In this episode, we're joined by Grace and Curtis from the 1619 Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping trauma survivors all over the world. They talk about the push for Critical Race Theory in the military, and how they fought back.
00:00:00.000In a viral video, you can see Russian soldiers preparing for some kind of conflict.
00:00:25.000A super chiseled, shaven head Russian man sits from his bed, muscular.
00:00:30.000Then there's another picture of him, he's like in a bomber jet, and he's got like a hood over his head.
00:00:34.000And then he jumps out, and he's got like a bolt-action rifle, or whatever, because it looks like he's got an AK-47.
00:00:38.000Anyway, the point is, this is an ad for the Russian army, apparently, and it makes the Russians look like pretty badass.
00:00:45.000And this viral video then juxtaposes it with the American Army ad, which is a young woman talking about going to LGBT pride events in support of her two moms.
00:00:57.000This is getting slammed by conservatives, and I don't think the Democrats really care that much or the woke care that much until it became a culture war issue, but Ted Cruz said that the Democrats and the woke media are trying to make our military into pansies.
00:01:11.000So across the U.S., we've seen the expansion of critical race theory in many companies.
00:01:15.000During the Trump era, there was a strong effort to push back.
00:01:18.000Donald Trump, at the 11th hour, signed his executive orders to ban critical race theory in government trainings and then any company that contracts with the government, but Joe Biden has reversed this.
00:01:28.000So there's a lot of optimism, but there's also a lot of pessimism.
00:01:31.000Today, we've got some people here who have actually dealt with the expansion of critical race theory from those in their own organization, and how they pushed back and actually wrote about how they were able to resist this.
00:01:44.000So we're going to talk a lot about critical race theory today, where we're currently at, optimism, pessimism.
00:01:50.000We also have the woman who wrote the 1619 Project, outraged because she was denied tenure, even though apparently it isn't something she should have actually gotten.
00:01:58.000And they're claiming now in mainstream press that it's cancel culture because she wrote fake history and nobody's buying it.
00:02:06.000I'm just going to throw it to you guys to introduce yourselves, you know, because I know that there's, you know, I'll just throw it to you.
00:02:11.000You go ahead and you can start, Grace.
00:02:20.000So just you want to give like a really brief introduction of... Yeah, sure.
00:02:24.000So we're co-founders of a non-profit organization doing trainings with lay care providers working with trauma survivors all over the world.
00:02:34.000So pretty high trauma context like refugee camps and human trafficking aftercare and foster kids and that kind of thing.
00:03:09.000Alright, so I think, you know, for this show, we're going to be going through, like, the whole story, start at the beginning, so it's probably better we save a little bit of it, so Ian has set up his static orb.
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00:05:36.000I'm buying a lot of healthier stuff so that when people show up, we're not just shoveling candy down their throat.
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00:07:32.000But I guess the gist of your story is that you were in an organization and wokeness, Critical Racer, started to emerge and you guys fought back.
00:07:40.000So why don't you just tell me from the beginning what happened?
00:07:42.000Yeah, so I actually joined Twitter almost a year ago because we were dealing with what we could tell were some sort of ideological strains of thought happening within the organization and with those strains of thought some very specific strongly worded requests around how the organization should proceed.
00:08:22.000So what happened with these ideologies?
00:08:23.000So yeah, so it's connected to, you know, psychology, counseling, and those fields are influenced now, in part, by critical theory, which is an academic theory.
00:08:35.000And while most people, I mean, I think the language is kind of a hard part about this, because, you know, when you use the word, like, woke, it's really loaded.
00:08:43.000It's becoming kind of a pejorative and people will resist that and, you know, like, OK, you're just using woke to say like anything I don't like that's coming from the left.
00:08:50.000It's just sort of this vague word that catches everything and you don't even really know what it means.
00:08:54.000So let's so so if you don't mind, how about I just I'll pull up critical theory as Wikipedia defines it.
00:09:01.000Not the perfect definition, but for those that we want to avoid, you know, loaded phrases.
00:09:06.000They say, critical theory is a Marxist approach to social philosophy that focuses on reflective assessment and critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challenge power structures.
00:09:17.000With origins in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems are influenced and created more by societal structures and cultural assumptions than by individual and psychological factors.
00:09:28.000Maintaining that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation, critical theory was established as a school of thought primarily by the Frankfurt School theoreticians Herbert Marcuse, Theodore Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Eric Fromm, and Max Horkheimer.
00:09:46.000Horkheimer described a theory as critical insofar as it seeks to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them.
00:09:53.000So this is what Marxist liberation from systems of power and oppression
00:09:57.000Orchestrated by humans on behalf of other humans or humans collectivizing in order to liberate themselves from hegemonic
00:10:04.000oppression So yeah, definitely Marxian in nature. The thing is though
00:10:08.000and where it gets hard is Even though people are very influenced by the ideas of
00:10:12.000critical theory and we're seeing this all over our country at this point
00:10:15.000No in schools and the military and medicine a
00:10:18.000Lot of people who have embraced the ideas of critical theory don't wouldn't call it that they don't know they
00:10:23.000wouldn't say Oh, I'm a critical theorist. I believe in critical theory
00:10:26.000So while they're while they have accepted many of the tenets and they're using the jargon like oh
00:10:31.000There are systems of power and oppression and we need to you know
00:10:34.000We need to examine these power structures and make sure that we're not complicit in perpetrating abuses or perpetrating oppression.
00:10:40.000So we're all familiar with that language at this point.
00:10:43.000If you were to, you know, ask the average person, like, oh, like, where would you say your ideas are coming from?
00:10:47.000They might say something just like social justice.
00:10:52.000I'm for that, you know, but they're not maybe aware of the actual roots of this thing and how it, the aims of it, you know?
00:11:00.000And so they end up aligning themselves with a theory that is Fundamentally, I mean, this is why I think it's so important to speak out about it is it's dehumanizing Definitely so and we felt that and so I mean in terms of that image being somewhat Sensational with all the pitchforks and whatnot it still is and other people many other people because when I when I I posted this story on Twitter and it ended up being spread abroad and and I'll give you a left argument, I suppose, or a critical theorist argument.
00:11:31.000So you run this organization and you start noticing this ideology.
00:11:37.000The first question you'll probably get is, well, what's wrong with someone speaking up and trying to have racial justice within your company?
00:11:46.000In fact, I share those same values and I think we might differ in strategy.
00:11:49.000And then what happens is when you say I differ in strategy, they say it sounds like maybe you're unwilling to investigate your white privilege or your whiteness or how you're complicit in the system.
00:11:58.000It sounds like you're not really ready to talk.
00:12:00.000So it quickly shifts from the idea to you.
00:12:02.000What was the first thing that happened that that you noticed?
00:12:49.000Well, I mean, he might be able to speak to this more because he was beginning to feel like, I don't even have the right to, or it's hard for me to contradict my own staff in certain ways based on how they're presenting these things to me as though these are non-negotiables.
00:13:07.000I mean, so I would say that the first time that I felt like I ever kind of even hit the pause button, because first of all, I hired all these people.
00:14:04.000And when we were trying to talk through our guidelines of really being welcoming, inclusive,
00:14:08.000and a space that of course, the shared value of everybody being able to have a voice.
00:14:13.000have access to what we had to offer and to feel comfortable and and be able to receive from that time in that educational space.
00:14:23.000So it that is where things began to surface was around the strategy of how to welcome and include people.
00:14:32.000And so right and specifically around gender identity and the use of gender pronouns.
00:14:37.000So it was it was an issue of speech and compelled speech because at first Was this you guys introducing a policy or is this something brought to you like wanting a new policy?
00:14:45.000So the way the organization is structured is we're a training organization.
00:14:49.000So we have trainers who are contract employees who are all over the world.
00:14:53.000You know, they're scattered different places and they lead trainings for us.
00:14:56.000And then we have a central team at headquarters that oversees the training program.
00:15:01.000So it's those training program staff that began, you know, wanting to introduce into the curriculum this idea We should be actually teaching the people at our trainings about gender identity and a good way to model that is to actually more than invite them at first and they eventually realized their first approach was not the best but their first approach was everyone needs to share a pronoun whether you know what that you know whether that's your thing or whatever like we're gonna we're gonna have the whole circle share their gender pronouns
00:15:32.000I mean there were comical moments because like we train everybody in the world and even the people who come to where we are locally and are trained with us are coming from all over the world.
00:15:41.000Aren't there many languages that don't have pronouns?
00:15:47.000These trainings that were happening locally were done in English, so anyone who was there was an English speaker.
00:15:50.000But yes, we train in other languages as well, and in contexts where, yeah, absolutely, this category of gender identity would just be completely foreign and inappropriate to bring up.
00:15:59.000But the local trainings, you know, we'd have moments where, you know, a woman from Uganda was there at the training and it gets to her and she's just like, I don't know what you're talking about.
00:16:19.000But it was still their deeply held conviction that if you don't bring that category of gender identity into the space, as they would say it, the people who that category is important to their identity will feel erased, essentially.
00:16:45.000And the fact also that even though some of our training staff were licensed clinical mental health professionals, these training spaces are not clinical spaces.
00:16:54.000So there was that thing, too, of like, well, wait a minute, how can we be doing care?
00:16:58.000This is a clinical model of care, affirmative care.
00:17:00.000We shouldn't even be touching it at all.
00:17:22.000And this was probably like three years ago.
00:17:26.000It's been, it was, yeah, and that I really started, I, using some of the jargon that I heard from them on a regular basis, I just started reading.
00:17:35.000So intersectionality, you know, is a big word that I heard them use.
00:17:40.000And then that, that launched me into this world of critical theory.
00:17:44.000This is why I say woke and I don't say critical theory.
00:17:46.000Critical theory is one aspect of what we're seeing, but then you have intersectionality, then you have fourth wave feminism, and all these different ideas.
00:17:54.000And so I understand that woke might be loaded because you've got a culture war going on, but it's more of an umbrella term for a variety of authoritarian ideology.
00:18:05.000It's a moral framework that believes in their own superiority, much like many fundamentalist religions.
00:18:24.000We wanted the strength that comes from different perspectives.
00:18:27.000But when you tell me I must accept your conception of reality and I can't even ask questions, because asking questions alone reveals that I'm I'm revealing like my resistance to even being a good person or something by asking questions.
00:18:39.000It's like, oh, I don't want to investigate my cisheteronormative, you know, whatever.
00:18:43.000I was like, you know, that to me is like cultish language, you know, where it's like this this doctrine must be accepted and to ask is proof.
00:18:53.000First of all, that the injustice is happening.
00:18:55.000That you're questioning, you know, what is Ibram X. Kendi's always saying, the heartbeat of racism is denial.
00:19:01.000Proving that he himself is one of the most abhorrent racists on the planet.
00:19:05.000I mean that literally, by his own worldview.
00:19:08.000The man himself is one of the most unrepentant racists.
00:19:10.000And that's a really important point is you have to hold them to the standards that they're holding to you.
00:19:14.000And then when you hold them to those standards, that's when you start to realize like, wait a minute, this isn't actually about a good faith dialogue because I just applied your standard to you, but now you're, it's, there's, it's asymmetrical.
00:19:27.000So, you know, we'll put a pin into that, and then for the people who watch this show and know me, they've probably heard this, but just for you guys who haven't heard it, my first experience with critical race theory intersectionality during Occupy was, if I agreed with them, they would recognize my mixed heritage.
00:19:46.000If I disagreed with them, they would accuse me of being a wealthy white male.
00:19:50.000Clearly, none of that was true, but it was just, if you disagree with us, you're a white man.
00:19:54.000And then I'm like, well, my mom is actually, and I'm from the South Side, I'm poor, and they're like, oh, I'm so sorry, oh, you know?
00:20:00.000So, just depending on- Even though none of your ideas changed.
00:20:05.000I was told explicitly that I needed to reconsider my opinions as a white man, and then when I explained, actually, I'm a high school dropout from the South Side of Chicago, and I'm from a mixed-race family, then all of a sudden, these white liberals went, oh.
00:20:27.000Well, it's reductive, and that's the dehumanizing part.
00:20:30.000It's reductive for the person who's on the receiving end of that, you know, to literally be told, you cannot speak on this topic because you are XYZ.
00:20:38.000Like, you just don't even get a seat at the table.
00:20:39.000But then it's, I think it's dehumanizing for the person who is holding the view.
00:20:42.000And so, equally, equally, like, I'm concerned about, um, the people who are being treated this way and, you know, having their, their lives ruined because they're being canceled or whatever.
00:20:53.000They're, they're going to lose their job.
00:20:55.000They're going to be smeared and, you know, in all the newspapers and their, and their, you know, reputation is in shambles at the end of it.
00:21:02.000And I'm concerned for them, but I'm also concerned for the people who have bought into it.
00:21:05.000Because it's really a dangerous way to look at other human beings.
00:21:09.000So after you start noticing this, this is critical gender theory stuff popping up.
00:21:38.000It's about, you know, disparities in mental health care that, you know, most of the world that needs mental health care doesn't have the resources they need.
00:21:52.000I can't remember which the first one was that I did, but I just started cranking out organizational position papers that essentially defined terms.
00:22:00.000And we, at that point, we had entered into like a formal series of, I don't know a better word for it than struggle sessions.
00:22:09.000It was these all-org meetings with the board chair present, sometimes a third-party mediator present, Trying to just even figure out, like, what is needed?
00:22:48.000Let's look up what psychological safety actually is and define it.
00:22:51.000And we defined it based on, um, the coddling of the American mind.
00:22:55.000I don't know if you're familiar with that book, Jonathan Hyatt, Jonathan Hyatt and Greg Lukianoff.
00:23:00.000So they really go into, like, the psychology behind what's sort of happening on university campuses right now, and now has, you know, like, overflowed into the whole culture.
00:23:10.000And so I used a lot of the material from that book, and then Amy Edmondson is a professor at Harvard Business School who coined the term psychological safety, and I used a lot of her research.
00:23:20.000And then I used some trauma-informed models of psychological safety, which is, you know, we do trauma work, so...
00:23:26.000Very much all in alignment with each other.
00:23:28.000So you've got this business school perspective, you've got these guys who wrote this book about the phenomenon in college campuses, and you've got these trauma-informed groups that basically teach about how to be safe when you're working with trauma survivors.
00:23:40.000It's like a whole other level of safety, right?
00:23:43.000And essentially what we saw is While these people were trying to be helpful to people who have been hurt, you know, it's like, yes, there's racism.
00:23:52.000Yes, there is, you know, discrimination against people with different identities.
00:23:57.000But what you're doing when you say, like you said, if you don't speak, you know, this thing into the space, this person's going to be erased.
00:24:05.000It's like, you're essentially saying that person has no agency.
00:24:07.000They're the biggest wimp on the planet.
00:24:10.000like validate them at every moment and affirm them and clap for them and do whatever they say.
00:24:14.000They're going to fall apart and dissolve. Have you seen the DSA meetings, the viral videos?
00:24:18.000No. So this is the Democratic Socialists of America.
00:24:23.000These are a series of viral videos where... I wasn't there.
00:24:28.000I can't tell you what the whole several hours looked like, but in the span of a few minutes, every time someone spoke, they offended someone.
00:24:56.000When your sense of self is dependent on others validating you and others accommodating you, I think narcissism is a great word for it.
00:25:04.000Entitlement is another great word for it.
00:25:06.000And it's counterintuitive because it's like, yeah, if a person's been hurt a lot, there is a sense of like, we need to take care and we don't want to, you know, make them feel unsafe.
00:25:15.000But also it's like counterintuitive in that this person probably actually needs to be pushed out of their comfort zone.
00:25:22.000So you're having these company struggle sessions.
00:25:25.000I mean, it doesn't sound to me like these people actually wanted to help anyone.
00:25:29.000It sounded like they just wanted to have power and bully.
00:25:32.000I wouldn't characterize them that way.
00:25:34.000They're definitely geared towards helping people, but again, it's the strategies versus values.
00:25:42.000You have to applaud them for living in integrity with the moral framework that they've adopted.
00:25:47.000They truly believe this is how social justice is done.
00:25:50.000and so they're carrying it out according to that that conception of reality that Marxian framework that you just read about where it says this constant like so so somebody's in power and the person who's marginalized or disenfranchised they have no say in the conversation so all the norms are just established by discourse there's nothing nothing actually objective see that's that's the real shift is it's not these these social categories of race and biological sex and gender identity and all these things those are really weapons towards what is actually under assault which is objective truth which is why this whole moral panic that you know that took place over the last whatever period of time are
00:26:32.000I kind of think of it as an epistemological panic.
00:26:35.000It's like it really it really disoriented people in terms of how they know how they can know whether something is helpful and true and just and then and then their methods of getting to how they know what they know also were under assault because science itself is under assault as a way to know.
00:26:51.000If you understand their view that it's all about power dynamics, the ideology, the underlying moral framework held by critical theorists, and the expanding umbrella is there is no truth but power.
00:27:05.000That's a core function of their belief.
00:27:07.000It was one of the core tenets of fascists.
00:27:10.000Right. So they're not ultra-nationalists, but they
00:27:12.000hold that authoritarian worldview, which is why it may
00:27:14.000be true that there are individuals who think they're
00:27:28.000I think there are different, you know, varying degrees to which people understand what they're involved with, right?
00:27:33.000I think there are certainly people who understand that this is a tool that can be used to radically transform our system of government and consolidate power.
00:27:41.000And then, like I said, there are like the foot soldiers who are just doing what they're supposed to do within their moral framework, who really think that they're helping people.
00:27:49.000They really see this as like, Oh my goodness, it's the critical consciousness, right?
00:27:53.000That's where the word woke comes from, is that your consciousness has finally been awakened to the reality of power and oppression, these structures of power and oppression that are everywhere, and you just didn't see them before.
00:28:04.000I mean, it's this conversion language, right?
00:28:06.000It's like, I was blind, but now I see.
00:28:08.000So it's like it's so I see this thing now and these these poor white straight cishet whatever people they don't see how they're oppressing and so if I if I care about the people who are being oppressed I have to help them understand how they're part of the oppression.
00:28:22.000Just like when I hear from Christians who say, I don't want you to go to hell, so I have to tell you and teach you.
00:28:36.000You know, some issues I'm having with it is, as you said, Ibram X. Kennedy said that denying racism or Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy.
00:28:45.000That one of the aspects of racism is denying racism, but questioning something is not denying something.
00:28:54.000And also, questioning critical theory, for people to have an issue with that seems counterintuitive because the whole point of critical theory is to question power structures.
00:29:31.000But it's like, I think that's just the the nature of when a social philosophy or a critical theory makes it into the mainstream.
00:29:40.000And it really just becomes more about the phraseology, the more than the philosophy.
00:29:43.000So people know the jargon, and they know what you're supposed to do and what you're supposed to support and what you're not supposed to support.
00:29:48.000They don't know the philosophy behind it.
00:29:49.000I think it's another big mistake, because I'm seeing that it is a huge failure of the anti-woke to embrace critical theory as their target, because now what we see are the woke left saying, OK, name a critical theorist and give me the idea that you have a problem with.
00:30:06.000And then what happens is they pull up specific quotes from like Ben Shapiro, where he'll read one quote and say, well, actually, I agree with that one.
00:30:13.000The issue is that Critical theory isn't, as a whole, the real problem we're experiencing.
00:30:18.000What we're experiencing is the fascistic ideology, there is no truth but power.
00:30:22.000Which, in many ways, is rooted in critical theorists, in Frankfurt School, etc.
00:30:26.000But it's well beyond any particular identity group, race, or gender.
00:30:32.000It is just a group of people who will claim harm in any way, and exploit the system in any way.
00:30:39.000And right now they've found an attack vector.
00:30:47.000They attack that by saying, you're being racist.
00:30:51.000When you try and then ask them what that means, they'll give you a different definition each time.
00:30:55.000Because it's not critical race theory.
00:30:57.000It is just an authoritarian Authoritarian fascistic tactic towards gaining power.
00:31:03.000Yeah, and it's incoherent and it's a double standard, but they are acting according to the theory which says everything is socially constructed.
00:31:54.000And so, the example I give is Bill Maher, for instance, often talks about how you don't need religion to be moral.
00:32:00.000However, he believes in many classically liberal principles which are founded in Judeo-Christian moral framework.
00:32:06.000For instance, the example I often give, you know, ad nauseum to the audience who knows this already is the Fifth Amendment, a right to a speedy trial, innocent until proven guilty, the right to remain silent.
00:32:16.000The core of Innocent Until Proven Guilty is Blackstone's formulation, which was inspired by the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, literally out of the Bible.
00:32:25.000You take away these moral frameworks, Bill Maher, who was raised in a Judeo-Christian society, who understood these things but without the religion, doesn't understand how that framework forms society and what that means in terms of justice.
00:32:40.000You now have an entirely new, purely secular religion, or whatever you want to call it, non-theistic religion, with no core moral framework other than the writings of critical theory and a bunch of other... I mean, there's other non-critical theorists who are included in their citations often, and the ideas they have is just get power by any means necessary.
00:33:03.000Yeah, and I think it's a great point talking about the framework that's being replaced because I've also heard as you know, everyone's trying to figure out what do we do about this woke movement?
00:33:13.000What do we do is just sort of like just get rid of it.
00:33:17.000You need you need a positive moral vision to replace the moral vision that has become embraced by many people because I do agree that it has religious connotations.
00:33:27.000It's a way of understanding yourself in relationship to the world and then acting out of what you believe in a morally integrated way.
00:33:37.000And that's the definition of religion.
00:33:39.000And so it's like, OK, so you can just say, let's just get rid of of all these,
00:33:42.000you know, critical social justice people in the woke movement.
00:33:52.000I mean, but belonging and having a moral purpose that you can attach to clear aims.
00:33:58.000So like that kind of teleological argument that is like there's something that we're aiming for, that society is aiming for, that each human being is made for.
00:34:07.000Um, and so all of that is, is, is providing people with meaning and you see like very religious kind of activity coming out of this, you know, ritual and confession and conversion kind of, I mean, so it's like, you can't just replace that with nothing.
00:34:22.000So let's, let's, let's, we'll, we'll, we'll go back to your company.
00:34:25.000So you were having these struggle sessions, you decided to define these definitions.
00:34:31.000Do you want to share anything? I'm enjoying this conversation. A breakthrough flew through the window.
00:34:36.000Curtis was the happy philosopher over there.
00:34:38.000Um Did you want to say? Well, I can step in just to say again
00:34:42.000that I want to again dialogue, I appreciate being here with you guys because
00:34:47.000Having rich dialogue where there's no victim villain narratives where you're honestly seeking the truth because
00:34:53.000we're on the same team the human team Um, I'd love to just point out in as we describe this just
00:34:58.000again that I love these people They're intelligent. They are caring they're living
00:35:03.000consistently with their convictions and that's exactly how I want people to live
00:35:07.000And so the process for us went from when we started, when we had to push pause and say, hey, okay, you know, in terms of gender pronouns, Can't we find a way in which everybody cannot have to violate their conscience and be able to be here together?
00:35:21.000And the guidelines and the way in which we handle that would allow everybody to show up and learn and take advantage of that.
00:35:27.000So in terms of when we did hit pause and then entering into those sessions, I mean, that we were trying to define terms.
00:35:34.000We were trying to not just miss each other.
00:35:37.000Same words, different dictionary, defining words.
00:35:40.000And then also we started to define the process and we Look for tools.
00:35:44.000So one tool that's great, which actually we haven't had a chance to properly embrace you guys in the Aloha spirit and give you some swag from our organization, but I tucked a book in there that was really helpful for us.
00:35:56.000Our board chair, who actually does professional conflict mediation, he suggested a book called Crucial Conversations.
00:36:04.000And so defining what is dialogue, how do we actually have conversations together where you can be communicating the same definitions of terms and you can hear each other, and actually it's kind of fun because they use the term that what you're doing in good dialogue is that you are filling the pool of the common understanding.
00:36:30.000You want a deep pool of being informed.
00:36:33.000So you're trying to make it a place where some people aren't just being a fire hydrant and just like overrunning the conversation and then other people are like shut off and not contributing to it.
00:36:41.000You want everybody to relax and be able to contribute so that you've got a deep shared pool of meaning for you then to make informed decisions around.
00:36:49.000So that's where we were trying to go to.
00:36:53.000The communication hasn't been healthy because there are these narratives forming that like we're these oppressive people or somebody is oppressing and causing harm.
00:37:01.000And there hasn't ever actually been a concrete accusation of harm.
00:37:22.000Like, so that's something in terms of defining psychological safety and where not only the same definition of the term, but also processes where I love it that, you know, just having a term like a crucial conversation where emotions run high, where there's high stakes, it means something.
00:37:39.000Um, it was very helpful for us to just say, Hey, we want that to become the norm in our culture, like at the organization that, um, when, when there is something that matters, you're not going to hide that and have sideline conversations with other people.
00:37:52.000Um, if it's, you know, relative related to somebody, then they get to take part in that conversation.
00:37:57.000And then it also set up a process, a framework by which you knew that if somebody approached you and said that I need to have a crucial conversation, there's, you know, that I think in the Chinese character for crisis is it's danger and opportunity.
00:38:12.000And I think that applies in terms of these crucial conversations where it's like there's danger that something is at issue here, but there's an opportunity to deal with it as opposed to what was happening was there was a lot of conflict that was never brought to the surface, and then that wasn't able to be dealt with in a healthy way.
00:38:31.000So those sessions were about us trying to adopt tools that will allow us to have this conversation properly.
00:38:45.000We got a chance to actually hear from everybody and fill that shared pool and then what I think brings us back to this conversation about critical theory and whatever we want to call what's going on right now that is that people started to leave the dialogue and and that was the question in terms of if it wasn't you wore them out they couldn't handle it they weren't gaining ground and they're like I'm out of here
00:39:11.000To some degree, but it was, I mean, yeah, the experience that I had that was just, you know, disappointing.
00:39:18.000In sticking to principles, until you can point out something that we actually concretely can change, then to me, we haven't done the work together.
00:39:27.000So they never said, here's what I want you to do?
00:39:50.000We need to be aware of other perspectives.
00:39:54.000We need, you know, certain kinds of diversity on the governing board, this, that, and the other.
00:39:58.000And so it's like, all of these things are great.
00:40:00.000Like, we can, you know, none of this is something we're opposed to, but it's the manner in which you're approaching us that's completely unprofessional and inappropriate.
00:40:07.000That you would go and, like, write this letter and then, like, present it at a board meeting?
00:40:11.000Like, kind of guerrilla warfare style or something?
00:40:16.000But so this is why I think, you know, it's clearly bad faith, in my opinion, from what I'm hearing, especially.
00:40:23.000And it was an attempt to subvert and steal power.
00:40:26.000And so that the tactics they use are meant to maximize damage to you while minimizing risk to themselves.
00:40:33.000The general idea is They can cause you more harm by publicly just slapping you in the face without warning, putting you on the spot where you're forced to say, oh, okay, we'll do it.
00:40:44.000Whereas if they go to you in private or with an email, then you can easily push back with minimum risk to yourself.
00:40:49.000So presenting you an open letter at a meeting, yeah, common tactics, showing up with a protest.
00:40:54.000I don't know if you guys experience any hard protests, but it's one of the things they'll do, because then these corporations are on the spot right now.
00:41:15.000Yeah, I mean, we had the advantages of being the co-founders of the organization and so having some authority instead of just maybe an employee who's seeing all of this happening.
00:41:24.000And like, I don't want to be part of this.
00:41:29.000And also just being, you know, a scrappier grassroots nonprofit organization.
00:41:33.000We're not in the spotlight, necessarily.
00:41:36.000You know, we have a lot of work that we're doing around the world, but I just think that it was worth it to us to really, like, lean into that conversation and try to understand the ideas and be really principled about our pushback to those ideas.
00:41:50.000And we, while it was really draining organizationally, like we spent a lot of time on that process that could have been going towards the work that we're organized to do, it was worth it to be able to, in a principled way, say, we're not going to do these things and here's why.
00:42:08.000That's, that's another, that's essentially the tactic.
00:42:11.000They know that, you know, for a lot of companies, they might say, how, how much money is it going to cost to do all these trainings and keep having these meetings?
00:42:17.000Oh, is it going to cost a hundred grand?
00:42:19.000How much is it going to cost to just give them what they want?
00:42:27.000Because then you're never done with it.
00:42:29.000And the long-term effect is that now you live under it.
00:42:31.000Yes, yeah, the appeasing strategy doesn't work.
00:42:34.000And for me, it's again, I love these people, and over a number of years, I don't think, even in talking with them, when we started to identify some of the language, and we've asked them explicitly, do you, like, it seems like you might be adhering to some of these philosophies, is that the case?
00:42:49.000They denied that, I don't, and I honestly think it was the truth, that they weren't aware of it, that it's something that they weren't taught, it was something that... Formally.
00:42:56.000Yeah, and it's just something that was influencing their thinking, So my hope, too, wasn't just to try to, you know, hey, I think that my intuitive sense of this is correct, and let's get there as soon as possible.
00:43:06.000It's like, if you want to treat people well and, you know, be the change you want to see in the world, I want to have conversations where you can actually look at the ideas, and at the end of the day, the best ideas would be the ones that influence your policies as an organization.
00:43:19.000It wasn't just to try to hold out and make it annoying because, you know, outlast them.
00:43:25.000It was really my hope was that people would come to see that, OK, we can have diversity, but we need to unify around what makes sense for the context of our organization.
00:43:36.000And then also, again, following the logic of, you know, in terms of that one specific topic, can't there be a way in which somebody doesn't have to compromise their conscience and everybody can be in an educational space together?
00:43:50.000Interesting, because, you know, it feels like a Chinese finger trip, right?
00:43:54.000That most people's instinct would be to try and pull their fingers out as hard as possible, and you guys seem to have, like, leaned in and really made them explain themselves, and it got to a point where they just couldn't effectively do it.
00:44:04.000You know, they talk about harm, but people are probably sitting around saying, I'm so sorry, tell us about your harm, and then they can't.
00:44:11.000I met with every single one of them individually for as much time as they wanted to take because I genuinely cared.
00:44:17.000And I, you know, and yeah, I'm sure that they had an experience.
00:44:21.000That's the thing in trauma, too, that like it's not necessarily about the experience, but the meaning that you make of it, that it has an impact on you.
00:44:28.000So it's even if it's something where it's like, OK, there's no policy or anything that I can necessarily fix or adjust.
00:44:35.000I still just wanted to hear them out because they it was the experience they had is real and I care about them.
00:44:40.000But yes, we did have, you know, the way that things went where we stuck to the ideas.
00:44:47.000And then over time, too, more came out.
00:44:50.000So, you know, when George Floyd happened, then that was another big blow up moment of people wanting to hashtag certain things and to advocate and to do things that were just out of the scope of what we considered within our mission.
00:45:01.000We don't make meaning about individuals' trauma and we don't make meaning about societal trauma at large.
00:45:06.000We show up and say, hey, we've got rigorously built tools to help people get through things, but we're not going to make meaning about what you're getting through.
00:45:17.000And so anyways, there's some more, you know, just kind of dissatisfaction around that we weren't being more proactive about that in terms of either advocating using our social media or in terms of doing that work internally as an organization.
00:45:32.000And so that was part of the story was was that it at that point, then people started to and I think this is kind of, you know, moving us forward in the conversation.
00:45:43.000At a certain point, people were not interested in staying in the dialogue.
00:45:48.000They weren't interested in looking at the best research that we could find around how to actually evaluate our policies.
00:45:54.000And it got to a point where people decided to step away.
00:45:57.000And what was unfortunate, and I think is also reflective of the Cultural moment we're in is that too often it switches from the ideas that you have being bad to you being bad.
00:46:08.000And, and, uh, you know, and I, everybody's an individual and, um, people, when those that did leave the organization all left in their own way and experience, but we were called some names and, and it wasn't our ideas that were ultimately, um, you know, The most italicized comments, so.
00:46:31.000It sounds like, though, you're just on the other side of the culture, Warno.
00:46:36.000You could choose to agree with the woke people who are constantly pressuring you, but it sounds like you rejected it, and now you're having a conversation with those who are rejecting, you know, critical theory and the wokeness and all that.
00:46:49.000Yeah, I mean, in thinking about why that Twitter thread that I posted ended up, you know, going as widely as it did and bringing a bunch of attention to me, it was that it was just, I mean, I was sad, honestly.
00:47:02.000It was like, this should not be rare, you know, but I understand why it is because the pressure is so great.
00:47:07.000And people don't want to see their organization, you know, sued, ruined, whatever, their reputation ruined.
00:47:13.000And so, like you said, they'll appease, you know, like, okay, yeah, let's do the training.
00:47:41.000Then the next I come along is like, no, I have an idea.
00:47:43.000This is this is how we understand knowledge.
00:47:45.000This is how we have a unified field of knowledge.
00:47:47.000And he bumps that up against the last guy's idea.
00:47:49.000And they're like, okay, this idea wins, and on and on and on until Hegel Where Hegel says, no, no, we, we, this rationalistic philosophy project has failed, like, we are never going to find unified field of knowledge, so now the best way forward is to take your thesis, your antithesis, and combine them into a synthesis.
00:48:08.000But what he did in that is, he didn't just change, he didn't just go from that dude's philosophy to this dude's philosophy, he changed the whole rules of the game of philosophy, which was, He established a whole new kind of epistemology, basically saying, well, there isn't really an objective field of knowledge that we can ever find, so let's just do the best that we can to move things forward.
00:48:26.000So it wasn't like, you know, where you have an idea and I have an idea, one of us is closer to the truth.
00:48:30.000You know, we're gonna try to align with truth, not just like move the ratchet forward, you know?
00:48:36.000And so he changed that understanding of epistemology.
00:48:39.000He also changed the methodology by which we arrive at the right solutions.
00:48:44.000So it's no longer like we're going to try our best to align ourselves with what's objectively real.
00:48:48.000I had a conversation a long time ago with someone during the Occupy Wall Street era, who is a far-left, anti-fag, ultra-woke, very intelligent, totally educated in philosophy, who completely agreed with me on everything.
00:49:04.000She told me it's fun to watch the world burn.
00:49:07.000So, while there are probably the grunts, the peons, the foot soldiers of You know, Critical Theory, who just abide by the tenets that they've been, you know, that have been espoused.
00:49:20.000It seems like there is some truth in the idea of being woke.
00:49:24.000Of truly understanding the nature of humans and the philosophy of, there is no truth but power.
00:49:30.000Because it seems like, well, they're actually in a sense correct.
00:49:34.000Of course there's objective truth, but they know that people will absolutely give up any notion of truth for comforting lies and or personal benefit.
00:49:44.000In which case, I have this conversation with an individual, and we talk about general philosophy, morals, nihilism, solitism, etc., and what a person can know and what a person can do and why we do it.
00:49:57.000And we ultimately come to this conclusion that, in the end, we're just kind of being hopeful that what we're doing is the right thing because we only know so much, right?
00:50:41.000Writing books and holding rallies and And I know, when I see this person, their true intent is, I want people to smash and burn, because at least life isn't boring them.
00:50:52.000Well again, she's acting in integrity with what she has decided is the moral framework of the universe.
00:50:58.000So it's like, after Hegel, and one of my favorite philosophers, Francis Schaeffer, calls Hegel the line of despair.
00:51:03.000So it's like, at Hegel, philosophy changed, and people gave up the project of Understanding truth objectively and it changed to kind of coping with this reality that the universe is absurd and that there is no meaning attached to our morality.
00:51:19.000There's no meaning attached to our language.
00:51:20.000There's no meaning attached to anything we do really.
00:51:31.000John Paul Sartre, for instance, not too long after Hegel, was like, this is where the trajectory naturally goes.
00:51:38.000His whole thing was, we can't really ever know what's true, what's real, and if we experience something true and real, we wouldn't even be able to communicate it to someone else, or even to ourselves.
00:51:49.000Therefore, the only way to authenticate your existence is by an action of the will.
00:51:54.000But it's still completely disconnected from meaning.
00:51:56.000And so Francis Schaeffer, in this book that I was reading recently, used the example of you're driving down the street in the rain, and you see somebody standing with an umbrella.
00:52:05.000You stop, and you pick them up, and you give them a ride.
00:52:07.000And you go on, and that was an act of the will that authenticated your existence.
00:52:12.000But an equal act of the will that would authenticate your existence is you're driving in the rain, you see somebody with an umbrella, and you run them over.
00:52:21.000You know, it's just like, and you're like, okay, if that's that's where we've arrived is like that there's nothing we can't attach meaning to morality.
00:53:21.000Constitutional carry of the Second Amendment is expanding across the country only the past 10 years.
00:53:25.000In the 80s, we had a Second Amendment, but you had less gun rights.
00:53:28.000Free speech as we know it didn't actually get solidified until, I think, until like 1961.
00:53:32.000Because we had that ruling and it wasn't Brandenburg via Ohio or whatever which finally gave us true free speech as
00:53:37.000we know it And there are still restrictions on our speech
00:53:40.000So it's interesting me when I think about this that there are many people that they say red-pilled
00:53:45.000And red-pilled is very much the alt the other side of being woke. It means essentially the same thing
00:53:51.000Yeah, but if you look at the average woke person in the average red-pilled person, they actually aren't awakened
00:53:57.000too much of anything They're just aligned with a political tribe as you move up
00:54:01.000higher in the hierarchy. I suppose you'll find more and more
00:54:04.000enlightenment my personal view of the politics right now from the high-profile political
00:54:10.000actors is Is that on both sides you have a lot of high-profile dumb people who don't really know what they're talking about, don't know anything about existence philosophy, or they can't self-reflect, they probably don't meditate.
00:54:19.000But then I think there's a lot of people who actually are truly awakened to something.
00:54:24.000So not necessarily woke or red-pilled, but conscious of philosophy.
00:54:28.000I do, however, think those that find themselves on the anti-woke side, when understanding philosophy, are good.
00:54:36.000And generally speaking, those on the woke side are generally bad.
00:54:40.000And the reason for this is that when I started, we had a really great discussion about religion several times, actually.
00:54:48.000We talk about philosophy and religion.
00:54:49.000I was talking about my moral foundations and, you know, why I choose to do the things that I do.
00:54:56.000And it stemmed very simply in what life does.
00:54:59.000And what life does is organize free energy into more complex systems.
00:55:05.000The universe as we think we know it today, assuming we're correct, we're probably wrong, and it'll probably change in the future, is that we are looking at the blip just after the Big Bang, and the true state of the universe is the heat death of the universe, where there's just absolutely nothing.
00:55:17.000Every electron evenly spaced so far away that they can never interact ever again.
00:55:21.000We're in this period where entropy rules the day, and the universe is slowly dying out and spreading out.
00:55:27.000And so in the meantime, there is some unique organization that is not a singularity that creates some kind of interesting things.
00:55:34.000Free energy organizes itself into molecules, elements, eventually single-celled lifeforms.
00:55:41.000Well, actually, first self-replicating proteins, then single-celled lifeforms, then multicellular lifeforms.
00:55:45.000Then multicellular lifeforms grow to a point where they start interacting with each other, creating ecosystems.
00:55:49.000The one thing that we can truly see life do is organize, create, or I shouldn't say create in the physical sense.
00:55:56.000They're not making things, they're organizing and giving structure to things.
00:56:07.000They want to go into organizations and break them apart.
00:56:10.000I want to build things and make them better.
00:56:12.000Get rid of the parts that are vestigial or broken and slowly improve upon society to the point where maybe we'll have a Star Trek-like future where we're in a spaceship and we can travel to stars and have replicators and people are much more happy and continue the process of Organizing the universe, as it were.
00:56:27.000Woke tends to be a disorganizational and chaotic force.
00:56:33.000Of course, a law of the universe, and the dominant one, which is a bit... It is a bit... Oh, now YouTube's gonna claim I swore.
00:56:40.000It is a bit depressing, but when I look at that conversation I had with that woke activist who understood much of these ideas, they chose to be chaos and destruction.
00:56:53.000I view creation and order as good for very simple reasons.
00:56:57.000Like I mentioned, we see life do this, but also, who wants to die?
00:57:03.000Some people do for some reason, like their body is breaking down, the organization of their form no longer functions, and they're in pain or they're suffering or something is wrong.
00:57:11.000But most people, and almost all life, one of the core aspects of life is the desire and the will to fight to live.
00:57:17.000So when I see a chaotic destructive force breaking things, I see that as inherently bad, because it defies the function of what life does.
00:57:25.000Not necessarily a, not at all, I think, a Christian framework in any capacity, but certainly much more in alignment with the structure of order, creation, and protection.
00:57:33.000Sometimes you need destruction because too much creation can lead to cancer, too many cells producing, so you need cells to apoptosis and destroy themselves.
00:57:41.000Sometimes you need like neutral, not creation or destruction, but a balance where the cell is just in, not stagnation, but in synthesis or in So there is like a neutral aspect to reality, I think, that we're missing.
00:57:58.000You could theoretically argue that the critical theorists, the woke, are actually an extremely harsh version of order, where I recognize sometimes destruction is necessary if it serves the greater creation.
00:58:12.000Unfortunately, it is as we believe it now.
00:58:15.000In order for there to be negative entropy, there has to be greater entropy created along the way.
00:58:20.000However, if you look at the woke and you look at authoritarianism, eventually, they are so rigid, it's like creating a giant tower that goes up in a straight vertical line, it collapses.
00:58:30.000So in the short term, you may say, if the woke had their way, they would create a rigid power structure, which is very orderly.
00:58:36.000Those who take the power are in charge, and they can control systems that way.
00:58:40.000Obviously, the communists in the Soviet Union had structure and order, but it was so rigid and it was so straight up that eventually you knock out one block and the whole thing falls down.
00:58:53.000Ultimately, I view woke, left, communists, socialists, et cetera, in the long term, as a destructive path.
00:58:59.000It's like watching someone build a bridge to nowhere, where eventually it just crumbles and falls to the ground, and it's destruction.
00:59:05.000And they're actively fighting against us who are trying to build, improve, and... So they're creating a system that's susceptible to destruction because it's brittle from its extension.
00:59:21.000They also are actively stripping organizations and structures to build their broken system, which is why I view it more like an... What's the right way to put it?
00:59:33.000They're people who are taking resources and building something nonsensical that will eventually destroy the system.
00:59:44.000I think that Jordan Peterson has definitely spoken to this because he talks about the negative ramifications of having too much order and the negative ramifications of having too much chaos.
00:59:53.000So when you get to the level of authoritarianism, you have too much order.
00:59:58.000But when you get to the level of postmodernism, when you can't even agree on the definition of the word that you're using to discuss these ideas, that is too much chaos.
01:00:16.000But yeah, so like these ideas are so disorganized and unstructured.
01:00:21.000This is the negative manifestation of chaos and the negative manifestation of order, both wrapped into this nice little package of wokeness, this critical theory.
01:00:31.000And I'm not sure what their end goal is here, but it's just- Hear me out about this theory.
01:01:11.000Well, if you study like research, yeah, you can study like vibrations of surface plasma And you can see light interacting with plasma and like that seems like consciousness.
01:01:21.000Yeah, but it's not mainstream and that's a problem because it could have been in the 30s when Tesla was working on it, but the the oil companies in the copper you're You're blaming someone else for what you should be doing I think the unexpected result is this uprising of a new religion, because we've suppressed what is actually real.
01:01:42.000I don't know what's actually real, other than what we think we know as humans.
01:02:19.000So basically, we have a structure of self-replicating proteins that is our system, and woke are malformed proteins that when they come into contact with healthy proteins, malform them.
01:02:31.000These proteins can't work in the body and eventually lead to the body's death and destruction.
01:02:35.000So I think, what was it, mad cow disease?
01:02:48.000Because I mean, that's something in terms of getting back to Hegel and just is there objective truth or not?
01:02:54.000And for people to be making objective truth statements that It's contradictory for you to say there's no such thing as absolutes, but that in and of itself is an absolute statement.
01:03:05.000So I think that, again, we find ourselves, you know, I like the movie, As a Surfer, 180 Degrees South, where the Patagonia founders that are into surfing and climbing and all that, they at one point in the movie say that, you know, you want to be progressive?
01:03:19.000Well, at some point, if you're going in the wrong way, it's progressive to turn around and go 180 degrees the other direction.
01:03:25.000And I think in terms of our ability as a civilization, I like how Oz Guinness calls we're living in a cut flower society, where we're enjoying so much of the fruits of Western civilization and a lot of ideas that come from Athens, that come from Greece.
01:03:37.000People for thousands of years have been developing ways to reason, you know, empiricism, the scientific method.
01:03:44.000So we see a lot of yard signs in Seattle that say science is real.
01:04:14.000Yeah, so it was trapped in a circuit with no nucleus, and it exhibited the chemical properties of what it normally would with a single electron in orbit.
01:04:25.000And when they injected more electrons into it, it exhibited the chemical properties of the appropriate atom with no nucleus.
01:04:31.000So that's, I mean, that's, it seems like that's kind of what's going on right now is that as Grace was saying earlier, that, you know, you can't just remove this particular project without being clear on what you're going to put in its place.
01:04:43.000And I would just hope that we can just take a deep breath.
01:04:47.000And look at some of the skills that our brothers and sisters have developed over a long period of time in terms of just doing dialogue better, doing science better, because that's something we've seen.
01:04:56.000The American Psychological Association and others are out of their lane.
01:05:00.000They're dealing with things that are philosophical, ontological, that are not empirical, and that are... that's messing things up.
01:05:07.000And we just need some honesty and some carefulness around the way that we approach things.
01:05:12.000And I'd love to, you know, continue conversations around things like, you know, what really is at the root of these questions of what is true.
01:05:21.000But I think that, you know, fundamentally, we all share the values of wanting to love people.
01:05:26.000And in our case, we've just seen in a particular way in which loving people depends on truth.
01:06:23.000There are people who genuinely believe false things and because of that want to build in the wrong direction, which would ultimately cause pain and suffering to a lot of people.
01:06:32.000But when you're arrogant and you just, I guess, egotistical, maybe a lack of true philosophical understanding, you're willing to burn down the entire system for the sake of claiming you are right.
01:06:44.000It's a problem humans have, I suppose.
01:06:46.000I think a lot of critical theorists disagree with the scientific method, have issues with it.
01:06:50.000And something about that that's interesting.
01:06:52.000They call it the scientific method, but it's just one aspect of science.
01:06:56.000You could call it the floorbow method.
01:06:58.000You could call it like dark method or whatever.
01:07:00.000It's a method of measuring something over and over and over again to make sure that it continues to happen.
01:07:05.000And then you can say, okay, fine, that is real.
01:07:08.000And if it doesn't happen over and over again, then you say it's not real.
01:07:12.000But a problem with reality is sometimes things happen and they don't happen over and over again because they're happening for reasons we don't understand or can't measure.
01:07:18.000And so the scientific method is flawed.
01:07:20.000And it's saying people are taking issue with that.
01:07:23.000They just don't have another type of science yet to explain why Someone might be born with male genitalia but feel like their gender is female.
01:07:34.000It's flawed in the sense that we're imperfect, but the fact that you recognize it's flawed and science recognizes its limitations means it serves its purpose.
01:08:01.000But that's the issue, is that I can simply say, when it comes to issues of universal healthcare versus private healthcare, well, I don't know.
01:08:09.000I'd love to look over the data and figure out a plan to move forward.
01:08:19.000He said, the whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves and wiser people so full of doubts.
01:08:41.000Well, I feel the door, give a little knock, then I'm finally on door number four, I hear a RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR I look down, look under the crack of the door, I see some light, and I'm like, I think that one's the door to freedom.
01:09:02.000I don't know for sure, but let's take a peek.
01:09:04.000I open it, I see sunlight, I say, alright, it's my best guess.
01:09:58.000And all like science doesn't talk about that.
01:10:01.000So these are like the ultimate things that everyone is answering.
01:10:04.000And everyone has arrived at, even if it's just sort of an agnostic, I don't know, no one knows, like that is still the framework out of which you're operating.
01:10:12.000And so what I see happening also with this critical social justice movement is that they've actually arrived at a transcendent version of science.
01:10:20.000They're saying that the, you know, the classic, you know, textbook definition of science didn't- isn't good because there's all these other knowledges, and they use that word knowledges plural, that we need to be observing.
01:10:33.000We need- we need to be carefully, you know, listening to because those views have been pushed out to the margins.
01:10:39.000And in a way, I'm like, I think you're right.
01:10:41.000And it's not- it's not that people's individual kind of standpoint epistemology is- is Going to get us to all the answers, you know, that that's that's a fallacious way of thinking.
01:10:50.000But there is the sense in which we need something that also transcends the empirical, like rationalism and enough is not enough.
01:10:58.000There's more knowledge that is so true to reality and to our understanding of ourself in reality that science doesn't touch.
01:11:05.000This is why I say I don't think that the left, the woke, are acting in any sense of good faith.
01:11:11.000I was watching a documentary about air conditioning and they said that, or I think it was about skyscrapers, we couldn't build above like eight stories because the accumulation of heat as it rose made the upper floors unbearable.
01:11:22.000Until we invented window unit air conditioners.
01:11:26.000Then we put them in the windows and we could filter the heat out of the building and keep the building cool, then we could start building higher and higher and higher.
01:11:33.000And then they mentioned that there were actually ancient tribes that already understood the principle of pulling heat from the bottom and pushing it out the sides, so that the upper levels of their structures could be warmer, or they could remove the heat from the building to keep their huts cooler.
01:11:49.000And these tribes learned how to do it by watching ants.
01:11:52.000There are anthills in, I think it's in Africa somewhere, where they grow these big towers that pull heat out of the ant colony and then funnel them out in different directions.
01:12:03.000Understanding that principle by watching nature, these ancient tribes were able to build and utilize it to keep their houses cool.
01:12:10.000And we, as Euro-centric settlers in the United States, didn't understand that technology.
01:12:16.000So now we're actually building skyscrapers that follow more of these principles, because it's very, very energy effective and allows us to build without needing massive amounts of air conditioning.
01:12:24.000You still gotta pump water and air up and stuff like that.
01:12:26.000So, I see that and I say, that's true!
01:12:29.000It's very obvious that if we paid more attention to other cultures' developments, that's why the actual diversity, in the true sense, is good.
01:12:55.000People often look at, like, how did they move these big stones to build these pyramids?
01:12:58.000They couldn't have done it without a machine.
01:13:00.000And then some guy is like, actually, you can use some wood.
01:13:03.000There's a really amazing video where this guy moved a two-ton slab by hammering wood under it digging a hole and then teetering it back and forth until it flipped and he's like and you just got to keep doing it and you can move using its own weight and counterbalance and he was like so you don't need gigantic machines to do it there's also another video with like how did the how did they split these rocks so perfectly and then a guy just like takes a an axe and he hits it along the edge and then the rock just splits it's like there are techniques that we might not know about or how about
01:13:33.000Didn't ancient Greece or Rome have cement that could dry underwater?
01:13:37.000And we're still like, man, how do they do that?
01:14:28.000No, that's why I think of it as management theory.
01:14:31.000It's really pretty crass, you know, it's it's not it, you know, whereas most frameworks by which we would have a conception of reality are about establishing sort of a meta-narrative, right?
01:14:48.000This one is really just about managing people.
01:14:50.000It's about managing people into categories by which we can easily identify each other and about having people mistrust whether they can really know or how they know.
01:15:00.000So that the knowledge is really coming from a Gnostic place.
01:15:04.000It's reserved to a few on any given topic.
01:15:08.000I was thinking the metaphor of if you're playing a video game and you have a multitude of characters to choose from.
01:15:14.000You have an archer, you have a rogue, you have a warrior.
01:15:16.000And you get to pick your party of four people.
01:15:19.000These critical theorists will pick four archers, because that's what they want.
01:15:25.000They want people that believe the same thing and act the same way.
01:15:27.000But then they'll get skins, just like cosmetic skins of difference.
01:15:30.000They'll have one archer will look like a woman, one archer will look like a black guy, one archer will look like a white guy, and then... But the problem is, it's not real diversity.
01:15:40.000They look different, but it's four archers.
01:15:43.000You need different people with different worldviews.
01:15:47.000And that's a very different type of diversity.
01:16:01.000Yeah, I mean, you know, most people want, like, the legit armor set, but, you know, endgame characters end up looking really funky because the best armors don't usually go together.
01:16:09.000Though I think, you know, a lot of games started making that better.
01:16:11.000Like, okay, fine, the tier 3 endgame armor is gonna be better.
01:16:15.000So, look, if you want to go on a raid and you want to have, like, a mage, you know, he's a little squishy, but he's got some good ranged DPS.
01:16:22.000And then you want to get a hunter because he's got the pet.
01:16:23.000You know, you can't just go in with five tanks.
01:16:27.000Although I've seen videos of people trying to do it.
01:16:41.000This rogue has a black skin, this rogue is a female, this rogue has white-yellow hair, and they consider that diversity, but you can't win with four rogues.
01:16:50.000That's a really good idea for a video we should make, where we go on a World of Warcraft dungeon, and we just have, like, a white rogue, a black rogue, a lady rogue, an elf rogue, you know, whatever, and we're like, we've got five different races of rogue, we're gonna go in and beat the boss.
01:17:54.000And then DPS means damage per second, so you have people who can fire arrows or magic spells, and then you have rogues in Warcraft who are up close slicing and dicing and stuff.
01:18:05.000If you want to win, almost every single normal run will be, we need a diverse team.
01:18:18.000Instead, Ian makes a really good point that would be hilarious to watch, like five priests trying to, you know, win a dungeon, and it's like, well, like, priests can do damage if they're spect shadow, but...
01:18:44.000Well, remember, Nicole Hannah-Jones talking about how you can be politically black and you can be politically white, even though you're actually black.
01:18:53.000This kind of superficial... Well, no, that's in critical theory.
01:19:58.000Well, so I guess, uh, man, just what's the final final leg of the story?
01:20:03.000You guys got a bunch of, you know, anti-woke, anti-SJW fat dudes in fedoras with katanas to like storm into the building and the big fat feminists were chased out or what?
01:20:16.000No, we were, we love all those people.
01:20:20.000We were just, yeah, we wanted to continue having the conversation as long as conversation was possible.
01:20:27.000And there came a point at which each of the people who left, left on moral grounds, saying that they they wouldn't want to be a part of an organization that is white supremacist, for instance.
01:20:39.000So yeah, it was just sort of like, okay, that's, you know, you're, you're living according to your moral beliefs and we disagree with you.
01:20:46.000You have these deeply held commitments, convictions, whatever you want to call it.
01:20:53.000I think it, you know, I, I just think it took you guys longer than it would take me, you know, like I, but I get it.
01:20:59.000And, um, if it were me and I was running an organization and someone, you know, put on an open letter, I'd be like, bro, doors right there.
01:21:09.000Well, here's here's where it's tricky because employers know that employees who are oriented towards this ideology will turn that into an attack on the organization if there's any sense of I was wrongfully terminated or I was I was shoved out because of my beliefs, you know, so I Honestly, I think the principled approach that we took is the only approach if you don't want your organization if you don't want to I disagree a pyrrhic victory for instance, there's like okay you won but like now you're in litigation if if If if I'd an employee say that they wanted everyone to name their gender pronouns I would pull them aside and say I cannot allow you to be homophobic or transphobic and force people to out themselves and
01:22:02.000We said, hey, look, here's what the actual research says.
01:22:05.000I put together like a 14 page paper on gender identity.
01:22:09.000And it was all the research like cited throughout the paper, like actual peer reviewed, you know, controlled, real research.
01:22:18.000And it was basically like, hey, this is actually not best practice.
01:22:23.000This can be damaging to people in dysphoric conditions to be asked to name their gender identity into a space full of strangers, by the way.
01:22:31.000And so what was really disheartening, though, is because this has more of a religious nature to it, that this person is like, That's all good.
01:22:39.000These are probably a bunch of studies written by white guys anyway.
01:23:45.000So my argument would be to make minority individuals go into a room to be taught about white people is discriminatory because they don't have meetings about black people or Asian people, only white people.
01:23:57.000So I told them that, you know, it's racist.
01:23:59.000I would, I would say absolutely none of that.
01:24:01.000If they said, we want to do pronouns, I would say this is harassment of the LGBTQ employees who don't want to out themselves.
01:24:09.000And if you bring it up again, you're gone.
01:24:37.000And they know that, and they exploit that.
01:24:41.000Yeah, and one quick add-on to that too is just that in terms of the spirit of what you want to actually see happen there, we ended up into a place where it's like we don't want to just play games and use the same rules that you have and apply them back to you to try to, you know, in some case show you that we can't live this way.
01:24:57.000But, you know, in terms of the space where you want to be inclusive, the whole point is we have these tools that are meant for everybody to be able to benefit from, and how can we make people feel like they can come and be a part of that?
01:25:09.000So there are solutions, and that was the effort, is how can we be informed and get to a place
01:25:14.000where we don't just play a game back and forth with a use of language, but to actually make
01:25:18.000progress in the world, there are solutions.
01:25:22.000And for us in that one particular case, it's like, why don't we just give, put the power
01:25:25.000in the hands of that individual and just say, you know, we're going to go around and as
01:25:29.000part of our guidelines that include all the normal stuff of just, you know, being respectful
01:25:34.000and everything you'd want to do in civil conversation.
01:25:38.000These people, in sharing at the beginning to get to know each other, why don't you just invite them to share how you'd like to be referred to in the space?
01:25:47.000Because that doesn't make anybody say a pronoun, and then that, if somebody... But you're still not satisfying, and this is what we learned, you're not satisfying what the goal was, again, was to bring that gender identity category explicitly into the space as a way of reflecting back to those people that they're seeing.
01:26:08.000Yeah, so what you guys found was that there is not a compromise there.
01:26:11.000There's nothing you can do to make it so that you are happy and feel that you're serving your own moral standard and that they're happy and you're giving them what they're looking for.
01:26:21.000There's just no common ground, and I think they make it that way on purpose.
01:26:25.000I think that's the reason they keep their definition so loose and easy, and they change it on you in the middle of an argument.
01:26:31.000And you were talking about this before the show, the concept of making them play by their own rules.
01:27:08.000I see it's like a kind of linguistic credentialism they have where they have this whole jargon that they use and that they employ against people.
01:27:16.000And most people just feel like overwhelmed by it.
01:27:18.000Like, I don't know what I'm even being accused of.
01:27:20.000I don't know what all these heteronormativity phrases are.
01:27:34.000How do you know I'm straight just because I'm married to a man?
01:27:37.000You know, it's like within your own, within your own framework, you know, like I could be any, I could be any sexual identity, any gender identity right now.
01:27:46.000Based on their own framework, you'd be a dog.
01:27:56.000He made one where he's talking about gender and he said, the arguments about critical gender theory is that men and women are on a spectrum.
01:30:05.000But just again, not trying to have the victim villain mindset.
01:30:08.000And we're trying to speak to people we love and care about and, you know, in a way that can point it out and have a good dialogue to where you can be.
01:30:19.000I love the concept of the noble adversary and how in philosophy it's so helpful to have somebody that might be completely on the other side of an issue.
01:30:26.000But as long as truth is on the throne, then you both can be very helpful to one another.
01:30:32.000And I love that question is just how how can truth contradict you?
01:30:36.000And is truth on the throne in your life?
01:30:47.000What happens when they're the dominant political party and they control the House, the Senate, the presidency, and they're passing laws based on this stuff?
01:30:55.000So the issue I see is that there are many people who think that these people want to have a dialogue, that these people are trying to improve things.
01:31:29.000Typically we just spray water on things, though.
01:31:31.000Which means, if you want to maintain your principles, you can't, in the end, in my opinion, use, you know, the rules for radicals, I suppose, because then you're just spreading fire along with it.
01:31:40.000I suppose, though, controlled burn could work.
01:31:42.000In the end, though, perhaps there's a surgical approach to using a controlled burn in certain settings where it must be done, and then overall we need to keep spraying water on the fire.
01:31:51.000Fire also can keep you alive in the right circumstances, like a controlled bonfire.
01:32:06.000But when it gets out of control, and then it loses its own tolerance and can't has problems with with upending itself when it's it sees its own flaws.
01:32:16.000That's the the wildfire that's dangerous.
01:32:26.000We chillin' this Friday night, everybody.
01:32:28.000So make sure you go to TimCast.com, sign up to become a member.
01:32:31.000We got a bunch of really cool stuff coming.
01:32:33.000We actually are building this auction system, which means it's not just about auctioning off weekly tickets to the space to come hang out for our Friday night events, but we're actually going to be able to have signed t-shirts and other weird stuff.
01:34:40.000Mike Tyson made the quote that being online has made people comfortable with saying things that would get them consequences in the real life.
01:36:00.000Yeah so somebody not too far away said that the chicken was an escape artist and that they had to like they couldn't keep it because it was going to get out and get eaten and I was like well we've got this fortified coop and she's currently laying eggs and it was funny because I was like I wonder what's going to happen because our chickens have never been around another chicken before.
01:36:17.000We put her in, and you know what the chickens did?
01:36:50.000David Palmer says, any charities you guys trust?
01:36:52.000I'm looking to donate, but want my money spent well.
01:36:55.000Well, one thing you can definitely do if you want to contribute, not all charities are tax deductible, which means you may as well contribute to something that is going to do great work, like going to TimCast.com and becoming a member.
01:39:23.000Well, our staff was of diverse religious and spiritual backgrounds.
01:39:29.000So that was something to take into account.
01:39:32.000Yeah, and I would say that also it was the idea of personal versus professional came to light in terms of just how oftentimes that the organized worldviews are quickly called out, but people are not aware of just the fact that we all have a worldview and that, again, people are out of their lane when you're trying to do science or have empirical conversations around these types of things.
01:39:56.000We all need to Just be honest about that fact.
01:40:00.000That is something we laid early on with the groundwork was we all operate on faith at some level, especially about the ultimate things.
01:40:28.000So when people are like, Tim's fake news, I'd be like, all my sources are certified
01:40:33.000And they gave CNN an 8 out of 10, and Daily Wire 3 out of 10.
01:40:36.000So if you don't trust them, I don't know who I'm supposed to trust.
01:40:39.000It was funny, there was like some fake report that claimed me, and like, it included me in a list of people spreading election misinformation.
01:40:46.000And I was like, what did I say about the election?
01:45:22.000I think it's a kind of a component of this whole conversation because I do think that critical theory, since it's built on assertions, has no legitimate authority and therefore all the power that it wields is illegitimate, which is why there's so much intimidation involved.
01:46:17.000I was just going to say, it's very similar to Robin DiAngelo's whole argument, is if you deny that you have white fragility, it's proof that it's the same exact Kafka trap.
01:46:26.000Did he put X in his name because of Malcolm X?
01:47:06.000I remember when I was little, I was in school and I was walking down the hallway and there's a big banner that said, stand up for what you believe in.
01:47:12.000And then I asked my teacher, I was like, what if someone believes in beating someone based on their race or who they love?
01:47:19.000And they were like, well, I mean, I was like, should someone in the class stand up if they hate a person based on their race or something?
01:47:42.000So why are you mad that social media companies... And of course the argument is bonk because the issue isn't necessarily that, you know, YouTube, Facebook or whatever are banning people for being racist.
01:47:51.000It's that they're banning people who are literally often on one side of the political spectrum for highly dubious reasons.
01:49:15.000Ibram X. Kendi, his middle name is Zolani.
01:49:18.000X-O-L-A-N-I, so I guess it's his name.
01:49:21.000Alright, Julie Simone says, Sounds like Dunning-Kruger effect, a type of cognitive bias where people believe they are smarter and more capable than they are.
01:49:28.000Basically, low ability people don't possess the skills to recognize their own incompetence.
01:49:33.000And you know, my favorite thing growing up was when people would say, when dumb people would also use Dunning-Kruger, they would say, well, you're an example of Dunning-Kruger.
01:49:42.000And I'm like, bro, I'm the one who's saying, I'm not entirely sure.
01:49:45.000You're the one who's overly confident.
01:49:46.000I got no problem saying, I don't know, man, I'm trying my best.
01:49:49.000The other funny thing was, I remember when I had these arguments about religion and stuff when I was younger, I would often hear, like, you need to have an open mind.
01:49:56.000And I'd be like, now hold on just a minute, because that statement itself is paradoxical.
01:50:00.000You're disagreeing with my view, claiming I'm the one with a closed mind, why can't I just assert the same thing of you and say you don't have an open mind?
01:52:19.000The smartest thing I've ever seen in any marketing campaign is making a meme where people go to other people's channels to get them to promote Michael Knowles' book.
01:53:21.000Well, we need a black rogue, we need a white rogue, a female rogue, a black female rogue, and an elf.
01:53:26.000It's like, that's diversity enough for me.
01:53:31.000I had a vision that I was being attacked by an eagle, or some sort of hawk, and a wolf dove out of, like, the veil, and it spun around and protected me from the bird.
01:53:53.000We were like, oh big man you go to baby and then he comes up the next day with a baby mouse And we're like is it the best you can do bro killing babies?
01:54:17.000I have to defend Bucko because he thinks that Tim is very bad at being a cat and he needs like really small little meals to make him full and fill his tummy.
01:54:25.000So he's bringing Tim these little things.
01:54:43.000I think he was, I don't think he, so a lot of people say that cats will bring you dead animals because they're trying to like, Hey, you're bad at hunting.
01:55:08.000And the other cat, who's an outside cat, who lives outside and hunts all the time, and, like, I watched him one time playing with a mouse and, like, swatting it.
01:55:44.000And so every morning in the garage, no joke the ground is blanketed with like you'll see dots all over the ground and you it's like it was really funny so i pointed out and i can't remember what i was talking to they're like uh just they thought it was dust and so i took the uh the leaf blower and i started blowing the floor and clearing it and then you have a big clump a huge clump of dead bugs of like flies of some sort weird
01:56:08.000Yeah, so I'm wondering if, like, the chickens can eat them, because then what we'll do is we'll just... It's a free meal, you know what I mean?
01:56:12.000I don't know what they're eating to make more bugs.
02:00:48.000I just, it's this like, you know, whenever the communists get power, they're like, we're going to take the farm away from the farmer and give it to the farmhands.
02:01:51.000It's a post-apocalyptic, and like, he goes to the store, and they're like, show me your hands, and he like, has to hold his hands up, because when the cannibals are shaking.
02:03:16.000Nick Spicer says, hey, Tim, love the show.
02:03:18.000Curious if you think the world is heading towards the world in Harrison Bergeron, forced equality and dystopic government rule.
02:03:25.000Well, that one was obviously very silly, like people having earpieces that scream in their ears and they can't think properly or wearing ugly masks or something.
02:03:32.000I mean, in a certain sense, I think we're already there.
02:03:35.000Where it's like, Ian was saying, you get a company, and they're like, we need someone who knows how to backflip.
02:03:40.000Have you considered hiring a Mexican person?
02:03:43.000It's like, what does that have to do with the backflip?
02:03:50.000I feel like purely through like need necessity that it won't get to that place of Harrison Bergeron because I think we'll die off as a species if we let ourselves hamstring or kneecap ourselves as a species.
02:04:03.000So I think it's just going to be like this.
02:04:05.000Evolution doesn't happen because we want it to.
02:04:16.000I think maybe all of us productive individuals should just one at a time start leaving without a word and, you know, go to a specific area where we can be separate from these countries that support people and extract value from those who are the hard workers.
02:05:34.000Smash that share button on these clips.
02:05:35.000We're putting up clips from the show, which are very different from the clips on YouTube, and they're usually making specific points, so they're really fun.
02:06:53.000You can't try somebody twice and private property.
02:06:56.000And I just wanted to say, if you don't want to get into a fight with an alligator in water, what you need to do when you start a conversation, not shoot it, that would be violence, is to pin down your definitions before you even get started.
02:07:07.000Just like Tim did tonight with our definition of critical theory.
02:07:10.000Anyway, I'm Sour Patch Lids on Twitter.
02:07:12.000You can follow me and join me in my journey to have more followers than Sour Patch Kids.
02:07:17.000Smash that like button on your way out.
02:07:19.000We do the show Monday through Friday live at 8 p.m.
02:07:22.000So we're not going to be necessarily back tomorrow, but with the new show we are.
02:07:25.000Normally it's like, we'll see you Monday.
02:07:26.000No, now we'll see you tomorrow at youtube.com slash castcastle, 9 a.m., and then Sunday, and we are getting closer and closer to making the vlog go.