Latest / PlasticPills Critical Theory & Philosophy / Pill Pod 7 - Cancel Couture
Transcript
- Guys, I have a good intro for this week, but I'm gonna waste it now that Eric's not here, because you're not going to have any clue what it's about. You too, Eric will know, maybe some of the listeners will know. Hello, and welcome to the Pillpod, a show where a bunch of us nerdy ass PhDs come together to discuss critical theory and philosophy. We are indeed the only turn based philosophy podcast on the Internet today. I need to adjust here. We were going to discuss power, and we're gonna do kind of a series on power that's going to move into neo Marxism a little bit. I think we're gonna get born up of that. What do you guys think about him coming? I don't know. I don't know. And he's surprisingly down to earth for Hegelian right, always the critique right, and yeah in terms of in terms of knowledge of the hegel to Mar's move, which is not just a move that just all of a sudden happened. Of course, he's very knowledgeable in that space. Because we don't want to do no sophomore Marx yeah here, yeah, So we need a X. We need an X porner is the kind of person you basically is able to unpack like the Science of logic or DOS capitol page by page. So if we wanted to talk about that, he would definitely be somebody we should get on. All right, So look forward to Borno almost done his PhD. On left left Hagel something left hag and we're gonna have to We're going to see some time zone because he's in uh London, I think in the United Kingdom. Dude, don't dox him, shy, I'll ask him before we put this up. So we had this great episode set up. Then on a huge storm hit Toronto. Now our lights are flickering. I got a warning set your internet might be unstable, and Eric has been eliminated. He's been killed. We're hoping not for a total party kill here. So I had I had given you all roles in our turn based philosophy podcast. We have radical left inquisitor Paladin Matt mcmadush. He's back from the Wars, back from the Wars with the all right, looking for an adventure. Eric was the Circle of Signs druid, returning from the mountain to warn us of impending ecological collapse. Like Zarathustra nice and Victor. You are hostage negotiator politics guy of the barred class because you have a rich, sexy voice and very high charisma. Wait, pels, what does that make you? Then? I'm the gm GM. Okay, now you're gonna you're gonna get tied up in my state apparatus and I'm going to do whatever I want to you. Now, wait a second here, I thought we were anti turn based. That episode never came out if you remember. Oh right, okay, So if you didn't hear us last week, it's because we released our first Patreon only episode and we have patreons. Yeah, which is a patrons Oh patrons. Sorry. Yeah, when we when we recorded the episode, we had no patrons, and now we do have patrons. So you're still going to get at least probably three times a month free content here and then the other half of that's going to be behind the Patreon wall. If this is your thing. If it's not, don't worry about it. If you're happy with the scraps that you are being given good stuff. Thinks we're gonna we're gonna bounce back and forth between there and here and as a as a big podcast listener, I can say that. I I've never been a patron, so I respect all people who just want free things because I want free things. But for those of you who are patrons, that's awesome. And we're gonna say the stuff on Patron that we that are are we doing Patreon? Okay, sorry Patreon. We're going to say the things on the Patreon that our bosses can't hear, that our employers will never find out about. So if that's an incentive, there you go. Yeah, we can really let loose on those Patreon episodes. Speaking of listeners, are you guys interested in hearing where our listeners are from? Because I could, I could open up the stats here. I'd love to know where they're from and how many how many we have had In the last couple episodes, they're going up. They're like each one kind of goes up as another one goes up. So if we do country breakdown, I can even do like States breakdown. But oh wow, this is cool. Tell us some cool, tell us some cool, especially because we were shitting on the South last week. Yeah, I'm curious do we have a lot of any Southern listeners for that episode? I actually got to response from a Southern listener who was, let's say, let's say, and he was, he's actually a person an acquaintance that in my personal life. So he listened to it, and he mostly agreed with it. Sounded like but he also said that we were kind of buying into a media narrative about the mainstream media presenting the South constantly as a race war when he says, when you live here, it doesn't actually feel like that. So I mean, that's good critique of a critical theory podcast. We can critique ourselves. Yes, most of what we know about the self, or at least I could speak for myself. What I know about the South comes from the news and the elections. And you know, most of what you hear about the seuth is oh, yeah, they elected another pedophile or or teacher's union or something like that, or just immigrants to go away. To be fair to Alabama, they didn't actually elect Roy Moore. They almost elected Roy Moore. They were considering, carefully, deeply considering. But I will also say that perhaps the divide is more accurately like a rural urban divide, because I think, like, maybe this is what your listener was pointing to that obviously, like if you're in a southern city, like, it's not at all what we're describing, right, if you're in Dallas, I mean from Houston now, but he also lived in one of the Carolinas for a while, so I mean he's got much more personal experience for us. But he said, the thing we got most right was the renegade and the reason that they're so distrustful of government and you know, building bomb shelters or whatever, is because they think the North is going to come back. They're on their way back. It's just a matter of time. That's fun That's pretty funny. That would have been the thing that maybe I would have expected to not be true. Yeah. No, I have a buddy of mine from Texas. Actually he was in my PhD program. Very smart, go I should say, But yeah, he used to say the same thing. Right, if you go into like rural Texas, his family you know, is a dark skinned, right, you know, people will look at you funny and like there's a lot of animosity. But he said, the weird thing is people in Houston almost overcompensate for the image Texas has internationally by being like ultra ultraliberal right, like said victor. The other victor said last week was they have an image problem, and then some people try to overcode that image problem by being extra extra Sakari. Well, and the revision is history about the Civil War. Yeah, okay, so we don't hate the South, just stop electing people that you constantly elect. So what other fee have you gone? Any other like feedback from from about that episode or no? No, I was, well, I don't always check the comments that we get. But anyway, looking at the stats, since we're talking about it, I can just click on here. I'll click on the US here, like what is the majority in terms of country countries? What the top four are? United States, Canada, Australia, UK. Yeah, okay, cool, as you would expect, they're the wealthiest English speaking countries. Next is Germany and next is India, which I well, that's interesting. There's a lot of English speakers though there, so yeah, there's probably more English speakers there than there are in Canada, and absolutely Canada and Australia combined, and probably also more than the United States. Maybe probably. Actually that's a good point. Yeah, I mean I didn't really know if we could look that up, but I imagine there's got to be tens of millions of people. If you if you include, if you include, if you include English as a second language, spoke, what's spoken, Well, I guarantee you India as more English speakers. Then well, even if you have a conservative estimate of ten percent, that's still like one hundred million people. That's still one hundred and thirty million or something like that. Yeah, Germany is our highest non majority English country on here. Cool, Netherlands, Hop Hop, Philippines, Brazil, Sweden, Greece. That then after that it kind of goes into sub Wow, that's interesting. That's about to be better to promote in Mexico. Yeah. And then when you break down the actual our top two, which is US Canada majority of surprisingly perhaps California considering we're Canadian podcast. Second is New York, but these go by population Illinois, Texas, Michigan, and then oh we even got some. We got one in South Carolina, three in Georgia. So sorry for shitting on you, but Florida is is this all for this specifically the America podcast? Oh no, no, this is the entire thing. So they've heard us. At one point. In Canada, we have BC Quebec Ontario, represented. Well, not a single listener in Saskatchewan or Manitoba, which is fine because we don't want the many. But what about Alberta? Oh yeah we got some Alberta. Yeah, probably just probably just tune in to hear us ship on Trudeau. Yeah, maybe Maritimes. Only Nova Scotia. Actually, okay, so where was somebody at Dell? We're growing, we're small, but how many listeners overall have we do we have so far? Like in our in our episodes, I mean it's probably still in the hundreds, right, Like per episode we're reaching four thousand total. Most episodes are between four or five hundred. Cool. That's pretty good. That's pretty cool. So thanks for listening wherever you're from, We appreciate it. Yes, thank you. I have a random question for Matt. Actually, I'm curious because he's he was mentioning I got to do better to promote this podcast in Mexico as you'll be starting to teach is this Will you tell your students that you're on a podcast or not? I'm curious about that decision. Yeah, I know, I probably will. I mean the university that I was at in Mexico used to encourage me to talk to my students about like any kind of interviews I was doing or books. I mean, they didn't have to listen, and it wasn't extra credit or something, since that would be pretty self serving. But I don't know. I always like to tell them, like, look, interested in whatever it is that I'm doing, or whatever it is that we're talking about here, there are ways to explore it more thoroughly, So come and support the pillpod. Yeah cool. There are some things we say that could be interpreted negatively by employers, particularly, Yeah, that's what I mean. We'll have to be and be more careful in the non Patreon episodes and on you. Once you're even trying to advance a little bit, they kind of go through your profile to find out, oh, is this person going to get canceled in like ten years? Yeah, we might get canceled in ten years. Oh god, maybe speaking of cancer saying what do you want to do that? Yeah, not do not canceled, but check out the cancel article, or do you want to talk about the other podcasts first? I think we could talk about the cancel article first and then move on to that. I mean, the two are related, but this is kind of fresh meat all right, So generally today, I mean, we had this whole plan. That plan is still gonna happen. We're gonna talk about fu Co versus Neo Marxism versus Delluz because we've done some Deliz content lately, talk about state and power. But since Eric's missing are Druid and he's particularly fond of fu Co, we are instead just going to shoot the shit today and hope that you enjoy it. Of Course, we're gonna keep with our theory philosophy, but we're going to look at some more pop culture stuff because we're trying to fit ourselves into a niche. And the thing about being an academic or a while you're in school, as you still are victim, I'm sure you know you don't know anything that's going on, like I resurface from your dissertation research, and like you don't know anything that's happened in the last three four years. So I'm just learning right now about the alt right because I know about Jordan Peterson. Everyone does. Of course, he's our dad, so of course we know him quite well. But there's all these other guys like the Shapiro and the the who's the really flamboyant guy he got canceled, but he used, oh, I don't know, put him in no, No, I think he's talking about like that guy with like the bleach blonde hair who he was like it was a bright guy. And then though Neonopolis is the one, and what ended up happening with him is he made some comments about how when he was younger, like really young, fourteen thirteen, he slept with a bunch of men and it was a good formative experience for him. So bright Barber was willing to tolerate the Nazi stuff and the racism, but when he seemed to be implicitly endorsing almost sexual pedophilia, that was the line they drew. Yeah, yeah, totally totally. At least at least we know they have a lie. Who would have known? I wouldn't have thought either, but you know, that was where it is. Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily put him in the same box as Peterson, but but yeah, sort of related is I think that's at is that we pick on Peterson and he's never gonna listen to this, obviously, But the reason we feel like he's our rival is because, first of all, he's an academic Second of all, he's from Toronto, and third, this is our Jewish song. So if we want to put it in psychoanalytic terms, we want to separate him from his objective desire because we actually have the same objective desire, which is being recognized for your intellectual work. Except we think his intellectual work is shit, yet he's getting recognized for it. So it's we're taking pleasure in trying to violate his his experience with his own object of desire. There's there's your lacan. Yeah, he's he's been. He's been pretty mute for a while though, of course holmas do that. You must have heard about how sick he got, and he was in Russia for a while. I think he actually just went on his daughter's podcast. He's in Serbia. Yeah, he's in Serbia. That's it. Yeah, he has actually written something recently. I was going to say he published an op ed in the National Post talking about the controversy over that chemistry teacher at Rock University. I'm not sure if you heard about that. No, I don't think I did. Maybe you could. So this professor released an article and it included some basically like hits against cancel culture. And the way it was that the university was moving from a quote meritocracy to one that was all about trying to include I like to focus on diversity and so on and so forth. And Brock basically said, you know, we don't approve of this. And the journal that had accepted the article withdrew it right. And it was really odd because the article was in chemistry and it was just these kind of random political comments, you know, taking shots at PC culture. A long story short, of course, Peterson wrote a National post about how this was a disaster and how you know, the vultures were swooping in, you know, to try to ruin this guy's academic career, and you know, it's reflective of the broader cultural enemy. And he also compared himself to a Greek prophet, which I always really enjoy. You know, does you know who Cassandra is, right, Yeah, Iliad Cassandra. Yeah. Now, she was a prophetess and she basically warned the Trojans that the Greeks were hiding in the Trojan horse, right, and nobody listened to her because she'd been cursed to utter the truth about the future and have no one listen. By the gods and of course you know Troy Fell and there's all that kind of stuff, right, But yeah, I know, Peter Senters reached the point now where he's comparing himself to people's to people in myth, which might be slightly better than him comparing himself to Christian prophets. I don't really know. You know, I shouted the wilderness and you did not hear me. So did this? So this this chemistry professor, so ye had to withdraw all that stuff. Yeah. The journal basically said that they were going to withdraw the article because it wasn't up to their standards. And it also includes did needless politicization of what was supposed to be chemistry piece, right right, which is kind of yeah. I mean it was to a chemistry journal, he did, yeah, go to a chemistry but the examples he used or something more like shots at PC culture. Yeah, he just included some random comments within the text that was supposed to be about some topics in chemistry, saying things like, wow, the university used to be meritocratic, but it's no longer now they all focus on diversity, hirings, uh, and free speeches acreasingly suppressed. I mean the guy is fairly old and crotchety. From the sense that I got, I don't know what's going to happen to him. My understanding is that he hasn't faced any kind of actual reprimand from his from his work, beyond a couple of the officials saying like, we don't consider this behavior acceptable. And I don't imagine he will actually face any more serious reprimand than that, and you know, having his article get canceled. But I mean that's the thing, right, the screen, bloody murder, and actually nothing substantial happens to these people almost ever, It's just like people calling you names on Twitter and obscure Canadian podcasts calling you addicted people. Some people do end up like maybe this guy nothing happened to him. But some people I guess have been like fired for various things. But it's not like a terrible it's not like an endemic like very common. No. I mean, I'm not particularly fond of woe culture right for a lot of reasons, and I do think that there's a problem with it. It's overprevalence at the university. I also do think that these commentators who suggest that it's somehow a mortal threat to Western civilization aren't just overstating I agree, they're kind of that's exactly right, almost overstating it to the point of comedy, right, Like where you think, like this is, you know, a minuscule, a little problem that you've somehow transformed into something tagged him out to the emergence of fascism or Soviet communism or whatever, right, and it's almost conspiracy brain right. Yeah, Well, to some extent, it almost seems like both both sides, like both extremes, right, the ones who think it's like a huge problem, maybe like the most woke, Like they kind of use each other to sustain their own sort of fantasy, oppositional fantasy that they're like fighting the good fight. So I think both have an interest in making the problem seem worse to some extent for their own sort of jewey soans to bring it back to Lacan in a way. Yeah, I think you're exactly right. I mean Morener could talk a bit more about this next week, right, But there certainly is a kind of dialectical antagonism between the two, although in this case it's much more conscious dialectic right, where one side deliberately tries to antagonize and the flame the other to rile up attention for themselves, and then the other side responds in kind. Right, Yeah, for sure. Actually, maybe that's a good time I could bring up this Harper's letter on justice and open debate. Yeah, rather than speaking in generalities. We have this open letter signed by presumably important people. And what happened there? Yeah, so, like this letter was released and signed by a bunch of pretty famous authors and academics, including Margaret Atwood, Noam Chomsky. I don't know who else is on here, Like a bunch of people. Some of these names I don't recognize because they're like literature. I don't know Francis Fuki, I'm a Malcolm Gladwell for getting count J. K Rowling. Jk Rowling. Yeah, a bunch of people. So I don't know. It's only three paragraphs. You haven't ready yet though, No I haven't. But that's a strange assortment of literati. So just for me and anyone else, why don't you explain it from the beginning? Oh do you think I should? Uh, well, it's only three paragraphs. Do I'm to just read it and then you can you can react in the moment. Sure, We've already talked about how you because you got the second voice, you got to read it dramatically, richly. That's what I was just gonna say. Ye, you got that sexy magisterial voice. Let's hear it. Apparently this is the first I've heard of it. But okay, okay. So this was published on July seventh, so yesterday from more recording. This on the eighth right, now, a letter on justice and open debate. So it starts. Our cultural institutions are facing a moment trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformance. So what I've heard so far is we're in touch, but don't worry, we're really out of touch. Okay. Sorry. As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second the forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion, which right wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intelerant climate that is set in on all sides. The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted what we have come, what we have come to expect. This on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture, on intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues into a blinding moral certainty. When this is just a refrain of you hear all these words in this order all the time. But is this people's experience actually changing or is it just because these people are on Twitter all day? I think you're right. I think I think you're right that being on Twitter, certainly it like intensifies and magnifies the experience. I mean, it makes things seem worse than there. But I also think that there is like there has been some sort of a shift as well. I think it's a bit of both. I don't know what you experience this and like your life, No, I mean in academia, like I mean, I hang around with academics, but I mean probably not with my non academic friends too much. I don't know, Matt, what do you think? Yeah, I was going to say, I think one of the reasons why this has assumed so much attention recently is the stakes are a lot higher for some of these people, right, Unlike public broadcasters or even academia directly academia, I should say, people like Twitter, like our worms, like Twitter, our Facebook, create their own rules and they respond to public pressure. Right. So, if you are able to actually create a campaign that gets enough momentum to cancel someone, that can have a serious financial impact on them as well as an impact on their ability to disseminate information. Right. I mean, if you want a good example of this, Miley Uanopolis is one that I actually took some satisfaction of because he was put it off a lot of these mediums and now he's compaigning that he's basically penniless. Right, he lost all of his sources of income, and to be fair, he deserved that for being a racist Nazi. Right. But you know, I can understand why people are concerned about this, since the stakes are really high for a lot of them. Do I think that this is a big problem beyond the kind of digital public sphere let's call it that. Yeah, I mean, every stereotype usually has some basis in truth, right, And if you spend enough time in academia, of course you'll meet people who kind of configure to a lot of these kinds of liberal and right wing stereotypes. Right. I knew when I was doing my PhD someone who would take issue if you're a white dude listening to rap, for example, right. And I remember I was telling her about how I was listening to Kendrick Lamar or something. She's like, well, you have no experience with that. I'm like, oh, really, I'm not a you know, a dude you know, selling crack in New York City and you know, come on, hey, la, come on la, yeah in La. Yeah, but at least we know you listen to Kendrick Lamar. So it's confirmation that you're not racist because those things are incompatible. Hey, no, he's fantastic, right, yeah, absolutely no, No, But you see, if you look hard enough, you can find these kind of stereotypes. And I do definitely think that there's sometimes pressure to conform for a certain kind of ultra woke expectation. Did I ever feel like I wasn't able to speak my mind in an academic setting, I would say no, right, certainly, not directly right. And what I feel like I would not be able to speak my mind if I were a tenured professor, Like a lot of the people who speak most vehemently on this issue are No, I don't think so, right, And I think one of the ironies is people like Jordan Peterson or Stephen Hicks or Gad Sad who constantly come back to this issue, far from being silencer, amongst the most vocal people in the entire world. Right, So I do think it's a problem. No, I'm saying I do think it's a problem, and I said that we should address. And I also think it has a debilitating impact on the left because a lot of people fixate on the kind of most annoying features of left wing activism and they're turned off by it, right, But I also don't think it's nearly as big a problem as a lot of these right wing individuals try to make it out to be. My thought about this has to do with solicitation of opinions, because if I'm in an academic environment and my opinion is unsolicited, then there's no requirement for me to give it. But it sounds like what these people are saying is I should be able to give my opinion on all things at all times, regardless of his present. And when you take that into the Internet, it just doesn't make sense because on Twitter, that room is everybody. But to me, this really reeks of their moral indignation that people are not soliciting their opinions anymore. And how dare someone come to question my judgment? I'll have you know, I am an esteemed member of the intelligentsia. Yeah, we just paspic there. I was gonna say, I think it just disappeared. Well, we were afraid this was gonna happen, that the storm, the storm would knock out our communications. But yeah, like, well, let's carry up for a couple of minutes and then hopefully I'll come back. I mean we can. I can keep reading the article because I just opened it while he was while he was talking. But I mean, yeah, I consider this to be a little bit silly in the sense that they just assume that their opinion has to be heard all the time by all people, whereas seriously, it looks like like materially and physically, a lot of people have been minorities, particularly I have been barred entry from these spaces intentionally, And that's not at all what's happening. This isn't like the reverse of that. It might be an overcompensation, it might be a pendulum swinging, but you know, I really see this as a classist document, and it's not a classes in like bourgeoisie proletariat, but this literati class that is upset that people are in their space and that people are telling them to control their volume. I guess, yeah, I mean, And there is often a kind of implicit conservative bias because a lot of these people don't like to admit their own political propensities when it comes to a lot of these debates about political correctness in the curricula, right, and there's this argument that while you know, we need to teach people about you know, the fundamental text of Western civilization. And if we don't do that, they're not getting an education that's worthy of the name. And my going to response to that is, well, why do you think that? Right? I mean, you can learn a great deal from Confucius that you would also get an Aristotle. But if you decide to swap out Aristotle for Confucius, you also get the added benefit of having students who have some familiarity with Chinese philosophy now, right, And you can compliment that by making sure that the replatos that they have some familiarity with Greek philosophy also, right. If you're looking at twentieth century literature and you swap out George Orwell or Chinuwa chebe right, things fall apart again? You know, would you be losing something? You know, certainly people everyone should read or Well, But then everyone should also read a chape as well? Right? Uh? And people don't really have a lot of good arguments against this, except to cry foul and then often try to implicitly imply that, well, these works from other cultures are substandard. They're just not as good as what we don't even think that's what this letter is saying, though, the letter on a justice and open debate. To me, it just looks if you scan the list of names at the bottom, these are just come back. Well, we need you to finish, We need you to finish reading. But okay, I'd like to finish read. We're talking about your opinions being solicited, and these people on this list, it looks like to me have forever had their opinions solicited. Yeah, you're okay, Okay, here we go. I think these are the people whose opinions are suddenly not being solicited, and they tend to be you know, boomer boomer. Yeah. I just want to finish up by saying the reason I brought up curriculum and kind of what appears on them on the curricula, right, is because it's indicatory of the more general mindset these people have, right, which is that oftentimes they try to present their concern as just being about freedom of speech and trying to make sure that every side is heard. And a lot of the authors in this letter, I think that's exactly what they're trying to do, and I commend them for that, right. But for many people who book this kind of rhetoric, what they're trying to do is push an implicitly conservative agenda, usually one that has very problematic elements and maybe not like what I just talked conservative, but just center, you know, normative. They want to maintain normalcy and Trump freaks everybody out. I think, Yeah, I think that's right though, that there is that there are some people who are using and that's what makes it difficult to maybe you guys were talking about this one my internet cut out, but like that's sort of sort of what makes it difficult to fully agree, because you know that some people are using this sort of like anti wokeness as a cover to really like push through their more conservative like agendas a little bit exactly. Yeah, Yeah, I think that's exactly right, right. And the thing is, I have no problem with freedom of speech and freedom of expression and try to allow as much dialogue and as many opinions as possible, right, And I think that's a very progressive standpoint, and I do find it really frustrating that someone on the political left don't actually share that opinion, right, And I think it's damaging to progressive causes. And not only is it damaging, but it paints us all with a negative brush, right, Yeah, would you have to extricate yourself from it's saying that. I also don't think that a lot of the people who push for this kind of rhetoric are all that interested in freedom of speech and dialogue for its own sake. Rather, they use these as a cover to try to advance their own kind of agenda, because if they work goot in positions of authority, they're probably try the best, as best it could, to marginalize our silence. A lot of the voses, which is always this thing like, sorry, what's it called? They sit it in the article. I'm pretty sure Western culture there's amalgam of you know, the best and brightest that the world has ever produced. This is the thing we have to defend. It's under threat, Like come on right, yeah, I mean I think so, Actually, maybe I should read a little bit more here, because because I think they start, they start getting more specific about the kind of consequences they're worried about. Okay, so they say here, okay, we uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter speech from all quarters, but it is now all too common to here calls for swift and severe retribution in response in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of con reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces. Books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity. Journalists are barred from writing on certain topics. Professors are investigated for quoting works of literature and class. A researcher is fired for circulating a peer reviewed academic study, and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of her proper reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk. Aversion among writers artists means who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus or even lack or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement. Man, this is just the baldest declaration of self interest. I'm afraid that my book deal is in jeopardy, so you all have to change. Although not to be just too contrary in here, there's definitely something too, that term disproportionate response in some cases at least probably not to any of these people, but for those with less less of a platform to defend themselves saying something it probably didn't mean in context mistake. In fact, I would say that that gets to the core of Like my biggest problem with so called cancel culture is like that it's sometimes in like it's more extreme forms, is overly preoccupied with I guess what I would maybe call a logic of retribution punitive like about which I don't like. I just don't agree with retribution on any side. That's why, like this could be a totally different conversation. I'm basically a prison abolitionist, Like, so I don't believe in retribution as like a logic for making society better in any circles. So I don't think that like firing somebody. Obviously it's a different situation completely, Like I don't want to get in a whole thing about prison abolition, but like, just in general, I don't agree with that logic of punishment for like things that are disproportionate. I think that, like if we want to make people buy into ideas sort of a mindset of retro abution is the wrong way to go. So yeah, when people get fired or silenced or whatever. Yes, it's not like some criminal penalty, but it still seems like a disproportionate penalty for something that is, like, as you said, pills could be a pretty small mistake. I mean, what comes to mind in Canada is I mean this might have been a bigger mistake. I actually haven't followed up on the story, but there's this Canadian journalist, Wendy Mesley. I don't know if you guys heard about this CBC journalist. Apparently she like used the N word during a meeting. I don't know if it's Oh yeah, I don't know if it's true to like, I don't know if it was true that they quote that she quoted. She said she was quoting something and yeah, like that's a mistake, shouldn't do that. But I think it was Martin Luther King's letter from Birmingham jail, wasn't it. It was something like that. Yeah, it was something like you shouldn't repeat the word whatever. But like to you know, a lot of people were calling for her to be fired, and I think I actually listened to another Canadian podcast that's about media criticism Canada Land. I don't know if you guys know it or familiar. Jesse Brown, Yeah, I hear that. Yeah. He had this this journalist Desmond Cole, who's like a well known I guess you could say a little bit on the more woke side, and he was on discussing what they in that podcast. Instead of calling it cancel culture, Desmond Cole was arguing to rename it consequence culture, and he was sort of arguing, well, yes, there are consequences for doing things. But in the in that episode, he was in my opinion, a little bit unreasonable and was calling Wendy Mesley like a racist disgrace, and you know, and Jesse Brown, the host, was asking him, well, you know what is if she just made a mistake in this one incident, you know, like we should talk about what the proportionate response is. And he was kind of like, well, why is it my job as a black person to like decide these things, and like she's a racist disgrace, like end of story. Yeah, he said this on the podcast, and I was just like, okay, that's like a little bit obviously we don't know what was said, but proportional punishment definitely has to take context into account, especially if she's quoting doctor King. Yeah, so, I actually haven't followed up on the Wendy Mesley story, so I don't know if it came that it was actually worse. But she was initially saying that it was really just something that she was quoting. She was quoting someone else during a meeting, and there was there was a person of color in the meeting who took great offense, and it became like a larger controversy. And I don't know if she's if she's going to get fired, but that was sort of what a lot of people were calling for. Yeah. Well, I mean, the thing that this article entirely leaves out is that this is not like state infringement on the right there freedom of speech. Really, these are just like these are brands, journals, publishers, news networks, schools, you know, seeking the response that's correct in the eyes of their consumers. So ultimately, these these signatories are complaining about market decisions, right, And the only thing you can really do to curb market decisions is legislate. So I guess the subtext of this letter is that the state protect them from their own employers. Actually, that's what I wanted to say, and as I think, actually this becomes most problematic because I don't like the idea of private and particularly the market actors trying to regulate people for behavior they engage in in their private lives. Right. I think that's a really worrying extension of the kind of logic of the market and to interpersonal relations. And this isn't to say that I think we should let people off the hook for making racist statements in everyday life, or that we should somehow say, well, just say whatever you want, have a free for all, and there should be no consequences. I completely agree with that. Who what was the name of the journalist you mentioned? Yeah, And I think there is a sense that people have gotten away for too long. We're saying bullshit racist stuff without there being consequence, and that's probably why there's a lot of this viha in state now. Saying all that, though, I don't like the idea of working for wherever it happens to be, you know, Walmart or college or university or you know, Amazon, saying some things at a bar one night to a friend of mine, having someone record it, and then all of a sudden I lose my job because of that, because as else I was saying, the company is brand conscious and doesn't want to be associated with that. But I think it's important detail too about the brand consciousness. And I absolutely agree with both of you that, But I think like that, you know, these are private market actors. But I think what this you know letter actually gets right is that the brand consciousness is motivated by fear, right, because like the Twitter's fear has has has magnified certain voices, so that like a company is just terrified that there that there's going to be some like viral Twitter like story about how they, you know, defended this employee who was a racist, right, And even if it was something yeah, yeah, like we're not going to boycott youth for union busting or having the predatory corporate practices or maximizing profits over the interests of your employee's health insurance. But if you have a racist employee, now, then you're fucking done, right, So they're so so they're so their fear is obviously making them make decisions that are maybe disproportionate to what actually happened, and that creates a retribute of like kind of outcome because people are being disproportionately punished for something that's motivated really by a private corporation's fear of being perceived a certain way because of the magnified discourse on Twitter. No, but I think that's really right, Vic. I mean, a lot of the problem, the problems that we see right now are consequence of the kind of magnification that you see in digital culture, right, And the reality is that in many of these circumstances, people are able to dog pile on those that they oppose and rally support because it's such an easy thing to do. And the problem with that, of course, is that digital culture doesn't include, it doesn't encourage looking at context of statements or commentary or books very extensively. You're able to kind of take this little one incident and then say, look at this, this is bad, and then everyone's going to draw the same kind of opinion from you, as long as they follow you in some kind of meaningful way, right exactly. And I don't think that's even necessarily just a left one phenomena, right. I think that that's true on the political right as well. And the irony is that people at Jordan Peterson or Dave Ruben or Ben Shapia have all profited from this as well, right when they sit there and they're like, look at these umb sgws on campus, see all the stuff that they do, Right, this is why the left is all crazy and you shouldn't pay attention to them when I think a lot of us are actually willing to have a reasonable discussion with their political opponents, yeah, and are interested in reaching out. It's just so easy to tar an individual or even tire our whole movement with a single diresh by taking one thing out of context and presenting it as emblematic totally love who that person is or what that movement is about. It's frustrating for me too, and you, I think, are speaking to this to Matt, like both of us are kind of pretty like far left but liberals, Like they're like both of us I think are liberals, And I think that what's frustrating from our perspective is the way, like this whole rallying cry against WoT culture has been taken up by people like Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin, And it's like frustrating because you see like people online and maybe even some of our listeners right who are maybe attracted to the because they like the critiques of the unreasonable wokeness, so then they'll start liking Ben Shapiro. But what always annoys me about those podcasts and those episodes is that all they do is talk about how annoying the woke left is, but they're never like defending their own ideas, which if you actually go and talk about, like what are Dave Ruben's actual ideas, they're like that from like a left wing liberal perspective, it's like you have bad ideas, and like all you're doing is critiquing in the left for like some of their worst examples where we can agree that some of the woke left says things that are unreasonable. But then if we actually turn around and examine your views, Dave Rubin, or your views Ben Shapiro, like you guys have shitty views, and like, as a left wing liberal, like I want to be able to talk about and critique and in some ways I want to even speak specifically to maybe some of our listeners who like those people, and like maybe this could even be a niche. Part of a niche for our podcast is like I want to, you know, take some of those people who are who are who are maybe like some of the things that Ben Shapiro says, but like bring them laugh, let to the left and be like, you know, like don't you know, don't be don't be seduced by their like sexy critiques of some of the unreasonableness on the left. And remember that ideas that are actually good and make sense are still on the left. Yeah. I mean. Contra Points had a really good article or sorry, a video on this recently when she was talking about cringe culture right, and she talked about how a lot of these anti social justice activists make an argument from mimicry and mockery right where basically, you know, you pa what one or two social justice activists are saying, and then you mock it. And then people assume that this is just emblematic of what people on the left are, even you know, on the far right, what liberals think, and they say, oh, you know, that's just ridiculous. Why whatever I have to engage with that? Uh, and from paragons of reason and logic, this is a pretty superficial way of actually trying to argue against your political opponents. Yeah, exactly, And you really see this like when they actually have to debate someone who knows what they're talking about, right, Like what Jordan Peterson how to debate Slavo Jiujak And Jesus just asked him like, well, who are these postmodern neo Marxist namee one. It was like, oh, like, I don't know, They're everywhere, right, Where are they? It's like, well, they're everywhere, right, They're invisible. They exist in the walls between us listening and policing, you know what everyone's saying. And you know, on the same thing with Ben Shapiro when he went on that pod deast or sorry BBC a couple of years ago, right, and somebody asked him like, well, don't you think you've contributed to this culture of hype of partisanship, you know, giving you written books like how to debate a Leftists and destroy them and so on and so forth. He just got off in a huff and left because he didn't want to have to bother with that. Right, Matt, I'm not accusing you of this because I just saw you do it, and our listeners did not. But you said paragons of logic and reason with quotes in your fingers, and yeah, I completely dismissed the right without engaging their ideas. So you guys can you guys can do that. You can be the paladin. I'll be the But we do that because we're where we both do politics. You're not you're you're you didn't study you didn't spend your PhD studying political because yeah, that's where you're intel. The ocuators have to come from. But I'm trying to get back to the article, though, what do they say we should do about this? Because we've talked about, talked about I just want to interject one second. I'd say it's not that I think that there aren't really intelligent commentators on the political right. I actually think Peterson has some very smart things to say, and I think people like Patrick Denein or Peter Lawler were You're brilliant political theorist for what it's worth. Yeah, what I'm talking about are what are sometimes derogatorially called logic bros. Right people who invoke reason and logic quite directly right as terms, almost like they're a tantric mantra. And if you just say I'm reasonable and I'm logical, and I'm reasonable and I'm logical enough, uh, that will make it so and my kind of argument is no right. If you want to be reasonable and logical, then make reasonable and logical arguments. I let them stand on their own from what has obviously known the intellectual dad web. Or actually I would like to add, like I think the paradigmatic example of this is like this Stefan mall and You, right, who you do debate Matt and like, Like, I think actually there's I would recommend our listeners if they're interested, Like there's a guy on YouTube who recently debated Stefan mall and You, and I think he got him. He actually like managed to get Stefan mall and You to like a point to like embarrass himself a little bit in a way that maybe in your debate, like there wasn't exactly that opportunity. His name's rationality rules. I don't know if you've heard about this guy on YouTube. So he destroys no so so actually his like debate was quite good though, Like I was impressed with him and like got and basically got Stefan mall and You to the point where he was like, I don't want to talk about this, like this is boring, let's change topics. When he was like beating him clearly it was pretty funny. That is funny. So what is this? Uh, but David Brooks, Matt Iglacias, Harry Potter author, what do they say we should do about it? Okay, so there's a final short paragraph. So they say, this stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers, we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve that possibility of good faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won't defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn't expect the public or the state to defend it for us. No, but they are asking for this state to defend it for them, Because these are the publishers and the newspapers and the universities are the ones that are firing. That's the only real consequence other than being called, you know, a cucklib or whatever. What what are we? What are we called by the all right soy boys? Is boys? The thing? All right boys? So we're going to get called a soy boy, you know, boohoo. But the people that are firing them are these their employers basically, or the people that are buying their manuscripts. And they're saying, we don't want state intervention, but they're asking for state intervention. They want it to be illegal for you to get fired for saying something on Twitter. Because all they do, all they is say things on Twitter. So what are they Well, I don't know if they actually want that. They don't say that. Yeah, I don't know what they call it for that, then what are they doing. They're just giving a manifesto that people are supposed to retweet. Yeah, I think they're trying to make an argument. They're trying to contribute to the to the public dialogue that they so that they're trying to defend here and say like they're trying to persuade other people and maybe persuade like publishers or owners to not be scared of, like the Twitter mob that might you know, try to job, which is a totally useless thing to do because you don't. I mean, this is totally backfar right, like the the didn't didn't there the the one thing I heard in reaction to this, and even Eric was sort of speaking to it on our on our on our Patreon discord. You get subscribed to the discord. Yeah, if you if you're if you're if you're a patron, then you can be on the discord and chat with us. Uh. He was saying, how like I like it, there's a there's there's a reaction, uh that there you know. It's like he was saying something like, well, who cares, like what these rich authors think? You know, Like it's they're hypocrites because some of them have apparently called other people out. And I've noticed that that's been someone from one of my colleagues also sort of repeated something similar like they're like, oh, it's funny, how like some of the people on this list have called other people out themselves. And I was kind of like, I don't know, I get it, but I always find the hypocrisy argument like kind of weak. It's like, you know, like who cares if someon hypocrite it's just because al Gore flies a private jet, right, Like who cares if he's that doesn't say anything about whether climate change is we should be worried about it or not? Right, And it's like just because some of these people have called people out says nothing about whether calling people out is bad or not. I know, hypocrisy, like what about it is? It was one of the thinnest arguments that you can level against someone, right because you don't have to engauge with the substance of what they're talking about. All you have to do is say, well, this person blacks integrity, so we can now ignore everything that they have exactly. And that's some of the reaction that I've seen on Twitter of this, uh, like maybe one of the more popular reactions to this statement. Yeah, I say, I will say this though, I have called that people for hypocrisy before, right, because sometimes it does just become so glaring and so much fun to observe that that almost impossible. It is just the temptation, right, of course, it is. It is nice to to indulge in some hypocrisy coling it doesn't just feel just like that the celebrity I Take Responsibility video, except sort of from the other direction where it's like your opinion is unsolicited, no one asks for it. Maybe some people like this, I don't know, maybe some people want to I shouldn't say that it's unsolicited. It's certainly unsolicited for me, and I wouldn't be reading it if you hadn't said it to me. But yeah, well it's unsolicited. But like, I don't know, why should that matter, Like, I mean, the Twitter is full of unsolicited opinions, Like, ah, that's true. Maybe that's a stupid argument, but it's like I've heard I've heard that argument as well, by the way, like this unsolicited thing, it's like I don't care. I didn't want to hear what like J k Rowling thought of this, And it's like and then they're saying that on Twitter. It's like I didn't care about your opinion about that either, Like I don't know. Unsolicited opinions are what Twitter is. I have a few I have a few people I follow on Twitter that are on this list, but they're only on there for like the I roll factor. So I noticed Jonathan Hate Oh yeah, I don't mind John. He's an eye roller for me. And same with that David Brooks. David, I think he's a New York heimes Calmnists, but they brought him in because he was the not Trump conservative and then he writes all this shit about like refinding his faith after getting divorced and stuff like that, so very like very boom or self help funny. And they have some younger people though, like Coleman Hughes. He's a writer for Collette. He's at Columbia and his primary focus is on race and racial reparations. Right, he's probably only about like twenty two, twenty three he signed a letter. Oh yeah, yeahah, he's a yeah, he's he's an interesting guy. Yeah, Coleman Hughes. I think actually what we should do just to kind of move the conversation along a little bit and actually kind of foreground our discussion of power is what do people think about the kind of implicit moral assumption in this which is that the liberation and debate will allow the best arguments to come to the fore will enable us to speak truth to power. Because there are these really kind of millsy and undertone to this piece, right, which as well, if you allow a free flow of different arguments in the marketplace of ideas, the best arguments will ultimately prevail, and individuals be convinced by them, and society will move forward. And this has always been extremely useful for people in marginalized communities. And I should say I'm permitted to this ideal, right. I think that we need more public deliberation, right, and we need better communication and dialogue and so forth. But I do also think it's really naive, and I know some of the authors there, like Nomchomsky, I've written a lot about this right to assume that if you disallow people to talk, the better argument will always carry the day. And I can't think of any instance in history where that's happened. Going back to somebody like Socrates, right, Socrates had better arguments for why it is that they shouldn't execute him, and the Athenians went ahead and did it anyway, yea. And I think the same is true today, maybe even more so, right. I mean, there are all kinds of instances I can think of where I've thought, well, this person had a better argument, the public seems convinced by someone else, probably just because the other person was more famous, or they had more attention, or they were more rhetorically flashy or what have you. Yeah, I mean I agree, I think that like when it comes to this question of the I mean, of course, it's a fantasy that if people have more information and more opportunities to debate, they're gonna the best argument is going to win the day. I mean, there's so many factors, but I guess I would still say that it's certainly better than the alternative, right, because the alternative would be that some centralized power is controlling the narrative. So like it's not so much for me, it's not so much that oh, like if we have that I believe in this fantasy, like, oh, if there's free debate, then we're gonna have the best idea. It's like, no, of course, not Like human beings are fallible and idiots, and there's a lot of twenty twenty year olds. We'res stupid, as we talked about last podcast, right, and it's there's way too many twenty year olds, way too many exactly. So it's just like people are stupid and they're not Then of the twenty year olds get when they get horny, then they just start watching Jordan Peterson on your tube. So, so the point like, so obviously I don't believe in that fantasy. But to me, it's just it's not about that. It's not about whether that's plausible or not. It's more about, well, what's the alternative, And the alternative seems worse to me, Yeah, which is presumably that you have something controlling debates, and that just seems obviously worse. No, I completely agree with you, right. I mean, the notion that there'd be some state committee or academic committee even right that adjudicated what is worthy of hearing and what is not worthy of humoring seems really frightening to me, right, and pretty reprehensible toil. To me, that's the only end of a manifesto like this, Like they just want everyone to read it and go, oh yeah, if we stop canceling people, then the better ideas will come forward. Or you're saying, okay, let's get an apparatus in here to make sure that people are defended from being fired by WestJet for being racist or whatever. Well, which is exactly why this statement is like kind of lacking a little bit, because it's just lacking a little bit because it may be is it does buy into too much bit of that fantasy, because I certainly doubt that anybody on this list would support some centralized committee like making sure that people don't get fired for we can look forward to next week and kind of what I had prepared for talking about today, And that's about power. People think that power is this, you know, floating miasma of something that one group has and that one person doesn't have. But the only possible time this is, like Fukuo's main insight, the only time you have power is in very particular interactions that sort of develop into a large pattern or an institution. So saying something like this is useless. In my opinion. There's no prescription for changing any particular mechanism anything that brings power about. They're whining about the power of the Twitter mob, and there's only one way to curtail the power of the Twitter mob, and that would be legislation. Do you think Twitter is going to batting people? But that would be directly opposed, diametrically opposed to Twitter's interest. Well, the tides of opinion do change from time to time, like I think this is but you're right, this alone does nothing. But I don't know, yeah, And I should say there is an irony implicit within the letter itself, right, which is that a lot of the people who signed it also made sure that they included their academic credentials or other designations professional expertise. Right. They didn't just rely on the substance of what they're saying to make their case more than what they're essentially saying is we're important people. Here's why we're important, and this means that you should take what we're saying to have some kind of authority, right. Right, Well, we can't really decide whether they decided to include those, right. It might have been the well then Harper's did, right. I mean, I don't have a problem with that, right, But it does speak to the kind of apolim point that you're making, right, which is that you know, it's very difficult to extricate the conditions of power from any kind of discourse, right, Which is why I also think, you know, while we should certainly emphasize the importance of rational communication and dialogue, we should always be aware that there are many different ways in which communication and dialogue and reason can be distorted by power, by ideology, and all that other kind of nasty stuff that we talked about. I'm also curious reading the names on this list, you know, one I was thinking to myself, there are definitely some people who would have signed this whose names aren't on here, and I wonder if that's intentional, right, like, because they for example, Jordan Peterson, right like, yeah, so I'll bet you that was an intentional it's like we don't want his name on here, or I don't know, Sam Harris maybe actually I didn't actually check hard enough to see if he wasn't on there, but I would imagine that there's certain names that are maybe that they don't want to be associated with, and they're like, yeah, let's not even offer those people to sign it. Yeah, the most outspoken people whose brand is only this thing are not included on here because they don't like that their brand is always bad thing, exactly, exactly exactly. That's a really good observation. Yeah, I mean really, Coleman Hughes is probably the one who's closest associated with that, since I'm most closely associated with that, since his primary thing is writing for collect and I think he's had a Sander Wright think tank right now. Yeah, yeah, I can't imagine that Noam Chansky or Josella Carnell or Samuel Mooyne would really want to align themselves with those kind of IDW types exactly. So like yeah, like obviously, like Ben Shapiro's not on here, and I'm sure he would have signed it. I'm sure Dave Rubin would have signed it. I'm sure all those people would have signed this. Fuck, you're probably gonna go down, stat Fan moll and you signed it, yeah, probably, yeah, But that really speaks to what actually being said here, you know, the subtext, and the subtext is really a defense of their very particular class interest in terms of this literaty intelligentsia class and what they see is normal, and their normal is being solicited and their opinions being sought out, which is also just blatant self interest. And I don't know if you could call that conservative. I guess it's sort of conservative in the sense that they're trying to return to normal. But this is no, no, no, no. But I think you're right. I think it is appealing to some sort of like like norm of maybe like in some ways to me, it's almost like, let's, you know, not forget the values of you know Berkeley in nineteen sixty eight or something like that, you know, the like the like open debate and challenging authority with debates. Last week we talked our last time that we talked, Victor, I brought up Alan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind. So this sounds exactly like his chapter because he's freaking out about black activists at University of Chicago in the sixties. Like in the sixties. This was although although although Alan Bloom has an agenda which is not one necessarily debate, his son, Francis Fukuyamas on here. Oh it's the other way. Oh yeah, his son, Yeah, his son is on here. Yeah. Friends, yeah, yeah. No. But I mean this is the one problem that I had with the article, right, And I think we all kind of agree that you are free to u speech, open dialogue, opinion, trying to make rational arguments all that. It's extremely important, right, and you know, to a certain extent, we're all committed liberals that way. The problem that I have with I mean liberal in the broad sense, not necessarily the liberal in the sense that you support X, Y or Z policy. Right. But you know what I meant, what I think is problematic with this is that if you're going to try to make the argument that we need to maintain a tradition of liberal open mindedness and dialogue and a robust public sphere, then that's fine, But then you should also try to engage in in depth analysis of why a lot of those moors aren't appealing to people any longer. And there are a huge number of dimensions to that that critical theory, to come back to the theme of this podcast can actually open up for you. And what I find problematic about a lot of these people, not all of them, because I think Nom Trowski and your silo Connal semim Win all do good work on this thing, but a lot of the authors that I see there just don't even bother doing that. They're just like, well, we should maintain this norm of liberal openness, and nothing has really changed since the nineteenth century. People communicate more or less the same way that they used to, and if we just got back to what worked for timeless centuries, then everything would be hunky dory. And I kind of argument as well. No times are changed, and if you want to talk about maintaining liberal norms, then you also need to talk about how to rejuvenate them and make them relevant in a digital era, right, where there are new forms of power that interfere with communication. Yeah, I think that's the material analysis here is this is all a reaction to media technology, because all other modes of communication are now media technology. Right. If if you read a book, you're tweeting excerpts and tweeting the title, and if you write an article, you have to tweet to it, you have to link to it. The only way to be published at all is to do it through these digital media. Yeah. Yeah, Like I almost want to evoke a Dorno here, right. No. Stephen Pinker is one of the signitors to this letter, right, and he's famous for his endorsement and Enlightenment reason and how things are always getting better, And he says, I can't understand why people are rejecting the Enlightenment on mass It seems like we're turned to on reason. And I think we have to insist here on the Adornium point, which is that no, you know, reason has or Enlightenment reason, Liberal reason as it was articulate in the nineteenth century has pretty serious problems inherent within it. And that doesn't mean we need to reject it, but it means that we need to look at what those problems are seriously in depth and then try to find a way to reconstruct and rejuvenate them for the twenty first century, rather than just by saying thinking, well, things were great back then, why don't we just return to the way things were right, which is what is a fucking brilliant point. I think we should bring that up pretty early next next time, and especially when Born is here, because Adorno's I don't know on Hartkarmer's dialectic is basically blaming Hegel more or less, but you know, cont Hegel for the unreason of the Enlightenment. But this is this is really my area of critical theory, and I think Eric who's not here, but pointing out those internal contradictions that maintain a whole normative system. And this is an argument. This are article is an argument to maintain normalcy and normal sea, which happens to be benefiting them. I don't want to say we should dismiss it because it's hypocritical, but this normalcy is benefiting them, so it's in their self interest to defend it. Yeah, right, right, Take somebody like it takes somebody like Coppermass or Max or Max our Horkheimer, our Axle, honest, right, any of these people who are really about, you know, renewing communication and so and renewing reason and rejuvenating it in the twentieth and twenty first century. Right, none of them would just say, like Pills talking about right, well, what we need is return to normalcy, and if we just go back to the Enlightenment, everything will be fine, right, which Chopski is also sometimes applause. Right. What they say is the Enlightenment had some seriously shitty problems inherent within it. There was an emancipatory kernel to this idea of reason as a liberating force. The project is not completed yet, because the material conditions and the cultural conditions which we live are always going to warp reason and dialogue in ways that aren't beneficial. Right, And I just don't I just food sometimes find that a lot of these analyzes don't really try to tackle any of that, right, They just have this kind of nostalgic vision of what life was like back then. Well, I mean, I just echo a lot of what you guys are saying. I don't like, I don't really have all that much to add other than like I think it's it's certainly like a debate that like continues to frustrate just because I think but like, in some ways, the extremes of both sides of the like so called wokeness versus non wokeness debate are so loud, so like everything we've been saying, Yeah, it's just that's frustrating because they're the loudest, and both of them kind of distort the reality of what's actually happening and make it seem like I'm a lot more of a severe situation than maybe I think it is, even though like as an academic myself, I would say it probably maybe seems the most real to people who are actually in academia because that's still where it comes up more often. Maybe you guys would disagree, but like that's where it seems most real. Potentially, Sorry, can I ask you something, Victor? This is something actually I think we do all address what do we think is a good model for reason dialogue and open debate, And let's not say this podcast or the three of us, right, you know, is there somebody out there we could point to you, like, who does open reasonable interesting debate about complicated issue? Well, story of my internet cutot for a second there, I no, no, I said, who can we think of a model outside of this podcast? You are my model, Matt. I would never I would never go talk to those people ever. Well, thanks, I appreciate that. But now, outside of this, can we point to someone of prominence, right that dialogues and presents constructive arguments about what's going on, doesn't kind of issue complexity, and I can kind of serve as a model for how to engauge in a reasonal debate in the twenty first secon. Yeah, I mean it's a really good question. It's a really good question. I mean, I agree, I certainly agree with pills that you do. You certainly do a good job. Thanks. But yeah, I mean who who's is the famous one that I I don't really disagree with most of what he says? I agree, I think he I don't think he censors himself for it, although he although like the reason Oh god shit, someone did you did you ask that question? Because you have someone in mind? I know. Actually I was gonna say as well, so you beat me to that, right. I mean, I think he does a really good job bringing things down to earth, and he does absolutely one hundred percent engage with his political opponents, pretty much engages with everybody. Right, my internet just keeps on cutting out here for a second, but I'm back there. We're still in storm in storm zone, I guess. Yeah. So so Matt actually agreed and said is good. Although the one thing that is that's like could be sometimes frustrating about him is he might like refuse, which also may be a good thing about him. Actually he kind of refuse to argue the point. Yeah, but like you've seen thousands of times how futile it is to argue the point, especially especially against you know, that that brand of intellectual dad web people. I think we should talk about this again. We were prepared for it, so we didn't have any like interesting quips or actually theoretical background to bring it. I should speak for myself. I didn't know we were going to talk about that. That's an interesting topic to me, It doesn't really matter all that much. I'd rather create spaces for speaking rather than complain about the spaces that I have to talk to people I don't like in. Maybe your opinion will change after we get canceled. I wouldn't even know if we got canceled though, Like, I don't know, I don't have Twitter notifications, Matt, would we have to protect I guess the only circumstance when it would actually matter is if somehow this podcast got big enough or we had paid sponsors and then we started losing sponsors because people like rallied them. What do we say that's offensive? I don't think we say anything this offensive. I'm just saying, you know, like if we I don't if we got canceled for something that we said so far, I would be shocked, because well, we laugh at people's kind of like sort of absurdity, and they're like sometimes we'll laugh at certain groups, is like irrationality or unreasonableness. I don't know. I guess yeah, twenty year old. I mean I think by twenty year olds. I think the only condition which would happen is honestly, like a kind of like a James Gun scenario, somebody drag dragged up something we said back in the day and use that to try to hit us something with bro I have been on Twitter for ten years, and before I started posting, started posting YouTube videos, I had like five tweets. It was one tweet every two years average. Yeah, anyway, we hope you don't get cancel that we're going to do our best to defend you at SENSE since you actually have a job too. Yeah, well only for the first year. Then once you get like tenure track official, then you can say whatever you want. So there you go. So this is only the start of a discussion more to com We're moving into a series of on power as I've probably mentioned twice already, but we're it's going to end up in Marx because I think we need to establish our position on Marx, because if we want to have a position on the Twitter, the Twitter land, everyone there has a hot take on Marx, and I think I think you might be a little bit overrated, and I think you might be putting too much stock into his relevance today. Not that he's overrated for his own time, I would never say that, Yeah, but I think saying, oh, we can just parallel one to one apply Marxian ideas into the conditions that we are witnessing. Nobody says that. Not even Lenin said that. So we're going to do mars cool with people who know Marx better than I. Definitely better than me. Oh yeah, better than all right, so here we'll say goodbye from Matt. Are what did I call you again? You're an inquisitor, a radical, You're left inquisitor, paladin and of course the bard. Thank you. I think we should just do you should do some lectures and then we'll post them up as like sleep aids. Yeah, just you just reading, or you could just do reading, just like read I should. I should read Marx's Capital or John Stuart Mill just just read it in your in your I don't know how to describe it, your base. I could whisper, I could do We could do like an SMR. Oh that's a hot search term on YouTube. Yeah, yeah, we should do it. We could put it up on our second YouTube. We should. So are you gonna Are you gonna put that up yet? Or what? It'll happen? People are asking for it, and you're asking for it most of all. So it's a good ode. I think it's a good idea. Cool. That was fun, but it was fun. Be careful for the lightning outside if you're in the city, and Matt, careful, be careful of America. Are you are you in America right now? No, I'm still an audio. Be careful of Attawa. Then yeah, you don't want to. You don't want to. You don't want too many people to see you on the street in Autaway. You never know what can happen by the city, in the entire goddamn world, right like, no, I mean, you may lag around a little bit too hard out there for supporting their charity, the charity, or they'll pull you into an alley trying to bribe you, you know, offer the hook it for a pedophile ring. Any anything could happen there, all right, bye, guys, Shall we start the rest off? Yes, yeah, it is HM.