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one of the terrible things about wokeness is that we're at risk of destroying the very thing that we now enjoy freedom because other countries
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see that as weakness and they capitalize on it how do you prove that threat is real because this has already happened
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and we'll get into this in more detail Conant kiss is the sharp wited saturnist podcast host and social commentator
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unafraid to discuss some of the most controversial topics and challenging questions that Society is struggling
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with ideology is a very bad thing because the moment you buy into a prepackaged set of ideas about what
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you're supposed to believe you can very quickly find yourself not interested in the truth for example the ideology of
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wokeness creates a very simplistic and frankly ridiculous way of looking at people not as individuals but as groups
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with a hierarchy of Oppression and promotion of victimhood which is what makes them so dangerous because when you
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teach people to be victims you actually cause them to suffer in real life we're weakening ourselves and now we censor
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everything political labeling is a weapon people use against their opponents and political correctness is preventing you from expressing a descent
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opinion you can't say that that's hate speech but as we spend more time arguing about trivial issues instead of real
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stuff that matters the dominant civilization becomes more divided especially from the inside and other
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countries get to make a play for that dominant position and it will mean that the values of the west human rights equality of treat and freedom of speech
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those values will not be considered values at all they don't want to hold hands and sink Bay and I'm convinced
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that the geopolitics we have seen in the last many years would not be happening if we were not signaling weakness in the
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division is there a way to stop the division here's what you do question if you could sit at a table with any four guests from the D CEO who
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would you choose here's a challenge for the entire D CEO Community if we hit 10 million subscribers by the end of 2024 you will get to pick four guests
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together Constantine who are you and what do you do and I have to add to that why did you do it my history is I was born in the late
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Soviet Union and I grew up in that Society watched the collapse as a young man young boy actually um and then saw
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the craziness of the emergence of modern Russia which was an experience unlike any other really it was pretty insane
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what happened um and then there was a very very brief window in my family's time when we went from being very poor
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when I was born to being very rich to being very poor in the space of like 10 years and in the 5year period when my
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family did have money they sent me to boarding school in the UK and that's how I I ended up here and then fast forward
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a bunch of years um I started a podcast with another comedian called Francis Foster called
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trigonometry we're about to hit a million subscribers today which is pretty exciting yeah and the reason I do
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what I do is um I have a different perspective to most people uh most people who were born here grew up here who take what we have here as a given they take it for granted in my opinion
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many people I've seen that the world is not like this everywhere I've seen also that societies don't necessarily last forever uh cultures don't necessarily last forever civilizations don't
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necessarily last forever so the reason I do what I do is I'm trying to remind people in the west how privileged and truly lucky we are to live in the
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society and we've talked you know in the last 10 years in particular so much about different forms of privilege you
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know male privilege White Privilege the one form of privilege that we don't ever talk about for some reason is Western
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privilege and actually I believe that's the one that we really should be talking about and should be talking about from a
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position of gratitude uh because we are incredibly lucky to live uh in the west uh and because we don't know that I believe we're at risk of destroying the very things that we now
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enjoy an immigrants love letter to the West is the title of your book it's I love this title um for a variety of
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reasons the word love is really intentional why did you include the word love because how I feel you know um when you've come to a place from outside it's easier to see what makes it special uh
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and so I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunities that people like me enjoy but actually all of us enjoy the freedom to make of your life what you will the freedom to speak your mind at least
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until recently the freedom to pursue things the freedom you know one of the bedrocks of our societies is capitalism
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now capitalism is based on the idea of private property private property doesn't really exist in most of the rest
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of the world if you are a billionaire even in Russia um you might be a billionaire today but if you cross vad Putin or whoever else might be in charge you will go to prison and have all your
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assets taken away from you and that's what happened to Mel horovsky Jack ma in China he made some comments about like
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banking regulations it wasn't even particularly controversial stuff and then he disappears for a year and comes
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back with you know completely different set of opinions all of a sudden and loses most of his money so we have the
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luxury in in the west to do what we want far more than any human beings have ever
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had in the history of humanity and I love that I love that freedom and I love the the opportunities that I've had to
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build my own life build my family's life to give my son now opportunities that he never would have enjoyed in a billion
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years in another country so what is the threat because you love the UK it's all going great you know um what is the
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threat that you see on the horizon and how do you prove that threat is real if you look at history and I'm no historian
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but if you read interesting people about history most civilizations are not destroyed from the outside they're
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destroyed through suicide uh through cultural suicide and I think one of the big threats I've been raising the alarm
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on for a long time is what people talk about as wo culture or Progressive you know rampant progressivism whatever you
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want to call it but at the heart of it is the idea that we are bad our society is bad it's based our history is bad it's based on you know slavery and colonialism and exploitation and
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imperialism and all of this stuff and how do you prove that well there's several ways to think about it the first
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one is if you thought your Society was bad why would you defend it why would you teach its values to your children why would you want it to persevere and continue to exist if you look
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geopolitically in the last many years as I've been predicting now for a long time look at what happened in Ukraine look at
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uh what happened in Afghanistan with the withdrawal of American forces look at what China is now doing in terms of how
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muscular it's becoming about Taiwan as the West loses confidence as the West becomes more divided as the West becomes
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more distracted as we spend more time you know it's a tried thing to say but as we spend more time arguing about what
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a woman is instead of real stuff that matters other people around the world see that as weakness and they capitalize
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on it and I'm convinced that the things we have seen in terms of geopolitics in the last many years would not be
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happening happen if we were not signaling weakness and division you politically Affiliated at all do do you
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consider yourself to be on the left or the right or neither or well here's how I think about it right uh my interest is
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in our society thriving our culture thriving our culture doing better and uh I don't think the right or the left is always
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right it's contextual right there are times when you want higher taxes and more government spending there are times
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when you want lower taxes and less government spending there are times when you need more immigration you know after
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World War II Britain Australia Canada many countries wanted more immigrants to come because they needed to rebuild their society uh there are times when you need less immigration and so I think
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it's about where you are in the moment as opposed to these rigid ideological positions like you know I am Pro
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immigration I'm anti-immigration I think both of those are pretty misguided positions what you want is to be in the
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right place at the right time so I don't know if you've noticed this but it seems to me like political labeling is now
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mostly a weapon that people use against their opponents right like if I don't agree with you it's convenient for me to
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label you as a member of the opposite tribe so if I'm on the right well you're a communist if I'm on the left well
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you're far right and and this is how we have conversation now um I have some positions that are currently considered rightwing I have some positions that are currently considered leftwing and you
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know I just one of the things I really learned from my history and my family's history and I talk about this in the
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book as you know is that ideology is a very bad thing always and so the moment you buy into a prepackaged set of ideas about what you're supposed to believe you very quickly find yourself having to
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believe things that you don't actually agree with so that you get to stay in the tribe mhm I don't care about the
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tribe I care about the truth there's a quote you um you referenced which uh I actually sent to my friends earlier on and I was talking to them um it is I have no interest whatsoever in the false
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dichotomy of right versus left if there is one thing my Soviet childhood taught me it's that subscribing to someone
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else's ideology will always inevit inevitably mean having to suspend your own judgment about right and wrong to
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appease your tribe which is on chapter one of your book on page 21 and it really
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um you know as a podcaster when you really want you're genuinely curious and you want to interview lots of people
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from lots of backgrounds the the great thing about doing this job is I have to teach myself to always look at the other
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side so if you represent one side my job in many respects is to try and understand the other side so we can talk about the other side as well to like
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represent the other side and um that's been really useful for me because it's stopped me falling into the Trap of like
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conforming with a tribe and also as you say like when you talk about the right and left thing being a label and a
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weapon that people will use it's the same when a journalist wants to write about me what they'll do is they'll find
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the most right-wing person that's ever been on my podcast and they'll say he interviews people like yes insert name
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insert name yeah as if to say I am those two people yes or in our case with trigonometry what happens is we are people who started our show because we were pushing back against the woke
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Progressive Dogma in our comedy industry at the time and so a lot of our early guests were exploring ing perspectives
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that were not ours we were two remain voters and when the remain when the brexit vote happened we were really confused because we were part of that kind of elitist Metropolitan you know I
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don't know anyone who voted brexit kind of thing but my perspective was I found it odd that people were saying well you know the reason people voted for brexit is because half the country is racist
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and I was like I mean come on that that's just factually incorrect we both know that uh that's not to say the big
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people don't exist and that doesn't mean that some brex of Voters weren't racist but to explain a complex phenomenon like
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that by a simplistic explanation of that just wasn't accurate so we had a lot of
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people who were Pro brexit on the show to understand where they're coming from well one of the things that happens is
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if you talk to a lot of people from one side then the people from the other side say what you just said well he's talk to
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this this and this I won't go on his show right and then they use that against you to say well you only talk to these people and like I'm like we've we've invited your Owen Joneses and your
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Ash sakas and all the others and Ash should come on soon and and we've had lots of people from different perspectives but if I'm writing an
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article about you or if I want to tweet something about you it's very easy to use what is wokeism as far as you see it
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because the word kind of sounds like a compliment it was initially it was a self- compliment initially so wokeness
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came along really in around 2014 and there if you are interested we can talk about why it does around that time
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because it's a very interesting thing that I actually think speaks to the moment we're in more broadly um but it
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was initially used by uh people particularly kind of black lives matter and racial activists in America about
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themselves and what they were saying is we are awakened to certain realizations realizations like what they call intersectionality which is the idea that you know different racial and sexual and
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other groups and Society are treated differently um and we're now awake to this that's what wokeness meant and now we are aware these systemic forces that are disadvantaging certain groups and
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now we're going to pursue activism that's designed to address you know white privilege male privilege and all
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of this other stuff but very quickly what happened is a lot of people looked at some of the ways these people were
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behaving and other people around them were behaving and started making fun of it which is what often happens and so
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now the word work is kind of an insult that's being used to say these people are somewhat detached from reality and
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they're obsessed about trivial issues um that don't actually have much bearing on reality they're not interested in facts
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they're interested in narratives and so on um but if you're asking me what woke culture really is it's a combination of
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things first and foremost it's the promotion and celebration of victimhood first and foremost then you
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take that victimhood and you say different groups are differently victimized some groups are victimized so
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black people ethnic minorities women U and by the way of course there's a kernel truth to all these things right
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uh certain groups are disadvantaged in society or perhaps a better way of saying is generally speaking have worse outcomes than others and that you know we can explore why
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that is in in more detail um but what we then do is we build a a hierarchy of Oppression some groups are more oppressed than others which makes them better morally Superior to others and
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there are some other groups that are suspect because they're doing better so this ideology kind of says the way to
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work out who is oppressed and who is the oppressor because if you have the oppressed you have to have someone who's
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oppressing them we can't say you know different groups do different in society for all sorts of different reasons if
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someone is not doing as well as someone else that's because they've been oppressed right uh and then you work out
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this hierarchy you know white people are the evil at the top uh you throw in some other successful minorities you know for
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example uh in the UK and in America uh Asians from the Far East Chinese Koreans Japanese they do very well right so they are now seen as part
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of the kind of more the oppressor groups that's why in American colleges for example they're discriminated against in
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admissions because they do better than Hispanics and and blacks right so uh it's essentially a way of creating a very very simplistic and frankly ridiculous way of looking at people not
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as individuals you know Steven Constantin but as groups black white russian Jewish whatever way you want to
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look at it and it's this generalized thing and one of the reasons it's so destructive is it's asking all the wrong
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questions it's it's asking the question of why do why why are people struggling right but it doesn't ask it from the
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right perspective the real you know poverty is the norm the real question is what creates Prosperity what creates
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success uccess what creates uh successful outcomes for different groups and if you just focus on you know what
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happened to a certain group 200 years ago you're really not going to get to the answer of how to uplift people in in
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the present moment so it's the elevation of victimhood it's Obsession about racial and sexual and gender Dynamics um
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and it's the promotion of a kind of anti-western anti- white anti-male ideology uh that I believe is very very dangerous to actually the very great
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societies that we've created which are based on the idea that you know I have some issues with multiculturalism but a
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multiracial society I think is a very healthy thing provided we are not encouraged to see each other as members
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of separate and divided tribes but that is exactly what this ideology does what is the harm of victimhood and how does how is that like really showing up in
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people's everyday lives from an individual standpoint and so I really want to know like the how victimhood is
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becoming self harm so if I choose to adopt a victimhood mindset how does that hurt me Steven well oh I mean there's a
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hundred different ways but one of the the thing things we know from psychology is what they call perception is projection I don't know if you're
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familiar with this idea okay you've had Jordan Peterson on the show right so one of the things he talks about is you
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cannot see unless you have a hierarchy of value in your mind right there is an almost unlimited number of things I could be looking at in this room there's a bunch of books behind you there's
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cameras in the room your producers over there there's a wall there's lights there's all kinds of things but I'm looking at you why because in this
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moment you're the most important thing that's happening to me in this room right our conversation however if I walk into this
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room and I am triggered by books right I wouldn't be able to focus on you I would be be a only be able to
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focus on what's behind you right now let's say you walk around thinking that because of your racial background
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everyone's out to get you well what are you going to see out in the world you're going to see people look at you funny
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now people look at you funny for all sorts of different reasons people look at me funny people look at women funny people look at men funny for all sorts
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of different reasons you might walk past the police officer and you might think well I know that my racial background
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makes me a victim of police brutality therefore I'm going to be on edge what does that mean well if a police officer
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says something to me to you you might interpret it differently than you might have done as if you were just a normal
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guy right and on and on it goes so you bring your perceptual filters into every situation and therefore the outcomes that you experience are predetermined to
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a very significant part not by the other people but by your own expectations and
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so when you teach people to be victims you make them victims you actually cause them to suffer in real life and the
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people who need to be resilient and strong and to be taught that you may be mistreated sometimes by different people but you have the capacity to overcome that you have the capacity to make that
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you can be whoever you want you live in a free Society where no one can stop you the people who need that message the
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most are the people who are actually victims the people who actually suffer discrimination the people who actually
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come from difficult backgrounds they need that message more than anyone it reminded me of that video I saw you do
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or feat in where you talk about the scar experiment which um made it very real for anyone that hasn't seen that video what was that experiment basically what they did is
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they took a bunch of people I think it was mostly women some men and they said to them what we're doing today so they
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set the frame what we're doing today is we are doing an experiment to find out how people with uh facial disfigurements
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are treated in society and they put scarring on their face in front of a mow so they could see that they had some really serious facial disfigurements and as they were leaving the
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room they said you know what we just need to touch touch that scar up a little bit more and they removed the
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scarring so these people went into what was set up as a job interview thinking they had scars on their face but the scarring had been removed without their knowledge and when they walked into
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those interviews when they came out they were asked a bunch of questions and what people found was they had massively
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increased levels of discrimination for their facial disfigurements they reported specific
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comments that the interviews had made about their face even though they had no scaring at all they brought their expectation in with them and they came out with the result that they were
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looking for so they believed they were discriminated against yeah so I I read about something called stereotype threat um which talks about how if you remind a
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group of people whether that's black people or women or whoever it might be about a stereotype um or factor that
00:21:00
relates to a stereotype before they do a test then they perform worse than the test and and I guess I don't know if this is a Counterpoint to this but so if
00:21:06
I'm a black person and there's a stereotype that black people aren't good at maths just by asking someone on a
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test to fill in their ethnicity before they do the math test drops their scores on the math test right which I I believe
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is the Crux of the experiment and this this kind of proves that I guess it's a few things I guess
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it's someone believing that they are as a disadvantage causes a disadvantage in performance but it also highlights if that's like an innate thing it also points to the power of these these
00:21:37
stereotypes totally but it's not the power of the stereotypes it's the power of the brainwashing right because what
00:21:44
what that what when someone says to you there's The Stereotype it's not just the stereotype alone it's also the fact that
00:21:50
they've told you that reinforces it for you right because you might be aware of the stereotype of a peripheral level but
00:21:56
you're like no I'm good at mass and that's it but it's when other people come in and tell you stuff that's when
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that social proof is also reinforcing it sometimes they tell you it in a well-meaning way yeah yeah but that
00:22:06
doesn't change it right but you're not saying we shouldn't tell people at all well I I don't know that the stereotype
00:22:13
that black people aren't good at math is true I I think what we should tell people is you can be whatever the hell
00:22:18
you want uh and you might be terrible at math that's okay you might be good at some other things but the thing you
00:22:24
should really do is do your best and find out the result you get I asked this question I flashback when I was 18 years
00:22:30
old and I was thinking of starting my first business and I discovered that there's this special like loan or Grant
00:22:36
you could get if you were black and as I sat there I remember being sat there on Facebook typing out this post which I
00:22:42
never posted where I basically was like this seeing that this exists has made me
00:22:49
feel like I'm at a disadvantage the existence of this thing but it's well-meaning like they wanted to give
00:22:56
grants to people that were black but part of me if you read between the lines of what that says it says because you are black you have a disadvantage right and then when I sort of overlap that
00:23:06
with what I know about stereotype threats I'm like did the existence of that grant program make me more hopeful
00:23:12
and self-elaboration they are incredibly well-meaning they're incredibly well- meaning which is what makes them so dangerous because um I
00:23:34
always forget this quote but there's a there's a wonderful quote about this which is that a tyranny exercised for your own good is much worse than a
00:23:42
tyranny that's exercised out of pure evil because at least the evil person knows they're being evil but when
00:23:47
someone is trying to help you by being tyrannical towards you I mean this is a different context but the point is the
00:23:52
same when someone is doing something to you because they think they're try they're helping they are not held back
00:23:59
by their conscience at all mhm and so they will do whatever the hell they think is the right thing in order to
00:24:05
help you what might be a good way of helping people who who come from backgrounds where there is less
00:24:12
entrepreneurial success and maybe that is the case I don't know what the statistics are is you know creating a school of black business Excellence
00:24:19
right like here's here's 10 guys like you who come in and talk about how you were great and here's some tips and
00:24:25
here's what you do and here's what I did inspiration right now look I don't buy personally into this idea that like
00:24:32
there's this Narrative of you can't be what you can't see I think that's one of the most pernicious and dangerous ideas
00:24:38
that we've seen in recent years um but to the extent that there are people who who need someone who looks like them
00:24:44
maybe that's that's the way that you do it um there is a great writer American writer called Thomas soul I don't know
00:24:50
if you're familiar with his work not brother if you read his stuff you will you will be hooked one of the things he
00:24:57
talks about uh is the fact that um over the last 30 40 years we have replaced things that work with things that sound good and so much of what we now do in our society is things that sound good
00:25:12
like that program but don't actually help anyone they don't actually work very well um and when we talked about
00:25:19
why wokeness really takes off in 2014 one of the reasons I believe and there's a lot of evidence for this and you can
00:25:25
look this up and even maybe flash up some graphs about this when social media comes
00:25:30
along that's when this stuff really takes off because social media is completely detached from The Real World
00:25:36
and social media because of that promotes things that sound good that make us feel good about how Progressive
00:25:43
we are virtuous virtuous but don't actually achieve anything because in the isolated context of Twitter or Facebook
00:25:50
or whatever you don't have the feedback mechanism of Smashing your head on the floor if you walk the wrong way or
00:25:56
whatever whatever it is right um so we do a lot of things in our society now uh that practically don't get the results that we'd like them to get but they make
00:26:08
us feel incredibly good about how Progressive like the black tile the black tile during the BLM movement right
00:26:14
there was the everyone posted a black tole on Tuesday right right right and then if you didn't post the black tile you're attacked for being racist yeah
00:26:20
yeah I just thought Instagram was broken for a day no I remember doing a post at the time saying that I thought this was
00:26:26
ridiculous like and really the the the part of it that was ridiculous was um attacking people that hadn't done it uh
00:26:33
which exists under this assumption that the normal thing to to do the normal response to seeing a horrific video
00:26:39
where someone is suffocated to death is to take to social media and post about it like in fact that's the most unhuman
00:26:46
unnatural response to seeing something which is quite troubling yeah um but The Virtuous thing to do obviously that CL
00:26:51
the likes would be to fall in line and if you look at that Stephen not to get you know too far into the weeds of it
00:26:57
but one of the respons respers to that terrible uh killing of George Floyd was that a lot of people decided to take a lot of understandable frustrations out on policing and the police more broadly
00:27:10
and what happened is that a lot of the police pulled back in several cities in America and a lot of black people have
00:27:17
been killed as a result because there's less police to actually keep the peace and protect people from criminals so
00:27:22
that was another example of where an understandable emotional reaction gets converted into very bad action that's
00:27:29
counterproductive for the very community that in that instance we were trying to protect you said something a second ago
00:27:34
you said you don't believe that you need to see it to believe it yeah like I believe that and it speaks to a broader
00:27:41
thing which is I I I think that you and I having spoken to you beforehand and you know we have big podcasts and
00:27:47
whatever you and I probably have a better understanding and more similar values around certain things then we
00:27:52
would do people of our own background and that's because people aren't just these stupid super icial things right so
00:28:00
when we talk about you need to see someone like you succeed I'm like well I didn't I didn't need to look at someone who looked like me to be successful I saw people in America doing podcasts
00:28:12
about the similar talking about stuff that I wanted to talk about I was like oh great maybe I can try that and then I
00:28:18
did you know and I think teaching people that is going to open the doors for way
00:28:24
more people from Minority backgrounds than teaching them that there's this one guy who looks like them that's been
00:28:30
successful I just I don't see it that way I think the truth of of modern Western society and this is why where we
00:28:36
started the conversation why we're so lucky is that if you're talented if you're driven if you're willing to work
00:28:41
on yourself if you're willing to read and grow and and and have a goget a mindset the world's your Royster it
00:28:47
doesn't matter what your skin color is it's interesting because I I reflect on when I started in business and for whatever reason I had a lot of Role Models All Around the World you know
00:28:58
whether it was Sir Richard Branson studying his story or other people but I I you two look incredibly similar I've
00:29:05
met him he's we're very very different but you know he's a very very kind man um but Jamal Edwards who was a young
00:29:11
black man probably the most famous young black business person in the UK I was obsessed with because there was
00:29:17
something about him and his story that killed my excuses and it kills your victimhood MH which is if someone who was a young black man who is walk up
00:29:28
that ladder you're trying to walk up and they don't come from money and they had a job in I think Top Shop normal dude
00:29:34
didn't have like a you know incredible education Oxford you go I've got no excuse right and that's and that that
00:29:41
part of it I've always rated which is if someone like you is walked in those footsteps before it helps kill your excuses and it gives you no reason sure
00:29:47
but think about what that meant for you though what you're talking about is undoing the brand the brainwashing that already existed yeah right yeah yeah
00:29:55
yeah yeah yeah so it's not that like you you needed a black person you needed someone who you could look at and say oh no no all this stuff I've been brainwashed into thinking isn't true but
00:30:06
on the point of brainwashing yeah it is objectively true that if I I think if you if you look at studies where they
00:30:11
take someone with a name that is associated with a certain race and they like sent a thousand emails for a job
00:30:19
application you're much more likely to get the job if you're called John yes than like lante sure or
00:30:26
Constantine like you're called Steven yeah yeah my parents nailed it they probably nailed it but we we could slice
00:30:33
this a billion different ways yeah you could say look I'm 5'9 barely right if you look at the CEOs CEOs of the top Fortune 500 companies they're all over six foot basically um the tallest
00:30:46
president presidential candidate in America almost always win wins like height heightism height discrimination
00:30:54
is massive especially against men what am I going to do well I'm gonna complain about that I'm gonna sit there and go oh
00:31:00
I'm 5'9 it's not going to change anything right so the only thing the only option I have is do I take this and
00:31:08
run with it do I make it a strength of some kind do I compensate for it elsewhere MH or do I wallow in my
00:31:15
victimhood those are the choices man yeah no one's going to make you grow can you acknowledge that the brainwashing
00:31:21
exists that it's in in part objectively true sure but it's also not a not reason
00:31:28
enough to become a victim sure okay but that's all I'm saying myself my point is that look of course different people are
00:31:36
treated differently and it's different in different ways right like for example I'm a first generation immigrant in this
00:31:41
country some people will see that as a Bad Thing other people will see that as a good thing right there are tradeoffs to everything right being an outsider is often bad but sometimes good so the only
00:31:55
thing that you can do is play the cards that life has D you right and so going i' I've been dealt
00:32:01
you could look people are free to do whatever they want with their life if you want to sit there and say you've been dealt a bad hand of cards I'll
00:32:07
agree with you I mean fine you have but it's not going to help you it's not going to help you and what I want for
00:32:13
people is to thrive I want them to thrive I want them to create the life that they want and I know for a fact you
00:32:20
know I've been the son of very wealthy people I've slept in a park in Edinburgh for weeks because I couldn't afford Ren the only person that is going to change your life is you no one's coming to save
00:32:32
you no one's coming to rescue you no one the Cavalry isn't coming it's just you and you have the opportunity to take the cards you've been dealt with and convert them into the best possible outcome and
00:32:43
for some people having a job is incredible taking the life that they've been given and just having a job that they can hold down and provide for their family that in itself is a massive
00:32:53
achievement for others the sky is the limit but you only get this one set of cards and you only get to play it once do you want to sit there and complain that you were born with the wrong
00:33:05
genitals or the wrong skin color or whatever or do you want to just play the hand to the best of your ability that's
00:33:10
the choice it's interesting because you said you want to help them Thrive yeah and I think if you asked some of those
00:33:16
people they'd say they also want to thrive and maybe they see the victimhood as their path to thriving you know what
00:33:23
I mean that's just a cop out man that like identity like because if I if I become a victim then I have this group
00:33:29
of people and then they're going to be nice to me and we're going to reinforce each other and we you too me you know like sure but it's not going to actually
00:33:36
help you it makes you feel good makes you feel understood and everyone gets does it make your life better does it do you earn more money does is your business more successful
00:33:47
well if you're like a diversity consultant it does right but for everyone else does it make your life
00:33:54
better first of all it makes you feel awful right and we've all been there we've all felt victims in certain
00:34:00
different situations because we've all been victimized in in one way or another you know whether it's a traumatic
00:34:05
childhood or things happen to you you know uh all kinds of things happen to people but ultimately you go talk to any
00:34:12
any good therapist or psychologists they're not going to say to you yeah yeah oh yeah you're really oppressed yeah they're going to say this this is
00:34:20
your opportunity to grow this is your opportunity to overcome yes we accept that the things that happened to you were wrong and bad and whatever but it's
00:34:26
acceptance and then you move on that's how life Works do you think there's differences in Generations as it relates to this attitude what are you seeing
00:34:32
when it comes to like generation Zed as they call them and how does that vary from Millennials some of the stuff that I we
00:34:39
have genz people working for us at trigonometry and I'm like some of the things about them are incredible young
00:34:45
people are always amazing because they've had the benefit of learning stuff like knowing stuff that we had to
00:34:52
learn right like I had to learn this they just get given it on YouTube or whatever they can watch a video
00:34:58
and like for 10 minutes and no stuff that it took me 20 years to unpack right um on the one hand on the other hand this is a generalization you can't generalize about people but my
00:35:09
experience is in the workplace for example they they think about their role in in such a disproportionately grandiose way comp like we had I remember Francis and I my co and try I
00:35:23
used to help him run a comedy club and there were people who would who would they literally just came in to help out
00:35:29
they were effectively doing an unpaid internship and they'd like pipe up in meetings and be like I think we should
00:35:35
do it like this like for my generation you know the idea that I'd like say anything in that meeting would have been completely Preposterous you know what I mean but look um every generation has
00:35:46
its own challenges I don't envy jenzi because they grew up with phones from day one and we are starting to to
00:35:53
realize I think probably 20 years from now we will look at phones like we look at tobacco companies 30 or 40 years ago
00:35:59
like the fact that young people were given smartphones from the age of 3 four 5 six or whatever that was just kind of
00:36:05
Cruelty really I think and we're starting to find that out so uh it's look it's very easy always to to slag
00:36:12
off young people um I we need them we need them to be the best versions of themselves so I'm always thinking about
00:36:19
encouraging and lifting them up and mentoring and and all of that certainly the people that I know from that generation but they do face unique
00:36:25
challenges and and kind of smacking some of that self-centeredness out of them is part of it you hopeful for
00:36:32
them I'm very torn about this more generally as well I'm someone who's incredibly optimistic
00:36:40
personally as I look out of the world today I'm not optimistic about the world I am optimistic personally so it's a it's a very weird thing I think that as
00:36:51
I say I think gen Z they've had some really difficult things imposed on them by their parents and of structure and
00:36:58
discipline imposed on them by their parents on the other hand they have tremendous opportunities too so I guess
00:37:04
it just remains to be seen you're not optimistic about the world definitely not definitely why well
00:37:13
we started talking about I think the West undermining itself um whether you think the West is good or bad is kind of irrelevant for this part of it when the the the the civilization
00:37:25
that is dominant which is us there's six great civilizations in the world today Western
00:37:31
Civilization who are the descendants of the Western Roman Empire Eastern Christian civilization who had descended
00:37:37
from Byzantium the Eastern Christian Romans Empire so that's the center of that Civilization is Russia now uh the two Islamic civilizations the Arabs and the Persians Persians Iran China and
00:37:49
India the Chinese and the Indians right Western Civilization has been dominant around the world for many many centuries now
00:38:00
when the dominant civilization becomes weakened especially from the inside whichever one that is what that opens up is what Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping
00:38:11
and others are now talking about this is what they mean when they talk about the multi-polar world what they mean is they
00:38:18
get to play they get to make a play for that dominant position they don't no one
00:38:24
wants to No One Vladimir putins and the XI Jin p don't want to sing you know hold hands and sing Kumbaya that's not
00:38:30
what they're into they want to be the dominant Force like America has been for a very long time and so when when the
00:38:38
king of the H Hill gets weaker and signals weakness to others what happens is conflict that's what happens so even
00:38:46
if you don't think Western values are good values which I happen to think they are for reasons we can get into the fact
00:38:53
that we are increasing the level of conflict around the world by signaling weakness I think is a bad thing right so
00:39:00
Ukraine is a very good example of that whether Taiwan happens as some people are predicting or we don't know it's not
00:39:07
a good thing if you look at what happened in Israel the reason Hamas felt comfortable to attack Israel on October
00:39:12
7th is he did is the Iranians who back Hamas feel comfortable in challenging Israel because Israel is America's Ally in the Middle East right so there is this great game being played and and it
00:39:25
is about throwing the West up its pedestal so even if you weren't comfortable with
00:39:31
the West's dominance the fact that it is likely coming to an end is a bad thing for the world in the interim because it
00:39:38
means there's more conflict uh and there's more violence uh and there's more strife and there's more Discord and
00:39:44
just to be clear the reason why it's coming to an end in your view is because of the internal Division and the internal
00:39:50
conflict that's part of it look it's a look the the the the rise and decline of civilizations is a very complicated thing part of it is economic right but even if you look at our economic
00:40:01
problems um the biggest problem that Western countries face is our level of debt right look at debt as a societal
00:40:09
issue national debt what does that mean well one of the things it means is we've we've broken the intergenerational
00:40:16
conflict uh intergenerational contract between your generation your children's generation and the generation before yours and mine right effectively our parents are unwilling to sacrifice for
00:40:29
their grandchildren that's what debt means because what we're doing is we're borrowing from the future right we are
00:40:36
operating at more than 100% GDP debt at the moment and we're increasing it all the time because we're running deficits
00:40:42
America is borrowing like crazy what does that mean you and I are not going to be even you and I are not going to be paying it off our children will right is
00:40:51
that the behavior of people who feel like they're one that they're United that they're looking after the Next Generation look at
00:40:58
GDP per capita I mean one of the reasons uh we have uh levels of mass immigration that we do today politicians will tell
00:41:04
you we need Mass immigration to boost our economy and they're only half Ling um they're they're telling you that
00:41:11
because it's true in order that they can pretend our GDP is growing we need to bring in more people but our GDP per
00:41:17
capita is falling and has been for some time so the Gen Z generation are going to be poorer than you and I is that a reflection of a society that is cohesive is reflection of a society
00:41:30
that feels like it's one that we're looking after the Next Generation which is our first Duty as people right U so
00:41:37
even our economic problems which are significant in my opinion are partly because of the cultural malays that we
00:41:43
experience and then everything flows from that as we talked about at the beginning if you brainwash people for decades now to think that their society
00:41:50
is bad and wrong and evil well they're not going to be willing to advance its interest they're not going to be able to
00:41:55
go and fight and defend it in war it's Etc we're weakening ourselves who's doing the
00:42:00
brainwashing a lot of it has been happening in Academia since the 60s so Educators uh who were uh being
00:42:08
encouraged and funded and supported by my boys from the Soviet Union at the time to demoralize the West they
00:42:14
encouraged a lot of these marxists and one of the things we haven't yet touched on is um the ideology of wokeness is
00:42:20
really a new form of Marxism it's a kind of race Marxism I know this sounds like very abstract and crazy I don't know if
00:42:25
it does to you but maybe to many people in your audience so perhaps I can lay it out a little bit can you explain what Marxism is well sure so Marxism was an
00:42:32
ideology created obviously by KL marks and Angel who who funded him and assisted him and the idea was very
00:42:39
simple uh the idea was that the way to understand human society is through the lens of Oppression we we've talked about this before right there are some people who are the oppressors and some people
00:42:51
who are oppressed who are the oppressors in Marx's original idea the oppressors were the Bourgeois the cap the people
00:42:57
who owned what he called the means of production the factories the the capital the stock like you are you are now a
00:43:04
member of the Bourgeois a capitalist you own a business right and what he said was that you are oppressing your
00:43:11
producer and everyone who works for you because you take their labor and you profit from it without giving them back
00:43:17
the right amount of value in exchange um and by the way just like with a lot of these other ideas it was true in the sense that Marxism really is a reaction
00:43:28
to the rampant abuse that was caused by the Industrial Revolution in which you know you had people sleeping in factories and chimney sweeps that were 12 years old up chimneys you know dying
00:43:40
all of that right so as with all of these ideas there is a kernel of truth but what he said and you know the people who really practiced this idea the most were the Soviets and the Chinese Communist is well how do you solve this
00:43:52
problem oh very simple you got to take from the oppressors and you got to give to the oppressor from each according to his ability to
00:43:59
each according to his needs however the problem is it turns out that communism is effectively a great idea at the
00:44:06
family level like your family is a communist Society so is mine like I go out to work I earn money we spend it
00:44:14
together on the needs of my wife my children blah blah blah that's communism right we share what one productive
00:44:19
person produces other people do other jobs they may not be paid as well blah blah blah the level of society doesn't really
00:44:27
work because people are self-interested and to make them not self-interested to make them all give up everything for the needs of the state and other other people you have to use a lot of force
00:44:37
right which is why you have to kill 50 million people in Russia 50 million people in China to even make it happen
00:44:45
now what happened was you got to remember this is very important people forget this when the Soviet Union was
00:44:51
created it was not designed to be a Countrywide phenomenon the communist belied that the only rightly by the way that the only way communism would work is if you made everyone in the world
00:45:03
communist because if you made everyone communist then no one could look at over the border and look at these evil
00:45:09
capitalists having a great life everyone would be equally poor and then they'd be happy that was the idea right um and so
00:45:16
the idea of the the Russian Revolution wasn't about making Russia Communists communist it was about making
00:45:24
the world communist it was the world Revolution that's why the Soviet Union the the the the symbolism of the Soviet
00:45:30
Union it never had anything to do with Russia or the Soviet Union on the flag it had the globe and the hammer and
00:45:37
sickle the point was this ideology was meant to spread to the entire world the problem was that when people saw what was actually happening in the Soviet Union they really didn't want that and
00:45:48
most of all people in Western societies including the working class who was supposed to be the oppressed and to
00:45:53
overthrow their oppressive people they didn't want that they just wanted to have a nice life and to have a house and
00:45:58
to blah blah blah um and so the Marxist in the west they very quickly realized that this wasn't going to work Western workingclass people were not going to overthrow the existing regime and have a
00:46:10
a Soviet style Revolution where they slaughter all the bouris and the capitalist so they had to find a
00:46:16
different way to approach it which is why they invented this form of race Marxism they said no no no you're not no
00:46:23
you're not really oppressed cuz you're working class and you don't have Capital the reason you you're oppressed is
00:46:28
you're a man you're gay you're black you're this you're that and that really landed with people particularly
00:46:34
multiethnic societies like ours where we have a lot of people from Minority backgrounds um it coincided with the
00:46:41
sexual Revolution I know you've had my friend Lis Perry on the show yeah uh I don't know if you talked about this but
00:46:46
the pill basically changes the relationship between men and women women are liberated so now a lot of this stuff
00:46:52
also happens and so what happened in the 60s is a lot of Educators in Academia started teaching these ideas to students
00:46:59
and then you have successive generations of people who are now essentially trained to think that our societies were
00:47:06
bad uh what they were was about oppression racism bigotry imperialism uh colonialism slavery Etc uh which all of these things have a kernel of Truth and
00:47:18
that kernel of Truth is used to tell gigantic lies and cuz I because often when we we talk about this division that's happening internally Within West we think of it as the other side of
00:47:29
doing it but a second ago you really pointed at forces far a field are tinkering and actually there was a story
00:47:36
this week I think or last week where a podcaster has been I think like arrested and had her channels deleted because it turns out I didn't go deep into the story she hasn't been arrested but yes
00:47:46
perhaps I can just summarize it quickly so there was a company in America called tenant media who were given $10 million
00:47:53
in a very short period of time so I'm sure it would have been more by a Russian today
00:47:58
Affiliated uh influencers and various nefarious actors from Russia effectively to uh disseminate certain types of information through right-wing influences in America and this has been
00:48:11
happening for decades there's a guy called Yuri basmanov if you're not familiar with him this guy's going to
00:48:16
blow your mind you should look him up he was a Soviet Defector uh in the 80s who came uh from the Soviet Union to India
00:48:24
to Canada ended up in America he gave series of lectures which people can watch on YouTube about what the Soviet
00:48:31
intelligence Services were actually focusing on because during the Cold War you might not remember this but you know people thought about Soviet spies as like stealing microfilms of American
00:48:43
nuclear installations and all of this stuff actually what he said was almost all of their resources were used on what
00:48:49
he called demoralization and demoralization is the process whereby you divide Society and
00:48:57
you activate nefarious forces within that Society against the society so you encourage forces that are destabilizing this is one thing that people don't understand about Russian misinformation
00:49:08
disinformation influence operations Etc they're not designed to get a specific person elected this is how British people and Americans think they're like you know well I invest $10 million to
00:49:19
get this outcome it's not what they do what they want is to create a cacophony of Lies so that you don't know what to believe anymore is this true is that true and so they were they are and were
00:49:31
and have always been paying people in the west or using people in the west to seow Discord to divide people against
00:49:38
each other to say uh the Soviet Union by the way was very active in in funding militant uh African-American groups uh in the 60s and 70s and 80s in America
00:49:49
and in fact whenever people would say to uh the Soviets well look you're like starving millions of people and putting
00:49:55
them in gags by would say well what about black people in America they're you don't treat them well right so who
00:50:00
are you to tell us about all of this stuff so by the way this isn't like um a unique thing like America does this too America Funds liberal organizations in Russia to get Russian liberals to act in
00:50:15
their interest this is what all civilizations do I'm just saying maybe we should protect our civilization from
00:50:21
this foreign influence so yes uh foreign forces are at play but you can't like no
00:50:28
I I don't know I imagine there's no amount of money that people could give you to spread Russian propaganda on this show there's no amount of money that
00:50:35
people could give me to spread Russian propaganda or Chinese propaganda on my show what they do is they find people
00:50:41
who already agree with them and then they amplify their voice using money and influence and say look we'll we'll we'll
00:50:48
give you you know we'll give you $10 million and you can come to this great conference we'll we'll give you an opportunity to interview this guy who's
00:50:54
close to Vladimir Putin or or this guy who who says this or that person or this person and they they just take the
00:51:01
forces within our society that already destabilizing and they amplify them so this podcaster in the United States it
00:51:07
was tenant media is that one podcast or is that a network of podcasts so what happened is they had a network of
00:51:13
podcasters underneath them who is according to the indictment they were all being used so they didn't know they
00:51:18
were being paid by Russia okay U they were just all being used and never now and again again we don't know the full
00:51:24
details but it would be like hey have you seen this new story like the ukrainians might have been involved in
00:51:29
the terrorist attack in Russia maybe you should cover it and one of them did stuff like that okay and they weren't
00:51:35
necessarily picking a side were they no they were picking a side oh so they were Pro Trump or Pro Cala or well they were
00:51:41
mostly right-wing influences uh but the person in question whose name is Lauren Chen she actually started agitating
00:51:49
people against Donald Trump at one point which is my point they are not trying to get a particular person elected they are
00:51:56
trying to make you go who do I vote what's going like just to to confuse everybody to the point that they don't
00:52:02
know what to believe and they don't know what to think and they don't know what to do looks like it's working that's my
00:52:08
point which is why we need in the west to have a very clear idea of who we are where we're going how we got here what makes our society successful where we've come from and to reject the lies about
00:52:20
our history because this is why uh both the crazy left and the crazy right want to revise our history
00:52:27
so that we don't know who we are anymore so that we can't say well actually Britain is a great country and has done
00:52:33
incredible things for the world right uh you know Britain is the country that has
00:52:38
the first modern Parliament it's a country that spread democracy around it it's a country that actually the first Empire in history that ended slavery it
00:52:46
ended slavery it didn't invent it it ended it slavery was the norm and then the British came along practiced slavery just like everybody else and a terrible thing it was and then they spent a
00:52:56
tremendous amount of blood money and treasure to end slavery not only within the British Empire they spent a huge
00:53:03
amount of diplomatic military and financial Capital to for to force other countries to end slavery in those
00:53:09
countries as well right but that's not what you're being taught in school right now is it no and and that's the problem
00:53:16
because if you think of your society as based on these terrible things well why would you want its values to persevere
00:53:22
and continue in the future it may be wonder if there there is any hope or any solution to this because immediately as I was thinking is there a way to stop the division and most of the division
00:53:33
actually happens on the internet now it's not like we're out on the streets and the way the algorithms work is they reinforce an opinion so you get
00:53:40
literally like coins at the casino for saying something where a big group of people clap and Nuance is like the enemy
00:53:47
of social media growth I think like if you if like if you express a solution to a problem as complex and nuanced who the
00:53:54
[ __ ] who the [ __ ] wants to hear a complex Nuance like really that that I think there's much more reward for me to
00:53:59
say this is bad yes or this is amazingly good and if you're in either of those camps you know exactly who's clapping
00:54:05
yes whereas in the middle as we've kind of you probably experienced it a lot as a podcaster um like you don't get the
00:54:13
support the full support of either side maybe maybe the middle exists I don't know well the center is the place of
00:54:19
greatest tension it always is because you're getting fire from both sides uh and picking a tribe is always much more
00:54:26
comfortable and more convenient but this is where I think actually the beauty of the internet is too
00:54:31
like 20 years ago you and I both would have had some kind of rich funer not me or you but someone who actually had loads of money who would be funding this and telling you what you
00:54:44
supposed to talk about I don't have to give a [ __ ] what anyone thinks there is an audience out
00:54:51
there for the nuanced balanced here's the thing I think about this but also about this take
00:54:57
and you know look yes absolutely uh you know if you're Andrew Tay you're going to get a bigger audience saying what
00:55:03
you're saying or the equivalent of of the left whatever that looks like uh then I might but yeah I'm very happy
00:55:10
with a million subscribers on YouTube I'm very happy that 60,000 people read my substacks every week and that's
00:55:15
growing too there is a market out there for everybody and then ultimately I think it comes down to is who are you
00:55:23
and who do you want to be I didn't get into this to be the richest or the most successful podcaster in the world I got into this because I wanted to promote critical thinking I wanted to promote
00:55:36
the truth and the pursuit of truth I don't claim to know the truth but I'm trying to find out what it is um and I
00:55:42
wanted people in the west to remember what they have to be grateful for it to defend it uh to stand up for the values
00:55:49
that made these societ is great you said a second ago that we've we need to remember who we are um if we are going
00:55:55
to be successful as society and one of the things that did sort of anchor Us in values was religion yes and I'm um I I
00:56:03
was born to a very religious Christian family um went to church a lot when we were younger um my mother's still extremely religious my father is religious as well I believe I still
00:56:15
think he's religious and at about 18 or 19 years old I discovered Like Richard Dawkins books and had this like
00:56:21
existential crisis for two [Music] years and then after the existential crisis which lasted two years and me
00:56:27
like you know really trying to find the answers I kind of was just at piece with it and I would class myself now as being
00:56:33
agnostic yeah but in the last six months I classed myself as being agnostic but you're by curious now my Curious yeah it's like you're God
00:56:45
curious you can always feel me going back to the beginning again but much of that I think is what you described which
00:56:50
is because we've become more individualistic more lonely all these kinds of things we're now searching for
00:56:56
purpose again yes and for for values that are anchored in something yes um I wondered what your take was on the impact that us becoming a more atheist Society has had on all these things look
00:57:06
I an agnostic myself um I that's not to say that I think you know I'm not a materialist in the sense that like this is it right it's definitely not it and I know that experientially I know that
00:57:18
there are ways that human beings connect that are Way Beyond you know the things that we can see with our eyes and hear
00:57:24
with our ears uh there are powerful forces in this world that are spiritual in nature these are not things I can
00:57:31
prove and I have no intention of trying but they exist um but there's no question that the the
00:57:40
the decline of religion has meant that people are lacking meaning and lacking purpose and lacking guidance and lacking
00:57:46
discipline and lacking a set of rails in which to live their lives um the the hope is that from that comes something else um you know there have
00:57:58
been many great religions throughout history there's no reason to say that the ones we currently have are the last ones we're ever going to have um God
00:58:06
knows what AI is going to do to our sense of who we are and what our purpose is and what our mission is um and also
00:58:13
you know there is purpose to be found in other things you you know if if you are
00:58:20
fortunate enough like me to become a father at some point that really changes your perspective on so many different
00:58:26
things and and gives you a sense of meaning and purpose I'm sure your work is very meaningful to you um but yes at
00:58:33
a societal level uh uh the death of religion is has been very impactful in that way for sure do you think we'd be better if we went back to being more religious as a society forgive me but
00:58:45
that's a stupid question because you can't go back really no you can't go back to anything the part of the reason
00:58:52
we are less religious is the the material circumstances of our lives have changed very dramatically
00:58:58
um and you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube you can go forward and that's what I'm alluding to uh I don't think the the religious age is over I mean human beings clearly have a
00:59:10
religious Instinct that has lasted through Through the Ages and usually religion has been there to explain to us the things that we do not understand I think that with a lot of the
00:59:22
technological breakthroughs that we're about to see there's going to be a whole range of things that I don't even know
00:59:27
what they are that we we're not going to understand exactly and the spiritual attitude we take to those things may be
00:59:33
different yet again we'll find out or a lot of people will go to religion but I don't think they're going to go to like the 960s version of it do you know what I mean yeah and I I think I think about
00:59:46
I read some work that said that a lot of young Western men in particular were choosing Islam obviously we've seen
00:59:52
people like Andrew Tate as well make the decision but that there was this rise in Young Western men deciding to come out
00:59:58
or convert to Islam that makes sense that makes a lot of sense why uh because a Islam is a religion that offers particularly men quite a lot of the
01:00:10
things that they really want right discipline structure uh reward mhm uh Community
01:00:21
um the I mean one of the things about Islam when you contrast it against Christianity and and Western values
01:00:28
today's Western values more broadly is Islam like very few other things is is one of the ideologies that still allows men to be strong and confident right in
01:00:38
modern Western Society what is a man supposed to be look at your adverts look at your movies look at everything man's
01:00:45
supposed to be this PA pathetic weak uh you second to his strong female counterpart right uh men are supposed to step back and make space
01:00:58
and all of this Islam says no no no you're you're the man that's always going to be appealing to men who who
01:01:04
increasingly feel particularly younger men who in many ways they've got the short end of the stick while being told
01:01:11
that they are privileged and blah blah blah blah blah like young men are not in positions of privilege in in our society
01:01:16
now they do worse in education they do worse in all sorts of other things and at the same time they're being demonized
01:01:22
right it's very natural that their response to that is going to be things like that and you know people often talk
01:01:29
about Andrew Tay as a very problematic figure which certainly is but to me the blame he's to me is the symptom of a of of a much bigger underlying wider
01:01:42
problem like my generation's version of that was Jordan Peterson who I thought was a very
01:01:47
constructive force and still is I had the privilege of touring with him in America this year and was incredible and
01:01:54
he's a very positive constructive person but the more you try to prevent men from
01:01:59
being men the more you're going to get the backlash and I think people joining Islam following these hyper masculine
01:02:06
influences going to like one of the reasons if you notice loads of guys are like now into going to the gym and being
01:02:13
like not just going to the gym to like be healthy but like they're buff right because that's one of the very few
01:02:19
acceptable ways for men to be men in modern society right because the things that we conven would associate with masculinity you know strength confidence aggression dominance Etc they're kind of
01:02:32
looked down upon for guys nowadays right um and so well at least I can go to the
01:02:37
gym and I can look buff right it's so true I was just thinking about the people my father might have looked up to he's from Coventry and when I from my
01:02:45
memory of his idols they were like rock stars in bands yeah they were like skinny like probably smoked some weed
01:02:51
they all had long hair my dad had long hair as well like this down to his shoulders when I saw some old photos of him and I imagine his version of like
01:02:57
the Andrew Tate was that I know the lead singer of like the Beatles or whatever yeah or his favorite rock band but
01:03:03
you're right all of our people we look up to in society they probably do Brazilian jiu-jitsu right they go to the
01:03:09
gym yeah there's some they fight in some way yeah boxing UFC whatever and it's much you know because I think that's one of the reasons that the UFC is crushing it as hard as it is I mean Dana why is a
01:03:20
brilliant business guy and it's a great product and it's fascinating but I think one of the reasons there such an
01:03:25
obsession with combat sports nowadays is that it's like well at least I can see like men being men type of thing do you know what I mean cuz nowhere else am I going to get that I think that's it's undoubtedly to me a kind of like
01:03:38
misplace misplaced masculinity or maybe it's not misplaced it's just like the one place you can actually see it you
01:03:43
know and you're allowed to celebrate masculinity in that way the the hyper masculinity it's a very interesting
01:03:50
moment that we're in is is there a solution that you can see to the issues that men are facing in the sort of
01:03:56
modern world where suicide rates are through the roof loneliness depression look the solution for men is always
01:04:02
going to be the same uh which is to be better to do better to work harder to learn skills to grow to develop uh to
01:04:10
look for mentors to look for guidance uh and to do things it's always going to be the way like no like I said no one's
01:04:16
coming to save you and this is uh this is why victimhood that we talked about earlier it's especially bad for men CU
01:04:23
you know we feel sorry for women we don't really feel sorry for men right so if a woman is a victim everyone wants to like go and help her and support her and it's natural and understandable there's a very good evolutionary reasons for
01:04:35
this I think um which is men are biologically disposable basically um you know if you have a tribe of 10 men 10 women you send the men off to war one comes back you can replenish the tribe
01:04:49
and that's a one very lucky dude if if you do it the other way around and you send the women off to war you're screwed
01:04:55
right and so um men are kind of disposable we didn't evolve to feel sorry for them and so for guys again
01:05:02
like you just got to do stuff and be better and yes you've been dealt a bad hand you have compared to the previous
01:05:08
generations where like men were in charge and all of that you're going to have to find a way and wokeism um and
01:05:15
sort of I guess political correctness and Council culture and all these things are much of the weapons that are used to
01:05:22
put men in those situations you would argue yeah uh but you know I I think with I always worry when we have these conversations that um to say that
01:05:32
men young men especially younger than me I think have a bad deal is often like people try and immediately shove you in some kind of box like you're some men's rights blah blah blah I just think
01:05:43
that's an observable fact and the reason I think it's important is um that men and women need to work together mhm men
01:05:52
and women have had to work together for the entire history of human existence one of the terrible things about
01:05:57
wokeness is that it creates these divisions between men and women you know men are this women are that and you see
01:06:03
the the the response to that from the aggressive masculine side now or women are all this and women are all that
01:06:10
actually the thing that men and women really need more than anything is each other they need to work together that
01:06:16
operates at the level of your relationship with your girlfriend my wife but broader Society too like we have different skill sets we are
01:06:23
naturally inclined to towards different things we have to find ways to work together better um and so when one side
01:06:31
suffers there was a time when women were treated very badly a lot of them that wasn't good uh treating men badly isn't going to work out well either what you really need is finding ways for men and
01:06:43
women to be healthy together in relationships um and so that's I think important to say that that's the
01:06:49
objective if that's the goal if that's the objective that we're holding up then the question is how do we get there and
01:06:55
and question the answer to that is not to point fingers at the other sex and say they are this and they are that but
01:07:02
to go well men are naturally aggressive and dominant and Status seeking and all of this stuff and let's find ways to channel that into effective things like we need guys to like stand on
01:07:14
construction sites and Hammer [ __ ] into the ground and all of that um and we need women to do other things that are
01:07:20
more natural to them I mean look once you have a kid and you start taking them to like Nursery you find find out that
01:07:26
you know there is no gender equality in a kindergarten it's like mostly women that run that place and that's the way
01:07:31
it should be and that's that's makes sense so um we have different inclinations different skill sets it's
01:07:37
not to say there aren't exceptions of of course there are right but generally speaking we need to work together that's
01:07:43
the point yeah I think even um mentioning that there might be biological differences in male and female is where people like the you know
01:07:50
those that are looking for watery they come out in but I think anyone in their private relationship can very clearly State the differences between men and women and as you say
01:08:01
they're not sweeping and there are exceptions but how beneficial I don't know anything about you we've just met
01:08:09
but I imagine your girlfriend's Been instrumental in your life would that be fair to say of course I wouldn't be
01:08:15
anywhere near where I am without my wife like and we both reap the benefits of that I'm sure that's the case with you
01:08:22
that's how it's supposed to work on an individual level and at the level of society holding each other up filling in
01:08:28
gaps like the first time I remember you know something when I was young when I was about 20 like full of testosterone I
01:08:34
remember watching my mom resolve a conflict with a joke and a smile and to me it was like magic I was like whoa you can do that and then I that was a
01:08:46
helpful thing for me to learn you know but in my masculine boarding school kind of environment you'd never do that right it was all about who can like win and fight and dominate and whatever we're
01:08:57
useful to each other we can learn from each other that's the attitude that we should have towards each other and the other sex I love the what the term you
01:09:04
use there when you said hold me up because that's exactly what my partner does for me right and I think she'd probably say the other the same for her
01:09:11
sure which I think it goes to your point about what it should be this s Mutual we fill in the blanks in each other's maps
01:09:17
of the world in emotional states there's certain emotional states that I find very hard to get out of my wife can come
01:09:23
in and be like boom boom boom done and vice versa right and they're not the same we've been told the lie that men
01:09:29
and women are the same what about problematic men like Harvey Weinstein and stuff like yeah terrible of course
01:09:35
the the whole me too movement exposed this wave of like I someone on my podcast said it was at the neuroscientist America he said um we've
01:09:42
called men out but we need to make sure we call them back in if that kind of makes sense well I think the mistake we
01:09:48
made was we called Mana instead of calling toxic Mana in the same way that people who are itical of women now they will point to certain female traits or
01:10:00
certain female people who behave in ways that are very toxic and they will broaden and generalize from that onto
01:10:07
all women right Harvey Weinstein does not represent me in fact throughout history people like him would have actually been dealt with by Good Men and prevented from acting in that way right
01:10:20
I guess the argument is that it is all men because you're having those conversations in your group chat and
01:10:26
you're not not checking your uh your friend or your I don't know Harvey's friends didn't check him what kind of
01:10:33
group chats are you reading this is what the this is what I see online as like right but that makes absolutely zero
01:10:39
sense this is this is the thing is like if you want to generalize about an entire group of people generally
01:10:45
speaking we think that's a bad thing to do like if you were to do that about pakistanis people wouldn't be be into
01:10:52
that right if if I was to do that about black people nobody would be into that but the moment it's men suddenly that's
01:10:58
that's totally cool now now we're going to do this doesn't make any sense free speech is at the heart of this right
01:11:04
because we're talking about social media platforms the ability to express ideas and not be scared um free speech has
01:11:10
been on a bit of a journey over the even the last 10 years I think if you just looked at where we were 10 years ago and
01:11:17
then five years ago and then the pandemic and then now it feels like all four of those moments were in a different place what what's your
01:11:23
observation of that story AR Free Speech well it's all very contextual right and
01:11:28
depends where you are uh what you do and what your opinions are um one thing people forget give you one brief example right because people a lot of people make free speech a political issue they
01:11:39
say well this side cares about it because they want to say their stuff and this side doesn't care about it because blah blah blah right during the pandemic
01:11:47
when the vaccine came out in America the person who was pushing the vaccine was Donald
01:11:53
Trump and people who were opponent oon of his on the left said I'm not taking Trump's vaccine blah blah blah blah blah
01:11:59
blah blah right the moment the presidency changed suddenly you couldn't criticize the vaccine right and suddenly
01:12:07
you know you wanted to kill people if you had some reservations about some things about it right so free speech
01:12:13
usually and always has been really uh is a weapon that people like to use against the other side which is why you need
01:12:20
people in the middle to to kind of be the referee and say guys I don't care which one of you is in power now we
01:12:26
always need free speech so that we can criticize the people in power not the right or the left but the people in
01:12:32
power whoever that is now from about 2014 onwards particularly I think there was a lot of restriction of speech uh from the left from the progressive left
01:12:44
um and that was part of wokeness and by the way just for for your uh your audience I think it might be helpful I
01:12:51
always say this because people don't know this where the term political correctness comes from people think
01:12:57
political correctness is you know let's be let's not be mean to people let's not offend minorities let's not make
01:13:03
offensive jokes blah blah blah never had anything to do with that political correctness was invented in the Soviet
01:13:09
Union by Communists so that they could say to critics of the Communist Regime well comrade what you're saying may be factually correct but it's Politically Incorrect and therefore you should shut
01:13:21
up in other words it's inconvenient to the party line of the the day and that's how political correctness is used always it's about preventing you from expressing a dissenting opinion um so
01:13:34
from 2016 onwards you saw lots of that uh especially on social media because uh the kind of progressive left had a lock on all of those institutions Facebook
01:13:46
Twitter uh Instagram we can go down the full list they panded I'm not saying the people who ran them were themselves
01:13:53
necessarily work but they p Ed and appeased that Fringe who said you can't say that that's hate speech you can't
01:13:59
say that that's and during the pandemic we saw real restrictions on it I understand why the pandemic killed a hell of a lot of people there was a hell of a lot of lies being told by people of
01:14:11
all different sides um I was uncomfortable with the level of censorship we saw though I thought that
01:14:17
a lot of very reasonable things were prevented from being talked about one of them was where the virus came from we
01:14:23
now know with almost certainly it came from a lab in China due to almost certainly gain of function research um Matt Ridley for example he he in the House of Lords in the UK so he's not
01:14:34
some Fringe random guy wrote a whole book with a Chinese scientist Alina Chan I think her name is uh we've had him on
01:14:40
the show to talk about this if you'd said that on social media in the early days of the pandemic you would have been
01:14:45
banned now we know that's almost certainly what happened and it's really important where the virus came from for
01:14:51
obvious reasons which is if it came from a lab where these people were messing around with viruses don't we want to
01:14:56
know that because could happen again might right um so free the Restriction of free speech is dangerous for all sorts of reasons um and then Elon Musk
01:15:08
bought Twitter and I think since then we've seen that you know um a friend of mine's um very fond of saying that zero is a special number and what he means by
01:15:20
that is when you control every single media Outlet in the world m of that type social media you are able to censor everything but the moment one of those Outlets is not controlled by you
01:15:33
censorship becomes pointless because people can go to the other platform and see the things for themselves right
01:15:40
which is one of the reasons Mark Zuckerberg has come out recently and said that they were wrong to ban Donald Trump from Facebook and Instagram and
01:15:47
they were wrong to suppress the hunter Biden laptop story and all of that kind of stuff and that they wouldn't do so
01:15:52
again because now now that there is a platform where that censorship is not happening he looks kind of bad in this
01:16:00
whole thing right um so I think Elon buying Twitter and opening up the range of conversations has had some very positive effect it's also had some negative effect undoubtedly uh and that
01:16:13
is a thing that you know I think a great engineer like Elon will hopefully fine-tune over time um what is the
01:16:20
negatives of well look the amount of horrific [ __ ] that people say on there now is is increased exponentially
01:16:26
undoubtedly right and the answer to that might not be that they need to be banned
01:16:33
or censored it might be what he said originally he talked about freedom of speech but not freedom of reach like you
01:16:39
know maybe you know my view as someone from a Jewish background is I don't want people being banned from social media for being anti-semitic but should they be promoted actively on social media for
01:16:51
being anti-semitic should we flood the internet with that Maybe not maybe like they can say what they want but maybe it shouldn't be to the broadest possible audience or what whatever it looks like
01:17:02
right like I don't think we want a space where people are encouraged to be hateful and it sometimes does feel like
01:17:09
that on social media one of the big problems is of course anonymity right it's like that windscreen effect in the
01:17:15
car you get in your car someone has cut you up in traffic the the things you do and say are not the things you would say to someone face to face MH and if you have complete online anonymity it
01:17:27
encourages people to be the the worst version of themselves um how you resolve that we don't know it's a complicated
01:17:33
problem I mean social media is a giant conundrum um personally I am still despite all that horrible [ __ ] on the side of like the opening up is good we don't want people being banned for
01:17:45
expressing the wrong opinion about you know the pandemic the vaccine the whatever unless they're really being
01:17:52
nefarious um there's a balance to be found we haven't found it yet when you look at all solutions as just having tradeoffs yeah I think it makes a lot easier to accept that we'll never be happy with this and if you arrive at
01:18:03
that position then um then that's a Thomas Soul line by the way oh was actually yeah man you would love his
01:18:09
books I promise you I've written his name down so I'm going to have to have to dig in um and everything you said I I
01:18:16
have seen so I've seen a rise in commentary that I think has really been beneficial and I've also seen the nword
01:18:24
more times on my timeline than like I ever would have seen before or like horrific stuff um so the idea of freedom
01:18:30
of speech but not freedom of reach might be the best solution and look it's a terrible thing to say but maybe maybe maybe you know the trade-off of a free
01:18:41
Society is some people are going to say things you and I both really don't like you know uh the question is should they
01:18:47
be front and center of the biggest social media platform in the world maybe not but as I say I think these are it's
01:18:54
a technical issue uh and as you say there are trade-offs to to both ways of handling it uh I believe that social
01:19:01
media is a very new thing we will find the solution it's going to take some time I just hope it doesn't break our
01:19:06
brains in in the meantime are you if we look forward 5 10 20 years do you think the West will still be dominant I think in that timeline yes
01:19:18
because the accumulated Advantage we have is very significant um but you know that thing about how did something end gradually and then suddenly H we're not on a good
01:19:30
trajectory and you know when we talk about you know the decline of the West people imagined like you know and then
01:19:36
one day everybody died this is not what I'm talking about but have you been to Rome yes yeah have you been to Athens no
01:19:44
okay well they're the same thing you walk out of the the tube station in central Rome and you see this Coliseum
01:19:50
and it's incredible and you think what an amazing civilization then you look around and there's Italians and they're
01:19:55
wonderful people and they have a great time and whatever but those are not the same thing the Roman Empire in Italy are
01:20:01
not the same thing um great civilizations come to an end um and the and they come to an end when they decide they are no longer willing to fight for their future and what does that mean in
01:20:11
reality if it comes to an end as in if the West becomes you know secondary to China or Russia what does that mean for
01:20:18
for me and you decline in living standards uh we are going to be dictated to by other countries in the way that we
01:20:25
currently dictate to them uh what they should do what they shouldn't do where they can have their power centers where
01:20:31
they can't um it will mean that our our children are not as prosperous and not as free as as you and I have been um and it will mean that the values of the West
01:20:43
which are ironically the things that woke people care about so much human rights equality of treatment all of
01:20:49
those those things will will fall to the way side because you know in Russia or China the attitude to gay people or
01:20:56
ethnic minorities is nothing like what we have here and so that's what I keep trying to say to people like look I agree with you when when you say we know we need to treat people of different
01:21:06
backgrounds equally and we need to be fair and we need to be kind to people if that's what you care about the thing you
01:21:12
should really really do is do everything you possibly can to save the West because the moment the West is not
01:21:18
dominant those values will not be considered values at all what could I do to save the West okay remove the podcast
01:21:24
okay Stephen before the podcast what could I do as an individual listening to this to save the West teach your
01:21:31
children how lucky they are take them abroad show them the rest of the world show them what people live like in poor countries around the world and remind them how fortunate they are and then
01:21:42
explain to them where it all comes from and it comes from the fact that we have developed designed invented found the
01:21:50
magic formula for Human Society at least the best one that humans have invented so far freedom of expression freedom of
01:21:56
research freedom of speech capitalism uh private property the rule of law um and
01:22:03
the idea that uh you know we talked about religion I think it comes largely from Christianity that we we all have
01:22:09
dignity by virtue of Being Human um uh those are the things that have driven our society to the tremendous success we have to the technological progress people don't realize that but you know
01:22:20
without freedom freedom of research freedom of expression you don't have the technological progress that we we have
01:22:25
and then you don't have the dominance that we enjoy because our dominance is almost entirely based on the
01:22:30
technological progress we're not the most populist civilization in the world we don't have the largest number of people um we are prosperous because of
01:22:38
our technological advantages and they come from the incredible opportunities that people have to research things to
01:22:45
make things and then to profit from them in a way that they don't have in other societies uh teach your children that
01:22:51
their society is great teach them that they live in one of the best places in the history of the world uh that all the
01:22:57
[ __ ] they''re being taught at school is not true uh inoculate them against these ideas my parents had to do this
01:23:02
with me when I was growing up in the Soviet Union they before my first day at school they said two things first do not
01:23:09
ever discuss anything we talk about in the home at school because we'll all be in trouble and two they're going to
01:23:15
teach you this this this is this this is not true that's fine you don't have to you don't have to argue with your
01:23:20
teacher just know that it's not true here's why it's not true if you have any questions talk to us you have to
01:23:26
inoculate your children against this stuff and then they will be good citizens then they will create things of value to the society and they will
01:23:32
spread that message to others I was thinking about you telling the story of uh going to school and your parents basically saying don't say that because
01:23:38
we'll be in trouble and and then I had a little Flash in my head of some of the recent headlines around people talking on social media um and being arrested
01:23:45
for it now I know there's a big spectrum of things people have been arrested for for saying on social media but there are
01:23:51
some absurd things as well which make everyone I think should give everyone cause for concern yeah um but we don't
01:23:57
think of our society as one where we could get in trouble for something we tweet well the assumption that most
01:24:02
people make is well you probably got arrested because you said something horrific yeah um
01:24:08
and I understand why they make that assumption but it's not always true uh a lot of uh gender critical feminists for
01:24:15
example women who are concerned about the invasion of women Spaces by trans activists they've had issues with the
01:24:21
police uh there was a girl called Chelsea Russell I don't know if you're familiar with this case but she um she
01:24:27
post her friend was killed in a car crash and she posted the lyrics of his favorite song on her Instagram and
01:24:33
contain the nword uh it's a rap song uh and she was prosecuted and found guilty of a hate crime um and she I think it
01:24:41
took several years for her to win an appeal against this but before that she was like tagged she had a curfew lots of
01:24:48
lots of other things so because you put rap lyrics in her Instagram by yeah Chelsea Russell look her up um so when
01:24:54
you restrict what people can say in this way you inevitably stray into areas that
01:25:00
for some reason currently are controversial like the trans thing for example uh and you punish people for
01:25:06
expressing you know sometimes not very articulately but not everyone is articulate sometimes people have honest
01:25:12
feelings and by the way you know should it be illegal to be a dick I I don't think so otherwise there' be hell a lot
01:25:18
of people getting arrested you know um and I just think we should always h on the side of freedom um we should always
01:25:25
ear on the side of allowing people to express themselves even if what they say we really don't like I mean that's what our society is built on can I ask you a
01:25:32
question then do you think someone who um says a racial slur online should be arrested personally I don't know MH no there is a context in which that might
01:25:44
be the case like if you're saying all these nword should be killed that's a different thing because you're inciting
01:25:49
violence but look I've been racially abused in my life it's not pleasant but like nothing happens do you know what I
01:25:57
mean yeah I don't think if someone just said a racial slur they should be locked in jail right um but obviously there
01:26:04
will be social consequences regardless they're not going to be able to get a great job for example like if you walked into a pub and you you started you know
01:26:11
going off about some racial group most people probably like be like who's that dick and you know the landlord might ask
01:26:16
you to leave yeah that's normal societal reaction your friends might stop being friends with you that's perfectly
01:26:22
reasonable but do we need to criminalize that behavior gosh slippery slope that is I I think so I think so and and I
01:26:28
think the most important thing is if you look around at countries in the world where people are prevented from saying
01:26:34
things that other people don't like where people are prevented from making jokes that other people don't like those
01:26:40
are not the sort of societies that we would want to live on our emulate do you think this election which
01:26:45
is coming up in the US between Trump and Kamala do you think it matters every election matters in the
01:26:52
United States because it's the most powerful country in the world and it's the leader of the western world and also because the gap between those two
01:26:59
candidates is so vast the Gap in terms of their political views and in terms of what they would do with the country in
01:27:06
terms of their perspectives their attitudes yes I think is very important do you for the woke um the eradication
01:27:13
of the sort of woke virus that you you speak of um do you think one candidate is more likely to achieve that than the other it's very hard to say because k has said a lot of things that are woke
01:27:26
um and she certainly would allow that side to flourish more then again if Donald Trump gets elected does that provoke even more of a work backlash because um you know the woke narrative
01:27:39
is America's racist and homophobic and sexism whatever and when Donald Trump gets elected that kind of reinforces
01:27:45
their ideas about reality and they double down so I don't know the reality I'm much more concerned about the war in
01:27:52
Ukraine I think that that needs to be resolved um I have a lot of family in Ukraine I really care about what happens there your wife is Ukrainian my wife's Ukrainian my mother's Ukrainian I spent
01:28:04
my Summers as a kid on my granddad's Farm in Ukraine my grandmother 95 years old still alive lives 100 kilometers
01:28:11
from the front line can't leave she lived through the Nazi occupation and now this um but more importantly for the
01:28:19
West I think it's a real test of uh the West's resolve and that issue needs to be resolved by someone I have said from day one Ukraine would have to give something away for long-term security
01:28:32
because there's no winning this war which candidate is more likely to end the war well carela I look there's two ways
01:28:40
to play this right and both of them have merits one way is you give the ukrainians way more support than we're
01:28:46
currently doing so they can actually make advances that's one way to handle it the other way is you accept Where We
01:28:53
Are and you say to Putin you've got two choices my friend one is we do a deal that's fair to you and that's fair to the ukrainians and the most important thing is that the ukrainians get
01:29:05
long-term security that means because you remember in 2014 this has already happened Russia already bit a piece off Ukraine in 2014 and but even at that point Ukraine
01:29:19
had security guarantees from Western countries which were not executed on right they were not on we promised them
01:29:25
safety and we didn't give them safety so the most important thing in this outcome is that there's a physical barrier
01:29:31
between Ukraine and Russia so that this can't happen again so either that's membership of NATO not going to happen
01:29:37
or more likely some kind of Korean style demilitarize Zone with peacekeeping troops on the border
01:29:44
right if you don't want to do that Vladimir then we will give you cran everything that's the threat that's the deal you have to do
01:29:55
out of the two candidates I think Donald Trump is probably more likely to get that outcome
01:30:01
uh it's not to say I like everything about Donald Trump but on that particular issue I
01:30:07
think he would be the the candidate I would put more faith in to sort it out for all the businesses and
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credit that's linkedin.com doac 24 terms and conditions apply what have you changed your mind about that mattered interesting I think one of the things I've changed my mind most about is
01:31:18
business as trigonometry has become more successful and we start to employ people
01:31:23
um I've understood things that I didn't really used to understand about taxes and incentives and stuff like that I
01:31:29
mean I don't know if you know this but Britain more millionaires are leaving the UK than any other country in the
01:31:34
world at the moment really yeah yeah and that's because we have a very bad business environment we keep talking
01:31:40
about you know we need to raise taxes on the rich and whatever what I never really understood is a a tremendous
01:31:45
amount of wealth is created by business people and when you tax them what happens is they stay rich but they stop
01:31:53
employing as many people they stop giving jobs to other people uh and so I never really understood wealth creation
01:31:59
very well before it's really interesting yeah it's a big topic of conversation at the moment in both the US and the UK
01:32:04
that like capital gains tax and cor Corporation tax um and you know it's a raging conversation in society which is we just need to tax like the rich and the business people more and then one
01:32:15
side says no don't do that because we're creating wealth and opportunities and jobs and the other side says no you're
01:32:21
buying a private jet and a and a yacht yeah I think in the UK it's particularly bad because there's a kind of attitude
01:32:28
to money here that's that's a little bit class warfish in a way you know what I mean and and for good reasons probably because you know this country had a
01:32:39
landed gentry these were people who were Rich because they were Rich because their dad was rich basically right um
01:32:45
and so we when we think of wealthy people we don't think of successful people we think of privileged people um
01:32:51
but most people who have money are not like that most people have have money because they've created things that are of value to other people but we get those two things confused quite often uh
01:33:02
and most people I know who are wealthy and successful they don't buy private jets they pour all their money that they
01:33:09
have into bigger better you know hiring more people you know when we have more money the trigonometry we hire another person because we want there's more [ __ ] for us to do that we want to do that we're not yet doing um then the on other
01:33:23
things you know I used to be incredibly libertarian on drug policy I used to think that you know
01:33:29
people should be take what you know freed to take whatever drugs they want I still think that about certain drugs but
01:33:34
I also think there are certain drugs that are just so incredibly addictive particularly to people who are already
01:33:40
vulnerable that they shouldn't be criminalized I think for taking them I think they should be given help they should be this should be treated as a
01:33:46
mental health issue um but I I've become slightly less Le less Affair about it uh
01:33:53
I think and then with everything else I've just that point you made earlier which is
01:33:59
Thomas Soul thing about there are no Solutions only tradeoffs every time I look at any issue I just realize that
01:34:07
most of the things that we argue about are unsolved because they're difficult to solve and there's very difficult
01:34:13
things on on both sides of the argument and quite often we look at things from an ideological perspective and that ruins things take an America they they're obsessed politically about abortion right you know these people
01:34:26
argue that people women should be allowed and the very good reasons to argue that these people argue what the sanctity of human life which I think is
01:34:33
a very good valid reason too and we can have those arguments and we're going to stay exactly where we' stayed for however many decades there are countries in the world
01:34:44
Hungary for example where they have a very right-wing government who didn't want to make abortion a political issue
01:34:50
what they did instead is they made Family a political issue they encouraged people people to have families financially they give people all kinds
01:34:56
of tax breaks and help them get on the housing ladder if they have kids and they've hared the number of abortions in
01:35:02
half without Banning abortion right so that's a practical solution to an issue that is not going to get resolved by people arguing about it from an ideological position and I just think
01:35:13
there's so many like tricks like that that can be found if we're willing to be interested in pragmatism instead of ideology it's interesting because when you use the abortion example I go you
01:35:25
know I think a for a lot of people in politics this abortion subject is like a political weapon now yeah and the I
01:35:31
think often the same about the Border I think if I was trying to get you to vote for me and I was um I need to represent
01:35:40
a bunch of things and if those things scare the [ __ ] out of you or create create some kind of disgust they're
01:35:45
probably going to work sure so if I say there's rapists coming across the border who are taking our daughters or you know
01:35:51
and they're sending that from mental institutions M and they're coming for your daughter and I'll stop it it's like
01:35:56
a compelling now you know sure and also I heard Trump talk recently about some of the the abortion subjects and talking
01:36:02
about ripping live babies out that at nine months and and I just think God that language is so tempting well
01:36:09
they're trying to win votes having said that Trump is is actually very moderate by Republican standards on the abortion
01:36:15
issue he's actually getting the tagged from his own side for it um look I think on immigration we talked before about
01:36:22
how different levels of immigration are appropriate to different times America in particular has a very rich history of
01:36:28
welcoming people from all over the world uh the problem that both Britain and America and other European countries have is illegal immigration there is no reason that should be happening there's
01:36:39
there's literally zero reason that people should be walking into this country um without being checked without
01:36:44
knowing who they are um and there it's happening on a vast scale and I give you an example this is just anecdotal of course but it's representative a big issue when I was in last time I was in
01:36:55
LA all the taxi drivers the lift drivers in LA are Armenian okay yeah Armenians speak Russian Armenians know that Constantine is a Russian name so I'd get in the lift they' be oh Constantine
01:37:10
start speaking Russian to me none of them know who I am so we get chatting whatever basically the ones that came to
01:37:17
America in the 80s and 90s they all came by applying for Reves or following the rules the guys have come since then
01:37:23
they've all come through the southern border really yeah it's not Mexicans fleeing cartel oppression mostly it's
01:37:30
people from all over the world um and this guy was telling me was like oh yeah yeah yeah I brought my cousins over I
01:37:35
brought my my dad over he's 883s in a wheelchair no problem we're just got him over what's the harm what's the harm
01:37:44
yeah of illegal immigration of him coming over and taking that job as a lift driver there's no harm of him
01:37:49
coming over and taking that job as a lift driver other than there's lots of people who are following the law and
01:37:54
applying and not coming in because that person has jumped a queue you can't have people coming in
01:38:00
illegally you it's against the law it's like saying what's the harm of someone committing a crime well the harm is
01:38:07
they're breaking the law right first and foremost secondly people break the law on purpose the reason they break the law is that we probably wouldn't LED them in otherwise so that means we've thought
01:38:18
about what kind of immigration system we want to have we've voted for people who put in the laws that we wanted I mean
01:38:24
this idealized version of reality but you get what I'm going with this um and then we say well we want these people to
01:38:31
come in but we don't want everyone to come in we want only these people because they have the right skills the right qualifications the right whatever
01:38:38
and what's happening is we're not letting them in some of them and we're letting people in that we never wanted in the country in the first place then a
01:38:45
lot of them are coming for example this country I don't know the latest figures but under the conservatives we were
01:38:51
spending 8 million pound a day every day in Britain on housing for illegal immigrants who were coming over from other countries right why should the British taxpayer be spending 8
01:39:03
million pound a day to put people up in hotels what's the rationale for that I'm
01:39:09
open to hearing it I still don't know if I'm clear on the harm that that if lots
01:39:16
of people like that cab driver came in through the southern border I know it breaks the law yes um I want to get
01:39:23
really clear on the the do you want a large population of people whose First Act of coming to your countries to break the law How likely do you think those people are to pay taxes to contribute to
01:39:36
society more broadly less likely than someone who was from that country yeah so it would the
01:39:42
har is and especially less likely so to than someone who would have come legally by applying for a Visa and getting that
01:39:48
visa and getting a job so if they all abided by the law and paid taxes would there be no other harm well we were
01:39:55
getting to the harm so the harm is not all of them are like the lift driver and we have no way of sorting them one from
01:40:02
the other right so when you have large levels of illegal immigration one of the things that happen is nefarious actors
01:40:08
abuse that so people come in who are uh some of them are criminals some of them are terrorists some of them are just violent you know Abdula zidi who threw acid over that woman and her children
01:40:20
recently in the UK he was an illegal immigrant he came in here on a lry he was supposed to have been deported twice
01:40:26
and then suddenly decided you know what I'm a Christian he converted and then we we let him stay and then he attacked the
01:40:33
woman and two children withd are people crossing the borders more statistically committing crime than people who are
01:40:40
there legally we don't know interesting because we don't know how many of those people there are people will say well
01:40:46
you know actually immigrants commit crime or how do you know how do you know how many illegal immigrants there are h
01:40:53
this is what I always think cuz I I watched all of the commentary around the elections and I watch every debate and I know it's on tonight and I watch
01:40:59
everything and I always hear about like the acid attack yeah now that's horrific it makes me get get goosebumps when I
01:41:06
think about it but there's also acid attacks going on from people that were born here so I'm trying to really
01:41:13
understand if I'm being brainwashed by like an extreme oh my God it's awful in that emotional feeling you get when you hear that story or statistically there's
01:41:20
significance here and that's why I as the question I'm is this an anomaly which is being used to like look over
01:41:26
here or is it the the norm that illegal immigrants are criminals sure but why would we take the risk of having people come here who are deliberately breaking
01:41:38
the law does that is that a signal of good intent on their part do you know what part of it is is I go oh God if I
01:41:47
was in you know inert country yeah I'd give it a go my was bad I'd give it a [ __ ] go wouldn't you sure well I'm a first generation England yeah yeah I was born in Botswana yeah oh were you I yeah
01:41:59
yeah I was born in Botswana so my half of my siblings were born in Manchester but me and the youngest were born in
01:42:05
Botswana my mom's Nigerian so and I think if I was in Botswana and I heard this like Disneyland of the UK portrayed
01:42:11
to me on a TV whatever I'd give it a shot I interviewed Francis inani yeah oh did you amazing guy yeah amazing guy I
01:42:18
speak to him on WhatsApp sometimes and hearing his story that he was in was it Cameroon and he Walked Out Of Africa
01:42:25
swam to like tried swimming got a boat tried climbing the walls etc for years and years walked through the desert and then makes his way to to I think it Spain and then gets to France becomes
01:42:35
the greatest of all time in UFC you go I I wouldn't agree with that noones is the
01:42:41
greatest he's the greatest of all time I meant to say the heavyweight champion of the world of the world he's incredible fighter just the most incredible Story
01:42:46
the fact that that fight has didn't happen is the worst it's just a crime yeah anyway your point is
01:42:53
you would do it yes and you're a a valuable member of our society that we need sure uh but what the point I'm
01:43:01
trying to make to you is first and foremost people act like that's the choice right either we let Francis and
01:43:07
Ghana drown in the Mediterranean or we let him in illegally that's not what I'm advocating for this
01:43:13
is where a lot of this conversation breaks down the actual solution to this like with the abortion thing that we talked about there are practical
01:43:19
solutions to this that actually make sense what you do is you set set up Refugee processing centers in the local
01:43:25
areas where there are conflicts where there's all sorts of turmoil going on people can apply there and then be
01:43:32
selected or not selected based on their circumstances because you like you said there are no Solutions only tradeoffs we
01:43:39
can't let everyone in the world who is poorer than us into our country can we no can we agree on that yeah I'm not I'm not I know you're I'm just saying I'm just taking you through the argument I'm
01:43:49
not saying you're saying that so that means we have to limit number of people we allow in is that fair yes okay
01:43:56
therefore we then have to choose who we let in is that fair yeah okay therefore illegal immigrations unacceptable does
01:44:01
that make sense yeah okay because if we want to help people from poor parts of the world where they're being mistreated
01:44:07
and oppressed we have to get them to form an orderly line in those areas give them an opportunity to apply for Asylum then pick the ones that we think are the most likely to not be terrorists not be
01:44:19
criminals they have a genuine case that they need our help that they're most likely to contribute to our society if
01:44:25
they break out of the queue and Run and Jump the wall and get in yeah do you have empathy for them of course and can
01:44:33
you blame them no no it's and I think this is the kind of nuance and issue which some people sometimes don't
01:44:39
highlight which is and I mean if you think about what's happened on the streets of the UK recently it's been
01:44:45
attacking them like going to the hotels where they they've been put trying to burn the hotels burning down Asylum
01:44:51
centers and hotels is moronic and people shouldn't do it and they should go to prison for doing it and people can't see
01:44:58
the difference no they can't you know I mean it's like you stole my job yes well
01:45:04
yes and I don't think I I I think sadly what happens is when people lived in deprived communities where they don't have jobs and it's not because someone stole them it's just because those communities were de-industrialized or
01:45:15
whatever they get deprived and people lash out U and it's terrible and it shouldn't happen and they always look
01:45:21
for escape go and that scape is always going to be somebody like that that does not mean that we should have an open
01:45:28
border for illegal immigration right so the question is can we let everybody in that would want to come here the answer is no as we agree that means we have to be selective that means we have to
01:45:39
choose who comes and who doesn't that means we are going to have to reject some people we can still have empathy
01:45:45
for them and understanding for them but it's like you have a front door in your house and there are thousands of
01:45:51
homeless people in London what if one of them broke into your house and started stealing stuff to sell
01:45:59
you would have empathy wouldn't you not a lot judging by your face but you would have some okay let me try and add some
01:46:05
more color to this analogy what if I needed people in my house to make it function and um okay good analogy so
01:46:13
let's say you need someone to build you an extension like I need like a cleaner a chef you need a you need a cleaner you
01:46:18
need a chef and you need someone to build an extension so you need a bunch of people yeah
01:46:24
and you put out a job advert right and some people reply and you're like cool I'll pay you this much you come in you sort out my extension you do my cleaning you do my cooking blah blah blah
01:46:35
okay they're turn scheduled to turn up on Monday and then on Sunday a bunch of people break into your
01:46:42
house and start doing all that stuff you don't know who they are you don't know what their qualifications are they break
01:46:47
down the front door and walk in mhm would would you be cool with that no right so in the same way that we have a front door on our houses because we want to decide who comes in and out of our houses we have a front door on our
01:47:01
countries I agree I think illegal immigration for all the reasons you've said is not is not acceptable and um the
01:47:06
part that I where I get pulled a little bit is where I see the illegal immigrants being demonized whereas what nothing to do with them yeah which is what but it's almost impossible and
01:47:18
there's so many issues in society like this where if you talk about the issue and really talk about the issue there
01:47:25
will be some important conversation happening here then you'll have some people come to the issue and see it as
01:47:30
an opportunity to Fan The Embers and the people that fan The Embers cause people
01:47:35
Downstream to misunderstand the issue and then start wars below so the point the conversation we're having about
01:47:41
immigration is a I think is a productive conversation but then if if someone you know uses that as a as a way to get into
01:47:49
Power by saying that someone is coming to rape your children or they're stealing from you or all these things
01:47:55
they've taken your job they're the reason you're unemployed you know they're the reason she she broke up with you because you don't have a job now the
01:48:01
illegals um that then causes all of this horrible Division and fighting below and lots of like people get caught in the
01:48:06
crossfire that were just getting on with their lives and good people 100% And that's that's why it's so so unfortunate
01:48:12
we can't well we can we're doing it now I think you and I I don't know what you actually think but certainly in terms of your arguments you're putting to me you're coming from a different place and I think we've got to the place that we
01:48:25
understand that I'm not anti-immigrant yeah uh and I'm actually Pro immigration in the sense that um well I'm I'm not pro or anti-immigration sense it depends on the time that you're in but generally
01:48:37
speaking I think when you choose the people who come when they're culturally a good fit for that society when they're
01:48:43
driven and talented and ambitious and blah blah blah blah blah that is going to be hugely beneficial to your country
01:48:50
um and I am for having legal immigration at the level that is beneficial to our society which is not zero legal immigration I think can be very conducive so not anti-immigrant
01:49:01
otherwise I'd have to be anti- me um but at the same time I think illegal immigration it just shouldn't be
01:49:06
happening yeah we agree and that's quite rare actually the the the ability to say that immigrants aren't bad people
01:49:13
they're not the the bad ones necessarily they're not the ones to to demonize um although of course there's exceptions
01:49:19
and that um legal immigration's good legal legal immigration's bad well again legal immigration can be good yeah right uh if it's very large numbers of people
01:49:30
in a very short period of time that becomes very difficult to digest for the whole society and then then tensions
01:49:36
arise of the kind that you're talking about so my view is you want to bring in the right number of people you want to
01:49:42
make sure that they're able to integrate make themselves at home learn the language adapt and then you can bring
01:49:47
more people if that's what your Society needs at that time what's the most important thing we didn't talk about that we should have talked about
01:49:54
hm it's a good question uh tradeoff denialism interesting tradeoff denialism tradeoff denialism is people who deny the very thing that we've been discussing most of this conversation
01:50:06
which is you can't solve every problem you can choose which tradeoff you get and in a lot of our conversations we talk about them as if there are no trade-offs climate change which I talked
01:50:20
about in my Ox speech is a very good example of this people say the planet's about to burn therefore we must do
01:50:26
everything that we possibly can the problem is that when you do the things that they're suggesting you do a
01:50:31
terrible amount of damage to people you make people poor especially in the third world in the poor parts of the world um
01:50:38
and in our countries too um you know the reason that people are living longer and
01:50:45
healthier lives is because we burn fossil fuels in 1947 the average life expectancy in India was 32 32 that's mostly because Jesus I just
01:50:55
turned 32 yeah so on average you would have died by now mostly in in infancy actually a lot of it was infant mortality today it's
01:51:07
71 why because they're burning a hell of a lot of f fossil fuels and getting richer as a result right energy is what
01:51:15
makes our societies run it's why we are living longer eating better all of that when you pursue this idea called Net Zero which is when we Outsource our own emissions to other countries so we can
01:51:26
pretend that we're green we actually create more CO2 around the world because we're we're Outsourcing manufacturing to other countries where they make things dirtier and then we're shipping them
01:51:37
back MH right um that doesn't make the world better it makes us feel better but if your thing is well you know climate change is the only thing that M it's the only variable that we're optimizing for
01:51:49
then you do a lot of damage and it's the same with almost everything else that do so what's the solution with the climate
01:51:55
change challenge what how would you approach it if we and presumably you believe in the idea that in global
01:52:00
warming and climate change I guess yeah well the world is warming and there human beings do contribute to that as far as I understand um it's not nearly the catastrophe that we're being told
01:52:10
that it is not even remotely the catastrophe that we're being told that it is for a number of reasons one of them is when the climate gets warmer
01:52:16
it's actually much better for human beings within a certain range uh we it's beneficial to Human Society we know that from history um doesn't mean that we want run away climate change mhm but
01:52:29
more people die from the cold than die from warm from warm weather and from warm weather related events one of the
01:52:35
things that we actually know is that far fewer people are dying from climate related disasters every year and that's
01:52:43
because our technology and coping with them is getting better uh my view is answer is technological uh we've got to
01:52:49
use way more nuclear power than we use because it's carbon neutral to not entirely but it's you need a lot less of
01:52:55
it uh you build a power station and basically then it kind of runs itself there's nuclear waste we'll find a solution to that but the solution is
01:53:02
very simple we have to find a way to make energy cheaper that's clean it's really interesting actually I was just
01:53:07
thinking as you're speaking about the call that Trump had with um Elon where Trump's making his point about climate
01:53:13
change and then elon's kind of saying well actually like climate change is a real thing and okay it's we're not going
01:53:20
to the planet isn't going to burn in 5 years or 10 years but you know in with within sort of a medium time Horizon we
01:53:25
do need to get carbon levels down and I was just thinking as you was speaking I was thinking God if if Elon wasn't
01:53:30
running Tesla I think that the right who I think have now kind of adopted Elon in some respects would think about climate
01:53:37
change very very differently I think the right do think about it very differently I think climate is quite unpopular on
01:53:43
the right but but his presence there means that people are openminded open minded subject and look the the answer
01:53:50
to that issue like with every other issue is to think about as a pragmatic issue not as a religious issue which is
01:53:55
increasingly what it's become people gluing themselves to roads and throwing soup on paintings is not going to stop
01:54:01
climate change is my point we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're
01:54:07
leaving it for and the question that's been left for you oh in the D I didn't know that
01:54:13
is what is one unfulfilled dream in your life huh it's a good question to have a large family oh interesting so you've got one child yeah and we'll probably squeeze
01:54:28
another ey if we're lucky but apart from that that that will that will remain unfulfilled I
01:54:34
suspect interesting yeah thank you so much thank you so much for the work that you do your your podcast has an absolute
01:54:40
cult trigonometry an absolute cult so many my team members are really really big fans of the show and I've watched so
01:54:46
many episodes predominantly clips that I've seen and then I've got drawn in and then TR tried to find the longer form
01:54:51
episode but it's um it's an important uh last refuge for sense and I and I really respect people like you because I do think that you do a really good job of navigating complex issues in
01:55:07
a way where I still have faith in your process I still believe that you when you approach these issues you're not doing it because you're ideologically
01:55:18
contaminated in some way you're still trying to approach them despite the tempt and the external pressure with the
01:55:24
intention of pursuing truth and truth to the to the means of making things better and those are the people that I really
01:55:29
warmed to because it's difficult I appreciate that man I feel seen as they say oh good no but I that's that's the
01:55:36
goal you know uh it's one of the things that we're very proud of is that as we discussed in the main conversation you
01:55:42
know it's very very easy to make lots of money and get lots of attention by appealing to people's base instincts and
01:55:49
worst instincts to by pretending to have more extreme views that you have um and
01:55:55
we've really done our best we are all susceptible to it uh but we've really done our best to operate from that place
01:56:03
bad faith changes everything and so does good faith when you act in bad faith it changes everything like this
01:56:09
conversation if you were acting in bad faith we wouldn't have had the conversation we would have had good faith changes everything as well and
01:56:15
that's what we try to do it's what you're clearly doing so anyway thank you for having me and enjoy the hate you're going to get it's okay thank you so
01:56:25
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