One day, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying were biology professors at Evergreen State College. The next, they were "campus villains" who dared to speak out when the school told white people to take a “day of absence.” Since then, they have become founding members of the “Intellectual Dark Web” and continued their fight for truth in a world gone woke. But with the world changing faster every day, and not necessarily in a good way, they were hit by a realization: Science and evolutionary biology haven’t changed very much. Humans have. Bret and Heather join Glenn to break down where these changes are leading us, as they explore in-depth in their new book, “A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life.” From climate change and capitalism to Afghanistan, our “apparently senile Commander-in-Chief,” and the evolution of sex (among flowers), Bret and Heather make the case that the key to escaping the chaos is right in front of us, if we choose to listen.
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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
We start with some good news. Life is good
It really is. Would you pick a time any time in history that you would rather live than right now and where your living,
best time in human history. Poverty rates are lower than ever same with global hunger, access
to clean water. People make more work, less train,
rotation. Modern medicine, access to information, women's rights, human rights, so
How does it feel like everything is collapsing.
that is really tough
to answer. Buddy
is what lies at the centre of a book called a hunter gathers guide to the twenty first century evolution and the challenges of modern life. This
couple is the reason I started this podcast, but
I have never agreed to be guests until now.
It is a husband and wife, evolutionary biologist team who
become an integral part of our new normal they first,
in prominent prominence in twenty eight seventeen, I think when they were it
they were at Evergreen College. They were both professors. They disagreed with the college's day of absence, which demanded that all white students and faculty leave campus for a day that it was crazy.
Outrage, was immediate and explosive. They were pray
thickly forced to resign.
Well, then they went on to become founding members of the intellectual dark web group of politically homeless rebels, mostly from the left
who violated one of the left's countless wholly laws, the
is going to be a fascinating conversation. I have no idea where it's gonna end up. Please welcome.
Heather Hang and breadth wines
I'm so honoured to have you both here
really it's
I am a big fan of yours. I have been watching you for a long time
and have wanted this interview for probably over three years
and I appreciate it. I am a fan of yours because of your courage
in an almost all things that I've seen you are taking a massive hits
and you're doing it, because you believe you
standing up for the truth. I happen to believe that too, but you're standing up for the truth and damn
consequences. I guess
thanks for being here thanks for happiness and how did
called. Has this been this journey of yours
it varies. I think in many ways it is-
its own educational experience and each time we end up in a new chapter, we learn more. I think you know in form
speaking. We feel that it is making us anti fragile, which is not a fun
process, but in the end be
being stronger unable to to withstand the
lights and challenges is important for, if we're gonna fight for what matters, it is important that we have the skills to do it and that's a process that learned how
and I want to get to the book, because I think we have
We ve had similar thoughts except mines.
kind of resides a little bit with the Beatles and herds as in the intellectual space, but an innocent
Horton that we talk about the book, because it is, I think people can.
feel the problem and they can name it here and here in here, but they don't really understand the scope of it and I think you guys are really hitting the scope of it
before we hit that
your lives have changed so much
and you believed in so much how much of a kind of two things
I know that I believed what I believe
and then I found out holy cow there's a lot of things. I was absolutely certain of that are not true,
and the tree
by my own people, you know mean
how much
This has happened to you guys to her you're like I would, if that's not who
I thought we all were there at that time.
Certainly true, that's not who I thought we all were right, but our politics I dont, think of changed.
But who we see engaging in similar thinking and truth telling has changed, who?
but do you TED ten years ago,
you and I would have through. We would have never thought of being at the same table cause we're on opposite sides, but were really not really not and am even ten years ago. It was me
in clear YO and in the end they will use where we were getting our news and piracy
We harder to listen to, for instance, for
Even ten years ago, but
that is obviously coming to a head even more in the last
one two three four five years with every and the vote, and that, of course, is one of the points of the
that the rate of change itself is changing. So fast that the the
search for coherence is becoming ever more difficult. I talked to
kind of least rice fifteen years ago.
And remember during the interview she said something because it was biblical what she said on off. She knew it at the time, but
what she said and it stuck out to me.
Because of what it implies. She said you're starting to see the birth pangs of the things to come and when you,
think of that
we realise were given birth to something, and I'm not sure I want to see what's coming out on the other end and
Earth pangs happen faster and
faster and closer to closer in the stronger they get.
I think that's true things are accelerating it such a rapid rate,
Why is that happened? Wise
the acceleration due to technology.
Is the acceleration wise it happening like this, but there are really two
reasons I should say this actually applies to earlier question to in some sense the reason that our politics hasn't changed. Very much is that site,
and in particular, evolutionary biology is our north star, and so what
he believed, and what we believe now were based on a model of the universe that hasn't changed very much now who,
we find ourselves interacting with, has changed radically in a way way way so
plain that part for people who don't necessarily understand evolutionary biology, what
Are you talking about her, but one so
I'm sure you had something particular in mind, but one thing that I hear and what breccia said is are under
any of the universe is based on three physical reality and it's not our politics aren't dependent on the social scene, and so who it is.
we're talking with and who
were finding common ground with has changed
that doesn't mean that what we think about underline processes has, because that was never a social set of beliefs for us right. Ok, so
human beings. We may differ here on what the best way to view ourselves is, but may be less than you would imagine
you are creatures that have to function in the world and are nature was built in an environment that we no longer live in right now
we. Humans are better than any other creature at changing our software to adapt to new habitats, but our heads,
tat are now changing so rapidly that we can't keep up, and that is partially about technology, but it's all
bout, the fact in evolutionary biology. We have a metaphor that we, like we talk about adaptive lands
in which
Tunisia are peaks, there are basically mountain ranges of opportunity and an order.
yet from one opportunity to another. You have to pass through what we call adaptive valley, and so
trepidations, about where we're headed is part and parcel of the fact that whatever else may be true, we are in transition. Yes, our tools are not
up to managing the problems that we now face, so we have to find a new way of bar,
not only are physically
rules but are
and and psychological tools, even earnestly tools of governance as a sunrise. They are archer feels like the government feels like it stuck in nineteen. Fifty
the world feels like its headed towards scientific and not scientific. The technology field feels like it.
Twenty. Fifty and
We're kind of of in between going vat world doesn't work, and I don't even know what that world means. Let's be you know frank about
Are our governmental structures are really eighteenth century structures and their brilliant, but they couldn't possibly manage a world this far from what the founders were capable of understanding, the founders never saw a train or a cane saw. So so let me ask on that, because I
I guess that we actually agree on this. The first
here's believes I mean I thought it would last thirty years.
they did not think it was gonna. Last like now,
I think they would get here if they could, with a time machine or their here. They would look,
Everything in the say great. How long did America last May
not recognize what they have done and then I'll think they would have recognized it in nineteen. Sixty two,
but they did allow through constitutional adaptation.
Central, etc that
did- allow us to adapt,
I did say we're not we don't see everything so just adapt and adopt you note constitutional amendments to get there,
the framework or the mission statement. We hold these days to be self evident or the.
Work that is adaptable. It's that we
trying to force a bunch of stuff into it that it
not meant to do it's meant to reject that kind of stuff right yeah. No, I I see it
very much the same way, and I think your framing of we
go back to nineteen fifty right now we don't know what I want to and we don't want to, and those who would claim that that was a perfect world. Are our misunderstanding. Without world, was
those who are saying
full forbore ahead to twenty fifty, no matter what because progress is always the answer and if it is required
rejecting everything about the old who cares
That also mistake- and so you know, progress yes and
tradition yes, but we're going to have to pick and choose or we're gonna have to do so with intention, and that's why I think we're having such. I always look. It right wing left wing, it's a bird,
and if you chop off one of the wings it ain't gonna, fly and cons.
serve it. If I don't know how conservatives
define themselves, but I I look at
conservative for the router, the word I'm concerned
serving the things that do work
looking to the future on new things that my work better, but
Let's not throw all of this out its
amazing how difficult this lesson is from both the right and left wing. One seems to think that it has the answer, and it doesn't understand at the the dynamism of our system is in the tension between the gas. Liberals always want to improve things, and they always underestimate the unintended consequences. S and conservatives, if left to their own devices, would avoid progress because of those unintended consequence I so what we really need to do, though, is adapt our
system. I think the founders would have expected us to change it much more radically than we have in order to keep up. You know we ve tree
certain things as sacred that shouldn't have been in that they wouldn't have expected.
but what we need to do is get a system that is not so violent in the fluctuation that balances these two forces in the region,
you mentioned up top that there is quite a bit we agree on, and this is now
well established. The hidden tribes report revealed that there is what they call the exhausted mental. This vast group of us S at aren't extreme. That agree on most of what we want at least, and then we differ over how close we are to it in what might be done too
go the rest of the distance, but
we are being shut out by
extremists than are pushing us into viewing you now. The other side is not good.
human and that's a very dangerous process. Unfortunately, with a lot of historical press,
that suggests we,
not continue down that road, so I know this has been a book that you wanted to write for like ten years
why now and lets
start on. The main message mean
twenty first century hunter and gatherer doesn't seem to go together. Yeah summits
that's a hunter gatherer guide to the twenty first century and
as we say in it, we could have named it a number of things: agriculturalists Guide, a post, industrialists guide, a mammal sky,
like all of these things, are or true disk,
Pictures of what the modern human condition is, and art
true moments in time from evolutionary history, and
hunter gatherer is didn't like the moment the most we will have in their head psycho doubts were adapted to write like Hunter gatherer on the african Savannah, but we ve been all of these things, and so our point in the book
using the term of art revolution, the environment of evolutionary adopted us for humans,
it's not just under gathers. It's all of these points in our history and become
as humans are so flexible are so much software compared to hard where we are born with so much capability that isn't hard wired in more than any other animal on the planet, then
Here. We are adapted to being pushed industrialists, not as well as we should be, and not
maybe even possibly to be perfectly adapted, given the rate of change, but
why why now Y know
in part, because we were talking about writing it for
for ten years, will your teaching, while we're still at evergreen, and we were able to now? No one
whenever Green blew up, we began to have an audience, and the word
of our many generations of students were still ringing in our ears near- were still affiliate connected with many of them. Who had been saying
was four years. Please find a way to take the teacher
of evolution of biology and specifically, what the two of you have put, but the two of us have been doing
into some kind of packaged form so that it can be delivered and other people
had said before he died. He said, I'm
kind of glad I'm not going to be around to have to see, and
make the decisions that your generation and the one the following you gonna have to make. He said
but it's
going to be fascinating one way or another. He said he was born in eighteen, twenty six,
and he said I remember as a kid- we looked up with a million
We never thought man could walk on the moon
and when we started seeing Buck Rogers and South that was movie stuff that wasn't actually landing on the mood he said
through my life or on the moon,
and look at us now. He said all of the technology, everything that is moving so rapidly, and I said I know it's really exciting. He said it is
but we're missing something. My said why
and I think this is what the whole point of your book is. He said read, Plato were struggling exactly the same place
reed Jesus same people, same problems. We ve had such an explosive growth here,
and really nothing here in many ways is that
problem that we are growing so fast part of the problem?
growing so fast, and yet we haven't worked on this, along with the fact that
social media were
tribes
It forces us back to that
tribal major cause.
It's been interest four thousand.
and thousands of years well it for
Does this back in one way, but I mean really what you're saying the reason that Plato is still resonant and
play. Doh is resonant. I mean you, see, Plato's how you feel in the matrix play out. People don't necessarily know that they're revisiting that same puzzle but
The problem is that these things aren't really fundamentally about
those who first spot at them? They are
part of the underlying architecture? They are failures of game theory that result in certain problems.
reoccurring in a new form until you figure out how to solve them, and so isn't that part of
So one thing that I dont understand: people think that we evolve well. Yes,
We do but we're all born at the same starting point, and so we have to
sk that when I first read Plato when I
an adult.
Oh my gosh
This is brilliant and it's exactly what I'm strongly with cause. Isn't that a self discovery thing you can't
ass that information and those answers on my logically Kenya.
well, first of all, what one of the things that are field has done, a terrible job of recognising and therefore conveying is that are our cultural lay. Our software
biological aren't we very often hear people say. Is a cultural Europe?
biological. It's it's a false dichotomy. You can see.
The genetic or is it cultural? That's a fair division, but
Culture is every bit as biological as genes. The problem is
when you do discover the answer to a puzzle. So let's, for example, say that
our rights of free expression, which the founders clearly
understood very well. You were, in some sense, a response to part of Plato's observation about what happens when the person who has escaped the cave returns and attend
to convey it right or
speech. Rights are, in effect, an agreement that we have that. Actually, we don't get to do that to the guy who comes back into the cave and says of the shadows. Aren't the real world right, but the problem
as if you live in a world downstream of that discovery,
And you always had these rights? You
realize how important they are and what they are really protecting, and so you on invent the
progress, because you don't see the problem, which is, of course, one of the themes of our our book. We talk about Chester
sense and the idea that if you see a structure
and you dont know what its purposes you'd be foolish to think it probably doesn't have one and therefore can be safely eliminated. Do you understood what the purpose
at that point, then, you know whether it continues to
play that role or whether that role is, is obsolete and
you know. The reinvention of problems that were solved is a next level,
problem that we have to address because it will happen in every area of history where we have been successful and people suddenly see. I don't know efficiency as dominant over the Alley
solution architecture. I
I remember.
just a few years ago for the very-
this time. I thought. No, these things are not self evident. They're not.
the date they were at one point, but they ve been lost. Freedom of speech
well what happened there. I thought we all agreed on it. What happened here
I'm a part of what happened. I think is that
a reductionism that takes us
when we are asked to understand things- and we are able to measure-
and so we are once we can measure something that we have numbers. The number sticking our heads and we forget the emergent hole- we forget how glory
ass. Humans are actually and what emergent beings we are, and so,
social media is a stand in for social interaction,
become even more so, of course, during during covered. But me a really since its inception, people mistook it for the entire thing,
they mistook social media, for social interaction and
that is where here with you
and that is a very different experiences of than if we were on his him call with right without me.
and without having any access at any conscious level to why or what exactly is being conveyed. That's more because we actually here with you, there's just more right because,
because humans are more than even many of the things we have yet measured and
as scientists. We hope we are. We are seeking an objective com
it accurate understanding of the universe hoping to get ever ever close
more and more refined, knowing we
Forget there
also knowing that the tendency to reduce to a single variable,
tend to exclude other things that may have just as much meaning, if not more.
would shatter was towards the beginning. You did thee
the lineage human Journey,
can you just take? Take us through that quickly?
yet, as briefly as you can put, I think we can probably cut it
Three point: five billion years, don't have that much time. Please do it faster than here so abruptly three point: five billion years ago, life,
life, came into existence on earth
and two
billion ash. I think if memory serves, we have things like the evolution of sex one.
two billion years ago and it
I suppose that in our language that is as that is, that has been unchanging since then. By
five hundred million years, or so we had begun
animals
we already had, we already had multinational authority. We already had
but multi similarity and before that we had on assuming that means that we, instead of a single cell, moving around on itself, where now aggregates of cells that aren't just aggregates, we are actually combining with those other cells and their specialization between them. So
it's some early on anyway, life, evolving, assertive, increasing level of specialization and
I'm so as animals. We now
begin to have a point
What do I include? What don't I think it's worth pointing out that you know you can trace
our lineage going forward is Heather is doing, but one of the things that the stands out when you begin to think in terms of what all of these lineages not just ours, look like is how many themes are actually recovered, even
with creature, symbolic. Anything like us so is very
pricing, the first sign you realise that, although we
animals and plants in some sense are distinct evolutions of sexual reproduction.
What we call male parts of plants and female parts of plants actually have the same biases built in them in terms of four
ample their enthusiasm for her
for sex with partners about whom they are not choosy, writing male female parts of planetary, choosy and male parts of plant. Much less so, and the reason is exactly the same rights that this is why we presented in the book the model of evolution that we did, which is that, once you begin to realise that, yes, there, you know
definitely large number of particulars and you could learn them all, but there's also
the underlying problems that are being solved and there aren't that many solutions so just as play
his cave. You now continues to re occur because the underlying dynamics are really what's being noticed, rather than some specific
instance of something the fact that
any time you know if, if you start out with creatures that have sex, but they have identical size gamete, you will quickly get to stay,
in which they no longer have identical size, gametes and the one that has large gamete will become choosy and the one that has small mobile gametes will be much less choosy and it doesn't matter whether you're talking about a tree
or a gorilla? The logic is the same. So once once you get that message me say: ok, maybe it what I should do, instead of investing in knowing all of the creatures of the earth what I should do as invest in understanding what
problem there solving and what the flames are in those solutions which then brings us to our problem, which is humans.
Than any other creature that has ever existed by far are wonderful,
switching from one needs to another. When we describe virtually
any other species on the planet. We are talking about a type of creature and an opportunity that yet
splits, but for us we can't name what that opportunity is that humans explain, because we do so many different things and have throughout our here
three done so many different things. How is that possible
because we have a near miraculous capacity to bootstrap new programming, we are a kind of a generalist robot and we have the ability to write our own new software for opportunities no ancestor had ever addressed. That capacity gives
the ability to pay
our way out of the problems that I think all three of us here at the table, recognizer headed towards us, but what we don't
is the ability to keep up with the rate of change
fact it we don't even live in the world that we were born into right. We can
educate our children and say here's the world that you're going to have to make a living in, because none of it did any idea. What it's going to look like. That's too fast, even our amazing rate of change.
billowy to change in a reasonable and coherent way at a rapid rate is just fine.
Outstripped by that technological pace,
if we don't ran it in you know, that's not gonna happen raining technology, I mean,
Ray Kurzweil is a friend of mine and I think he is the most fascinating guy and this guy.
yes do I've ever met, because
we he doesn't he
you know, I said to him one point about upgrading. You know,
becoming the singularity
and I saw, but what about those people who don't- and he said well, they tell everybody will want to. But what, if we don't want to do
right. Why would you, and in others, is this
circular thinking that everything's gonna be ok and disregard. What that actually means
to the homo sapiens? You know and
We're. Just moving so quickly and their such air
hence in there I mean every p.
of technology. We have is the greatest experiment on the human species ever done.
The cemetery peace just keeps Goin up, but let's take your question
Will we rain it in that's a hard question answer?
Will it be random? That's an easy question.
we will either rain it in or it will reign.
It will reign us in the processes are already unsustainable in very simple literal terms, and what that means is either we figure out a
comparatively gentle path to some way of existing. That does not continue down this trajectory or the trajectory will collapse because it is unstable. So what are the things that
are fighting us fighting thee, the natural man. If you will,
we need to really we that technology is exacerbating that we need to which we need to reckon.
Eyes and rain in
I'm not sure natural forces, unnatural, the right dichotomy, because part part.
But we explore in the book is the idea that this is actually. This could have been predicted
that this that this, the human condition is one of
software of such liability of such flexibility that
Of course, we would end up becoming not
our worst enemy, but-
What we also need to do, then, is figuring out how to be. Are our best friend right I'd like to two to recognise that we have to share the planet with everyone else, and also that the
and just include non humans, but all of the humans who are here and shore
there are probably too many of us, but we have to do what we can to live well with the people who are,
here now and and
figure out.
Better angels how to explore our better angels.
which means that in a society that is just pounding each of you stand up and do so. I've been working to try to rescue people
that and I don't care what you're sexuality I don't care, I don't care
understand. I think how
People must have felt trying to
you Jews from Germans,
These people mean nothing to you, just just
give them to me. I will take them
it says about Afghanistan, yeah yeah, and is this this weird thing where it's just
not even human. The emotion is weird and-
and I was over there and Minos people started Saint all kinds of stuff.
and my first reaction was no good deed- goes unpunished. I'm here you can do anything,
and nobody is where everybody so cynical and everything else how
do you become better angels.
When there's zero reward for it in society, while punishment in power-
We haven't really understood the puzzle, yet all
evolved creatures have the same purpose and that
is a very unfortunate statement because of its if it, if you share a purpose with malaria pathogen it's not much,
what purpose? It's not! Honourable! It's not decent, so
humans have the most
market capacity to do tremendous things we can be compassionate, we can develop inside, we can innovate, weaken
beauty all of these things. But those are all they all came to be in the service of that mine, numbing objective, but once
recognized that MRS
another place that our field has not been very good. We ve given people the impression and in fact most evolutionists believe that creep
we are trying to produce as many offspring is possible and really producing more offspring is a means to an end. The end
is too large ones, dreams as deeply into the future as possible, and so
The reason that you see the pattern that you're seeing,
because in fact people are wired without their awareness of it,
four lineage verses, lineage competition and, to the extent
the two lineages are fighting over a limited resource like a patch of territory, the disease,
I ought to read that territory of the other lineage is extremely powerful. This accounts for the greatest tragedies of history- I think, without exception,
and the problem therefore, is
to convey the message to whatever part of the human is
is listening. That
Actually the objective getting into the future requires that we stop doing that. Now that's how we got here, but we have to stop doing the thing.
got all of our lineages to this point in history. If we want this to continue- and really you know, philosophically speaking-
we have the most
glorious opportunity that any creature has ever had lately
damaged as it is, is a beautiful place more beautiful than any other. We ve, seen or even have reason to know exists
I contend that it is a power
spirit that is alive, that will kill off.
before we can kill it. It will rid itself of the disease of man if we don't, if we don't
if we all harmonise is bigger than us willed
at least I think
it is. We are already seeing signs of of things
stewing, but it's
it's going to survive
well you even if it means, kills us. You know that
so there's a manner of speaking, which necessarily have to be right for interest, even notice that
there are four hundred Seville
nuclear reactors operating on planet earth that require constant vigilance to eat them, cool enough that they dont melt down and sail out all of their content, so we ve even set up nature. So even if we were to do ourselves- and we would take a lot with serbia- right
created an inadvertent, doomsday machine for no good reason. Yes, so the wreck,
ignition, that we have the most bitter
four planet that we know of and that all
we have to do in order to continue this indefinitely and really to provide the opportunity of being human witches them.
glorious opportunity, there is to provide to the maximum number of people all
have to do- is solved the sustainability puzzle right
have to do, is figure out how to get along well enough and deny
do things that undermine opportunity. We have not liquidate the planet and that that's
the puzzle, we're trying to. So how do you? How do you do that?
I mean this is a puzzle. I've been trying to solve cause, I believe in
leaving the free market,
I believe it is the fastest way to solve problems,
but I also believe that that you know
Can't just read: wealth of nations. You have to read moral sentiments. If the people are good, the free market will create all kinds of
the people are not good, it will, it will
whatever it is, they desire and theirs.
something in as I look it capitalism,
You look at it and it goes goes great,
and then people make a lot of money is too Tocqueville said and they get a lot of power and then MC kick the door behind them or they just
so greedy, they just but the apple
person.
I found I've talked Palestinians without cameras, looked pale
steady and say sound exactly like the Jews. I just want my family, I just all
scrap. That's the tired America.
how do you get that in?
The power structure. Well, ok,
I want to get us to far afield, but I do think that this is a place where
left and right need to see each other.
need to understand the part of the puzzle that the other gets and realized
to the public that they ve got wrong. So I would argue, market
are the best mechanism we ve got
figuring out how to do things. They are absolutely brilliant at solving that kind of problem. They are too
able at figuring out what problem to solve, as you point out yet discover every defect in the human character and figure out how to exploit it, and they turn us into monsters that we are not inherit by direct so, and so there are places that markets don't belong, places like sex.
And music
what you want to do is figure out how to take that a amazing tool and pointed at the problems that we want soft and to keep it away from the problems. We don't want, soft. We don't want it finding our defects, we want to tell it what our values are and then allow it to,
of the problems of how best to wreak, and
enhance those values, so
the problem is if you're
get fundamentalist and you think well. This is the best tool we ve got for problem solving, let's pointed at everything, then you end up creating the hazard where it solves the problems. You don't want solving, and so really it's a tool- and you know it just like in our power- saw right a parasol, great tool, but you don't want it running around your Sharm right now you wanna under control, doing things that you need done and that's that's possible. You know on the left, though, what you here is, you know
capitalism is the enemy right did not like markets at all,
and then on the right. You hear that markets are what we ve got for solving problems. So, let's get to it and really the point is that figure out
to refine that tool so that it does what we need done? There remains
the problem, though, that the current invoked of the people who make it
the door closed behind them or not?
my table? Who or the
people saw em with very good intention that are
working to solve problems that you're, like no don't know
What are you doing? No, no, that's that's a bad, but they feel
it's an immense. It's not an american thing. It's a human thing! There's a mouse
I'm going to cross it
and so there breaking barriers that
Maybe we should hold off I'm just. Let's just all talk,
bout that before we do it, I do, and I think there are two different problems. Ok,
right. The first one is what
So if a willingness to dehumanize the other- yes so that you can excuse your own bad behaviour and that
think is easier, more easily dealt with, although we haven't seen it down with them.
this attack utopian ism of
there is a problem that can be approached, then we will approach it, no matter what and no brakes right we'll do so so so it couldn't. Can you tell me
How do we begin to solve? If that is a problem?
The first set of people
How can the the
bridge person begin
to a fact, meaning
full change there.
we ve begun to see
But we know of some people and organisations who are explicitly working to bridge
the divide cross
the divine it's it's very much
what you're talking about doing in Afghanistan. But people working, for instance, within the Eu S, to bring a red voters and blue voters together into the same room and just have them meet,
exchange names and I contact and say
hey. I also have a kid dog a mortgage and I'm human too, and
there is
value for a very few in keeping us from recognising each other's humanity.
How
with social media. It's much harder.
To remind ourselves that we're all human- and I think we are basically what
these sorts of conversations and as much
in human contact as possible. We
actually engaged with people with kindness and generosity, but that
that doesn't necessarily get to the people. Forty kicked the door closed behind them.
this I want to introduce you to my beetles thought, and I had
I was listening to my remember, which song was, might have a revolution
And I ve been listening. Some John Lennon- and I thought part of me said, thank God
They don't have that tool in their hand, because
the hippy movement in the sixtys it I mean it did a lot of good. It
also did some bad, but it
The real happy movement was based on drugs. Really it was based in love, and
kind of consciousness and you
did have if you listen to the music of the sixties,
much of it is very inspiring you know and
he's in love? We don't have that now
have a John Lennon. We don't have anybody preaching
the size of the culture you said, keep
you know business out of music which had like
explore with you, but
we don't have a soundtrack. That's helping us move forward in a loving way ends.
sixties had that well,
All of these have been unnatural, arrows and
the problem is you have to tracking other in some ways we have better music
because there are more bands, it's not all concentrated by the fact that you got three stations in your area than in everybody's listing the same. You know the same soundtrack. You have a lot of room, but the point as it means that we're not synchronized in the way that used to end,
a stroll humans. Would have been in the people were artificially synchronized and lies. Sixties. I miss, and you know this is so stupid, but I miss the fact
it was much watched. We must watch Thursday night NBC and we all-
would come to work and we would talk about friends right. I mean
I dont- really miss that era, but I
there was something that found
together that we don't have, except for the Superbowl. Now that he's in there was value in the city was terrible. Yes fact, if everybody was at least thinking about the same brand, undrawn had a value, and so there is a question about how do you get the best of both worlds? How do you get the increase in quality that comes from having many more bands contributing to our sonic landscape?
at the same time. You get enough synchrony that we understand each other and you note again them
a problem of hyper novelty, that we talk about in the book explained that the
rate of change that is outstripping our capacity to alter ourselves so that we are not being harmed, that we are not being made sick, psychologically, physiologically and socially by our environment. That problem is actually
its multi layered. So not only in our people, our age, have
experience of living in a very different world than they grew up, and we all remember you know it
beginning of the email era. We all made a mistake somewhere where we sent some email, that we should have thought more carefully about and didn't realize that the band with was going to be reduced and that somehow this was very different than a letter, and it wasn't quite like a conversation is right and the problem,
okay. We get that
people who are young enough who have grown up online. Have this
their developmental environment and I guess,
Part of one of the many messages in the book is that
there are things that
nickel reality will teach you development
I so that you understand them, whether you could say
They were not right. If you walk into a bar and you behave the way people behave on Twitter, he'll, get beaten up and you
not to do it right on Twitter. You may not learn that lesson. In fact, you may get so many likes that you continue to do that, because it feels like the right thing to do. You may not understand, therefore, what
when conflict is and why it should be reserved for very special circumstances. So
what we are doing is we are not only creating an environment that we can keep up with. We are creating an environment that is shaped
our children in utterly arbitrary ways, and when they become adults they will then be living in a world that isn't even that, one that we created the shaped them. It will be some new world and their tool kit will be out of phase with where they're going to be, and we can see this coming a mile away. What's gonna do to them it's going to make them
miserable and unhealthy, and
the thing we have to realise is that it's the generating function. We have to stop that process. We have to slow down the rate of change.
enough that we can keep up
like us. One thing I would add is that the social media environment in particular, makes us likely to choose our arguments for what we hate, rather than with what we agree, and
not that there isn't plenty to disagree with by saying:
actually I stand for this and
The other thing is something else that isn't odds with this thing that I stand for as opposed to I hate that
I stand for, but I hate that and the
The standing primarily an opposition is dead.
De facto divisive and and deadly I've. I'm working on something now that I'm I'm calling the power of one, and it is just you recognise that you have control not of everything else, but
you and just just stand for you know I had a
a woman who saved use
in world WAR two and I had her meat with my family and tell it shoes
seniors all she saving hundred Jews, hiding them under by him is an amazing story.
and she gave me some great advice and in a nutshell it is you don't have to be a hero. You
We have to remember what you,
it's time you re wrong and just don't know, move from that. It's right, throng and oh. I know that
person is still a person and I'm gonna treat. I don't care what everybody else does that's what I'm gonna do and its
It's hard. Now, however, because
Everything is, I sit on my way forward to I don't care reform and
my wife dozen everybody else does- and I like what you know you
we were fine without that we were fine. Without that we can be fine again without that are
if may slow down, but
convinced that you can't
live without it, and then
it brings a lot of great things to your life, but then on,
half of it,
while you're being convinced that you are also being convinced that you,
should be the opposite of what your parents. Torture was right. Rome, that's absolutely right and
I think, there's part of what you're saying it's perfectly straightforward and clearly right right. What's
IRAN has not basically change it, but
it has in society.
it hasn't in reality right, but it has in society not because the fundamentals are different for because the particulars are so
explain that.
for example,
capacity to be rewarded for behaviour that creates massive harm in lives that we never see even just
even your investment portfolios right your damned. If you do and damned, if you don't ride you, you are in competition with other investors and what you need in order to
stay afloat is defined. The investments that pay back,
but those investments may be profitable, not because they are actually enhancing the world in some way, but because they successfully externalize harm on to someone who can defend themselves, and so that's obviously immoral. But if it's you know if it's buried in your retirement fun, you dont know that your arming somebody else nor you in a position to do anything about it. So we have to begin to recognise that, although you can
an operational s, but just as a thought
Experiment hang on Josiah does
to sound like you're saying is he s would be a good thing, but
that is then somebody else's making the judgments on? What do you naughty? Yes, Geezer
environmental, social, justice and governance.
Gore's and all companies are they
ex are now starting to make loans based on? Are you involved in social justice? What do you and that's it right-
now, at least for sure, it's an arbitrary number. They decide.
You are what you and what you're, not that
Statistical icing, that kind of stuff scares the hell out of me
right. It was exactly the kind of thing that conservatives correctly fear, because if you build that system, no matter how well intentioned you are, it is guaranteed to be gained in its just the next landscape of warfare. So that's not
not where you go, but it will and includes a category air right like lumping in environmental with social justice causes
would seem too to not be aligning those of us who deeply care for the environment and see a tremendous amount of harm in modern social justice, for instance, so,
I want to
back to something that we were talking about earlier, which is what
happens when you gather conservatives and liberals together, and one trick that I have learned is that
The first thing you should do is
figure out what it is that you actually agree on, because very frequently puzzles that we differ over actually,
there's half of them, we dont differ off and then, but
We recognise the other person, we sort of figure that everything that they're saying is wrong, the case so far it if I go into a room of conservatives
be pretty sure there were gonna disagree over environs.
at all
stay inability and, in particular, climate change right
If I asked the question,
a few believed and human beings were causing substantial alterations to the climate that was going to degrade the them
passing of the earth to sustain people in the future.
Would you be in favour of doing something about it,
We every reasonable person will agree to that, and that is why we so fascinating is fascinating, because I
hey. You can't
argue with global
you can argue with a smaller
a lower Garber down? What's what's happening,
you can't argue with the changes that are happening, you
I'd be able to argue, is man doing this, or is this sickly, but we'd have
that argument in- and it's a healthy argument to have,
What strange is you can't have the argument on
how to fix it. That's the hardest one right, that's the one that,
were presented with destroy the plough?
it or destroy humanity and everything that we have just burn it all up. At once, that's what it seems like too conservative you're like no. I don't think we should do it that way, right,
I am sure there are things that we could agree on, but those
things. Don't ever really seem to ever be talked about. The everything's always pushed
that's what I shall I you have to get to the place where you ve agreed that if we are damaging the planet in this way that we all agree that we should stop right, whether we know how to do it, whether that's even plausible, because that is a conversation that people can have an be decent to each other right. What do we do it
that's where we are right.
just for a moment. This reminds me very much of a framing indifferent domains that I've been making lately, which is to people
come together and the first person says my God there's a problem.
person bases yeah there sure is
person one says. Therefore, the solution is acts
person to says was ass, a big problem, but I don't think you're solutions, gonna do it and
first person and the others
B team, blue and team red or might be reversed, but the first person says if you-
I agree with my solution than you don't think this is a problem
There is just a basic logical failure here, but it is the way that many of us are our demonized and dismissed.
Because we say that solution, you ve come up with
makes us as wrong or incomplete.
Or at least how about there's other. There is on the other scam to build an empire of money for something else right like why wait, that's not, but that which action of solution says nothing about whether or not you thought there was a problem with the frankness and then
I know
conservatives, they
this not a blanket statement conserving
especially live in rural areas. The
consider themselves great stewards of the land and gender,
They are my grandfather.
I remember him saying all the time he's. A farmer
These nuts are telling us.
to manage Yellowstone and the forests in california- and I remember him distinctly in the seventies in california- will burned to the ground burned to the ground. If they do this
he was a real environmentalist in my book you know, but
hard. No, you can't
if environmentalist a few disagree with what they're doing to save the environment are. So
the solution here. To the extent that there is one is actually weirdly,
buried in the second to last chapter are book, because what we describe is a pattern and involves human pattern that goes back millions of years. In all likelihood, certainly it goes back hundreds of thousands in which human being
swap out their software program?
to engage in new opportunities and the way they do, that is by
plugging their minds into each other and
essentially engaging in what we would now call parallel processing right and this,
Look like anything strange. It would look like people standing around a campfire discussing
what the
problems. Are what solutions might look like in with their different types of expertise. They would
up with a new solution, a prototype and then
the time it would be refined and then it would be driven into the cultural layer and handed one generation to the next. Now. That point, though, is
implies that our minds have two ways of running. If we are
situation, that our end
esters wisdom is applicable to than we are wise to apply, it may be refined it a little bit but not to question it too much right. That is naturally conservative impulse. If we are in a situation that our ancestors wisdom is inapplicable because they didn't know anything about this, this predicament, then we have to
rise to this collective consciousness and figure out what to do about the puzzle and the point where we are in a battle about whether or not this is that moment is
is the moment to
double down on the ancestors with them, or is this the moment to do something different, which is inherently dangerous? Is that danger that liberals don't tend to see they weren't progress? They want to fix problems and they don't recognize the hazard of unintended consequences
facing it.
there are far more, in my opinion, far more dangerous than the nineteen fifties was nuclear holocaust. This is
I mean this is just the meanness. As Stephen Hawking said, the
of homo sapiens by twenty fifty. You make the wrong and he didn't mean that we'd be extinct. We would be.
We'd be elaborated unwary operated in. So I don't want that
I don't think a lot of people want that. You knows with
if we are not careful right now,
we're- and no one is talking about it. No one is talking about the
the real, true peril. That is
our doorstep right. The pair.
It is actually should be uncontroversial right just up. The simple
the degree to which the power of our tools has gone up. The degree to which we are interconnected has gone up. We are now one experiment, and your population can't make a mistake and go extinct and everybody else now. You know. Do the next thing: we,
all in it together at this point, but the
key to getting people out of their auto pilot
Jerome Loud and into their conscious. How do we solve this new problem mode? Is there
recognition that the old programme, when you run it, creates errors.
Throws errors like a computer program that runs into some sort of an input it doesn't expect, and so and what?
those errors that the old programming
Well, we conservatives need to see that the fact that you know
for example, that we have a situation in which the most predict
do and dynamic nation that has ever existed, which has become a model for the West right. People have rightly adopted what the fuck
there's got right and they deplore employed it across the world to good effect that we would endanger that by failing to recognise the humanity of other participants in that system. In some sort of team sport mentality that jeopardy
does the whole project is obviously insane practised. The simple
fact that we seem to be coming apart at the seams, despite the fact that whatever our problems are the system
still functioning so let me
amazingly so, amazingly, so I thought we would be gone,
years ago. I thought we'll. Never this thing is resilient. It's crazy,
but the ancient wisdom would come from George Washington said: don't do the two party thing? Don't don't we
you'll do tribal and then what
personal realize they can move
kit and become more popular and then the other one will up their game. I mean that's that
there's your founders wisdom well,
we did it so now, how do you undoing first thing they do, I would say, is unique to recognised. We need to separate effectively the founders values from their mechanism right,
mechanism was great, but its run its course it. It cannot solve these problems right first past the post is a lethal hazard. Now it's part of what's causing
you know, team, against team mentality inside of our system that threatens us, but the way you get to
conscious mind engaging the puzzle rather than the auto pilot mine, as you recognise the errors, and so if you
these puzzles really well refined. The
thing that you see very often sounds like a riddle. Right
it sounds like a paradox. That's the indication that there's something here that needs to be thought about carefully, rather than just doing what we all learned. It must be done so
I like to say the following thing: I'm
a liberal, in fact,
I am reluctant radical. I want to be a radical cost. Radical changes dangerous, but I don't think we have a choice. We have to engage. Radical change is frightening. Is that its that's one? Riddle
but the other side of it is. I want to live in a world that is so good that I get to be a conservative. I'm not
Brill because changes my objective, but we do need
get somewhere that the point is actually from here. Change would be a mistake,
changes in worth it will get. What we're up ending is so successful at doing what we say we want to accomplish this.
Don't you think, though, that I could be wrong
I think the average person would agree with you on that both sides right that view
isn't working, but you
You sick, as you you scare me when you say but founders,
systems aren't working
We're not using the founder systems we haven't been for
we're a hundred years. We ve up ended all of the because
it is you're saying you know we have to have these conversations are standing around a campfire
happening to us is everything is global and
only the leaves yet too.
Those decisions around their camp fire at Davos, and we are left out
the real change comes. Real, meaningful change comes printed
I'm not against universal health care
you can show me it works and can sustain itself, otherwise,
as I hate this system to, but it's the best when we got you know so, let's keep doing. We should
be fifty states instead of one country fifty lit,
experiments try, it
do this see what works take the best of that and work, but you have to
break them down to the family, to the community, to the state, but
for it goes global. Everybody now is trying to solve. The problem for the world had well
immediately goes there. The problem mediately immediately the problem, as you got, a tension between two truce here and
the tension is a very real one. On the one hand, the idea of the laboratory of the states is a very good one rank prototype, something and figure out how to get it to work before you globalizing. That's the only same thing do, on the other hand, you have,
game theory puzzles that will call you not save. For example, you had a rational system of taxation and then let
they Oakley Homa decides well, you know what we would like to attract and businesses, and so we're gonna create a very hospitable. Business climate by lowering taxes in Oklahoma, business start flooding to Oklahoma. Every other state notices, hey their businesses, are leaving in they're going to Opel Homer. They all lower their taxes and now you're, a rational across the board tax structure has in is triggered a race to the moderate it down and break it down. Even smaller, though I'm using the fifty states,
as the biggest it should be. I'm saying
all of these things
The single in Eisenhower talked about this in his farewell address and it's brilliant. If we would have,
Listen to just that one address. We would have fixed a lot of stuff.
The man the single scientist working in a laboratory that is doing
it because he has an idea and says. I think this might work in my work. His whole life on it. That's all
that's gone, it's now white coats in a laboratory workin for somebody, that's getting grants from somebody else, so
we were losing the individual spark, that's that
key to western society is. The individual spark well
the environment that freeze the individual to have the spark and to act on it? Yes right, so you know it's both things, you then
yeah Alex. I was gonna say just that this feels like a different level of the problem, which you may be right. It may then fall in.
the right solution. That's more global, but
You ve talked a lot about the problem with modern science, which is exactly as you describe that at this point,
individuals have a very hard time sang. I wanna be a scientist. I am going to train to be a scientist. I'm gonna go. Do science, you immediately get pulled into someone else's lab with someone else's grants with someone else's questions that have already asked and there's an questions that you don't ask that the end and lots of questions that Europe included from asking, because whose what kinds of questions are getting funded by in a seven H. India DE right now is a question of fashion and whose deciding what's fashionable. It is in fact the elites, be they in science or politics and
it's very, very difficult. This is one of the reasons actor that we were at some apparently Po Donk Little College in the Pacific Northwest for so long was that it actually provided the opportunity to ask whatever
since we wanted it was one of the very rare institutions of higher at and it s not anymore, but it was one of the very rare institutions of higher ad in the modern world where you could actually
investigate what you're interested in investigating that said
couldn't do so. If you are trying to do high tech sites,
high tech still requires the big grants and the universities want that because they get a big chunk of the overhead and
how they are running. So it's the rights, the business model that has the floor, so isn't this
Zack seem situation that are pilgrims. The founders, whatever
came here for them
model is broken. It just doesn't work,
because it's now so corrupt, then she can't work. Except
there's no place to go. I mean, as one of the things I like about Elon Musk, let's get off planet before the sing, explodes
You know there's no place to go. We have two right we
have to reboot with
out losing the
heartened framework right. Well, we are ironic,
we are not doing exactly the opposite of what we should be doing. We should be recognising that we are in the same boat and that noticing each other's humanity is the first step and then figuring out. What we agree on is the second step and from there we can begin to engage the stuff that we disagree over and figure.
where to go, and I would point out them-
solution to your puzzle, or at least the the prototype for it with
back to the laboratory, the states is actually a con
that comes out of Catholicism of all places called subsidy charity which
means. Everything should be governed at the lowest effective level, but it
to be the lowest effective level and we are area we have some global problems right. Those problems have to be governed at a global level. Right not having the oceans governed by anybody is, is a recipe for disaster I but having the oceans governed by a group of people,
that are just on the take and are all afraid of China or all afraid of us or whoever is also not a soul.
right. That's it that's a band aid that looks like it's gonna he'll, but its festering underneath. Well, you have you have two problems tangled together, so you ve got the. How are we to govern ourselves issue and then what are we to do about the the corruption right? Because we can we can say look such things have to be governed at a global level and other things you don't watch her. You know your local parks governed by the other global gag structure right. So we have to have that thing, but even if you had a system that govern everything at the lowest effective level, if its corrupt, then it may be, you know it may be-
than the problems its built ostensibly to solve. So we have to solve the corruption issue as we address the met. Let's make sure everything important is governed, and this is one of these places where
The founders missed it because they
seem sufficiently dangerous technology to intuit. What a global problems of this sort would look like. There is no such thing as a manager or middle manager when they were out. I only mean they didn't know one,
I think they really truly messed was
They didn't see that corporations could ever be more powerful than a government. Did they might have missed the questions of scale, Ryanair pages it it could not you they could not. Imagine it and that's that's. The first met
that I've seen that they had all kinds of flight safety mechanisms all over there.
One nothing! Nothing
and can too many conservatives are like, while its
operation? They got no, no, no! No! No! This is a different ballgame. This is a dick.
current ballgame right, we are
de facto governed by these entities, that we have no pretend no protection at an eye and they are merging with the governments of the world, and I mean I have always marked. Ah you know these
just opium movies, where, like guy well, he works for the corporation and sliding oh stop it
Don't laugh. That is exactly the right or the left was right about that. The right,
was wrong and now
It seems like very few people even want to talk about that like wait, right managerial suddenly. Talking about the problems of the corporations is not something that's on the table and right right.
goes to a sort of overarching issue, which is the founders, of course, didn't know anything about evolution.
It. Hadn't been described yet
they effectively did was they created an evolving system, and so what we are living in is the consequences of the fact that they built a system that has all the characteristics necessary to create adaptive evolution and
creatures have evolved were, as if creatures have evolved in it, and many of them are predatory and their extremely difficult terrain in because the
We want things again. They had
An evolving system
It was evolving in structure. So if you want to evolve because it becomes outdated, amended pay which-
required, the council to come together
And so you weren't getting these little teeny changes that all of a sudden, a hundred years later,
to something that doesn't recognise anything constitutional,
even now we are, we are effectively on a craft hurtling through a dangerous landscape and there's no one at the helm and no one at the helm and din
Nobody even they'll give lip service to the bill of rights, but they don't actually stand for the Bell rights. Nobody does stand for the malaria like we can. We just get
can you get me ADA those I wouldn't I'll get on board with the can you giving aid of those rights that you're willing to stand for re I'll know it's it's. I mean it's very further. Almost literally nobody at the helm in the EU
At the moment we have an apparently senile commander in chief who was effectively the choice of the day and see which is not an elected body and
they don't know whose really actually running it right. I mean, in fact I think, if, if, if you
were in on those conversations. It would be even more frightening because I don't think any things really running it right. It's me, you know it's a corrupt entity and it is doing what corrupt
entities do, which is serving very narrow, short term interests, and you know the consequences for four
ah says Americans and for the planet, are, you know, absolutely arbitrary,
This is very different, then
humans have ever experienced before
but it's very similar, isn't it in some ways. I believe.
We make a call for more camp fires in the book and
as things are scaling up
there are, as you alluded to earlier, the equipment
campfires that are happening outside of the reach of everyone else. Yes, whereas used to be, and we have always had hierarchy all of our
groups, all of our tribal groups have always had hierarchy, often
male hierarchies are separate from female hierarchies and then to some degree, some you're familiar level hierarchies, but there is
there was an ability. These, like vision, fusion groups were able to move in between each other and say: oh I'm, here now and you're here and YO sums
They would war, but more often they would meet and
maybe sometimes exchange people you Ellen marriage. Whatever there was,
The possibility of one of those groups simply owning everyone else and in part
because people really did come together in a way that was equalising campfire breaking bread.
I see the weight of your eyes,
Power Amplifier Davis, it's the power amplifier of modernity that are making this very much, unlike in the case of it, but it also
and I dont Know- which came first- the technology or the loss of this belief. But it is, we didn't just come
together to come together. We came together
because, in the end
I could see the whites of your eyes, but I too
We believed
You believed at the core funding.
mentally the scene.
Kind of
things that I believed all
created equal. You know you have a right to free speech. All this stuff.
when we lost that I dont know how to
I dont know how to
it together with somebody says now the bill of rights. Now, that's occasionally you can speak. You can speak if you have that. How do you? Because it feel,
those like the media
The amplification feels like half
country, believes half the country doesn't or
a third, a third and then crazy, crazy crazies on both sides.
it's the truth. Well,
there is a long history and humanity of the ring, those that you that are a threat to your own resources,
and in so many languages
those who are not you you that the person who is being whose naming themselves at the chosen people and everyone else is someone else. So it's not like that's new right but
upon being able to come together crossing those borders between tribes?
generally, there is a recognition of humanity and I think a the scale problem right that we just we have
our ample fires. We have too many people and we have too little
opportunity to actually engage this end
This is where the screens are actually doing an incredible amount of damage that everyone talks,
screens, but no
we don't have the measurements for all of the sensory stuff. That is being inch energy
and when we are actually in person with one another, but there is value and that that no one has named no ones.
when attempted to measure or a few people have and as we,
and less and less time. Actually
in visa with one another. It's going to be,
easier and easier to go tribal in this way. That seems permanent,
I would argue in the: U S we have to take ownership of the peace
we on the equation at our side got wrong answer and each of us well sure
I mean I went on the they called it, the Glinda apology to her, and they said it was for something. No, you can't
human,
really truly human. If
the country says they hate you and not go
do they have a point. I mean I mean that person and all end
did apologize for things that I thought you know. I shouldn't said that our action is in this way or whatever we.
To start here
and then our side
in the world,
you know, I mean right will mean anyway. I mean I agree that the hallmark of an honest brokers that you go back and clean up what you ve got wrong:
that that is fundamental and there are not enough people doing that, but it
in this case
We have a
tension. People detect something
Franco, everybody not everybody, knows rigged and for most people the system is rigged against them. They detect, and so the question is: is that
because the fundamentals are wrong. Is that because the the
a society that we have described is incorrect. Or is it because it is not working
and what we are seeing on the left. The yeah
collapse of reason that we are seeing on the left is really lots of
people who know that things are wrong who know that they have been taken advantage of and been mistreated. Mason
standing with the source of that it, and not realising that the right thing to pursue is a repair.
of the unfairness of the system. It is now
The dismantling of that system, because ass the system is the best thing that we have in terms of producing fairness. It just we never got therein, and this is where the right, I think, has made an error, which is that the right
imagine the system worked better than it did it imagine
that's changed. A lot has changed
I know twenty years ago I was called
She had no great and railway blue and now you're like now this
you know, that's the problem is after you done it.
Have time a takeover tour vault cross. The walkway here I collect everything
can to preserve moroccan history, but I
like a lot of the dark stuff about Americans. I cannot do any liberal professor on the dark side of american history. It's him
Orton to remember that you know
I think there is a lot of people like I was twenty years ago.
that are just not long ago. We did make what I mean. We gets
Rick things horrific things that,
need to be addressed and set right and just talked about and like no, never do that again battle leave a mark
but now now I think because,
G o p. Ten years ago,
so betrayed the the tea party
people- and I don't mean all ology part of people- I mean the people actually believed in the constitution.
Betrayed them. They went who that's what
first questions asked you your own side. Have you done?
gosh. It's not who I thought we were that's where we went through me,
It depends what you mean by around side. If you mean the Democratic Party, absolutely the thing is you know it's. It's met.
That x ray. I did it.
not really went beyond the GEO p. It was that was the whole system that we thought we knew what it was
I trust- and it's like Now- that's dirty to its all, dirty leaving the rocky
occupy in the left is to tea party on the right, and I think very similar things happen for those of us who were who were here
Full of that could have been an answer and to see it. Decay, both for external and internal reasons that it it turned out
not to have any possibility of success. That's what sad about
to movement, has said about the alarm, because I've
talk to people who marched in
lives matter.
here in Houston, where there was a shooting and
We all were huddling behind a car, and in
what color you are and we all were like. Ok, this is bad and we started talking in a lot of people
involved in that, because they said real problems and real issues, but that's not
what the system was made for in that
black lives matter, ink right.
That's right. Whole difference. I owed men, and this is exactly where we landed area
Clever matter as a slogan is the belief of course, right right, absolutely it's too bad. That even needs to be said. Yet, on the other hand, once you look at the fine print of what the organisation was interested, I say when even was run, I mean right. Lobal thing is like one
These are Roger. Why people there? What are you doing? What is that right? Well, and you know you from
defending the police to attacks on the family. The point was it had nothing to do with black lives mattering it was. It was a very bizarre ideology, ideological agenda that was a lethal hazard to what does work about our system and the same. The same arguments can be made without delay.
the same corporate structure behind it for me to write like muted
the potential to be awake
two to actually reveal to the vast majority of good man who are out there that the vast majority of women have unfair.
Net to really intolerable and horrible experiences as young women and most men don't know that, because most men art those whose two men I got.
that's what it should have been. Incidents went off the rails because it was
maybe because it was designed to. I don't know when aren't oils, but we ve. Now. I said at the end of the Brook Obama demonstration he made me a better man
I didn't like him at all like
policies all we, maybe better man cause. He pushed me against the wall. All the time and I had to go wait is that.
right or am I wrong or what what's what's
we are learning alive,
there is a lot of good that came out of me too, and black lives matter even
It wasn't directly related to their goals. Alot of people did step back.
and then necessarily join in. They were just like.
Point on them that man, that's good, yeah, good things
to get back to an earlier point. Is I think,
rules had so many successes in the twentieth century. Right now
women, women's emancipation and civil rights and gay rights and worker protection,
worker protections and this these
became values that almost everyone holds in common and
think because of that momentum, it now seems too many on the left that change,
always be necessary and, as you said earlier, brought your changes and inherently good changes. Inherently bad change will sometimes be necessary.
Changes and always necessary, and if we actually moving in the right direction,
bending the system is moving in the right direction is clearly going to be a bit.
Rail of the values that you are claiming to have an optimistic.
Occasionally we returned to the idea of an adapted valley.
Things are very dark and.
That doesn't necessarily mean one shouldn't be optimistic, because in some sense they would have to be in order for us to accomplish what we need to accomplish now darkest before the dawn right and so the
problem. If you think about you, know the adaptive landscape I was describing, the problem is, if you have to move on from the opportunity that you ve been exploiting and to find a new one, it is very easy to
head in a direction where that opportunity does not exist, it's very easy to pass into that valley and do not
I've somewhere. So what you really need is very careful thinking about where that next opportunity is and what
for the explanation for it
If I you know, if I could get one fought into the mind
I generally it would be
something has us divided.
for reasons we may never know. There may not even be reasons it may just be. Some process, but the key
to us getting out of this is the
recognition that most of us agree on the values to be pursued. We agree on what a good society would look like. We may disagree on how close we are and what might be done against the rest of the way. But we agree, we don't want a system that is rigged in favour of one race and against another. For example, we want a system, the bars people from doing whatever job they want to do because of their the sex they were born into. We want a fair system in which opportunity is broadly distributed. Now what
You recognise that virtually everybody you meet can agree to that. Much
and then you realize that we,
all been led to believe that there is another team and that those people don't agree
They don't agree with you on anything or a right that their bad people who want bad things and the point as well all right wooden, wouldn't the right.
Thing to do but to recognise. We know
what the objective of the project is,
We all understand something has gone awry and the correct
thing to do is to talk to each other about how we might get ourselves out of this and get back on track where we can fight
the details of how to get there, not where we're going historically
you guys are on exactly the right path and one that wasn't
necessarily taken the last time we had a horrible horrible world war
in May.
Research over the years on the Holocaust,
biggest thing. That happened was.
Nobody knew juice.
the Jews they were saved were generally saved by people who said yet. The Jews are like that
This one, I know this one and
You know when you understand that you realise we better start talking to each other tat because
oh I'll, save a conservative or a liberal cause. I know this one
but the rest of us are like that. No that's not true. That's not true. I call it that
Macbook application.
process. We believe that
of the capacity to be superheroes- and we believe
their superveillance on the other side of the screen or out there
the world, and it is the very fair.
a human being. Who is either we're just
look within yourself and
see no matter how remarkable you are, what you're weaknesses are or
If you are in the EU in the opposite cap, and you feel that you're not doing well
find the strength that you have and recognise that mixture
different amounts. Indifferent. Relative amounts is going to be present in every single through human video. You noticed
so from wheeling Cal.
in front of people's houses right right now, courses,
retreating into reality, I'll tell you something funny
live in Portland, which you know is almost a cartoon of less of live. You know, Texas exists right, I have we had. There are liberals here,
we have we have many years, but even in port,
where you would imagine that there's just
simply no reason to be accessed a funny thing
happens, for
at least- and I know for Heather when we are open about our doubts.
The conventional wisdom of the left, which is that people who
would espouse in all of the usual slogans as soon as they hear that year.
Actually you
have your own doubts and that you're willing to voice them. It is amazing what people volunteer, so it. Why
do you think they worked so hard
to silence people who have just a little bit of courage?
tat need to silence that courage. They need us crush it may yet.
bridge is contagious current.
Courage is contagious. Your address could rights, yes, and this is where this impulse to authoritarianism comes from right because they need to control the conversation in order that the doubts don't emerge and restore us to a conversation that might actually stand
cancer. Putting us back on track,
it is, it is remarkable how many conversations both Britain I have had with you.
you PS drivers, cashiers waitresses, whatever or just
were heard, while paddle boarding or dino sitting in a park and
then sometimes talking with the people and sometimes just eavesdropping but its Portland, it's mostly liberals and the number
of people who are saying this thing is coming: it's authoritarian
it's dangerous and
we need to stand up is high. It still quiet
but it's a lot of people hit my
gases
it's coming from the left faster than its coming from the right, but it will come from the right to hear
passing all of the exits where Europe
Turning to such I mean this
the way revolutions happens. Communist revolutions happened
you so the seed of discontent. You overload the system, you get it so nothing's working, there's, no safety anywhere and the people
cry out, help us and they will and they'll crush that
and it'll be either side. That does it if we
change our way soon. Yeah ned
it's imperative and you know,
We are prevented from doing it by being told that you know you will you owe me
guilty by virtue of your association is, if you talk to people on the other side and those of us who have talked to people on the other side, we know
pay the price for it. On the other hand, it's quite clear that that is the road forward. It is, you know it is anybody,
can't manages is, is not going to be of help. I started this podcast three years ago and you
where the number one target to put on this show, because
I wanted to show to be
a model where people can disagree and we go
we friends, we can see each other gone
or person, I'm a normal person, we don't.
Each other. We don't hate the country and they don't hate freedom
We just disagree right, that's right, let's
conflate the ideas with the person. I'm glad you're both here I hope you come back
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Just a reminder.
I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and passes on to a friend, so it can be discovered by other people.
Transcript generated on 2021-09-18.