TRIGGERnometry - ＂We Need to Move Beyond Race＂

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.

00:00:08.320 I'm Constantine Kissin.

00:00:09.520 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:15.200 Our brilliant guest today is a writer, editor and podcaster.

00:00:20.100 She's a sub-editor of Aria magazine.

00:00:22.780 Io Natalia, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:24.340 Thank you.

00:00:25.300 It's great to have you here.

00:00:26.780 Before we get into the conversation, which we really look forward to, tell us a little

00:00:32.060 bit about who are you, how are you, where you are, what has been the journey through

00:00:36.220 life that brings you here?

00:00:38.680 So I grew up in Pakistan in the Parsi community.

00:00:44.920 My father was an Indian-born Parsi who moved to Pakistan in the 60s.

00:00:50.540 My mother was Scottish, and then I moved here to the UK in my early teens, and I went to

00:00:58.540 school here and university. I did a PhD in English literature, and I was an academic

00:01:05.180 until 2006, when for some unknown reason, I decided to leave academe and go and live in

00:01:13.780 and teach tango. And for about 11 years, I danced tango, I taught tango, and I had a very popular

00:01:24.220 tango blog. And so I would also tour and give readings and advice and things. And I've since

00:01:33.220 made that blog into two books on tango. And then I went to India for two years, 2017 to 2019.

00:01:45.420 And I've begun work on a new book, which is memoirs and little biographies of mixed race

00:01:54.440 Indians. And in the meantime, I switched. When I went to India, I knew that I wouldn't be able

00:02:03.020 to just to teach tango for a living full-time anymore so i switched over to becoming a an

00:02:11.340 editor i met helen puckrose online and i got involved with ario and then later i got involved

00:02:18.460 with a company called lecture wiki who do public lecture exchanges between people and i recently

00:02:25.620 also joined the team at yasha monk's uh new publication which is called persuasion

00:02:30.760 so um i reinvented myself a few years ago about three and a half years ago as a writer editor

00:02:41.260 and then i moved to london in march of this year good timing on purpose actually i was planning to

00:02:50.380 move in the summer yeah but i suddenly realized that i if i didn't leave right then i was unlikely

00:02:57.300 to be able to go i found it interesting you talked about your journey from you know buenos aires to

00:03:03.220 bombay to london and in that time i've moved from south london to north london to east london so

00:03:08.900 there we go it's a slightly different journey um but it's interesting you talk about the book you're

00:03:15.000 working on now, which is about mixed-race Indians. The whole conversation about race that we're

00:03:21.240 certainly having in the Western world, I don't know whether it's happening in the same way in

00:03:24.180 India, but you can tell us. But it seems to have gone in some sort of interesting direction,

00:03:30.440 to put it very mildly. What are your sort of thoughts on it?

00:03:33.480 I have a few thoughts. I mean, one thing I think is that there has been this

00:03:37.700 absolute obsession with racism and detecting racism everywhere and i don't want to imply that

00:03:46.660 racism doesn't occur and isn't important but because on this set all the time mainly against

00:03:53.940 me yeah we don't like russians well you know who can blame you

00:03:59.420 and you said you weren't funny there we go there we go yeah we don't let him make the tea

00:04:05.820 anyway sorry i i nearly i nearly brought a jar of marmite did you that is hate speech

00:04:12.920 right there hey actions this is literal violence i don't want to be actually thrown off the set

00:04:19.080 so i refrained but yes we are obsessed with racism uh everywhere and you're not saying

00:04:25.720 it doesn't exist i think that this folk this continual focus on um the race elements of

00:04:35.460 things. We're continually asking not, is this particular phenomenon affecting people badly?

00:04:44.980 Are there people in need we should help? But we always ask, well, which people of which race

00:04:52.660 does it affect in what proportions? There's this kind of racial bean counting that goes on all the

00:04:58.000 time, which I think is extremely unhelpful. And I think that might be one of the reasons why Bernie

00:05:04.020 Sanders wasn't successful in the U.S. elections, in the U.S. primaries, is that he was talking

00:05:11.880 about things that would, he was largely talking about measures that would benefit everybody

00:05:18.580 who was in need. So, for example, universal health care, but that weren't framed in terms

00:05:27.540 of specifically and primarily benefiting black Americans.

00:05:33.620 And some people seem to have seen that in itself as racist,

00:05:38.160 that it wasn't focused, to be not focused on race

00:05:41.760 seems to be considered in itself racist now,

00:05:46.020 which I think is insane.

00:05:48.440 Have you seen it grown worse over the years,

00:05:51.120 this sort of focus on race?

00:05:53.280 I think so.

00:05:55.080 I feel as though it's been since about 2009, 2010, there's been this shift in focus from

00:06:10.360 a kind of liberal way of looking at things, from concern with poverty, hardship, etc.,

00:06:21.080 to this much more identity-based, identity-conscious way of analyzing and looking at the world.

00:06:29.880 And I find it mostly extremely unhelpful.

00:06:34.280 I mean, I think it can be positive and fun to celebrate your ethnic identity or your race, quote-unquote, if you enjoy that.

00:06:46.560 But I don't find it helpful to be constantly asking, well, what do I think of this person's opinion?

00:06:56.420 First, I need to know what race they are, and then I can decide whether it's worth listening to them on this topic or not.

00:07:04.200 Before I know whether this particular policy is a good idea, I need to know what are the skin colors of people that affect most effects.

00:07:14.120 and I saw that with things like the Grenfell Tower disaster that was such an obvious tragedy

00:07:22.400 and to me the important things were the shoddy building, the poor housing, the poverty

00:07:28.800 but everybody started focusing on how many people of brown and black skin are living in the tower

00:07:37.080 as opposed to white people and I just feel that that is extremely unimportant.

00:07:41.940 And why do you feel it's unimportant, Ayanna?

00:07:45.080 So if, let's say, Bangladeshis, who as a community, I think, are overrepresented in prison, underrepresented in high paying jobs, etc.

00:07:58.400 So let's say if we can help people who are poor and who live in food deserts, who have poor housing, who have poor access to education, that will disproportionately help this group because they are disproportionately represented there.

00:08:16.300 We don't need to target it at them specifically.

00:08:20.400 And I think it's divisive.

00:08:26.140 So I hear all of this rhetoric from both right and left about the white working class,

00:08:34.580 but brown and black people are disproportionately represented in the working class.

00:08:39.180 And to me, what is important is the working class issues, not this kind of racial division.

00:08:46.020 I couldn't agree with you more.

00:08:47.460 I think the reason people talk about the white working class is that while there's been a focus recently on sort of black and brown people and making sure that they're getting the support that they need, I'm not saying they're getting it, but there's certainly been a focus on it.

00:09:04.660 there seems to be that group of people who are somewhat ignored and i think that's where you

00:09:09.880 start to get this disparity and as you say that's the reason for that is that it's divisive this

00:09:14.420 way of looking at things is divisive and then it forces everybody to go well what about me what

00:09:18.980 about my race what about this instead of just all of us going we we need to support people who are

00:09:24.160 who are low income or who have a poor education or who live in terrible housing that that can

00:09:29.460 combust in flames and kill hundreds of people. But you mentioned Bernie Sanders, which I thought

00:09:36.180 was interesting, because what you're really saying there, and it's a very good observation,

00:09:40.340 is that his message would have appealed to the broader American public, but he couldn't get

00:09:46.640 through the primaries because within his party, an agenda that appeals to everybody is considered

00:09:54.240 insufficiently woke you might say yes which seems to be a sort of contradiction in terms because the

00:10:00.420 objective of political party by definition is to win power and yet what they're really doing is

00:10:05.660 this and they've ended up with a candidate who would the best respect him and we don't like to

00:10:09.880 make fun of him you know he's he's not in his best years let's say he's not in the prime of his health

00:10:16.180 or whatever so they've ended up with a candidate that's certainly inferior in many ways simply

00:10:22.500 because of a sort of ideological obsession. Would you agree with that?

00:10:26.860 Yes, yes. And I do think that this constant focus on race makes people very self-conscious

00:10:37.240 and awkward. And it is actually damaging to people's interactions. And it is, if anything,

00:10:46.760 it's going to make people more racist, because people are fixating on this aspect of identity.

00:10:55.160 And I think that is very dangerous. It's an interesting thing, because there's almost like

00:11:00.100 a self-fulfilling prophecy about it. Because if you say, well, there's so much racism,

00:11:04.920 and therefore we need to focus on race, and then you create the racism, then you go, look,

00:11:08.860 I told you there was racism. I think James Lindsay, Helen's colleague, made this point

00:11:13.680 when we had him on the show the first time is that like it never stops when when if trump let's

00:11:20.760 say gets re-elected that will only be used as evidence that more wokeness is needed because

00:11:26.820 people will go look how much racism there is as opposed to recognizing their role in it so what

00:11:32.380 what do you think would be a healthy solution what do you advise people to do in terms of having

00:11:39.620 this conversation? Well, we need to get beyond race as much as we possibly can. So I think that

00:11:46.960 if ever you're tempted to say, this white person said X and Y, or this black person said X and Y,

00:11:54.840 just try removing the word white or black from that. Try to deal with people as individuals,

00:12:02.280 try to focus on their opinions as individuals,

00:12:06.240 try to look at it with as little focus on races as possible.

00:12:12.960 I mean, I understand that you're saying that,

00:12:15.800 but is that going to be possible in our society now?

00:12:18.080 Don't you think we've gone so far down the path

00:12:20.300 that it's going to be so tricky to row back from that?

00:12:23.400 I hope we can row back from that.

00:12:26.660 I think that, I mean, I feel that the helpful things are

00:12:30.220 a civic conception of nationalism.

00:12:34.680 I hope that this topic might become moot in the West

00:12:38.640 because there has been so much racial mixing, quote-unquote,

00:12:46.180 because to talk about people's mixed race implies that there are some people

00:12:51.300 who are pure, which obviously doesn't really, it doesn't make sense.

00:12:56.020 But in a kind of colloquial sense, there are so many more mixed race people now.

00:13:04.280 And when I interviewed Eric Kaufman, who's recently written a book called White Shift,

00:13:10.520 if Eric's demographic projections are correct, by 2100, the West will be 90% mixed race.

00:13:20.520 But of course, many of those people will no longer think of themselves as mixed race, but many of them will think of themselves as white. This is Eric's argument. Just like Hispanics and Latino immigrants to the US, the first and second generation usually think of themselves as Latino and they tick that box on the census.

00:13:44.320 But by the third generation onwards, they think they think of themselves as white American and they tick that box.

00:13:51.220 Look at Francis. He's so progressive. He's second generation. He thinks he's white.

00:13:55.260 Yeah, absolutely. He pretends to be white.

00:13:58.480 But it's it's and there's a question that I wanted to ask you is that you obviously half.

00:14:04.940 So you're half Indian, half Scottish. Yes.

00:14:08.380 And there's something there's a there's something that I discuss with people who come from a mixed background in that.

00:14:14.040 And I'd be interested to see what you think of that,

00:14:16.540 in that you never truly feel that you belong anywhere, in a way,

00:14:20.900 because you are always other.

00:14:23.400 You're never truly, so I'm half English, half Venezuelan.

00:14:27.980 I was raised by my mother.

00:14:29.260 My mother raised me, my father was always working,

00:14:31.820 so she raised me very much in the traditional Latino sense,

00:14:36.000 which means that I view the world differently.

00:14:38.920 I have different values, in a way, from a lot of my English friends.

00:14:42.920 He's a great lover.

00:14:44.040 Yeah, exactly. You would know.

00:14:46.260 Now, that means that I feel a sort of detachment almost from I'm never truly English, I'm never truly Venezuelan.

00:14:56.700 Do you feel that? And do you feel that there is an issue around that?

00:14:59.620 I think that there's kind of two ways that it can go.

00:15:04.200 So I feel that being mixed race can be a kind of opportunity to build bridges and defy labels and show how kind of superficial and silly such labels are.

00:15:24.560 And it can also give you this kind of sense of disorientation.

00:15:31.120 and I certainly being Parsi in particular being Parsi is like identity politics on steroids

00:15:40.520 because so Parsi identity is patrilineal if your mother was Parsi you are not Parsi

00:15:49.640 if you married a Parsi person if you married a Parsi person you are not Parsi and if you are

00:15:58.500 the adopted child of a Parsi father, you're not Parsi. It's absolutely strict in this extremely

00:16:05.400 inhumane way. So there was recently a court case where the two daughters of a Parsi mother

00:16:18.100 wanted to go to the funerary ceremonies, the sky burials, which we famously have,

00:16:24.960 where you were eaten by vultures, which is my dream for after death.

00:16:30.620 If anybody is listening, I'm not eaten by vultures.

00:16:32.760 We've all got our dreams.

00:16:34.520 It wouldn't be mine, but fair enough.

00:16:35.700 Not top of the list, yeah.

00:16:38.200 But they were not allowed to go to their mother's funeral

00:16:43.840 because only Parsis can enter the Dungalwadi,

00:16:49.120 which is the funerary gardens and grounds in Bombay.

00:16:57.440 It doesn't sound very inclusive.

00:16:58.820 It's not inclusive at all.

00:17:01.420 Where's the progressive?

00:17:03.720 It's not very woke.

00:17:05.160 No, not very woke.

00:17:06.240 It's absolutely not inclusive at all.

00:17:08.700 And you can't, so there are many Parsi, you can't go to the fire temples.

00:17:15.520 and we also have these holy wells in Bombay and you cannot enter unless you are a Parsi

00:17:23.920 and I did get questioned sometimes because I don't look especially part I don't look very Indian

00:17:31.700 although Parsis are also paler skin than most other Indians and more western looking

00:17:38.320 but occasionally I was questioned but as soon as I said my father's name I was allowed in because

00:17:47.760 my father was Parsi so when you're Parsi I feel as though you're constantly having I was constantly

00:17:54.300 having to prove my identity and I always felt a bit because my father died when I was quite young

00:18:02.160 And my Gujarati, Parsis all speak Gujarati, is very, very rusty, almost non-existent.

00:18:12.520 And because I grew up largely in the UK, so there are a lot of prayers that you're supposed to be able to say by heart, and I can't, most of them I can't say I can't remember by heart.

00:18:28.860 There's all kinds of ritual actions you're supposed to do, and you're supposed to know what date it is in the Zoroastrian calendar, and is it a fire day, a water day, or whatever.

00:18:43.440 So I always feel a bit nervous about proving who I am.

00:18:51.240 And in India, it's vital. I lived in the Parsi bargain. For that, you have to be a Parsi. Only Parsis can stay there.

00:18:58.860 Whams if you identify as Parsi.

00:19:02.440 Well, I think that you should.

00:19:04.620 I feel as though everybody should be able to do what they want.

00:19:09.600 I'm completely in favour of both transgender people

00:19:13.660 and I think transracialism should be fine.

00:19:16.540 If you feel like you really identify with Japanese culture

00:19:20.380 and you just want to be Japanese, I think you should be able to be.

00:19:24.740 Really?

00:19:25.440 Yes, I do.

00:19:27.020 Hold on.

00:19:28.060 Let's zero in on that one, because this suddenly got interesting for me.

00:19:32.340 So if I identify as Japanese, Japanese people should have to pretend that I'm Japanese.

00:19:41.160 Should have to pretend, no.

00:19:43.000 Okay.

00:19:43.800 But I think that authenticity is really a myth.

00:19:48.420 I think it's a beautiful myth to imagine on the father's side, my ancestors, going back, landing on the coast of Gujarat in the 8th century and before that, being part of the Sassanid Empire in Persia, etc.

00:20:09.140 There's something very moving and beautiful about that, but it's also, it really is myth.

00:20:17.180 it's not um there isn't some kind of parsi infusion in my dna somewhere so i feel that

00:20:27.580 if you want to convert to zoroastrianism you should be able to and if you want to go to and

00:20:33.500 do the parsi ceremonies and become a parsi you should be able to see i don't know much about

00:20:38.540 the parsi identity which is why i'm slightly disadvantaged here but you gave the japanese

00:20:43.120 example so i japanese is not being japanese is not a religious thing it's not right you can

00:20:49.700 convert to judaism or to christianity or to islam and and you can then be part of that identity but

00:20:56.080 i don't think me being interested in japanese my sister for example is massively into japanese

00:21:01.760 culture speaks very good japanese but she'll never be japanese well i i i probably i'm really

00:21:10.260 thinking of um could you be a kind of master of some traditional japanese art sure form um like

00:21:19.620 kintu sorai the one where they do the the cracked put gold into the cracks in the pottery

00:21:25.520 or um could you be a shinto priest or something like that i i would say that you should be able

00:21:34.300 to be oh sure does that make you japanese i guess is what i'm getting at because you said

00:21:39.660 transracial right maybe not so that's more what i'm thinking of when i'm thinking of a kind of

00:21:44.600 transracial identity so there is your actual parentage yeah um which you can't change yeah

00:21:52.260 unfortunately yeah you should picture parents more carefully exactly um but there's also

00:22:01.160 the kind of ethnic connection to a culture which i think should be uh you should be able to choose

00:22:08.680 In the same way as you can't change your sex, but you should be able to change your gender if you want to live as the opposite gender in society, you should be able to do that.

00:22:21.240 So I feel similarly about both those things.

00:22:23.760 There is your actual ancestry and your biology, which it doesn't make sense to lie about.

00:22:36.880 And if you're trying to pretend that you are someone you're not, that is obviously a very brittle, fragile situation.

00:22:49.040 But then there is the culture that you identify with, the behavior that you identify with, the way that you want to be seen.

00:22:59.500 And I think that those things you should be able to choose as widely as possible.

00:23:04.480 Language is obviously part of it, and we've touched on it now.

00:23:08.040 But you wrote a very, very interesting article where you talked about Boris Johnson and his use of language.

00:23:14.760 and you've also discussed widely the effect language has on us.

00:23:19.740 You've used examples like Jordan Peterson.

00:23:22.460 Can you just delve a little bit into why you think language is important

00:23:26.800 and our use of language, particularly when it comes to people

00:23:30.200 of influence like your Boris Johnson's, your Donald Trump's,

00:23:33.400 or in fact your Jordan Peterson's?

00:23:36.480 Maybe I can start with this.

00:23:38.280 This isn't so much about Trump and Johnson,

00:23:40.860 But one thing that I've noticed in the kind of shift from this sort of more liberal politics to more woke identity politics style approach, which I was talking about, which I feel happened at the end of the aughts in around kind of 2008, 9, 10.

00:24:04.020 That's a totally subjective evaluation, but that's when I feel it began to really shift over.

00:24:10.860 And I think that one thing that happened is that wokeness encourages, at its worst, it encourages this kind of paranoia.

00:24:23.620 It's everything must be re-examined to see what it really means.

00:24:28.360 And as a result, I've noticed that people's writing and speech has just gotten much worse.

00:24:34.860 because, and of course I'm generalizing wildly here,

00:24:38.660 but people have begun hedging absolutely everything.

00:24:45.240 So their writing has become more and more paraphrastic

00:24:48.900 and it's really hard for any...

00:24:56.660 Academics have always written badly,

00:24:58.900 but it's got worse and worse.

00:25:00.600 It's really hard for them to say anything

00:25:03.000 in a simple, clear way.

00:25:04.860 And I've noticed also that there's been a lot of kind of sloganeering, and we are expected to know that the thing that is being said isn't what is actually meant.

00:25:21.120 so um for i think the most egregious example of this was a couple of years ago with sarah jong

00:25:30.360 who wrote all these tweets about how much she hated white people one of them said

00:25:36.540 i really love to see old white men suffer it's something like that and there was a huge scandal

00:25:46.220 about this, and her employers at the New York Times and other people on the social justice

00:25:52.040 left defended her tweets on the grounds that when she said things like that, it was actually

00:25:59.040 code for, I would like to see a less racist, more racially egalitarian society.

00:26:04.280 um so there's this kind of extraordinary on the one hand hyper examination

00:26:13.920 of language which has just seems to have disabled some people from being able to say

00:26:21.920 anything comprehensible and on the other hand there's there are all these kind of codes and

00:26:31.020 there's also this concept of trolling, which is something you see on the Trump

00:26:38.900 right as well as on the left. I see this happening on both sides of the spectrum where,

00:26:45.000 oh, well, I said this thing, but it was, I'm kind of wait, I will say the thing, like,

00:26:50.980 I want old white men to suffer. And I'm going to wait to see how it's received.

00:26:57.120 And if it's received badly, then I'm going to pretend I was just joking.

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00:27:29.140 get tickets at mirvish.com sounds like our routine but actually i mean that is part of comedy in the

00:27:38.080 sense that you never really know whether something's funny until you've said it a few times and

00:27:41.960 you've seen the response so you're trying to gauge the reaction and if the reaction is not good

00:27:46.660 then you probably don't want to say that thing again but it's interesting to talk about academia

00:27:52.260 Because it seems to me that some academia and your colleague and boss at ARIO, Helen Pluckrose.

00:27:59.760 My captain.

00:28:00.620 Your captain.

00:28:02.240 Words are important.

00:28:04.840 With Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay, they kind of established that a lot of modern academia, particularly in the social sciences, is actually not just, it's not hedging.

00:28:16.660 It's obscurantism.

00:28:18.020 It's where you're deliberately not saying anything, but you're saying it in a way that no one else can tell that you're not saying anything.

00:28:26.100 And so there's been a lot of that as well, hasn't there?

00:28:29.100 Absolutely.

00:28:29.540 I think it's really telling that there's been, at the same time as the so-called squared hoax, the hoax that Helen James and Peter did, came to light.

00:28:47.160 there's also been a replication crisis in psychology in particular but in science more

00:28:53.400 generally and for people who don't who are not academic let's just explain replication crisis

00:28:58.060 essentially means that you pretend that something is true but no one else can reproduce the quote

00:29:03.380 experiment that got you the quote-unquote results because really most of it is bullshit let's just

00:29:09.560 call it what it is right a lot of so in psych there are a lot of classic experiments which

00:29:15.360 supposedly prove certain things about character so one famous one is the marshmallow experiment

00:29:21.500 where they gave children two marshmallows or they gave them a marshmallow i think yes they gave them

00:29:28.600 a marshmallow and they were told um you can either eat the marshmallow now or if you wait 10 minutes

00:29:36.540 you can get a second marshmallow and then you eat them together but the point is you can't eat the

00:29:40.860 first one until 10 minutes have elapsed exactly and then they followed the kids in later life

00:29:45.960 and they claimed there was a correlation between um the children who are able to resist eating the

00:29:53.380 first marshmallow and they had video of them it was very cute some of them were like looking away

00:29:58.800 trying not to see and and a couple of them picked up sniffed it licked it back down yeah it was

00:30:05.440 adorable but um apparently there was a correlation between being able to resist eating the second

00:30:11.880 marshmallow for 10 minutes and being successful in later life and this is one of the psych

00:30:19.320 experiments that was cited a lot and a lot of other work was based on it yeah and um and and

00:30:27.620 it hasn't replicated you're breaking my heart here i've been quoting that experiment all the

00:30:33.420 time about the importance of being able to wait really it hasn't replicated see this is why we

00:30:39.120 need we need the fake science so people like me can feel good yeah um so this this this experiment

00:30:45.580 has been essentially debunked or at least can't be reproduced it can't be reproduced which means

00:30:50.520 that it they haven't proved anything so we don't know whether it worked or not and that's now true

00:30:57.980 with a huge number of experiments in psych

00:31:00.580 and some that are really well-known.

00:31:03.100 But there's also a replication crisis

00:31:05.460 more broadly in science,

00:31:07.540 and I've been reading Stuart Ritchie's book about that.

00:31:11.020 You should have him on this podcast.

00:31:13.640 He is also here in London.

00:31:17.300 But with a replication crisis in science,

00:31:21.920 when the whistleblowers showed

00:31:24.460 that things were not replicating,

00:31:26.760 the people in psych are all expressing concern, making changes, doing reforms.

00:31:35.340 And the so-called square hoax, which showed that if you have a kind of woke political slant,

00:31:46.020 on your paper you can publish all kinds of absolute bullshit.

00:31:50.840 Well, in their case, they published a chapter from Mein Kampf,

00:31:54.220 rewrote it with some intersectional language

00:31:57.380 and they were able to get it into a magazine that published it.

00:32:02.200 There's a reason it's a bestseller, mate.

00:32:05.840 And when this came out, you know, what's happened is that

00:32:10.180 all of the academics are circling the wagons.

00:32:15.000 They're all very angry.

00:32:16.320 I mean, not all, but everybody who's,

00:32:19.060 almost everyone who's responding to it is responding to it

00:32:21.820 in this angry way with personal attacks on them and complete denial.

00:32:27.780 It's just the contrast between how people in psych are reacting

00:32:31.120 to the much worse crisis in their field

00:32:33.360 and how people are responding to the publication of these hoax papers

00:32:38.660 is just extraordinary.

00:32:40.760 And why do you say it's extraordinary?

00:32:46.000 Because there should really be a wake-up call.

00:32:48.860 um it should um it it should be a wake-up call for the fact that um number of publications has

00:33:00.240 nothing about the quality of your work especially in arts and humanities academe

00:33:05.200 that uh your work in social sciences shouldn't be whether or not the work is publishable shouldn't

00:33:12.980 be dependent on your political stance. It's also worrying that almost everybody in social

00:33:22.180 sciences and humanities is, almost all of the faculty are left-wing. And I say that as a left-wing

00:33:29.440 person myself. I would expect most people to be left-wing in academia, but not 80 to 1.

00:33:36.620 Um, and I think that, um, I think that there are so many concerns there that, that have been

00:33:48.020 highlighted by the success of the hoax. And there are things that we already knew in fact, but the

00:33:54.560 hoax has just made it more undeniable. And it should be a reason for people to be re-examining

00:34:02.540 how they are doing things but is it no surprise people don't like to change the mind i'm still

00:34:10.680 going to believe in the marshmallow experiment but uh you talk about being left-wing and maybe

00:34:14.940 we've got a little bit of time left so i want to perhaps finish on that um it's interesting isn't

00:34:21.860 it because there's a small portion i would argue of the left that's gone sort of crazy

00:34:25.980 uh and i think a lot of the other people on the left are sort of tarnished by association

00:34:33.080 uh even if they are reasonable and sensible and sane as you are so why are you left wing

00:34:40.080 um i well i'm a kind of old-fashioned um from each according to their ability and to each

00:34:48.880 according to um according to their need i seem to remember that slogan from russian history

00:34:54.240 sounds familiar um i mean i'm obviously i'm not a marxist communism is a failed system

00:35:03.860 incompatible with human nature we need capitalism for wealth generation

00:35:08.320 but i think that we could do a lot more to prevent um the people who are most struggling

00:35:18.580 in society from living in real hardship. And whether that is through social security or through

00:35:26.920 UBI, I think that we have the means to do that. And it would create a more peaceful and harmonious

00:35:36.400 society for everybody, including those who are better off. Of course, the devil is in the details,

00:35:42.780 but I think that we're not going far enough in that direction.

00:35:46.040 You know, on that thing, something that Francis and I often talk about is that, do you think that one of the challenges for the sane left is that there is a sort of trend on the left, and this is, again, a broad generalization, which we're trying to stay away from, to ignore the human nature, as you referenced when you talked about communism.

00:36:08.020 So, for example, when we talk about people who are currently not very privileged, let's say, they don't have access to a lot, right?

00:36:17.780 Part of the reason for that might be is that by nature of their sort of genetic and other background.

00:36:26.220 So part of it is genetic, part of it is their education, part of it is their family background.

00:36:29.860 Maybe they come from a home where they didn't get a lot of attention when they were a kid.

00:36:33.560 It will be difficult for them always through life to have a comfortable life.

00:36:40.580 That will always be a challenge for them, right?

00:36:42.660 But if you think that any bad outcomes are the product of structural inequality, then you'll never actually look at that.

00:36:52.300 And you'll never accept that some group of people will always need help by virtue of the fact that that's just the way they are.

00:36:58.660 You know, is that, do you think, am I right to point at that as a sort of gap in people's thinking?

00:37:05.220 I think so. I mean, I definitely don't think human beings are infinitely malleable.

00:37:11.180 I think we're a lot less malleable than most people on the left usually say.

00:37:18.860 I'm actually a non-believer in free will, so I think it's all luck all the way down.

00:37:23.720 um and um so yes i think that we um will never achieve kind of equality of outcome um what we

00:37:38.020 can do is try to give equality of opportunity as far as possible and provide a safety net

00:37:44.100 so that um people no one is is really or as few people as possible are living in misery so

00:37:51.980 So, and I think that safety net can actually be raised a bit.

00:37:58.660 So, I, yeah, I'm not really, I think that looking at outcomes is also the wrong way to go about things.

00:38:08.360 Trying to tinker with outcomes to say, oh, we don't have enough.

00:38:12.880 I don't know.

00:38:13.560 We don't have enough people of Pakistani origin playing in our orchestra.

00:38:18.820 I don't find that a useful way of looking at things at all.

00:38:23.500 You give opportunities, and then you have to live with the fact

00:38:27.440 that people will end up, even when opportunities are completely equal,

00:38:34.120 with differences in outcome, and they're liable to be differences between groups.

00:38:40.140 There is, I mean, life is complicated.

00:38:44.080 There are a lot of steps between opportunity and achievement.

00:38:47.860 but isn't the problem as well especially in the uk that we have this class system so we talk about

00:38:52.520 equality of opportunity but the reality is that you come from a working class background you're

00:38:57.240 simply not going to get the range of opportunity that you would do if you went to a highly exclusive

00:39:02.400 public school and you know grew up in a wonderful area of london etc etc yeah absolutely um i mean

00:39:09.520 many of my friends bought their first um houses or flats with help from their parents

00:39:16.620 and that made a huge difference to them and that difference has continued to the present day

00:39:22.900 when we're now in our 50s so yeah i don't think we're ever going to have equality but we can

00:39:29.100 we can make it easier for people who haven't come from an affluent background well i went to boarding

00:39:36.140 school me too and here i am on a set working with someone who went who didn't go to boarding school

00:39:42.920 for a long time who's from a sort of working class background exactly and look at what a better person

00:39:48.980 you've become as a result of this he's now kind he's compassionate my where's my privilege this

00:39:54.440 is my where's my privilege did you did you enjoy your boarding school because my boarding school

00:39:59.940 was like a cross between prison and the army yeah well the thing is with i i i agree with that

00:40:07.240 description but the thing is the army can be good for some people as well so it depends on

00:40:12.840 the sort of person that you are. I found it more difficult from a sort of adapting because when I

00:40:17.020 came, I didn't speak any English. So I found it quite difficult to fit in initially. But then I

00:40:21.540 found the great thing about boarding school is it gives you the opportunity to find things that

00:40:26.680 you're good at and do a lot of them. And so I got the opportunity to try my hand at lots of things

00:40:31.700 and be bad at lots of them, but then find some things that I was good at, you know. And then

00:40:37.380 once that happened i i really started to enjoy it a lot um but anyway i want my privilege

00:40:42.800 i want my privilege give it back to me anyway i don't know it's been great chatting with you

00:40:48.320 um as always at the very end we ask uh one final question which is what's the one thing we're not

00:40:54.380 talking about as a society that we really should be okay i think we should institute um ubi universal

00:41:01.840 basic income so um i know some people are talking about that but not enough andre yang was talking

00:41:09.580 about it look what that got him i know but i was a fan of andre so let's talk about that more is

00:41:15.220 there any evidence that it's a good idea in terms of practical experiments i think that there have

00:41:21.320 been um there was an experiment in finland yes and it was um i think it was too small to be

00:41:29.660 conclusive but it went well well i think what that one showed is people are not more likely to go back

00:41:34.960 to work if they're unemployed because the people were unemployed but they're a bit happier yeah

00:41:39.880 and in the capitalist system we don't give a shit about that do we should so maybe that's the thing

00:41:45.460 we should be talking about more yeah i mean i think that we we think of success in terms of

00:41:52.840 making money yes um being well known and we don't value things like um looking after your

00:42:01.000 aided parents um we don't value um looking after people who are ill um we don't value family life

00:42:10.280 we don't value time with your friends um we don't value people's creative pursuits

00:42:16.180 unless they're unusually successful in them.

00:42:21.520 But we value finances,

00:42:28.020 and it's supposedly a successful life to be CEO of a company

00:42:32.480 working God knows what hours.

00:42:37.140 And I think that what is actually valuable in life

00:42:40.220 is how we affect each other,

00:42:45.020 how we make each other's lives better so it may be a more valuable life to just

00:42:51.360 be somebody who brightens up your friends lives and your family's life than someone who is making

00:42:59.220 a lot of money and obviously we do need money this is the system that we live in but i think

00:43:06.340 that if we if we could institute ubi if we had better safety nets some people would be able to

00:43:14.260 pursue things that they can't currently pursue but which are very worthwhile because we only

00:43:20.140 have one go around on this planet that's a lovely way of putting it so Iona thank you very much for

00:43:26.920 coming on the show if people want to follow you where where would that be or look or see your

00:43:31.260 work or read your work um they can follow me on twitter at Iona Italia um you can find my work at

00:43:38.200 R-E-O, A-R-E-O magazine.

00:43:41.580 And I have a website, IonaItalia.com.

00:43:47.200 And also check out my podcast, which is called Jew for Tea.

00:43:53.340 Perfect.

00:43:53.940 Thank you so much for coming on.

00:43:55.380 Thank you.

00:43:55.640 And thank you for watching.

00:43:56.900 We will see you very soon with another live stream or episode.

00:44:01.120 All of them go out 7 p.m. UK time.

00:44:03.880 The only time, the only day we're not broadcasting is Mondays.

00:44:06.520 so enjoy your mondays off and we'll see you very soon take care guys and see you for another

00:44:11.820 fantastic episode or live stream

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TRIGGERnometry - September 30, 2020

＂We Need to Move Beyond Race＂ - Iona Italia

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