00:02:49.820And now I'm a professor at the University of Exeter, been there for 10 years.
00:02:54.060And I do various other things, work on lots of different projects, the new books obviously are.
00:02:59.000And I'm also a senior advisor to the Lugartum Institute.
00:03:02.520And one of the things we were keen to talk with you about is, essentially, the question that we like to throw at all of our guests is, what's going on, Doug?
00:03:14.320Well, what I'll do is I'll link it back to the book.
00:03:18.460Of course you will, because you're here to promote the book.
00:03:20.560Well, I'm here to have a conversation with you two.
00:03:22.700I mean, that's the important thing for me.
00:03:24.560So the book makes different sets of arguments.
00:03:28.140I mean, what motivated me to write that book was, you know, I've always seen universities somewhere where we can have open and rational debate and open inquiry, in an ideal world at least.
00:03:41.420And really, universities are sort of the motors of human civilization, you know, contestation, you can have these incredible ideas taking place.
00:03:50.700So wonderful cultural centers, really.
00:03:55.040But what I really, really found was over the last sort of, there's been a period of time, especially over the last five years, and especially after, you know, post-George Floyd, there was a sort of increasingly creeping illiberalism and authoritarianism on the campuses.
00:04:10.200Manifested around various types of issues.
00:04:14.420And in particular, this kind of idea of decolonization, decolonizing the curriculum, which itself is kind of quite a contested ideology, draws from a specific sets of theories, post-structuralism, post-modernism, post-colonialism.
00:04:30.420But it was increasingly being imposed by university authorities, and executive teams.
00:04:37.600And I thought that that was a grave threat to our universities and to liberal values of pluralism and openness and free inquiry.
00:04:47.620So the book is really about that process.
00:04:50.880It looks at the ways in which there's been these kind of increasingly moral panics within Western politics, and the ways in which what I sort of identify as sort of professional managerial elites, technocratic elites, if you want to put those in those kind of terms, have often sort of latched on to this.
00:05:09.520And a sort of politics of vulnerability, where they're enabled to sort of control the narratives to some extent, but also to lead alleged oppressed minorities, et cetera, to some sort of technocratic solution or salvation.
00:05:24.940And the power ultimately rests with them.
00:05:28.620So the book looks at that, and then it unpacks some of the theories, some of the philosophical ideas of that, then relates it.
00:05:34.880I'm very keen to relate to a much bigger picture.
00:05:37.380Well, this is why I asked you what's going on, because everything you've said so far will be a very familiar story to our audience.
00:05:43.300These are questions we've been looking at for several years now.
00:05:46.520But what I found interesting about your work and your book is that you talk about the bigger picture, what's going on, that these things are more of a symptom of, rather than just being the problem itself.
00:06:00.840So what is at the core of everything that's happening?
00:06:04.420In terms of the kind of the broader culture war, well, there's multiple levels that you can analyze it, right?
00:06:10.320So I think one of the first big things we need to understand is that what takes place in popular culture or in our life here in the UK, many of it draws from much deeper philosophical currents.
00:06:26.160And I think I find it very frustrating, people that talk about the culture a lot.
00:06:30.600Essentially, I see those discussions about specific issues, you know, diversity managers in the National Health Service or, you know, various cultural issues.
00:06:42.980You really, I find it frustrating because you're ultimately talking about a sort of tactical elements of a much broader cultural and philosophical malaise.
00:06:54.740So essentially what I would say is the wellspring of a lot of this stuff comes from various theoretical elements that we've seen developing in the humanities and social sciences, in the Anglophone universities in particular, over the last 20 to 30 years.
00:07:10.200So what you ultimately had is essentially you had a critique of Western civilization.
00:07:17.760And in particular, you had post-structuralist and post-modernist philosophers, so Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Edward Said.
00:07:24.500I'm sure you're familiar with those kind of those thinkers.
00:07:27.740And the essential critique that they make and they move away.
00:07:31.040And it's also a direct attack on Marxism, which is quite interesting because often the sort of some of the analysis says that the culture wars are kind of a neo-Marxist thing.
00:07:39.720But in many senses, and the book tries to draw this out, it's also it's also a radical critique of Marxism.
00:07:44.380Marxism minimally, at least, had a teleological view of history.
00:07:48.200It was kind of an arc of progress and it was a materialist philosophy.
00:07:51.760It's rooted in material structures and a notion of the world, an ontological realism, i.e. the world exists.
00:07:57.680And we can come to understand it and therefore transform the world.
00:08:01.240So the post-structuralist ultimately critique that.
00:08:04.020They argue that there's no such thing as objectivity and truth.
00:08:07.100And they place a theoretical and philosophical primacy on epistemology, how we know what we know.
00:08:12.780They move away from an ontology, what actually exists.
00:08:16.840So I think on a metaphilosophical, almost a transcendental level in Western civilization, in the Anglophone world at least, that has been one of the big cultural shifts we've seen.
00:08:26.900There's been a conveyor belt process of graduates being educated in these ideas that have then come out into broader culture.
00:08:33.420And so the essential argument is a social – it places primacy on social constructivism.
00:08:40.760Essentially, the real world doesn't exist.
00:08:44.500All reality is essentially are sets of contested, discursive or ideological constructs endlessly at war with each other.
00:08:52.920And so there's no way of ultimately adjudicating the truth between these different social constructs, given that there's no such thing as reality.
00:09:03.240And therefore, all of human life is characterized by this endless philosophical struggle to impose one's truth.
00:09:08.700In other words, if we're looking at the background, the set of the show, and I claim that the wall is made of brick and you claim that it's made of, I don't know, glue, who is right or wrong isn't a matter of the truth.
00:09:23.260It's a matter of which of us has more power, status, influence in current society.
00:09:28.760And therefore, that person gets to impose their will on everybody else.
00:09:32.260And so in the book, what I do is I identify that social constructivism as a fundamental, philosophical, transcendental value that is now at the heart of Western civilisation, in particular, Anglophone civilisation.
00:09:54.700And essentially, so if I – and so the decolonising critique is that you had formal colonialism, extraterritorial acquisition, and what's happened is in Western civilisation today, which is fundamentally based upon colonial discourses that construct the world in a kind of – often as a duality, it draws on Derrida.
00:10:20.960It says there's a dominant and a subordinate.
00:10:24.800There's the white, black, male, female, yeah, Western, non-Western.
00:10:29.640And there's an inferiority and a superiority, which, again, Derrida completely contested.
00:10:35.120All this stuff, by the way, is fundamentally philosophically contested.
00:10:45.440So that social constructivism has really escaped the campus petri dish and now spilled out into broader culture, okay?
00:10:53.600In the book, I argue that we have to hang on to a sense of reality, and I argue for ontological realism, scientific realism.
00:11:01.680And what I try to do in the book is to sort of unpack that and relate this to some of the bigger issues about geopolitics and decolonising and the broader malaise in Western culture.
00:11:11.280And essentially what it argues is we have to refocus our philosophical or value primacy on what exists, what is real.
00:11:21.580So, Constantine, you may say that that's made of brick, and I may say it's made of glue.
00:11:26.980But because of the mind independence nature of that wall, you're more right than me because there is such a thing as ontological reality.
00:11:35.900Francis, you may believe that you can fly, you can flap your arms and you'll be a bird, and you can jump out this window right now, and every single time you're going to hit the deck.
00:11:50.540And you're going to hit the deck because there's an ontological reality of gravity.
00:11:55.040In other words, there is a world that exists independently of our consciousness, okay?
00:11:59.600And because of that, it creates a boundedness on what is true and what's not true.
00:12:05.100In other words, there's a rational adjudication.
00:12:08.000You may believe that, you know, earthquakes are the angerers of the gods, or I may believe it, but we know that it's the tectonic movement of the plates of the earth.
00:12:18.740So because of the primacy is placed on ontology or reality, it's why Kathleen Stock's book, she's a philosopher, her subtitle was Why Reality Matters.
00:12:31.380So I argue that we must return to basic values, not in terms of imposition, but we have to ultimately return to the rational adjudication of different claims as to one's truth.
00:13:36.400The stew that we stew through unconsciously, not even knowing it, it's just reproduced unconsciously, often does come from a much deeper philosophical, theoretical base, conceptual base.
00:13:48.860So Western civilization, I'll wrap up in a couple of seconds.
00:13:51.920Western civilization is characterized by a generic judgmental relativism and social constructivism, which is fundamentally antithetical to the values that came before.
00:14:02.360And I would argue some of the values that really helped to progress all of human civilization.
00:14:34.660And they went, yeah, yeah, we all agree with it's Monday.
00:14:37.000The problem is, if you can't even agree that it's Monday, then you're never going to come to any type of agreement on the more complex or important things.
00:15:15.300So you can really, once you understand that concept, you can really begin to unpack a lot of what we see in the cultural war.
00:15:25.500There are other elements to it, of course.
00:15:28.440You know, the kind of the weaponization of bureaucracy and technocratic regimes, the complete incapacity of so-called conservative party to even get ahead of any of this or get its head around it.
00:15:42.720The generic sort of general philosophical drift that we've seen.
00:15:46.340But it's very dangerous that these ideas are quite dangerous because on the campus, you can have these ideas.
00:15:54.220But when they spill out, you can begin to see the human costs of some of this stuff in relation to what it does to social relations.
00:16:12.320But then there's also the bigger issue in relation to what this means about the future of Western civilization in the context of an increasingly multipolar international system.
00:16:22.440The rise of China, the rise of other states, you know, and those states aren't characterized by that.
00:16:30.620If we can agree, you might disagree with me here, if we can agree that one of the big progressors of human civilization has been arriving at a kind of a system that we can might call the truth.
00:16:46.620It's never always going to be the truth, but it's the best explanation that we have at that point in time.
00:16:53.060And what happens is standing on the shoulder of giants from that truth, we can continue our inquiry, our open, rational inquiry to find a better truth that when technological breakthroughs, for example, happen, we move forward.
00:17:09.440If we can never even get to that foundational place in any way, if everything's a contestation, everything's a power struggle constantly, we're never going to advance.
00:17:20.080We're going to sort of almost collapse into a relativist stew.
00:17:23.680And again, if you think about the rise of China, related geopolitics, I'm sure we'll come on to talk a bit more about that in a bit.
00:17:30.080But if what has really helped instantiate a broadly kind of open economic system, economic advancement, innovation, and increasingly multiracial and multicultural societies predicated on liberal values of openness and tolerance
00:17:49.920and pluralism, if you introduce this concept of constant tribal discursive warfare, that can do great damage to the social contract, but also to politics in general.
00:18:03.920And in the context of the rise of highly authoritarian and highly illiberal states, that's a very, very dangerous thing, because what we have in the West is not natural.
00:18:16.420We've had a – in Europe, minimally, essentially, we've lived on the institutional architecture of the post-war international settlement, the victory of the West, first over Nazi Germany, and then over the communist Soviet Union.
00:18:35.440They're not – there's no necessary progressive arc in human history.
00:18:40.000So the institutional settlements that arose from those forms of victory aren't natural.
00:18:45.640They have – they've been imposed to some extent and they have to be defended.
00:18:49.680And within those things are sets of values that I would argue, broadly speaking, are very pro-human values.
00:18:57.240And – but those aren't necessarily the values that other states share.
00:19:01.880And in an increasingly multipolar international system of increased geopolitical competition and great power competition, interstate war, and the end of the end of history,
00:19:14.580we really should perhaps be slightly more cognizant of the kind of values that hold us together, because we're going to need them going to the future.
00:19:21.660Hey, guys. Trigonometry needs your help.
00:19:58.460The only way to change that is to make a stand and support independent content creators,
00:20:04.240like Trigonometry, to produce better and more honest content.
00:20:08.180We have big plans and we'll shortly be announcing exciting new shows and more terrific interviews with huge guests.
00:20:14.300That isn't going to happen without your help.
00:20:16.520When you support us, you also get incredible extra content, such as extended interviews with none of those irritating adverts,
00:20:26.540and they'll be released 24 hours early just for you.
00:20:30.240We'll have exclusive bonus interviews that only you get to hear.
00:20:33.700Click the link on the podcast description or find the link on your podcast listening app to join us.
00:20:40.380Support us and help change the way we have conversations and make the world saner.
00:20:44.960The woke argument that I am most sympathetic to out of all of them is lived experience.
00:20:52.080Because the reality is we all have a different lived experience.
00:20:55.760If, for instance, you're a 5'1", very attractive woman in her early 20s,
00:21:02.400your experience in life is going to be very different from me.
00:21:05.280You're going to be offered and given things and have opportunities that I simply won't have.
00:21:09.960But also as well, I'm not going to be, you know, intimidated by a bloke in a pub pestering me and wanting to have sex with me and not listening to know.
00:22:07.280So what lived experience has become is a kind of authoritarian power job insofar as when I talk about my lived experience, that's my truth.
00:22:19.220And you get that quite a lot in, I've seen that a lot.
00:22:23.120You know, so essentially what lived experience is as a kind of operative power play concept is really about.
00:22:29.940It's about saying this is my lived experience invariably from a historically maligned or oppressed minority.
00:22:37.280And therefore, I have greater truth and greater social power.
00:22:40.820So therefore, you need to shut up and listen to me and basically do what I want.
00:22:46.280Now, I'm from a really poor working class family in Hackney.
00:22:49.220I'm, you know, my demographic in terms of white working class kids in university.
00:22:53.560If I start going around to people and say, well, I'm from a poor working class family and I want this and you've got to do this because that's my lived experience.
00:22:59.820So lived experience is all well and good.
00:23:02.560But again, essentially, you've got to be cognizant of the capacity to instrumentalize these concepts and weaponize these concepts for power.
00:23:13.800And a lot of this stuff we see is all about power, about institutional power, making money and that kind of stuff.
00:23:21.880You've seen scientists talk about lived experience.
00:23:23.820For me, it's one of those kind of very odd flip authoritarian, totalitarian concepts where essentially it goes from what you said, entirely fair enough and then completely agree, to being shut up, do what I say because I'm an oppressed minority and that's my lived experience.
00:23:43.020It is used and that's the thing that I hate about it.
00:23:45.900Instead of it being a point of discussion where someone can go, look, I understand that, but you need to understand that as a black bloke growing up in 1980s Brixton, I was targeted.
00:23:59.880I was denied opportunities and we need to talk about this and we need to be honest about this.
00:24:07.480Instead, it's like you said, it's now become a weapon in order to shut people up.
00:24:13.960And even then, one hopes that if you're talking about the lived experience to ultimately open up the human heart, this is what you're really talking about.
00:24:26.180You're saying, I had this pain or I had this oppression and I'm giving you my heart here, my personal experience, then one would hope that that rests on an openness and a human grammar of compassion and empathy.
00:24:44.840It becomes weaponized and instrumentalized.
00:24:47.620And I think I've seen this time and time again.
00:24:50.960So essentially, it's not a cruel point I'm making, but it's a banal point, which is banal in the nice sense in terms of an obvious point, lived experience, personal experience, of course.
00:25:01.960But then when that starts to become an operative value at the apex point of institutional cultures, then you're going wrong.
00:25:13.280Well, what you're talking about really is that some concepts can be misapplied.
00:25:17.540If you and I are having a conversation about what it was like in 1980s Soviet Union, I can be, well, I actually grew up there.
00:25:28.500But if you and I were talking about economic statistics about 1980s Soviet Union and you were saying to me, well, did you know that blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:25:36.160And I was like, well, actually, my lived experience, well, that doesn't apply in the realm of statistics, observable realities of that kind, et cetera.
00:25:46.580So I think sometimes it's just a concept that, as you say, has been expanded way beyond its remit and people will use it to achieve ends that it can't be used to achieve.
00:25:55.440Yeah, or to stick with your example, you say, oh, I grew up in the 1980s Soviet Union and that was my lived experience, right?
00:26:02.680And I make a point, oh, no, I don't want you to speak because that's my lived experience.
00:26:07.060And, you know, so what you see is what I call a trauma shield, a trauma bubble.
00:26:14.240And, again, it speaks to this kind of this politics of vulnerability and this sense, the weaponization of trauma we see as well.
00:26:23.060It's a very common thing and victimhood.
00:26:26.060And the sad thing about that is genuinely, you know, it may well be true.
00:26:31.000But when it's weaponized, instrumentalized as essentially a power play for me to say, well, yeah, I was born in the 1980s Soviet Union and therefore it gives me, I'm on a higher moral perch than you to sort of give you my truth and it trumps your truth.
00:26:48.100And under that then is an emotional power play.
00:26:50.800Okay. So let me chart this in simple terms because I want to get from what you're saying, which is erosion of the concept of truth, tribalism, accelerated by the very idea that we all have our own unique perspective and mine is more valuable than yours because I have a certain blah, blah, blah, to the concerns you have about geopolitics and geostrategy, etc.
00:27:13.580Right. And so the idea, correct me on any of this if I'm incorrect, is because Western societies are increasingly divided along these arbitrary lines between groups that are drawn not by a contestation of what reality actually is,
00:27:32.580but simply about who can make the most noise, who can have the greatest claim to victimhood, who can have the biggest complaint, whatever it might be.
00:27:41.440We actually can't agree about what our values are and therefore when we are engaging in the battle of civilizations or at least in geopolitical competition, we don't know what it is that we stand for.
00:27:55.720And so we're living off the fumes of the values that were created in the post-war period that we no longer as a society actually universally believe.
00:28:03.740Yeah. I mean, so think about this, right? In terms, if we take this desire for diversity, inclusion and equity.
00:28:17.440So equity is a concept that obviously conflates equality of opportunity, which is a completely optimal way of running society in many senses.
00:28:27.180You want the best people, irrespective of their sexuality, their gender, their race, to get as best chance as possible to then move forward.
00:28:35.300And ideally, when you aggregate that at the societal level, you're going to get great outcomes from that.
00:28:39.880So that concept has really been conflated and collapsed into equality of outcome, where essentially you get often technocratic elites who will essentially engineer and engender forms of inclusive cultures to make sure everybody gets the same.
00:28:59.240So that then is obviously in many senses that then is kind of fundamentally antithetical to Western politics.
00:29:08.020In fact, it's more commensurate, ultimately, the equality of outcome argument to sort of a Soviet system.
00:29:15.680This is why my next book I'm currently working on is why the West lost the Cold War.
00:29:19.760We thought we won it in geopolitical terms, but we lost it in metaphysical terms.
00:29:25.740And so essentially, so when you aggregate that out to a societal level where you have technocratic elites that are kind of taking it on their holy mission to uplift people, often people don't even want it.
00:29:40.300And if you aggregate that out to a societal level where people are potentially doing jobs, not because they're the best people to do the jobs or not because they're the most qualified or et cetera, i.e.
00:29:53.360diversity is a sub variable of a much higher apex value, which is one of merit and selection on the basis of merit.
00:30:02.960If diversity becomes the apex value in the institutional selection process, when you aggregate that out, i.e.
00:30:09.900the intersectional characteristic of the individual doing the job, it becomes more important than the capacity to do the job.
00:30:16.780I think the magazine, online magazine is called Palladium, called Why Complex Systems Won't Survive the Competence Crisis.
00:30:22.740And it talks all about, I really recommend everybody read it.
00:30:25.300It talks all about how, basically, in America, a lot of very complex systems like aviation safety and the military, et cetera, are actually being very badly affected by these diversity initiatives.
00:30:37.040So, I mean, so essentially, there's nothing wrong with diversity per se in any way.
00:30:41.280And there's nothing wrong with inclusion in any way.
00:30:43.240But the thing is, those things must be ultimately outcomes of a much more important process, which is the selection on the basis of capacity and merit.
00:30:56.460The problem with that argument, Doug, is that I don't know that that is possible because not all groups have the same talents, aspirations, skill sets.
00:31:07.140And that has been true throughout history.
00:31:09.600So, some diversity will be a natural consequence of selection on competence.
00:31:15.900But I also think we have to recognize that not all people want the same things or are good at the same things.
00:31:22.780And so, I am increasingly persuaded by the argument that artificially created diversity is not a good thing.
00:31:30.640But also, I completely agree with your point.
00:31:33.120The other thing about that is often the equity, equality of outcomes thing, again, it underplays or completely erases human agency and therefore human dignity.
00:31:44.540If you've got a squirrel, I'm going to give a really banal example here.
00:31:47.760If you've got a squirrel that goes out in the winter or in the summer and gathers all the nuts up and puts it all away, you know, and hides it away and works hard,
00:31:56.140and then another one sits there just sunbathing and smoking a blunt or whatever, a squirrel, whatever, right?
00:32:02.480How fair is it then if you go along to the squirrel number A that's saved up the nuts and say, well, you know what?
00:32:08.060Our friend over here has got no nuts now.
00:32:11.520Give me half your nuts to give to him.
00:32:13.120I mean, that's not – that's not – so, in other words, human agency, people's choices, application, self-discipline and hard work are really also fundamental value.
00:32:22.960So, in many senses, this kind of woke dispensation, we'll put it in crude terms, erases the innate dignity of human agency.
00:32:32.560And it erases the incentive to create, build, strive, achieve, which is what you're talking about when it comes to geopolitics.
00:32:41.920So, when we go back to your original question about geopolitics, if some of the – it's very much about values and metaphysical, almost transcendental values.
00:32:55.000If we've had the subversion of the transcendental or the metaphysical values of Western civilization, where new sets of values are replacing the old ones, and that's – we then aggregate that at a societal level, a civilizational level.
00:33:11.620And we're doing this in the context of an increasingly multipolar international system, the rise of incredibly powerful civilizational states that have extraordinary sense of nationalist purpose, national pride, also feed off a decolonizing narrative, and also now spreading around the world.
00:33:32.680And as an influence operation, a psychological operation, I'm not saying it's all the rest of the heat, the defeat of Chinese or Russian propagandists, but the idea that there's not influence in psychological warfare taking place is for the birds.
00:33:48.940Why do you say – why should people trust you on that, then?
00:33:51.800I've worked in the security, intelligence, military fields, academic fields, for many, many years.
00:33:58.320My PhD was on counter-insurgency warfare, for goodness sake, psychological operations.
00:34:03.820I'm not – it's not – and why wouldn't they do that?
00:34:08.340Of course they'd do it, and there's nothing wrong with it.
00:34:10.260If you think about it in terms of this is basically great power politics, this is my bread and butter.
00:34:16.560Great power competition is my bread and butter.
00:34:19.360And states will do what states do, right, in their national interest or national security interests.
00:34:24.320Of course China, using its incredible economic leverage with the Belt and Road Initiative, is running all over the Caribbean, investing tens of billions of dollars in the Caribbean infrastructure projects.
00:34:36.820And of course they're going to say you need reparations against the colonial masters to sort of create this soft power.
00:34:50.680I mean, states will engage in psychological operations and warfare.
00:34:55.460But coming back to the other – so we can come up – but come back to – if we then think that what we have in the West isn't natural, we didn't just roll out of bed with a pina colada and a nice sort of international – no, not much war here is there, not been invaded since 1066 because we're an island stopping power of water, et cetera.
00:35:15.560And it rests on an international dispensation, an international order underpinned by American power, American military power in particular.
00:35:23.280Ukraine would be most probably singing from the Russian national anthem absent the very early intervention of the Brits but in particular the Americans.
00:35:30.700I mean, that's really – so America remains the key linchpin power in the broader liberal – it's called the liberal international order.
00:35:39.520If it keeps being characterized by this process of denigration and being torn apart, you do have these very capable states out there.
00:35:49.180And human history doesn't just rest some way.
00:35:54.900It's a constant process of flux and change.
00:35:57.540So that comes to the big point of the book.
00:38:35.760People take the mickey out of it, but, you know, Magna Carta.
00:38:38.460And there's that, you know, standing up against Nazi Germany, standing up against communism.
00:38:42.880There is that kind of very strong sense in the British people.
00:38:45.760But on the flip side of that, there is also that finger wagging and follow the rules and the curtain twitching.
00:38:51.720So, I found the pandemic to be really, really depressing because it really brought out that element, that part of the British character, moral policing and, you know, dobbing in your neighbour and stuff like that.
00:39:05.400And then we saw that in British politics, you know, with the Conservative Party.
00:39:10.320I think the Conservative Party, I hate to say it, but I think they do bear a large chunk of responsibility because I just don't think they quite get the stakes that are involved in this.
00:39:22.200And if this rests, if the ultimate meta value of a Conservative Party is the preservation of a specific civilisation or dispensation, they've really dropped the ball on that.
00:39:36.000Well, the only objective of the Conservative Party at the moment is the preservation of the Conservative Party, and they're not even doing that very well.
00:39:50.020But, I mean, this is also the frustration, is that people say that the Conservative Party are sort of weaponising the culture war, and they're using the culture war as a kind of, like, weapon to divide the working class or...
00:40:11.300The Conservative Party, as far as I can tell, on the culture war, are utterly strategically clueless.
00:40:17.520I'll give you an example of it, right?
00:40:20.020In the last three months of the Blair government, OK, they passed the Equality Act.
00:40:25.080Now, the Equality Act is a really innovative piece of legislation, but what it essentially does is it mandates public sector bodies, National Health Service, any public sector body, to promote equality of opportunity between people of protected characteristics, sexuality, gender.
00:40:41.900So it sounds, you know, and it sounds, you know, but what that's actually done is it's underwritten the massive growth of EDI and bureaucracies across the public sector.
00:40:53.180So you see today there's headlines today, you know, about the woke civil service, right?
00:40:57.920So you have that across the British public sector, and it legally mandates public sector bodies to promote equality of opportunity.
00:41:07.460Now, what's the metric for equality of opportunity?
00:41:10.660So you get all these EDI bureaucracies, the commissars in the public sector, the woke commissars, if you want to use crude language, who have used the innovations around the Equality Act to push this stuff through.
00:41:24.420So it's a constant frustration of mine to see these headlines in the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph or wherever, constant culture war, whack-a-mole headlines about the culture.
00:41:35.940Oh, isn't it terrible, diversity management, isn't this?
00:41:38.980And yet these public sector bodies quite rightly can turn around and say, well, it's our legal duty to do this.
00:41:46.140So the idea that the Tories have been fighting a culture war, when they've left this on the books, left for them like a grandmaster's chessboard, the last three months of the Blair government, and have left it completely unreformed, and then the pernicious and authoritarian and liberal elements of that act, you know, the unconscious bias, the macroaggressions, all this stuff we see, that all comes from that act too.
00:42:10.400Why? Because one of the ways in which employers in the public sector can discharge their duty under the Equality Act is to say, well, we've run these training programmes, and all of our employees have gone through these training programmes, and therefore we've discharged our duty.
00:42:23.560Do you see what I mean? So it's all the pernicious elements of that act.
00:42:26.860You know, I've gone off a little bit there from geopolitics, but it just underlines the point about we have to understand the deeper tactical and strategic terrain upon which a lot of this stuff that we talk about in the culture wars and geopolitics,
00:42:40.340it rests on a much deeper infrastructure.
00:42:43.500Do you have a website? Or do you plan to have a website? Because if you do, then EZDNS is a company for you.
00:42:51.900EZDNS is the perfect domain name registrar provider and web host for you.
00:42:56.120They have a track record of standing up for their clients, whether it be cancel culture, de-platform attacks, or overzealous government agencies. He knows about that.
00:43:06.560So will you in a second. EZDNS have rock-solid network infrastructure and fantastic customer support.
00:43:13.520They're in your corner, no matter what the world throws at you, unless it's your ex-girlfriend, in which case you're on your own.
00:43:21.780Move your domains and websites over to EZDNS right now. All you've got to do is go to EZDNS.com forward slash triggered. That's EZDNS.com forward slash triggered. Use our promo code, which is also triggered, and get 50% off the initial purchase.
00:43:38.240Sign up for their newsletter, Access of EZ, which tells you everything you need to know about technology, privacy, and censorship.
00:43:47.360But it also speaks to just a lack of common sense. It's just a complete lack of common sense.
00:43:54.200If you're not going to get the best person for the job, the job isn't going to be done as well.
00:43:58.700If you're going to get rid of meritocracy, the whole industry is going to crumble,
00:44:02.300because you are not going to be doing the job that you're meant to be doing as effectively, nothing's going to work.
00:44:11.140I don't understand why this is a particularly difficult point to grasp.
00:44:15.360Well, again, I think you've hit the nail on the head.
00:44:19.080But the dangerous thing about that is by being inclusive and be kind and be empathetic,
00:44:25.720which is underpinning a lot of the drive for that stuff, which is wonderful.
00:44:29.420It sounds great. It's a wonderful thing, right?
00:44:31.980That it's the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
00:44:35.660Again, if you aggregate that out across a societal level,
00:44:40.500you're going to have suboptimal outcomes inbuilt into institutional cultures time and time and time again.
00:44:46.260And when you aggregate that out, that the quality of your life, the functioning of your services,
00:44:52.080the way your money as taxpayers is spent will constantly be suboptimal.
00:44:58.160Now, and it goes back to my original point, in the context of great power competition,
00:45:04.900do you think for one second that the Chinese, who are an incredible civilization, thousands of years of history,
00:45:13.420I mean, what an incredible country, what an incredible culture.