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Um, but even that, you know, that's to some extent there's, there's another
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And so on the other side, you have boomers who I think in life have some of them, many
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of them have tended to be, you might say too ambitious or ambitious in the wrong way,
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valuing money above all else, being very materialistic at the expense of their families and their
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marriages, which is why the boomer generation has, has been a disaster for the marital institution.
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The boomer generation has been a wrecking ball on the marital institution.
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Divorce was epidemic in the eighties and nineties.
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And a lot of that was because our parents' generation had decided that professional
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So they were ambitious at the office, at work about making more money.
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They were not necessarily ambitious about, about being good spouses and good parents.
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I realize it's not the case for all of them, but if we're going to make generalized comments
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about one generation, we can make them about the others too.
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Um, my point here is simply that there are flaws in every generation and if older generations
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want to convey anything to younger people, they have to begin by admitting what they did
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And this is one of the reasons, I'm just telling you, it's one of the reasons why millennials
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have closed themselves off and are not interested in hearing the criticisms of baby boomers because
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we can look at the baby boomer generation and say, wow, what a disaster this has been in
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Um, there are some very obvious problems in that generation that have manifested themselves
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So if you're not going to acknowledge that and all you're going to do is look at younger
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people who, by the way, your own kids, who you raised, uh, this is the generation you raised.
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And you're going to look at them and blame them for everything.
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Well, it's just, how are we supposed to take that?
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So there has to be some self-analysis and some self-criticizing that I, you just don't,
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I don't see that often among the older generations.
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And I say this as some, as a millennial, I criticize millennials all the time.
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I mean, they're millennials criticize the millennial generation all the time.
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And I have spilled much ink, uh, over the last four or five years doing exactly that.
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I'm not saying it never happens, but there seems to be less of a willingness to look within
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and say, wow, we really screwed up in these areas.
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Now, I don't mean that as a comment directed at, uh, Dennis Prager, by the way, I, who I
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think is a brilliant guy and I really admire him.
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I don't want to, I don't want to, I'm not going to try to ignore it.
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I think it's, uh, let's focus just on millennials here.
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Um, no matter how prevalent these problems may also be in other generations, he's absolutely
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right that among millennials, there is not enough passion, not enough ambition, not enough
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knowledge, not enough expertise, not enough skill, but the lack of passion and, and, uh,
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and ambition to me is, is what, because I've, I've got a lot of problems myself, a lot of
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That's, that's one that, um, I haven't struggled with as much.
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So it's hard for me to even understand, like, how could you be a young person and not have
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goals and dreams and the willingness to go out and grab them?
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Um, and so when I see that in younger people, I also feel like what, what in the world is
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But I think if we're going to talk about that, let's talk about why that might be the case.
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What has gone wrong that has potentially created, uh, a general, multiple generations now of people
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who do not seem very knowledgeable and do not seem very ambitious. Well, if we're going to,
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if we're going to try to figure out why, and I don't mean to, to, uh, beat up on one of my
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favorite punching bags here, but you know, I I'm sorry. We do have to look at the education system.
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If you're talking, especially you're talking about a guy, you know, a young person who's 25 years old.
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Well, this is someone who has been in, who, who just recently emerged from the education system
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and has been in that system his entire life up until this point. So if you want, and if there's
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something wrong with him, and especially if there's something wrong with an entire generation
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of people around that age, it makes sense to look at the system that they spent their formative years
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in. You probably can find, um, the source of many of these problems in that environment, logically.
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So it must be said that the education system is simply not set up to develop skills or to give a
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deep base of knowledge in any subject at all, or to find and ignite a person's passion or anything
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like that. It does the opposite on every score. And it is even designed to do the opposite.
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It creates people. This is what the education system does. It creates people who are,
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who are like very large, sprawling, wide kiddie pools. It creates a person who, you know,
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the, the, the typical person coming out of the education system is going to be like a one mile wide,
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two inch deep kiddie pool, very broad, very shallow. At the end of 12 or 13 years in the education
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system, a kid will have a tiny bit of knowledge on many subjects. Um, he will not be competent in any
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of them. He will have no area of expertise or specialty or special interest. And then he will
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go to college as a kind of blank slate, which is how it's designed. That's what the colleges want.
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Right. And, um, and he'll have no idea what he's good at, no idea what he cares about,
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no real idea what his interests are. And he'll decide sort of randomly then what his major is
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going to be. And at the end of four years, five years of college, he'll be 22, 23, 24 years old
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with still a very shallow, but broad base of knowledge, no expertise, no skills, no special
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interest. And, and his one area of more in-depth knowledge, his major will be maybe an area that he
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doesn't even care about, uh, because he picked it arbitrarily and without knowing anything about it
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before he chose it. Now, as I've shared before, when I was in school, I, I, I, I realized very early
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on that I was specially interested in writing and history. I also realized that I was specially
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terrible at math and I hated it. And, and with a passion, um, and I was in it, it just did not click
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for me. It clicked, you know, up through arithmetic and the really basic stuff. It click, click, click.
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Once we started getting into algebra and things like that, that's when it, it, it, it left me
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behind and I did not have the brain for it. Um, whereas I can remember even being in, in, you know,
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in, uh, a much younger student and looking around at some of my, some of my fellow classmates who
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seemed to struggle with writing and reading and things like that. And, um, it was hard for me to like,
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how could you struggle with this? Is this how, and I would see kids who are really brilliant at math
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and seem to be very smart, but then it's like, they, they write, they were, I, you know, see how
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they were right. They're writing at a level that was, um, three or four steps below where I was.
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And that's how people are, you know? Um, so here, here's the problem.
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Those, there were, there were the subjects that I were, that I was really interested in and I really
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cared about and I was good at in, in an education system that's effective and in an education system
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that is set on creating the kind of people that Dennis Prager wants and that I want and that most
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of us want, uh, in that kind of system, I would have been able to double or triple up on, on the
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subjects that I really cared about, dive into them, explore my interests in those areas, develop those
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skills, learn those subjects. And at the end of my time in school, I would have a, a deep base of
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knowledge, a deep reservoir of knowledge on a few subjects. And I would then have the beginnings
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of a skill and a vocation and a calling, right? Um, most people, unless you're Leonardo da Vinci,
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unless you are a historic genius, most people are never going to have a deep reservoir of knowledge
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on every subject. The most you can hope for to be a really competent, interesting, interested,
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um, successful, knowledgeable, smart person. For, for most people like that, it's, you have it,
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you have, you have that deep base of knowledge on a few subjects. Um, but the school's not
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interested in that. You know, they're not trying to create people like that. Instead, the school says,
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um, no, you can't spend too much time on those subjects that you care about and that you're good at
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because we need you to, um, take Spanish, uh, for some reason and trigonometry and you need a credit
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in some kind of art class and you need to take physical education for one year for some reason.
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And, oh yeah, we need you to take something like aquatic science too, you know, because why not?
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And, um, and, oh, you have to keep advancing into more and more advanced math classes and science
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classes. Even if you have not mastered the first level, we're going to, going to push you on anyway.
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Um, but the problem is there's, there's, there's, there's no point in, in knowing just a little bit
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of Spanish or a little bit of calculus or a little bit of aquatic science. It's great to know a lot
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about those subjects. If you're, if you're bilingual, great, that's a great advantage to have. Um, if you're,
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if you are, if you know calculus backwards and forwards and you really know math and you're a
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math, math expert, great. There's a lot you could do with that. There's, and it's, it's not just do
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with it, but that, that will make you a more knowledgeable, intelligent person. So that's all
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fantastic, but you can't do anything with a little on those subjects. So with something like a foreign
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language, there is no point in forcing a kid starting in ninth grade from like ninth to 11th grade to
00:27:20.900
take a couple of Spanish classes for 45 minutes. So, you know, every few days for, you know, it's
00:27:26.520
like, there's no point in that. You're not going to learn a language that way. You're not going to
00:27:30.320
really learn anything. The most you could hope is that at the end of that, they're going to know how
00:27:34.980
to say a couple of sentences. They can ask for the bathroom, name the colors. Um, you know,
00:27:40.000
and that's the most they'll know, but that's nothing. That's not even hardly the beginning
00:27:44.460
of something. There's no point. Um, with those kinds of subjects, either you've got to really
00:27:52.280
know them or you might as well not know them. Here's, so I graduated high school and, um, I had,
00:28:01.660
uh, I had that, that very shallow, um, bit of knowledge on all these different areas, but what
00:28:08.640
happens with shallow water, it evaporates. And so that's what happened with me. A lot of my
00:28:14.280
knowledge, whatever little bit of knowledge I was forced into my head on, on advanced math concepts
00:28:20.460
and foreign languages, um, and aquatic science, whatever little bit of knowledge was, all of that
00:28:26.000
evaporated. It was, it was already useless. I couldn't have done anything with it. But then within
00:28:29.520
a couple of years, it was completely gone because I didn't care about it. I didn't try to build on it.
00:28:33.540
I didn't want to, I knew I didn't want to. And so it just went away. Um, what was the point?
00:28:41.900
There was no point. It was a total waste of time, but you know what? There is a point
00:28:48.180
in knowing just a little bit about the mechanics of a car. There is a point in knowing just a little
00:28:55.780
bit about like budgeting and things like that. Because even if you never expand on that base of
00:29:02.240
knowledge, even the bit, you know, will be useful to if, if the only thing you know about a car is
00:29:05.940
you can name a couple of the, you can point to a couple of the parts of the engine. You can change
00:29:09.360
the oil, check the fluids, change the tire. Um, um, maybe, you know, when you hear the clanging of
00:29:15.400
the engine, you can kind of figure out it might be this or that. Like if that's all you know about
00:29:19.400
cars, that's, that, that, that's not enough to get a job as a car mechanic, but that's, that's
00:29:23.740
going to be very useful to you. So if the schools are going to force kids to, to develop a little
00:29:29.900
bit of knowledge in certain areas, why not those areas? Why not force every kid to take a cup,
00:29:35.060
to take at least a class on about cars? We all drive cars. That that's actually useful knowledge
00:29:40.700
that kids could use even if they never master it. But the school say, no, well, we don't have time
00:29:48.000
for it. We don't have time for that because we need you taking calculus when you're in 11th grade.
00:29:51.460
Even if you're, even if you'll never touch math ever again, when you graduate.
00:29:58.700
And I know people say, well, what do you mean you use algebra as a daily, you could use algebra
00:30:03.000
every day. No, you don't. I have lived, you know, I like to say pretty competently and successfully
00:30:09.840
as an adult for many years now, I have never really used algebra ever, never used it. Whatever
00:30:16.240
little bit of math I need to do, I just pull out my phone, do it on the calculator. That's,
00:30:19.920
that's the modern world for you. I have no need for it. So it just, it doesn't make any sense.
00:30:29.760
The subjects where a little bit of knowledge would be useful, those are precisely the subjects
00:30:33.740
where kids are given no knowledge. And the subjects where there's no point to those subjects,
00:30:39.920
unless you're going to master it, kids are forced to develop a little bit of knowledge. It's just a
00:30:44.160
total waste of time. So it's no surprise that young people have little knowledge and little in
00:30:50.860
the way of interest and ambition, because these things have not been fostered. They have in fact
00:30:56.100
been stifled purposefully by the school system. The school system wants broad, shallow, docile people.
00:31:04.280
And it will resort to pretty much any measure to create those kinds of people.
00:31:14.680
And so that's how you end up with my generation, or at least that's, that's maybe not the whole story.
00:31:22.100
That's a big part of the story. What can we do about it? What can we do differently? Well,
00:31:26.300
I think for the education system, for the education system to really function properly and to really
00:31:30.300
create knowledgeable, intelligent, competent people, I think for that to happen, there would
00:31:38.760
need to be a total overhaul of the education system. The education system needs to be rebuilt from the
00:31:44.560
ground up. I think it's just completely wrong in how it goes about almost everything. But that's not
00:31:49.820
going to happen anytime soon. It might never happen. Which means that most of us, what needs to happen
00:31:56.300
instead is that once we get out of the system, and we are young adults, that's when the real work
00:32:02.180
begins of actually learning and growing and developing skills, developing knowledge. I've
00:32:07.560
said before, and I really believe it to be the case, that almost everything I know now, I learned
00:32:12.900
after I graduated. Almost everything. So that's the work that we need to do. All right, we'll leave it
00:32:18.540
there. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Godspeed.