Latest / Honey Badger Radio / Benedict Beckeld on Why Oikophobia, not Suicidal Empathy is Killing the West | Fireside Chat 277

Transcript

Benedict Beckeld on Why Oikophobia, not Suicidal Empathy is Killing the West | Fireside Chat 277 · Honey Badger Radio

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you may be,
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: and welcome back to Honey Badger Radio. My name is Brian,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: and this is the Fireside Chat, where we discuss interesting
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: things with interesting people, I guess. I'm just going to
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: put it that simply. And today I have a really
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: fascinating guest that I just happened to discover randomly. I was,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: you know, we on this channel, this is a men's
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: issues channel. We usually talk about the issues facing men
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: and boys and That usually leads to conversations about greater,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of like philosophical concepts. And we talk
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: a little bit about the idea of sort of hatred
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: or disdain for your own culture. And I think that's
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: a big problem. And I think that there is a
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: connection there. And then I discovered this gentleman, Dr. You
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: are a doctor, right? That's how I. OK, Dr. Benedict Beckled.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: You're a Swedish-American philosopher, author, and poet known for your
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: work on oikophobia, which is cultural self-contempt or aversion to
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: one's own civilization, especially in your book, Western Self-Contempt, Oikophobia
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: and the Decline of Civilizations. You have earned a PhD
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: in philosophy and classical philology from the University of Heidelberg,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: taught philosophy, Greek and Latin at institutions, including the American
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: University of Paris, volunteered as a teacher in Nambia. And
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: since 2014, you have focused on writing about aesthetics, political philosophy, history,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: and contemporary culture while living in New York. Welcome to
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: our small channel in this corner of the internet, Dr.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Benedict Beckold.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: And as you were saying just before my first live stream,
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: so this will be exciting.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, so this is your first live stream? Yes. Oh, wow, okay. Well, yeah,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: so honored to be a part of that. All right,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: so let's just jump into it. So like this channel,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: we mainly talk about the issues facing men and boys.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: This is things like, you know, boys in education, misandry,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: which is the hatred of men that we see in
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: media and it's basically everywhere, academia, et cetera. So the
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: audience doesn't really, we don't normally talk about this idea,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: but I do think that there is something, there's some
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: connective tissue between what you talk about in your book,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Western Self-Contempt, and what we talk about. So I guess
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: what I thought I would start with is, could you
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: explain for people who might not know, what is oikophobia?
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so orcophobia is a term that was, it's a neologism.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: It was coined in the 1990s by the late British
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: philosopher Roger Scruton. And it basically means the hatred or
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: fear of, yeah, there he is, of home. So it's
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: basically the opposite of xenophobia. Xenophobia being the hatred or
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: fear of foreigners. Orcophobia is the hatred or fear of
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: one's own home or one's own culture, one's own society,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: sometimes one's own fellow citizens. And this is basically, as
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: I've laid out in the book that you mentioned, is
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: that this is contrary to what most people believe. This
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: is not some brand new thing that has been around
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: for maybe a few decades or so. Rather, it is
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: something that comes and goes in history, in Western history
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: since ancient times. And I kind of explain in the
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: book how it happens, the socio-historical circumstances under which orcophobia emerges.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: And one, maybe I'll say right away that one way
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: in which it can connect a little bit to men's
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: issues is that if traditional gender roles emphasize masculinity, as
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: they do, then orcophobia in trying to tear down all
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: different kinds of traditions also tears down traditional gender roles.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: And so that, of course, does have an effect on
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: the role of men in society. And so It's not
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: just gender roles, it's religion, it's all different kinds of
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: traditions that are being attacked by cophobia, but certainly it
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: affects everyone in the society.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what is it about men? Because I think there
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: is a strong connection between men and masculinity and a civilization.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, we need men to sort of sustain it,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: but it does seem to, when people are attacking or
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: criticizing their own culture... like in the case of, let's say,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: the UK, for example, because they're pretty far down this hole,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: they will shame and attack their own men. I don't
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: know if you noticed, but even though there are massive
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: problems with Islamic gangs in the UK, when the media
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: acknowledges this in any way, it's not framed as a
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: problem because of a Middle Eastern religion or a group
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: of people from another culture that have different values, but
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: rather it's just an attack on men in the broad sense.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: They just say, well, this is a problem of just
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: men in general, right? Not these men, but men generally.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: And then it gets framed that way. Like there was
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: a recent, was like a dramatic Netflix series called Adolescence.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: And it basically focused on this boy And of course
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: the boy was a native white English boy and he
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: murdered a girl and that became the entire story. And
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: it was supposedly to address some of the, what they
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: would call rape culture in the UK, but it was
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: framed as just targeting men. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: And that's, which is quite superfluous because Western men over
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: the last half century or so have already been quite domesticated.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: feminism has been quite successful on that front. And so
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: further domestication or further limitation of natural masculinity, and many
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: other people have said this, will often lead to that
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: masculinity being expressed in more unpleasant ways. And the thing is,
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: you're always going to have some crazy people who do
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: horrible things. That's always true. But when you clamp down
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: on masculinity, then all of the good men that are
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: out there who could do something about that and punish
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: that man or prevent it from happening in the first place,
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: protect the women in their lives, they become less capable
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: of doing so. So you're never going to erase human depravity.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: That's always going to be around, but you are erasing
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: the capacity of human beings, in this case of men,
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: to do something about it. So that's, yeah. They're digging
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: their own grave, basically, unfortunately.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So the thing that got my attention from your videos,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: you made a response video to Gadsad. And Gadsad, you know,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: we have some mutual acquaintances here at Honey Badger Radio
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: with Karen Strawn, who has appeared on Gadsad's YouTube channel
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: years ago. And he coined, I think he coined the term,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: suicidal empathy. And we took issue with it. Um, because
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: we didn't think it was quite right. And I think
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: you're the only other person that I've seen that sort
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: of like taken that same tack. So can you explain
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: for people who might not know, like, what is suicidal empathy?
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Why is it wrong? Not just wrong, but it's almost
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: like a thought terminating cliche. That's just used to end
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: conversation around this, which I think is important and how
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: it's different from like a phobia. Yeah.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, and I should say also, when you say
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: that you have some mutual acquaintances, I mean, I like
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Ed said, in general, I think he does good work
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: on a number of fronts. But yeah, in this particular case,
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: I have strongly disagreed with his concepts here. So suicidal empathy,
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: the way he presents it in his book of that title,
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Suicidal Empathy, is basically the idea that The West is
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: declining because we are too empathetic toward other civilizations, including
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: civilizations who want to hurt us. So we're too empathetic
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: toward migrants from certain parts from the Middle East, mainly
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: who want to tear down our traditions, other migrants as well.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: And we are too empathetic toward Mother Earth, for example,
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: because by caring too much about the environment, we destroy
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: our own economies. we're too empathetic toward black people, let's say,
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: because we then elevate them to positions for which they're
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: not qualified. He uses the case of the former president. Yeah,
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: that's very topical right now. Exactly. He talks about Claudine Gay,
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: the former president of Harvard, but it's true. It's become
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: very topical now because of Jason Arday. But so that's
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: the idea of suicidal empathy. And my main critique of
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: it is that it's This kind of behavior, which is,
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: of course, real enough, is not based really in empathy.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: There are some individual cases where you can find genuine empathy.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying there's no such thing at all. But
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: the main thing that's going on is orcophobia, this word
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: that we used before, hatred of one's own culture, a
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: desire to want to tear down the traditions that have
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: built the civilization in the first place. And so basically,
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: it's the exact opposite of empathy. It's antipathy. empathy meaning
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: a feeling in or with someone, a feeling for someone,
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: antipathy being, of course, a feeling against something. And that's
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: really what we're dealing with. And what's interesting, and I
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: talk about this in the video that you saw, even
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: some of Gad Saad's very own examples clearly demonstrate that
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: it's not actually a question of empathy, but that it
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: is a question of antipathy because he talks, one salient
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: example is how when he talks about how Texan farmers
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: are attacked for having lots of cows and lots of
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: children because it destroys the environment, they still protect, they
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: still defend the behavior of the Chinese Communist Party, even
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: though they are the greatest pollutants on the planet. And
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: so If they genuinely cared about the environment, they would
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: also criticize the Chinese. But they're not. They only criticize
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: their own people at home, people from Texas and American
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: farmers and so on. So that shows that, sure, I'm
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: not saying they don't care about the environment at all.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: No doubt they do. But it shows that the primary
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: motivation is antipathy toward their own kind and not care,
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: not love or passion for something else. And Gad Saad's
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: own example, there are plenty of other examples as well.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: Gad Saad's own examples show this. which he doesn't seem
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: to realize. And the thing is, even in those cases
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: where there is genuine empathy, it is almost always nestled
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: in a foundation of orcophobia. That is to say, it's
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: nestled in an initial act of repudiation. Only after that
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: repudiation has taken place can there then arise a certain
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: empathy as well for others. But the repudiation is really
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: the initial and continuously driving force behind these actions.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. The impetus is the critique, not necessarily the,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: you know, the empathy. And it's kind of it's so
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: so it's like calling it empathy is is being not
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: just inaccurate, but it's overly charitable.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: And that's exactly that. That's another problem, because most people
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: would say that empathy is a virtue. As I mentioned,
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: I am actually not one of those people. It's a
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: whole other philosophical question. philosophical can of worms why I
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: don't consider empathy a virtue, but most people do think
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: that it's good to be empathetic. It's something that people
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: often brag about, oh, I'm very empathetic, showing that they're
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: really more narcissistic than empathetic, but okay. It's a common
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: thing people like to say about themselves, that they have
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: a lot of empathy. And so if that's the case,
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: that we as a society as a whole consider empathy
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: to be a good thing, well, then Gad Saad opens
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: the door to people saying, okay, These people that he describes,
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: they may be misguided, but at least they have the
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: right motivations. At least they have good intentions. That's always something.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: But no, in fact, they don't have good intentions because, again,
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: empathy is not the driving force. And that's almost definitely
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: not his intention because he does spend a lot of
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: time kind of making fun of them. I mean, there's
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: sarcasm and humor in his book, as is his usual
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: modus operandi. when he makes fun of them, he probably
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: doesn't mean to give them an out, so to speak.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: But he does because people can at least say, okay,
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: they have good motivations. But in fact, no, they don't
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: have good motivations.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yes, exactly. And so I want to go back to,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, the other thing about empathy too, and maybe,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: you know, just out of curiosity, I don't know if
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: I'm off the mark here, but Does it seem to you,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: because it seems to me, and I'm a layman, I
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: don't do the, you know, I'm not deep in the
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: philosophy per se, I just host the show, but it
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: does strike me as really feminine. Is that fair to say,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: or am I being unjust? Because we talked, you just
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: mentioned that men have been domesticated significantly, and of course
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: there's a push to constantly domesticate them further and further
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: and further, and Western men, that is. So isn't this
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: concept of, it just seems to be feminine to me.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Is that wrong? Am I off the mark?
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: No, I think you're quite right. And I'm always a
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: little reluctant to say yes, because it's become such a
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: cliche to this particular issue. But it's true. I mean,
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: it's a cliche for a good reason. Women generally are
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: more empathetic. And there are, of course, evolutionary reasons for this.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: Women evolved to... take care of their children and to
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: shower love upon them and to rear them and so on.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Whereas men were out hunting and killing prey. So there
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: are long standing reasons for this going back to prehistory,
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: why this is the case. And so, yeah, that's definitely
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: a part of it. And it won't surprise you therefore
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: to hear that part of the development of okaphobia in
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: Western societies is also feminization. Now, modern feminization is more
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: extreme than that which has taken place in the past,
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: and there are reasons for why the current iteration of
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: vocophobia is more extreme than past iterations. I explain that
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: as well in the book. But the point is, the
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: same trend, even if less extreme, the same trend of
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: the feminization of society has certainly taken place in the
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: past as well, including in antiquity. And so this is
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: a repetition of the pattern. So definitely... Definitely, we do
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: become more feminine as we advance as a society.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: As we become more and more comfortable? Is that like
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: a product of, let's say, abundance and comfort? Yes.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not exactly. And plus also women often do
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: gain more political power now in antiquity or in earlier times,
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: they didn't have political power in the literal sense, like
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: women couldn't vote or anything like that. But it would
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: become more common that certain upper class women would gain
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: an influence culturally and more so than would be the
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: case in earlier phases of that society. And certain experimentation
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: with androgyny, the blurring of certain strict rules, borders between
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: male and female would also take place in the past
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: as well. The muscular body, this is something that Camille Paglia,
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: for example, has written a lot about, the muscular male
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: body would become less celebrated and would give way to
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: a different look in men. So all of this has
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: taken place before. And so, yeah, I think you're quite
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: right to point out that feminization is a part of this,
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: and which is also why it's why it's important to
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: point out that in this particular case, what's going on
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: is actually not this kind of feminine empathy or that's
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: only the surface phenomenon. It is in fact something much
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: more sinister, but it's not a coincidence. And in that sense,
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: at least Gadzad is right that it's often women who
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: are leading these kinds of movements because yes, they are
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: on at least a surface level, more empathetic, yes.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: I've also heard from another detractor. I don't know the
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: real name, but on X they're called Disaffected, I think.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: And they said that this is not suicidal empathy, but
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: it's homicidal narcissism. Is that... I mean, this could just
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: be a sentiment that doesn't mean anything. Does that track?
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Is this the same thing? No, so....
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I don't know about homicidal. I think suicidal is,
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: I think that's the part of Gadzad's term that's correct.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: It is suicidal, what's going on. So I would probably
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: keep the suicidal rather than the homicidal, although, well, maybe
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: homicide toward one's fellow citizens. But when it comes to
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: the narcissism, yes, 100%. And in fact, in the book,
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: I talk about how vanity, I don't use the word
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: narcissism so much because.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: It's like a medical term.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. From a psychological and even psychiatric perspective, that
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: conjures up certain ideas that do not really factor in directly.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: It can in certain cases, but not really on a
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: mass level. So I prefer just to use vanity as
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: a term, but we could use narcissism. But so that
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: is always a motor, an engine behind okaphobia, because of course,
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: and this is also something that many people have talked about,
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: basically virtue signaling in common parlance, the idea that one
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: shows one's own virtue by demonstrating for foreigners or for
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: the environment or for what have you. And that is,
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: of course, a form of vanity because one doesn't really
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: care so much about those other people. Really, one cares
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: about showing off oneself how virtuous and moral one is.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: And so that is vanity. And that kind of vanity, again, also,
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: I keep mentioning antiquity, but it does go back to
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: antiquity once he's clear traces in literature. from the ancient
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: world and from 1700s, 1800s, about how this kind of
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: vanity is really a big engine behind this sort of behavior.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: So I think that part is certainly true.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: All right. Yeah, I think that's great and true. I
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: think that, yeah, virtue signaling is completely self-serving. It has
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with whatever the issue of the day is.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: It's just People chasing trends to like, I don't know,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: just be seen as virtuous without actually practicing virtue. Because
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: virtue is sacrificial and it's not self-serving.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: Exactly. That's exactly. Yeah, very well put. Virtue is sacrificial
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: to a great extent.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: And so, yeah, they kind of betray themselves there.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: There you go. All right. So let's get into your book,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Western Self-Contempt. So in it, you describe oikophobia as a
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: recurring pattern. that appears in the late stages of all civilizations.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: So how do you distinguish this from ordinary self-criticism or
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: healthy reforms?
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so there is no absolute line by which one
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: can distinguish the one from the other and say clearly
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: this is orcophobia on this side and that is self-critique
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: on the other. Where exactly that line is to be
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: drawn is a bit subjective. So there are certain behaviors that...
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: for example, when Tacitus criticizes the Romans as being a
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: bunch of brutes and committing rapine and everything like this,
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: one could say, well, he was kind of right, wasn't he?
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Or one could say, well, why is he turning against
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: his own people? So it's a bit subjective exactly where
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: one would draw the line. But there are certain behaviors,
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: at least, that are so extreme that one could certainly,
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: any intellectually honest person would agree that this is okaphobia.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, one extreme example was, you know, a few
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: years ago during the Summer of Love, as I think
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: they euphemistically called it, when they kept tearing down statues
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: of our founding fathers and so on. You know, a few,
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: and not just of, you know, Southern Confederate leaders or
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: anything like that.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: No, no.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, George Washington. Yeah, they did. In the UK,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: they took down Winston Churchill.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: And what happened didn't even happen over there.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: Right, exactly. And even right here in my own city
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: of New York, Washington Square Park, defacing the statue of
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: George Washington and so on. So any intellectually honest person
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: would have to say that that is orcophobia because that
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: is so far away from where one might draw a
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: line that it's no longer subjective, I would say. Then
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: there are other cases that are maybe a little more
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: of a gray area. So yeah, so there's no exact line.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: The point really that is to be made philosophically, there
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: is no exact line, but the point to be made
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: historically is that even when a society develops the capacity
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: to self-correct and to criticize itself, which is a good thing,
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: I would agree, it sets the stage for later orcophobia,
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: because nothing is more human than taking a good idea
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: too far, basically. And so the process of self-correction and
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: self-critique is one that is never stopped. And it always
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: goes to the point where it becomes too extreme. And
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: this is where human vanity comes in, because if somebody
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: has leveled a good point of self-critique against his own community, well,
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: then the next person has to show that he is
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: even better and even smarter than than the first one,
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: and so levels an even greater point, an even more
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: extreme point of critique against its own community, and eventually
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: it becomes a competition. And this is part of the reason,
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: there are many other reasons, but this is part of
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: the reason why academics tend to be so orcophobic, because
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: they have to basically, everybody has to come up with
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: the newest and most advanced theory. And that leads to
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: degrees of outlandishness that one does not come across by
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: and large in society as a whole. There's no exact line,
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: but there is this development that always takes place toward
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: ever more extreme ideas of self-critique.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: What are some historical examples that you find most illuminating
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: for understanding today's state of oikophobia? Because you said that
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: this has happened in Rome and Athens. So what are
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: some of the most illuminating examples? Yeah.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: So anybody who follows modern political discourse and modern political events,
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: I'm sure would recognize if I take us on a
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: very quick journey with just a few examples. There is
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: much more, of course. But yeah. But so, for example,
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: in ancient Greece, in ancient Athens, in the late fifth
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: and early fourth century B.C., they start, people become more atheistic.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: So this is another false notion that mass atheism is
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: something new. It's not. It's certainly, again, more extreme today
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: than in the past. But Plato, in his laws, for example,
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: complains about there being lots of atheists around and that
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: we have forgotten the ancient gods. This is a common complaint.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: And in their place, imported Eastern customs and Eastern cults. Again,
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: this could be comparable to orcophobes today having a tendency
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: toward Buddhism, for example, being very popular.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Or fetishizing Islam or something like that.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: Exactly. That's right. Not to say that Buddhism in and
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: of itself, I'm not criticizing Buddhism itself. I am criticizing
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Islam itself. That's a whole other story. But this idea
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: that okay, people may want to embrace these things, but
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: how much is it, and this goes back to the
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: idea of empathy, how much is it that they really
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: love those things?
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: It's like xenophilia, but it's a little bit of a
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: trendy thing.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: That's been going on since the 60s too. That was
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: like the love movement. Yeah, I'm sorry.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, 100%. Yeah, no, no, absolutely no. But the 60s
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: is definitely a watershed in the modern development of it,
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: no doubt about that. And much of it is, rather
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: than being a genuine embrace of something foreign, is a
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: repudiation of their own religion of Christianity. So that's one thing.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Then in Rome, we have, through the expansion of the empire,
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: we have a lot of Greek-speaking migrants, not immigrants because
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: they're technically a part of the empire, but migrants in
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: the sense that they move from the periphery of the
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: empire to Rome with different cultures, Middle Eastern culture and
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: Greek as their native language. and with no sense of
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: loyalty toward the idea of Rome. And so the culture
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: in the motherland in Italy is basically watered down, and
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: there's no sense of national unity anymore because of these
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: migrant waves. And then that, of course, becomes even more
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: extreme with Germanic invasions later on. That's something else again.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: So that's another thing. In Enlightenment France, mid-1700s, We have
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: people like Voltaire and Rousseau and Condorcet. There's a long
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: list of people who repudiate Christianity, but have good things
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: to say about Native American tribes, for example, of which
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: they know almost nothing. But they're very ignorant when they
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: talk about extra-European cultures. Um, and, uh, also a tendency
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: toward vegetarianism incidentally, which is, which is another thing. Uh,
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: an orcophobia doesn't have to be a vegetarian, but vegetarianism, uh,
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: often there's a correlation between rising orcophobia and rising vegetarianism,
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: because that is once again, another tradition, the tradition of
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: meat eating that is to be repudiated. Um, and, and
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: one sees that as well. Uh, yeah, both in one
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: season in Greece, in Rome, in France, uh, enlightenment France, it's,
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: it's a recurring thing. And one thing that changes in
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: these examples is that most of the time, the later
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: we get in history, a couple of exceptions, but the
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: later we get in history, the bigger the phenomenon becomes.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: In terms of the bigger of the phenomenon, do you
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: mean the scale of the spread of it or the
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: consequences of it?
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: Not the consequences necessarily, but the number of people involved,
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: the number of different segments of society involved. So in
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: ancient Athens, it's still just an elite. And it's not
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: even the whole elite, but it's certain segments of the
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: intellectual elite of the aristocracy. Whereas in... In France, in
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: the 1700s, it spreads to the middle class. And then
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: in Great Britain, in the late 19th century and early
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: 20th century, it spreads into the lower classes as well.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: It's still more of an elite phenomenon, by and large,
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: than a middle class or lower class phenomenon. But it
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: does become broader and broader within society. And one certainly
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: sees this in the United States today. It's certainly, again,
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: it's academics who are the biggest offenders, but one can
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: speak to regular people and with no particular education. And
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: many of them will be convinced that, yes, of course,
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: America is terrible. And and of course, we're responsible for
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: everything that's wrong with the world. So that's a common thing.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: And that basically happens because the the the reasons for okaphobia,
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: why it exists, things like egalitarianism and education and so on,
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: they become more democratized as history goes on. So in
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: ancient times, there was only a very small elite that
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: was thoroughly educated by their standards. Whereas today, there is,
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: of course, the idea everybody should go to college and
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: so on, which is a nonsense idea. But it's a
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: very terrible idea.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: But because of this, because of the democratization of these things,
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: orcophobia as a result also becomes more widespread.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess because we're able to share information
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: so much faster, I guess it comes with a price, right?
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: That this kind of stuff can spread much faster. Absolutely.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: And that's actually, yeah, you raise a very good point
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: because technological innovation can also contribute to it. Now, obviously,
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: as somebody, as being against okaphobia doesn't mean one should
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: become a Luddite. I think technological innovation is a good thing.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: But yes, it does lead to a certain uprootedness in
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: many instances. and it also facilitates exposure to other cultures
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: and to other ways of thinking and doing things, which
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: again can be a good thing, but which also opens
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: the door for more self-questioning, yes.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think there's also something really appealing for
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: people to feel like they're part of an intellectual class,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: like an elite class of people. So I think that's
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: why it's appealing to lower class people to be able
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: to essentially repeat oikophobic statements, right? And just like say, oh, well,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: you know, look at me. I'm enlightened. I understand all
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: of our flaws that no one else, you know, everybody
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: takes for granted or whatever it is.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: And this is actually, that's exactly right. And this is
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: also part of the reason why it's a bad idea
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: for everybody to go to college because genuine expertise is
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: something that is gained only through a lifetime of study.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: but having gone having spent four years in college gives
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: the illusion of expertise and that means that a lot
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: of people think they know a lot more than they
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: do and they often know the wrong things and and
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: it's often better to know nothing than to know the
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: wrong things and so There is a certain intellectual humility
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: sometimes that is destroyed by going to college.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: So Scruton coined this term, but do you treat this
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: any different or expand on it in any way in
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: your book?
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, quite a lot.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: Because otherwise I wouldn't have written the book. Um, so, um,
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: that's true.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: Well, although, uh, in fairness, um, it's still a fair
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: question though, because there are plenty of academics who, who
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: write things that have already been written and, uh, but
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: they write them anyway and.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: They put their name on it and they make money. Yeah, exactly.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: Um, so, uh, so yeah, but, but in this case, yes. Um, uh, he, uh,
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Scruton's treatment, uh, was, um, first of all, just in
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: terms of, um, amount, much less. So he wrote an
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: article in 1993, I believe it was, which was about
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: where he introduced the term orcophobia. And then it appears
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: as a book chapter also in his book, England and
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: the Need for Nations, which came out in 2004, with
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: the second edition in 2006, I think. So he does,
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: he has talked about it here and there, but his
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: treatment is basically focused on on modern orcophobia only. He
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: does not conceive of it as a recurring phenomenon in history.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: So he describes something and his descriptions are perfectly accurate.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: And he describes basically, and of course, because he's British himself,
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: his focus is more on Britain and to some extent
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: on the European Union in his writings on this subject.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: And he describes very accurately what orcophobia, what it looks
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: like basically. But he does not talk so much about
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: why it happens. And he focuses on a more descriptive
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: analysis of what's happening in his own country and in Europe.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: In fact, I wrote this book. It took a long
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: time to get published. It's controversial. So I actually wrote it.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: He passed away in 2020. I wrote it in 2016, 17, thereabouts,
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: and actually sent him the manuscript and because I wanted
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: to get an author blurb from him. And he did
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: read it and did give me an author blurb also kindly,
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: which is on the book. And he did say, yeah,
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: this is something new. But he wrote to me explicitly
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: that he was convinced by my arguments, which is basically
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: that this is not something new. And in order to
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: fully understand what it is and how it works, we
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: actually have to understand that it's something that corresponds to
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: human nature under certain socio-historical circumstances, which is why we
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: can trace it all the way back to antiquity. Um,
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: so yeah, so it's, it's, uh, it's certainly a new treatment.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: They're also talking greater detail, um, than, than he could
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: have done in, in a few pages, um, about how
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: also modern philosophical, um, streams and movements, um, play into
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: it and, and how those philosophical streams have coalesced over
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: the centuries to yield the modern iteration of okaphobia. So it's, it's, um, much, uh, much, uh,
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: more in detail.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, How does, is one of the
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: things that we do, or at least I talk about
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: a lot on this channel is the, what I call
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: the post-World War II mythology, right? What I mean is
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: not that it didn't happen, but rather that a lot
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: of modern people are forming their entire worldview on those
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: events and they're not taking into account things that have
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: happened before that. And what I want to ask about
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: your book is how does the post-World War II intellectual
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: climate you know, like the Frankfurt School influences, deconstruction, especially
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: things like deconstruction, demoralization. How does that fit into the
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: longer pattern that you described? Do you think there's like
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: a connection? I mean, I would argue yes. Yeah. Yeah.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: In the book, I spend a number of pages on
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: the Frankfurt School, on French theory and so on. Not necessarily.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: not to describe those schools themselves. I'm not, you know,
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: other people can talk about what they think about everything,
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: but precisely, but specifically only how they factor into orcophobia
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: historically and philosophically. So I do spend some considerable space
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: to that. Frankfurt School, definitely. I mean, you can essentially
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: draw a line, which is, I do explicitly in the book,
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: you can draw, in order to understand modern, obviously this
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: doesn't apply to earlier forms, but in order to understand
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: modern orcophobia, you can basically draw a line from Marx's
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: through the Frankfurt School to French theory of the 50s
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: and 60s into the 70s and 80s.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: The modern version. I was thinking it could have started
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: with the Enlightenment or the French Revolution or something like that. Oh, no, sure.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, no.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, since you mentioned the Frankfurt School. But yeah, no,
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: there is, by modern, I mean now not the modern
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: era as opposed to antiquity. I meant what we're experiencing
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: right now in the 21st century. Um, uh, but yeah,
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: of course, but you're certainly right that, um, uh, earlier, um,
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: iterations as well. There, there are many similarities as we've discussed, but, um,
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: but for the, for the modern version, um, obviously Voltaire,
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: one of the few things of which one cannot accuse
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: Voltaire is being a Marxist. That was, he lived too
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: early for that at least. But, um, uh, but the, um,
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: but so, um, I mean, I, I don't want to
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: be too mean by the way.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Voltaire, you, you, you think Voltaire was sort of like.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: The, I mean, he, Yeah, the problem is this kind
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: of self-victimization and xenophilia elevation of other cultures. There are certain,
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, as a historian, for example, Voltaire is quite innovative,
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: so there's certainly parts of his work that I like.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: But yeah, but so the kind of the Marx, Frankfurt,
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: Paris axis, if you will, is certainly one that has
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: come together, that has led to modern or contributed to
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: the current expression of orcophobia. Basically, one of the things
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: I call it, there are basically two main things I
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: discuss in some detail in the book. It's the coalescence
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: of relativism and positivism. And ostensibly relativism and positivism are opposites.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: Relativism being the idea that what is truth is basically
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: subjective and different people have their own version of truth
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: and so on. And there is nothing absolute. And positivism
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: being the idea that as a society, we can work
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: toward an ever better and ever more perfect society where
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: we eliminate injustice and everything becomes equal. And Those two
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: are actually mutually exclusive because, well, if you're a positivist,
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: then you're saying implicitly that there is actually something that
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: is the absolute and the right and the true toward
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: which we should all strive. Whereas a relativist does not
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: think that way, but relativism and positivism come together in
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: modern orcophobia because both relativism and positivism tear down previous institutions.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: If relativism is true, that truth doesn't matter, well, then
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: we can reject our own truth, the truth of our
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: own society. And if positivism is true, then we also
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: have to reject our own old traditions because we're striving
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: towards something new and towards something better than what used
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: to be the case. And so positivism and relativism, while
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: being philosophically exclusive of each other, come together in tearing
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: down our own traditions. And the other point that I
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: discuss in some detail is macro and micro monomania, as
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: I call it, which is basically the idea that everything
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: has an essence. Macro monomania is the idea, this is
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: my term, but it's basically on the macro level that
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: everything is about one thing. So for Marx, everything is
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: about class struggle. And he reads all of history that way.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: And micro monomania is that a particular phenomenon is about
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: only one thing. So, for example, Foucault reads everything as
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: being about power. And so every single phenomenon that he
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: comes across in history, he thinks, doesn't say so quite explicitly,
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: although there are certain passages where he pretty much says
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: so almost openly. He makes this kind of error that power,
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: it's all about power and that If he can say
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: that power was involved in a particular event or the
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: striving for power was involved in a particular event that
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: rules out to him all other possible motivations of that action,
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: which is incorrect because in many cases, at least that's
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: incorrect because human motivation is very complex and we can
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: be motivated by power and also by other things at
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: the very same time. And Foucault rules out all of
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: the other things. And so that's micro monomania, micro because
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: it's about one particular phenomenon as opposed to all of
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: history as a whole. And so what I lay out
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: in the book is basically how this micro and macro
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: monomania come together in Marx being the first philosopher. Hegel,
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: for example, was indulged in a lot of macro monomania,
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: but he was not indulging in micro monomania. Marx is
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: the first one who does both of these. And that
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: spreads then to the Frankfurt School and to French theory
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: as well. Because what you can do with micro and
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: macro monomania is that you can essentially discard any explanation
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: and any motivation that does not fit politically with the
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: result that you wish to accomplish. Yeah. biggest philosophical objection
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: against them, at least from the point of view of
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: an analysis of workophobia.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Well, since we brought up Voltaire and now Hegel,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: I think in one of your videos you talked also
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: about how this happened with the Greeks was essentially like
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: as the philosopher, and I can't remember if it was
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: Socrates or Plato or Aristotle, but the people who came
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: after sort of like started down this road. Do you
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: know what I mean by that? I'm sorry. Yeah. Go
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: ahead and explain it, because I can't do that.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, of course. Pleasure. So Socrates was involved in
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: it a little bit, like Nietzsche, for example, criticizes Socrates
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: a lot for being subversive of tradition. Some of his
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: critique is fair, although I think Nietzsche goes a little
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: too far in his attack on Socrates in certain areas.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: It's really mainly the generation of Socrates' students, the generation
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: after him where we can say, Because you asked before about,
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: you know, where do you draw the line? This is
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: one example of where I would draw the line. I
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: would say that Socrates offers a lot of self-critique and
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: some of the critique I don't agree with myself. I
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: think he's wrong about certain things, but I would not
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: call him an orcophobe. The actual orcophobia I would place
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: in the generation after Socrates. So basically Aristotle's generation, except
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: Aristotle himself is certainly not an orcophobe, not at all.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: No, not at all.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's much more conservative. But you have certain names.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: You could mention Diogenes the Cynic, for example, Alcidamus, Antiphon,
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: Hippias of Elis. There are a bunch of names there. Basically,
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: that's a generation after Socrates who do engage in what
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: is clearly orcophobic behavior, rejecting tradition and even imitating foreign
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: ways and so on and so forth. So, yeah, that's
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: around there.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: All right. So... Let's come back to the modern day.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: How does the phenomenon relate to or differ... Oh, no,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: I already asked that question. I'm sorry. You discussed radical
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: left groups and countercultural movements. Do you see continuity between
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: the 1960s radicalism and present-day orcophobia?
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. I mean, they were orcophobes in the radicals
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: of the 1960s. I think no question about that.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: What about the narrative that they were, for example, against
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: the Vietnam War? And that was like that was like
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: a big thing. There were protest songs and stuff like this. Yeah.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: So I think it's worth pointing out that one can
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: make too much of this. But I think it's worth
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: pointing out that many of them, not all, obviously, but
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: many of them did not turn strongly against the Vietnam
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: War until they started getting rid of college deferments. And
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: so when it was time for them to go and fight, oh,
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: then all of a sudden the war is immoral. When
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: the lower classes and the peasants are doing it, then
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: it's not so bad. Again, that doesn't apply to all
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: of them. Some of them were consistent, but there were
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: plenty of people for whom that was true. So that's
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: one point I would make. But another one is that
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: if they were very specifically against a particular war, that
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: certainly is not necessarily workophobic. but they would become swept
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: up in many other things as well. If you're carrying
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: a sign saying, Vietnam is a bad idea, let's get
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: out of Vietnam, okay, that in and of itself is narco-phobic.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: But as we all know, these protest movements took place
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: in a larger nexus of wanting to, for example, institute
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: African studies in colleges, which is a very specific act
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: of repudiation of traditional scholarship. for a lot of disciplines
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: that are really complete garbage and yeah, and and and
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: and the I mean the Black Panthers is a whole
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: Nexus basically of repudiating Christianity as well of experimenting with
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: drugs and Buddhism of thinking that traditional family structure is
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: Is to be discarded as well in favor of free
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: love and polyamory and so on so I Yeah, I
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: would agree that if you just took a particular protest
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: against a particular war in isolation, that would not necessarily
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: qualify as orcophobia. But we know. And so you could find,
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not saying that every single student protester
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: of the 60s was an orcophobe, because you could have
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: some people, some individuals for whom this really was the case,
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: that they were really just protesting against a war with
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: which they disagreed. But as a mass movement, it was
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: sort of orcophobic, because again, it was part and parcel
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: of so many other things as well. And even among
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: many who protested against the war, the way in which
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: they protested, I remember statements like, I mean, reading, obviously
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: I wasn't around, but I remember reading about statements like,
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: you know, if an American and a Vietnamese face each
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: other in the jungle, I hope the American gets killed because,
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: you know, it's the Vietnamese guy's country. Okay, if you
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: say that, you're not just protesting against the war, you're
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: clearly giving expression to your anti-American okaphobia, wishing that your
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: fellow American is going to be killed in the jungle. Right. So, yeah,
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: so overall, it's still locophobia. And there's, to go back
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: to the main part of your question, basically, the continuity
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: from that to today is, of course, that there is
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: a greater emphasis on race today than there was then.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: Like I said, there was some emphasis on race in
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: those days as well, obviously, around the same time, a
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: little bit earlier. And then into this time that we're
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: talking about, of course, there was also the protests in
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: the South against Jim Crow laws, which is, you know,
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: I would say more justified. Um, but, um, but so
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: race was also on, on, on the minds of a
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: lot of these people, uh, and, um, and, and the
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: academic institution of these departments that I mentioned, uh, mentioned
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: that's also race involved, but it was more a question of, um,
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: it was more a question of America vis-a-vis other countries,
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: but we still find that today because orcophobes still want
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: America to lose on the world stage. We're not involved
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: in a big war right now. Like, uh, obviously like
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: in Vietnam, although our conflict with Iran, Orcophobes generally want
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: the United States to be humiliated vis-à-vis Iran. That's a
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: common thing. And in certain segments of the right as well,
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: this is actually also something that I talk about in
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: the book, about how there is a reactionary orcophobia, which
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: is also historically attested, or I attest it historically in
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: the book, about how this is also something that occurs.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: You talk about the kind of accelerationists on the right side.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, not so well, not exactly, but rather the kind
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: of person, although I mean, they can maybe overlap. But
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: basically the people on the right who want I mean, yeah,
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: you could I guess you could say accelerationists, although that's
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: not the aspect I would emphasize. But I guess it's
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: the same people, actually.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: I think they like they want things to get worse
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: because they think there's going to be. Yeah, it will.
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: jar people into action or something, but it will just
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: do more harm, right? There's like a disdain for collateral
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: damage of that kind of action.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: Right. Well, I'm thinking sort of, I don't know if
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: he would be an accelerationist, but yeah, people like Tucker Carlson,
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: for example, obviously being a prime example of how people,
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: they see what has happened with their own society and
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: they start to hate what has happened to their own society.
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: And a lot of that critique is justified. But because
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: of what they perceive their society has become, they then
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: start to hate their own society from that direction. And
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: that's something that one sees in history as well. A
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: conservative backlash that becomes so angry at decadence that it
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: actually starts to also root for one's own defeat. And Plato,
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: for example, is an example of how Plato thought it
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: was bad that the Greeks won the Battle of Salamis.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: because that made the lower classes more uppity, because the
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: lower classes helped in the Greek victory. And so this
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: kind of conservative reaction where one actually wants one's own
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: country to lose. So one sees that on certain segments
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: of the right as well. But it's still primarily a
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: left-wing phenomenon, kind of means regular okaphobia, which is that
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: one wants one's own country to be humiliated. And that's
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: certainly something that okaphobia right now has in common with
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: okaphobia in the 60s. Right.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, by the way, guys, I am speaking. I'm just
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: like sort of addressing the people that are joining. Dr.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: Benedict Beckold, he has written a book called Western Self-Contempt,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: Oikophobia in the Decline of Civilizations. And is that absolutely
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: fascinating to see that this is being discussed? And I
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: guess you're doing the rounds. Are you getting a lot
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: of eyes on your book and people interviewing you and
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: talking about this stuff?
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: I have done lots and lots of interviews, yes, certainly.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is an academic press book. It came
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: out from Cornell University Press. And so for an academic
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: press book, it's certainly getting a lot of attention. Most
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: academic books are read by about five people and then
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: they wither away. So that's certainly not been the case
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: with this book, I'm happy to say. So I've gotten
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: a lot of attention. Not as much as attention, though,
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: perhaps from... in the commercial world, as I think it merits.
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: And I mean, obviously I'm not, I'm a little bit
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: biased here, but basically it is a phenomenon that you
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: see everybody talk about. Even if they might not be
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: using the term workophobia, but this idea of cultural self-hate
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: and and westerners and americans think hating their own country
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: or their own civilization that's something that everybody's familiar with
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: uh and so i know that it is a subject
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: that if more people were aware of it um they
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: would certainly be interested in understanding how it happens why
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: it comes about yeah and and how it works and
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: so on so um you know i keep uh i
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: keep pushing um and keep um putting the word out there.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I give interviews very regularly.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: So does oikophobia affect different Western countries in similar ways
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: or are there meaningful national differences?
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: There are meaningful national differences in the sense that some
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: countries are more advanced, quote unquote, advanced in this process
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: than others. But the results, certainly in the modern world,
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: the result tends to be the same. But some people,
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: some countries have just become more extreme than others in
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: this regard. And you can kind of see the future
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: of the less okaphobic countries. You can see their future
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: in the more okaphobic countries.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: And so that's interesting. It's good to point that out
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: because I'm in the United States. You're in New York.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: It's not the United States. Yeah, there's America and.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: There's New York. Yeah. But I think, and maybe I'm wrong,
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: but I think the United States is a little bit
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: behind other Western countries like UK, Europe, and Canada. Yes.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: Is that fair to say?
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. There was actually a... Yeah, there was an
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: article in the... Was it The Economist or The Atlantic
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: or something? I can't remember where. About how Americans are
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: more ecophobic than Europeans. And I... published a response to
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: that saying that that's wrong. The reason the journalists thought
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: that was because more Europeans said that they liked their
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: country than Americans in some particular survey. And the reason
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: that's wrong is because okaphobia has already changed Europe to
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: such a degree that they don't even know when they
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: say they like their country, what they're talking about is
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: they like the new version of their country, the okaphobic
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: version of their country. When an American says he loves America,
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: He talks about things like our history and George Washington
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: and World War II and things like that, things that
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: make us proud and patriotic. Whereas when a European, a German,
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: for example, says that he loves Germany, he means their
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: food and their soccer team and things like that, not
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: German history or traditional ancient German culture.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: I don't think Germans are allowed to like Germany.
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I think they live in.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: Fear of acknowledging it.
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: That's true. Yeah, they're only allowed to wave their flag
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: during the World Cup. It's illegal. But the same is
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: true even in France or Scandinavia, other European countries as well,
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: where liking their country just means liking these fairly superficial
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: expressions of their culture and not their more permeable traditions.
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: And so the point about Europe, Western and Northern Europe,
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: it's somewhat less case in Southern Europe and much less
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: the case in Eastern Europe, but certainly Western and Northern Europe,
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: they have become so occophobic that they don't even realize
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: how much they have lost. And they don't realize the
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: extent to which they're already on the brink, as we see.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: Whereas here, as you say, in the United States, we
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: are less advanced. But as I mentioned, if we don't
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: watch out, we see our own future in Europe. And
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: so we have to watch out. Now, you mentioned yourself. Yeah,
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: the United States is a large country and we have
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: different pockets. My own city of New York, I'm obviously
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: in a political minority here. I love New York city,
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: but yes, um, we are certainly more phobic than much
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: of the country. No question about that. Uh, but, uh,
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: United States still by and large, um, we're, we're still, um,
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: we're still doing, we have lots of problems in this regard,
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: but we were still doing a lot better than, uh,
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: than Western and Northern Europe. Yeah.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm with you there. I was from Chicago, but
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: I left, but I grew up there, lived there my
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: whole life. And yeah, it's, it's a lot like New
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: York in a lot of ways. Um, but what about Canada?
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: Like they're like right there. Are they, I think they're pretty,
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: you know, one thing I know about Canada and I
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: don't want to spend too much time on this, but, um,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: my wife's Canadian and, um, we have had conversations, uh,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: about this and I guess Canadian identity is actually like
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: Canadian identity itself is simply, we are not the United States.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Like that's how they define themselves. So it's like defining
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: themselves by what they are not. Now, um, Does that
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: count as a kind of oikophobia or is that a
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: stretching it or what?
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: Well, in a way, I mean, I guess it was
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: almost counts as a type of xenophobia if they, if
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: they hate their Southern neighbors, uh, so much. Uh, but that's,
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: I think it's a little bit sort of the, um, the, uh,
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: baby brother complex there. Uh, you know, you need to, um,
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: distinguish yourself from the, from the big brother and, um, um,
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: from the, from the big boy and, and, um, Say
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: that you're so different and you're your own thing. And yeah,
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: the Canadians, I think, have become very ecophobic. And of course,
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: they're also a victim to vast demographic change, as is
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: the case in Western and Northern Europe. Of course, there's
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: vast demographic change going on in the United States as well.
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: But again, still... less extremely so. There's also different kinds
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: of demographic changes. Having millions of Mexicans coming in through
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: the border, obviously, I think we should have a very
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: tightly controlled border, but it's still not the same as
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: having millions of Muslim Arabs coming in to your country.
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: There are different degrees of, you know, different cultures are
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: more or less removed from our own. And so there
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: are different types of demographic changes. But in any case, yeah,
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: I think that's a problem with Canada. They have suffered
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: more than we have on that front. And it's a
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: shame because the Canadians used to be, as one should
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: point out, so also lest one receive too much Canadian
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: hate mail, but the Canadians used to be quite patriotic.
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: They fought very bravely in World War II and so on.
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: They can be quite fierce, actually, if they want to. Yeah,
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: I think that.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: Canadians have been conditioned to... uh, be averse to any
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: kind of national pride. And I think that's, that's that,
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it's top down or, you know, whatever,
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: but that, that's just what I got from it. Um,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: and I think it's an important thing to look at
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: because yeah, I mean, they're right there. So we're like
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: watching them. I think it's good for every Western country
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: to look at, uh, what direction they're going in by
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: looking at people who are further down the line. So,
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: you know, where, where you're headed.
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: Exactly. No. And I think, yeah, Canada is definitely also
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: more progressed than we are, um, on that front as well. Certainly.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh, is there, is there a psychological or developmental
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: dimension like adolescence prolonged into adulthood or status seeking through
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: moral superiority, uh, to this? Yeah.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: All of the above. Uh, Scruton himself actually talks a
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: little bit about, he has a particular phrase that, um,
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: he used, I think in England and the need for
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: nations where he says, I don't remember verbatim the exact wording, but, um,
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: Basically to the extent that it's a common, the state
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: of mind is common in adolescence, but it is a
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: state of mind in which some adults become arrested effectively,
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: sort of perpetual adolescence, something he talks a bit about.
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: And yeah, so there is that, there is the vanity,
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: the drive to distinguish oneself from one's fellow citizens and
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: to show one's superior morality. Uh, vanity is really the
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: main thing. Um, and it becomes, we all needed the
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: psycho one, since you mentioned psychological mechanism and so on.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: One thing is that we all need, um, something against
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: which to measure ourselves.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: It's a human thing that we kind of compare ourselves
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: to others in certain way. We, we need, um, we
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: need thing, external, um, objects or people, other things by
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: which we gain our own identity in our own sense
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: of self.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: That's just how we tend to operate. It's not the
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: only thing that gives us an identity, of course, but
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: that's part of how we think. And so when everybody
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: is worrying about the British invading or later on about
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: the Russians invading us or something like that, then the
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: British or the Russians are the ones against whom we
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: measure ourselves. And so we consider ourselves as Americans superior
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: to them. So that obviously is very anti-Oka phobic. But
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: when all of these exterior threats have been eliminated and
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: we basically don't have some large enemy looming on the horizon,
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: we start then to measure ourselves against our fellow citizens.
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: They are the ones who become the external objects against
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: which we gain or through which we gain our own identity.
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: And so it becomes more important to signal your superiority
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: to people at home. And that's certainly a mechanism as
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: well that contributes to okrophobia, which is why okrophobia arises
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: once a society has achieved a measure of security.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: How do you respond to critics who say the concept
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: pathologizes legitimate critique of Western history, slavery, colonialism, historical inequality, etc.? Yeah.
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: So the answer to that critique is that it doesn't
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: seek to... pathologize self-critique goes back a little bit to
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: your question, I suppose, about where you draw the line.
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: You can always say that self-critique is good. And I
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: point in the book to several points of self-critique that
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: led to an advancement of some kind for that civilization.
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: But if one looks at the particular expressions of that self-critique,
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: one notices that it itself is a pathology because it's
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: obviously not in a psychiatric sense, that's important to point out,
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: but it is a pathology in the sense that it
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: becomes almost holistic. When one discusses the behavior of these
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: people whom I would describe as homophobes, one sees that
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: it's not some pinpoint critique on a particular thing. Rather,
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: it becomes a holistic rejection of the society as a
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: whole because there can be some individual exceptions, and those
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: are people whom indeed I would not call orcophobes. But
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: most of them are people if, for example, you are
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: somebody who wants the United States to be humiliated against Iran.
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: You are probably also somebody who wants us to have
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: open borders. You are somebody who thinks that Christianity is
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: a system of oppression and patriarchy. You are somebody who
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: thinks that marriage is not a good thing for society
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: and that the family structure should be torn down. You
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: are somebody who thinks that the economy should be destroyed
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: in favor of the environment and endangered species. So once
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: that's the case, once you see this kind of holistic approach,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: then that is a pathology because you are showing that
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: all of your answers to various social and civilizational questions
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: all point toward the destruction and the tearing down of
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: your own society and of your own traditions. If you
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: had a particular point of critique that was isolated and
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: you thought and your opinion on other issues led in
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: all different kinds of directions. then one could say that
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: indeed you're an intellectually honest person, and we could agree
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: or disagree on that particular issue. But that is the pathology,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: that one point of critique leads to other points of critique,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: and what do they all have in common? They all
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: have in common the tearing down of one's own traditions.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: So that is homophobia.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: So it's like taking every civilization, every society has its skeletons, um,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: in the closet and it's about taking one of those, anything,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: and then intensifying it and magnifying it and using it
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: to essentially diagnose the entire civilization as sick beyond repair
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: and deserving of, you know, whatever, like their, their cure,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: whatever that is, whether that's, you know, tearing everything down,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: that kind of thing.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's well put.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Uh, all right. So, First of all, is
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: there a relationship between oikophobia and xenophilia, which is like
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: the love for the foreign? Do those things typically go
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: hand in hand or can one exist on its own?
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: The one can exist on its own, though it's fairly rare,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: but they do typically go hand in hand. And we
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: see this in ancient Greece as well. So the.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: You do find individual exceptions. For example, it's possible to
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: love your own country, your own culture, but maybe you're
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: very interested in ancient Chinese culture, for example, and you
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: study Confucius and you enjoy Chinese dress and food and
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: what have you. And so you're a xenophile vis-a-vis the Chinese,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: while still remaining a patriot at heart. Those cases are
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: quite rare, but there are such people. So that would
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: be one. So they can exist independently. And it's possible
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: also to hate your own culture and be an orcophobe.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: For example, there are Western women that convert to Islam.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: And it's almost like they use xenophilia to fill in
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: the gap or the hole that orcophobia has left.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right. I was going to use a word
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: which goes exactly in this direction, namely compensation or a
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: compensatory act. And so most of the cases, I wanted
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: to point out some exceptions, but yes, most of the
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: cases are exactly that. And this also goes back to
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: what we talked about earlier in reference to Gad Saad,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: when I said that even in those cases where you
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: can find some genuine instances of empathy, they are nestled
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: in a foundation of repudiation. And so when you have
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: a Western woman, for example, converting to Islam or starting
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: to wear a hijab and so on, she does this
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: because she has already repudiated and rejected Christianity and a
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: large part of her own traditions. And so the xenophilia
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: becomes a compensatory act, as I've called it in the past. Basically,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: the idea that, OK, you're no longer a nationalist for yourself,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: so you have to become a nationalist for somebody else.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: You replace one uh, love with another love and you
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: replace one hatred with another hatred. Um, and, uh, and so, yeah, uh,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: in the overwhelming majority of cases, um, orcophobia and xenophilia,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: at least some degree of xenophilia, uh, the particular civilization
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: toward which xenophilia is directed usually varies depending on who
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: is the current enemy of one's own home civilization. Uh,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: so for example, orcophobics and, um, xenophiliacs, um, during the
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: cold war might have, uh, liked Russia, for example. And nowadays,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: orcophobic xenophiliacs will tend to prefer Islamic culture or something
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: Middle Eastern. So yeah, that is certainly a pattern.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: All right. We've gone for about an hour, but I'd
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: like to keep going if you're open to it, because
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: I have more questions. I really like this conversation. I'm
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: really enjoying it. So guys, if you're watching, again, this
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: is my guest, I'm sorry, is Benedict Beckold. And send
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: your super chats or super chows to us, feedthebachelor.com forward
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: slash just the tip for a super chow. Ask him
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: a question if you wish. I look forward to seeing
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: your guys' thoughts on this discussion. So I want to ask,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: this is something that I've actually wrestled a lot with,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: with one of my co-hosts, a man I work with
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: who sort of brought the term up with me. He said,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: you know, he mentioned oikophobia and it got me curious
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: about it. a shout out to Mike Stevenson, Dr. Anrakam,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: but I want to know what is the goal? Is
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: there a goal or a reason for oikophobia? So we,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: he said that oikophobia is an end in and of itself.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: And I don't see how that could be because someone
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: must benefit. Like there must be, now I'm not saying
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: that it was like there was a man behind the
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: curtain that pushed it out there, but I do think
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: that there must have been a goal. Is there an
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: end goal of oikophobia?
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: Does that make sense? Yeah, I would say yes and no.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: I'm not trying to be diplomatic here, but I would
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: say that maybe you're both right based on your presentation
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: of it. It's a goal in and of itself. I
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: think he's right in the sense that... since vanity and
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: this kind of virtue signaling that we've talked about as
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: a part of it, Okaphobia is a goal in and
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: of itself in that it gives the Okaphob that sense
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: of power and that sense of self elevation that he's
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: looking for. So in that sense, just being an Okaphob
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: and just living that out is its own reward because
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: you do get to feel like you're better than everybody else.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: So in that sense, it is its own goal. But
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: it's also true that, yes, I mean, on the more
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: longer view of the matter, once they achieve their goal,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: they would recognize many of them that actually it was
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: not worth striving for, but the goal is the destruction
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: of one's own tradition, of one's own geopolitical power, and
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: so on.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: It also creates a vacuum for other people who are
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: not oikophobic to essentially seize that power.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: Well, what I mean, it's a destruction of their own country,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: I'm saying as a whole. Um, so, but yeah, well,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: probably in there, I mean, in their imagination, they would
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: be the ones to, to, to see.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: Like, like, like, for example, let's talk about the United,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: the United Kingdom. Um, cause I think that they're very, very,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: very far down this road, uh, where they have let
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: in countless foreigners from countries that are, that have cultures
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: that are incompatible with Western culture and things are changing
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: there very rapidly. And so it's oikophobia that keeps that
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: machine going. But after a while, the new people who
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: have come in are not going to adopt the same
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: ideals towards their own culture. They're just going to absorb
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: that one. And now then it's going to become this. Now,
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: that may later that may become oikophobic over time. I
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: don't know. But I think that it will have the
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: effect of destroying what's there, replacing it with you know,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: in this example, an Islamic regime. Oh, yes.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, no, definitely.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: I misunderstood you a little bit. Basically, yeah. So in there,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: of course, because they're these okaphobes who are trying to
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: invite Islamic immigration, they're very naive, of course, and they
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: don't understand Islam at all. I've written, lest people think
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: that I'm, don't know what I've written extensively and lectured
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: about the incompatibility, philosophically speaking, between Islam and the West
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: as well. So that's a whole other can of worms.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: But basically, the people who Invite Islamic immigration. They don't
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: know they don't understand Islam. They don't know what it's
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: about And so of course in their minds if we
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: think what is the goal from their point of view?
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: Of course from their point of view it is that
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: That the UK in this case is going to turn
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: into You know a socialist.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: Caliphate.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, well, a socialist egalitarian paradise, essentially. And that,
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: you know, Muslims and everybody else will kind of just
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: get along and live happily next to each other and
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: so on. That's sort of, that's their goal. So I
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: think to go back to, for your original question, I
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: think it's true that there is an external exogenous goal
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: that they have, but also that okaphobia is its own reward.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: But when it comes to what will actually happen, of course, yes,
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: you're quite right. What will actually happen is that the
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: countries will turn Islamic and there will be a point
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: basically of no return. There will be a point at
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: which either the country turns Islamic or the native population
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: grows violent. And obviously nobody wants violence. I'm not advocating
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: for violence just as a descriptive matter about what will happen.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: if such a thing is to be solved, yeah, there
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: will lead to, some people have been throwing around the word,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: the term civil war, whether that's apt or not, because
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: civil war kind of suggests two rival armies, you know,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: fighting against each other. You know, they don't have guns
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: in the UK, unfortunately for them. But, so I don't
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: know if civil war is the term necessarily, but civil unrest,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: civil infighting, certainly, yes, that will happen if the country
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: is not to become entirely Islamic, yeah.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I want to let's shift gears to something else.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: I'm wondering if there is possibly a relationship here. I'm
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: not sure. This is a little bit of a stretch, maybe.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: So I'm sure you've heard because it's been going all
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: around all over the Internet about the case of Lindsay Clancy.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: Are you familiar with this? Yeah.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: There's a woman who murdered her children.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: Yes. The woman who murdered her three children. claimed that,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: and attempted suicide, or at least appeared to attempt suicide,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: and then claimed that there were voices telling her to
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: do it, the SSRIs did it, whatever it is, the medication.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: She's trying to get off for insanity. She's pleading not guilty,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: but the case is not what I'm interested in at all.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: It's not about that. That's gonna play out the way
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: it plays out. My interest in it is the reaction
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: to the case, specifically from women online. And what I've
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: noticed a lot lately, and I'm not going to blame
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: social media for this. I think a lot of people do.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: And I don't think that that, I think that's a
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: lazy way to look at it. But I've noticed that
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: there has been one crisis after another, one event after
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: another that where women specifically in large numbers go out
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: and support or express empathy and support for people like
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: Lindsay Clancy. So Let's looking at just this one in isolation.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: Do you think that there is, I don't know, like,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: do you think that there's an oikophobic angle to this?
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: Because there is blaming of men, blaming of patriarchy, blaming
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: of big pharma, blaming of these other things, but not
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: of the woman who killed her children. I don't know
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: what your thoughts are.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not, I heard of the case, but I'm not,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: I haven't seen, and I'm not sufficiently familiar with what the,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: protesters have actually been saying to probably have a definitive
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: opinion on that.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's different things, but there's a lot of
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: blame going everywhere except the woman.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: So if it, if it is the case and I suppose, yeah. Um,
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: if it is the case that they are sort of, um,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: that they're, that one reason why they're supporting this woman
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: is because they think that motherhood is too much of
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: a burden or, um, And that they reject having to
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: be at home raising children and so on. If that's
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: the angle that a lot of these protesters have, then yes,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: that certainly is a part of that. I don't know
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: if I would.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: Well, they blame patriarchy.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: They do. OK.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: Yes. So let's not painting with a broad brush, but
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: because I know there's lots of different takes. But the
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: things I see most common is the blaming of patriarchy and.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: and the capitalist system.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, really?
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because the capitalist system is what enabled Big Pharma
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: to give her medication. Again, we don't know that medication
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: did this, but it's just people speculating. And I think
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: the speculation, the launching point for the speculation is an
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: already existing antipathy towards the West, basically. Like, oh, it's patriarchy,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: it's these other things. It's the family unit itself, right?
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: The problem is that there is a family unit.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, so in that case, definitely I would agree
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: that that's, yeah, based on your presentation of some of
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: the things they say, yes, that is orcophobic, or at
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: least it has an orcophobic element to it, yes. Yeah.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: What about the reaction, and I don't know if you've
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: seen this too, but the reaction to the assassination of
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk?
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's something I'm a bit more familiar with.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: And yeah, the celebration of his death and so on.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: And I mean, absolutely revolting. Obviously, one doesn't have to.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, some members of his own family saw him
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: get shot, I think. I mean, just to celebrate that
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: is obviously repulsive.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: But it was a majority of women that did that.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: Was it a majority of women as well?
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Well, it could be because women are more likely
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: to post on social media. but I, the overwhelming support
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: for Lindsay Clancy came from women. They gave, they funded
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: her about a million dollars, uh, for her, for her case.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: Cause they're certain that she's innocent and she did nothing wrong.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: And that's wild. And the celebration of Charlie Kirk was
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: a lot of women too, because, and I think, okay,
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: trying to be charitable, uh, just because I don't want to, uh,
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: get anyone thinking that I'm just here to bash women
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: or anything, but I think that what is happening is
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: that they think that to be a good person means
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: to essentially support those who don't have a voice. It's
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: the marginalized. It's like a motherly instinct that they're responding to.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: The problem is it's extremely misplaced. And there's a lot of,
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: it's like an, I don't know, like a ghoulish happiness
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: about people that they think are bad and dangerous being
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: killed like Charlie Kirk. They think that he's a bad
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: man that hurts people's feelings and that something should be done.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: So when that happened, I think that's what, but they
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: were obviously celebrating that, but they were also doing it
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: to signal to other people to say, hey, look at me.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: I'm saying the thing that everyone's supposed to say because
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get support. I'm going to get, you know,
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: people are going to like my comments. They're going to
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: comment on it positively. They're going to support me. And
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: so there is If oikophobia is the idea that you're
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: doing this, the motive for this is to feel good
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: about yourself, to make yourself feel like a good person,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: then this is just another way of doing that, right? Yeah.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: No, I think that's right. And it's interesting that the
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: statistic about women posting more about the death of Charlie
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: Kirk than others. Yeah, which I wasn't aware of. Yeah,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: and there's the old saying that if women didn't have
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: the vote, we'd never again have a Democrat president. We'd
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: just have Republicans. So there is truth to that, obviously.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: Or if we had a Democrat president, they would be
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: a lot more moderate. So yeah, I mean, there is
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: that nurturing aspect, as you say, and as we've discussed, yes,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: that is certainly more feminine. But it's interesting to note
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: how that nurturing aspect can also lead to a certain
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: ferociousness that can also be quite feminine in the sense that, well,
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: you fight to the death for your own offspring. You
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: fight to the death for that thing for which you
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: are being empathetic or for which you are, that thing
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: which you are nourishing. And so that can lead to
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: a certain ferocity. I mean, there's been, there's plenty of
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: psychological literature, as I'm sure you're aware of, about how
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: women are more prone to mass psychosis than men. And then,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: of course, feminists will say, well, most of those studies
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: were written by men, weren't they? But one can, of course,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: if one wants to attack the methodology of studies, one
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: can do so. But simply saying that they were authored
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: by men is not an argument. So I think there's
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: a lot of truth to that. I'm one of those
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: people who I wish more public-facing intellectuals would openly acknowledge
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: when they don't know something, for sure, because one hears
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: a lot of public intellectuals talk about things of which
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: they manifestly have no clue, and it's embarrassing. So in
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: this particular case, I'm inclined to say that I don't
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: want to make too categorical a statement here because I'm
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: not so familiar exactly with how those things play themselves
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: out in the case of Charlie Kirk and certainly not
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: in this more recent case. But it sounds to me
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: like what you're saying, I mean, what you're saying sounds
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: quite accurate to me.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at it in terms of, well,
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: I guess I'm looking at the contrast because you had said,
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: and one of the other things that stood out to
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: me too was the, I guess it's like the, well,
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: how do I put it? It's like the suppression of
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: masculinity as part of how this happened. So in that,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: there is the gap and I think it's being filled
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: by a feminine way of approaching these things. And I
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: think that's where this, this kind of oikophobia can grow,
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: it can be nurtured. And I think that a lot
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: of these women, probably most of them that were doing
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: this were single, young, childless. So I think that's also
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: a big part of it as well, because the instinct,
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: which could be useful for raising kids, is not being
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: used that way because they're not having children. And the
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: reason why they're not having children is because they're convinced that,
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe they're convinced that having children is bad
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: for the planet, right? because they consume resources and they've
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: been told this over and over by people in the
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: media and so on, or they believe that having children
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: is a form of oppression because it means that you'll
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: have to raise them, which means you can't be a
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: girl boss somewhere and go and earn a living and
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: depend on a man and these kinds of things.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: Yes. No, absolutely not. That part I think 100%. And
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: now here I can express myself a bit more categorically. Yeah,
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: I think that's exactly right. And there is also this
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: kind of androgynous blurring of distinction between the sexes that
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: we touched upon before. Men have been emasculated, which means
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: that part of that vacuum has been filled by more
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: masculine women to a degree. And this idea that the
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: complete rejection of the notion that we find happiness in
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: each other, men and women, I mean, and that we
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: need each other and complement each other, which is the truth.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: And the rejection of that does lead to misery on
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: both sides. It leads to effeminate men and to masculine women.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: I mean....
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: Kind of masculine women not really yeah right that way
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: just it just means weaker overall in my opinion like.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah no agree agreed but yeah in terms of surface
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: yeah in terms of surface expression exactly.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: Right but the aim is to sort of like make
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: the the categories indistinguishable like they don't matter and it
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: just ends up hurting both men and women really of.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: Course because a lot of these uh Yeah, absolutely. Because
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: a lot of these so-called girl bosses and so on,
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: they themselves, I mean, deep down, of course, they're not
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: happy with the exterior expression of their views. And many
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: of them do come as they get into their 40s
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: and then 50s and discover that they're childless. They might
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: not explicitly formulate it, but they discover the paucity of
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: their earlier manner.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Um, you've spoken about the need for a balanced
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: love of home, like Ophelia, what concrete practices or attitudes
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: would that look like in a modern pluralistic society?
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: So Ophelia is, um, this is actually, yeah, also something that, uh,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: Roger Scruton, who we mentioned has written about. Um, but yeah,
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: Ophelia basically, um, in order to, um, there are basically
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 2: two levels of Ophelia. Um, the first level is the
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: higher level, patriotism and pride in one's country and so on,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: and the desire to see one's country be successful on
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: the global stage. But that's the easier level, if you will.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: Even though I wish we had more patriots, it is
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: still relatively easy to be a patriot. It's a good
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: thing to be a patriot, but it's not difficult.
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: The more... The.
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: Harder level, because it requires actual day-to-day work, is the
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: more local level, the lower level, if you will, of orophilia,
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: which is the cultivation of family and local bonds in
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: one's local community. And that's a day, you know, everybody
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 2: can wave the flag on July 4th and so on,
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: and it's good that we do that. But the kind
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: of day-to-day orophilia, part of which is, of course, to
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: build a family, to make sure that once children receive
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: a traditional rearing and education, that they learn to appreciate
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: their own traditions, which again does not exclude obviously learning
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: about other traditions as well and learning about different cultures,
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: but that they prioritize their own home, their own tradition.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: The establishment of friendly bonds with one's fellow citizen, with
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: one's neighbor, the building of community around church or synagogue
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: or what have you, that's the kind of day-to-day orcophilia
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: that is ultimately even more important because that, of course,
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: is the level that undergirds the larger, the higher level
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: of nationalism, patriotism, and so on.
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: How would that... I mean, I don't disagree with you,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: but how would that actually... be a good bulwark against oikophobia?
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: How does that work? How does that play out?
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: Well, so I don't know. Oikophilia isn't always a bulwark
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: against oikophobia. It depends. I mean, if you're if you're
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: I'm talking more about people who are now already prone
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: to to to do this kind of thing, what they
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: have to do to perpetuate their oikophilia. If anything. Yeah,
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 2: it's certainly true that the better we have it, the
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: more a certain class of society will turn against its
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: own society. And that's part of the internal contradiction of okaphobia,
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: that success leads to self-hate. Success economically, wealth, security vis-à-vis
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: external threats and so on. Success on all those fronts
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: contributes to okaphobia. And that's part of the tragedy of history.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: In the book that I wrote, it is also a
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: tragic view of history because it's not the case that
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: we can say, okay, well, we need to achieve this
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: and this and this. And then once we've achieved that,
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: then we have, you know, then we have the good state.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: Then we have, then everything is fine because it's a
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: constantly dynamic situation and a success on one front, progress
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: on one front leads to regress on another front. So
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: it's not that it defeats okaphobia in and of itself,
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: but this is what we need to perpetuate okaphilia. One
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: thing though, I will say is that even people who
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: are not naturally conservative or people who might tend somewhat
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 2: toward okaphobia, Once they have children, and this is one
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: of the reasons why having a family and one's own
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: family is so important, is that once you have children,
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: there often develops a desire to pass something down to
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: the children. And you see this a lot. People who
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: may not have been religious, for example, maybe they were
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: raised in a religious home and then they rejected religion
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: as teenagers. They don't necessarily become full religious, but sometimes
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: they'll often embrace certain rituals, for example, because.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: They like they'll go to church, even if they're not religious.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: Because the kids.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: Exactly. That kind of thing. So so so that's something
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: that not just on the religious front and other areas
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: as well. Once you have children, you want their children
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 2: to learn about your parents, about their grandparents, about their
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: great grandparents. You want them to because you come to
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: realize as a parent. that your children are basically your
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: only path toward immortality. It sounds a little selfish to
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: put it that way. No, it's true. Exactly, it is true.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, legacy and ancestry are something that we just do
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: not value in modernity.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And it becomes an extension of yourself. That's
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: how your name lives on. I mean, of course, there's
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: some people who create things, books or inventions or whatever
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 2: that live on afterwards. But the main reason, the main
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: way for us to achieve immortality is through our children
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: and grandchildren and so on. Uh, and so once that
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: is the case, then even people who are not conservative
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: and who might be more progressive, at least they become
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: slightly less. Okay. Phobic because they do start to see
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 2: the aesthetic value, if nothing else of tradition. Uh, so that's, uh,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: that's one aspect of OCA philia that can combat or phobia, but, um, yeah,
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: but certainly not all of it does.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Like having skin in the game is kind of
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: what you're getting at. Like if you're, if you remain
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: single and childless. then you have no reason to invest
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: in the future after you're gone. So you're just there
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: to live and get what you can out of life
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: while you're there and then you're gone. And if you
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: are pushing your society towards that, it doesn't affect you
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: as much because you're going to be gone. But if
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: you have children, it's going to change everything. I assume
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: if you love them, you're going to start thinking about that.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: And I think that that is a really good point.
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: And one can point, of course, at several, obviously there
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: are exceptions on both sides, but one can point at
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: several quite orcophobic politicians who are childless.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go. Maybe we shouldn't be voting for
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: childless people. I don't know. At least like people who
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: are more than simply surface level patriotic. So, yes, I
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: agree with that. I also think it's interesting that you
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: brought up now going to church. Now, this isn't, we're
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: not apologists here, but I am a Christian. And I
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: have noticed that when I go, it's almost like extended
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: family because like after the service is done, then there
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: is a fellowship and everyone brings food and we all
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: sit and eat together. And, you know, we check up
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: on each other and we look out for each other.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: And it does, it's like a participatory event, right? And
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: I would, I'll call it communion, but I don't mean
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: it in the sense of you know, religious community. And
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, in the sense of community building as a
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: way to stem that. So I don't know if you're
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: religious or what.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 2: I'm not. I was raised religious, Jewish, actually. I even
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: had a black hat and everything until I was about
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: 15 or so. And then I actually went off the path.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: But I still, even though I was a non-religious person,
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: I very much value religion. So a lot of people,
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: when they abandon religion, they become anti-religious. I'm the exact opposite.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: I'm actually very pro-religious, even though personally I don't believe.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: But this is one of the things I love about
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: the left. They will tear down religion and attack the church.
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: and then complain that we don't have any sense of
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: community and that we're also uprooted and that there is
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 2: no proper culture here and that other Islamic culture is
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: a proper culture. Well, yeah, it's a proper culture. I mean,
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: it's a bad culture in my opinion, and there are
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 2: philosophical reasons for this, but at least it has cohesiveness
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: by dint of its religion. And the left has destroyed
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: the cohesiveness that is precisely provided by religion because, as
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: you said, There is no force for communal cohesion as
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 2: strong as religion. I mean, there's no exception to this.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: In all societies, religion is bar none the strongest element
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: of communal cohesion. So once you tear down religion, then yeah,
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: then you tear down the most fundamental unit, the most
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 2: fundamental force for cohesion in your society. And this is
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: something that is also, again, it's universal. This is why
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 2: the first steps toward orcophobia across societies is the questioning
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: of one's own religious traditions. That always comes early on.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: And then eventually, over time, that does lead to orcophobia. Again,
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 2: as you said, we're not apologists necessarily. I'm not religious myself.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: But as a descriptive historical matter, this is what happens.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: Evidence is absolutely clear. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: So, so, and this is why it's so important to
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: emphasize the role of religion. We mentioned the church, uh, again,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: as you said, even, and I tell people who said, oh, well,
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: but I don't believe in Jesus for whatever I said,
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 2: that's fine. Um, but go to church anyway, because there's
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 2: a real community there and you could still learn moral lessons.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 2: You can appreciate that there are people there who care
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: for each other and you can, uh, you know, there's
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 2: so many aesthetic experiences of it as well. I, when
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: I was living in Germany, I got my PhD in Germany.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: I'm a secular Jew, but I would sometimes go to
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: Latin Mass on Sundays simply because I loved listening to
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: the Latin hymns and just the aesthetic experience.
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: I assume the cathedrals are beautiful too.
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, some really beautiful structures for sure. And so, yeah,
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 2: one reason I prefer Catholicism to, well, it's nice to
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: go into a Lutheran place of worship, sorry, a Catholic
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 2: place of worship than a Lutheran place of worship. By
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 2: and large, there are exceptions. But anyway, that's a whole
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: other that's a different story. But anyway, to appreciate the
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: aesthetic aspect of it and the communal aspect of it
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: is very important, whether you are a very loyal religious
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: believer or not.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know that you're working on
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: another book right now. I think it has a lot
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: to do with aesthetics. Right.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: And what is what is this new book about? You
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: wrote it, but it's not published yet.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: Not published yet. Exactly. So I call it, the working
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 2: title is Art and Anarchy. There we go. Art and Anarchy,
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 2: Sociopolitical Reflections on Aesthetics. Well, hopefully I'll be able to
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 2: keep that title. We'll see. But basically it's about, it's
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 2: a bit diffuse, but it's essentially about how it's about
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: the relationship between art and society, what one says about
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 2: the other, and also about our understanding of art, basically
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: what it is, how we are to understand it, and
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: how it also goes into, it's kind of also a
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: philosophy about philosophy, so it's maybe a little more cerebral,
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: but it's basically how we think about these particular concepts,
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: and I suggest a particular way of thinking about them
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: so as to open up the field for more creativity
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: and for better scholarship, for more empiricism and so on.
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 2: It's basically what the book is about.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: It's fascinating because I do think there's a relationship there.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: I just want to tell you what was going through
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: my head as we were talking about church and communion
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: to essentially build stronger communities so that they can... You
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: basically feel as though you have more love for the
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: people closest to you and that will hopefully, you know,
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: stem the sort of like, what I think oikophobia is
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: ultimately just nihilism. I mean, that's where it goes, if anything.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: I think that, but maybe I'm wrong, but like when
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: we stopped going to church as much and, you know,
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: Marx wrote about religion being the opiate of the masses, obviously,
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: but when we stopped going to church as much as
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: society in America became more secular, although I think the
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: United States is far more religious than other Western countries,
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: but it's still more secular than it has been in
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: the past. We look to different cultural ways to stay connected. So,
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: you know, we watched movies together. We listened to the
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: music together. We went to, uh, we watched television shows
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: and then you go to work on Monday and everybody
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: would stand around the water cooler and talk about, you know,
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: what they saw or whatever. And it was, we were
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: still connecting, but now that's gone too. So there isn't,
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: there isn't much keeping people together. We're becoming more and
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: more atomized. Um, So I thought that that was really
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: interesting that I don't know that. So the relationship between
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: this book and your book on your art stuff. And
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: also I think, and I mean, I don't want to
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: go too far. Maybe I'll have you back on and
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: talk about your book when it's out. But like how through,
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: because I studied art history and I watched how existentialism
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: and Dadaism and this nihilistic stuff came in and it
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: basically stripped the beauty away and made everything political and,
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: And that was like in the late 19th century, maybe
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: before that. Yeah. And I think that was part of
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: the demoralization process.
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. And this is also a process that I
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 2: talk about in one of the chapters in that book.
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: And it even starts a little bit earlier. Already, Hegel
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 2: talks about famously in his lectures on aesthetics, he talks
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 2: about how art has become intellectualized.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 2: And it's not a coincidence, right? You're familiar with these things.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 2: It's not a coincidence that people say, oh, he's so prescient,
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: he saw what was going to happen later. I mean,
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 2: he obviously was a highly intelligent man, but he's actually
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: describing what's already going on before his time, because really,
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: going back to the Enlightenment again, it's not a coincidence
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 2: that this intellectualization of art and therefore the downgrading of
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 2: sensory beauty vis-à-vis intellectual thought, that that becomes greater at
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 2: a time when the Enlightenment has completed its ridicule of religion.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 2: Because the striving toward, I mean, it can also be
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 2: an intellectual process, but the striving toward the divine often
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 2: expresses itself aesthetically in the simple sense of striving toward
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 2: beauty because one wants to glorify his name, glorify his creation,
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: God's creation. Once God has been ridiculed and killed, so
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 2: to speak, then what is left? Well, what is left
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: is the purely intellectual process and the fact that the
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 2: artist takes over the role that used to be filled
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 2: either by God himself or at least by the priest.
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 2: Once the priest and God have been discarded, the artist
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 2: becomes the new holy man, which means that he becomes
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 2: his own justification. And so he's no longer, he no
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 2: longer has an obligation to act morally or to beautify
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 2: because whatever he does by dint of being the artist
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: is in and of itself considered good. And that's part of,
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: obviously this process becomes more extreme later in the 19th
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: and then into the 20th century. But the seeds, if
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 2: you will, of this process starts already in the 1700s
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 2: and then with Hegel's observations in the early 19th century.
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 2: So that's part of it. We tend to think today
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: when we think of sort of the stereotypical or the
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: archetypal artist is this kind of brilliant individual who, however,
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: morally is, you know, not a very good person. You know,
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: he sleeps around and he doesn't, you know, takes drugs and...
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 2: and so on, right? Lives in a dirty attic and
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 2: creates these amazing things, right? That's a very modern view
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: of the artist. But that view of the artist really
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 2: comes from this particular period from France and the Belle Epoque,
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 2: which was infused with these kinds of ideas. If you
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: look at Renaissance artists, well, before the Enlightenment, they were
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: all expected to be exemplars of virtue. And most of
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: them were. I mean, you can find exceptions, of course,
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: but most of them were. And it's certainly a view
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: of the artist that would have been alien to... Greek dramatists, poets,
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: and so on. So this is recapturing, I think, different
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 2: ideas of what it means to be an artist or
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: even just a creative person in general, even as a scholar.
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 2: And I talk about how this relates to scholarship as
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 2: well and to philosophy. It's obviously very close to my heart.
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 2: That's a big part of the book. Understanding that is
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: something that would actually open up the field for more creativity,
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: for more new things to be created. once we kind
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 2: of stop being captured by this very historically limited view
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: of what creativity and of what art is or should be.
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: That's a good point. Yeah. I noticed when I was
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: in art school, because I am an artist, which is
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: why I studied art history, there were a lot of
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: people that had no talent, but they had the correct
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: political ideas and so they can put together that's why
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: we have so much profane art that's being hung up
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: in museums because it has nothing to do with the
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: beautiful and the transcendent and the divine but it has
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: everything to do with like what are you saying in
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: the moment and most of it is very much caught
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: it's like in a time capsule like it's saying something
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: about a specific incident at a specific time. And so
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: it's not eternal. It's very, you know, temporally stuck. Does
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: that make sense?
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it is. And which is why most
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 2: of art that is celebrated today will be forgotten tomorrow.
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, obviously, that's true of a lot of art
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 2: from the past as well that was created that we
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 2: don't remember anymore. But it's even more. And you made
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 2: a good point. A lot of people laboring in art
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 2: with absolutely no talent Yeah, because there's nothing exogenous against
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 2: which to measure themselves. Certain people would have been kicked
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 2: out of art school because the teachers are, okay, you
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 2: don't know how to draw, you're worthless. Whereas today, of course,
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 2: because the artist has become his own justification, this leads
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 2: to a much higher proportion of laboring artists having absolutely
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: no talent whatsoever, and using art also in a broad sense,
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 2: you know, poetry, not just painting, all different kinds of
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 2: creative endeavors, shall we say.
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 2: I will say, though, I don't want people to then
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: once they finally read the book to be disappointed. There
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 2: are certain passages as well, perhaps in the book where
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 2: conservatives will be a little upset with me because since
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: I'm striving for and I'm not I'm not a doctrinaire
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 2: conservative by any means.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: Our audience isn't necessarily political.
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I get a lot of critique from conservatives as well,
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 2: because I and I tell them I'm not a political
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 2: activist or a pundit, which always takes one side. I'm
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: a philosopher. And the point of genuine philosophy, the point
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 2: of genuine thought, is that it's a journey whose destination
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 2: is unknown. And as you explore certain intellectual paths, you
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 2: don't know where you're going to end up. Sometimes you
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 2: end up in a different place that's not necessarily in
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 2: accordance with doctrinal conservatism. But so I just mentioned briefly
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 2: that I actually am somewhat, there are aspects of modern
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 2: art toward which I'm friendlier than to other aspects, I
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 2: guess we could say. And I explain why in the book.
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 2: And it's about how if we're going to open up
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 2: To take Roger, this is a point of rare disagreement,
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: for example, between me and Roger Scruton. Roger Scruton, in
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: some of his books and also in a talk once
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 2: that he gave that I attended here in New York,
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 2: he basically talks about how we should strive to reinvigorate
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 2: classical music and make modern classical music. And, you know,
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 2: that's sometimes done well, but the problem is that very
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 2: often that too often it leads to just being stuck
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 2: in old forms and you're really not creating anything new
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 2: or different. And so we have to be a little
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 2: more open than a lot of us.
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: I understand. Yeah. Yeah. It's not just, you can't just, Oh,
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: we're just going to go back. Like you can't really
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: go back. There's so the hit, you know, what's happened
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: has happened.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: I understand. Exactly. Exactly. A colleague of mine who wrote
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 2: poetry in Latin and I told her that it's worthless because, um,
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 2: Because you're not answering to our present moment now. Like
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 2: we already have Virgil and Horace and so on. You're
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 2: not doing anything interesting.
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the dark side of nostalgia, if that
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: makes sense. Okay, so looking ahead, do you see oikophobia intensifying, peaking,
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: or generating a meaningful backlash? And if there is a backlash,
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: is there an aspect of that that worries you or
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: concerns you? Yeah.
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: Um, so all of the above pretty much, uh, the, um,
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 2: so okaphobia will continue to intensify, you know, after, um,
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 2: Trump's reelection, people said woke is dead. And I, along
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 2: many others said right away, no, it's not, no, it's not, no, no,
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: not even.
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: It's going to become more, they're actually strongest when they're
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: in a position of weakness. That's when they're most emboldened,
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: I think, but go on.
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 2: No, I think there's a lot of truth to that. Um, the, um, Basically,
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 2: you might have certain aspects of wokeism that are kind
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 2: of passing fads, like people putting their pronouns in their bios,
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 2: like that has gone down a little bit, for example.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 2: So there might be certain aspects, yes, that kind of
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 2: come and go. But wokeism as a whole is kind of,
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 2: and wokeism being the most modern expression of wokephobia, that
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 2: as a whole is certainly going to continue to intensify.
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 2: And so that is going to continue to intensify. That's
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 2: absolutely clear. The question is, because it always does, I mean, historically,
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 2: there's no point in history at which.
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: Is it like an inevitable thing, like an inevitable pattern?
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't like the word inevitable in the sense
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 2: that one will be accused of historical determinism. and from
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 2: taking away people's responsibility and and yeah and freedom to
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 2: act and so on and there's a whole epilogue in
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 2: the book in which i address that exact issue but
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: basically if you're looking at it historically speaking we shouldn't
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 2: be captives to history obviously but there has been no
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 2: society which became kind of okaphobic up to a point
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 2: and then kind of said okay well this is too
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: much let's let's dial it down a bit that doesn't
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: happen so okaphobia continues to intensify the more um Important
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 2: question then becomes, where does it lead? Will there be
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 2: a backlash? There will be a backlash and there is
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 2: a backlash. We see the backlash now. That's another reason
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 2: why we mentioned UK a couple of times. Another reason
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: why I think UK right now is actually very interesting
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 2: because one sees more of a backlash brewing there now than,
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 2: for example, in France or Germany on the continent. And
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: so it'll be interesting to see what happens.
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: The backlash, by and large, is a good thing and
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 2: a necessary thing to the extent to which it will
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: lead to violence. Again, it's an open question. We'll see.
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 2: But even though violence will be unavoidable in at least
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 2: some cases if Islamization is to be stopped. Your question
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 2: about whether there are aspects of the backlash that are
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 2: not so good is an interesting one. And I think
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 2: the answer to that is clearly yes. The question to
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 2: me is whether those aspects are so great as to
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 2: outweigh the goodness of the backlash as a whole. And
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 2: to that, my answer is no, at least not yet.
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: No, I appreciate that answer because I think that's where
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: I'm at too. I think it's necessary and I hope
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: that it happens. And I think there probably will be
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: some degree of overcorrection, but I think that will, you know,
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: it'll like level out after. I'm not that concerned.
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 2: Right, exactly. No, that's roughly my attitude as well. And
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 2: I think one of the more obvious ways is to
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 2: some degree in the UK also, but I think especially
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 2: here in the United States, actually, in which the more
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 2: negative aspects of the backlash expresses itself is through rising
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 2: antisemitism on the right. The left has been antisemitic for
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 2: a long time. That's nothing new. And of course, there
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 2: was a time even earlier on where the right used
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 2: to be more anti-Semitic. But nowadays, the rising anti-Semitism on
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 2: the right is a problem in the sense because there
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: is this, and you see this to some extent in
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 2: Europe as well. There is a sense that our civilization
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 2: has been so infiltrated by foreign elements that it leads
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 2: to sort of exaggerated desire for purity. So that anything
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 2: that is even just a little bit different, you know,
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 2: forget about the Muslims and the Arabs and so on.
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 2: They're very different already. Of course, yeah, we're against them.
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 2: But even things that are a little bit different, like
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 2: an American Jew whose family has been here for three generations,
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 2: even he is not pure enough to correspond to what
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 2: we want American society to be. And so that is
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 2: an overcorrection. That is clearly negative, I think. And so, yeah,
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 2: so that is a concern. But as I said, the
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: backlash is so necessary and the threat from homophobia is
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 2: so strong that I'd rather have the backlash with those
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: couple of negative aspects than no backlash at all. And then,
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 2: you know, over time that those negative aspects could be,
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 2: you know, corrected as well. Hopefully we'll see. But so, yeah,
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 2: that's my general view on that.
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: So this is a channel where we discuss primarily men's issues, legal, legislative,
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: and political to some degree, because it has to be.
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: Things like child custody and child abandonment, things like that.
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: But one of the sayings that comes up a lot,
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: and I think that this is going to be a
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: little bit of a difficult thing to tackle, but there
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: is an idiom that you see very often. It goes
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: something like, weak men create hard times, hard times create
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: strong men, strong men create good times, good times create
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: weak men. And I guess I'm wondering is, even though
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: we still live in, okay, things are tough, but men
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: by and large behind the scenes are, somehow managing, despite
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: all of the, let's say, attacks on men and patriarchy
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: and their access to jobs, like, you know, girl bossing
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: and like all these other things, like all of the problems,
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: men are still going out every day and they keep
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: everything running. The roads are maintained, the plumbing, the electricity,
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: the power grids and all that. Do you still, do
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: you agree with that idiom that I said before. I
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: know that you said that men have been domesticated. And again,
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: I don't see that saying as necessarily an attack on men.
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: I think that it's probably speaking more to the cycle
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: of a rise, and then decadence, and then a collapse,
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: and then a rise, and that kind of thing. And
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: it sounds like The patterns, there's like parallels between that
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: and the pattern you described in your book about oikophobia.
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: So I want to know what your thoughts are on that.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I mean, it's basically true. Obviously, it's a
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 2: great simplification, and I think it's interesting to get much
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 2: more into the weeds of it, which is part of
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 2: the reason I wrote the book. But yes, it's largely true.
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 2: The little.
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: Statements or expressions like that, I think, are a good
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 2: heuristic kind of for understanding what's going on for people
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 2: who don't, for people who are not inclined to study
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 2: the matter in greater detail. I think probably a bigger
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 2: problem is when there are these kind of in-between studies,
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 2: people who talk a little bit more about details, but
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 2: who don't do the necessary work, like Glubb, for example.
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 2: Glubb wrote an essay that has been quite popular about
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 2: the fall of civilizations. And It's serious enough to be
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 2: taken seriously, but not serious enough not to contain a
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 2: bunch of errors and arbitrary statements such as his notion
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 2: that civilizations last for 250 years, which is rubbish. Because
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 2: if you look at how he actually writes, you see
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 2: that he has an entirely arbitrary measure of what constitutes
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 2: the end, the beginning and an end of a civilization.
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 2: And such statements lead to some Americans saying, okay, well,
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 2: we're going to turn 250 years old. So I guess
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 2: that's it with American civilization.
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: Oh, right.
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: And how is that not also part of the demoralization process?
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: You just tell people, well, this is it. This is
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: how long we last. So I guess don't bother to
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: try to make things better or change anything because time
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: is up. Sorry, you were born in the wrong century, right?
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 2: That's right. Exactly. Yeah. So, no, that's it's it's very demoralizing.
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 2: So a little brief heuristics like that, as the one
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 2: you mentioned, I think are generally good because it's quite accurate.
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 2: It's these kind of in between half serious studies that
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 2: get all the attention, such as, unfortunately, gets at suicidal empathy.
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 2: They're they're the they're the texts that I or the
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 2: the the efforts that I don't like because they actually
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 2: teach things that are wrong. But yeah, so I agree
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 2: with that statement largely.
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: Do you think that the idiom is meant to be accusatory? Yeah, probably.
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: Blaming men?
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it blames certain men. I think it
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 2: probably blames more circumstances.
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: Circumstances?
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, about how... But I mean, it praises men, but
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 2: then one praises one generation and attacks the next. I mean,
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 2: it's a common saying that the greatest generation produced the
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 2: worst generation, right? The World War II generation produced the boomers.
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 2: I don't think that's accurate, but it's a common expression. Obviously,
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 2: I love the World War II generation, but I would
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 2: still probably say the founding generation probably takes the top
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 2: spot for me. But in any case, be that as
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 2: it may, it's a common feeling that that is the case.
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's as much about blaming as about
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 2: simply understanding how things come about in historical cycles. Historical
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 2: cycles kind of have gone out of fashion in academic circles,
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 2: which is another reason why I've faced some resistance. And
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 2: strictly speaking, it's not a cycle, it's a spiral, as
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: I explain in the book. But yeah, there is a
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 2: lot of truth to it. And a lot of very
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 2: wise men of Greek antiquity subscribed to the cyclical view.
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 2: So there is more to it than can be so
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 2: easily dismissed.
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: Okay. So let me see here. Some argue your term
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: or this term, it's not yours, that the term oikophobia
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: is too broad or polemical. What would falsify the oikophobia
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: thesis for you?
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 2: Well, the term itself, so I guess defending Roger Scruton here,
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 2: but obviously it was my choice to take that term
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 2: and run with it. I think for me, the greatest
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 2: defense of the term is that we needed an opposite
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 2: of xenophobia. And xenophobia is an overused term for sure. Absolutely.
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 2: So it's possible to overuse orcophobia as a term as well.
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 2: But that's actually kind of part of the point. And
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 2: as I've said on a number of occasions, the fact
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 2: that we had a term for xenophobia, but not a
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 2: term for orcophobia, was itself an expression of orcophobia. Because
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 2: apparently the moment you criticize a foreigner or a foreign culture,
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 2: you're a xenophobe. But criticizing your own culture, apparently that's
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 2: not pathological in any way.
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: It makes you enlightened.
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 2: That's what good people do. Exactly. So having a word
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 2: that included the root phobia in it as a correspondence
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 2: to xenophobia, I think was very important. And so I
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 2: think that was a very good contribution on the part
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 2: of Scruton. Some people say you should have orchomisia or
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 2: something because they don't fear their home. They hate their home, misia,
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 2: from the Greek root for hatred. But again, the point
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 2: was to have I wasn't I mean, I wasn't in
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 2: obviously I don't know exactly what was in Scruton's head
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 2: when he came up with the term. But but the
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 2: point is, I think, to have an opposite of xenophobia specifically,
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 2: because many times when people criticize foreigners, that's not done
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 2: out of fear either, but rather out of dislike or hatred.
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 2: And so in genuine cases of xenophobia, but we still
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 2: use the term phobia. When it comes to the falsification,
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 2: going back to my future book as well, that's the
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 2: one that's still coming out. Since I also talk about
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 2: creativity and scholarship and how to expand the borders of
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 2: those things, I actually also take issue with, in my opinion,
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 2: overestimated concepts of falsification. Karl Popper comes in for quite
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 2: a lot of critique in the book. But if we
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 2: are going to use that term, What would falsify okaphobia,
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 2: but so far no one has falsified it to me,
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 2: would be something like, if you can point, for example,
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 2: at the historical processes that I describe in the book,
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 2: if you can point to how attacks on your own
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 2: culture were perfectly common also in the earlier phases of
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 2: a civilization, that would go against the process, the historical
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 2: development that I outlined. But nobody can because the evidence
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 2: just isn't there. I mean, maybe you can find some
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 2: individual here and there, somebody making fun or whatever. But
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 2: by and large, the evidence just isn't there. So that's
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 2: something that could falsify part of what I say. All right.
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 2: If you could.
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's diachronic. Exactly. If you take synchronic, if
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 2: you could point to most of these particular orcophobes as
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 2: really just criticizing one particular aspect. Again, that could also
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 2: be a type of falsification. But as we've already discussed,
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 2: most of them actually have a much more holistic disdain
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 2: of their own civilization than just some particular singular point
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 2: of complaint.
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes. So since writing the book, have you changed
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: or shifted or evolved any of your opinions on this?
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: Has anything changed since then?
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 2: Not really, although I love the question. I've given so
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 2: many interviews. I've been on so many podcasts and nobody
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 2: has ever asked me that question before. It's a great question.
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 2: Not really. I've maybe shifted my emphasis. I mean, I
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 2: hate academics who spend their entire lives working on just
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 2: one thing. Yeah. So there's a good German word for that, Fachidiot,
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 2: which is basically somebody who just writes about one single
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 2: thing his entire life. So I cast a much wider
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 2: net and I like to work on different things and to...
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 2: to study lots of different things like political philosophy and
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 2: philosophy of history, mostly in Western self-contempt and now more aesthetics,
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 2: which was actually my first love in philosophy. Now I'm
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 2: devoting myself more to that in my next book. So
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 2: I shift emphasis in terms of what I work on,
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 2: but in terms of my actual view on this topic
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: of vocophobia, no, I don't think I've changed my mind
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 2: in anything because... no different evidence has been presented to me.
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, I've been attacked by lots of different directions,
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 2: but whenever somebody attacks me.
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: That was going to be my next question.
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay. Yeah, whenever somebody attacks me, it's not serious critique.
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 2: It's just childish personal attacks and so on. Nobody has
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 2: attacked me in any serious way. Why do you think
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 2: they're doing this? Pardon me?
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: Why do you think they're attacked trying to discredit you?
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 2: Oh, well, so there's been from both left wing and
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 2: right wing direction. From the left, I think it's easy
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 2: to say because most of the people there are orcophobes themselves,
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 2: so they feel indicted by what I say. The critique
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 2: that I've gotten from the right has most of all
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 2: been along the lines of, The fact that I'm explaining
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 2: it and showing how it works somehow justifies it in
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 2: their eyes and makes it harder to combat from their
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 2: in their opinion because they like to present okaphobia as
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 2: being just some absolutely crazy madness and if you can
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 2: dismiss it as some crazy madness then it then it's
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 2: easier kind of to marginalize it okay well these are
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 2: just crazy people but then you don't take.
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: It seriously then right and you think it's a joke
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: yeah yeah Exactly.
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 2: And so to them, the fact that I explain it
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 2: and show that it's actually happened before kind of somehow
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 2: normalizes it. So that's a critique I've gotten from the right.
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 2: And my answer to them is, okay, you're attacking me
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 2: as activists. You're attacking me as pundits who are trying
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 2: to affect political change. And I appreciate that you're trying
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 2: to affect political change, but I'm a philosopher. And my
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 2: job is not just to say things that a particular
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 2: side likes. My job is actually to explore things. and
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 2: to take these various areas of research and examination to
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 2: their ultimate conclusion. Um, and, and I also say, I mean, it's,
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 2: it's in the book itself. I'm obviously not, I am
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 2: against okaphobia, but I also want to understand it and
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 2: describe it. And that's my job. People who, so the
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 2: critique from the left has just been by people who
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 2: are not interested in philosophy and that's fine. You don't
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 2: have to be interested in philosophy, but, but then you
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 2: also shouldn't, uh, then you also shouldn't attack me.
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, absolutely. Um, Yeah, thank you for that. Okay,
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: so I did get a couple of paid comments. I
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: think they're questions from people in our audience. So guys,
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: send in Super Chats, Rumble Rants, Super Chow, whatever, and
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: I will be sure to read them. So one I
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: got from NovaFan21 on Rumble who gave us a dollar
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: and said, does it say in your studies what happens
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: when it's too late for the strong men to protect society?
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: It feels there is no difference between being put in
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: jail for criticism and withdrawing from society.
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there is. I mean, I talk about in the
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 2: book about how, I mean, what comes after orcophobia. Obviously,
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 2: in the American case, we don't know yet. Although if
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 2: past civilizations are any model, which of course they are,
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 2: then it's not that pretty. We do have one vis-a-vis
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 2: the ancient world. The advantage we have today is that
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 2: we're not surrounded by hostile tribes. The Canadians or Mexicans
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 2: aren't suddenly going to invade us once we become....
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: In America, at least.
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 2: Right, exactly.
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: I can't speak for France.
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 2: Obviously, we still have migrants coming in who do not
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 2: wish America well. I mean, you see this, especially in
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 2: New York City, obviously, prime example, the mayor of my
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 2: own city.
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: Michigan.
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Michigan is another example. My mayor, and I mean,
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 2: we're still, some of us here in New York, in
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 2: disbelief that our mayor is somebody who's not just left
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 2: wing and has bad economic policies or whatever, but he's
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 2: generally somebody who hates our country. That's the case here.
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 2: So that's part of what happens, except in greater degree. Now,
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 2: ancient civilizations, once they no longer are able to fend
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 2: for themselves, you can think of okaphobia as a destruction
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 2: of the immune system. They are then no longer able
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 2: to defend themselves against barbarian hordes. So we don't have
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 2: foreign armies invading, but, and you see this even more
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 2: in Europe, it does lead to a dilution of the culture,
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 2: to demographic collapse often, and and ultimately to violence. The
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 2: question is simply what kind of violence, whether a society
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 2: collapses through foreign invasion or whether it collapses through violent
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 2: infighting between orcophobic and non-orcophobic factions and the allies of
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 2: the various sides. That's something which will be interesting to
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 2: study Europe now to see what happens in the next
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 2: couple of years and decades. And as we've said, I
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 2: think the UK is right now the most interesting area there.
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 2: But yeah, that's essentially what happens.
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. All right. And I got a $ 5 Super Chow
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: from Official Reverse Trad for $ 5. And he says, question
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 1: for guests. If I hate my hometown of New York
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 1: City because it's oikophobic with regards to the national identity
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: of American and a few similar things, am I an
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: oikophobe for hating my home city for being oikophobic? It
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: seems like a tricky question.
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 2: Well, as a New Yorker myself, obviously, it's a question
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 2: close to my heart. No, I would not say that
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 2: you're okaphobic because you still love America. You're for America,
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 2: if I understood the question correctly. I would say just
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 2: as a fellow New Yorker, one thing I would say
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 2: in favor of New York, unlike places like D.C. or Seattle,
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 2: for example, New York is at least big and diverse enough,
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 2: using diverse here in a positive sense for once. It's
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 2: big and diverse enough that there are pockets of sanity
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 2: in New York, as the questioner probably knows. If you
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 2: know where to go, you can actually find a lot
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 2: of sensible people in this city, unlike some other places.
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 2: But no, I would certainly not call somebody like that
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 2: an orcophobe, although I would, as a selfish New Yorker,
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 2: I would hope that my fellow New Yorker stays in
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 2: the city and tries to improve it rather than Rather
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 2: than jumping ship.
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 1: Just flee.
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Although, I mean, although I would understand it
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 2: if he does.
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: Well, a lot of the big businesses left because they
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 1: didn't want to be taxed.
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, right. No, I mean, if you're a big business, sure.
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, why would you stay, of course?
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's the only way to sort of like
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 1: not just survive and preserve your business, but also to,
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to say punish, but send
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: a message to New York, right? Um, same thing happened
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: in California. Yeah.
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 2: And if, uh, if, uh, this person, for example, has
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 2: young children, for example, I could also understand you wouldn't
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 2: want your young children to grow up in a place
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 2: where he's going to be indoctrinated in the public schools
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 2: or the streets are going to be unsafe and so on. So,
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 2: you know, so obviously everybody's situation is different. So I
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 2: can certainly understand that people who want to leave, but, um,
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 2: but no, not an Okafold.
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: All right. Well, thank you for that. I'm just going
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 1: to double check to make sure I didn't miss any, uh,
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: comments from anybody and I don't see anything here so
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 1: I guess like I wanted to just ask one last
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 1: thing and then I think we can wrap it up
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: here so I've been doing research into various like Frankfurt
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: School professors but also the people who preceded them and
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: I think I feel like It may have, or at
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: least one of the big parts of this history is Hegel.
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: And you mentioned Hegel, I think, when we talked today.
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: Would you say there's a way to connect the Hegelian
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: dialectic to this oikophobic, I guess it's a critique of
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: Western civilization, or is that like a little bit of
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 1: a stretch?
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 2: Not really. I mean... I don't think it's that much
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 2: of a stretch. I mean, you have plenty of, as
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 2: you know, right-wing Hegelians and left-wing Hegelians doing battle with
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 2: each other. And Hegel, partly also because early Hegel is
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 2: such a terrible writer, it makes it easier for him
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 2: to lend himself to different interpretations. He does become better
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 2: over time. He becomes a better writer with age, yes.
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 2: You compare something like the philosophy of rights with the
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 2: phenomenology of spirits. The earlier work is much worse written
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 2: than the latter. But that aside, it's the teleological aspect,
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 2: if you will, of Hegel's philosophy of history that can
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 2: become a little dicey. Now, obviously, there are people, including Nietzsche,
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 2: who have made fun of him to a degree that
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 2: he doesn't quite deserve. But and I criticize this as well,
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 2: this aspect of his in the book, the the the
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 2: the overly teleological flavor of his philosophy of history, the
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 2: idea that, OK, well, if things progress toward a particular goal,
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 2: toward a particular point, well, then that the end of history. Yeah, exactly.
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 2: That lends itself to this kind of positivism that I
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 2: mentioned before that does to some extent seek to tear
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 2: down tradition now. this depends a little bit which Hegel
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 2: one reads. I mean, so, and this is part of
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 2: my problem with a lot of Hegel scholarship in general.
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 2: I was actually just corresponding with a colleague the other
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 2: week about this, that people kind of decided, this is
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 2: not true just of Hegel, it's true of many philosophers,
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 2: but people kind of take their favorite philosopher, Hegel in
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 2: this case, and they decide, okay, this is what he thinks.
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 2: And then they kind of reject everything that goes in
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 2: a little bit of a different direction, which is especially
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 2: interesting problematic in the case of such a voluminous writer
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 2: and lecturer as Hegel. And this is where people forget
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 2: the philology you mentioned at the beginning in your introduction.
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 2: My PhD is in philosophy and in classical philology, philology
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 2: being the study of language and literature and so on.
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 2: And the philological dimension always has to inform our philosophizing.
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 2: We have to pay attention to what the person actually says,
• 2:07:15
  Speaker 2: black and white. and not just kind of have the
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 2: theory in our mind.
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 2: Hegel says this, Mark says this, uh, and that's it. No,
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 2: look carefully at what the detail of what he actually says.
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 2: And there you see that there are certain passages where
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 2: Hegel certainly does go in a kind of end of
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 2: history direction, which is the more teleological aspects that I find, um, bad.
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 2: And then there are other passages where he does seem
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 2: much more strongly to acknowledge that actually, no history is
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 2: not over. And, uh, And it's not the kingdom of Prussia,
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 2: that's the culmination of history and so on. So it
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 2: depends which Hegel you read, but there's certainly a danger
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 2: or a possibility that Hegel can be used to some
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 2: extent fairly or unfairly, depending on your tastes Yeah. In
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 2: an orcophobic direction.
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah. All right. All right. Well, then I don't feel
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: so dumb. All right. So it was more of an instinct.
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: And I saw some things, but I think that's good.
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Uh, I got one more super chat came
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: in late and then, um, we'll go from there. So
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 1: Xeranks gave us $ 10. He's, I think he's also a
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 1: New Yorker. He said, came into this late, but as
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 1: a fellow New Yorker, I've long said New Yorkers are
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: more libertarian in attitude at least. Is that correct? And
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: how do you reconcile that with Mamdani's election? Yeah. So
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: I have a theory on that one, but go ahead.
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay.
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 2: I'll be curious to hear your theory.
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 1: Um, It's not complicated. It's women.
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 2: Okay. We're kind of stewing in our own New Yorkism here.
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 2: So I think it's true. When he says that we
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 2: tend to be libertarian, I think there's a lot of
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 2: truth to that. When it comes to Mamdani, his victory.
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 2: So this is, and people have talked about this, you know,
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 2: when they started the electoral map of New York city,
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 2: a lot of it. And this, this goes to what
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 2: we talked about before about the, the dilution demographic dilution
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 2: and so on and cultural dilution. A lot of his
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 2: voters are immigrants who came from parts of the world
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 2: where they have a similar kind of attitude toward the
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 2: United States.
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: They vote on tribal lines.
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 2: They vote on tribal lines, exactly. I have an article
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 2: coming out now, actually, just this week on what I
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 2: call ethnic memory and how that operates politically. So basically,
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 2: these are people who.
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 2: And even when they come from this part of the world,
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 2: in some cases it is that they actually agree with Mamdani.
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 2: And in some cases, when, for example, Indians or so
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 2: vote for him, it's not that they necessarily agree with
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 2: everything he says. It's just this feeling that, oh, well,
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 2: he's one of us. So we vote for him for
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 2: that reason. That was a very significant voting bloc for him.
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 2: And then, of course, you do have the young communists,
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 2: a lot of people who, a lot of New Yorkers
• 2:09:59
  Speaker 2: who are... first generation New Yorkers or, or who, uh,
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 2: or who moved here from other parts of the country
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 2: because they wanted to, um, imbibe New York culture and left-wing, uh, um, uh,
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 2: urbanism and so on. Um, and, uh, that's, that's another
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 2: major voting block. Most of the more traditional New Yorkers,
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 2: if you go to those neighborhoods, um, where, uh, where, um,
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 2: of New Yorkers have been, um, in the city, part
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 2: of the city fabric for longer, they voted for Cuomo.
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 1: Um, so, um, Yeah, people who are older ones, they
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 1: went with what they, I guess, like they tried and true.
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I would have voted for Sliwa,
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 2: but that was obviously a lost cause. So I held
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 2: my nose and voted for Cuomo. But so, yeah, that's
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 2: why it's a story of a tale of two cities
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 2: as opposed to a story of two.
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think New York, the cities have... very hardy people, hardworking,
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: and they, especially New Yorkers, they, they typically are very,
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 1: they feel very strongly about their home city, but apparently
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 1: it wasn't enough because what the truth is, is that yes, people,
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 1: a lot of them vote along tribal lines. There was
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 1: an election in Minnesota where there was a Somalian running
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: for mayor and he lost because there were other Somalians.
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 1: If they, if only Somalians voted for him, he would
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: have won, but He was in a different Somalian tribe
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 1: than some of the other Somalians, and that's why he lost.
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: So it was because he was the wrong Somalian for
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 1: the Somalians. Yes.
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And that's the danger of ethnic memory.
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is a thing that we have to
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 1: also face as a reality. In the United States, in
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 1: first world countries like this, people typically don't think along
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 1: those lines of, I'm going to vote for the guy
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 1: who is in my tribe. But people from the third
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: world and such, they will. That's like what they know.
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 2: And this is that's yeah, that's a very important point
• 2:12:06
  Speaker 2: to raise. And it's so it's the reason it's so
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 2: sad is because one of the major achievements of Western civilization,
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 2: and this goes back already to ancient Greece as well,
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 2: is the overcoming of tribalism. Basically, the invention of politics,
• 2:12:19
  Speaker 2: which is effectively a Greek invention, the idea that they
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 2: were divided into tribes as well, and then they come
• 2:12:28
  Speaker 2: together into a polis, where you basically elevate the fellow citizen,
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 2: the importance of citizenship, that my fellow citizen doesn't have
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 2: to be a part of my tribe, but he's my
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 2: fellow citizen, and that's what matters. And the establishment of politics,
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 2: a political system over on top of tribal lines and
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 2: kind of erasing tribal lines, that is one of the
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 2: core achievements of the West. And that's being completely destroyed
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 2: by the influx of still tribal cultures.
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: All right. That's great. Okay. Well, guys, first of all, Benedict,
• 2:13:04
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on our show. I
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 1: don't know if you want to have any questions for
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 1: us or our channel or anything like that. Um, or any,
• 2:13:14
  Speaker 1: any final words you'd like to say?
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 2: Um, no, not really. I would say it might sound
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 2: a little hackneyed, but, uh, to combat, uh, to combat orcophobia, um, uh,
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 2: I think it's also important to remember the good things
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 2: we have. You mentioned accelerationists and, uh, and so on.
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 2: I think a gratitude to nihilists, exactly. Uh, gratitude toward the, uh,
• 2:13:35
  Speaker 2: all the, uh, uh, men who came before us, uh, is, uh,
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 2: is important and to everything that they built and that
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 2: we should continue to, uh, build on their foundations. Um,
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 2: so I think, yeah, uh, continue to be grateful in
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 2: spite of all our problems, realize that, um, you know,
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 2: there's life in the old thing yet and, um, and
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 2: she's worth fighting for.
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 1: So, right. And we're still living in the most prosperous,
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 1: the most safe, the most abundant, uh, time in all
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 1: of human history. And if you're in the United States,
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: even more.
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 2: So you, if you were, yeah, you were born in, um,
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 2: in the last half century in, in, uh, in the
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 2: United States, you won the lottery.
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Don't take it for granted, basically. I think
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 1: that's where oikophobia can get in. The peak of decadence,
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 1: you take things for granted, and then you start finding
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 1: things to be resentful about.
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 1: And it's not good. So anyway, I want to thank
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 1: you again to Benedict Beckold. The book is Western Self-Contempt,
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: Oikophobia in the Decline of Civilizations. You can get it
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 1: on Amazon. Are you going to do like an audio
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 1: book of this for some people like to listen while
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 1: they work out?
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they were the publisher, Cornell University Press. They had
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 2: offered it to Audible and a couple of those different companies.
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 2: And apparently we're told that it was too intellectual for Audible.
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 1: What?
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what they said.
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 1: Well, if you want somebody to read the book for you,
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 1: I can do it.
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 2: That's what I was told by Cornell. But right, exactly. Yeah, no,
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 2: that would be great. So we'll see if you know.
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, if there was enough demand for it, then
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 2: I'm sure that could happen. But people would have to
• 2:15:11
  Speaker 2: write to Audible or whatever and to say this is
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 2: a book we want as an audiobook.
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 1: Well, you came on the right channel because even though
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 1: we stay tiny, for some reason, every time a guest
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 1: comes on our show, they go on to blow up.
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 1: So maybe we have the Midas touch, but we can't
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: do it to ourselves. So hopefully you'll, you'll do more
• 2:15:29
  Speaker 1: interviews and get out there. And I really do.
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 2: And then I come back with the Midas touch on you. Yes, exactly.
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Thank you. We will. I think this is a
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 1: really important conversation. That's why I want to bring you
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 1: on because I like to look at what is like
• 2:15:42
  Speaker 1: at the, you know, like the most fundamental part of
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 1: the problem. You know, a lot of people look at
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 1: the symptoms and they're like, This is bad. This is bad.
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 1: But it's like, yeah, but where's that coming from? And
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 1: and I want to get as deep as I can.
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 1: So I thought this was a really good conversation. And
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 1: I'm very thankful for that.
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: So and thank you guys for watching. I'm sorry. What
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: was that? No, no, no.
• 2:16:07
  Speaker 2: I was going to say thank you as well. And
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 2: it's I'm actually glad that we went for such a
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 2: long time because it allowed us to really get into
• 2:16:12
  Speaker 2: the weeds of things.
• 2:16:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I like that a lot.
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: So with that said, thank you guys for coming on
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 1: the show and checking this out. Sorry for there was
• 2:16:22
  Speaker 1: some little technical glitches with YouTube, but we're we're fine.
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 1: The show is run and I have a recording. We're
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 1: going to make some shorts content out of it regardless.
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 1: So but it's also on Rumble and yeah, and X
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 1: as well. So with all that said, thank you again,
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 1: Benedict Beckled for coming on the show. And thank you
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 1: guys for watching. If you guys liked this video, please
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 1: hit like. Subscribe if you're not already subscribed. Hit the
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 1: bell for notifications. Leave us a comment. Let us know
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 1: what you guys think about what we discussed in the
• 2:16:51
  Speaker 1: show today. And share the video because sharing is caring.
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for coming on this episode of the
• 2:16:56
  Speaker 1: Fireside Chat. And we will talk to you guys in
• 2:16:58
  Speaker 1: the next one. Next week, Janice Fiumengo and her new book.
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 1: So see you guys then.