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Mark McDonald on navigating ideological extremism | Jerm Warfare · UK Column Radio

0:30
Speaker 1: My name is Jim. This is Germ Warfare, the Battle
0:33
Speaker 1: of Ideas. Mark McDonald, thank you for joining me in
0:36
Speaker 1: the Strangers.
0:38
Speaker 2: It's been a really long time since I've been on
0:39
Speaker 2: your show.
0:41
Speaker 1: It's been really long. I feel like I feel like
0:44
Speaker 1: I've gone back to your bar that I haven't frequented
0:48
Speaker 1: in years, and there you are sitting in the corner,
0:51
Speaker 1: and I decided to buy you a drink.
0:54
Speaker 2: I had been there the whole time waiting for me.
0:57
Speaker 1: When when is Germ coming?
0:59
Speaker 2: Is he? Is he ever going to come back? It's me.
1:02
Speaker 2: It's not being sit in a bar as a man.
1:04
Speaker 2: Women don't come up to you, so you've got to
1:06
Speaker 2: wait for somebody else to show up. And it's a
1:09
Speaker 2: really passive exercise.
1:11
Speaker 1: Unless they identify as women. That happens quite a bit.
1:15
Speaker 1: It's kind of scary, actually, Mark. Obviously you and I
1:19
Speaker 1: know each other quite well, but let's just quickly go
1:21
Speaker 1: through the boring stuff. I sometimes get accused of ignoring
1:25
Speaker 1: who my guests are, so quickly give me an overview
1:28
Speaker 1: of you.
1:30
Speaker 2: I have worked as a child an adolescent psychiatrist for
1:33
Speaker 2: over a decade, but I really started to branch out
1:36
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty when the world shut down and everyone
1:39
Speaker 2: lost their minds, speaking, writing, publishing, podcasting. In the last
1:45
Speaker 2: couple of years, I've stepped somewhat away from that because
1:48
Speaker 2: I've been largely burnt out from all of the political
1:52
Speaker 2: rabble rousing, and I've been really getting back to what
1:56
Speaker 2: I think is most important for me personally, which is
2:00
Speaker 2: my friends, my family, personal growth, travel, health, and I've
2:04
Speaker 2: been spending less time out in the trenches going around
2:09
Speaker 2: to conferences and trying to persuade people to become more rational.
2:14
Speaker 2: What I've what I've in the last few years is
2:18
Speaker 2: that the rational people are already rational, and the ones
2:20
Speaker 2: that are not you can't really persuade them. So I'm
2:24
Speaker 2: more interested now in finding a place where there are
2:28
Speaker 2: more rational people and settling in there rather than trying
2:31
Speaker 2: to convert the crazies from my own location, which is
2:34
Speaker 2: still officially Los Angeles, California.
2:38
Speaker 1: But that's where you've started off on the wrong foot.
2:43
Speaker 2: I mean that's where I was born. Are you saying
2:46
Speaker 2: I started off on the wrong foot at birth?
2:48
Speaker 1: I mean that's a fit of the Sodom and Gomorrah.
2:52
Speaker 2: It would be better if it were Sodom and Gomorrah,
2:55
Speaker 2: because then there would at least be really good sex involved.
2:58
Speaker 2: But in Los Angeles, I don't think you have that.
3:00
Speaker 2: You simply have highly deranged personality disordered women and men
3:06
Speaker 2: with their tails between their legs, which doesn't really lead
3:09
Speaker 2: to a lot of sex, and it doesn't really lead
3:11
Speaker 2: to a lot of masculine energy or healthy feminine energy.
3:16
Speaker 2: But simply, I think Los Angeles is really a toxic
3:19
Speaker 2: wasteland interpersonally, and for me, I think interpersonal relationships are
3:24
Speaker 2: really one of the most important aspects of life. Yes,
3:26
Speaker 2: much more important than the weather, which I have to admit,
3:29
Speaker 2: you really can't beat the weather in Los Angeles. It
3:31
Speaker 2: is damn good. But that's about all that's good left
3:35
Speaker 2: in LA at this point. You haven't been to South Africa.
3:38
Speaker 2: I have not with a You invited me a few
3:40
Speaker 2: years ago and mist well you Indian gived it back
3:45
Speaker 2: and so.
3:49
Speaker 1: Now you can't come anymore.
3:51
Speaker 2: Previtation was rescinded a couple of years ago, but I
3:56
Speaker 2: know you profered a new invitation, so I would like
3:58
Speaker 2: to take you up on that. I'd love to go
4:00
Speaker 2: to South Africa. It's one of the places that I
4:03
Speaker 2: would love to visit.
4:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I was talking about the weather. I
4:06
Speaker 1: think politically it's a dump in many ways, and I
4:09
Speaker 1: mean I want to get into that, but the way that, yeah,
4:11
Speaker 1: at least is a wonderful thing. And I remember you
4:15
Speaker 1: saying to me years ago that being in Los Angeles
4:19
Speaker 1: just absolutely destroys you.
4:22
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that is true, even more now than
4:25
Speaker 2: I said it a few years ago. And I can
4:27
Speaker 2: say that with conviction because having left LA and begun
4:33
Speaker 2: to spend some time elsewhere once again, which I had
4:36
Speaker 2: done for a few years back in the early post
4:39
Speaker 2: twenty twenty rage debacle time span, I found that I
4:44
Speaker 2: immediately notice and feel a great deal of difference when
4:49
Speaker 2: I'm far away from the culture wars of the West,
4:53
Speaker 2: and LA is one of those nexuses of culture war,
4:58
Speaker 2: because people swear in the world they just don't care
5:01
Speaker 2: about this shit. You go to Iraq, you go to
5:04
Speaker 2: eleven On, you go to Central or Eastern Europe. They're
5:06
Speaker 2: busy living their lives. They have their own domestic problems,
5:09
Speaker 2: they have their corruption in their mafia. But it's not
5:12
Speaker 2: a psychological issue. It's more of just a practical one.
5:16
Speaker 2: How can we get our car repaired without having to
5:18
Speaker 2: pay a bribe. How can we manage to get our
5:20
Speaker 2: kids into college without connections. I'm not saying that's ideal,
5:24
Speaker 2: but it's a lot better than debating over whether or
5:28
Speaker 2: not it's fair and just to men from hanging out
5:34
Speaker 2: with little girls in locker rooms because they happen to
5:37
Speaker 2: have a psychotic disorder and think that they're a woman.
5:40
Speaker 2: That's not something that is even discussed here because it's
5:45
Speaker 2: so insane. And so I really like the fact that
5:48
Speaker 2: there are other places in the world that are not
5:50
Speaker 2: in the West, that, despite their problems, are largely fairly peaceful,
5:55
Speaker 2: normal places where people are just leading their lives and
5:58
Speaker 2: walking their dogs and getting coffee and having drinks and
6:00
Speaker 2: going out, and they're not slamming down their fists on
6:04
Speaker 2: the table and yelling about why it's so devastating to
6:09
Speaker 2: peace and harmony to have the Pete's coffee chain remove
6:14
Speaker 2: the rainbow flag from its marketing campaign. Yeah.
6:18
Speaker 1: That's something that I found very annoying in the surge
6:23
Speaker 1: of LGBTQ nonsense, is that I can't just buy a beer.
6:28
Speaker 1: It has to come with some sort of social message.
6:33
Speaker 2: That is the croox of the problem I think in
6:36
Speaker 2: the Western cultural wars. We're not actually arguing about ideas.
6:40
Speaker 2: We're arguing about whether or not it's appropriate for every
6:45
Speaker 2: aspect of our life to be impregnated with some form
6:50
Speaker 2: of ideological extremism. And I don't want to be arguing
6:55
Speaker 2: and fighting about that aspect of my life. I want
6:58
Speaker 2: to go and get a beer without having to read
7:00
Speaker 2: a message on the side of the can, or to
7:02
Speaker 2: have to listen to a forced newsfeed overhead on the screen,
7:07
Speaker 2: not of sports, but of messages lambasting the president because
7:12
Speaker 2: he has the long color hair, and I'm just tired
7:14
Speaker 2: of it. I don't want to be involved in that anymore.
7:16
Speaker 2: I find it exhausting. And I would have to say
7:19
Speaker 2: Jeremy that the level of anxiety and stress that I
7:26
Speaker 2: see and feel throughout Los Angeles and most urban America
7:29
Speaker 2: is so unhealthy. I've never seen this before in my life.
7:33
Speaker 2: And I'm not talking about all the mask nonsense in
7:35
Speaker 2: the medical crap that sort of is basically water into
7:39
Speaker 2: the bridge at this point. I'm just talking about the
7:41
Speaker 2: stress that I think adults and even younger people now
7:45
Speaker 2: are feeling because there is an unending internal battle that
7:52
Speaker 2: people are fighting to resolve. This intrinsic paradox and computational
8:03
Speaker 2: error in their brains between what they know is real
8:08
Speaker 2: and what they're told is real. The chasm is becoming
8:11
Speaker 2: so wide that it's causing these neuronal explosions. People just
8:15
Speaker 2: can't handle it anymore. And for that reason, people are
8:20
Speaker 2: not happy. People are not content. People are not courteous,
8:24
Speaker 2: they're not kind, they're not generous, they're not spontaneous, they're
8:29
Speaker 2: not fun. People are simply listless, and they're mired in
8:34
Speaker 2: these addictive behaviors. A lot of it is drugs, alcohol,
8:38
Speaker 2: empty sex, gambling, hyper exercise. There's all these extreme behaviors
8:44
Speaker 2: that I see people are engaging in in Los Angeles
8:47
Speaker 2: that I believe are purely an attempt to try to
8:51
Speaker 2: resolve the cognitive dissonance between man plus woman equals baby
8:55
Speaker 2: versus man with address can have unlimited children. Can't resolve this.
9:00
Speaker 2: I keep getting back to this whole trans issue because
9:02
Speaker 2: I think it's just such a perfect exemplification of how
9:05
Speaker 2: we've jumped the shark. We've gone from arguing about whether
9:09
Speaker 2: we should be more socially kind to the underprivileged and
9:12
Speaker 2: give benefits to those who are of some form of
9:14
Speaker 2: victimized minority group, which I think is still an arguable position.
9:19
Speaker 2: I'm not even in favor of that, but let's just
9:22
Speaker 2: say that that used to be a somewhat reasonable forum
9:25
Speaker 2: for debate, and now we're arguing about whether it's okay
9:29
Speaker 2: to have forty year old men having sex with children.
9:32
Speaker 2: This is not a current in a society that can
9:37
Speaker 2: continue if the society is to survive. It is not
9:40
Speaker 2: a survivable state that we're in right now, in my opinion.
9:44
Speaker 1: And it's a weird kind of chronology. If in the
9:46
Speaker 1: mine was joking saying I used to be the enemy,
9:50
Speaker 1: now I'm the guy who's being accused of being the OPPRESSA.
9:58
Speaker 2: It's crazy how far we have gone to the path
10:04
Speaker 2: of the insane think. I don't think Americans at least
10:08
Speaker 2: are really even largely aware of this, because they don't
10:12
Speaker 2: have any other reference experiences unless they actually leave the
10:17
Speaker 2: country and they go someplace far, far away where people
10:20
Speaker 2: are behaving normally. And how many Americans do that. It's
10:24
Speaker 2: not very many, not today.
10:27
Speaker 1: I don't mean to say this in a disparaging way,
10:31
Speaker 1: but have you noticed as an American that when you
10:34
Speaker 1: travel outside of America, Americans are not really looked favorably
10:39
Speaker 1: on and it's not because of Americans themselves. You must
10:45
Speaker 1: understand what I'm trying to get at you.
10:48
Speaker 2: I found that it really depends on the country. For example,
10:51
Speaker 2: when I was in kurdis Dan last summer, I found
10:53
Speaker 2: that Americans the archetype of the American person, so not
10:59
Speaker 2: the individual in front of your face, but Americans plural
11:02
Speaker 2: or the framework. The framework was viewed very favorably, but
11:07
Speaker 2: that was specifically because the United States saved the Kurds
11:12
Speaker 2: during the Clinton administration from essentially a genocide by the
11:17
Speaker 2: Turks and others. So clear that in some places there
11:22
Speaker 2: is a very positive connection that the local people have
11:28
Speaker 2: with the United States. Lebanon is another. It's incredibly pro
11:31
Speaker 2: America and Americans in Lebanon. However, when you are looking
11:38
Speaker 2: at places where there's a large tourist component and those
11:43
Speaker 2: tourists are poorly behaved, I think they changed their mind.
11:46
Speaker 2: That's the first one.
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Speaker 1: And that would happen because you always yet sorry, it's
11:50
Speaker 1: always like, uh, it's those Americans again.
11:54
Speaker 2: When I'm here, for example, in Budapest, and I hear
11:57
Speaker 2: these really really loud Brits, Australians and Americans and they
12:01
Speaker 2: are all loud and obnoxious, all three of them, and
12:04
Speaker 2: the Canadians as well. They're all obnoxious and they're all drunk.
12:07
Speaker 2: I kind of cringe and I think, oh God, I
12:09
Speaker 2: hope that those people are not actually American. And then
12:11
Speaker 2: I hear that they go accent a little out of
12:13
Speaker 2: the folk like that. They're definitely not American. I don't
12:16
Speaker 2: know where they're from, but they're not from my country,
12:19
Speaker 2: thank god.
12:20
Speaker 1: So fait to be faed though as a South African
12:23
Speaker 1: when I travel, everybody's scared of me because I think
12:26
Speaker 1: I'm gonna mug them. So We've all got our quirks,
12:33
Speaker 1: hold the ruggage, so they all they stuffed close to them.
12:37
Speaker 2: It's true, every single group of people from every country
12:42
Speaker 2: that travels has a bad reputation in their stereotype framework.
12:45
Speaker 2: It just depends on what the stereotype is. That is
12:48
Speaker 2: very true. But there's a second anti American theme or
12:52
Speaker 2: vein that runs through certain nations that has nothing to
12:56
Speaker 2: do with the tourists, and that has a lot to
12:58
Speaker 2: do with their understanding of America's position in the world.
13:06
Speaker 2: And I'm not saying that they have the good criticisms
13:09
Speaker 2: that I was describing. I think they're good criticisms that
13:12
Speaker 2: the US has just kind of lost its way in
13:14
Speaker 2: allowing nonsense to persist. I'm talking about the understanding that
13:22
Speaker 2: they have that somehow the United States is not on
13:26
Speaker 2: board with the globalist agenda and they're not. That is true,
13:31
Speaker 2: and I see this largely in Western Europe or in
13:34
Speaker 2: EU nations.
13:35
Speaker 1: Wait, hold on, hold on, you're saying the US is
13:38
Speaker 1: not on board of the globalist agenda.
13:41
Speaker 2: Not in the way that the EU is. No. Oh, okay, right,
13:45
Speaker 2: The EU seems to be the nexus for globalism in
13:48
Speaker 2: the world, and the United States since Trump was elected
13:53
Speaker 2: has been largely opposed to that. Now, prior to that,
13:55
Speaker 2: they were on board. The Biden administration, the Obama administration
13:58
Speaker 2: were all very pro euploglobe, pro international Court. They wanted
14:02
Speaker 2: there to be basically no borders, just dissolve everything and
14:05
Speaker 2: to sort of becomes just one giant pot pourrie of
14:08
Speaker 2: love and internationalism, and that unfortunately got us to the
14:11
Speaker 2: brink of collapse right before Trump was elected the second time,
14:15
Speaker 2: and his international stance has been the opposite. And I
14:19
Speaker 2: think to his credit, he's largely said America first, we
14:23
Speaker 2: need to protect our nation. We're not responsible for the
14:26
Speaker 2: rest of the world, and we're not babysitting the EU.
14:28
Speaker 2: We're not going to basically protect all the nations around
14:32
Speaker 2: the world, particularly in the West, at our expense, when
14:37
Speaker 2: those nations are not supportive of traditional democratic institutions and
14:41
Speaker 2: traditional liberalism, and they're not. They're essentially all corporate globalists
14:45
Speaker 2: now that are running a kind of postmodern Marxist campaign,
14:49
Speaker 2: anti borders, anti language, anti culture, to in my opinion,
14:53
Speaker 2: create two classes of people, which are the oligarchs on
14:56
Speaker 2: the top and then the peons that serve them below,
15:00
Speaker 2: kind of hunger games mentality. That's how I see the EU.
15:03
Speaker 2: I don't see the EU even as a traditional socialist model.
15:07
Speaker 2: It's really quite a feudal system. And I think that
15:11
Speaker 2: is the nexus for the anti American sentiment in the West,
15:14
Speaker 2: and I think it's largely misunderstood and it's largely unearned,
15:19
Speaker 2: and I think that the reason for it is primarily
15:24
Speaker 2: the takeover of international media, which no longer provides accurate information.
15:29
Speaker 2: And from what I've heard by talking to people here
15:31
Speaker 2: in Budapest, their understanding of geopolitics is completely incorrect. Outside
15:37
Speaker 2: of Europe, they have no understanding of politics in the
15:41
Speaker 2: United States because everything they hear is essentially propaganda.
15:48
Speaker 1: Going back to the LGBTQ thing, you have worked with
15:52
Speaker 1: kids full what many years have you found that that
15:55
Speaker 1: has affected them in a big way.
15:59
Speaker 2: I think it's been a disaster. I think children today
16:02
Speaker 2: are completely confused. The ones that are still able to
16:06
Speaker 2: focus on normal binary sexual development. Boys will be boys,
16:12
Speaker 2: girls will be girls are often punished for that, ostracized
16:18
Speaker 2: to their utter confusion, They don't understand why it's a
16:23
Speaker 2: problem to insist that they play with trucks on the
16:26
Speaker 2: boy's side and the girls play with the dolls. When
16:28
Speaker 2: they resist the cross sexual fertilization of games and toys,
16:33
Speaker 2: for example, they're upbraided and they're told that they're insensitive
16:37
Speaker 2: and intolerant, and they're often sent home. And this is
16:41
Speaker 2: happening in classrooms all over the United States which have
16:44
Speaker 2: been taken over by left wing looms, largely but not entirely,
16:49
Speaker 2: women with pieces of metal in their face, with shaved
16:52
Speaker 2: heads and strangely colored hair, pledging allegiance to rainbow flags
16:56
Speaker 2: instead of the United States flag. This is actually quite
16:59
Speaker 2: common and even embellishing. I mean, you see it all
17:01
Speaker 2: over libs of TikTok, which publishes videos on this regularly,
17:05
Speaker 2: as well as other social media sites. So I see
17:10
Speaker 2: in my day to day life and in my practice
17:12
Speaker 2: that young children from a very very young age all
17:15
Speaker 2: the way up to their teenage years are completely incapable
17:19
Speaker 2: of finding a normal developmental path because they are not
17:24
Speaker 2: allowed to assert it. When they try, they are punished
17:31
Speaker 2: and they are isolated. And this is true in almost
17:34
Speaker 2: every urban area in the US. I've spoken with. Even
17:38
Speaker 2: people a little older, let's say, in their late twenties
17:40
Speaker 2: early thirties, their entire language system has shifted. They're speaking
17:45
Speaker 2: English in a way that I barely even understand. The
17:48
Speaker 2: number of women, the percentage of women, for example, in
17:51
Speaker 2: their let's say teens in twenties now that don't consider
17:55
Speaker 2: themselves to be strictly heterosexual has exploded. The terms that
17:59
Speaker 2: they're using, I don't even understand. They're talking about to
18:02
Speaker 2: spirit this and binary that, and they're into polyamory and
18:07
Speaker 2: they want to be sexually non exclusive but monogamous in
18:10
Speaker 2: a non monogamous ethical way. I don't even understand what
18:13
Speaker 2: they're saying. And this is all coming from an externally
18:16
Speaker 2: driven a propaganda campaign. It's not coming from an intrinsic
18:21
Speaker 2: change genetically or biologically or psychologically from the individual herself.
18:27
Speaker 2: So that kind of capture that's taken place by what
18:32
Speaker 2: I would say is an anti life group, which is
18:35
Speaker 2: I think aligned with the globalist group. I think has
18:38
Speaker 2: done a real number on young people. And I don't
18:41
Speaker 2: think that we're going to be able to solve this,
18:44
Speaker 2: at least in the United States unless we mount a
18:46
Speaker 2: really vociferous campaign against it. But I don't see it
18:49
Speaker 2: happening anytime soon.
18:51
Speaker 1: I was tetting to a phenomone actually earlier today. AIDA's
18:55
Speaker 1: in the UK, South African immigrated. There doesn't any meta anyway.
18:59
Speaker 1: He said to me that.
19:01
Speaker 2: I should just.
19:02
Speaker 1: Live and live and stop worrying about the LGBTQ stuff.
19:05
Speaker 2: I know.
19:06
Speaker 1: So what if these are adults making consenting decisions, if
19:09
Speaker 1: they want to top off their bits, let them, sure,
19:13
Speaker 1: let them. But I'm talking about something deeper than that
19:15
Speaker 1: didn't exist in the nineties. I don't remember the word
19:20
Speaker 1: transgender ever existing before, like nineteen ninety eight or even
19:24
Speaker 1: two thousand and odd whatever, do you.
19:27
Speaker 2: Because it didn't there was a very very small, less
19:30
Speaker 2: than one percent of the population that was involved in transsexualism,
19:34
Speaker 2: which is what it was called back then, which was
19:36
Speaker 2: transpasite or even transvestite, although that's simply strictly dress related,
19:42
Speaker 2: so how people dress. But the transsexuals actually had an
19:45
Speaker 2: identity internally that crossed over to the other gender. It
19:50
Speaker 2: wasn't just that the men liked to prance around in
19:53
Speaker 2: women's clothes and then by day they would go to
19:56
Speaker 2: work in a suit. You would even call that perhaps
19:59
Speaker 2: more of a fetish. But transgenderism is not a fetish.
20:03
Speaker 2: It's much more deep rooted than just a behavior or
20:06
Speaker 2: an addiction or a focused sexual proclivity like being aroused
20:12
Speaker 2: by women's high heeled shoes. This goes much much deeper.
20:16
Speaker 2: It's also very much based on a proselytization. I mean,
20:20
Speaker 2: I don't recall at any time in my life people
20:23
Speaker 2: who followed certain fetishes ever trying to convince other people
20:27
Speaker 2: to do it, or to pull children into it, not
20:29
Speaker 2: that I can recall. But now it's not really or
20:34
Speaker 2: is no longer about one'sone self expression. It's about the
20:39
Speaker 2: forced conversion of the rest of the population to come
20:42
Speaker 2: to their side, not only for support but also for
20:45
Speaker 2: championing it and to incorporate it into their own life.
20:49
Speaker 2: And I think that cross is a very distinct moral
20:52
Speaker 2: threshold and cultural threshold where live and let live is
20:55
Speaker 2: no longer really the mantra, even though that's maybe what
20:58
Speaker 2: this man is using as actual words. It's really let
21:02
Speaker 2: them live, but assume that you will not be allowed
21:08
Speaker 2: to live freely unless you comport to their standards. That's
21:12
Speaker 2: not the same thing as actual freedom.
21:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I'm also kind of hinting at the fact
21:17
Speaker 1: that if this didn't exist, you know, more than twenty
21:21
Speaker 1: years ago, then it must be artificially created, and then
21:24
Speaker 1: therefore it's been put into society for a reason.
21:28
Speaker 2: You're moving towards me the meaning behind this or the
21:35
Speaker 2: motivation for it, as opposed to the ideology of it. Yeah.
21:39
Speaker 1: I mean, for example, somebody who you might interact with
21:42
Speaker 1: us who calls themselves transgender, you don't off the bat
21:46
Speaker 1: hate that person. They are a symptom of something bigger.
21:50
Speaker 2: I think that's true. I've said that the biggest victims
21:56
Speaker 2: of the whole transgender movement have largely been young girls,
21:59
Speaker 2: because they're the ones that have and captured, and they're
22:02
Speaker 2: also the ones that are mostly preyed upon by the
22:09
Speaker 2: men who are smaller in number than the girls who
22:13
Speaker 2: say that they're transgender, but by the men who are
22:17
Speaker 2: inherently predatorial and are using this movement as a mechanism
22:23
Speaker 2: to virtuously and without responsibility, prey on women. And I'm
22:29
Speaker 2: referring to, for example, the men that go into women's
22:31
Speaker 2: locker rooms with dresses on because they voyeuristically view naked
22:37
Speaker 2: young girls, or rapists who or in male prisons who
22:41
Speaker 2: announce that they are now women's that they actually go
22:43
Speaker 2: and rape women in women's prisons. These are sociopaths, these
22:46
Speaker 2: are predators, and they're being protected under this umbrell of transgenderism.
22:51
Speaker 2: So if this is being allowed, and we as a
22:54
Speaker 2: society are condoning it, then you must ask the question,
22:56
Speaker 2: as you did, what is the intention behind this? Is
22:59
Speaker 2: it to allow people to express themselves freely? I don't
23:05
Speaker 2: think so, because there are a lot of areas of
23:08
Speaker 2: free expression that are now banned or illegal in the
23:11
Speaker 2: United States. If you protest against globalism or against the
23:16
Speaker 2: wrong political party, you can be physically assaulted and there's
23:19
Speaker 2: no recourse. So it's not that freedom has now become
23:23
Speaker 2: too free. It's that there has been an unleashing of
23:27
Speaker 2: an irresponsibility within one domain of life which has become
23:31
Speaker 2: very corrosive and which is destroying the fabric of our society.
23:35
Speaker 2: And so if that is the end result, you have
23:39
Speaker 2: to acknowledge that there was an intention in the unleashing
23:45
Speaker 2: of this pathology, and that intention must be nefarious because
23:49
Speaker 2: there is no good that is coming of this. So
23:52
Speaker 2: why would someone do that, or why would a group
23:54
Speaker 2: of people do that? It's very similar I think to
23:56
Speaker 2: asking the question why would you allow for open borders
23:59
Speaker 2: with teen million illegal largely criminal or militarily engaged against
24:06
Speaker 2: the United States or spy based Chinese government employees infiltrating
24:15
Speaker 2: your country. Why would you encourage that unless you wanted
24:18
Speaker 2: to destabilize the nation. So I think there is a
24:21
Speaker 2: goal ultimately of destabilization and corrosion of the country so
24:25
Speaker 2: that power can be realigned and a small group of
24:28
Speaker 2: people can start to take control. And that's a You
24:31
Speaker 2: can call that a conspiracy, I suppose, but I don't
24:34
Speaker 2: really see how you can argue that this was simply
24:37
Speaker 2: a well intentioned that failed exercise in democratic freedom.
24:41
Speaker 1: Just a quick caveat, because whenever somebody now these days,
24:45
Speaker 1: is conspiracy or conspiracy theory. They always add a disclaimer,
24:49
Speaker 1: and that just shows the power of propaganda and how
24:53
Speaker 1: a word has been weaponized. It says, if conspiracies don't occur,
24:57
Speaker 1: more judices just happened to fall on a by knives,
25:01
Speaker 1: you know, JFK. Just happened to be driving down a
25:03
Speaker 1: road where they were just bullets flying, you know, and
25:05
Speaker 1: one hit them, you know, or nine hit them or whatever.
25:08
Speaker 1: It was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
25:11
Speaker 1: It was just a terrible coincidence. Conspiracies obviously occur, and
25:16
Speaker 1: but people are so scared these days to say the
25:19
Speaker 1: word conspiracy and a conspiracy theory is just it's just
25:23
Speaker 1: you theorizing over an event, that's all, until it becomes
25:27
Speaker 1: either real or false.
25:32
Speaker 2: The challenges that were put forth in twenty twenty to
25:36
Speaker 2: obvious lies about the impending destruction of the world due
25:41
Speaker 2: to a cold virus were immediately slapped with this moniker
25:44
Speaker 2: of conspiracy theory. So for that reason, it's now been
25:49
Speaker 2: given a dirty name. Because the people who were opposed
25:56
Speaker 2: to giving up their freedom were appropriate seen as a
26:00
Speaker 2: threat and the best way to end a threat without
26:06
Speaker 2: going after them and murdering them is to discredit them.
26:10
Speaker 2: And when someone is discredited, then they don't have any
26:12
Speaker 2: power anymore. And I think the word conspiracy theory has
26:15
Speaker 2: been adopted as a weapon of discrediting people who are
26:19
Speaker 2: threats to the movement that you're trying to empower.
26:24
Speaker 1: But that's also a very interesting observation about the power
26:28
Speaker 1: of language and how it influences the way we engage
26:31
Speaker 1: with one another. You know, for example, the LGBTQ you thing,
26:34
Speaker 1: you made a reference earlier to how we used to
26:37
Speaker 1: talk about one thing, and now we talking about other things.
26:41
Speaker 1: And in conversation sometimes you have to find yourself pausing
26:47
Speaker 1: because you're worried now how the other person might respond,
26:51
Speaker 1: because you just make a joke and they go, no, no,
26:53
Speaker 1: that's offensive. You shouldn't joke like that, you know, Like,
26:56
Speaker 1: what is the logical conclusion of this? We just don't
26:59
Speaker 1: really commit property anymore.
27:02
Speaker 2: We use euphemisms and we use coded language to announce
27:08
Speaker 2: what tribe we belong to, rather than actually arguing real, pointed,
27:15
Speaker 2: accurate facts and experiences. So the virtue signaling that comes
27:23
Speaker 2: through with symbolism, like the coffee chain. I think it's
27:28
Speaker 2: called Phil's coffee that has been posting and placing rainbow
27:34
Speaker 2: flags in their shops for a number of years, even
27:36
Speaker 2: though it's just a coffee shop. It's not a bathhouse.
27:39
Speaker 2: There's no reason to be having rainbow flags about gays
27:44
Speaker 2: in a coffee shop when it's not a gay coffee shop.
27:47
Speaker 2: But they're doing that as a means of virtue signaling.
27:52
Speaker 2: Right now, in the United States, if you want to
27:54
Speaker 2: have a conversation about anything that has any kind of
27:57
Speaker 2: cultural or political import if you don't use certain words
28:02
Speaker 2: in a certain way, you will be quickly labeled as
28:06
Speaker 2: a bad person, as somebody who is immoral, And once
28:10
Speaker 2: that happens, the conversation ends. So people are very very
28:13
Speaker 2: careful about what words they use because they don't want
28:17
Speaker 2: to be ostracized or cut out of the milieu that
28:22
Speaker 2: they belong to. So I guess what I'm saying is
28:25
Speaker 2: that I think conversation now in the United States has
28:28
Speaker 2: become largely performative. I don't think its function is to
28:32
Speaker 2: exchange information and reach decisions, or express disagreements and pursue
28:42
Speaker 2: the truth. I think it's largely display. It is about
28:47
Speaker 2: exerting power and maintaining power and displaying that power through
28:52
Speaker 2: the way that you dress, in the way that you speak,
28:54
Speaker 2: so that you can then be seen as aligned with
28:56
Speaker 2: a group that is in power rather than out of power.
28:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, but now what's happen and is that those conversations
29:02
Speaker 1: have been relegated to Dave Chappelle and other comedians.
29:08
Speaker 2: There are very few comedians left in the US that
29:12
Speaker 2: are still actually practicing comedy. I've been to about twenty
29:15
Speaker 2: comedy shows in LA in the last six months, and
29:18
Speaker 2: I would say that all but maybe two or three
29:21
Speaker 2: of the performers, the comedians in those shows, we're using
29:25
Speaker 2: what I would call performative language as opposed to really
29:30
Speaker 2: truly provocative language that is meant to challenge a power structure.
29:35
Speaker 2: In fact, I would even say that comedy now largely
29:39
Speaker 2: in the US, is simply performed to reassert and reflect
29:47
Speaker 2: the existing power structure, which is the antithesis of comedy.
29:50
Speaker 2: Comedy is always supposed to be about making fun of
29:52
Speaker 2: the king. But yeah, that was the that was the
29:57
Speaker 2: role exactly. We don't do that anymore in the un
30:00
Speaker 2: The people that are that are jesting the comedians are
30:04
Speaker 2: essentially attacking the people without any power. It's very ought
30:11
Speaker 2: because the people who are in charge, the people who
30:13
Speaker 2: have the power in the US, are largely those who
30:15
Speaker 2: are pushing all of these crazy movements, and these are
30:17
Speaker 2: the same movements that the comedians are in favor of.
30:24
Speaker 2: So I don't even think comedy serves its purpose like
30:27
Speaker 2: it used to. And you're right, Dave Chappelle challenges There's
30:30
Speaker 2: a couple of other comedians who are still speaking, they
30:34
Speaker 2: say truth to power, but they're not common anymore. I
30:38
Speaker 2: don't think that. I don't think that comedy has been
30:40
Speaker 2: successfully resurrected in the US after it was essentially banned
30:44
Speaker 2: during the lockdowns in twenty twenty, because it always has
30:47
Speaker 2: to be done in front of people. You don't have
30:50
Speaker 2: comedians talking into a microphone, you know, in a podcasting booth,
30:54
Speaker 2: and then people are like, I'm going to listen to
30:56
Speaker 2: the comedy podcast that came out yesterday. It doesn't work
30:59
Speaker 2: like that. Always has to be in front of an
31:01
Speaker 2: actual audience, and that was made illegal for two years,
31:04
Speaker 2: and I don't think. I don't think comedy has ever
31:06
Speaker 2: come back since then.
31:08
Speaker 1: The same can be said though about a lot of
31:11
Speaker 1: rock music. I mean, it was all about drugs six
31:15
Speaker 1: rock and roll and sticking it to the man in
31:18
Speaker 1: that it's all about raging for the machine.
31:22
Speaker 2: Well, how many rock stars have signed up to become
31:25
Speaker 2: poster childs of City Bank and American Express or performed
31:31
Speaker 2: for the Democrat Party at political rallies. I don't think
31:37
Speaker 2: there are many that are still actually trying to challenge
31:44
Speaker 2: the power structure. I mean, even Howard Stern, who was
31:47
Speaker 2: around for decades. I mean that guy was like the
31:50
Speaker 2: poster child of sticking it to the man in the
31:53
Speaker 2: radio broadcasting world. Kindly, I could describe him as someone
31:56
Speaker 2: who sold out, but I would even go so far
31:58
Speaker 2: as to say he seems to have act lost his mind.
32:01
Speaker 2: He seems to be irrational at this point and completely
32:04
Speaker 2: controlled by this this kind of mass paranoia that took
32:09
Speaker 2: over the world in twenty twenty and hasn't really left us.
32:11
Speaker 2: It's just sort of shifted form away from perhaps the
32:14
Speaker 2: medical to the more cultural. And many other people like him,
32:19
Speaker 2: So it would be challenging if you were to ask
32:23
Speaker 2: me to identify a cultural icon, either a speaker, a comedian,
32:28
Speaker 2: a musician, somebody that's in a kind of pop culture
32:30
Speaker 2: world who's actually challenging the largely despotic co mingled movement
32:43
Speaker 2: of government and large corporation and cultural assignment, you know,
32:49
Speaker 2: through magazines and radio and music, challenging that structure and
32:54
Speaker 2: mocking it in a way that upsets the balance of power.
32:58
Speaker 2: I would have a hard time aiming more than two
33:00
Speaker 2: or three people. I just don't see them anymore.
33:05
Speaker 1: When Gavin mcinness was on my podcast, he said that
33:09
Speaker 1: everything is downstream from culture. Would you agree with that?
33:13
Speaker 2: No? I don't. I think that unfortunately, culture, which used
33:24
Speaker 2: to be largely naturalistic and largely the result of an actual,
33:32
Speaker 2: real confluence of decisions, preferences, trends, has now been taken
33:39
Speaker 2: over and manipulated by a very small number of powerful people. Therefore,
33:47
Speaker 2: what we consider culture now I don't believe is actually
33:51
Speaker 2: culture anymore. I think it's actually a campaign. And therefore
33:59
Speaker 2: I think that culture may actually be the beginning, not
34:04
Speaker 2: the end, of the stream of decisions and behaviors and
34:09
Speaker 2: changes in the way that people view their life. Which
34:11
Speaker 2: is a very scary thing for me to say, because
34:14
Speaker 2: I always used to think that culture was simply what started,
34:19
Speaker 2: and that from that we found our lives and we
34:25
Speaker 2: determined how we wanted to live. I don't believe that
34:28
Speaker 2: culture is a natural life force anymore. In many places
34:32
Speaker 2: in the world. I think it's actually completely artificially modeled
34:37
Speaker 2: and injected. And I'm talking about that from the point
34:40
Speaker 2: of view of the foods we eat, the music we
34:42
Speaker 2: listen to, the books that we read, how we listen
34:46
Speaker 2: to podcasts, our movements, and how we move around. A
34:54
Speaker 2: simple example in Culver City, which is close to where
34:57
Speaker 2: I live in Los Angeles, the government and removed all
35:02
Speaker 2: these parking spaces and turned two or three out of
35:07
Speaker 2: five lanes of traffic into bus zones and bicycle paths,
35:12
Speaker 2: and now the culture quote unquote is a walking biking
35:16
Speaker 2: culture where there's no cars. Well, that wasn't the result
35:20
Speaker 2: of people saying, we really don't want to actually have
35:24
Speaker 2: to use our cars and park and go shopping. We'd
35:27
Speaker 2: all love to just ride our bikes three hundred and
35:29
Speaker 2: sixty five days a year because those lanes are empty,
35:32
Speaker 2: there's nobody in them. There's a bus every twenty four minutes,
35:35
Speaker 2: and there's maybe seven bicycles an hour, and everyone else
35:39
Speaker 2: just doesn't go there anymore because they have nowhere to
35:41
Speaker 2: park and they can't get through the traffic because it's
35:44
Speaker 2: just a mess. It's three lanes down to one. So
35:48
Speaker 2: was all of that, all of those changes in people's behavior,
35:51
Speaker 2: was that the downstream effect of culture. I don't think
35:53
Speaker 2: so politics exactly, politics masquerading as culture, and that's.
36:00
Speaker 1: Bullshit, okay. But then when you speak about culture, what
36:03
Speaker 1: do you mean?
36:04
Speaker 2: What I mean is a kind of like a Ouiji
36:12
Speaker 2: board where everyone has their hands on the board and
36:15
Speaker 2: no one's really moving it or controlling it. It just
36:18
Speaker 2: sort of goes with the summation of all the forces
36:21
Speaker 2: of the hands on the board shift it in a
36:23
Speaker 2: certain direction. And that's where culture becomes an expression of
36:36
Speaker 2: the direction of the people as a whole. And that's
36:41
Speaker 2: when trends start and you start to see movement. Back
36:46
Speaker 2: in the let's say nineteen sixties, there was a cultural
36:49
Speaker 2: fashion trend towards bell bottom jeans and hippie dippy hair
36:53
Speaker 2: and marijuana. Was that started because a denim company launched
37:00
Speaker 2: a hippie campaign and one over the youth who were
37:03
Speaker 2: all in very conservative nineteen fifties clothing to start dressing
37:07
Speaker 2: more slovenly with bel bottom pants and putting flowers in
37:10
Speaker 2: their hair. Was that because there was a series of
37:16
Speaker 2: viral reels on Instagram that were all pushed by a
37:21
Speaker 2: third party that was doing crowdsourcing and funding to get
37:24
Speaker 2: those reels out to capture the minds and attention and
37:26
Speaker 2: change the stuff. No, that wasn't happening. Everybody just sort
37:29
Speaker 2: of decided to do that on their own and it
37:31
Speaker 2: became a fashion statement. But now when you see people
37:35
Speaker 2: dressing differently, it's usually because one corporation that has an
37:40
Speaker 2: investment in a specific type of clothing somehow got an
37:43
Speaker 2: influencer to start posting videos of herself wearing this clothing
37:47
Speaker 2: and paying her about half a million dollars for it
37:49
Speaker 2: to ignite a trend. But it was all ignited by
37:54
Speaker 2: a marketing campaign in New York City. It had nothing
37:56
Speaker 2: to do with an actual girl that really liked that clothing.
37:59
Speaker 2: These are the these little points that I'm making about
38:02
Speaker 2: how everything that we determine to be culture now seems
38:07
Speaker 2: to be artificially induced, like meat that's grown in a laboratory.
38:14
Speaker 2: And I don't think that culture anymore in the West
38:18
Speaker 2: is naturally determined. I think it actually is laboratory grown,
38:21
Speaker 2: and I think we're being force fed it. And that's
38:24
Speaker 2: another reason why I'm so concerned about the viability of
38:28
Speaker 2: the West because if you no longer have an actual
38:31
Speaker 2: naturalistic culture, if your culture is being fed to you,
38:36
Speaker 2: then you really are kind of living in a matrix
38:38
Speaker 2: to some degree, aren't you.
38:40
Speaker 1: It's not longer organic, not at all.
38:43
Speaker 2: I see this with almost every trend, every popular exercise, fad, food, movie, book.
38:55
Speaker 2: It all seems to be originating not from the ground up,
38:58
Speaker 2: but from the top down. And I find that very
39:01
Speaker 2: troubling because it disenfranchises the people from actually co creating
39:07
Speaker 2: their culture. Their culture is being created for them, and
39:10
Speaker 2: they're being told to just follow it, and if they
39:13
Speaker 2: don't follow it, then they're considered to be some kind
39:16
Speaker 2: of an econoclassed outsider who's a rabble rouser, and that
39:20
Speaker 2: person is then ostracized. So it eliminates what I see
39:24
Speaker 2: as sort of the organic give and take and development
39:27
Speaker 2: of tools that people need to adapt to a changing environment.
39:33
Speaker 2: I don't think that people are adapting and developing tools anymore.
39:36
Speaker 2: I think they're being told what to do, and then
39:39
Speaker 2: they are being forced into an adaptation which is not
39:42
Speaker 2: actually of their own shoosing, and which is not healthy
39:45
Speaker 2: for them. Spending seventeen hours a day on a phone,
39:49
Speaker 2: which is the average screen time as of a college student.
39:52
Speaker 2: Now that's not a cultural trend that the kids just
39:56
Speaker 2: sort of picked this thing up and decided that it
39:59
Speaker 2: was something that was really cool and they really wanted
40:00
Speaker 2: to do. They have been neurotransmittedly addicted to these phones
40:07
Speaker 2: with a very sophisticated, multi billion dollar invested, algorithmic, always changing,
40:14
Speaker 2: weaponized series of apps that they, the children and the
40:20
Speaker 2: young people, are really unable to resist because they don't
40:23
Speaker 2: have the capacity. It would be like dropping packages of
40:26
Speaker 2: cocaine in every single school district in the United States
40:30
Speaker 2: and then a month later saying, you know, we have
40:31
Speaker 2: this cultural trend now of cocaine addiction. We don't know what.
40:34
Speaker 2: I guess kids just really like coke. That's what these
40:39
Speaker 2: phones are doing. So it concerns me and it kind
40:42
Speaker 2: of gets back to what you're talking about earlier that
40:45
Speaker 2: I really do think there is a conspiracy, so to speak,
40:48
Speaker 2: as a post an organic movement towards a way of
40:52
Speaker 2: life in the West which will be our undoing because
40:56
Speaker 2: it is not a sustainable, humanistic, healthy, happy, growth oriented,
41:02
Speaker 2: reproducing of humans directed way of life. It always it
41:07
Speaker 2: is the opposite of that there's a death it ends
41:11
Speaker 2: in basically deaf.
41:13
Speaker 1: We were having supper yesterday with friends and me and
41:17
Speaker 1: my mate. We were talking about cotton and different styles
41:21
Speaker 1: of cotton that you that you buy now on some
41:23
Speaker 1: cotton a stretchy and other and other cotton isn't. It's
41:26
Speaker 1: a very strange conversation and I sound very gay now
41:30
Speaker 1: that I'm talking about it. But there was a context
41:32
Speaker 1: which I won't get into, and he said to me,
41:36
Speaker 1: but I will never buy a linen shirt because I
41:39
Speaker 1: don't want people to think that I work on a yacht. Really,
41:46
Speaker 1: and that there feeds into what you're saying about about culture,
41:51
Speaker 1: because linen is equated to what you wear on a boat.
41:56
Speaker 1: It's that it's that it's that kind of straight material.
41:59
Speaker 1: And I was just thinking about how these fashions do
42:02
Speaker 1: either fall into organic or artificial trains. As you're talking about.
42:09
Speaker 2: That's a great example of an artificially driven anti trend,
42:13
Speaker 2: meaning anti linen. When if you look at history, linen
42:19
Speaker 2: was probably the most popular fabric during the entire pioneering
42:24
Speaker 2: period in the United States because it's incredibly durable, it's strong,
42:27
Speaker 2: it wicks sweat, away, It has a great breathe ability.
42:34
Speaker 2: It can be very easily washed and dried, which is
42:41
Speaker 2: why you wear it on a yacht. Well, no, that's
42:44
Speaker 2: not why you've heard on a yacht.
42:46
Speaker 1: Because it gets full of because it gets it gets wet,
42:48
Speaker 1: and it gets full of salt.
42:51
Speaker 2: You could just as easily wear elastin synthetic nylon product
42:56
Speaker 2: on a vote too. It's because the advertisements for clothing
42:59
Speaker 2: that are made out of linen tend to only feature
43:01
Speaker 2: people wearing yachts, are not wearing that's working on yachts
43:05
Speaker 2: as opposed to building wooden cabins out in the forest
43:11
Speaker 2: or preparing meals with linen table claws, because they're much
43:15
Speaker 2: easier to take care of than silk and cotton. It's
43:22
Speaker 2: always perhaps been that way to some degree with advertising
43:26
Speaker 2: for clothing. But the association that's incredibly constrained that this
43:31
Speaker 2: guy has about linen only being a type of fabric
43:34
Speaker 2: that one would wear in a yacht is clearly impregnated
43:37
Speaker 2: inside of him. And it's not a conclusion he reached
43:39
Speaker 2: on his own. He reached it because of all the
43:42
Speaker 2: advertisements that he's been flooded with. Well that's the.
43:45
Speaker 1: Point, But I mean that feeds into what you're talking
43:47
Speaker 1: about artificial culture. Smoking was a phenomenal example of that.
43:52
Speaker 1: I mean, let's be honest, the greatest advertising ever was
43:57
Speaker 1: to back advertising, yes back in the eighties particularly, and
44:03
Speaker 1: we're seeing.
44:03
Speaker 2: That now with marijuana and CBD products. The switch from
44:09
Speaker 2: the use of tobacco by teenagers as an active rebellion
44:13
Speaker 2: to CBD in marijuana. I've never seen something like rapid well,
44:18
Speaker 2: and vaping is also part of that, and it's not
44:24
Speaker 2: intrinsically something that most young people gravitate towards, but because
44:30
Speaker 2: of the marketing and because of the anti tobacco position,
44:35
Speaker 2: which opened up a new field of rebellious behavior, which
44:40
Speaker 2: is the nicotine delivery products and the CBD in the marijuana. Now,
44:44
Speaker 2: when you walk around and you see kids, you know,
44:48
Speaker 2: junior high school, high school kids, they're all carrying vate
44:51
Speaker 2: and vap pens with them, or they're using marijuana in
44:55
Speaker 2: fusion devices to get high. And that's all due to marketing,
45:00
Speaker 2: it's not due to any kind of organic movement whatsoever.
45:04
Speaker 2: And now they're all addicted to it and they can't
45:05
Speaker 2: stop because nicotine is highly, highly addictive, and also marijuana
45:09
Speaker 2: is in a different way. It's addictive in terms of
45:12
Speaker 2: the behaviors that it induces of lack of productivity and
45:16
Speaker 2: also to some degree, the reliance on marijuana to quell
45:19
Speaker 2: anxiety and depression. And you have a huge, huge degree
45:22
Speaker 2: of rebound effect when you stop marijuana and you become
45:24
Speaker 2: highly anxious and also depressed when you stop using it.
45:27
Speaker 2: Very similar kind of methodology of addictive capture that was
45:33
Speaker 2: performed after World War Two with tobacco and smoking, very
45:37
Speaker 2: very similar. So those sorts of weapons, like you said,
45:41
Speaker 2: marketing weapons, have been in use for a long time,
45:44
Speaker 2: and they're just simply evolving, I think, into a much
45:47
Speaker 2: much more powerful tool. And I think it has a
45:50
Speaker 2: lot to do with social media and the use now
45:54
Speaker 2: increasing use at AI to help create and generate fake
46:00
Speaker 2: trends that you can do very cheaply and that can
46:03
Speaker 2: accrue enormous amounts of money. The control that potentially that
46:09
Speaker 2: can be exerted over our minds through AI, certainly were adults,
46:13
Speaker 2: but even more so with young people, is actually quite
46:16
Speaker 2: terrifying if it's used as a tool of manipulation.
46:21
Speaker 1: I was thinking that AI is probably one of the
46:27
Speaker 1: biggest I don't want to call it a black Swan
46:31
Speaker 1: event because it isn't, but something along those lines where
46:34
Speaker 1: it's a huge, huge turning point in civilization. I think
46:39
Speaker 1: the Internet itself was one of them. I mean, I
46:42
Speaker 1: remember back in the early nineties logging on with the
46:46
Speaker 1: dial up modem and Google hadn't existed yet. I think
46:49
Speaker 1: it was like Ulta Vista and one or two other
46:52
Speaker 1: search engines that had just about nothing on them. But
46:55
Speaker 1: I think that was a big turning point. Also, AI,
47:01
Speaker 1: I think is a huge, huge deal. And I don't
47:05
Speaker 1: even think any of us have any idea what the
47:07
Speaker 1: nixt twenty five years is going to okluck.
47:11
Speaker 2: It's not possible because we don't know how it's going
47:14
Speaker 2: to be used. I see two largely distinct scenarios. One
47:19
Speaker 2: is lovely and the other is horrific, and I don't
47:23
Speaker 2: really see how it's going to be anything in between.
47:27
Speaker 2: The lovely scenario would be that AI then becomes a
47:34
Speaker 2: replacement for the enslavement that we now suffer from as
47:38
Speaker 2: operators of computer systems. We are basically the slaves to
47:42
Speaker 2: computers today and social media. We were promised that they
47:46
Speaker 2: would free usk These are tools that we would be
47:48
Speaker 2: able to use to increase efficiency and improve our lives,
47:52
Speaker 2: and I don't believe that they are. I think on
47:54
Speaker 2: a net basis, the smartphone is actually cost us a
47:58
Speaker 2: lot more than it's provided. What the AI can potentially
48:03
Speaker 2: do is take over all of the time wasting useless virtual,
48:08
Speaker 2: anti interpersonal events and activities that we're now consumed with
48:13
Speaker 2: and do them for us. And if that's possible, and
48:17
Speaker 2: if that can happen, then we could go out into
48:19
Speaker 2: the world and actually live our lives again instead of
48:21
Speaker 2: being stuck behind a desk or craning our necks over
48:24
Speaker 2: into a phone. That would be lovely. That would actually
48:27
Speaker 2: be a pivotal moment in history, similar to let's say,
48:31
Speaker 2: the discovery of antibiotics or the Industrial Revolution, of massive
48:36
Speaker 2: increase of efficiency. That would free us from a lot
48:39
Speaker 2: of anti human tasks that I think are robbing us
48:42
Speaker 2: of our lives. On the other hand, the AI could
48:48
Speaker 2: actually end up doing somewhat the opposite what it could
48:51
Speaker 2: end up doing if we don't have control over our
48:55
Speaker 2: local manager, our chief of staff AI system that we
48:59
Speaker 2: are now directing it towards and giving it action plans.
49:03
Speaker 2: If the AI as an entity becomes controlled and taken
49:08
Speaker 2: over by a small group of globalists in the way
49:12
Speaker 2: that medicine has now, it could actually be used against
49:17
Speaker 2: us in the way that medicine has recently been used,
49:20
Speaker 2: and that would end up looking like a system where
49:24
Speaker 2: we are fed as we are now, like we're talking
49:27
Speaker 2: about trends. We are fed the tasks, the priorities, the
49:33
Speaker 2: decisions about things as basic as what temperature to keep
49:38
Speaker 2: our thermis dead at in our home, how far to
49:41
Speaker 2: drive our car, how much food to purchase, when to
49:45
Speaker 2: purchase the food, what types of food, books that we read,
49:48
Speaker 2: the music that we listen to. This is already happening
49:51
Speaker 2: to some degree. But if AI is taken over not
49:54
Speaker 2: by us as individuals, but by corporations and international groups,
49:58
Speaker 2: and then it's strained in its algorithms to not really
50:02
Speaker 2: be able to assist us, but actually to act as
50:06
Speaker 2: an assistant to a largely ideological endpoint which is defined
50:11
Speaker 2: by not us as individuals, but by these entities that
50:14
Speaker 2: are trying to take over our lives, then we could
50:17
Speaker 2: end up becoming enslaved to the AI. So that's how
50:21
Speaker 2: I see the future of AI. Either we become our
50:24
Speaker 2: masters of it, or it starts to master us, and
50:29
Speaker 2: I think it is dependent on two things. One is
50:32
Speaker 2: to what degree these globalist, corporate international structures are able
50:37
Speaker 2: to rest away AI from our hands, and the way
50:41
Speaker 2: that the whole bitcoin was taken away from the people.
50:45
Speaker 2: How much actual curiosity and independent spirit we as individuals
50:52
Speaker 2: and collectively express towards AI. If we actually try to
50:57
Speaker 2: learn it and we want to incorporate into our life
51:00
Speaker 2: as a tool, we could potentially win this tug of war.
51:04
Speaker 2: But if we sit back passively, and unfortunately a lot
51:06
Speaker 2: of the problems in the US are due to passiveness,
51:10
Speaker 2: passivity ordering coffee online, you know, and just picking it up,
51:13
Speaker 2: or Dooom's clothing like doom scrolling. It's a passive way
51:17
Speaker 2: of using the tool. If we start using AI like that,
51:21
Speaker 2: just letting AI tell us what it thinks we should
51:23
Speaker 2: be doing, instead of acting as an architect for our
51:26
Speaker 2: lives and saying, this is what I want to do today, tomorrow,
51:31
Speaker 2: and for the next week and the next month. I
51:32
Speaker 2: want you AI to show me how to accomplish these
51:35
Speaker 2: goals that I have decided for myself. If we don't
51:38
Speaker 2: do that, if we just lay back and say, you
51:40
Speaker 2: know what, I don't really know what to do with
51:42
Speaker 2: my life. Give me some ideas, tell me how I
51:44
Speaker 2: should live, Tell me how I can optimize my environmental
51:48
Speaker 2: footprint and become a better citizen and support the underprivileged.
51:53
Speaker 2: And then AI gives us a whole list of tasks
51:55
Speaker 2: and affirmations and lanes and barriers and constraints that we
52:00
Speaker 2: start to follow like little sheep in the same way
52:02
Speaker 2: that many people did after the twenty twenty debacle. Then
52:06
Speaker 2: I think we might wind up becoming horribly enslaved to
52:10
Speaker 2: it again, kind of like a matrix scenario. Those are
52:13
Speaker 2: the two outcomes I see with AI, and I honestly
52:15
Speaker 2: don't know where it's going to head because we don't
52:17
Speaker 2: really have a lot of evidence yet to see what
52:18
Speaker 2: direction we're going.
52:20
Speaker 1: Friend of mine said to me that human progress is
52:23
Speaker 1: a myth. Now I found out a really profound statement.
52:26
Speaker 1: Technology or technological progress is not a myth, but human
52:30
Speaker 1: progress is a myth. In other words, have humans actually
52:33
Speaker 1: changed at all in let's say a thousand and two
52:35
Speaker 1: thousand years.
52:37
Speaker 2: You could argue, I think that humans have progressed and
52:42
Speaker 2: then retreated from progress.
52:46
Speaker 1: I mean, for me, given examples. So in other words,
52:48
Speaker 1: they go let me give an example. So they'll say, Okay,
52:51
Speaker 1: we don't use spears anymore. Okay, no, sure, but we
52:55
Speaker 1: use a different method now we use bullets. The same thing.
52:57
Speaker 2: Though, Well, you're kind of begging the question, which is
53:04
Speaker 2: why do we still have wars and why do we
53:07
Speaker 2: still fight? And you could, I suppose, argue that we
53:10
Speaker 2: still fight and we have wars because we haven't progressed
53:13
Speaker 2: to a point where we are able to resolve differences
53:18
Speaker 2: largely peaceably. So in that sense, one could argue that
53:24
Speaker 2: there hasn't been much progress. But I suppose you could
53:28
Speaker 2: also argue that there's been an acceptance of the reality
53:33
Speaker 2: of the intrinsic flawed nature of humanity, and the acceptance
53:38
Speaker 2: of that reality has led some civilizations to develop weaponry
53:44
Speaker 2: in order to protect and advance their people. And the
53:48
Speaker 2: cause of what they see is good because they know
53:50
Speaker 2: that there will always be bad people that, if left
53:53
Speaker 2: to their devices, will develop even more advanced weaponry will
53:56
Speaker 2: wipe them out. So I think think you could you
54:01
Speaker 2: could argue that to some degree there's been progress in
54:06
Speaker 2: the acknowledgment of the reality of the flaws of man,
54:11
Speaker 2: because if you posit that the goal of humanity is
54:15
Speaker 2: to progress to a state of perfection where there's no
54:19
Speaker 2: longer any intrinsic vice that comes out of the human
54:25
Speaker 2: That's very similar to a sort of Buddhist approach to
54:29
Speaker 2: eliminate all expectations and all desires. And that may not
54:34
Speaker 2: actually be attainable, because we are not actually perfect beings,
54:40
Speaker 2: and you'll always have drives that are inherently destructive. I
54:47
Speaker 2: think acknowledging that and arming yourself for that battle is
54:50
Speaker 2: actually a sign of thoughtfulness and progress, because denying that
54:55
Speaker 2: usually ends up causing and guaranteeing your demise against people
55:00
Speaker 2: who are far more flawed than you.
55:05
Speaker 1: And in a way, why should they be human progress.
55:13
Speaker 2: That's a good question because what is exactly the purpose
55:16
Speaker 2: of life itself? Is it to progress human beings as
55:19
Speaker 2: a species, or is it to lead a full life
55:22
Speaker 2: for yourself and perhaps immediate descendants. Yeah, what is the
55:25
Speaker 2: trajectory of that quote unquote progress? If the trajectory is
55:31
Speaker 2: to allow for the most powerful and meaningful experiences, which
55:39
Speaker 2: requires health, It requires transportation, it requires interpersonal connections, It
55:46
Speaker 2: requires mastering the elements of the weather and our surroundings
55:51
Speaker 2: to the degree that we're able to achieve build the
55:54
Speaker 2: tools to then provide the opportunity to have those experiences
56:00
Speaker 2: is than I think we are progressing. But I think
56:03
Speaker 2: you could also argue that even though we have all
56:06
Speaker 2: those tools, now we have better health, we have transportation,
56:10
Speaker 2: we have mastered the elements, we do largely connect interpersonally
56:14
Speaker 2: without stabbing one another to death over small things. Outside
56:17
Speaker 2: of you know, some of the soccer bars in England.
56:21
Speaker 2: Outside of all of that, you could, I think very
56:25
Speaker 2: well make the case that there aren't many people actually
56:27
Speaker 2: taking advantage of any of that now. What are they doing,
56:32
Speaker 2: certainly outside of tribal Africa, what they're largely doing is
56:36
Speaker 2: sitting in front of their computer and doom scrolling. They're
56:41
Speaker 2: not taking advantage of any of the experiences that they
56:43
Speaker 2: have available to them. They're not traveling, they're not having
56:47
Speaker 2: deep conversations with people. They're not pushing their bodies to
56:52
Speaker 2: their limits of construction or sports or athletics. Very few
56:57
Speaker 2: people are doing any of this. In fact, they're doing
56:59
Speaker 2: less of this now than they did one hundred years ago.
57:01
Speaker 2: And we can't certainly argue that people are more interpersonally connected.
57:05
Speaker 2: They may be less violent, but they're certainly not getting
57:08
Speaker 2: out of their interpersonal experiences nearly what they were getting
57:11
Speaker 2: out before the advent of the phone. So in some
57:17
Speaker 2: ways we are not actually leading better lives than we
57:21
Speaker 2: were one hundred years ago. We may be leading longer
57:24
Speaker 2: lives and perhaps less acutely painful ones, but certainly in
57:28
Speaker 2: terms of contentment and a sense of self achievement, I
57:33
Speaker 2: don't really see much positivity to be seen, broadly speaking
57:37
Speaker 2: anywhere in the West in that regard.
57:40
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think your progress has been fair.
57:43
Speaker 1: I mean, you've progressed from la to Europe. Now you
57:46
Speaker 1: need to progress a bit further than go downwards to
57:48
Speaker 1: the bottom of Africa.
57:50
Speaker 2: Uh huh, I was expecting you were going to go
57:54
Speaker 2: in that direction.
57:55
Speaker 1: Well, it's been a few years in making, so.
58:00
Speaker 2: I would Uh.
58:02
Speaker 1: Let's know, I live amidst amidst amongst in between. I
58:07
Speaker 1: don't know what the right word is, but I live.
58:08
Speaker 1: I have a lot of wine around me. Put it
58:10
Speaker 1: that way, a lot of vines, a lot of vineyards.
58:15
Speaker 1: That should be good enough reason to progress a bit more,
58:18
Speaker 1: to progress towards the vineyard. But what is the right word.
58:21
Speaker 1: I live amidst vineyards amongst between. I don't know what
58:26
Speaker 1: the right right word is.
58:29
Speaker 2: Well, between is there would be definitional side of me
58:36
Speaker 2: two vineyards which you are smack in the middle of.
58:43
Speaker 2: If you were among vineyards, there must be three or
58:45
Speaker 2: more of them, and if you were amidst them, that
58:49
Speaker 2: just sort of seems like you're not really sure exactly
58:51
Speaker 2: where you are, just kind of floundering through a bunch
58:53
Speaker 2: of fields.
58:54
Speaker 1: And also you don't really know what you're saying, because
58:56
Speaker 1: nobody says amidst anymore.
58:58
Speaker 2: No, it doesn't have a very clear finish. No.
59:01
Speaker 1: Okay, well, that's a great way to coming forward the
59:03
Speaker 1: final lap mock. Are you still I mean, is there
59:06
Speaker 1: still a way I can follow your work? Or have
59:08
Speaker 1: you kind of gone off the radar.
59:10
Speaker 2: I'm still writing. I'm not doing a lot of public
59:12
Speaker 2: speaking anymore, but I'm still writing, and I'm publishing every
59:15
Speaker 2: week on dissident MD. So dissidentmd dot com is my
59:20
Speaker 2: subscriber site, and you can subscribe for free, but you
59:23
Speaker 2: won't get to see very much because most of it
59:26
Speaker 2: is paid with a very small amount of money. The
59:28
Speaker 2: cost of a Starbucks coffee once a month is about
59:31
Speaker 2: what you need to pay, and you can receive direct
59:34
Speaker 2: full articles, not the limited ones that I believe are
59:39
Speaker 2: covering subjects that are of great pertinence and import at
59:43
Speaker 2: the time of the writing. I'm also still part of
59:46
Speaker 2: a podcast, although I'm taking a couple months off and
59:48
Speaker 2: it's just being published by my podcast co host, and
59:51
Speaker 2: it's still the same. It's called Informed Dissent and you
59:55
Speaker 2: can get that on any podcasting platform and we publish
59:58
Speaker 2: that essentially every week with a new episode, usually with guests.
1:00:02
Speaker 2: So Dissident MD the website and Informed Descent the podcast
1:00:06
Speaker 2: are the two places where I'm now i'd say most
1:00:09
Speaker 2: frequently self representing.
1:00:12
Speaker 1: I think you could do better than Starbucks. I mean
1:00:16
Speaker 1: they the ones who give you coffee with some sort
1:00:18
Speaker 1: of social messaging.
1:00:21
Speaker 2: They do, and so does fills, and so does Pets,
1:00:24
Speaker 2: and so does coffee being there aren't really many chained
1:00:27
Speaker 2: coffee places that don't, and unfortunately even the individual ones
1:00:30
Speaker 2: do the same.
1:00:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I don't. I don't know how possible
1:00:34
Speaker 1: it is for you in LA to support like the
1:00:36
Speaker 1: small guy, but I try and support the small guy
1:00:38
Speaker 1: as much as possible.
1:00:40
Speaker 2: The small guy is usually a Marxist with the shee
1:00:43
Speaker 2: gavera flag on his shirt and are often far more
1:00:48
Speaker 2: strident leftists than the actual corporate coffee shops. Yes, but
1:00:53
Speaker 2: how's he's coffee? Well, this is what I was about
1:00:56
Speaker 2: to say, is that the one area where I think
1:00:58
Speaker 2: the Left has actually competitively won in the quality of
1:01:07
Speaker 2: their product against conservatives is in making coffee. And I
1:01:13
Speaker 2: think it's the only thing, the only thing I can
1:01:16
Speaker 2: think of that the left actually does better than the
1:01:18
Speaker 2: right is making coffee. There is no other What is
1:01:24
Speaker 2: the reason for that?
1:01:26
Speaker 1: Because they all started off as waits em barristers, so
1:01:32
Speaker 1: they're born into it.
1:01:35
Speaker 2: That's true.
1:01:39
Speaker 1: With the hipster beard and the ponytail, so they can
1:01:42
Speaker 1: get through cottage.
1:01:44
Speaker 2: So it's not so much that they have an intrinsic
1:01:48
Speaker 2: advantage in their genetics in making coffee, it's that they
1:01:52
Speaker 2: just have more experience with it, because correct, that is
1:01:56
Speaker 2: the only job that they actually ever had orhere they
1:01:58
Speaker 2: were making money.
1:02:00
Speaker 1: And the quote unquote conservatives will never do that because
1:02:03
Speaker 1: it's below them.
1:02:05
Speaker 2: That's very true. I hadn't thought about that. I think
1:02:10
Speaker 2: you're right. So, actually good coffee making is kind of
1:02:16
Speaker 2: a sign of lack of ambition in life.
1:02:22
Speaker 1: I think we've opened a can of worms.
1:02:24
Speaker 2: Yet Condora's books, conservatives are always more ambitious and they
1:02:31
Speaker 2: work harder, so they skip the coffee making stuff. And
1:02:33
Speaker 2: the people that are not ambitious or that are based
1:02:36
Speaker 2: on I guess life of delusions and grandeur, they start
1:02:40
Speaker 2: as coffee makers and they stay that way for a
1:02:42
Speaker 2: number of years, and they often never actually attain real jobs.
1:02:46
Speaker 2: So perhaps the only thing that they can be proud
1:02:50
Speaker 2: of is their mastery of coffee.
1:02:54
Speaker 1: And that's two coffee machines, actually you doo, yeah, the
1:02:58
Speaker 1: one the one is full grinding beans and the other
1:03:00
Speaker 1: is for those little capsules.
1:03:03
Speaker 2: So you have the lazy man's coffee machine and then
1:03:06
Speaker 2: the one that requires some manual labor.
1:03:08
Speaker 1: Yes, but obviously nothing beats grinding coffee beans that smells
1:03:14
Speaker 1: just a doubtful.
1:03:16
Speaker 2: It does come out better m remarkably higher quality, but
1:03:21
Speaker 2: it does require more work. Yes.
1:03:25
Speaker 1: But having said that, we have now destroyed this entire conversation.
1:03:29
Speaker 1: So let's ended up by saying, Mark McDonald, thank you
1:03:32
Speaker 1: for joining me in the trenches.
1:03:35
Speaker 2: Thank you