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Premium: Scott Adams - From The Archives · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  Get a few months. This is a preview of an episode which paid subscribers a
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  getting a load better after paying at the moment until February. If you haven't
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  bothered getting your own dedicated premium podcast feed and if you want to
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  hear all of today's episode then you can go to UncomfortableCompossations.substac.com
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  slash subscribe or slash listen if you want to be taken directly to where you
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  can generate your own personal premium podcast feed. Scott Adams is really
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  interesting. He's the creator of Dilbert which is the one of the most
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  successful cartoon strips in the history of the world.
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  2000 newspapers at Rannon or Rums in not sure. In 65 countries in 25 different
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  languages and Scott Adams was sort of pressient about Donald Trump. He noticed
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  the strength of Trump's persuasion and persuasive powers back during the
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  primaries before Trump even had the Republican nomination and so Scott Adams
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  became something of a kind of contrarian
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  Trump are in the creative class are sort of a lone person singing
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  Trump's if not praises then at least attributes when others were
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  shouting about how terrible a Trump presidency was going to be. And so this
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  conversation is one that I had in 2017 we've cut out most of the nonsense about
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  man him arguing about what the Trump presidency was going to look like
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  because that's kind of irrelevant and we've lent into the portion of the
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  conversation that was about Scott Adams's life and his creative urge and his
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  perspective on success his vision of what he wanted to do with his life and
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  of how you can achieve what you want to do with your life too.
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  Enjoy this preview and do consider bothering to pull your wallet out of your pants
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  and become a paid subscriber otherwise I will see you next week. Enjoy.
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  I just want to start with who you are because a lot of people will have been aware of Dilbert
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  but may not have been aware of you as a human being until the Trump era where did you grow up
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  and who was your family what did you like as a kid?
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  Wow, a big question. I grew up in the country in upstate New York
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  and was small family with modest means sort of a Republicany conservative town
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  and as soon as I could get out of there I got out of there and went to California where
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  opportunity was greater and the people were more open-minded and life was better.
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  What did open-minded mean to you at that age? I pretty much grew up in the town of racists.
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  If I can characterize them that way but most of it probably had to do with the fact that
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  the town was almost entirely co-occasion bunch of white people and they just didn't really
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  have any contact with anybody else so but that racism so that was mostly in the form of
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  inappropriate jokes that we thought were funny when we were kids and I no longer think
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  are even slightly amusing. Did you find the was it that you found the racism objectionable or
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  that you found the whiteness of the place tedious? You know you get used to whatever you're born
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  into so I don't think I ever gave it a second thought it just was what it was.
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  Yeah and then when you got to California was it everything that your your New York
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  brain had dreamed of? Yeah yeah it was probably the smartest thing I ever did was
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  immediately after graduating college which was near my home in upstate New York.
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  I traded my car for a one-way ticket to California and because I wasn't planning on coming back
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  you know and I figured the the odds were good in California for just about everything. Part of what
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  I write about and talk about is strategies for success and one of the best strategies is if you
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  have the option you should move from wherever the opportunities are low to wherever they're high
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  because where you are is a big part of your overall success. Yeah you're preaching to the converted
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  there I wanted to work in the media so I moved from Sydney to New York which is which was a good move
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  in hindsight. Yeah that that type of move rarely doesn't work if you're sure what you want to do
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  anyway. That's right and you know what if it doesn't work you know what the worst case scenario is
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  you spent your 20s in New York City I mean there are worse there are worse fates.
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  So what did you what was your vision when presumably it was not merely a negative desire to get
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  out of where you were but there was some what was the can you put some flesh on the bones of your
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  vision of what a California future might have looked like? Well it very much was a desperate need
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  to get out as well as moving towards something that had more opportunity. The the small town experience
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  is boring in a way that only prisoners who have been in solitary confinement for years can
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  understand. I mean it's a it's a it's a sort of brain death slow brain death. California on the
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  other hand has so much going on so much variety in people variety in thought variety and you know
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  economic opportunity it just it was the right place to be if you wanted your brain stimulated
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  and you didn't like didn't like normal and you didn't like vanilla. Let me just let me just pause
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  this this this this this traps through your your biography for a moment to make a couple of
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  notes and get your thoughts on them. One is when you talk about small town mentality you sound
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  very much like the elitists who middle Americans and many Trump supporters resent the I get
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  accused of this thinking that there's much so much more cosmopolitan cosmopolitanism and openness
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  on the coasts and and in big cities and there is in in small towns that and that that it in itself
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  is a bubble you know we've had all this conversation about the bubble since since Trump
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  and that actually when you say that there's a variety of thought in California I know a lot of
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  Trump supporters in California who say there's no variety of thought whatsoever that it's that it's
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  become an enormous echo chamber. How do you reconcile that? Well when they say there's no variety
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  in California of political thought they're just noting that the dominant the dominant preferences
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  on the left you know the more Democrats here than Republicans but that doesn't mean there are
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  plenty of people with different opinions all over the place so you can find yourself surrounded
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  by people who only agree with you in California but you don't have to drive too far to find plenty
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  you don't so it's it's more of a choice here you know and where I grew up you'd have to drive
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  pretty far to find somebody had a different opinion and by the way before I'm aligned my old hometown
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  let me point out that that this was 40 years ago so if you were to compare everybody's you know
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  ethnic sensitivity they're they're sexist sensitivity 40 years ago to today there's no comparison
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  so I would assume if I went back today it would be a lot like California's. Well yeah maybe more
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  than it was 40 years ago but I would I would also grant that probably not as as diverse in it's
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  in in the number of outlooks that are bumping up against each other as you get in big cities.
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  Yeah just I would say more open-minded in general but certainly less diverse yes.
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  Yeah and what about the the remarks that you made about about small towns versus big cities to
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  do you still have I find that to be contradictory given what your political inclinations are right now.
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  Well this is one of those cases where since I have lived in both the small town you know I grew up
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  there and I have lived my adult life and were metropolitan areas I feel like that gives me a
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  little license to be a little more brutal about my own experience than then someone who hasn't
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  experienced it. So if you grew up in only a metropolitan surrounding and you had bad things to
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  say about folks who live in rural places I don't think I would take that as credible.
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  So that's the first thing is that you know I have a little bit of a license because I've been there.
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  But in terms of do they think differently I would say yes you know you could make a generality
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  that that their experience is different enough that it influences how they think.
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  Okay so getting back to this vision of California what did you think that your future was going
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  to be what did you want to do with your life? Well when I first left college I had a degree in
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  economics and I asked my economics professor you know what should I do with the rest of my life I'm
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  going to California what's what's the smart thing to do? And he took out a brochure for Crocker
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  National Bank a big bank that doesn't exist here anymore and they were doing a lot of innovative
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  technology things and he said go work at this bank there you know you have an economics degree so
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  it makes sense to be at a bank and they're at the tip of the spear for technology you know they
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  were early adopters of ATMs for example before anybody had them and I thought okay I'll go there
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  I'll let them trade me in the ways of the world and then I'll have enough skills that I can
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  go somewhere on my own when the time is right so that's what I did I took a job that would pay for
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  at the bank I took a job that would pay for all of my outside classes paid for my college paid
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  for me to get an MBA at night and did a phenomenal job of of training me were you a frustrated writer
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  at the time? No not at all I had no no ambitions to write a book no thoughts about that I had always
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  thought about being a cartoonist so my earliest hopes and dreams from the age of let's say six
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  years old you know for several years I wanted to become a professional cartoonist I wanted to
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  become Charles Schultz and you know I was addicted to peanuts comics and I thought hey that looks
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  like a good job I could do that but I wasn't a good artist and by the time I reached the age of
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  11 I think 11 or 12 I decided that it's very rare for anybody to become a famous cartoonist
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  it's almost it's it's almost so rare that it's it doesn't feel realistic or clear thinking to
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  even set that as an objective so so I changed my objectives you know I was now old enough for
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  all the all the magic and optimism to be you know drained enemy by the system and I thought well
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  I have good grades I'll become a lawyer lawyers get paid well so when I went to college I thought
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  to myself well I'll be some kind of a lawyer it didn't take long for me to think about that a
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  little bit more and I couldn't imagine any day of work as a lawyer that sounded good to me you know
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  looking at contracts no thanks you know uh winning a court case when someone else has to be the
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  loser on the other side doesn't feel as good as it should be you know can't I do something where
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  everybody's happy so I did look at a whole variety of different things I could do with my life
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  but I never let go of that that dream that maybe I could do something in cartooning I did a lot of
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  doodling and you know I got good responses sometimes from friends so it was always percolating
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  in the back of my mind but it wasn't the first thing I tried over the second or the third thing
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  when did the doodling turn into something more well I had a strange experience with my two
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  careers first at the bank and then I moved to the local phone company out here and it was in
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  the 80s when I was working at the bank when diversity in corporations was terrible they had
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  pretty much no representation of women or minorities in in management and the local press got on
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  the bank and said hey we just looked at all your you know all the information about who your
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  managers are and you're doing a terrible job with diversification and that was embarrassing for
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  the bank and so the order came down and my boss actually called me into the office and said to me
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  I don't know how to tell you this but you know I'm just going to be honest with you I can't
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  promote you because you're white and male and I said well how long is that going to last
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  and she told me honestly because I have no idea you know I can't tell you when this will end
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  until you get sex transition surgery or put on blackface I suppose that you're going to remain
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  being white and male well I wouldn't put on the blackface but I take your point so I moved to
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  Pacific Bell the local phone company and got on the fast track there you know I was identified as
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  an up-and-comer was finishing my MBA at night and one day my boss called me and said I don't know
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  how to tell you this but we're getting a lot of pressure from the press it turns out we don't have
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  any diversification in management and until further notice there's just no way we could ever
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  promote you and after the second time that my career was destroyed by sexism and racism
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  and by the way let me let me say as clearly as possible yes I know that I had my white privilege
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  and patriarchy to rely on and I did in fact leave those bad situations and go on to make a fortune
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  so I'm not saying it's bad thing to be a white man in America I want to be as clear as possible
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  about that I just haven't had two coincidental experiences back to back which are entirely true
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  I'm not making up any part of that in which I couldn't get ahead because of my race and ethnicity
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  now sometimes people say to me well you know are you ethnically insensitive and I say
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  Christ is just the opposite if you've actually been on the receiving end of racism I mean literally
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  or sexism literally in an economic way in which there's no ambiguity to it you're told to your face
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  yes your gender and your ethnicity are why we will not promote you if you haven't had that happen to you
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  you don't take it as seriously as as if you do so I'm probably I'm probably more let's say more
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  emotionally attached to the issue of you know equal opportunity then most people would so be