Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / PREMIUM: "Multiculturalism & Identity" with Stan Grant

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PREMIUM: "Multiculturalism & Identity" with Stan Grant · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  A quick note before the episode begins. I am currently travelling through the South Pacific.
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  I hope to be recording shows and doing sub-stack live streams. It isn't always easy coordinating
• 0:14
  with guests who are used to living on island time instead of my hectic big city time.
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  Anyway, knowing that I would be away, last week in Sydney I pre-recorded a terrific chat
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  with a brilliant multi-time uncomfortable conversations guest, the journalist and author Megan
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  Down. You will hear that conversation later this month. She and I also had lunch when I was in
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  Los Angeles a few months ago. It was utterly brilliant. Then and it was brilliant to chat with her
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  last Tuesday. Well, Megan lives in Altadena in Los Angeles and we spoke last Tuesday. You know what
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  went down last Tuesday Wednesday Thursday in Los Angeles. I say she lives in Altadena. She lived
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  in Altadena basically up until the day that she recorded this show because much of Altadena,
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  including her house, is rubble, is ashes. She didn't own the house. She owned everything in the house
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  and like me she makes a living from podcasting and sub-stacking and now she has no equipment and
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  no where to live and will have to spend a lot presumably just to get back to zero.
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  I'd like to encourage you to do her a favor and do yourself a favor and throw a few shackles by
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  subscribing to her sub-stack. That's the most parsimonious way to assist in some tiny way with
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  the catastrophe that has befalled them. The City of Angels and my friend and colleague
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  end up coming guest. If you find the episode entertaining and informative later this month,
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  and I'm sure that you will, this writes me as the least that we can do. The podcast,
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  her podcast is called The Unspeakable. There's a link in the episode description of this episode.
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  Just open your podcast app and it'll be there with one click to subscribe. She also has a new
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  venture called The Unspeak Easy, which was the the approximate reason for her coming on this show
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  this month. It's a community for women who are basically fed up and crave nuanced honest
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  conversations about today's most complicated issues. As I said, that's the subject of the episode
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  that you'll hear later this month. I just wanted to get ahead of the game right now because she's
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  in strife and have you check out The Unspeak Easy and The Unspeakable the podcast at the link in
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  the show notes. Okay, my thoughts go out as always with everyone in Los Angeles on with the show.
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  Got a humans welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas and few ideas are more dangerous than
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  the notion that liberalism, small L liberalism, enlightenment values that have propelled the success
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  of Western civilization for low these many years are under attack and may be crumbling,
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  may be giving way to a new world order where ancient tribalisms are more ascendant. I recently had
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  today's guest on the show Stan Grant to talk about liberalism in 2025 and to wrestle with the future
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  of the global order and the place for enlightenment values in the 21st century, but I wanted to get
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  him back to think about bigger questions of I suppose identity tribalism racial slurs what you
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  might call cancel culture how we relate to each other how we censor each other how we sanction
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  the changing norms of culture the sort of ruthless globalist elite of which I suppose I myself
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  am a part and how that is butting up against the identities both of the kind of woke left in
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  their identity politics and also of the regressive right in their blood and soil talk and their
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  anti-immigrant rhetoric nowhere is that seen more keenly of course in the Middle East or ancient
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  enmities are flaring up it seems to be an ancient story but also a pressing one and a modern one
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  and Stan and I disagree quite vociferously about the viability of the enlightenment values I am pro
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  he is more skeptical and also the utility of religion he is pro and I am more skeptical this is
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  one for your heads and also your hearts I hope you enjoy as much as I did the return of the one
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  and only Stan Grant to think over the past year that I've really been very conscious of doing
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  you know I was just talking to you about my mum you know when I was back at mum and dad's house
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  and I switched to television from channel after channel to to the ABC
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  mum walked in and said what you did that for I said oh what's in use you guys that's the
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  Toffs channel the Toffs channel Toff the Toffs being a ton of English word for a pump a pumpers
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  a small snot you know elitists look down your nose and and there's something in that like I
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  one of these have been very conscious I spent a lot of time in the bush now back out I've got
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  this property in the country like a Toff but anyway but but I do and and I've been very conscious of
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  of just not being surrounded by Toffs I was in I was in a shop the other day in the coals in
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  Tumut which is just near the little village that I live in it's getting something out of the
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  out of the refrigerator and there's a bloke next to me and he was talking to some woman there
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  and and he was evidently just picking up the conversation he he was picking up a car in Sydney
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  and he said yeah I knocked on the door and it was the wrong house and the bloke said nah it's not
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  me mate it's the walk down the road and and I actually went thank you God thank you God
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  that I can be in a place where people can use language with some dirt on it some American
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  listeners wog is what the roger tree term for would you say for south of southern european and
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  middle eastern it began with the sort of Greek and Italian post-war migration in Australia you
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  know that that was the colloquial term that was used and and but but but Josh here's the thing
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  if we you if we lose the ability to discern descriptive language from offensive language we're
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  losing something of the ability to communicate to one another and I just some would say why do we
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  need to communicate that way because because we lost that ability it was in that moment right when
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  he said that in that moment when he said that um I knew exactly who he was talking about I knew
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  he wasn't being offensive I knew why can't I just say the Lebanese family or the because that's
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  not how they speak and we don't need to re-educate people and you know because it's true that we
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  don't need to re-educate yeah it's true did we need to re-educate people from calling them the
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  N word family down the road well well it's the it's the way the word is used I think the N word
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  comes with a viciousness and a vitriol that was very rarely used descriptively but in Australia
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  that the word worgan and I'm using it here in in the in the way that this man meant it right
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  right right the way the word was used was there was a colloquial character to the word it was a
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  word that that that opened us to each other rather than closed us down I don't know that the word
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  was spat it can be spat with venom it can be it can be uh it can be spoken with with violent
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  intent but it can also be spoken descriptively right isn't that true don't you just
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  inhabiting the norms of when you evolved your cultural consciousness and came of age because
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  there was a time when you talk about the specs and the years and the bones and the
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  this in the words this and like everywhere and maybe the white people thought that that was
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  all in good fun but maybe a lot of the people of color or the ethnic minorities felt like
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  felt slightly demeaned by the way that they were being referred to it depends Josh I mean
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  what I appreciated in that moment was that I knew there was absolutely no venom
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  uh in the in the in the use of the word it was a descriptor to me it's I knew exactly
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  he was talking about right I knew he was talking about the Italian bloke I knew what sort of
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  car he was buying right to do and he felt it too well I just felt I just felt a very easy colloquial
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  use of a descriptive word to you know like the redhead of bloke the mix the mix down the road
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  the Catholic um you know they they we have lost in a horizontal world in a world where we level
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  everything out we have lost the ability to use words in a descriptive way that cut to the chase
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  that you understand what people mean if you'd said oh yes it was the southern European gentleman
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  down the road that um if you knock on the door and it's the wrong door and an Aussie bloke in a
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  singlet opens now it's not me mate you you want the walk down the road now I guarantee you in the
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  way that that's used that that bloke and that bloke used to him down the road bump bump past each
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  other they breathe the same air good I mate there you go oh yeah yeah you watch a footy on the weekend
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  we're losing some of that now of course we know that those words can be supercharged and I don't
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  I think in the in the case of the N word which I don't use and if someone used it I would feel
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  very differently about it if it said the N down the road yeah I would know we knocked on the door
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  he went yeah you know he's got it let me just give you another example there because if we were
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  having this conversation 10 years ago we wouldn't be using the phrase the N word we would be talking
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  about the exists because we're not talking about a person I don't think I would have 15 years ago
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  yeah I tell you I tell you I tell you yeah I'll tell you why it was a we I'd never heard the phrase
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  the N word really until I remember in the early 2010s when I was in the States in Australia prior
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  to 2010 or 2012 before social media that was not a phrase that existed no I wouldn't have said
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  the N word I wouldn't have said in that way that's what I wouldn't have used the word right I say
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  you would have talked about a slew or something yeah I would have because because I'll tell you why
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  I mean when I was a kid boy again again to come to language right um we lived in the blackskamp
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  the mission was down the road I know people called it the blackskamp um and uh and
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  and in a way when you we lived in the blackskamp it was an Aboriginal mission and uh
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  and when you and you know we that that was language and we used to um but I remember once I was
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  playing football and there was a you know it's about my Aboriginal my my boys I grew up with
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  and a white boy in the team and the white boy turned to me and he said I'll fuck off stand you
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  fucking football mad abo see and I hate that word too right oh it just I knew what he meant I knew
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  he was demeaning me I the anger that I felt at the use of that word um it was it hits you with a
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  force of history that if someone if but if I was if I bumped into a friend of mine a white friend of
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  mine from those days and he said I was telling remember you used to you know used to ride our bikes
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  down around where you are you remember down the the blackskamp I'd go yeah I I know what he meant
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  right I know the descriptor yeah I know the use of the word he's not saying oh yeah where you
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  you know you your abos lived um if you'd said that I'd be like I know I know why you're using that
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  word so it strikes me that there are maybe like three levels on which slurs like that operate um
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  there's the one that you're talking about the bloke uh talking about the world's right where he's
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  talking about an actual person but he's not directing the word at the person then there's
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  oh yeah yeah right or directed at a person exactly right which is probably the harshest
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  form of a slur and then I would say the mildest form of a slur is when it's being used the way
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  linguists call like um what is it like a mention a mention use instead of a usage use or something
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  like that where basically you're talking about the existence of the word yeah in language yeah
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  and you signposting that with all of the that's right so it would be a sentence like the N word
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  is the worst word in the English language and you should never use it about a person
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  now even in that sentence where I'm talking about an abstract conceptual icon yeah like the N word
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  untethered from any reality what I'm saying is that 10 years ago I would be saying the word in
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  that sentence yes yes I wouldn't be saying I but what has happened in terms of your point about
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  losing the ability to understand meaning because we're playing along with a new set of norms
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  well we I just wonder whether or not we always are playing along with some new set of norms yeah
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  but I think it's different now Josh and I think it goes to one of the and I'll do I'll use
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  this word right because it's another word that's completely over overused and used wrongly but the
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  word evil and I think one of the true evils and you know I'll put my doctor of theology on you
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  yes professor yeah which I do have but but the Tower of Bible and the the the story of that
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  is a story of reaching for God and becoming incommunicable to one another you are struck down
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  you speak languages that no one can understand we're becoming communicable one of the evils of
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  modernity and you see it in the development of of Western philosophy the you know the the whole
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  epistemology of Western thought which is is an increasing project of of incommunability of becoming
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  strangers to one another of turning the human being into a verb a riddle it it it begins with
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  day card and the idea of I think therefore I am God becomes a thought experiment God exists only
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  in the ability for us to think about God's existence we then become cute we then become God's
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  ourselves the idea I mean first of all I think therefore I am is the ludicrous statement yet
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  we built a world on it right why is it ludicrous because Josh you don't think yourself into
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  existence we are born into family we are born of appropriate act of procreation of our parents
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  we are born of love we are born with potential if thought is the is the definition of existence
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  do we then get into the quality of thought what about a baby that does not have can't
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  communicate and does not have rational logical thought that we have at what point does that does
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  that even well yes to day cards many blind spots it raises a lot of it he thought animals were
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  machines yeah but hang on just to defend him on the on the narrow point of that claim what I find
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  what I understand him to be saying in the cogito is that it's an epistemological claim which is that
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  yes we you know we could be mistaken about everything it's possible that we could be mistaken about
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  thoughts we know we at least confuse the basic thing that we can we know is that I see in some
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  sense exist there's the only thing I can be absolutely certain but actually I don't I don't
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  I don't but as a as a as a first principle of Western epistemology I reject that because in
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  Aboriginal our own philosophy and our own spirituality I exist even before I exist I am not born
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  of an act of procreation the act of procreation brings life to the existence that that preceded
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  right but you can't know that until you have I want us to comprehend that notion I can't but but
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  I don't believe thought is sets the limits of knowing so I mean first of all I don't I'm not
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  going to be able to prove to you the existence of God there is a reality beyond the capacity to
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  think the existence of God and that was what daycare was doing right daycare is making the move of
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  saying I can't prove the existence of God but I can prove that I think and by thinking I can
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  think of the existence of God ergo God gives me the capacity to think therefore God exists I mean
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  that that was a separate move but that's essentially a fundamental move right that's that's the
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  beginning of the cogito cogito ergo soon I think I exist therefore but but well he doesn't
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  invoke a deity in the first principles of the cogito he's just saying we can't be certain of
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  anything I could be moved by a demon I could be moved by anything he can't be certain he exists
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  but the but the term is because he was nominally a Christian yeah and I use the word nominally
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  as it's meant to be used theologically because in nominalism God actually is distant God is not
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  imminent God is transcendent and distant it is again a really fundamental epistemological turn
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  in modernity that that God ceases to be in the in the Thomas the Thomas Aquinas idea of of God
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  being being analogical something we experience through the living of life and is at his imminent
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  and through reason you can you can know God but God is also beyond reason this puts God into
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  another realm into a supernatural transcendent distant realm and at that point God ceases to have
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  any agency within the human realm right something that we see in the in the sky that's not
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  something what we see in our daily life and and that's essentially where Descartes is coming from
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  but it's an interesting turn because you have struck a match there you've lit a fire for the
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  human mind to set the limits of the human and and from that point on you get a whole tradition
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  that that works its way through a whole lot of iterations you know enlightenment iteration
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  canty and ideas of ethics through to Hageli an idea of historicism through to Nietzschean ideas
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  of God is dead to till you get to Heidegger who resets the whole frame of what it is to exist
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  with with with being and time that we are thrown into the world and the darsai and the living
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  the actual existence in the world is the predicate for the fact of our contemplation of that
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  existence which ultimately is picked up and supercharged by by the French existentialists you know
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  Sartre Foucault and others which leads to it to a post modernist idea where there is no truth
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  and the human being fundamentally is a riddle fundamentally is a riddle there is no even
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  fundamental proof of our existence I think that what we've seen and I use this word evil because
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  it it it infects our ability to be able to see ourselves in the other person there is no more
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  you know I love the Greek idea of the canosis you know it's fundamentally this it's the
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  heart of Christian belief that that you are emptying yourself for the other you know Jesus
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  as Christopher is is an emptying of himself for the world there is none of that in this in this
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  world of incomprehensibility and I think we've reached a point in sort of this late modernity
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  where language itself ceases to have any purchase any meaning and our and and at our
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  our efforts to try not to offend also comes from an inability to see I might offend you but I
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  don't see you either right and the language itself loses all all meaning and that's why when I
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  was standing there in the I love this being out in the country where things are reduced to a
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  a microcosm they're very simple these are people that you see in the street people you smile at
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  people you bump past in that ecosystem I love the fact that that I can go to mass and I can
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  be there with people who probably vote for the National Party probably voted no in the referendum
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  that's not the right wing people I mean I mean I'm just saying I don't know the audience yeah
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  the next party would be that they're conservative or conservative party and I and I love I love
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  the fact that we can share space without those things being the determinant of our relationship
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  and it does come back to language and that's why when I stood there and I heard him use that
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  use of that word I just went thank you God that a word can be used in that way that I don't have
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  to leap to offense I don't have to I don't have to I know exactly what he's saying I don't need to
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  interrogate him and and and and that he has used it that way too not with viciousness not with
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  venom I just think that we can over police our world and create such a horizontal world that has
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  no purchase there's no dirt in our lives no dirt in our fingertips we need to come from somewhere
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  and I think liberalism as an idea predicated on a neutrality that can't believe created the
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  possibility of a of of of of a piece that was based around a cosmopolitan neutrality where we
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  create a neutral space that it that ethically mediates our differences and our disagreements I think
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  we've hit the limits of that because we've stretched that so thin that the language itself
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  becomes baffling I mean they're so we know what people mean do you think there's more of that
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  in the cities than in the country is that why you nominate an anecdote from the country in other
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  words I think there's a couple of ways I think there's a couple of ways of looking at the
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  at the bloke talking about the walls down the road and one way which I would argue is probably
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  the mainstream center left way from the university educated elites who mostly influence public policy
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  and the bureaucracy in the public service and the media and journalism and entertainment
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  would be there are always people who have got the memo late on the way that we're supposed to
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  do things and the you know the arc of history is long but it bends towards justice
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  and this guy this guy and we can come to that with this guy is one of the stragglers and there's
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  always been stragglers and if it was the 1950s and you were going out there then he would be using
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  the n word casually and now it's the w word and in 30 years time he will no longer be talking the
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  the person who represents him will no longer be talking about trans people the way that he
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  probably does right now because they too will be folded into the ever arching ever marching vanguard
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  of new norms it strikes me that you don't see history that no I don't because I think history
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  makes us baffling I mean well I just think the I think the evidence of the the spread of Western
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  epistemology means that that history makes us increasingly baffling to one another I think
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  I think in a world where technology puts us ever closer in greater proximity to one another we're
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  also more estranged I mean the the level of isolation the level of alienation look at the levels
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  of of mental illness particularly amongst the young lives lived on screens I mean all well warned
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  about this you know the when language ceases to have any meaning we lose something fundamental
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  about the human and language itself can become a part of that that process that makes us so baffling
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  to one another so why has there been such a concerted or maybe that is the reason why there has
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  been such a concerted effort to police language lately I mean there was an ad on the back of a bus
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  stand that saw which is from the new South Wales public health and it was talking about how people
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  with cervix as neat now can now get free testing for you know HPV or whatever it was now will you
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  it would use it was a day when you would call those people women but because some trans men have
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  cervixers they call them people with cervixers if you're a first generation Sydney cider from
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  Sri Lanka and if you want to contact you know people who actually need this test done for public
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  health reasons yeah it's probably simpler just to call women women and assume that trans men are
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  going to understand the context because you're talking about cervical cancer um I think I think
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  it's I think it's not really simpler it's it's it's it's it's it's a way of communicating that
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  is instantly understood and the use of descriptors um if they become if we become baffling to one
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  another it's it's a very short step to killing one another not understanding one another not being
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  able to communicate with one another you know and I and I really do think that this sits at the heart
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  of of the Western experiment that ultimately leads to a point where the human doesn't even know
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  what a human is now you know when I when I overheard the use of the word well it kept me in mind
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  I'm not an Italian or a Greek or a Lebanese right who my Italian Greek and Lebanese may try
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  use that word by the way um so they may they may well have taken umbridge at that I took it
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  as a way of describing something that instantly when he said that I had a picture I mean there
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  is something refreshing about bluntness about just speaking words as they are instead of culturally
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  and linguistically diverse communities and so you know yeah is it an Anglo or you know
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  yeah and also a foreigner and also just that it was used it was not spat it was there was no
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  venom it was just a colloquial use of no I understand but that's just a measure that is that's a
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  metric that is not relevant anymore Stan, the whether it's spat or not spat is not relevant
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  to the university and I think it is and I think it is relevant and as a university educated
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  elite I think there is what we don't do not need is for the madness to escape the social
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  science lab and infect our society. There is a place for contemplation of norms and attitudes
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  and language that can be worked out in an academic sense that may lead ultimately
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  to it may filter into our society in a positive way but things run mad in academia they just run
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  insane. One of the things that I embrace myself against all the time is the use of now the
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  politicisation of the idea of the body you know someone will say you know and I hear it in
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  reference to me as an Aboriginal person the black body and what whiteness does to the black body
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  I mean again I see that as a manifestation of the Western epistemological evil of the removal
• 28:14
  of the soul if we are just a representation of a physical form that is invested
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