Lionel Shriver returns to the Trigonometry studio to discuss her new book, Mania, and her thoughts on the current social manias that have swept the country over the past few years. She also discusses how she s been able to be so prophetic about what s happened and what s happening now.
00:00:00.720The sequence of manias that I've seen during the last dozen years, the first and most dramatic in some ways was the sudden obsession with transgenderism, the Black Lives Matter thing, and then COVID was a mania, and Me Too was a mania.
00:00:19.460What the big red flag on climate change is you couldn't differ. You throw them all together, they were demonstrations of our collective capacity to lose our minds.
00:00:35.740In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees can grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields.
00:00:49.460Want to fast-forward your career? Discover the Chang School of Continuing Education at Toronto Metropolitan University.
00:00:57.940Our programs are the perfect way to boost your success. Visit the Chang School online today.
00:01:06.160Lionel Shriver, welcome back to Trigonometry. We were just talking about the fact that it's been six years since you were last on the show.
00:01:14.640And we've been pretty useless. But actually, it's so wonderful to have you on. We were going to, truthfully, just going to talk to you about everything that's happening in the world.
00:01:24.260Your opinions on things are always fascinating. But then we read your latest book, which came out last year.
00:01:30.460And it was an amazing read for a number of reasons. So beautifully written, obviously, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:01:37.380But actually, the thing we were reading in both of us with the same impression, which is, oh, this is a great satire of woke culture that's been going on this entire time.
00:01:46.340It's a world in which, I hope I'm not giving too much away, but, you know, social justice reaches the point where you can't differentiate between people based on intelligence.
00:01:54.940And so to criticize people for being incompetent in their job becomes a thing that's not done.
00:02:01.320And people get fired for using the D word, the D word being dumb or the S word being stupid and so on.
00:02:06.660And then you get to the logical conclusion of it in which the protagonist who speaks up against this is punished, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:02:14.580But then you get through to the other side in which the whole thing flips and things start moving in the exact opposite direction.
00:02:23.440And that's what I thought really separated it from everything that has been written about these movements in recent years.
00:02:31.180How, it sounds like a sucking up question, and I'm happy to suck up in some ways.
00:02:38.780How have you been able to be so prophetic about what's happened and what's happening now?
00:02:45.580Well, the reason the book is titled Mania is that I wanted to look at the larger phenomenon of social hysteria,
00:02:54.220the way that a whole culture has suddenly become consumed with an idea or a practice.
00:03:01.620And it doesn't seem to take any time at all.
00:03:04.560And in fact, it seems to take less and less time now, obviously, because we have the technology to communicate ideas more quickly than ever.
00:03:58.540And I think that's the case with a lot of these things, that it takes a little while and it's on a very low level and a few people and then suddenly just...
00:04:06.680But what was most striking about that particular mania was that it came with the instruction on the box that you may not criticize it in any way or your career is over.
00:04:22.100And indeed, that was a self-fulfilling warning.
00:04:29.600And there was a good three years after this suddenly occupied a large proportion of our television schedule, all these little boys in dresses, that I kept my mouth shut.
00:04:48.560So, I talked to my husband behind closed doors about how weird this is and where is this coming from and why is this the new test of your liberality.
00:05:03.680But I did not write anything about it.
00:05:06.340And that's not like me because I found it disturbing.
00:05:11.340But I wasn't going to take my career in my hands.
00:09:39.940I actually think climate change is on the ebb.
00:09:42.260But, yeah, the giveaway with climate change, I mean, I'm not going to get into the ins and outs of the science, but it's anything but settled.
00:09:57.100The big red flag on climate change is you couldn't differ, right?
00:10:27.600It's such a great point because in your book, your character talks about not understanding how the Holocaust happened,
00:10:34.600and not understanding how the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge happened and all of these great atrocities.
00:10:40.120But having seen what's happening with the mania in the book, which is about IQ and discrimination against people who have low cognitive ability,
00:10:50.640suddenly she understands how people, how these events happen.
00:14:25.940Uh, because once I started, uh, making lists, I discovered how much of our language is contaminated by, um, words that mean stupid or smart.
00:14:51.560Um, and that, that was a lot of the, the playful side of that book is, is, you know, you, you, okay, you can't use the word dumb anymore, but can you have a dumb waiter?
00:15:14.400Um, but sticking with this, the one thing I wanted to slightly push you on further is, uh, you said something that I think to many people, particularly people who, who are kind of somewhere in the center, as I feel we are, um, something that instinctively sounds true that what you said, which is manias aren't a political thing.
00:15:35.020Um, but then you gave a bunch of examples of manias that are exclusively left-wing.
00:15:39.900And if I were on the right, I would say, well, look, you're claiming that the right is equally culpable of this, but you're only giving me examples of left-wing.
00:15:48.240So is it that the left is, uh, it's not a human thing.
00:15:51.380It's a left-wing thing to engage in these crazy manias.
00:15:53.340Um, well, I just have to observe that the, um, it's been the left that has been generating, uh, social manias recently.
00:16:03.300And you're right, that doesn't illustrate my thesis, but then that's one of the reasons that I made up my own mania.
00:18:55.500Well, there's even in the texture of the Trump administration this time around a literally manic feeling of not being able to get enough executive orders out the door.
00:19:21.260Maybe I give the New York Times too much of my time and attention.
00:19:28.080But that's certainly what the impression that the legacy media is generally promoting is that these people are in some kind of weird frenzy.
00:19:53.100Even if they keep the Senate, then they can't pass any significant legislation.
00:20:00.640And even the majority in the House is slender.
00:20:05.540Yeah, there's a reason they're in a hurry.
00:20:09.680They're not going to be in real power for very long.
00:20:13.080One of the characters that I found really interesting in the book was the character of Emery, who is more intelligent than the protagonist.
00:20:26.860And at the same time, utterly cynical.
00:20:29.480And that, to me, reflects a lot of the people who end up quite influential in these types of manias in that you look at them and you think, do you actually believe what you're saying or is this just careerism for you?
00:20:52.740In fact, the people who go for the mental parity movement in the book are the people you'd think would be the last sort to sign on because it's the intellectual class and they have the most to lose.
00:21:10.140But they immediately know which side of their bread is going to be buttered, so they better get on board.
00:21:18.760And so they're some of the earliest adopters.
00:21:23.880And that's ā I think that's also commonplace.
00:21:29.000And so the people ā the people who are well-educated and you would think would be the last to be susceptible to something that's basically crazy are some of the first people.
00:21:46.600Because the more intelligent you are, the more able you are to make an argument, the more able you are to convince yourself of your own, shall we just say, retarded argument.
00:22:07.480It's been at least 20 years, if not 30.
00:22:10.400I don't know what decree came down that made it ā that gave us permission again, but yes.
00:22:20.280But I'm glad you brought up Emory because this book is sometimes misunderstood as purely a political satire, and it's certainly a political satire.
00:22:30.540But it's also about a friendship, and the friendship part is sincere.
00:22:37.300It is ā and I wanted to write about a friendship that was progressively under strain from not just ā not exactly political opinions, but different approaches to the circumstance.
00:22:53.380You either go with it or you fight it.
00:22:57.580So my protagonist thinks that saying there is no such thing as variable human intelligence is retarded.
00:23:07.560And Emory is an opportunist, and she's always had ambitions to be a media commentator.
00:23:18.120She's stuck in a kind of under-listened-to, stupid little afternoon radio show, and she wants to be on TV, like everyone.
00:23:30.940And so this is her opening, if she really goes with this.
00:23:39.260And eventually the relationship blows up.
00:23:43.640That attracted me partly because I hadn't written that much about friendship, and I think it's an interesting relationship to explore in fiction.
00:23:53.100But also because I've lost friends during this period, not scads of them, but enough to be really concerned that this is happening to a lot of people.
00:24:11.040That ā and I have to say here, it is usually during these manias.
00:24:19.500It has been the friend who's further to the left, who usually flounces out in a huff.
00:24:29.840I mean, most of my friends are to the left of me.
00:24:34.820You know, the nature of London and New York, and that's kind of inevitable.
00:24:43.600But it's very painful to have a friendship that, you know, you've nurtured for years, and suddenly, you know, you have cooties.
00:25:01.800You know, it's like, get away from me.
00:25:03.720And there's ā in one instance in particular, I suspected that it wasn't just that this person was disturbed by my political positions, but that she didn't want to be associated with me.
00:25:23.000It was bad for her career, bad for her reputation.
00:26:10.840I mean, if you think about how difficult it has become to talk about anything to do with race,
00:26:18.320and that includes your closest friends, that it's ā especially during the pitch of the Black Lives Matter thing.
00:26:30.820You really had to ā you really had to wash the mouth because almost anything could be misinterpreted and willfully and maliciously so.
00:26:38.740So ā but you gradually couldn't trust even people close to you to get a joke, you know, to realize that you were just tossing something off.
00:26:56.600And one of the interesting things about the book is that the protagonist, the heroine of the book, is not ā in terms of IQ, I think it's in the book she's got an IQ of 107, it turns out, at the end.
00:27:10.360So she's not someone who's particularly bright academically.
00:27:15.080But what you explore really interestingly is a lot of this is about temperament.
00:27:20.480There are people who are very bright, very sharp, but they don't have the temperament of somebody who is unwilling to go with it.
00:27:30.620There are people who just temperamentally can't stand bullshit, and then eventually they take so much, and then they go, fuck it, I can't.
00:28:04.000This is the question I want to ask you, because if you look at the last 10 years, there's mania after mania after mania, as you've described.
00:28:13.140And if you took the position that trans women couldn't actually be women, you'd be fired from your job like my for-starter.
00:28:21.260Until the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom had to rule that actually biology is real, right?
00:28:27.320But if you were, I don't know, someone else working at the desk next to Maya at the job that you used to have, and you didn't engage in any of these manias, and you didn't say anything, and you just kept your mouth shut, and you got on with the job, and you paid the mortgage, and you raised the kids.
00:28:44.920Fast forward to X number of years later, problem solved.
00:29:38.780But what I'm saying is, you know, is it really the case that everyone has to take a position when, if you look objectively, these manias blow over after a couple of years?
00:29:49.660Because a few people say something about it.
00:32:11.100Other than it's the free rider problem, which is you can only do that as long as someone says something sufficiently so that the thing you actually don't want to happen stops happening.
00:32:20.780If no one wrote an anti-lockdown column ever, we might still be in lockdown.
00:33:07.880And it's, it's not entirely in our control.
00:33:11.800And there are people who are, to give them, to give them the benefit of the doubt, are naturally self-protective enough to keep their heads down and or, or to mouth whatever it is you're supposed to be mouthing now.
00:33:34.080And they just, and, and they get through.
00:33:53.020You know, and, and the best part of this period, you know, we all hate the word woke and we all end up having to use it.
00:34:01.320So, um, the whole, the best thing about the woke thing has been that a variety of individuals have distinguished themselves and, and have put their reputations at risk.
00:34:15.160Uh, and, um, have been willing to stake out lonely positions, um, just for the sake of staking out a, a, a, a position that they believe in, not necessarily to benefit from it.
00:34:32.340And little by little, I mean, this is where a lot of podcasting has come from.
00:34:37.560It is, it has been people providing a forum for dissenters.
00:34:44.060The, the, the, the people who are mouthing the latest whatever, they don't need a forum.
00:35:13.060Uh, it's been a very important form to make sure that in a, an ideological monoculture, other voices can be heard.
00:35:26.740And, and I've, you know, I found it, this is the glass half full version.
00:35:32.680Uh, I found it very encouraging that there are people out there who are not conformists, who, who are still capable of independent thought.
00:35:44.560And, um, and little by little, I think we found each other.
00:35:49.200We're not all best friends or something, but there is a loose, dare I say, community, another word I hate, um, of, of people who they're just temperamentally ornery and can't be manipulated.
00:36:10.200Yeah. And again, going back to the book, I find it interesting that your character is somebody who is just in terms of IQ very regular because it does, it is a temperament thing.
00:36:24.100I think a lot of people like to think it's an intellectual thing and, you know, they were so much smarter than everybody else.
00:36:32.780I think it's just that person and you, you, you can see them, you can see them because frequently in their jobs, they're the ones who get fired because they, that's me, uh, because they physically can't stop themselves from going, no, no, it's, it's just bollocks.
00:36:50.120And everybody else swallows it, but for whatever reason, you have this kind of gag reflex where you can't swallow it.
00:36:56.960Yeah. The intellectuals can talk themselves into anything. Uh, and there's something about the academic world, uh, that not only does it foster mediocrity, but, uh, it has a, it has a group think sense in a way.
00:37:14.460I, I, I find that surprising. It's not what universities are supposed to be like, but it's certainly what, what they've become.
00:37:21.240And I, but also as well, what we've currently seen in the present climate is an overcorrection, just like there was an overcorrection in the book where suddenly people were fetishizing IQ.
00:37:33.900It was the most important thing. You couldn't vote unless you had a certain level of IQ. You had, there were mandatory IQ tests. It became the most important thing.
00:37:44.620Yeah. But we all know that the ability to regulate your finances is, it's got nothing. It's about discipline. It's not necessarily to do with IQ, but just as we've seen an overcorrection in the book, we've now seen, starting to see, particularly with the Trump administration, an overcorrection in, in culture and politics and society.
00:38:08.160Yes. And my biggest worry is that the overcorrection will be clumsy enough that we boomerang back to what we were doing before. You know, the progressive Democrats.
00:38:18.460The progressives say this is, they're doing all the things we told you they would do because they actually are Nazis and then you need us.
00:38:25.900Now chop your bollocks off or whatever is that follows from that.
00:38:29.260Yeah. I don't have that sense that the overcorrection means that we naturally swing back gently to the middle.
00:38:40.620But I guess the question is, again, what do you see as that overcorrection? Because I think like when Francis talks about it, again, it's something that sounds reasonable, but what does one point to to say that overcorrection is happening?
00:38:59.260I mean, I don't know. I mean, I've got an event tonight with a spectator about Trump. I have no idea what I'm going to say.
00:39:08.580But it is a problem for people like me because I wish him well. I don't like him personally. I've never been a big Trump supporter, but I would like that correction to take place.
00:39:26.700I don't want the overcorrection. And I hate seeing the way he gives the opposition fodder for, you know, yes, he's an authoritarian.
00:39:39.120You know, he's talking about a third term, which is unconstitutional.
00:39:44.460I think he does this to a degree tauntingly. You know, some of it's on purpose.
00:39:49.160Some of it's temperament. It's just his nature. He's a scorpion.
00:39:58.180But if he just had some discipline, some self-control, he could bring about some very useful change.
00:40:10.320But in being too aggressive and not obeying some of the rules, he may just self-destruct.
00:40:20.120And then we're stuck with these Democrats again.
00:40:28.080Look at your face as you say that. I guess the question I'm also curious to get your thoughts on is there has been a big debate about, you know, for years now, part of the way the manias of the left have been enforced is to say, well, all the scientists agree that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:40:47.740All the scientists agree that the vaccine is this.
00:40:50.360All the scientists agree that climate change is that.
00:40:52.520All the experts agree that this, this and that.
00:40:55.540All the people agree, all the professionals agree that this is Russian disinformation, which was completely fraudulent.
00:41:02.700Those of us who saw through it clearly thought that this was wrong for them to do that.
00:41:08.660And in the process, what they would do is undermine institutions and organizations and the credibility of things that actually was very important to run a cohesive society.
00:41:18.300And now we are through the looking glass on that.
00:41:21.520And now increasingly the sense that expertise exists at all is entirely in question for some people.
00:41:29.580And so I don't know if you caught the debate between Douglas Murray and Dave Smith, for example, but there's been a lot of talk in the context of that.
00:41:36.960And I don't want to get into that specifically, but I guess what I feel is happening is in the podcasting world, which was so important for giving the opportunity to dissent on a different voice.
00:41:49.840Because we've become, I feel, my view is slightly edging towards the idea that dissent equals truth, that someone who disagrees is by the very nature of things right about things, as opposed to a perspective that ought to be considered.
00:42:11.720I haven't seen the Joe Rogan podcast yet, but I'm familiar with the parameters and the criticism of Douglas Murray in that case hinged on credentialism, which is similar to the issue of expertise and if there's such a thing.
00:42:37.280Based, by the way, on that criticism, you don't need to see the podcast to comment on it, so please go ahead.
00:42:41.720Not knowing what I'm talking about never stopped me.
00:42:51.400We certainly don't want to get into a world where we don't believe any experts.
00:42:58.420That, all the scientists agree, everyone agrees, the experts agree.
00:43:06.060That number was, has been and probably still is being enforced because we all agree that the Trump administration is imploding, for example.
00:43:40.540And, but if we go to climate change, for example, the, all, you know, 99% of, I don't remember what number they use, it's usually around there, of the scientists agree that it's all caused by human activity, et cetera, et cetera, the whole paradigm.
00:43:59.240They can get away with this because they are actively censoring anyone who disagrees, and therefore all the descending voices are silenced.
00:44:14.080And then it sounds, it seems as, you know, the legacy media all says the same thing, and therefore you do give this impression that all the experts agree.
00:44:25.800And there are plenty of scientists out there who have either a completely different version of what's going on or, or a more moderate one, you know, a more complicated one, a more nuanced one, a less hysterical one.
00:44:39.480But they do not get grants in universities.
00:44:50.440And they do not get into newspaper op-eds.
00:44:55.260They do not get in scientific journals.
00:44:59.780A lot of the media that promotes the voices of expertise has been captured, and therefore they speak with one voice.
00:45:13.000And that does totally contaminate the whole notion of expertise.
00:45:17.540But I don't, you know, I totally agree that just because you are being contrary doesn't make you right.
00:45:26.460And what we want is a fluid and open system that sponsors voices on multiple sides of an important issue.
00:45:40.740And since we're talking about the left-wing media is they are displaying a real insecurity about their positions because not permitting debate, saying, oh, you're a climate denier, you know.
00:45:56.260And that suggests you're insecure about your position because if you are secure, then it should speak for itself.
00:46:05.000And you're not afraid of your observations being refuted because you have confidence in them.
00:46:10.440But here's the difficulty, Lionel, and this is, I think, why this conversation is being had the way that it is, which is 99% of scientists also agree that this table is made of wood and gravity is real.
00:46:23.420And unless we're all prepared to spend the rest of our lives working out for ourselves, whether gravity is real or not, whether walls.
00:46:32.820By jumping off buildings, for example.
00:46:38.220Then this idea that we simply need to debate everything endlessly and simply listen to podcasters opine about these things, podcasters like us.
00:46:54.580I don't feel I have a conclusion on this.
00:46:56.200What I'm trying to feel for is how do we differentiate between the areas in which credentialism and expertise is and has been misused and areas where we can say, you know what?
00:47:07.320Actually, 99% of scientists do agree gravity is real.
00:47:41.900But what if the metrics by which these things are adjudicated internally are not the metrics of truth-seeking?
00:47:51.100What if the metrics are, as they often are in the mainstream media, numbers, clicks?
00:47:56.540What if the peculiarities of the individual person who's in charge of that podcast whose interest may not be the pursuit of truth but may be entertainment?
00:48:07.380How do we ā if we ā if we, the podcast space is largely replacing the mainstream media as people keep saying we are, how does that all get ā can this be the space where truth is pursued?
00:48:29.340I mean, when I'm deciding whether to watch a podcast, there's a certain kind of podcast that I can watch a couple minutes of and it makes me feel a little guilty because what this person is saying, it seems true, you know?
00:48:49.520Well, and maybe even enlightening, maybe it's about something that I could stand to be better informed about, but this person is boring and I don't want to watch it.
00:49:01.540So, I mean, that's part of the format.
00:49:06.080It's one of the requirements of the format that it be entertaining and that has very little necessarily to do with truth.
00:49:11.640And I admire you guys for seeking out people who have something to contribute that does seem true, but there's also the requirement that it be stimulating in some way or amusing or, you know, somehow engaging beyond the actual information.
00:49:34.620The other aspect of this debate that I find very frustrating is the thing that we can't trust the experts.
00:49:40.100And the moment when people say that, I go, that's a load of bollocks because if your daughter had an epileptic fit, you wouldn't be there going, oh, let's not trust the experts.
00:49:50.220No, you'd be trying to get, you'd be wanting medical intervention ASAP and you'd also want the best doctors, if not the best neurologists, to come in and look at her and you would be deferring to their experience unless you were a moron.
00:50:06.340But then on the other side of that, you look at the junior doctors in the UK who have all just got up in arms over the Supreme Court decision on, you know, legal sex is biological sex and claim that this is in defiance of medical reality.
00:50:27.700They do not believe there are only two sexes, they think, you know, gender, whatever that word means, that's one I try to avoid, that it's a spectrum, which is a load of nonsense.
00:50:41.240And that means these people, these are people who are trained in medicine, who no longer believe in the reality of biological sex.
00:51:04.660So, and this is why, like, neither of us is bringing a view to the table that's rigid and fixed.
00:51:13.320But I can see a gigantic problem, which is if the pursuit, if what happens is we've gone to a place of the mainstream media, which had a bias, but I would say in my lifetime, the BBC had a pretty clear focus on the pursuit of truth, mostly with a bias, right?
00:51:31.860That's not quite the same as a pursuit of truth, but it's not the same as a podcast, which focuses on entertainment first and truth as a byproduct of that, or if at all, right?
00:51:44.920So, in the same way that the mainstream media needs to improve, I'm curious how we adapt to this new reality.
00:51:53.200And maybe, you know, maybe interrogating you about the podcast world is unfair.
00:52:00.640So, no, it probably is perfectly fair.
00:52:03.280Well, so how do we negotiate our way through this technological revolution that's now causing revolution about the way we think, the way we, what we believe about what's true?
00:52:14.460Well, the internet has made information chaotic.
00:52:21.840It seemed as if at first it would just be, we'd all become so much smarter because we'd have access to the truth.
00:52:30.640But, no, it gives us access to our truth.
00:52:36.880And I'm sure I'm guilty of that as much as anybody.
00:52:41.920I naturally seek out information with bias that confirms what I think already.
00:52:51.860I waste a huge amount of time reading things that are telling me what I already think it is.
00:53:00.640But that is, that's a natural human impulse to be affirmed all the time.
00:53:07.700Because what we don't want to do and what most people actively avoid for understandable reasons is discomfort.
00:53:23.340That actually what you believe is factually incorrect, which happens to every single person.
00:53:29.200It's far easier to listen, to ingest information, expose yourself to podcasts, and even surround yourself with people who think the same things that you do, even if they are a load of nonsense.
00:53:41.220Well, it takes a lot of discipline to constantly expose yourself to information or people disseminating information that you don't want to be true and it messes up your position on something.
00:54:02.900And I don't think I'm that much better at that than most people.
00:54:06.500Because it's not just your position on something, it's your whole world view.
00:54:11.460For instance, if you are, like there's a lot of people in our space, they're naturally contrarian.
00:54:16.520That very easily lends itself to a particular set of views on a range of different topics, whether it's COVID, whether it's whatever it may be.
00:54:33.140So it's very easy to take that position.
00:54:35.640But actually, once you start challenging yourself and you start exposing yourself to certain other voices that may be correct, all of a sudden, maybe it's not one grand conspiracy.
00:54:50.400And one of the painful aspects of this era has been the way that we separate out into left and right and therefore we just ā we have these set menus of opinions.
00:55:07.560And there's no substitute for taking them one at a time and deciding what you really think.
00:55:12.720I mean, for example, with Ukraine, I ā just because the right-of-center position has gradually developed into it's their problem.
00:55:22.560Why don't we ā why don't we defend our own borders?
00:56:58.420But once you've got past election day, it's a different conversation.
00:57:02.140I suppose your book being called Mania, the most obvious question is, do you think human beings are capable ā I don't think they're capable of avoiding manias,
00:57:11.680but are they capable of reducing their frequency, reducing their intensity?
00:57:16.440Are we able to learn from manias we've had and go, well, this thing is just like that thing, so maybe how about we don't do this?
00:57:24.220Or do you think we're just going to go round and round and round on this carousel?
00:57:27.700I think we're going to go round and round.
00:57:30.280I wrote the book because I wanted to come to a better understanding of the whole phenomenon.
00:57:37.920It was an interesting ā it was interesting to go through my made-up mania.
00:57:46.460It brought out in relief a few things that I've observed along the way.
00:57:50.300But I think it is an aspect of this species where highly social, even those of us who like to think of ourselves as loners, still operate in a swarm.
00:58:19.280Is there, for example, a set of kind of like personal principles that, you know, I don't stop speaking to people because they think something?
00:58:29.880Is there some way in which we can all be slightly cognizant of the fact that we're constantly living through periods of this madness?
00:58:39.140And so when the latest madness comes along, it might not be a good idea to do the thing that we did last time that caused us to X, Y, Z.
01:00:13.220Do I really think that the UK or the US is systemically racist, an expression that burst onto the scene and suddenly it's in every newspaper article?
01:03:05.880So there is always that need to balance the empathy for those types of people, but also realize that your empathy can't be ruinous and it can't destroy what we know to be true.
01:03:15.680Well, one of the things that makes the mania work in mania, the mental parity movement, is that they've got a point.
01:03:54.560You can become better informed, but you can't increase your natural mental ability.
01:04:01.980It's true of all abilities that you can, you can get more skillful.
01:04:08.780Um, but, uh-huh, I'm, I'm not ever going to be a great singer, right?
01:04:17.420There are all these abilities that we have in varying degrees, and it's not fair.
01:04:22.220It's not fair that they vary so much, and that there are really smart people out there, and, and really pretty thick ones also.
01:04:31.140And it's not the thick person's fault, and there's no reason to treat that person worse, just because he or she was not born as very smart.
01:04:40.800But the other thing that I was also looking at in this book, uh, and this is a, a left-wing proclivity, the obsession with equality and, uh, wanting everyone to be the same.
01:04:55.860And that fairness that I was talking about, it's not fair that I don't, I have a terrible voice, I mean, I, that I can't sing.
01:05:05.300Um, and the left wants to address that kind of unfairness with a devastating leveling, which is, means that, uh, the, the society is less competent.
01:05:21.700That you, you, you, if you, when you're going to level something, you have to take it down to the, the lowest point.
01:05:28.000Um, and it also, uh, doesn't admit of the joys of human variation.
01:06:54.220Um, you can't, you can't really have a great life, but at least you can't have a really crap life.
01:07:02.620Fundamentally, this is a social, has to do with taking on the socialist vision.
01:07:06.080I, um, I find that vision, uh, anti-human and it is not a world I want to live in.
01:07:12.420Lionel, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be?
01:07:17.480Before Lionel answers the final question, at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our sub-stack.
01:07:23.100The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this.
01:07:27.060Have you watched Adolescence and what did you think of it, if you have?
01:07:30.000Do you share my sense that anti-Trump liberals are in denial that their political culture and social behaviour set the table for this populist backlash?
01:07:37.760Will America regret voting Donald Trump back into office and why?
01:07:42.420Lionel, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be?
01:07:47.500Okay, but I've, I've advanced this idea before.
01:07:50.860I, I think it's important that we start, um,
01:07:57.040questioning things that have been in existence in a long time and we take them for granted.
01:08:02.440And I would say in particular, and this is by way of, um, paving the way for my next novel out in January, um, that I think that we should, uh, either reform or completely scrap the asylum system.
01:08:18.240I think, uh, I think, uh, both the UK and the US, but right now especially the UK, uh, is, um, is being taken advantage of.
01:08:30.580And it's a system that has outlived its usefulness.
01:08:34.360It was designed, uh, after World War II, as we know, and, uh, to try to prevent, um, what happened then is, especially before the war,
01:08:46.860people did not open their borders for Jews fleeing persecution, but it's now being used for almost entirely economic purposes.
01:09:00.300And it's, it's so widely abused that the people, the, the few people for whom it w it should be useful.
01:09:07.580It sometimes isn't useful for, because they get lost in all these cases that, uh, that the, the system wasn't designed for.
01:09:14.920So that's, that's, that's, I think, I think the vast majority of people will actually probably not have any idea what you're talking about.
01:09:22.400So what, what, what is happening in your opinion that you're raising the alarm about?
01:09:27.480Uh, we have a mass migration from the global South to Western countries that is too fast and is leading to social division, cultural dilution.
01:09:50.680Um, I hate seeing, um, I hate seeing in the UK the, uh, uh, factionalization with Muslims and the majority culture.
01:10:12.400Um, and we're all foreigners when we go somewhere else.
01:10:16.480So, but I, I think that, you know, what's been happening in the United States under Biden was, uh, really socially destructive, economically destructive.
01:10:31.100And, um, the best thing that Trump has done is, is effectively close the border.
01:10:36.960So, and I'd like to see this country, um, get a grip on its immigration also, because then maybe Britain can start to assimilate the people who are already here and create a unified country again.
01:10:56.160Well, I'm glad I followed up because for some reason, inexplicably, I heard you say mental asylum.
01:11:01.860And I thought, I thought you had raised some really important issue about the mental health, psychiatric hospitals, et cetera, system.
01:11:09.940So, yeah, well, that's, that's, and maybe that's my next book.
01:11:21.680There's a lot of the deal happening in real time for you.
01:11:23.720Head on over to Substack where we ask Lionel your questions.
01:11:26.160Do you think the nuclear family is the healthiest form of social unit, or is the extended family unit that you find in many places around the world a better environment for children to grow up in?
01:11:39.520A claims program for harmed Canadians has begun as a result of a landmark tobacco settlement.
01:11:59.980If you smoked regularly before November 20th, 1998, and were diagnosed with lung cancer, throat cancer, emphysema, or COPD, you may qualify for a significant payment.
01:12:13.280To learn more, call 888-482-5852 or go to tobaccoclaimscanada.ca.