Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Being Courageous in a Conformist World" with Sarah Wilson

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"Being Courageous in a Conformist World" with Sarah Wilson · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Get a humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. Here's a dangerous idea for you.
• 0:08
  We're all getting soft. We're all getting too soft to be able to have real vigorous debates anymore.
• 0:14
  Some cultures can do it. The French, for example, still seem capable of figuring out how to
• 0:20
  disagree as an art form, how to actually cultivate the craft of disagreement and
• 0:26
  argumentation in a civil environment. But that we in the Anglo-Sphere have lost that
• 0:32
  knack. We just squabble in predictable ways. It was that sense, that sense of a kind of
• 0:39
  civilizational decline, that sense of being on a treadmill to nowhere that caused today's
• 0:45
  guest Sarah Wilson to pack it all in. She had it all. She was the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine
• 0:50
  in Australia. She was a host of MasterChef, the television show. She was a wellness columnist and
• 0:57
  had millions of readers. And then she sold everything and she traveled the world. She's now a
• 1:04
  nomad. She doesn't have a house. She is based in Paris because that is the place where people
• 1:09
  can still argue. And this is an example of an argument in itself. Sarah and I disagree on a lot.
• 1:17
  We have a kind of a mutual respect, a longstanding relationship, but kind of an intellectual friction,
• 1:22
  I suppose. And we're both on Substack. So this week we jumped on Substack Live and we live streamed
• 1:28
  to her fans and mine. This is a slightly unusual episode in a sense that it's not as buttoned up.
• 1:33
  It's not pre-recorded like the normal podcast is. It's a taste, really, for you to see what it's
• 1:38
  like and the kinds of stuff that we're experimenting with over on Substack if you haven't already
• 1:43
  joined us there. We talk about everything from how population collapse could cause
• 1:48
  civilizational decline to how much to blame the woke left or the trumpists for the decline of
• 1:53
  conversation. I love Sarah. I love this conversation. I hope you enjoy as much as I did. The one
• 1:58
  the only Sarah Wilson. Such a shame we didn't get to catch up in Europe. I was just in Amsterdam.
• 2:08
  And I hit up older Sarah and I was like, come up to Amsterdam for the weekend and get dinner.
• 2:14
  It's a little far. I get it. It's a little far.
• 2:18
  We have a bit hectic. You have these ideas in a stragging that you can just come on a train,
• 2:24
  you know? Sure. And then again, the bureaucracy, oh come on, that's not that hard.
• 2:31
  Buying a train ticket from Paris to Amsterdam. I can do that on my phone in three seconds.
• 2:36
  Yeah, it's not. I'm sad to have missed the opportunity as well because it's always
• 2:41
  wrapped by a conversation between you and I, between you and anyone really. That's true and
• 2:46
  between you and anyone. Yeah, probably. So tell us about this turret or tower that you were in,
• 2:55
  I mean, when you say that you're in a tower in Paris, it brings up kind of like gollest,
• 3:00
  or medieval ideas about where you might be.
• 3:05
  Well, the being suggested such. I'm on the seventh floor and anyone who's been to Paris before,
• 3:10
  you would know that a lot of apartments don't have a lift and ass-on-set. So I walk up.
• 3:16
  And the final floor is like a spiral staircase. And it's kind of storage. It's where the
• 3:21
  maids used to live. And then under the tin roof, where if it is 30 degrees outside, it's 40 degrees
• 3:28
  inside. So I've been sweating it out in here and it's just a temporary place because as you know,
• 3:35
  Josh, I live, as I'm going to say on the run, she's on the land. I live nomatically. So I
• 3:43
  just float around, but I'm actually trying to find somewhere more permanently, but I'll do it
• 3:47
  after the summer. You want to repeat summer nights. There's no point doing anything between now
• 3:51
  and the end of August. So I'm going to be flying out hiking, speaking out a few festivals in the UK,
• 3:57
  that kind of thing. And this is just the temporary thing that I've rented off some academic.
• 4:02
  There's a website where they use the, you know, if they're in Japan on a sabbatical,
• 4:07
  you can take over their place. So that's what I'm doing.
• 4:12
  And sleep anywhere. I can live in absolute grungy circumstances as long as it's quiet,
• 4:17
  and I'm away from all the humans. I'm up here. I'm literally, there's no common walls.
• 4:21
  I've got a view of the hall. It turns around, but it'll cause chaos so that you could see outside,
• 4:26
  but you can see that I shall tower not to die on the whole thing. So it's pretty amazing.
• 4:31
  You're, you're essentially a pigeon up there. You could to look down on everything and feel safe
• 4:35
  because you're purchasing all like my cat who gets up on her little perch on one of those little
• 4:40
  things and likes to be able to look down on everybody else. Make sure that there's no danger coming
• 4:43
  from above. You essentially need to make sure that the only things that could be attacking you
• 4:47
  are bald eagles, but nothing from the ground. I understand that instinct.
• 4:51
  Yeah, and also it's kind of that the princess in the ivory tower. Everybody's got to climb up
• 4:57
  to meet me. And thankfully, most of them don't make it. So I'm left alone. I can descend down and
• 5:02
  have a coffee every now and then, but yeah. It's great. It's quite likely. Nicely.
• 5:07
  The thing I admire about your lifestyle, many things Sarah, but one in particular is, what do you do
• 5:11
  all your shit? Have you got rid of all your shit? What's your where's your shit? I haven't
• 5:15
  owned shit in years, Josh. When about 35, I was in a cosmo and I quit and I took off
• 5:23
  sold off all of my stuff at what I could pack into a car and I went up to the, as you do, to the
• 5:30
  forest in the northern, up in northern New South Wales and lived up there and gradually just wore
• 5:36
  everything out. So I'm still wearing stuff from when I was 18. I'm now 51 and I just sort of
• 5:41
  rotate my clothes. So I've got one suitcase with me now and one backpack and that's what I live out
• 5:46
  of. I love it. It's so glamorous. It's so hanging away. It's so like on the road. It's so
• 5:52
  carolac, I should say. It's very easy. Yeah. So I can just pack things up and I'm taking a suitcase
• 5:57
  over to a friend's house, but the rest I'll just take with me for the summer. It'll have my
• 6:00
  tent. It'll have my little tent stove. It'll have a couple of changes of clothes so that I can do
• 6:05
  presentations, go hiking. But yeah, I've been like, I've been living like this for so long.
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  I'm daily male likes to pick up on the fact that, and let's put it out there again in case I
• 6:14
  pick up on it again. But I have about three years of underpants at a time. So I'm a big fan of
• 6:23
  that. I'm a big fan of that as well. I mean, I'm the kind of person who you're like, you know,
• 6:27
  you know, so I'm happy to be married to the kind of person who, when going on a weekend away,
• 6:33
  will take like almost comically large quantities of luggage. Like, you know, it's like almost white
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  lotus levels of like dragging gigantic pink suitcases full of like, and you know, what could you,
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  I don't even know what I would, even if you asked me to fill those things, I wouldn't even know
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  what to put it in. But what am I putting? Sausbons, what are we carrying pets, live iguanas?
• 6:55
  And so, but I, so I, there has never become a matter of pride to me that I am the member of the
• 7:01
  household who will go on a four week trip to North America in the middle of winter and only take a
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  carry on, you know, carry on luggage. But the idea of actually going as far as you have
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  and turning my entire life into that is still like, it's almost like, to me, it's
• 7:18
  imagine going fully vegan raw food for me. You know, it's like something I would love to believe
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  that I am capable of doing. And yet, I'm too much of a fool and human being,
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  homo sapien, to pull off. Yeah, I mean, I guess the difference is is, I don't,
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  yeah, I don't bang on about it. Actually, I probably do. People are fascinated by it. I was going to say,
• 7:41
  I don't know. Well, it is interesting. It is interesting. But you get a pass, you get a banging on
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  pass when people are asking you all the time about it. I think if people are asking you,
• 7:50
  then you have a get out of jail free card. If people are just joining us, Sarah Wilson's internet
• 7:56
  connection is a little unstable today. As indeed as Sarah Wilson, all the time, wouldn't you say,
• 8:01
  Sarah? I'll just banter for one moment while you're internet connection covers. I see that people
• 8:10
  are already commenting and asking questions. Sarah Peggy says, Josh, you wrote an article in the age
• 8:16
  about Israel a week ago. And it was quite offensive and very uninformed. I would like to debate
• 8:22
  this with you. Thank you, Peggy. I appreciate the offer. You'll be delighted to hear that I've just
• 8:28
  recorded an editorial about the article and its, and the reaction to the article and the strikes on
• 8:36
  Iran, which will come out overnight, Australian time. So within 24 hours, you'll be able to hear
• 8:42
  me a pine for an entire hour, which I'm sure answer all of your questions. Very controversial,
• 8:48
  Sarah, apparently, to argue that diaspora Jews should perhaps think independently instead of being
• 8:54
  perfectly synonymous with the IDF. I was one controversial. I was wondering how much,
• 8:59
  yeah, flaky cocked from that. Yeah, that's a big one. And I applaud you for putting that
• 9:05
  idea out there because it's being in the back of my mind, but I obviously can't write a piece
• 9:11
  like that. I'm not Jewish. I probably, I had to imagine what happened if I post you
• 9:18
  later that idea outside of my own private friendship circles. But yeah, bravo, Josh, I think
• 9:26
  whether people agree with it or disagree with it, I think it's a perspective that needs to be
• 9:29
  put out there because it's, it's been dangling. There's an elephant in the room and it's been
• 9:35
  big one. Yeah, I mean, it's really difficult for me to sort of speak about it to an Australian audience
• 9:40
  because over here, these kinds of things can be spoken about. You can actually have these debates
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  in the street at cafes, in public, and the intellectual side of it is debated,
• 9:53
  rather than sort of, you know, personal history on X and stuff like that. So, but in Australia,
• 9:58
  I'm very, very aware. It's just, it's extreme, it's extremely difficult territory to even venturing
• 10:05
  to, especially her, you know, a white middle age woman who's not Jewish. Yeah, yes, but do you
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  find that in France, the conversation is genuinely open-minded or is it close-minded in another way,
• 10:18
  which is that to be reflexively anti-Israel is the acceptable position and to have a nuanced
• 10:25
  position about, well, maybe I believe in Zionism, but I don't believe in the settlements or, you know,
• 10:30
  maybe I believe, like in the occupation, as long as the Palestinians are willing to acknowledge
• 10:35
  Israel, is it, like, is there grey, or is it just like, well, I mean, it's a shitty little Zionist
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  state? I would say that, obviously, like rest of the world, it's, it's changed over the last two
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  years, you know what I mean? Like, I think there was a lot more grey happening 18 months, two years
• 10:52
  ago, and progressively that's, that's shifted as, as the war has progressed. But I would say that
• 10:58
  the French, you know, they say here that if you get invited to a party, bring a good bottle of
• 11:02
  wine and a good argument, and really they're in it for the argument, they really do. I'd say that
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  as the first point, but then I would also say that what's happening in Israel and Palestine, it's
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  huge here at the moment, there's protests on all the time that are about, you know, free Palestine,
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  but I would say that the French cover a whole range of issues, and the French are able to accept
• 11:27
  that the world is in a, is a complicated and complex place. And so they're able to actually
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  hold nuance, they're able to actually discuss different world politics without getting really,
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  really worked up. So even if they've got an entrenched point of view, they don't go absolutely
• 11:44
  mental, and you know, I was watching something with two toddlers, and it was, somebody was
• 11:52
  analysing these two French toddlers having an argument, and they could barely speak French,
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  that was doing made up French, you know, and I was saying here is a cut example of two people
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  having a French argument, and the way that it works is that people don't shout over the top of each
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  other, so he's commentating, going observe, they don't shout over the top of each other,
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  they listen to this point, it robustly engage, it doesn't matter what they're talking about,
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  you know, it's fiery and worked up, but it's, it doesn't get personal, it doesn't get, you know,
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  over a certain threshold. So I'd say that's the difference, is they can maintain these ideas
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  because they're used to debating complex ideas. Yeah, I completely get that, and I do,
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  do you think it's gotten worse over the past five or 10 years in countries like Australia?
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  I mean, I don't know if I'm just wistful towards a past that never actually existed, and things
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  were equally tribal, and the time in which my parents were in their middle age, but I do have a
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  sense that in my sort of theory of the case is that it's become harder and harder for us to
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  figure out what's going on in the world because of the breakdown of legacy media and the rise
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  of social media and the splintering of all of our information ecosystems. There have been a bunch
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  of taboos on both the right and the left, the right has its obvious taboos, Israel being one of them,
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  you know, but the left has its taboos in terms of social justice and cancel culture and
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  kind of woke ideas and things that you're not supposed to say, and therefore we've lost the
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  knack of respectfully wrestling with ideas because the penalties are too high if you accidentally
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  trigger the tripwire or trip over the taboo, so we're all training on eggshells and we no longer
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  really know how to hear an idea that we hate without it feeling like a personal affront and like
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  the person who's articulating it must be not just wrong or misguided, but evil and worthy of being
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  shut down or dismissed. I'd say there's three factors because I've thought about this a fair
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  bit because you do the whole comparison between Australia and Europe. The first thing is that
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  Murdoch media obviously dominates and so you do have tribalized media in Australia more so
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  more so than probably over here, obviously it exists around the world. The second thing is
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  the absolute opulence. I think opulence basically necessitates quite lazy, flustered thinking,
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  also a lack of ability to actually hear other points of use. So you know, it's been almost,
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  well, it's been just a little over three decades of uninterrupted economic growth in Australia and
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  sure there's being slight lips and there's a cost of living crisis I understand going on in Australia
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  at the moment and it's legit for those who are actually experiencing it, but the middle class is
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  always being far more comfortable and very much protected from say the GFC, this kind of thing,
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  even COVID didn't actually have a huge economic. That's the financial crisis. That's right,
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  the global financial crisis for American viewers because I know you're still using your Aussie
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  Lingo, yeah. Exactly. The GFC, the global financial crisis. Yeah, that's it, we've got a short
• 15:06
  and everything, but that kind of opulism that comes, you know, binding boom, et cetera,
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  means that there's just not a need to actually question things and go down deeper. And I think,
• 15:18
  you know, coupled with an anti-intellectualism that has always existed. So I think it has always
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  existed. I know in the 70s, you know, of course, you know, lots of intellectuals left and, you know,
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  and for similar reasons to the what we're talking about now. And then I think, you know,
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  the third reason is that the schooling system and the whole way that, you know, the system has
• 15:39
  operated as a result of 30 years of opulence means that debating and ideas are just not treasured.
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  The schooling system here in France is like, from what I understand from my friends who've got kids
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  in it, is like the 1970s. You know, like it's strict, you must have firm ideas on things, you
• 15:58
  must be able to debate it. So kids grow up, actually, you know, debating ideas. And I see parents on
• 16:05
  those bikes, because everyone rides a bike here, or be a whole family and a bike, and they're having
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  a big old debate going down the street. And I can only catch bits of what they're talking about,
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  but they're really reasoned arguments. It'll be a three year old going, oh, but the parents will
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  go, oh, you know, and it's, that is the culture and the schooling system operates this way. So I
• 16:24
  think that everything's being kind of homogenized out. Everyone gets, you know, awards for just turning
• 16:28
  up. And this idea of robustly engaging stuff is just not part of our culture now. And I think,
• 16:34
  but the main reason is that opulence. Yeah, I think you and I have disagreed on this before,
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  because I find it a bit materialistically sort of simplistic to blame opulence. Like there's
• 16:46
  certainly a kind of a comfortable conformism. And I don't know if it's caused by opulence,
• 16:54
  or if it's just caused by the sort of ethos of, she'll be right. And maybe you need both of those
• 16:58
  ingredients in order for it to take place. You know, but I certainly know a lot of places where there's
• 17:05
  hardship, material hardship, but not broad-minded or deep thinking. And you can certainly think of
• 17:12
  places that are prosperous, but you know, but have boisterous levels of intellectual disagreement,
• 17:18
  like the northeast of the United States, or I don't know Scandinavia or something.
• 17:22
  There's something about a, like Aussies are just very concerned with maintaining an even keel
• 17:29
  and not rocking the boat and keeping things nice. You know, you don't want to be, you don't want to
• 17:35
  upset anybody. You don't want to rock the boat too much. You want to make sure that you're in
• 17:40
  with the right crowd. And I just think that in addition to schooling, the French in particular
• 17:46
  have a home life that is much more animated by the art of overboisterous conflict and, you know,
• 17:54
  almost socratic challenging of each other. And it's something that I'm very comfortable with,
• 17:58
  because my dad was a European refugee who grew up in Paris and had that whole ethos of sitting
• 18:06
  around the dining room table and debating the nature of the cosmos and, you know, the existence
• 18:12
  of God and whatever. It's also quite a Jewish thing, I got to say, like this sort of the training
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  of this kind of Talmudic aggressive engagement with ideas. And Aussies are just not on this.
• 18:25
  I mean, it may be it's an Anglo thing. I mean, it may be, but then like the Irish have it as well,
• 18:30
  but maybe the Brit stung it and maybe the, maybe it's the British strain of Australianism that
• 18:35
  lacks it. I think it is a perfect storm, but you're, I think you're actually taking things in
• 18:41
  isolation rather than the whole sort of system. Australia as a system is an opulent place,
• 18:47
  right? And so the levers of intellectual thinking, the things that actually dictate what determines
• 18:54
  intellectualism have become flaccid, basically from too much ease. That's the way I see it.
• 19:00
  Now, of course, you can take little pockets out and go, yes, there's working class sections in,
• 19:04
  you know, Paramata where they're really having great debates, sure, but as a culture, that is not
• 19:09
  the vibe. And I think that, you know, there's lots of studies that have been done to show the
• 19:15
  connection between wealth, you know, a wealthy country and a lack of curiosity. And I think that's
• 19:21
  gone a bit to do it with it as well. When I was going up in the 90s, I actually do think Australia
• 19:26
  was a lot more curious because sort of media exposed us to what was happening in the rest of the world,
• 19:31
  but we were isolated. So we always wanted to know what was going on out there. We were the largest
• 19:36
  consumers of media, you know, when I was the editor of Cosmopolitan, Australians were reading more
• 19:43
  magazines than anyone per capita in the world. And we're the biggest uptakers of new technology,
• 19:49
  because we were always reaching outwards. So I think technologies had a part to play in this,
• 19:53
  because we're not as curious, because everything comes to us, you know, sort of, you know,
• 19:58
  like this as a as a tumbling sort of vomiting of information as it does in the rest of the world.
• 20:04
  So we just don't have that that yearning to go out there and learn about the rest of the world.
• 20:10
  Yes. I mean, I think the other the other technological factor here is the fact that social media
• 20:16
  and the internet has led Australia to an overconsumption of American based content,
• 20:22
  because we're in the Anglo sphere. So we're we're inheriting or wrestling with a lot of our own
• 20:28
  issues through the prism of American culture. And in particular, I think the last 10 years
• 20:34
  has that's been damaging because America has become so hot. And during certainly the social
• 20:40
  justice reckoning, which I think also then gave rise to Trump. And like these are extremely
• 20:48
  toxic cultural movements. And for Australians to be sort of pushing all of their own ideas about
• 20:55
  big issues like climate change or Gaza or whatever it might be through the prism of American social
• 21:01
  justice or American make America great again is not helpful. And does it cause a tribal
• 21:08
  tribalism and a group think where Aussies have more up their first instinct when they talk to you
• 21:14
  or when they read a piece like my piece in the Harold and the age is to think what tribe are you
• 21:19
  in what side are you on instead of what is it that you're saying? How can I critique it? What do I
• 21:25
  agree with or disagree? Like where is the nuance? Where's the where's the space for agreement? Like
• 21:29
  how exactly do we differ? Let's you know, let's basically use repartee and discourse and dialogue
• 21:36
  as a way to communally reach some sort of higher conclusion rather than you've said something that
• 21:42
  is dissenting and you're a heretic and so you're out. Well, so you picked up on something there
• 21:47
  that I think really comes down to it was really I think really hones all of this so it's individualism.
• 21:52
  I think Australia has adopted the individualism that has you know just gone through the roof in America
• 21:59
  and we're really brought into all of that again as a result of opulence because you know that
• 22:04
  accumulative mindset works you know when there's money floating around but Vivek Murphy who's
• 22:11
  the surgeon general he wrote a book called Together it was sort of shortly after COVID I think
• 22:17
  but he was writing about how tribal kind of thinking when we're in a crisis what happens is
• 22:23
  we actually have to create another and so we really lock down into us versus them thinking
• 22:30
  and we have to create a other out there if there isn't on already and that's what's happening
• 22:35
  in Trump's America there's this no ability to be able to go we can actually be here and there can
• 22:41
  be actually cooperation with the other we've got actually create them into the enemy and that's
• 22:45
  where the scapegoating comes in with migrants with Jewish people or with Arabs as well there's always
• 22:52
  a scapegoating in those kinds of cultures which of course means that you can't actually have healthy
• 22:57
  robust community building conversations that is another factor and again it's the central thing
• 23:03
  here is individualism you know what do you mean by individualism there because I associate as
• 23:09
  something of an individualism myself and sort of a you know civilly libertarian minded person
• 23:14
  I associate a lot of the rise of group think and tribalism with a decline of the brave courageous
• 23:21
  individual and the rise of people conforming into subgroups where for me Trumpism is a populist
• 23:29
  nativist blood and soil group think about who gets to be in the group of the legitimate American
• 23:35
  versus who is in the out group of the illegitimate American and similarly the arrangement of the
• 23:39
  left over the past decade has been about micro managing the groups of historically disadvantaged
• 23:46
  marginalized communities to squabble over a finite pie for which hierarchy of privilege versus
• 23:52
  under privilege or oppressors oppressed or colonizer versus colonized gets to enjoy a certain
• 24:00
  ranking in a hierarchy of groups and for me it would be liberating if everyone was just a little
• 24:05
  bit more individualistic in the way that I understand the term but that's not how you're using a
• 24:09
  issue no I do use it in that term I disagree with you I actually do think that I do think that
• 24:18
  individualism has produced that Trumpian type of thinking which is all about individual rights
• 24:26
  it's all about me me me and that's all about certain people getting ahead of everybody else
• 24:31
  it's not about bringing everybody up together that's certainly not what they're thinking about
• 24:36
  and that individualist thinking has then observed what the work left have been doing
• 24:42
  and see that as tribal and you know really I will pay back workism and I really hate the way that
• 24:50
  it's been appropriated misappropriated inverted and so on over the last couple of years but at this
• 24:55
  core it's really meant to be about being alive to making sure that everybody gets a fair go at life
• 25:01
  and so that's a collectivist way of looking at things when you're an individualist you see that
• 25:08
  as another ring you see that as a form of tribalism and it's like well no it's about bringing
• 25:14
  everyone along together so I actually do think that hyper hyper individualism has fragmented
• 25:21
  even collectivist thinking and turned workism into a tribal kind of you know groupthink movement
• 25:30
  now of course what's then happened is that the work left has then obviously got tribal
• 25:36
  to actually you know sort of combat what's been happening so it's been a two-and-fro
• 25:41
  I'm not saying um workism doesn't have its faults it certainly has become highly problematic
• 25:48
  but we've got to remember where it all started from um so that's what I would say has been going on
• 25:53
  I think I mean I'm certainly with you I think we would certainly agree that like the whole
• 25:59
  concept of workness has now become an abused notion that the rights just uses to beat up on
• 26:06
  anything that they don't like um but the would you say for example that the French far right is
• 26:12
  individualist that the French far right is what is individualist look I think it's it's not quite
• 26:22
  as individualist as um what's happening in the US but no um because I see the far right and
• 26:30
  trumpism as as groupy collectivist are populist ideas of reframe you're right that they they are
• 26:41
  individualist to the extent that they are not universalist right they're not universalist in a
• 26:45
  traditional old school left wing sense of like all humans are created equal and we should lift
• 26:52
  everybody up and care for the lowliest among us and you know give the shirt off our own back in
• 26:57
  order to help the corporate and all that sort of stuff they're not universalist or progressive
• 27:02
  in that sense but they're not focused on the sanctity of the individual either there are all
• 27:10
  about drawing borders between groups of people and in that sense they're collectivist there are
• 27:15
  who's in and who's out who belongs here and who doesn't who has the right to be here and who
• 27:19
  doesn't who fits in and who doesn't who has an alien religion like Islam who has you know weird
• 27:26
  habits like the Haitians who are eating cats and dogs like who you know it's all about
• 27:31
  tried it's all about enforcing borders of a tried because they regard the world as having as being
• 27:37
  this globalist cosmopolitan melage of nonsense that you know is going to spin out of control unless
• 27:44
  they reassert groups but what I would say is that individualism actually created the realm the world
• 27:53
  where somebody like Trump can rise to power what he's doing now is creating a cult like our tribal as
• 28:00
  you say mindset to to win now I don't think it's about bringing up everybody together it's really
• 28:07
  about the elites it's about you know ironically given that that's what he he criticizes it's really
• 28:13
  about bringing his oligarchal mates along for the ride so it is individualism that created it
• 28:19
  and back to that diva mercy point is when you get to a crisis point then everybody has to survive
• 28:26
  by going tribal so that's what we're seeing in the US is this tribalism that's that's that's in
• 28:33
  place now before all of this was happening and things were karma you had the collectivists and
• 28:38
  you had the individualists right and in a individual unit as a you know a family member Josh you have
• 28:45
  two sort of forces going at play you have your individualism and this is how we operate as humans
• 28:51
  where we're going to look after ourselves and our our offspring and our immediate circle
• 28:57
  because that's actually in our interest however we don't have fangs we don't run fast we don't
• 29:03
  have poison in our tail the only thing we've ever been able to do to survive as a species and
• 29:08
  reach the top of the food chain is to cooperate so we've essentially lived in this tension between
• 29:14
  individualism and collectivism all throughout our existence and we have community leaders to
• 29:20
  ensure that one doesn't two out of control because when it's in balance with survivors of species
• 29:26
  and what happened since the 1970s as sort of neo liberalism started to come in is that we got rid
• 29:33
  of all of those those leaders and those sort of boundary makers I call them the the umpires on
• 29:39
  the foodie field of life so we got rid of the unions we got rid of we can even say religious
• 29:47
  leaders moral thinkers the various sort of stop gaps that would actually ensure our individualism
• 29:55
  didn't take over and stop the collective thinking preserving us so what's happened now we've
• 30:00
  arrived in 2025 without any of these umpires actually keeping the game fair it's like plate
• 30:07
  out and umpire without rules it is no longer fun it's helpful letter it goes Roman Empire you know
• 30:14
  kind of arena style um kind of battle and then you and then then what happens is you've got to go
• 30:21
  tribal that's where that's okay so that's what the um that's what sort of neo liberalism got rid
• 30:29
  of he's all those checks and balances and i mean two yeah i think there are there are two things
• 30:37
  happening happening there that you're pointing to one is the decline of the group and the rise
• 30:41
  of the individual but then i think it's actually a separate move to remove the umpires because the
• 30:47
  first thing is not just about removing umpires it's about i remember there was this book i don't
• 30:51
  if you remember around the turn of the millennium there was a book that was briefly viral called
• 30:56
  millennium and it was a big hard cover coffee table book and it was about the it was sort of like
• 31:00
  that if you imagine the Yuval Noah Harari of the time right uh and it was i remember one line in
• 31:08
  it which was they were the author was comparing the enlightenment uh to uh the discovery of nuclear
• 31:17
  power and saying that the enlightenment and individualism and individual rights um for the first time
• 31:25
  splits the social atom and unleashed the ferocious power of the individual in the same way that
• 31:30
  nuclear energy and you know split the physical atom and unleashed all that power and that i think
• 31:36
  was a welcome thing i mean i think that is a lot of the dissenting heterodox ideas that gave rise
• 31:45
  to human rights and the franchise for women and a whole bunch of other things and then enter racism
• 31:52
  but more recently i see what you're saying about the decline of fair umpires and an increasingly
• 31:58
  rigged system that has given rise that always that has left a space in which cynical people like
• 32:05
  the Donald Trumps of the world can step into it criticizing oligarchs while he himself is an
• 32:11
  oligarch criticizing plutocrats while he himself is a plutocrat criticizing the rigged system while
• 32:17
  he himself is the biggest rigor of any system criticizing you know the elites who don't listen to
• 32:23
  the little man while he enriches himself and his family at the expense of the little man but the
• 32:28
  only reason he can plausibly make the case is because he is pointing to a real thing that has
• 32:34
  happened since probably the 80s which is that the working poor have been disempowered and you know
• 32:41
  regional towns have had their hearts ripped out and the church has declined and there is destabilization
• 32:47
  and globalization has had impacts and we just haven't dealt with any of that as well as we might
• 32:52
  have and now we're suffering the consequences. So I mean it's going around in all kinds of
• 32:57
  circles but this is exactly how complex systems go and that's as you know what my latest book is
• 33:03
  about which I wrote on a sub-stark as a serialization has now been picked up by Penguin in the US
• 33:08
  um to be published next year but um I explain all of these complex systems so I mean if we take
• 33:14
  a linear moment in time sure we can have this argument that you know individualism we need to
• 33:20
  return to it because it's the thing that stops these tribal ways of going about things but it's
• 33:25
  a complex system and we've arrived precisely at this point as as other complex civilisations
• 33:32
  before us so I don't know if you know about this I've been rattling on about it for ages we probably
• 33:36
  covered at some point at one of our dinners or something but um every complex civilisation throughout
• 33:43
  history has collapsed and we are in the process of collapse we're in the sixth stage there's
• 33:49
  generally sort of six stages that have been mapped out by historians and we're in the sixth stage
• 33:54
  and this is what it looks like and it's precise it happens the same way around into rampant
• 34:00
  individualism leads to an anti-intellectualism that then leads to a essentially this uh era of
• 34:08
  frivolity, narcissism um you know fake news literally um this has happened in the Roman Empire the
• 34:14
  Mayan Empire and so on so there's a whole range of factors that uh play out after these other things
• 34:20
  have played out and it's a pattern that we the most boring predictable kind of species on the
• 34:25
  planet we we do it over and over again and we have not learned our lessons and um we're we're
• 34:31
  you know it's played out exactly as it has before and as the historians warned us it would
• 34:37
  and it is individualism that will kick it off um there's a range of different factors the thing
• 34:42
  that will actually tip is a is usually a climate crisis or and um oh what's his name Peter
• 34:50
  Peter the polyamath you wrote a book my god it's too early in the morning for me to remember the
• 34:54
  Russian polymath um he wrote a book about how collapse the thing that triggers it is um
• 35:02
  inequality inequality is the thing that will tip a civilization it's the ultimate kind of
• 35:06
  trigger point there'll be all these other things going on but it's the thing that will tip the
• 35:10
  civilization off the edge Peter church and Peter church and thank you very much that's exactly
• 35:15
  well that was one of our substakers uh Karola thank you Karola thank you Karola oh Karola
• 35:20
  yeah Karola is one of my followers and she has probably heard me quite Peter church and many times
• 35:25
  over um but yeah he works out of the Austrian Institute of Systems complex systems um and his book
• 35:34
  was a big best seller a couple of years ago but um this is how it goes and it's sort of interesting
• 35:40
  just sort of seeing how um the heterodox movement um which you know I'm I'm being a big fan of but
• 35:47
  they've gone down this whole uh I think spiral of thinking because they've got trapped in this
• 35:53
  us versus them thinking which is precisely what will tip a civilization and it's exactly what we
• 35:58
  shouldn't be doing at the moment um so I get disappointed where my my former left thinking
• 36:05
  brethren has become so anti-woad and I just don't think that's the issue I actually think it's the
• 36:11
  the upshot of what has been happening for quite a number of years now so we need to pull back and see
• 36:17
  it as a broad systemic issue rather than taking a little linear chunks and focusing on on those
• 36:23
  uh because that's exactly what got us into the into trouble in the first place um and it's also
• 36:29
  what's going to prevent us from getting out of the trouble I like that uh you're going back to the
• 36:34
  fake news in the Mayan Empire I want to hear what the Mayan fake news was what the
• 36:40
  and what you know what this information and the people who roll um you know the the the passing
• 36:47
  on of information and it's the idea of a bullshit not lying but bullshit um and you know that sort
• 36:54
  of that writer who wrote the book in the 80s on bullshit you know what he's on about like
• 36:59
  being that we were heading in this direction um where lying isn't even the problem anymore it's like
• 37:04
  an absolute disrespect for truth which of course Trump has lies like yeah he's lying there's
• 37:11
  still a connection to to the truth you kind of know that you're going against the truth uh and you
• 37:17
  trying to get away with it with bullshitting you've stuck two fingers up to the whole concept of
• 37:22
  telling anything resembling truth um and that's where we're at today yeah that's that
• 37:27
  things that is a six-stage collapse concept Daniel says on uh sub-stake that the Mayan's fake news
• 37:35
  was that the world will land in 2012 uh so apparently there you go it wasn't true it was 2012 right
• 37:40
  when was it when wasn't everyone running around with their hair on fire saying that the
• 37:43
  Mayans had predicted the end of civilization in the 90s or something yeah I mean there's been so
• 37:48
  many of these things and it did a party since it was just throw back at me um oh but it hasn't
• 37:54
  there've always been something like you saying the world's going to come to an end and I'm like
• 37:59
  yes I suppose the difference is today in 2025 we have modeling that has been done for many many years
• 38:06
  done by huge um you know think tags and institutes um showing that this is how it goes this is
• 38:14
  you know the systems are already in play I mean population collapse is probably the best example to
• 38:18
  show that there's no reversing it now you know um we are going to go through massive population
• 38:24
  declining a couple of decades and of course that's going to have a ripple on effect for the economy
• 38:28
  um for stability democracy all of that are you talking about the declining birth rates in the west
• 38:35
  the declining birth rates around the entire world um the actual population most environmentalists
• 38:42
  say that that's welcome and it should happen quicker I mean they're still having babies in Africa
• 38:46
  and Latin America um but uh the rate of increase is declining but we're still creating a lot of people
• 38:53
  yeah well why the global the global numbers about to the replacement rate um globally is well
• 39:00
  below the 2.1 required I think sorry I should say we're at 2.4 or globally it's about 2.4
• 39:07
  but it's going to actually be going down but what's important here is that some of the huge the
• 39:13
  biggest uh players in our global civilization are actually below replacement rates so South Korea is
• 39:21
  currently at 0.7 most of Europe's 1.4 and 1.6 and once you go below replacement you can't come back
• 39:29
  up again so Africa's replacement rate is going down so it's currently at four point something there
• 39:37
  are some nations that are going up ironically it is a result of malnutrition and increasing
• 39:42
  famine and poverty people tend to have more children in those times but it's a small blip that
• 39:49
  will probably them you know go back down the other way but India's only just above replacement China's
• 39:55
  below replacement so massive swaths of the pop of the world Sarah you now you're now sounding like
• 40:00
  the Christian conservatives who say that we should all have lots of babies because uh we're in an
• 40:05
  inexorable uh civilizational decline uh and I'm in forced into the position of the progressive small
• 40:12
  liberal who says well we'll we'll just import well I believe in immigration and we'll figure out
• 40:18
  where around it but I don't think it's an invalid concern but it's definitely you've got some
• 40:22
  strange bedfellows there yeah no totally but um just you're a man you can handle a hell of a lot of
• 40:27
  nuance it's not a this is no longer left versus right you can't work out the camps anymore I was
• 40:35
  you know grew up with this idea and the the population explosion poor adult Rick you know we're
• 40:39
  all doing because we're all just gonna you know eat up all the resources so people say to me
• 40:43
  isn't this great to the environment that the population's going to decline in a couple of decades
• 40:47
  well the problem is it's not going to happen soon enough to make a difference to that you know
• 40:51
  1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperature threshold that we're meant to be uh not surpassing
• 40:57
  although we're now in our second year of it um so it's not going to make a difference it's not
• 41:01
  going to make a difference to the things to to this deadline that we're on so everybody you know
• 41:06
  if you if you sort of take it again as a linear chunk in the whole argument sure less people
• 41:13
  but the point is we're not actually going to see a tangible decrease in population and we're
• 41:18
  going to hit a peak of 9 to 10 billion people in about 2050 and then it'll cut back down the
• 41:23
  other side radically fast so by 2050 we'll have gone over that threshold of climate warming so
• 41:30
  no it's not going to make a big a big difference yeah also I would just add to that to bolster your
• 41:36
  case somewhat the the reason why the population crisis is more dire than the climate crisis is
• 41:42
  because there are conceivable technological solutions to the climate crisis we're not acting
• 41:46
  on them fast enough and you know a lot of going to go around there but you can imagine a universe
• 41:52
  you can imagine you can easily imagine a universe in which technology gets us uh saves us from the worst
• 41:57
  of climate chaos you can't really imagine how technology saves us from the worst of just not having
• 42:03
  enough people like elderly and to fix the bridges and the infrastructure and the crumbling
• 42:10
  cities and especially now I mean and this is why the conservatives the Elon Musk's and the Trump's
• 42:16
  and so on are bringing out these you know bridesmaid's tail type subtility policies which is what
• 42:23
  they do made style yeah yeah but I mean but what's wrong with that isn't that consistent with your
• 42:30
  worldview one oh because firstly firstly what I would say is in hungry they did it and it made
• 42:35
  absolutely no dint on fertility um or in population replacement rates you cannot do it in time
• 42:41
  if the damage is done you cannot get back up to um replacement levels and that's being shown
• 42:46
  through all the modeling um then the second thing is that um trying to solve uh problem like
• 42:55
  draconian or wellian measures aren't going to cut it just just isn't it's not addressing the
• 43:01
  reasons why people aren't having children at the main reason why the fertility is going down
• 43:07
  is because of chemicals and uh and and sort of popular pollution problem um you know the sperm
• 43:17
  count of men has halved since the 1970s and there's projections saying yeah but that's not it
• 43:22
  Sarah that's not it it's not because people are trying desperately to have children and they
• 43:26
  said it's a combination it's because people are choosing not to have babies they're choosing
• 43:33
  not to have babies as people get richer they don't want babies as much there is that um that's
• 43:38
  an absolutely valid thing I would dig deeper and I would say they're choosing not to have babies
• 43:42
  because they're also not partnering there's a big big pushback from women going I don't want to have
• 43:47
  kids and and and we go back to the fragmentation that's happening at the moment and the fragmentation
• 43:52
  between men and women is real it's another layer tool of this um and you know this is something
• 43:58
  that I've been writing about on my sub stack is the the male violence that's going to be coming
• 44:03
  about again we're bringing in another issue here but this is this is how complex systems works
• 44:08
  AI uh is coming in and taking now you know increasingly white collar jobs and taking jobs from
• 44:16
  for men in their middle ages who have been quite comfortable and are not at all used to having um
• 44:23
  you know a change in the status quo and male violence is going to be it become a huge thing and
• 44:29
  disenfranchisement and men feeling redundant and we're seeing this play out you know in TikTok and
• 44:35
  everything young women are absolutely sort of uh fed up with men um and it's a real problem it's a real
• 44:43
  problem but look there's all factors at play here and they're all converging on a bit absolutely
• 44:48
  plastic. No I mean I but I think we've also we've we've also collectively failed to be honest about
• 44:55
  the the gender imbalance in the sense that we've made great inroads in redressing the uh you
• 45:01
  know the ways in which women were held back in the past and it has marked you as some kind of a
• 45:06
  crazed lunatic anti-theminist if you raised the fact that women are now outperforming men of
• 45:12
  so many different metrics they're graduating university and higher rates they're not dropping
• 45:16
  out of high school at the same rate they don't have to inflict the same self harm on themselves they
• 45:20
  there is a dysfunction in masculinity that is at least in part caused by the crisis of you know
• 45:26
  gender roles and to simply say well they had it coming because they ruled the roost for a thousand
• 45:31
  years doesn't save you when civilization collapses because you have a whole generation of useless
• 45:37
  young men who are infuriated and then raped. Yeah but I think you know I you can go around
• 45:43
  circles with this and I sort of debate these different things and in my audience on substack
• 45:47
  I'll get a lot of men some of whom I've seen their names here so they can they can put their
• 45:52
  hand up as they like saying well what should we do and I'm like well the thing is and this is
• 45:57
  what I drill it down to and I wrote about it in response to the adolescence movie as well
• 46:01
  was Netflix series I should say um we can drill it down drill it down drill it down but eventually
• 46:07
  we've got to get to a point where we're going to have to do something we're going to have to do
• 46:09
  something fast because young boys are suffering I totally agree with you the problem is is that
• 46:16
  women are often the ones who actually try to make these kinds of sociological changes and men
• 46:21
  are turning to me to women like me and go well what should we do what should we do and notoriously
• 46:26
  young boys especially ones who are suffering do not listen to women they just don't especially
• 46:31
  you know older women we need men men of your generation Josh to actually take charge now
• 46:38
  and so whether that's going to look like a feminist movement for men where they're actually
• 46:42
  going to go we've got to redress these ballots we're going to have to get you know institutional
• 46:46
  change happening we're going to have to get cultural perceptions changed it does need to come
• 46:51
  for men what I would say is that every woman I know if we see men rising up trying to actually
• 46:57
  help young boys and having these kinds of conversations will be their cheering and supporting
• 47:03
  I guarantee that's not true that's not true no that's not true you will because you'll understand
• 47:08
  the new ones and you'll understand that it's not an attack on you but coming back to what we
• 47:12
  were saying earlier about tribalism and groupthink and the you're either with us or against us
• 47:16
  mentality at the moment if men do try to step when men do try to step I mean it's changing a little
• 47:22
  bit but but like when men do try to step up and say there is a crisis in masculinity I mean it's
• 47:27
  happened to me a million times on the air in you know at writers festivals if I mentioned a panel
• 47:34
  or something like that the moderator or some woman takes an easy shot and says oh boohoo I think
• 47:39
  you'll be okay pet yeah let's all cry some tears for white men shall we and they get a
• 47:45
  huge round of applause that is just the way that it goes I think we're in a time of transition
• 47:50
  and this is what's going to have to happen this is what happens we're in a time where these ideas
• 47:55
  where it's sort of switching over where we're going to have to we're going to have to change gears
• 48:00
  and realize we're going to have to use different methodologies different approaches for young boys
• 48:05
  and of course there's going to be this moment of conflict where somebody on the
• 48:08
  writer's festival panel is going to go at someone like you for sure and then there's going to be
• 48:12
  women like me that going hang on no we need to be discussing this and what we need to do is
• 48:16
  bring in different perspectives and so this is this is inevitable it's a massive seismic shift
• 48:23
  this is what happens is where the ideas get juicy and interesting what I'm saying is we need to
• 48:28
  see more men like you like don't give up like women in the 1920s didn't give up on us they're
• 48:33
  out there fighting fighting fighting they gave up their lives literally so that women like me could
• 48:40
  be sitting here talking to you you know so it's we've got to remember that these things take
• 48:46
  hard work dedication and really really tricky times so this is what I said get out there start
• 48:53
  doing this now no I get it I get it and listen let me make the point clearer one of our sub-status
• 48:59
  subscribers knowledge has said Josh doesn't seem to know many good women or hasn't looked hard
• 49:04
  the point isn't the point here is the hecklers veto or the terrorists veto it's not about
• 49:10
  most women and it's not about most men it's about a dynamic that we have created in which the
• 49:15
  there are certain taboos which leave you extremely vulnerable to an attack which put which marks you
• 49:22
  as being on the other side or on the side of hate speech or something so the moment you articulate
• 49:27
  this we have a context for the bully woman the heckler woman to throw up it only takes one
• 49:35
  person out of a hundred to shoot you down and the consensus is that they're on the right side and
• 49:40
  you're on the wrong side because you represent you know making excuses for traditionally privileged
• 49:47
  guys like dumb pale-style males and they're fighting the good fight on behalf of
• 49:52
  traditionally marginalized communities like women so yeah so it's a it's a group thing thing
• 49:57
  it's not about I don't know enough great women I know I know heaps of great women the problem is
• 50:01
  that they are also afraid to speak up because they know the taboos that are associated with
• 50:06
  social justice dogmas once you go and say that the great thing thing thing and the sort of these
• 50:13
  labels and this is you know not a direct attack here I'm catching my terms a little bit but
• 50:18
  um I find that just a way that actually I think when we sort of put labels onto these scenarios
• 50:25
  these complex scenarios it actually limits the debate I actually think you know I think that
• 50:30
  people are scared and they're trying to work out these things and sure there's a dump on this is
• 50:35
  what humans do they do a dump on until somebody in the public lie like you all me or whoever can say
• 50:42
  calmly and rather than kind of getting reactive can actually say calmly I totally see your
• 50:48
  point I feel for you and and we need to probably progress this debate in a different direction
• 50:57
  and boys are suffering and we need to suck la la la la so part of what we're being challenged
• 51:02
  with at this juncturing history is also talking differently communing differently and not
• 51:08
  planning to the very things that landed us in this problem in the first place which is that
• 51:12
  adversarial us versus their tribal thinking so I'm really careful about using words like group
• 51:18
  thinking work and all this kind of thing partly because they've been misappropriated but also because
• 51:23
  it it's not helpful I think those those women you know who sort of speak up like that they're coming
• 51:29
  from a place of pain and hurt and fed up this like because like the other side of all of this when
• 51:36
  boys are not in a great place it's shit for everyone right I mean Donald Trump is a little boy
• 51:43
  tucking his toys out of the cot right and we're all having to suffer and so this is something
• 51:50
  that we've got a very mind you know women have a tough time and they go off and take drugs in
• 51:55
  you know in the suburbs and basically you know live these miserable lives man goes through a tough
• 52:02
  time and women get raped and there's violence and there's you know freaking world war three
• 52:08
  so that's we've got a band war was in mind um yes certainly certainly no I mean I take that point um
• 52:15
  you know I would also add that when when men are at a rough time they don't just rape and kill women
• 52:20
  they kill themselves that triple the rape that they kill anyone else um but the and I take a point
• 52:25
  about what's that a lot it's still destruction yes totally I mean the of course I have faith in
• 52:33
  our capacity to say I hear what you're saying and I disagree respectfully in this respect because
• 52:39
  I have a show called uncomfortable conversations that seeks to do precisely that um and I don't
• 52:44
  mean to elevate or empower the concept of group think or tribalism more than at warrants I think
• 52:50
  that when I talk about it I only talk about those phenomena in order to be able to pinpoint
• 52:56
  a part of the conversational problem that we have or the challenge that we have in order to empower
• 53:01
  people to push back against it or notice when it's happening which is that we've inherited a bunch
• 53:07
  of taboos that the taboos are being enforced by bullies who posture as uh disenfranchised uh you
• 53:18
  know seekers of justice and that it that is the that is the source of their bullying which is
• 53:25
  not necessarily an overt ability to exclude people from the public square but the ability to shame
• 53:31
  people into not believing they have it right to speak up with their own opinion and to call out
• 53:37
  what they see as being their truth because it contravenes or contradicts a set of norms whether
• 53:44
  that we're talking about on the left those will be social justice norms those might be beliefs
• 53:47
  about biological sex they might be beliefs about the ability of certain migrant communities to
• 53:52
  integrate they might be beliefs about the LGBTQIA plus community they might be whatever any of these
• 53:58
  you know indigenous Australians any of these things that are really difficult to talk about without
• 54:03
  falling into one preset camp or another and on the right they're going to they have their
• 54:09
  their whole set of taboos in many ways they're more sensory yes and much more you know the right
• 54:14
  invented cancel culture it was it was pulling off McCarthyism and you know the crusades and
• 54:20
  banning violent video games in the 80s and trying to have the life of Brian uh you know cancelled
• 54:26
  from movie theaters long before wokeness or cancel culture was even a thing so this is definitely
• 54:30
  not one side or the other but I'm I'm joining you in calling for um for greater courage in standing
• 54:38
  up to and calling out people who misuse their platforms in order to try to curtail the things
• 54:43
  that we can talk about even when they seem to be doing so for good reasons I would argue I
• 54:48
  totally I totally understand the role of that and I have championed it and supported and being
• 54:54
  and being fascinated by that the heterodox you know kind of way of thinking about things but I
• 54:59
  would say is we're now at a point where we're going to have to move on as in we need to actually
• 55:03
  find better ways because this way is not working and we've gone into an antagonistic adversarial
• 55:09
  way of thinking and you know in my book I write about the idea of molek with the aim theory
• 55:14
  concept it comes from the Hebrew Bible the the god that um would uh if you sacrificed your child
• 55:21
  he the god this you know god of molek would give you a win on the battlefield right which is
• 55:27
  the ultimate irony you actually want the wins on the battlefields to save your children and yet
• 55:31
  you're sacrificing your children anyway this is molek right this kind of ultimate catch 22
• 55:36
  situation where a small sacrifice right basically uh to get a small win as a sacrifice that you make
• 55:43
  to get a small win ends up fucking us all over and look the the ultimate example of that that I
• 55:48
  use to explain it it's not the ultimate example it's a simple example is you're at a concert
• 55:53
  and uh the first somebody in the second row stands up to get a better view and then everybody
• 55:58
  behind them's got to stand up and then the whole by the you know the end of the concert everyone
• 56:02
  standing up and everyone loses because they've got you know they didn't get to sit and be comfortable
• 56:07
  for the concert and that's what's been playing out with the AI race with the nuclear race um with
• 56:13
  pretty much everything that's happening in the world today one person got up and and made a sacrifice
• 56:20
  you know and ended up seeing us all losing and so you know this is where we're at with the
• 56:26
  nuclear race at the moment everybody's got to invest in nuclear bond we're all stuffed
• 56:36
  and this is what's happening with with kinds of conversations around the place now one person
• 56:41
  started talking um antagonistic adversarial us versus them kind of words and then everybody
• 56:49
  had to join in at that level and that's where we're at we're at this point where we're all just
• 56:53
  crippling and squabbling backwards and forwards in a really immature unproductive way and what I
• 57:00
  feel that people like you and I should be doing our responsibility is to shift that we need to
• 57:08
  yes and way of going about things rather than uh yes but way of going about yes and yes and
• 57:18
  yes and yes and and but yeah so I finished the thought no I just I I feel that we really this is
• 57:26
  the only way forward otherwise we're going to be stuck in this semantic shit this mollic kind of cycle
• 57:33
  and and nothing's going to shift and we no I look I completely I agree with you that I think what
• 57:38
  you're what I'm picking up on and correct me if I'm wrong is a sense of frustration with um
• 57:44
  small ill liberals constantly banging on about how stupid lefties are for going on about work
• 57:48
  social justice nonsense like criticizing that right and like um yeah we get it like putting
• 57:55
  phone down big corporations forcing employees to put their gender pronouns in their email signatures
• 58:02
  is a little bit extra but like we don't need to keep focusing on that when there's a legitimate
• 58:07
  threat to democracy and global civilization right here's my my only response to that as someone
• 58:13
  who has been guilty in his day of um trying very very hard to call out the left on focusing on
• 58:19
  bread and butter issues my own response to that would be to the extent that we didn't focus on that
• 58:24
  enough we ended up with the make America great again movement and Donald Trump um like I worry
• 58:31
  about the left losing its sense of universalism and its commitment to economic justice
• 58:38
  and its fixation on identity politics not because I think it's the biggest problem in the world
• 58:43
  it's not even close but if it allows a space in which the center and the center right feel that
• 58:50
  there is no left for them to vote for and end up fleeing into the arms of autocrats because they
• 58:55
  don't think that the left is making sense on a bunch of common sense issues about biology and
• 59:01
  immigration or whatever then it's a big fucking deal whether or not you put your gender pronouns
• 59:06
  in your email signature right like that for me is what's at stake what's at stake is we are losing
• 59:12
  elections we should not be losing there is absolutely no reason why Donald Trump should have won
• 59:17
  the last election in the United States and I'm not monocausal about this I understand there was
• 59:22
  inflation there was a lot you know there was Biden there was all this but at the end of the day
• 59:26
  it shouldn't be that hard to create a center left party that can articulate to its
• 59:30
  traditional base of the working class a message of economic empowerment without tying itself up
• 59:36
  in knots about whether or not transgender prisoners are going to get free health care
• 59:42
  I would say at this point in a complex civilisations decline yes it is that hard
• 59:48
  and I also get upset when people just go at the Democrats or at you know sort of various
• 59:53
  left leaning parties around the world going you've done us all over what they're in the same
• 59:58
  position as the rest of us we're all in this weird race to the bottom battle right that we
• 1:00:04
  none of us want to be in and I think rather than again pointing the finger and trying to find
• 1:00:10
  someone to blame we need to set there's no one to blame and yet we're all to blame and that kind
• 1:00:15
  of level of complexity is is a mind fuck but we need to actually accept that to be able to move on
• 1:00:22
  so so that's the only thing I would say there I feel the same I do feel the same way I scratch my
• 1:00:29
  head going more than scratch my head I you know bang my head it gets a wall going what now how
• 1:00:36
  yet we also observe Josh people getting people like AOC a hard time Bernie Sanders a hard time
• 1:00:42
  anyone who does come out and get radical and meet the times with a actual stance which is
• 1:00:51
  appropriately outraged and and revolutionaries shut down so this is where we're at we are in
• 1:00:58
  state of flux where we're going to have to accept all of these things are going on I issue the
• 1:01:03
  challenge to everybody listening out there is to not get caught up in the biification because that
• 1:01:08
  is going to be worse and worse and worse we need to have more softness more empathy more understanding
• 1:01:14
  and more hardcore progressive thinking like truly progressive thinking and actually get out
• 1:01:20
  there and collectivise again I'm not talking socialism like if somebody hits me if that I'll be
• 1:01:25
  like bloody be pissed off but it's about we've just got we've got to communicate we've got to get
• 1:01:29
  out of this prisoner's dilemma that we're in where we're all going down because we're not
• 1:01:34
  collectivising that is the only thing that kicks the human species going forward so until we can
• 1:01:41
  actually get those skills honed again in the absence of the church the scouts movement all those
• 1:01:46
  umpires on the food food field of life we're going to have to do it without the philosophers without
• 1:01:51
  the intellectuals that should be people like you and I it's going to be people like who are listening
• 1:01:55
  and she we are the philosophers and the intellectuals don't talk yourself down Sarah we are the
• 1:01:59
  modern day sages for fuck's sake well where's the process the process as our society's going to get
• 1:02:07
  look I mean one thing that and that's the tool of the people who are just joining in the middle
• 1:02:12
  of the throws at this fabulous conversation you're meeting Sarah Wilson if you're coming from my
• 1:02:17
  side of defense you should subscribe to her because she's someone who is actually up for having
• 1:02:21
  these conversations and for trying to interrogate what it means to live in the 21st century um so do
• 1:02:27
  that and if you're coming from her side of things uh and you like this then obviously subscribe to
• 1:02:31
  uncomfortable conversations uh this is my whole meta having conversations with interesting people
• 1:02:36
  about some of the most provocative ideas uh fearlessly and hopefully not tribally um you're
• 1:02:41
  your mate Karola um says uh I wish more people could have conversations like this listening to
• 1:02:46
  the other person's point of view and trying to find common ground and respectfully disagree great
• 1:02:50
  so go subscribe to both of us you'll get a double dose um Daniel says is pot oh that's a question
• 1:02:56
  on population collapse I'm gonna come back to that before before we wrap um but I wanted to talk
• 1:03:01
  about that's something you said earlier Sarah on bullshit because I think this is important to
• 1:03:08
  really underline the whole dictator's playbook like the Putin script is you don't
• 1:03:18
  require people to necessarily believe that the lies you tell them are true but you so muddy the
• 1:03:24
  notion of truth you pointed it this early as I'm just reiterating what you said but I just wanted
• 1:03:27
  to clarify it that you're so muddy the whole idea of there being such a thing as true truth
• 1:03:34
  or truth truth or falsehood that people kind of just abandon their fidelity to even thinking that
• 1:03:40
  it tears that they should care about that question and I think once you do that then people are
• 1:03:46
  totally malleable and one of the things that I really worry about both politically and also
• 1:03:51
  culturally is not just the bad actors the obvious bad actors like the Putin's and the Trump's who
• 1:03:58
  clearly are full of shit but the ways in which we are encouraged socially and culturally and
• 1:04:05
  politically to pretend that we believe things that we don't really believe or that we may be sort
• 1:04:11
  of believe or that we believe to the extent that we believe that we ought to profess our belief in
• 1:04:16
  them but like be brave grow up here like stand up and assert your truth and like you were saying
• 1:04:26
  about the French three-year-old on the back of a bicycle engage in some back and forth and train
• 1:04:31
  ourselves to disagree and to throw ideas around in a free space where we know that we're not going
• 1:04:36
  to be demonized for making a mistake I think that's critically important. Yep Hannah Arendt if
• 1:04:41
  anybody is listening and wants to kind of read some good philosophy out there that's very relevant
• 1:04:45
  for the times Hannah Arendt wrote about this and she was obviously she was Jewish and she escaped
• 1:04:53
  Nazi Germany went to Paris then she had to escape Paris or France when the Nazis arrived and she
• 1:05:00
  went to the US and she eventually came back of course and wrote what's his name Ickman Ickman's
• 1:05:09
  Ickman in Paris right? Yeah so she went to the trial of this of this Nazi general and it's
• 1:05:19
  where the banality of evil phrase comes from because he was such as every day guy who was saying I
• 1:05:25
  just follow orders blah blah blah blah anyway she writes a lot about what was happening back then and
• 1:05:31
  it's very you know pertinent to what's happening today but one of the things she said is that
• 1:05:37
  bullshit the absolute evasion like undermining of truth is is basically what brings a society down
• 1:05:45
  when you can no longer no there's no stable stakes in the ground that you can hang on to as a culture
• 1:05:52
  as a society and so and and then it becomes just you know a molecule kind of all you know no
• 1:05:59
  holds barred kind of thing situation you know it's that you know it's like the sporting game with no
• 1:06:06
  rules it just becomes very very unfun and dangerous yeah yeah I think it's a really fundamental
• 1:06:15
  thing that you're picking up on there Josh that when we don't no longer care about truth we're fat
• 1:06:22
  where we're here and you know what it actually doesn't take a huge amount of courage it's one of
• 1:06:28
  those things where what do they say about courage I sometimes say this to my kids so I should
• 1:06:33
  probably get it right that courage is not not feeling fear it's feeling the fear and doing it
• 1:06:38
  anyway and that you the fear actually is greater before you've done the thing and then once you're
• 1:06:44
  doing it and you're you're learning and you're you know in the aftermath even if you fall flat on
• 1:06:49
  your face it's never as terrifying as before you do it I think we'd all be a lot better if we were
• 1:06:53
  just a little bit braver conversationally I should not try to give to people to actually go to
• 1:06:59
  that point is I describe it as like when you're climbing a tree as a kid you know it's always good
• 1:07:03
  to put into kidnanologies but you know you climb the tree and you can stay close to the trunk right
• 1:07:09
  and and it's all cozy and the groups group thinking and everybody is kind of a bit foggy headed
• 1:07:15
  because it's a bit suffocating and and everybody's trying to play it safe right you only really start
• 1:07:21
  to come online as a human when you go out on the branch and you go out to the furthest limbs and
• 1:07:26
  you're out there amongst the foliage and it's only there that you can look out and see that
• 1:07:31
  you're standing in one tree amongst many and you can see that there's a world out there and there's
• 1:07:35
  a whole range of complex like interconnected systems going on and you can actually feel the breeze
• 1:07:42
  and then you've also got to fend you've got to use all of your primal muscles and and cognitive
• 1:07:50
  abilities to stay stable on this sort of you know wobbly wobbly platform out there you know in
• 1:07:57
  the breeze and that is how I see going about a life you can hang out at the trunk and just get swamped
• 1:08:05
  and fed these boring suffocating ideas or you can go out on the limb so to speak and you can actually
• 1:08:11
  you know a bunch of different philosophers and thinkers call it going to the edge you know
• 1:08:17
  Pima Chodra and the wonderful Buddhist nun she says the edge is where you're meant to be right at
• 1:08:23
  that point we're meant to be at that point fighting for things leaving things being agile fending I call
• 1:08:30
  it fending in my last book we're meant to be drawing on those very human skills to feel fully alive
• 1:08:37
  and as you know an artist you know I sort of very much know I need to go to that edge to really come
• 1:08:43
  up with ideas they're going to connect with humanity you and as a provocateur you know you need to go
• 1:08:48
  to that edge we all need to go there and that's actually where we need to be at the moment to fight
• 1:08:54
  the things but also to most importantly and this is the most important fight we need to be doing at
• 1:08:59
  the moment is the fight for our humanity because that is what has been eroded here the bullshit the
• 1:09:05
  fake news but equally AI AI is really and this is the gift of AI actually it's actually getting us
• 1:09:13
  to think about what makes us human all right so if it's not our work if it's not on the ability
• 1:09:19
  to seduce somebody you know online if it's not this if it's not this what is it that makes us
• 1:09:25
  human we're having to ask that now because we have been stripped of everything else you know it's
• 1:09:30
  happening now not because we're not fighting for it so it's a really interesting time to be alive
• 1:09:38
  and I'm with you Josh like find your courage because this movement is going to we happen to be
• 1:09:44
  the adults born into this time in history it is a difficult time in history it's like game on
• 1:09:50
  we've got to get out there we are the adults in the room we're not the children we're not the children
• 1:09:55
  no one's going to come and save us this is our moment I love it I love that that analogy about
• 1:10:00
  the tree as well and about the edges are on on substax zero right in permaculture you always work
• 1:10:08
  from the edges because that's the most fertile areas that's a nice analogy serena says try doing
• 1:10:14
  a masters in Australia nobody wants to debate a thing or to disagree which is a sad indictment
• 1:10:20
  perhaps a vacuuming you know in Australia and Shelley says Australian opulence and individualism
• 1:10:26
  like what you were talking about before Sarah is explored wonderfully in the social research
• 1:10:30
  a humacized book the way we are lessons from a lifetime of listening yeah he's a really interesting
• 1:10:35
  writer and I mentioned I said that I would oh also shout out to Gary who is in Minneapolis and
• 1:10:42
  our hearts got out to everyone there after this assassination Gary says here in Minneapolis a
• 1:10:48
  person just killed a leading politician and her husband also severely worded another politician
• 1:10:52
  and his wife in their homes in the latter case their little daughter managed to call for help
• 1:10:57
  we've entered into necropolitics and brutalism we have plenty of guns and bullets but too little
• 1:11:03
  deep connection and conversation here here Gary and lastly I said I get back to Daniel who says
• 1:11:10
  is population collapse coming back to your point Sarah a problem for civilization or just for
• 1:11:14
  growth economics yeah do you see a future in which there's a like a stabilization at a lower
• 1:11:23
  zero zero growth rate well it's not even a matter of whether we're heading there whether we like
• 1:11:30
  it or not like that's the thing and most modeling shows that will probably stabilize around
• 1:11:37
  about three to four billion it'll take a couple of hundred years some
• 1:11:44
  we go Sarah man we did well oh so I just lost you halfway through that brilliant speech I don't
• 1:11:50
  know how much the viewers got so just assume they got it but maybe just reiterate the five
• 1:11:54
  hundred things that you were saying so yes population decline is going to be a huge impact on the
• 1:11:59
  economy so yes that is the system that'll be mostly impacted which is why the bros and
• 1:12:05
  and everyone are really worried about it they need people buying their their items you know they
• 1:12:12
  need our attention they need more attention are going into their products but it's going to have
• 1:12:17
  a ripple on effect for absolutely everything else you know if we don't have tax payers then who's
• 1:12:24
  going and we don't have young people coming through the system who's going to look after us when
• 1:12:28
  we're older we're going to have a hold of sick people who's going to actually look after the hospital's
• 1:12:33
  infrastructure you know it's going to have a huge I mean the main thing I worry about and this is
• 1:12:38
  what I talk about in my book the mass civil unrest element in all of this is the thing that we need
• 1:12:43
  to be keeping an eye on so we as humans are very resilient we have handled all kinds of disasters
• 1:12:50
  throughout history all kinds of declines and so on but the problem is we it's it's about how we
• 1:12:57
  handle things and because we've lost all of our collectivist infrastructure we are actually we're
• 1:13:04
  like an open wound without an ability to form a scam we're we're basically so exposed to what's
• 1:13:10
  about to hit us we've got no skills we've got no ability to go and meet our neighbors and cooperate
• 1:13:16
  and collaborate because that's what we're going to need so to answer Daniel's question yes it's an
• 1:13:22
  economic issue but it's a civilizational issue very shortly after and that's what let me let me let
• 1:13:29
  me let me let me end by saying can you do away with the word collectivist because it comes with
• 1:13:35
  so much baggage I know that you mean it well but it also means communism and socialism and a whole
• 1:13:41
  bunch of other stuff that you don't intend it to mean communal collective maybe okay I'll do that if
• 1:13:49
  you couldn't drop the group thing to deal it's a deal what's a better word for it because I will
• 1:13:56
  don't mean to necessarily come into our into our conversations maybe that's a good yes yes what's
• 1:14:02
  what is a good synonym for a group thing I choose last missed that last bit sorry oh my brother
• 1:14:12
  I was just asking what is a good alternative word for group thing
• 1:14:27
  I think I think we're losing each other aren't we which doesn't matter all right okay I love
• 1:14:32
  you Sarah next time we'll be in person and we will actually be able to entertain each other in
• 1:14:37
  the flesh thank you to everyone for for watching yeah we'll wrap it up subscribe to Sarah
• 1:14:44
  Sarah's substacks subscribe to my substack do it now before you forget just subscribe to
• 1:14:51
  the free versions and then you can always keep us in your pocket thank you Sarah thanks thanks to all
• 1:14:56
  lots of love Sarah so sorry about the internet that's okay