Latest / PlasticPills Critical Theory & Philosophy / Pill Pod 87 - The Idea of Communism IV ft. Diego Ruzzarin

Transcript

Pill Pod 87 - The Idea of Communism IV ft. Diego Ruzzarin · PlasticPills Critical Theory & Philosophy

0:00
I agree, we can use liberalism against itself until a certain degree, but
0:06
we do, we do need some goals in common, beyond the tactical aims,
0:10
you know, like beyond the beyond the tactical little steps, like little
0:16
victories here and there are some Lula one in Brazil. We have Boric in
0:20
Chile. You know, we have Petro in Colombia. Like beyond those tactical
0:24
victories. We have to go beyond and say, okay, good. So
0:27
now Lula is still negotiating who owns the Amazon, but now he's negotiating with
0:33
with with some benefits to the Brazilian people. And it's like, dude,
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really, And at the moment here in the city, we have water cuts
0:40
every day, so I only have water in my house from four in the
0:45
morning till eleven am. Then I don't have water in my house the rest
0:48
of the day. Yeah. Right now, it has been like that all
0:53
summer, and it's probably gonna be like that until September when we get water
0:56
again with the rains. Okay, and I'm talking about the third biggest city
0:59
in Mexico. We have other six million people living here, and it's a
1:03
very wealthy city. Actually, the little one of the little spaces in the
1:07
city is one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in all of Latin America. So it's
1:12
not a shady backyard type of not super well developed cities with Lamborghinis and Ferraris
1:19
on the street. And we have water from four am till eleven am in
1:22
the morning every morning. But at the same time, it's in the city
1:26
where we have Heineken and Coca Cola, and they consume millions of leaders of
1:33
water and they're constantly asking us for take faster showers. Hello, listeners,
1:46
I come to you with a heavy heart. And the listeners, of course,
1:49
are both the humans listening to this and the scripts that are crawling our
1:53
audio on the pilpod. We've had a few mistakes along the way. You're
2:00
going to share your shame with the listeners. Very rarely are those mistakes mine.
2:06
But I would like to publicly apologize to our guest, who's who I
2:09
will introduce you to in a second, because never in the history of the
2:14
pill Pod has there been a mistake this big, which is we got half
2:19
we got half an hour into talking about stuff and it was fire. But
2:23
you'll never hear it. It is lost to the sounds of time and to
2:28
the abyss that is the pure past. But we're going to record it again,
2:34
So thank you to our guest for sticking around. So this is an
2:38
episode with Victor and I, a co host combination that we've never had before
2:46
as far as I'm aware, No, I don't think so. So for
2:50
the last month or so, although not sequentially, we have been looking and
2:53
re looking at the idea of communism and all that is implied by both the
2:59
words idea and the word communism. So just to catch you up on that,
3:04
the Idea of Communism was a series of three conferences which were subsequently put
3:09
into books addressing that age old question what do we do now, particularly in
3:16
light of the financial crisis, and that would be not the current but the
3:21
last financial crisis, And so they dragged all of these celebrity Marxists out of
3:27
their dingy offices and put the task to all of them to decide what the
3:36
academic response was to as to whether communism is really good for anything anymore.
3:43
So that's what we are addressing again today. But at the moment, if
3:46
you want to detect the echoes or reverberations reaching us from some non capitalist future.
3:53
It doesn't look like any Anglo country or even any you know, quote
4:00
unquote Western country is headed in that direction. So as we and probably a
4:06
lot of our audience and almost all of our source material on this podcast,
4:12
whether it comes to political theory or or what to do next, is somewhat
4:18
stuck in a little bit of an Anglo eurocentric box. And because we can't
4:24
trust any English language news coming out of Latin America for some obvious reasons,
4:30
we have invited Diego Rousaret, who we now have both talked to for half
4:36
an hour. But Diego, I'm wondering. I'm wondering for the listeners who
4:42
may not know you. You're probably the most famous leftist that I've never heard
4:47
of until we started talking on Instagram. But what the hell would you put
4:53
on your business card? We don't have business cards, but I don't know
5:03
what the hell I will put on my business card. Something like the CEO,
5:06
motherfucker, something like Zuckerberg. Now just kidding. First of all,
5:11
thank you guys so much for the invitation. I was I was telling you
5:13
guys just before we started the second recording. First, as far as now,
5:15
a strategy that is this episode of The Pill Pod that I'm having a
5:21
huge cringe fan out because I've heard pretty much every episode from the Pill Pod.
5:26
I'm a huge fan since I started stalking you and you responded to me
5:30
on Instagram and on Twitter. I said, guys, this project is way
5:32
too cool for people not to be listening to this. I really want to
5:34
be part. I want to participate help as much as possible. So first
5:39
of all, I'm really thankful for the invitation, and I really respect the
5:41
works that you guys are doing. Even if ideas don't matter. I think
5:45
it's a it's a cool effort regardless, it's an esthetically pleasing effort of nothingness,
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if you can say something like that. Having said that, what's on
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my business card about how will I introduce myself? It's kind of weird because
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I'm a content creator. I do a lot of YouTube, well at this
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I've done a lot of YouTube for the past two years, but I'm active
6:04
in every social media. I have a little team of people that have been
6:09
like following me since the beginning, and they wanted to collaborate, so I
6:12
make them like partners under like a cooperative organization, so we create together.
6:19
They help me edit the clips and edit the videos, and then we split
6:24
the profits as much as as we find the fit and just to the amount
6:28
of work and talent that is required for the end result. And I'm currently
6:33
working on a documentary regarding the politics and economics behind soccer around the world,
6:40
especially for marginalized groups, and how they use soccer to send a message under
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this idea, especially since the World Cup is coming in November is going to
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be in Qatar, highly controversial because of many political and socio economical implications.
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So I'm at the moment, I'm passionate about that project. And for our
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listeners, you got to respect comes in here and he modulates for you by
7:01
calling it soccer when no one in the world calls it soccer and diego.
7:08
One other thing that I want to get out of the way is you told
7:11
us you're not a leftist, whereas like the only thing that I would be
7:15
able to just identify you as as a leftist. So what are we talking
7:18
about there? I don't identify as a leftist definitely, because I don't I
7:23
don't find any leftist political projects that I can relate to because I think and
7:30
this is where or where I think we can transition into the article. In
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Latin America, what we have is especially nefarious brand of leftist populism that seems
7:42
to disguise itself under leftist notions, but don't really challenge any of the key
7:48
underlying real effects of current life. So that's why I don't necessarily identify as
7:56
a leftist. So if you're an Anglophone and you search up Diego's name on
8:01
Google, you'll find the debates, debate, the lectures, the interviews.
8:07
Now he's a documentary filmmaker. It's about what would you say, eighty percent
8:11
Spanish twenty English around something like that. Yeah, I've been growing a lot
8:16
in the US lately, a lot with Latin communities in the US, which
8:20
I found is a huge, huge market. But I will say, yes,
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the split is around eighty twenty. I guess I'm curious about, like,
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so, how did you start what's kind of been your trajectory to become
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as we in our first version of the recording, So your favorite title,
8:35
become this political influencer, you know, what was the journey from from kind
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of like being just someone who's interested And I think you maybe you can tell
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me tell us again about some of your own personal connections to philosophy as well,
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and then like how maybe that led into where you are now? Sure?
8:54
So, Like I'm a designer by formation. I have a mastery degree
9:00
in experience design. I study the design and tell us that I didn't is
9:05
a product design or like not only that, my specialty is in food design.
9:11
Oh yeah, yeah, like packaging no no, no, no,
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no, no, no, much much more complicated than that. It was
9:18
fucking amazing to be honest with you, like, this is the first part
9:22
of my life. I was really like a big capitalist peak to be honest
9:26
with you, like I was climbing the ladder. I work in the multinational
9:28
company. I was forced to wear suits. I was giving presentations about innovation
9:33
and strategy in New York with CEOs and shareholders. Like the first part of
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my life, I was really into fast moving consumer goods like the food industry.
9:41
To be honest with you, and my specialty was understanding the relationship between
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humans and food. Where do we get the pleasure the pleasure from eating?
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And the first part of my career I travel around the world and I published
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like twenty books about street food, about what people eat on the street and
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why trying to understand from the beginning, from a very designer point of view,
10:03
what was the relationship between portability, ergonomics, price point, culture,
10:09
history, techniques of cooking, available utensils like and how these transform and shaped
10:18
the relationship between humans and food. And that got the attention from b companies.
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I got hired from from PepsiCo. To be honest with you, guys,
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I worked with PepsiCo for like seven years. Yeah, I know,
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I know. And then and then I discovered something nefarious. I mean that
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the nefariousness was there from day one. You're married to a Lucanian psychoanalyst.
10:39
Correct, did she think about you running around basically writing on the desire of
10:43
food? Well, to be honest, that's how we met. We met
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when I was doing exactly that, And I think that's what got her attention
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at some point because I was talking so much about desire and pleasure and everything,
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and she was like, this guy has no idea what he's talking about.
10:58
It cute you, like this asshole, Like he's trying to impress me
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using words that don't make sense out of the context of LACAN. So yeah,
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we got off like really well at the beginning, like I was,
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you know, like, I had no idea what it really meant to talk
11:11
about desire and pleasure. I was only talking about desire and pleasure from the
11:15
capitalist logic about how to drive consumption. I had no idea. And now
11:20
when I look back, I just saw your video on this idea of consumerism
11:24
and how marketing traps your desire, and I would love to get into this
11:28
conversation with you and give you a bunch of real life examples of how your
11:31
video applies to how this actually operates in the real world, because it's scary.
11:35
It's fascinating, but at the same time, it's super super scary.
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So because I could, I could only make that because I also have a
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background in marketing, but it was web marketing, not food, but food
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sounds a lot more interesting. It was, man, it really was because
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in a way, and now because I'm reading Marisma lupont Tee and also Hustler
11:56
like phenomenal, it is one of my favorite fields. But I I just
12:00
look back at my career and now what I'm doing with soccer, and I'm
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trying to apply a lot of these ideas of embody embodied experience to the notion
12:09
of food, but also to the notion of soccer. And and that's why
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I keep falling back to this, to this, to this notion that the
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only thing I can identify as is as a materialist, like beyond beyond materialism.
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All the other tags and stuff that you can apply to yourself are just
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like so hard for me to identify with, but materialism I just can't shake
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off. Is like I keep getting back to it. I just want to
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say quickly that I love how in Latin America and conon all Europe, they're
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still like like practicing Lacinian psychoanalysts that would be so rare to find in North
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America. But I remember hearing. In fact, I think I even have
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a like an aunt in Chile. Do you think psychoanalysis works works in English?
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No, I think it does. I think it can. I think
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well, I mean I like Lacinian psychoanalysis as you if you listen to our
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episodes, do you know that I'm a big fan of Gijak and Lacan in
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spite of my you know, my lib tendencies. I love that stuff,
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but I think I think it works, So I actually not to like take
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the conversation off totally off the rails. But like my mom and my stepdad,
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they're both in therapists and like and in fact, my stepdad was studying
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when he was younger as a medical doctor to become a Freudian psychoanalyst. But
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I think what he found is just that psychoanalysis one of the faults is that
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it's a little bit too sometimes depends on the therapist, it ends up reifying
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the method the technique too much, and it's like obsessed with the technique and
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kind of is dehumanizes the kind of connection between the patients and the therapists.
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So that was his problem with it, and he's he identifies more as like
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a humanist therapist, and some of these people who he's influenced by are actually
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like, you know, phenomenological psychotherapists too, which is a little bit.
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But he doesn't really believe in methods. So I think I think a lot
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of the insights of psychoanalysis are really good in terms of like how well they
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work. I think, I don't know, but I think it it does
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seem like psychoanalysis can be vulnerable to people getting too obsessed with doing the method
14:05
correctly and then not maybe paying attention. I don't know. What if you
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think about that, if I've ever talked about that with your with your wife,
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I think that I think that, well, if we incorporate the loose
14:13
critiques of psychoanalysis and and try to reconnect it back to Zize, even if
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Ze never actually read the loose, is that the notion is to apply like
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hated it. Yeah, but he really he he read it not least uh,
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let's say the least nicest way possible, like contrary to what the lose
14:35
he said, there was a good philosopher and his name was the louse.
14:37
And then Guitari came along and ruined the Oh yeah he said should be shot.
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Yeah, that joke is amazing. No, but what I like what
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I like about well, what what's the relevance of talking about psychoanalysis today?
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And if we connect back to z Ze and and my notion of materialism,
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we talk about psychoanalysis still because psychoanalysis is in a way to reverse marks dialectics,
15:01
to analyze superstructures, to reveal material conditions. But that's my reading.
15:07
Like, beyond beyond that, I think that the policy, like not not
15:13
policy, let's say police like behavior of psychoanalysis can be detrimental and in a
15:18
way it was very much instrumentalized to to create a normative desire in current conditions.
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So I think there's a limit to psychoanalysis, but it's not my field
15:28
of expertise. I know I'm going to get in problems with my wife because
15:31
of saying this, but but regardless, I do believe there's some value in
15:33
psychoanalysis into revealing the underlying material conditions that and to end up showing up as
15:41
a psychological behavior. I mean, I've been through years of psychoanalysis and I've
15:46
only found it helpful. But then there's a point where you're like, I
15:50
need to go live my life outside of this kind of like it's kind of
15:54
like shifting to offline. You've got to live your life or offline, outside
15:58
of the outside of the office. Well, I guess just quickly to comment
16:03
on on what you said about not identifying as a leftist anymore, and I
16:08
wonder if it's consistent with I think something that I've said before, which is
16:12
I think there's always a problem with isms in that, like, at least
16:15
myself, I like to think more about specific human problems people like things that
16:21
can make people's life concretely better and I think that like whenever you it's easy
16:26
to become a slave to an ism, right, because then you feel like,
16:29
oh, I have to connect everything back to like is this truly leftist?
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Is this truly whatever? And it's like to me, it's like those
16:34
things don't matter. It's just like, what are things that make sense in
16:38
the context of what we live? And I think that's actually why, which
16:41
maybe we can get into later. I think some of my positions end up
16:45
coming across as like a little bit liberal because like my reading of the way
16:48
things actually are and like not caring about being some pure leftist lead me to
16:52
conclusions. And I guess and I wonder if like your move to just say
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well, I'm just a materialist is also in a way being like, well,
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we just need to attention like the context of people's lives and like what
17:03
is that are actually the things is affecting them? I don't know, I
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wou do you agree with that? Well, I'm to be honest with you,
17:08
I think I think ideas emerge out of condition, and we don't necessarily
17:14
change conditions with ideas like this is this is what is very hard for me
17:18
to to commit to, Like do ideas change the world really when like to
17:23
an extent, maybe, But are these new ideas just just just a reflection
17:30
of some underlying real condition that is actually shifting beyond our our control or even
17:37
our ability to recognize. And then these new ideas emerged to describe the fact
17:42
that new material conditions are are being tangibilized in reality. That's that's that's that's
17:47
what I define as materialism. It's not it's not a radical you know,
17:52
physicalism where I'm not a monist. I think I'm still within the realms of
17:56
dialectics. But I just think the subject is a sink. I don't think.
18:00
I don't think the subject itself is it's a it's a pure affirmation,
18:06
it's a it's a spontaneous event. That's that's why I'm so uncomfortable. And
18:11
so I have always this distrust on the that we have to rely on subjects
18:17
for change because subjects, subjects are a symptom. We are a symptom of
18:22
language, we are a symptom of material conditions, we are symptoms of relationships
18:26
of power. So again it's hard for me to try to justify that subjects
18:30
are the cause of something. For me, subjects are the effect of something,
18:34
they're not the cause. So that that's why I identify as a material
18:37
is because I still believe the idea of subjectivity is mostly an illusion. Is
18:42
it's a it's a self created fantasy, this narrative fallacy, that the story
18:48
we tell ourselves about ourselves. That's why I still, you know, even
18:52
trying to make sense of this, of this notion that we we should be
18:55
talking about material conditions, where I think most mostly lefty politics are talking about
19:00
fantasies, narratives, identities, and subjectivities, and people don't really don't really
19:07
grasp the notion that these subjectivities they are a results of something else, of
19:11
something that came before it, of a material condition that was the cause for
19:15
these subjectivities to emerge. That's that's why it's hard for me to identify as
19:19
a leftist, like most most of the leftists today are idealists, they're modern,
19:25
like for for God's sake, still mostly the leftist politics is modern,
19:30
and that's for me, it is a disaster. Yeah, agreein to some
19:36
real world examples here, because I don't know that I've really thought about it,
19:41
But leftist is the one label that I have never denied there's a bunch
19:47
that I would deny, and that one's not one of them. But we
19:52
in the Anglo sphere and our Angloid audience are we look to South America,
19:59
like the last year, I think, since what is it March or February,
20:04
we see the elections in Chile, we see the election in Colombia,
20:08
we see Lula back on the rise. So if you are a non no
20:15
just a non leftist, I guess Victor and I think we've agreed that both
20:19
of us are non partisan leftists. But if we look at this, it
20:26
seems like good reason to be excited, and I think probably our audience is
20:30
excited about it because you know, nothing's going on up here. It's kind
20:33
of the narrative that we have, like we're dealing with our lib Prime minister
20:41
and whatever has happening in Britain, and then we got Biden bumping into walls
20:48
right below the border. So we look to Latin America as, oh,
20:52
there's like a wave or a push or something. Something's happening somewhere at least
20:59
even if it's not here. But it sounds like you're pushing back against that
21:03
a little bit. So what would you say with regard to what's being called
21:07
the pink wave. Right. So this is interesting for me growing up in
21:14
Brazil until i was ten, but then after that Mexico and I've been traveling
21:17
pretty much all over the global South for the past almost thirty years of my
21:22
life. Is that we never really believed in democracy. And I think this
21:26
very much relates to what Ziz normally says, is like, we know,
21:32
but we don't want to know, so we don't know, right, So
21:36
we know that democracy is fake, we know that democracy is corrupt, but
21:40
we really don't want to know because it's too hard to think about alternatives to
21:44
change the world. So we don't know. We pretend like the next guy
21:47
is not going to be corrupt, so we play along, okay. And
21:51
this is mostly my analysis that the way Latin America explains the world is with
21:56
the structure of soap operas, with novellas. Right, So there's there's this
22:00
structure, there's this narrative, there's always the hero the villain. Meritocracy is
22:04
always part of the story. If you if you work yourself hard enough,
22:07
you can pull yourself out of poverty. There's there's an opportunity waiting for you.
22:12
People still believe in the lottery, like it's social lottery, financial lottery,
22:17
whatever, the bitcoin lottery exactly. We we we believe reality structure like
22:22
a novella, like the structure like a sap opera, and and and it's
22:25
it's it's interesting because soap operas don't go anywhere like you can go into Netflix
22:30
in South America and and some eighties soap operas are still number one trending.
22:37
We haven't been able to go past them. There's one very famous from Columbia
22:40
called Betty la Fea, which is Betty the Ugly Secretary that I think is
22:45
still number one in Latin America in Netflix. Is insane. We're still trappedunder
22:49
that fantasy. And that's and that's how I think is our relationship to democracy
22:53
as well, even if it's it doesn't matter what you believe, it's how
22:56
you act. I think you guys said said it in a podcast as well.
23:00
It doesn't it doesn't matter that you identify yourself as a Marxists and anarchist.
23:03
You have to vote, you have a passport. You're a subject in
23:07
a way, you're subject to and you're a subject from this notion of structured
23:11
reality that is reinforced to habits and acting. Is what you do what matters,
23:17
not what you think. So if you vote and you have a passport
23:19
and you have to renew your license, you're you're a liberal. I mean,
23:23
you can think whatever you want to think, but your actions on the
23:26
world just say otherwise. And that's why I think that even if people have
23:30
this and I think popularism in Latin America is being is being the escapegoat of
23:36
hope. You know, It's like we are. We are unable to dream
23:41
about an alternative, So we just paint capitalism under different, more friendly colors.
23:47
That's it. That's all we can do. Our our freedom today is
23:51
we're free everywhere. We're free for everything. We can be naked on the
23:53
street. We are challenging all criterias about sexuality. We are free. We
23:59
are even challenging this notion that we can live forever under these artificial intelligence that
24:03
can be downloaded into an Amazon server that then your family are going to have
24:07
to pay rent for you to survive. But we're free to think about whatever
24:11
we want. But we cannot raise taccess, we cannot limit the mode of
24:14
production, we cannot challenge the property of common goods. Those things are beyond
24:18
freedom. So what I think is that politics today, especially in that in
24:22
America. But I also think this is a global disease, is that we
24:26
are allowed to talk and challenge only those notions that don't really change the underlying
24:32
material conditions that actually produce reality. I mean, true, true. So
24:37
just for the listeners, we read just a really short section of Gjak's Answers
24:44
Without Questions, which comes from the Idea of Communism series. I think it's
24:48
booked two, but I just wanted to read this a little bit because it
24:52
lines up with what you're saying. The recurrent story of the contemporary left is
24:56
that of a leader or party a elected with universal enthusiasm, promising a new
25:03
world, and he puts in brackets Mendela and Lula. But then sooner or
25:08
later, usually after a couple of years, they stumble upon the key dilemma.
25:14
Does one dare touch the capitalist mechanisms or does one decide to play the
25:21
game. If one disturbs the mechanisms, one is very swiftly punished by market
25:26
perturbations, economic chaos, and all the rest and kind of what you're describing
25:33
this seems like it might be a split between maybe your generation in the global
25:38
self versus our generation in the global North. Is like the suburban white kids
25:45
up here are realizing this. Our parents all believe in property, our parents
25:52
all believe in democracy. And it's only now that these cracks are starting to
25:59
show for you know, what we call our generation and mainly the younger generation,
26:03
which is either to just completely check out of the system. I don't
26:07
want a part of it, or to realize this is bad and it's only
26:11
going to get worse. Yep. I think I think it's related to social
26:17
mobility because in the seventies, even if it was still very much skewed under
26:23
like democracy was kewed to fulfill the interests of capital, which is which is
26:29
in a way my reading of neo liberalism. I think that social mobility disappeared.
26:34
And now the conversations we're having and the agenda's proposed for the economic future
26:38
is you're going to own nothing and you're gonna love it. That's fucked up.
26:44
That's fucked up on so many different levels. We're talking about the future
26:47
where everything is up for rent, of course, and it's type of a
26:51
type of an this topic inversion of the idea of communism, and well,
26:56
my my tanky helio team owning left its landmarksist side kinds of like it because
27:04
if there's less burgeois to decapitate is probably going to be faster. So God,
27:11
so I'm just going to close my accelerations is there. It's not an
27:15
incitation to violence. But if we only have to decapitate seven billionaires, it's
27:19
going to be much easier, guys, So so let them. Let's let
27:22
us play acceleration is for a while, and let's pretend like five guys own
27:27
every one of the commons. But they already laid the technological ground for actual
27:30
communism to exist, which is great. But the issue is that right now
27:34
we have a sort of dysfunctional dystopian communism where one guy owns the intellectual property
27:41
of eighty percent of the world, and we have like Bill Clinton has bought
27:45
how many acres of land in the US for agricultural production. It's it's insane,
27:51
like the guys doing the last two years of pandemic. The guy hoarded
27:55
up on agricultural grounds around the United States. So as soon as we say,
28:00
okay, thank you for holding it all all up. Now we just
28:03
take you out of the equation and we and we syndicalize it, or we
28:07
make it into a cooperative and we own it. The ones will work it.
28:10
We we we've gone, we've gone into that direction. But my concern
28:14
with this is that we are not having the discussion that we need to be
28:17
having about property, which I think it should be one of our main concerns.
28:21
We keep talking about, you know, painting democracy on their different colors,
28:25
making democracy less inefficient. And and of course it will be better,
28:29
yes, it will be objectively better. But what we also have to think
28:32
is that for someone in the world, it's always too late. It's always
28:37
urgent. Revolution is always late for somebody. For for a mother yesterday in
28:41
Ghana with three kids, revolution is already too late. So having having this
28:47
notion of having only aims but no goals, it's dangerous to me because it
28:52
leads up to a to a to a to a type of passivity that is
28:56
that is self patronizing in the and I said, it's going to be better,
29:02
marginality better, and in a way we change as much as possible for
29:04
things to remain the same, all right, so very based. I don't
29:10
disagree. And the revolution yeah, the revolution is always late for somebody.
29:15
But then my question is what do I do tomorrow? Do I get a
29:22
brick and walk up the street and throw it into the window of a TV
29:26
bank? Is that going to help the woman in Ghana? So when we're
29:30
talking about aims and means, as we've been talking about for basically weeks here,
29:36
what are we doing? What are we doing here and now that matters?
29:42
Or how do we even measure how it matters? So I'm putting an
29:47
interesting position here between two people that I respect, and both of whom I've
29:52
heard talk a lot about this. So Victor, on one hand, we've
29:59
heard the firebrand property is the only issue. Abolish private property, nothing's ever
30:04
going to get done. And then we've have like your mantra, which is
30:11
institutions are bad and you agree with that, but also that institutions are important
30:15
and can be reformed. So I was wondering what the other side of this,
30:21
Teeter Totter is going to look? You can we have institutions with no
30:23
private property, then me and Victor will be really good friends. So okay,
30:30
So I mean I kind of wanted to ask, I kind of wanted
30:32
to push you on something else, but maybe we can like this will be
30:34
related. But I wanted to push you on not wanting to identify as a
30:38
leftist because I guess in hearing your concerns about and actually Pills said it earlier
30:44
that him and I both kind of identify as what we sort of say,
30:48
non partisan leftists, And I guess I just see leftism as an orientation towards
30:52
like what's going to make people's lives better, what's going to make people what
30:56
it seems like people want. And I guess I guess I'm hearing a lot
31:02
of in what you're describing, kind of your concern with property or concerned with
31:04
alienation, like that sounds like a normative concern right, Like to me,
31:08
that doesn't seem that different than being a leftist. Right, It's like,
31:12
you know, so I guess I'm wondering. I guess I'm hearing like a
31:15
kind of crypto universalist like like like claim about what the good is while still
31:22
trying to deny or am I hearing it like kind of a denial of that?
31:26
But like everything that you're hearing clearly sounds motivated by a sense of justice,
31:30
And I guess why an idea of communism. Yeah, yeah, which,
31:36
which, which is a perfect segue into the topic. So this notion
31:38
that Marx was a crypto noormativist or or cryptomralist even worst, it's it's it's
31:45
weird because I mean, you can give a moral reading to some of Mark's
31:49
pieces, I guess you can. But the notion is that why do we
31:53
need to change material conditions, especially to the means of production, is for
31:56
new subjectivity to emerge? Why does that matter? Who cares if there's not
32:01
a sense it matters? No, I mean the sense the sense of justice
32:06
is in the sense that today what we're trying to fix is the symptoms of
32:08
currency existing subjectivities. Yeah. And the Marxist analysis is that, well,
32:15
you can fix the symptoms as much as you want, but you're never touching
32:20
the underlying conditions. The only thing that is actually going to promote something new
32:23
to emerge is the changing in the material conditions, which is in the end
32:27
property right, Okay, No, I don't disagree, I guess I just
32:30
want I guess I just do think that you have a sense of justice underlying
32:35
your perspective. So I think that you matter. Yeah, like like the
32:39
reason those things matter the reason you're concerned with property. It sounds very clearly
32:44
to me motivated by like what you have some ideal of the justice. So
32:46
I guess that's all I meant so like and I just feel like that is
32:50
being a leftist, Like I think that like that is if if you want
32:53
to, if you want to, I can, I can, I can.
32:55
I can't take that that that nomenala tui I read on't mind. But
32:59
for example, one thing that would be mandatory for me to consider us as
33:01
a Marxist or as a leftist even it's the idea of collective versus individual That
33:07
for me is fundamental. If you if you don't think collective is first and
33:12
most more important and constituent of individuality, then then you cannot be a leftist.
33:17
Yeah, that's interesting. I mean I I I tend to think with
33:21
a that they're kind of to use Hidergarian language, they're kind of equi primordial.
33:25
I think they both like exist at the same time. I don't think
33:28
you can give one the priority over the other. I think neoliberalism has given
33:31
us, has made us give individuality much of our in priority. But I
33:37
still think that it's a mistake to be like, well, the priority is
33:38
to collective. I think that they're equi primordial, which maybe we don't have
33:42
to get into. But yeah, but look, I think I think this
33:45
this primary. I think you guys have scratched these topic once you got it.
33:49
You got into this conversation once for like five minutes, and then you
33:52
drop it, And I was like, oh my god, I really wanted
33:53
to hear your takes on this because here's your chance. Yeah, and I
33:58
and I want to if you, if you, if you guys can or
34:00
would really love to, because I think most most people tend to oversee this.
34:06
They might be his storicism, like I don't know if if it's it's
34:09
not even philosophical, it's more like history of philosophy. But to get this
34:13
notion of are you dialectical? Is it material before idea? Do ideas even
34:17
matter? Ideas exist before before matter or the collective constitute the subject or the
34:24
subject is born, and then his affirmation on the world changes collectivity. Like
34:29
I think even if these notions are overlooked, they tend to in a way
34:34
domino effect into your views of the world. And and that's why that's why
34:37
I think, like most leftists today, they are idealists, they are modernists,
34:44
and they are voluntarists. That that's why it's so hard for me to
34:46
identify as a leftist because fundamentally I don't agree with any of those three.
34:51
I don't believe in personal merit, I don't I don't believe ideas fundamentally change
34:54
the world, and I don't believe in individuals can change the world. So
35:00
like, even if I if I agree with social justice, like your fundamental
35:05
notions of the world are foreign to me, right right, yes, yeah,
35:10
pills? Oh god, well put me on all right, Well,
35:15
I mean you guys already know what I think. It was the whole last
35:17
episode. So if you walk up to someone on the street and you ask,
35:23
hey, are you an individualist or a collectivist? That's a it's a
35:27
non question if you if you want to go back to the means by which
35:34
you would identify yourself as an individual in the first place, they would be
35:37
collective. Means you are never on your own. Your language is not your
35:44
own as you as you said, you're being is not something that you are
35:47
just in control of and that you self determine through life. But I also
35:52
think that the context in which Diego is bringing this up is political, and
36:00
in political I think very obviously there's no such thing as individuals. Individuals are
36:06
useful placeholders or personas or figures, and any talk about heroes and villains all
36:12
falls into this trap as if individuals make history, which I think that is
36:16
demonstrably untrue. Okay, well, well well, I mean well, I
36:22
mean, I know Diego's curious about, like what you think about I mean,
36:24
I guess the question is, like I guess the question is how like
36:30
what what what has priority like kind of at a maybe ontological level, like
36:35
like what like what is like what's the the underlying And I guess I mean
36:37
I was describing that. I think like these things are kind of equip primordial,
36:42
meaning that like I think the individual like and this is I think influence
36:45
from you know, you mentioned Diego, you're reading Mary la Ponti right now,
36:49
and I think, to me, like MARYL la Pontin phenomenology, I
36:52
think they're they're like my reading of it is that it clearly shows that kind
36:55
of the experience of the other and then the experience of like individuality, meaning
37:00
that there's like an alterity between you and another person, which kind of gives
37:02
us a sense of individual like I think those two things are co producing at
37:07
the same time, Like you can't have like, I don't think there's a
37:09
collective experience and then that creates like I think both are kind of happening at
37:14
the same time. And then I guess the question is, like, what
37:16
are the kind of implications of that for the question of like property and capital?
37:21
And I don't know if I have an answer for that, but that's
37:22
my view. But can I can I give you? Can I give you
37:25
a radical material is reading of what you just said? Sure? Like for
37:29
example, let's say so I was born in South America, right, the
37:32
food my parents ate constitute their genetic build and it was passed on to me.
37:42
So the macro engineering of using corn as the basis of alimentation for our
37:49
generation has an effect on our bodies. And this was before us, eh,
37:54
before any of the individuality emerged. You were constituted by the effect of
38:00
corn on your parents and any potential genetic predisposition you can have on the world.
38:06
Mm hmm. Like in that sense. In that sense, material conditions
38:09
are always before not only individuals, but any ideas that can emerge the more
38:15
we study about God biome and God health, the more we understand what Freud
38:21
wanted to do with with bio analysis, you know, psychoanalysis, and even
38:27
I don't know in which of Freud's book is this text. But Freud said
38:30
that he knew the limits of his practice because in a way he could not
38:35
describe the relationship with the body into an emerging psyche. And I think the
38:38
more we study genetics and biomedicine and epi medicine, the more we understand everything
38:45
comes from our material constitution, from our material mind, if you want to
38:52
say it, from this Merlo parente idea of your embodied experience. But your
38:58
embodied experience has a history, It has a material history. Where were your
39:01
parents born, what type of genetic disease do they have? What type of
39:06
vaccines did they receive? What type of food they ate? Their relationship to
39:09
nature? These constitutes what you can think. So look, you can see
39:15
what you're saying with the description, but what you are offering is a description.
39:21
You say, Look, if we go back, we are corn,
39:23
and you can go back to whatever we are, the food that our parents
39:28
aate and their genetics. But you have to also understand that there's an observer
39:34
in that equation. That observer right now, like being you or being the
39:39
person who's writing this analysis of the fact that we are not just ourselves.
39:45
There's also a position there of observation that is also not strictly material, Like
39:52
this is not a strictly material analysis in the way that you're framing it,
39:54
because there has to be someone doing the analyzing, and the analyzing is where
40:00
where the things that we associate with the individual come out also as important,
40:07
you know, thinking, So diang, I want to ask you if this
40:10
is if property is the only thing that matters, if property is the thing
40:15
that we have to go back to, If everyone who is not talking about
40:20
property is a fake leftist, and of course we're always we are always on
40:23
the look for or we're always on the lookout for these fake leftists, then
40:29
why would you make a documentary about soccer instead of right property? Yeah,
40:35
the left worst enemy is the left. It's insane. I don't go to
40:42
that extent, like even if I don't like openly identify as a leftist,
40:46
especially when I'm talking to anglophones, and in the sense that you guys have
40:50
a notion of the left that is very foreign to us, is you know,
40:54
especially in the United States, relating liberal point of views to the left
41:00
is so hard coming from from Mars, it's super hard because you end up
41:06
with these antagonism between individual freedom and individual effect on the world versus material conditions.
41:12
And for me, it's always super hard to reconcile. But having said
41:15
that, why did it take to me? The reason that I ask is
41:17
because very materially, both you and I sit in front of cameras and microphones
41:25
and we film, and that's most of our day. So I'm trying to
41:30
get I'm trying to get you to answer that connection between what what do we
41:34
what are we doing? If property is the thing that matters, because you
41:37
know, I tend to agree with you that property is the thing that matters.
41:40
But if we are just like involved in this constant flow of internet communications,
41:46
we got to game the algorithms, we got to do all this stuff.
41:51
Where's the connection between like the soccer part of it and the property part
41:54
of it. So I have I have different line of flight you could say,
42:00
or like different lines of work that I want to accomplish with what I
42:07
do. Okay, the first one of them is capital Mano. Okay.
42:12
So, like these tea shirts that I send you guys, like the branding
42:15
that I use everywhere, capital Mano, Capital Mano. Why do I say
42:17
capital mano? Because I want to raise awareness of these that we're still proletariat,
42:23
that we're still spendable, that we are just one variable in a system
42:28
that has no moral judgment, that uses us as one other variable in something
42:34
that doesn't concern us. You know, the proliferation of capital doesn't care about
42:37
humans, and the proliferation of capital doesn't care about nature. It has its
42:42
own internal logic, and we are one variable within that logic and that's completely
42:45
a morals outside of moral judgments. Right. So that's that's capitalu mano.
42:51
The other line of work that I do a lot is it's the other sentence
42:55
that made me very famous. That was the one that I use on the
42:59
debate is why do you believe that? Would you believe? Is in Espanolis
43:02
port? Okay? So it's a question that I constantly ask everyone that I
43:07
interview, everyone that I talk to, to reveal the fact that ideology still
43:12
operates in the sense that there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a
43:15
superstructural construction to your view of the world that helps you explain reality even if
43:22
it doesn't necessarily has any connection to reality itself. Okay. And then the
43:25
third line of work that that I line of work I could say, or
43:29
line of research that I do, is the dimitification of meritocracy. And I
43:35
know meritocracy is probably not as nefarious in the global North because it's partially real
43:40
as it is in the global self. Meritocracy is this sense that the harder
43:45
you work, the better is going to be the results. And this is
43:50
measured by a bunch of indexes like the Genie index, which measures social mobility,
43:54
and in Latin America it has been allied for decades, but people still
44:00
you believe in it. And soccer is one of the fields where people still
44:04
believe in meritocracy, where they believe that you have talent and you put the
44:07
hours on it, it will make it, and you will be famous,
44:10
and you will have money and you will lift your whole family out of poverty.
44:15
This is the myths of soccer, and that's why I think soccer is
44:17
still a very proliferous myth that is so big and so huge, especially in
44:22
the global self. Because it has the structure of a soap opera, you
44:27
can still think and it ends up behaving like a monotheistic theology in the sense
44:34
that you choose a country, then you choose a team, then you choose
44:37
a player, and you glorify and you create this. You know, Diego
44:42
Maradonna and you have this. I went, I went to visit the Church
44:45
of Diego Maradoni in Argentina, and there's a church that legal Church of Maradonia
44:50
in Argentina. I was baptized under the Church of Maradonna, which is going
44:53
to be a great part of the documentary. But what I want to show
44:57
is this notion that even under soccer, matocracy is alive. Even under soccer,
45:02
not those with the best talent are the ones best rewarded. And even
45:06
under soccer, if you don't own the field, you cannot play. They
45:10
have to ask for permission to play. They need a ball, they need
45:14
a space. And there's some fundamental things that are outside of the scope of
45:19
the main narratives that people are not bringing up forth right. So this is
45:22
why I accepted the documentary and I gave it my spin in order to introduce
45:28
the conversations and the talking points that I wanted, and this is drastic pills.
45:34
Like the main issue, and one of the main issues that we discover
45:37
is where do they play soccer? Who owns the field? And like,
45:42
for example, we had we had an episode because it's going to be like
45:45
twenty eight episodes of five minutes and then one full hour and a half full
45:49
documentary, and we had the story in the Amazon River about a floating community
45:54
where they leaving these floating houses in the river near the Amazon River, actually
45:59
near the Rio Negro, which is one of the two rivers that constitute the
46:02
Amazon River. And they don't have a field when the when the river is
46:06
high because during raining seasons, the river goes up by twenty three meters and
46:09
the fields disappear. So they have to rent a little floating field. And
46:15
we had to transport the floating field to the city so they could organize a
46:19
soccer tournament. So there there's there's this Like there's a sentence that I love
46:23
is that if politics is water is war by other means, soccer is politics
46:29
by other means. That's what I want to do with the documentary. And
46:32
would you also say in that line then that like is media war by other
46:37
means? Because you are you're a media creator, and like so are Victor
46:43
and I by by other by other media. But is that is that like
46:47
a space worth fighting for? Is a space worth like? Can can you
46:53
put it on its head just by talking about it? Because this is it's
46:58
hard. You already referenced me in this interview saying ideas don't matter, and
47:02
that really comes to the heart of what I mean by ideas don't matter.
47:07
Is like if if I were to if I were to say, all right,
47:10
I'm gonna shut this all down, I'm going to shut down the media,
47:14
my like, my my channel, my whatever, and I'm going to
47:17
go do something I wouldn't know what to do. And I really don't know
47:22
what to do. I don't have that. I don't have the capacity to
47:27
understand all this, Like, oh, if I have a political theoretical outcome
47:32
in mind, then I can realize it. I don't. I don't know
47:35
what any of that is. I'd actually be interested to hear what Victor thinks
47:39
about that too. Please please speak for Gohad, like what what are you
47:45
asking me, Paust? Like in terms of if if diego what Diego is
47:51
saying is right, Like, if you are a leftist your issue is property,
47:57
then should you be managing like what you do in a day only based
48:01
around that or can you do a documentary on soccer and bring in the property
48:07
aspect? And is that a sense of consciousness in the material historicist sense that
48:14
is real? Yeah? I mean I do, And I mean that also
48:17
brings me like I want to ask Diego some questions about like property, because
48:22
I know there's a couple of things, So like maybe a way into that
48:29
would be to ask you about something that you said earlier. Diego, you
48:31
kind of made this distinction between aims and goals, and I wasn't exactly sure
48:36
are you saying that? Like the aim is kind of like the direction we're
48:38
going in, and then the goal is kind of like the endpoint exactly right,
48:43
So and you and you start yeah, okay, okay, And aims
48:45
make more sense to you than goals, right, because goals are not I
48:49
think are necessary. Okay, I think both are necessary. And this is
48:52
exactly the point about talking about the idea of communism, because is the goal
48:58
still relevant or just talking about aims? And we change aims every year?
49:02
You know this. This is why and going going back to pills, to
49:06
pills notions, So pills, it's hard because you say, okay, in
49:09
the end, even talking about property, it's in the realm of ideas.
49:14
Even talking about property is in Even even believing that talking about property can have
49:19
an effect on people is idealism. Yeah, right, I kind of think
49:22
that's true. Yeah, it's it's it's hard, it's super hard, because
49:25
then debates are completely worthless. Conversations are worthless because they're all syintomatic. This
49:30
is all symptomatic of of real material conditions. So what's the point of doing
49:36
it? Then? This is this is why I think Zezek is still relevant
49:38
because his notion is that we use psychoanalysis to reverse back to reveal material conditions.
49:45
That's why I think I think conversations should be around the realm of property
49:50
because maybe we can get some trauma. Well what about of property, like
49:53
like, so how should it change? Like I want, I want,
49:57
I'm kind of curious about like concretely, you say, need to talk about
50:00
property in what way? So, for example, at the moment, one
50:05
of the main economic concerns is the collapse of aggregate demand. Right, so
50:10
people have less and less money to spend. We are more and more productive
50:15
than ever a productivity keeps going up and salaries are flatlining. Right, So
50:20
what happens in economic basic economics is that you have a collapse of aggregate demand.
50:24
People produce a lot, but they cannot even buy what they produce.
50:28
And Max Marx firs aw this, I mean, this is not new.
50:30
We have been in this trend for the past since the seventies at least,
50:34
and more and more we throw away what we produce artificially because people cannot afford
50:38
it, and we don't even believe the market can self regulate. So it's
50:42
easier just to produce more trash, hide it into the ocean or in some
50:45
remote island in Africa and produce more and just like have iPhone fourteen and fifteen
50:51
and sixteen instead of rebating the leftover, so people can actually afford in a
50:57
way related to their salaries. So so this this artificiality created by the market.
51:02
And again this is not outside of capitalism, and this is this is
51:07
capitalism. Like people that criticize this and say, no, this is the
51:09
effect of Caynsian neoclassic economic logic on capital. No, no, no,
51:17
this is capital and marks force audies like the rate of margins are going to
51:22
grow thinner and thinner as we progress. And the future world that is proposed
51:29
to us, it's a world of rents. It's a world of no property,
51:32
where all property is congregated in very few hands and we have to rent
51:37
everything. This is the world that is proposed to us. And and why
51:40
is it scary? Because we already have climate migrants, climate refugees. We
51:46
have people in Soccer that don't have fields, people that don't have their own
51:50
houses, and we have these hordes of homeless zombies living in main main cities
51:54
in America. And this is happening all over the world and densely populated city
52:00
that are you know. And that's why I connect back to my own son,
52:04
and I become very very egoistic in this notion because I know from very
52:09
firsthand that we're all going to be handicapped very quickly. Our ability to produce
52:15
money and to even pay for the rent of the things that we don't own
52:20
is going to disappear. It's a window. What is the story with your
52:22
son? So my first son, Paulo, he actually turned ten yesterday,
52:30
Happy birthday and he was born with a very very weird genetic disease is one
52:34
in fifty million. I don't even know the name in English, is a
52:37
very complicated name. But he got diagnosed into autism. And then my wife
52:42
started researching and this is this is incredible. My wife doesn't give interviews,
52:45
but I swear to God, she's like the most brilliant person I've ever met
52:49
in my life. She's a Lakendian psychoanalysis. But because of my son,
52:52
she started researching medicine and now she's like a like other doctors call her to
52:59
talk about gene medicine because of the advances she had made with our son.
53:01
It's incredible, incredible. The diagnosis we had is that he was going to
53:07
be enable of speech and he was going to lose partial motor functions by the
53:12
age of seven or eight. And now he's ten and he has a vocabulary
53:15
of around one hundred words, but he's still fully, fully functionable in his
53:21
body functions. So just because of supplementation and different type of exercises and stuff
53:25
that my wife discovered. Can you imagine the trauma of being a a Canaan
53:29
psychoanalyst and then having a son that is diagnosed under autism, and then discovering
53:34
that the problem is the body. It's the alien thing. You imagine that
53:37
like it was. It was super intense. And she still practices psychoanalysis.
53:42
She still has like thirty forty patients in psychoanalysis, but now she always connects
53:46
psychoanalysis to the body, you know, like like there's no point talking about
53:52
your depression if you don't if you don't if you have a lack of B
53:54
one vitamin, like if you don't fix B one, there's no point treating
54:00
your depression. And and for me, this is this is bioanalysis, Like
54:04
this was Freud's dream for us to be able to connect the symptom that is
54:08
the subject, to the body, which is the source. Right. So
54:12
when because of my son, because of his genetic disease, I started reading
54:15
and I started researching because I got really paranoid as a parent. I was
54:20
so he's condemned to be homeless, you know, the the reality for for
54:25
for I don't know how to say it properly in in English, but diverse
54:30
functionality, how do you say it in English? Divergence not not neurodivergence,
54:35
like the body, the body type physical functionality because in in in in Spanish
54:40
as divers that functional functionality differently abled, differently abeled exactly. So, so
54:46
the current politically correct version of the disabled is differently abled, right, But
54:52
it's still a capacist notion. It's still a notion that your worth is related
54:57
to your ability to produce right. So under that notion, I got really
55:01
scared because my son was condemned to a welfare state or to homelessness, and
55:06
in Latin America they're pretty much the same. And it got me really scared,
55:10
and I got to research about this and what was the future going to
55:14
look like? And under this notion, if you connect the dots between collapse
55:17
of aggregate demand, hyper industrialization and hyper productivity automatization and the disappearance of able
55:25
its jobs and the disappearance of welfare state, what you have is a large
55:30
sum of population that is not going to be able to pay rent to live.
55:35
And if you don't own anything, you will have nothing but nothing on
55:38
a level that we cannot even understand today. That's that's why I believe property
55:44
is so important, because in the future, the opportunities to produce money are
55:47
going to be very scarce. Salaries are going to be collapsed, cost of
55:52
rent is going to be extremely high, and it's going to I first see,
55:55
we're going to live in a world where utopia exists for like the one
56:00
percent, and ninety nine percent are going to live under fucking you know,
56:04
like uh Elysium, you know one district ninety one of these these topic movies
56:09
from the from the from the last decond? Have you heard of this example,
56:12
diego, I don't want to I don't want to say the wrong car
56:15
brand, but I believe it was BMW. They put seat warmers in all
56:21
the seats, but you need to have an app that you pay fifteen dollars
56:24
a month to to unlock exactly seat warmers exactly. So it's just going to
56:29
be a complete world of micro transactions where you don't own anything even if you
56:35
buy it. Anyway, the example of you bringing up your son like this
56:38
really makes sense what you said earlier on which is this, uh, this
56:45
firebrand rage you have against the idealism of the left. So the idealism of
56:52
the left in terms of you know, we have to I don't know,
56:57
whatever fantasy it is, we have to overthrow, we have to guillotine.
57:00
We have to do this, and I kind of want to like negotiate some
57:05
sort of truth between what I know your views are and what I know Victor's
57:09
views are. Is there an institutional way to do this at all? Because
57:15
we could, like, you're from Mexico and we are from Canada, so
57:19
we could talk about the United States until we're blue in the face. We
57:22
know the United States is, it's a failed state, it's fucked up.
57:29
But is there is there any sort of democratic alternative? It sounds like what
57:36
you're saying is, I don't you don't have much faith in this pink wave.
57:38
I prefer you don't have much faith in this pink wave. Necessarily,
57:46
you don't have much faith in institutional reform. Victor, despite being a LIB,
57:54
is actually very intelligent and very articulate on the topics of institutional for many
58:00
focuses on that and reads it all day. So I wonder if there's like
58:04
some way to negotiate between these two positions as sort of a closing down arc
58:12
because you're saying we're done diego and Victor saying, yes, I agree that
58:20
everything is shit, but we're not necessarily done with it all yet. Well,
58:24
It's kind of interesting because in a way, like I don't know,
58:27
I've been listening to Diego like give his account, and I was thinking to
58:30
myself, well, I don't disagree with any of the kind of like you
58:34
know, diagnosis of society, and I was trying to figure out, Okay,
58:37
well, am I just more pessimistic about the possibilities or like more pessimistic
58:44
about change? And like you know, I have some other notes written down
58:46
of things that I maybe want to bring up, questions about subjectivity which maybe
58:51
we won't have time to get into, which I think informs my views about
58:53
like what a kind of possible future is. But then that all got thrown
58:58
totally haywire when you said that you prefer China, and I was like,
59:00
okay, well that's over the US any day. Okay, over the US.
59:05
Sure, I still don't know what other options do we have as Latin
59:07
America. The issues that I don't know if you guys can relate to this
59:10
notion, but there's there's a there's a punchline in Latin America where we say
59:16
we are too far from God and too close to the US. That's that's
59:22
hour doom. Why we are doing as a continent or as a region because
59:27
we are too far from God and too close to the US. Yeah,
59:30
that's funny. We're the shaddy manufacturing backgrounds. That's that's what we are.
59:37
We are we are the labor camps of the global North. I mean that's
59:40
Latin America and that's the global South. To be honest with you, if
59:43
you take away a couple a few very rare examples. And I used to
59:47
live in Singapore, I also have to add this. I used to work
59:51
with Chinese banks and Chinese companies. I know how they do business and how
59:54
they operate, and and there's a lot of propaganda about the way China works.
1:00:00
That is that is brainwashing you guys, completely, completely completely, it
1:00:05
is insane, like this demonization of China and it's it's still it's still Michael
1:00:09
Bay. Is Michael Bay in the same sense that top Gun is glorifying the
1:00:15
Navy and the army, like this demonization of the alternatives, it's still the
1:00:20
propaganda machine. Like, yeah, it's true that China is buying Africa and
1:00:23
it's buying Latin America, but the rate of interest is lower than the FMI,
1:00:30
So too bad. Wait, what is f m I uh uh Phondomonetarian
1:00:37
International. Oh I am F in English? Yeah, International Monetary Fund.
1:00:43
Yeah, because the I m F is gougers with their with their interest rates.
1:00:46
I mean that that doesn't servis me. We are born in debt,
1:00:50
We're born this, This is this is insane. Can you imagine? Like
1:00:53
I know that the talk is getting too political for pills, but like in
1:00:57
in in Mexico specifically, Yeah, twenty five percent of the taxes capture by
1:01:02
the state I used to pay the interest of the National Dema. Yeah,
1:01:07
that's that's message. Imagine. Yeah, this notion, this notion that debt
1:01:13
is not hereditary, it's a lie. We are all we are all born
1:01:16
in debt. Yeah, of course. But like back to this question of
1:01:21
China, and you know, I think the concerns that I have, I
1:01:23
mean, I don't doubt that some of the stuff we're told is untrue,
1:01:29
but I think, you know, ultimately, I think my concern with with
1:01:34
from a political theory perspective is like I want some grounds for whatever sovereign government
1:01:40
over me. I want there to be some thing that I can see that
1:01:45
makes sense, that makes it legitimate, like like legitimacy, right, so
1:01:49
like you're you're too modern for me, victory, Like, yeah, you're
1:01:52
rational for me, you're trust just trusting rationality. Your trusting rationality is too
1:01:58
romantic for me, my friend, But you still believe rational beings. No,
1:02:05
not at all, No, no, not at all, not at
1:02:06
all. So this institutions No, No, so it's not it's not that
1:02:12
I actually think that. It's like it's a very like even materialist like point.
1:02:16
I think that, like you, you need the government to have something
1:02:19
that makes them legitimate, and one of those things is like to keep you
1:02:22
safe. Is like the basic is like a basically this is kind of like
1:02:24
a Thomas Hobbes point, This is like a very but it has a defense
1:02:29
on this point, and that he has very little faith in human rationality,
1:02:32
which is why he thinks institutions are necessary. Yeah, a big other is
1:02:37
necessary. Yes, mind, the big other is not outside of your mind.
1:02:42
The institution is just to make it so people don't kill each other.
1:02:46
Even these ex point that the institutions are like a big other. No,
1:02:50
the well, they the function that way, they can function that way ideologically
1:02:53
they can. But you need someone who's going to punish you if you're going
1:02:58
to go like steal your neighbor's lawn furniture. But then again I go back
1:03:04
to the notions. I really don't disagree with institutions. My problem is with
1:03:07
property. Can we have institutions without private private property? Then then then I'm
1:03:12
then I'm into it. So maybe I mean it depends what we mean by
1:03:15
private property, and like so and and then like pup, what's the what's
1:03:17
the what is the negation of private property? So what kind of a human
1:03:22
relationship? It's like, I guess I think we need something stable that that
1:03:25
that like at least gives people a sense of of like uh, some sense
1:03:30
of semblance of trust that like there's some reliability in their life. And when
1:03:35
I say reliability, I mean that in their everyday life, they trust that
1:03:38
like someone isn't going to arbitrarily come and just like take their stuff away or
1:03:43
like kill them for no reason. Right. We need some stability. Yeah,
1:03:45
yeah, absolutely, So there's yeah, so I think so, So
1:03:51
I think, like to me, like that's really all I mean by institution,
1:03:53
And like you know, you might not it sounds like you don't even
1:03:57
necessarily disagree with that. It's just like it seems to me that like private
1:04:00
property again, like like there's a kind of vagueness to like exactly what we
1:04:05
mean by that, because you were like a lot of the kind of points
1:04:10
you were making earlier, Diego were about, you know, no one's going
1:04:13
to be able to own anything anymore, right, So like to me,
1:04:15
I was like thinking to myself, Okay, well so you do think that
1:04:17
people should own things, but just maybe not in the conventional sense, right,
1:04:20
It's like people need to know what Okay, So two things first,
1:04:26
there's there's a line by Gotte Gotta, I don't know how to say any
1:04:29
elish growth. There's a line by Gotta that I absolutely love. That is
1:04:33
that I prefers, I prefer injustice to disorder right, and and I think
1:04:40
it is what is what you're saying that you prefer a certain level of democratic
1:04:45
imperfectibility to chaos, to anarchy, to the lack of institutions because you don't
1:04:49
have even a framework of regulations in order for injustice to be recognized. Because
1:04:56
if we don't have a framework of institutions, who determines you know, moral
1:05:00
law, good and bad crime punishment? We need social institutions. And that's
1:05:04
actually the first argument against any libertarian point of view, the notion of private
1:05:10
property only exists under the state because you need somebody to recognize private property.
1:05:15
If you don't have somebody to recognize property, property doesn't exist. You know,
1:05:19
you can say you can own anything, but if somebody doesn't recognize,
1:05:24
someone with an authority doesn't recognize your property, then what you mean by the
1:05:27
legitimacy of property, it's a completely empty claim. Right, So in that
1:05:31
sense, I agree with you. I prefer a certain level of injustice than
1:05:34
disorder. I agree. That's why I said, and my notion to move
1:05:39
in the direction of property and what I mean about property. Marx has a
1:05:43
differentiation between two types of properties. There's private property and individual property. So
1:05:48
you can own things, of course, you can own things. But the
1:05:50
question I raised today is about the property of commons. It's about the property
1:05:56
of territory, of land, of natural goods, of technology, of and
1:06:00
some that are super new like intellectual property, like data. You know,
1:06:05
like why why are those privatized? And there I mean, they are owned,
1:06:12
but they are owned by very few people under very questionable means. That's
1:06:17
that's my challenge. So it's not it's not about you know, that again,
1:06:21
I think we're talking about the same the same thing in different time moments,
1:06:25
Like I agree with you in the aims, but we're probably disagreeing in
1:06:29
the goals, or or we haven't discussed if we have the same goals,
1:06:31
because probably the aim like the midsteps we agree. Like I'd say, what
1:06:35
I'm talking about is that we discuss about property. Why because today, like
1:06:42
very few of us is going to own their own houses, and probably all
1:06:45
our parents had their own houses, like we don't. We don't even dream
1:06:49
about it anymore. We're just like we normalize the fact that we're gonna rent
1:06:54
until we die, okay, And there was a certain degree of and you
1:06:59
see, this is why I cannot scape marks. And I would love to,
1:07:02
And I say, I'm not dogmatic. I would love to get out
1:07:04
of these arguments, but it's hard to escape because I remember my parents,
1:07:09
Like once my parents, he told me once, okay, I paid for
1:07:13
my house, Now what do I want to do? I will never be
1:07:17
able to ask myself that question. I will always be scared of being homeless,
1:07:24
Like can you imagine that logic of projectivity, like destroying your subjectivity because
1:07:29
you're always scared of homelessness. You don't think that has any effect on our
1:07:33
subjects. It's insane. Of course you do. Like once you pay your
1:07:38
house, once you have a place to fall dead and fall ill, you
1:07:41
think about different things, Like what are all these different things that we're not
1:07:45
thinking about because we scare about homelessness every day. This is my question about
1:07:48
property. This is my challenge to property. There are some certain basic things
1:07:54
that you need to live that capitalism is taken away from you little by little,
1:08:00
transforming everything into a centralized ownership that rents everything out. Two people that
1:08:04
have less and less acquisitive power every day, and two jobs that are disappearing
1:08:10
like this. This is the materialist criticism of capitalism, is that you're gonna
1:08:15
own nothing and you're gonna have no option. Yeah, I mean I agree,
1:08:17
I agree with that. Like for sure, I think maybe where there's
1:08:21
like a slight disagreement, as you said, is like the goal, And
1:08:25
you know, I think my like, I don't exactly know what the goal
1:08:28
is, Like I don't have like a fully fleshed out thing, but I
1:08:30
guess I have concerns about like so I think you know, when we first
1:08:35
started recording that the version we don't have. I think I kind of mentioned
1:08:40
to you because you asked me, do I think that you know that capitalism
1:08:44
is necessary? And I think I said that, like it you believe in
1:08:46
the free market? Yeah, like or And I think my answer was like,
1:08:48
well, it feels really hard to imagine like some overarching structure telling you
1:08:54
that, like you can't exchange these things for goods. And I think,
1:08:57
like, so I think to me, like that kind of private interaction of
1:09:00
people being like, well, if you give me this, then I give
1:09:01
you that. I mean, this is like a very human thing that that
1:09:04
all human societies have done. It's just become this market apitalism. Yeah,
1:09:10
well right exactly. Okay, so that's so good. I think we agree
1:09:12
on that distinction. Distinction then so like so like we it's a very strange
1:09:15
question. Do you believe in the free market because there is a mark?
1:09:19
Well, of course it exists, but that's a separate there is believe it's
1:09:24
part of it. The part of it is the question we should be asking,
1:09:26
Oh yeah, so no, all markets are not. But I think
1:09:30
there's also a question that I have about subjectivity because I think you've said you've
1:09:34
said a couple of times something along the lines of like the kind of subjectivity
1:09:39
that's created by capital, that's created by our private property paradigm. And I
1:09:43
wonder, this is kind of a philosophical question, but I wonder, like
1:09:46
where do you think that It sounds like when you're talking that you see subjectivity
1:09:50
as being caused by these structures, and I tend to think that, well,
1:09:57
these structures are also kind of a reflection of subjectivity also. So it's
1:10:00
like you see, so you're you're an idealist, you believe ideas can before
1:10:03
mattered. Uh no, no, no, so I think so I think
1:10:06
the matter actually, so I think like the the the markets, and these
1:10:11
structures that we have are a reflection of like the material conditions, the material
1:10:15
body of like how we are. So like you know, and I think
1:10:17
like that's like, for example, like Lukenian psychoanalysis, right, like the
1:10:21
dialectic of desire. It's like this this like like it's impossible to quiet this
1:10:27
dialectic of desire, that like you're you're always going after the object. And
1:10:30
it's like I think, but in a way capitalism fits that. Now I
1:10:32
don't like it. I don't like the form that it's taken but in some
1:10:35
ways, I think we learn the desire, we learn what we desire,
1:10:40
but the structure itself, like the fact that we're going to fall into this
1:10:43
pattern of like desire satisfaction, desire satisfaction, I think that means that it's
1:10:47
a fundamental Yeah, it's it's fundamental. So I think like in some ways
1:10:50
that structure in subjectivity, in my opinion, spontaneously creates these structures that that
1:10:57
maybe lead to these outcomes. That makes me a little bit more PASSI interject
1:11:00
a little bit because I have completely shifted on this in about the last six
1:11:06
months or so, thinking this is how, this is who we are,
1:11:10
and you kind of learned this in like our our our high school class.
1:11:15
People are greedy, people are going to seek their own interest. But I
1:11:20
really wonder which comes first, whether it's the social conditions that tell you you
1:11:26
you can be successful. It doesn't matter who you fuck over, it doesn't
1:11:29
matter which community you start from. If you really want to make it to
1:11:32
the top, you can screw over everybody and you can make it there.
1:11:36
And I want to know, I really this is not a question that I've
1:11:41
solved at all. But I don't know what kind of people we have outside
1:11:48
of this system. And for example, like David Graber the New or the
1:11:54
new book, Yeah, I haven't he really tried to unearth this. I
1:11:59
don't really like agree with the analysis, but I really buy the project of
1:12:05
like what we what we are as people, as like an organism that has
1:12:12
been alive for one hundred and eighty thousand years or whatever it is. We
1:12:15
don't really know what we are if we're born into this, raised in this,
1:12:19
and die in this, and that's the only future we see, that's
1:12:23
the only past we see. There is something else that I believe is possible.
1:12:28
And unfortunately, Victor, I'm not gonna be able to say here's what
1:12:31
we could try out, or is what we could do. I don't want
1:12:33
to be miss I don't I also don't want to be misunderstood. So I'm
1:12:36
not saying that like you know, capitalism or this kind of like perverse kind
1:12:41
of like systems that like lead to this perpetual like like accumulation of more and
1:12:45
more and more. I'm not saying that that's destiny. But what I'm saying
1:12:48
is, like I think because of the way we are, we are vulnerable
1:12:54
to those kinds of structures emerging, and I think that potentiality is always there.
1:12:57
We're talking about human nature. Yeah, so so it's not destiny,
1:13:00
but it's like we are always well, I guess, but so we're always
1:13:03
going to be vulnerable to being captured by these things. You give me the
1:13:09
free market. You believe in the free market, you believe in human nature,
1:13:12
and you believe in the institutions. But but I believe in the Canian
1:13:15
psychoanalysis and and and Mary Lepontine phenomenology. I mean, that's where I root
1:13:18
my my accounts of the human beings. It's not like of all the critiques
1:13:23
I give of liberalism, Victor never falls into them because he never believes in
1:13:27
the best of people. He believes in the worst. No, I don't
1:13:30
which is the It's not but it's not even the worst interest. It's it's
1:13:32
like, it's not even best of worst. It's self interest. No,
1:13:34
no, no, I don't believe believes itself. I don't think people have
1:13:38
believes that the basis of politics is self interest. That's actually one of the
1:13:42
reasons why I don't like some Marxism is because I don't believe in self interest.
1:13:45
I don't believe people know what their self interest is like like I don't
1:13:47
know. Yeah, people don't know what they want. People people are taught
1:13:49
what they should want. That's the issue is Like, it's like we are
1:13:54
aliens arriving in a country that is playing soccer and we believe the objective of
1:13:58
life is to score a goal. Like this is my reading of criticism of
1:14:00
capital. Actually, like I like that. No, Like, like,
1:14:04
we arrive at this moment in history, we are trying to make sense and
1:14:11
create categories to describe what we are observing and experiencing, and we create our
1:14:15
Okay, I'm going to be like, forgive my explanation because this is definitely
1:14:20
not my strongest field. But my notion of the birth of subjectivity is the
1:14:27
Master's live dialectic. So within the Master's live dialectic, there emerges a sense
1:14:32
of self in the in the notion of the recognition of the other. Right,
1:14:38
what what Marks did to inverse the Master's live dialectic is to say that
1:14:43
the slave that is not recognized, that doesn't get recognition from the Master,
1:14:47
looks for work and nature to create a sense of self. So our sense
1:14:54
of self comes from our relationship to to the world how we build our life
1:14:59
and how we relate to the world. And this, I think is validated
1:15:01
by Merlin Ponte and a lot of other thinkers. And correct me if Aarron
1:15:05
who was the thinker that brought this notion of masters. They've the elected into
1:15:09
France and had a huge sort on a lot of Kojev maybe Jean Paul Jev.
1:15:15
That's right, Oka, that's right, So okay, so my so
1:15:17
my notion of subjectivity, I still I'm still in the Mark Marxist reading of
1:15:23
the master's they've elected from Hayo. So we we we lose in some in
1:15:28
some level, in some degree, we lose the battle of recognition. We
1:15:30
want to be recognized as a self auto consciensius, self work consciences. But
1:15:38
we lose this and then we then we then we go to nature to discover
1:15:42
who we are. But within capitalism, alienation happens because we are never able
1:15:46
to identify who we are, because we never did recognition from our work.
1:15:50
We are alienated. And out of alienation it's the birth of pretty much everything
1:15:55
that is with identity politics. It's everybody trying to discover and identity to be
1:16:00
somebody in the world, to be recognized as something someone, as a preference,
1:16:05
as a sexuality, as whatever. But we can never be fully be
1:16:10
fully satisfied by this because there's no material fact in the world that give us
1:16:15
that sense of self confidence. So that's that's why I'm an advocate for this
1:16:18
sense of materiality and property because like the type of questions that my father asked
1:16:25
himself, like Okay, I pay for my house, I have food on
1:16:29
the table, now what should I do? This opens up new possibilities,
1:16:33
And what I'm afraid of is that we are we are being cut off from
1:16:39
these new possibilities of imagination because our desires are trapped under the machine of capitalism,
1:16:45
and not only capitalism, but liberalism as well. For me, it
1:16:47
is harder and harder to separate them. That's that's that's my that's my my
1:16:51
philosophical argument for why I believe discussing property is the only way we can open
1:16:58
up for new subjectivities. And this is not cryptomoralism. I don't think it's
1:17:01
going to be fundamentally better. This is where I stand my ground. I'm
1:17:06
not saying it's going to be more just. I'm not saying it's going to
1:17:09
be better I'm just saying it's going to be different, and in this and
1:17:13
in here very delusion. I much rather go for the creation of new subjectivities
1:17:17
than to stay trapped in this nostalgic nightmare that we cannot get out from the
1:17:23
past five decades. I agree, I agree with with with almost all of
1:17:29
that. I think I think maybe I'm more I'm trying to locate like where
1:17:31
I stand on like maybe this question of subjectivity and like the and new possibilities,
1:17:36
And I think to some extent we share very similar pessimism. But on
1:17:42
another sense, I think I might be more pessimistic in the sense that like
1:17:45
maybe you could correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I'm hearing you,
1:17:47
you know, these kinds of new subjectivities, and also like alienation,
1:17:50
Like I'm a bit of a skeptic when it comes to like unalienation, Like
1:17:54
I think we're always alienated. There's no way to not be alienated. I
1:17:57
think there are like concrete, specific exams samples of things that clearly like owning
1:18:02
your own labor power, like like having more control over like your the your
1:18:09
material conditions to me, and I I do I'm not scared to kind of
1:18:13
moralize it like that just seems good. That seems better to me. Okay,
1:18:16
But then but this idea that like you know, new subjectivities will emerge
1:18:19
that will be less alienated, Like I I don't even know what that means.
1:18:24
Like I think I think that like we are by nature that the thing.
1:18:28
This is where I'm kind of a Lakenian like I think I think that
1:18:30
like alienation is like a condition of possibility for our subjectivity, like for our
1:18:34
the desire, the way that we are alienated by the symbolic, like this
1:18:38
is just a feature and it's not something we can ever get out of.
1:18:42
We can we can find I think we can locate concrete things that will give
1:18:45
us more autonomy and more control. But I don't see that as like a
1:18:49
different subjectivity as if I can if the symbolic, if I can give just
1:18:55
an example of something that seems to have survived the the capitalist spore reproduction is
1:19:03
the family. Like in your in your family, you have people that you
1:19:08
don't like, you have people that you do like, they remain your family.
1:19:12
You have the weird uncle, you have the the grandparent that says stuff
1:19:15
you disagree with, And these are these are I think it might be our
1:19:19
only like little cloister, which is even being dissolved today, but it's the
1:19:25
only little cloister of relations that are completely outside of a market. And you
1:19:30
know, if you want to think of new possibilities, not really new possibilities,
1:19:35
they're really old possibilities. But to to think of of humanity as a
1:19:42
fraternity, which might honestly, which might honestly not be possible in today's world
1:19:49
with the size of states that we have, with the lack of you know,
1:19:54
intentional community that we have. Maybe not, but like you have an
1:19:58
example with your family of of a community that is not based on on market
1:20:04
relations. It's based on social relations absolutely, Like for example, like I
1:20:10
take care of my kid not because I get something in return. Well,
1:20:13
you could say, no, there's there's a there's this beautiful sentence from a
1:20:16
quadriplegic that is a philosopher of capacity in Spain called Haveavier the Romagnac. And
1:20:24
this is actually something you guys could benefit from. Like there's a lot of
1:20:26
philosophy in Spanish that is not translated that is beautiful, like Gustav Bueno Romagnac
1:20:31
or nest To castro Borges. Of course, but there are some other thinkers
1:20:35
that could be great, But this guy has a sentence that I love that
1:20:38
is that uid but on the sores, which would translate to those who allow
1:20:45
others to take care of them give meaning to caretakers. Right, So like
1:20:53
this, this is what I think you mean pills when it is not necessarily
1:20:56
a transition but is subjective as a result of social relations, you know,
1:21:03
like social relations of care. That's kind of what I got from the from
1:21:06
the Graver book, even if his historiography is a little bit off, but
1:21:12
the point of him writing the book and his co author, I forget the
1:21:15
name, but the point of the book was like, this is not the
1:21:19
only way it could be. This is not even the way it's always been,
1:21:25
exactly exactly I think. I think that that history, that rewriting history
1:21:30
is to erase our cognitive bias to individualism and self worth and to give a
1:21:35
more collective tint to history. But I would be and I agree with you
1:21:40
with the criticism to the book. I would like a systematic reading of history,
1:21:45
a systemic reading of history, like a reading of history based on the
1:21:48
philosophy of systems, because I think this is still very modern in the sense
1:21:55
that is romantic. It has this notion of individual free will and reason,
1:22:00
and I think I think we need to overcome modernity urgently in so many fields.
1:22:06
All Right, Well, while we're wrapping up here, I'm just saying
1:22:10
I'm feeling a little bit more sentimental than I was when we started the conversation.
1:22:14
And it's and it's still left with the same question that this what is
1:22:18
this? The j reading is answers without questions, like the question really we're
1:22:25
we're still left with, you know, wherever we live is what do we
1:22:30
do? It's not good. Wait, so we can't just talk about it,
1:22:32
and I just know I'm not I'm not I'm not wrapping up. We
1:22:36
don't Okay, wait, the question we're left with, I guess is just
1:22:43
what do we do? And I'll leave it with you, Victor. Okay,
1:22:47
Well, I like, yeah, so the Graver book I have been
1:22:51
I actually have the audio book. I haven't. I was listening to it
1:22:55
like when I was out cycling for but I haven't. I need to return
1:22:58
to it. And I thought it was you know, it's interesting, But
1:23:00
I guess, yeah, I just I find myself to be such a skeptic
1:23:04
of like these ideas, Oh, we can change our subjectivities that we treat
1:23:08
people who aren't our family like our family. Like I just, I mean,
1:23:11
I don't know, maybe that's that's that's that's a that's a bastardization of
1:23:14
what you guys are saying. But I just I think I just am fundamentally
1:23:17
very much a pessimist about that about those kinds of things, Like I think
1:23:20
family is a unique a unique thing. And maybe in the context of like
1:23:24
a much smaller tribal society, right like that Graver is talking about it,
1:23:28
these smaller places, but like a in an advanced society, that just doesn't
1:23:31
seem like a plausible answer. But just as a counter example, like what
1:23:35
if we made online communities that were localized, like our discord for example,
1:23:41
do you think people treat each other with different respect in there than they would
1:23:46
in like a a larger market. Just the conversations in four Chan to the
1:23:53
conversations in Twitter, of course. And I think we want to have a
1:23:56
society where there's like people can people can you know, you know, create
1:24:00
social bonds in these various like in fact, there's a lot of work in
1:24:03
this In democratic theory, it's called like associational democracy where they talk about you
1:24:08
know, like building kind of like institutions that allow for these like much smaller
1:24:12
groups of associative ties that that can create like better conditions of solidarity and like
1:24:17
and and like respect for others. And yeah, I'm not I'm not necessarily
1:24:24
necessarily against against those things, but but I guess I just I'm just less.
1:24:28
I'm less optimistic about like what is going to be something radically new.
1:24:30
That's another thing is like is there something like new? I think that I
1:24:34
just think human beings are the same, Like I just think that, like
1:24:38
we believe in human nature. Uh well no, so I believe in I
1:24:42
believe that there is a structure and that limits human nature. But I don't
1:24:45
believe in one set human nature. So I think that like Mary le Pontine
1:24:48
Phenomenology, Lakenian Psychoone House show us the limits the traces around which this variety
1:24:55
of human nature can operate, but it's not determined, like it's not like
1:24:59
one thing it's but it's limited by And actually I take Jijx in some ways
1:25:04
h philosophy to be talking about that, like like which is why I think
1:25:08
he finds I think I take him to be sort of pessimistic, like in
1:25:11
the reading we had today where he's like, you know, like what,
1:25:14
like what do you want? These things are just falling into this kind of
1:25:15
fantasy where you're like, oh, I'm gonna overthrow this. And just like
1:25:18
he always loves talking about v for Vendetta, right, it's like what's going
1:25:20
to happen after viv for Vendetta? Right, it's like the same what do
1:25:24
you guys want? Yeah, exactly what do you guys want? So so,
1:25:27
and I think that we we rarely know what we want. I mean,
1:25:30
human beings are are are are are sick, confused creatures that have no
1:25:33
idea what the fuck they're doing, and they get they get pulled and influenced
1:25:36
by different different structures like I So I agree with a lot of the analysis,
1:25:41
but in terms of like something radically new, Like I just think there's
1:25:45
there's a structure, there's there's kind of a thing that that you can work
1:25:47
with this kind of like outline of what a human being subjectivity can be.
1:25:51
And I think that there are ways that we can make those things like better.
1:25:56
So and in that sense, I'm like a moralist, but new,
1:25:59
radically different I'm just I'm just kind of a skeptic. I don't know what
1:26:00
that means. I'm going to I'm going to try to answer both questions.
1:26:03
So Pills ask to what do we do? Like what do we want?
1:26:06
Right? And from victory you get this skepticism of of of what could be
1:26:11
and this challenge of really new subjectivities? Can we go there? Do they
1:26:15
actually exist? Do we want that? Okay, so to both, I
1:26:18
don't really care about subjectivities. Again, I think the subject is a symptom
1:26:21
that then that's why I think what do we want? I want property?
1:26:26
Like why do I want property? At least to have the safety that there's
1:26:30
an end to my work? At least I want that peace of mind to
1:26:33
say that I don't need to work until I die, Like that that I
1:26:36
can choose to to dedicate my life to a different endeavor that is not mandated
1:26:42
upon me on the basis of our reals, Like, you don't just want
1:26:45
property for yourself, you want property for every single person, regardless of ability
1:26:50
you exactly exactly, That's exactly my reading. Of course, I'm the cheval
1:26:56
de. I'm the like the horse of Troy in a sense that if I
1:27:00
if I am white, blue eyes, one hundred kilos, like I'm yeah,
1:27:08
and if I have all the yeah, if I have all the privileges
1:27:12
of a cis gender whatever, and I'm worried about property, Like what I
1:27:17
want to show is that everybody is susceptible to this danger. Anyone can be
1:27:24
successible to this peril of losing all property on things. And that's why I
1:27:28
want to talk about property. My romantic philosophical logic to explain it is that
1:27:33
it will leave and open up to new possibilities and new subjectivities, which is
1:27:38
all very nice. Maybe I'm completely wrong, but it is more like the
1:27:43
aim versus the goal. Like the goal is the new subjectivity the end.
1:27:46
The aim the short term tactical objective is survival is a much rather simple sense
1:27:53
of I don't want to be exhausted by my work until death. I want
1:27:57
to be able to indulge myself in boredom and say, what the fact do
1:28:00
I do now? Because I'm not I'm not thinking about food tomorrow or you
1:28:04
know, existential threats to my life or to the dignity of my son,
1:28:09
Like what is that? Like? What is my what is my mind capable
1:28:14
of? If I can go to bed without worrying about the dignity of my
1:28:17
son's life because he's disabled. What is that? Like, That's that's what
1:28:23
I wonder, That's what I want that that's what excites me. That's what
1:28:26
I think we should aim and strive for because and I think property is what's
1:28:30
going to open up these possibilities, because today, working till death is the
1:28:35
only thing that is not negotiable is the thing that everybody has made peace with
1:28:40
this in the back of their minds. And we just like we squander and
1:28:44
we debate, and we talk about different things, and we find different interests,
1:28:47
but in the back of our minds, we're like, oh my god,
1:28:48
I have to make money out of whatever I do, otherwise I'll be
1:28:51
homeless. I think we agree on the aims for sure, Like you know,
1:28:56
like I think that's kind of maybe what I end up focusing on more
1:28:59
in my own thinking is just like, what are some concrete aims that can
1:29:02
help us put ourselves in a better position for people? And like, you
1:29:06
know, I think you you were mentioning. I was reminded of Thomas Picketty.
1:29:11
You know, do you know this this economist I have this kind of
1:29:14
left wing kind of Marxist economist. I think he is really interesting, good
1:29:18
example. I don't think marketing. He's definitely he's definitely very very left wing,
1:29:24
though very very no but he's Asian at most a most at most.
1:29:29
I mean of capital is pretty like it's pretty He's still DearS. He's still
1:29:35
on the subjective value of of of prices. Is he's not into the labor
1:29:41
value theory. He's the subjective value of theory. So that is exclusive from
1:29:45
marxistom fair enough, fair enough, fair enough. So he's not a Marxist
1:29:49
economist. But but he's left. That's why, that's why he's complicated to
1:29:54
have a conversation with the Anglo left, because the Anglo left is mainly liberal
1:29:58
and and and more and more academic circles. Liberal and Marxists are like diametric
1:30:02
opposit's. Yeah, yeah, for sure, I mean so. But in
1:30:06
terms of aims, I think that he he he has presented some some good
1:30:10
concrete aims. He talks about like the wealth inheritance right where every person would
1:30:15
be born, and he does the math on it that you would inherit automatically
1:30:18
from the state, like two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, like when you
1:30:21
reach age eighteen, right, and like he has a whole bunch of interesting
1:30:25
arguments about like how that would enable people to He has really good arguments too,
1:30:30
about like how inequality is actually sometimes productive, but like way too much
1:30:34
inequality is not productive, like obviously that's still within a capitalist paradigm, all
1:30:39
that stuff. But anyway, I think it's an name that my argument is
1:30:43
always this, like so so, well, I am skeptical about whatever we
1:30:45
want to call these new subjectivities. I still think that like people who are
1:30:49
concerned with this need to be fighting and arguing four things that can put the
1:30:55
working class, the people who are vulnerable right now, in a better position
1:30:58
so that then they can keep asking for more. Right, which is like
1:31:01
every little step on the way that puts us in a stronger position. When
1:31:05
I say us broadly in the sense people care about this, we should be
1:31:09
supporting and so and then goals. I guess maybe I just don't know what
1:31:12
the goal is. I'm kind of a skeptic. I guess, well,
1:31:15
it's it's very I think even Mark said it is the end of private property.
1:31:18
But communism is only that, like beyond that claim, I don't think
1:31:24
communism is anything else but the end of private property. That's it. The
1:31:27
rest of the analysis in Capital and in the critical project of Gatta, and
1:31:31
even in even in the articles we read for this series so far, like
1:31:35
bad You, he never says private property. He just says the collection and
1:31:40
this is this is much more clear, this and this is, this is
1:31:45
and this is one of the critiques people make about bat You that but you
1:31:48
is not really a Marxist in the traditional sense, because if you don't critique
1:31:53
private property, what are you talking about? Like, what what's the point?
1:31:56
Like what are you aiming for? And this because that's not what he
1:32:00
was trying to do, which is the same thing I argue, Yeah,
1:32:03
it's not fair, it's unfair. I'm I'm mischaracacterizing, but do a lot.
1:32:09
But it's true that he's being criticized under that notion that he's not really
1:32:12
a Marxist or Marxist enough if he doesn't include a critic on property, like
1:32:18
at least he should mention it, well, he has a lot and he's
1:32:23
a male property. Yeah. Well yeah, that's the other thing that is
1:32:27
sometimes hard to swallow from. But like I think I think it's it's also
1:32:31
hard to just wash the failed attempts at leftism in the twentieth century without being
1:32:39
truly a harsh critique of the all the mistakes. And but also you cannot
1:32:43
fully just dismiss them as authoritarian regimes and just not say, well, where
1:32:47
where they were under started, where they ended, like the different possibilities.
1:32:51
And what I wanted to lead with this conversation is, you know this notion
1:32:55
from Hegel that what is real is rational, what is rational is real,
1:33:00
And then Angles did the rewriting as, uh, what is real is rational,
1:33:04
and what is rational can be real like and and and this is this
1:33:09
is my reading about the notion of communism in the sense that as much as
1:33:13
it is rational, it can be real, even if it's not like for
1:33:16
example, the the aims we are aiming for is that as much as we
1:33:20
can struggle for new ownership for property, then we can create the conditions for
1:33:28
for change to occur. And this sounds very messianic. And I always struggle
1:33:32
with this part because it requires a certain level of dogmatism that I don't necessarily
1:33:36
have, because it's in a way it requires a belief in in prosperity and
1:33:43
what and whatever. But I do believe in it's it's more existential than that.
1:33:46
It's more it's more urgent than that in the sense of survival. And
1:33:50
that's that's why I'm still trapped under this under under this notion of the world.
1:33:56
I say, fucking even the messianism of it. Like I think all
1:34:01
of us work this kind of job, and all of us also are maybe
1:34:08
not you diego anymore, but at least you have you know what it feels
1:34:11
like to work for someone else, and you know what it feels like to
1:34:14
work for yourself, And there's a completely different sense of the world that arises
1:34:18
from that when you have the freedom because I have to go back and forth,
1:34:23
I know Victor has to go back and forth. And if we could
1:34:26
just do like the ownership of labor, that creates a huge difference in you
1:34:33
know, the quality of life. But also if it fails, there's nothing,
1:34:39
there's nothing waiting for us under there. So I don't know, I
1:34:43
don't know what the what the good world would be, but I think at
1:34:45
least out of this discussion, I understand that that like property, is what
1:34:49
makes life worth living. Unfortunately, but it is the kind of thing that
1:34:56
we have to deal with and not and not only property in the sense of
1:35:00
ownership, but property in the sense of security. You're not going to die
1:35:05
and your kids are as simple as that, and you know the next generations
1:35:09
that I could die. Absolutely, I just want to have this, this
1:35:14
peace of mind of Okay, I'm not condemning my kids to starvation like that.
1:35:20
That sounds like a lot, but you know, like no, totally.
1:35:25
I mean, it seems like something that we all want. And you
1:35:28
know, I was thinking to being a graduate student for so long, what
1:35:31
a difference it would make to like not worry, to be able to pursue
1:35:34
the things that I want to pursue, which is why I do like the
1:35:36
kind of concrete aims as you put it, of people of like you know,
1:35:42
I know we didn't get into universal based income, which there's but like
1:35:45
even what you know Piketty was proposing, right like if I inherited you know,
1:35:48
two hundred grand, you know, like how different I life. Let's
1:35:53
go, Let's go, let's go into detail into that victory. Okay,
1:35:56
So UBI an inheritance of twenty fifty when you were born. If property,
1:36:00
it's accumulated into one hand, don't you think inflation is going to devour that
1:36:03
in like a few not only a few decades, a generation if you want.
1:36:08
That's that's a problem with universal basic income that it doesn't account for inflation
1:36:12
or where does that money comes from because you depend on taxation to raise UBI.
1:36:16
Like the challenge to UBI is ubs no universal basic shareholding, which is
1:36:23
a proposal that that because money in a way, it represents value, but
1:36:28
what we want is property. So what we should aim for is not universal
1:36:31
basic income as you have at least common denominators of your subsistence, but universal
1:36:38
basic shareholding in the sense that we can collectively own these things and then the
1:36:43
profit that comes out get evenly distributed. Like are you guys familiar with the
1:36:46
with the structure of a p and L profit and losses spreadsheet? You mean
1:36:53
shareholders for a company or like even like basically when like for examp, Let's
1:36:58
say, okay, so I want to create the price of this, right,
1:37:00
so the p and L, like the profit and losses is how much
1:37:03
labor costs, how much raw material costs, how much process liquid? What
1:37:08
are the distribution marketing? It accunts for everything? Right, so the P
1:37:12
and L that costs for every profit and every loss within the product. But
1:37:15
then on top of that we always add an extra percentage for the shareholders surplus
1:37:21
surplus surplus value. But we could go into this, but talking about it
1:37:28
again, this is my this is always my original question is what is talking
1:37:32
about it get us? I think it's interesting. I mean, well,
1:37:38
it reveals, it only reveals the material conditions. Yeah, it doesn't change
1:37:42
that. He just reveals just and just to be fair to Pikety, I
1:37:45
know that that his argument about like in terms of inflation, Like I don't
1:37:47
know that well, but I know a lot of the math on his proposal
1:37:51
will have to do with like taxing inheritance taxes. So like a lot of
1:37:56
rich families, like they inherit these huge amounts of wealth and then they just
1:37:59
pass it down their family without taxes. And it's like he claims that he
1:38:02
did the math, and it's like a lot like doing putting more of an
1:38:04
inheritance tax could pay for a lot of that. So like it wouldn't lead
1:38:08
to more inflation, it would just redistribute. But sure, I mean there's
1:38:11
problems with with UBI and and other things that have no, absolutely, and
1:38:15
I think as an aim, as an intermediary aim, it can bring a
1:38:17
lot of good to a lot of people that are really struggling right now.
1:38:21
In Brazil under Bolsonato fell back thirty years on nutrition, like we have as
1:38:28
many malnourished people today as we had forty years ago. That's Brazil again got
1:38:32
into the problem of malnutrition because of our right wing president. This is completely
1:38:39
urgent is today, it's actual. It's it's result of bad policy and of
1:38:43
course for COVID if you want, and recession and whatnot. But it didn't
1:38:46
happen every country in Latin America. It happened mainly in Brazil, so of
1:38:49
course it has to do with what Brazil did, right, So in that
1:38:54
sense, I think, of course UBI will immediately help a lot of people.
1:38:58
We will solve the problem or just like delocated or just like move it
1:39:02
somewhere else. Because it's always strange when people talk about this black legends,
1:39:09
you know, the black legend of communism. No one hundred million deaths,
1:39:12
and it's ridiculous made up numbers by the CIA and stuff. So like when
1:39:15
you get into the numbers, for example, for malnutrition, the statistic at
1:39:19
the moment is that eight million people die of hunger every year. Eight million,
1:39:25
okay, And we're talking about we having the possibility and the capacity to
1:39:30
produce food for ten billion people, So we can produce for ten billion,
1:39:36
okay, and eight million die per year. And then the four needing causes
1:39:41
of death are heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and alzheimer All of them
1:39:46
are food related. So what's the point of having a system that uses the
1:39:53
market as a regulatory logic that overproduces and kills that people that consume too much
1:40:00
and kills people that consume too little because the profit is because it's only about
1:40:04
profit, it doesn't care about people. We're not even part of the equation,
1:40:09
and we're talking as if we were. This this is what is monstrous
1:40:13
to me, in the sense that putting ourselves within the objectives of the market.
1:40:19
It's it's the it's the most narcissistic argumentation ever. Like it doesn't care.
1:40:26
It's like we're not even like we're not even part of the Like we're
1:40:30
one more variable. That's it that at most, we're one more viable.
1:40:33
And I'm afraid of liberalism because we tend to design institutions around the logic of
1:40:40
capital with the bias that the market cares about us. That's my problem with
1:40:45
the liberalism. But Diego isn't making a podcast about it and all talking together.
1:40:48
It's the same narcissism. It's that it is. But my other option
1:40:56
was to work for PepsiCo. Okay, okay, And so I present choice.
1:41:03
I can I say, Can I say this is less worse or not
1:41:06
even less worse? It's less worse, Yes, it's less worse. I
1:41:11
don't know. Maybe maybe I'm wrong, Like for example, I look at
1:41:14
what I used to do and I'm ashamed, Like I used to run P
1:41:17
and LS, I use, I use. Can you imagine I used to
1:41:20
change the packaging sizes of products to alter size impression and SkELL subjective value.
1:41:28
You mean, like putting air in a bag of chips. Yeah, and
1:41:31
changing the proportions of the rectangle so people think the value of what I was
1:41:36
buying was more than what actually was. Right, So I can I can
1:41:43
safely say what you're doing now is much better. So thank you. And
1:41:46
I hope and I hope that after the documentary I learned about something new and
1:41:51
that I can eventually do something more about it. And this notion that I
1:41:55
no longer defend wokism and progressism, and I want to move into real discussions
1:42:00
about how we can change the relationships with property. I hope it can be
1:42:02
better, but otherwise what else do we do? What else we dream about
1:42:06
us in ascilartionism? No? Thanks, yeah, yeah, fair. I
1:42:11
will just say on liberalism very quickly, I think that that word, it's
1:42:15
you have to I think that like it, often people who are sympathetic to
1:42:18
like Marxism, I think they end up conflating with neoliberalism. And I think
1:42:23
that like all I mean by liberalism is just like a framework that protects people
1:42:28
from the arbitrary power of the state. And I think that like liberalism does
1:42:30
a good job with protecting people from arbitrary state power, a very bad job
1:42:36
of protecting people from arbitrary corporate power. And I think that that's like a
1:42:41
flaw in liberalism that like that I agree with you that I'm sympathetic to,
1:42:44
but I still think that like that overall framework is important, which is why
1:42:48
I still, you know, flirt with with identifying myself as that, because
1:42:51
because I do care about arbitrary power. Victor, did you hear what I
1:42:54
said sometime recently. It was like all of the rhetoric was to protect state
1:43:00
power, but it was also to protect them from the pores. Oh sure,
1:43:04
it's a bourgeoisie ideology. Yeah. And I don't want I don't want
1:43:10
to be unfair to liberalism because I also I also understand that I know there's
1:43:14
several different types of liberalism. Is completely unfair to Characacturizer as one school of
1:43:18
thought, because it's it's a very diverse. I've I've read some of it,
1:43:21
but not in all of it, I'm sure, and I and I
1:43:24
know I'm painting a caricature picture of liberalism right now just to oppose it.
1:43:28
And it's unfair, and you're right to make the remark. But but but
1:43:30
having said that, I agree we can use liberalism against itself until a certain
1:43:36
degree. But we do we do need some goals in common, beyond the
1:43:42
tactical aims, you know, beyond that, beyond the tactical little steps,
1:43:46
like little victories here and there are some Lula one in Brazil, we have
1:43:51
Boric in Chile. You know, we have Petro in Colombia. Like beyond
1:43:56
those tactical victories, we have to go beyond and say, okay, good.
1:43:59
So now Lula is still negotiating who owns the Amazon, but now he's
1:44:03
negotiating with with with some benefits to the Brazilian people, and it's like,
1:44:09
dude, really okay. Another another very simple example. The city I mean
1:44:14
right now is called Monterey in Mexico. Actually, Matt used to teach here,
1:44:17
if I'm not wrong, at the Mexico City campus, the Mexico City
1:44:23
campus. I was Mexico City, it was not Mexico. Okay, cool.
1:44:30
Yeah, So so I went to the same university, but here in
1:44:32
Monterey where the is the is the hometown of that university. And at the
1:44:36
moment here in the city, we have water cuts every day, so I
1:44:42
only have water in my house from four in the morning till eleven am.
1:44:45
Then I don't have water in my house the rest of the day. Yeah.
1:44:49
Right now, it has been like that all summer, and it's probably
1:44:53
gonna be like that until September when we get water again with the rains.
1:44:56
Okay, And I'm talking about the third biggest city in Mexico. We have
1:45:00
other six million people living here, and it's a very wealthy city. Actually,
1:45:03
the little one of the little spaces in the city is one of the
1:45:09
wealthiest neighborhoods in all of Latin America. So it's not a shady backyard type
1:45:15
of not as super well developed cities with Lamborghinis and Ferraris on the street.
1:45:18
And we have water from four am till eleven am in the morning every morning.
1:45:23
But at the same time, it's in this city where we have Heineken
1:45:27
and Coca Cola and they consume millions of liters of water and they're constantly asking
1:45:33
us for take faster showers. Wow, like again, like this This is
1:45:40
my This is my concern with no liberalism is that is the instrumentalization of the
1:45:45
state to permit the proliferation of capital interests. And this is the limit of
1:45:49
and this, this is in the end the limit of current existing democracies.
1:45:55
Current existing democracies, they only operate as a byproduct or as a subsystem of
1:46:00
the capitalist system. That's it. Because campaigns cost money, and money asks
1:46:04
for something in return, so somebody has to fund the politicians, and the
1:46:09
politicians they get into power and they already own everything that they have, all
1:46:13
the power that they have, they own. And of course as the state
1:46:16
cannot fund campaigns, and campaigns are more and more expensive. Whoever funds the
1:46:23
candidate owns the candidate once he's in power. So of course, get when
1:46:27
you get these problems of water shortages, that is again a result of posting,
1:46:30
utilization or whatever you want. Who's like, we romanticize and we create
1:46:35
these fantasies and narratives to explain it, and we end up with the logic
1:46:39
and onto you have to take faster showers. But then again, one leader
1:46:43
of Coca Cola requires two hundred years of water, and one kilogram of meat
1:46:46
requires almost ten thousand liters of water. And it's like, and again,
1:46:50
we're producing food to feed ten billion people and we start eight million per year,
1:46:56
and the four leading causes of there are food related. This that's why
1:47:00
it is like economy is worse than astrology. It's it's the worst. It's
1:47:05
like, who the hell? Like, like, oh my god, it's
1:47:09
insane. I feel like I'm trappling this insanity. It sounds like you might
1:47:13
be able to call that, hmm, like a contradiction. Maybe, just
1:47:20
maybe if somebody was only brave enough to come up with these criticism, who
1:47:26
will be the guy I can't wait. I'm looking forward to it. An
1:47:30
analysis of contradictions. Where where, Where, Where are? And that's why
1:47:34
we should make podcasts. We should we should make people aware of these contradictions.
1:47:39
At least, I don't want to wake up to somebody to tell me
1:47:42
you have to work harder. Like at least I don't want to hear that.
1:47:46
Like I would love to get somebody to explain to my son that he
1:47:49
has to work harder in order not to starve. I would love to see
1:47:54
that. I will pay any motivational speaker to come to my house and give
1:47:57
a lecture to my son that that doesn't speak and he cannot understand because of
1:48:00
genetic condition, and explain to him how he has to pull himself up by
1:48:04
his good straps. I will pay any amount of money to see that.
1:48:09
I'll record it. I will make the most viral video ever. He should
1:48:12
have been on Crypto. I'm curious in well, I don't I mean,
1:48:15
I need to wrap up soon. But in Mexico do they not have like
1:48:18
social assistance? I'm just curious, like is it like because I know,
1:48:21
like in Canada, I feel like there's like pretty robust, like like what
1:48:25
I think they call it legally like disability, but like I don't know,
1:48:28
I don't know what's what it's like. Does that not exist in Mexico?
1:48:30
No, yeah, yeah he does. But can you imagine, like even
1:48:33
right now, I'm I'm fighting a couple of like I already passed a couple
1:48:38
of intentions of law. None of them's got approved so far, but I
1:48:44
got one to protect victims of cork. See if colts like people that fall
1:48:48
into these pyramid schemes and theological colts and everything. I try to pass a
1:48:55
lot to protect them and to penalize people that organize pyramid schemes. But then
1:48:59
again copyalism as apartment skin. So it was kind of a very successful and
1:49:03
getting those laws passed or no, no, got it got to the floor,
1:49:06
it got discussed into the floor, it got a lot of traction,
1:49:10
but then it went nowhere. And now I'm trying to pass a law and
1:49:14
change the legislation to change the name from this ability to differently able. And
1:49:19
it's just a matter of simple dignity, you know. It's like we still
1:49:23
call them disabled, which is insulting. It's like like when it's your son,
1:49:28
it's like it burns I can I cannot explain it. This is just
1:49:30
like it's infuriating. So this is one of the battles that I want to
1:49:34
pass. But then again, it's to raise awareness on a bigger problem that
1:49:38
we're all going to be disabled very quickly. Pills. What do you think
1:49:43
I think we recorded a podcast? Yeah, I just mean it's not unfair
1:49:47
to say that. It probably completely changed the world, and you know,
1:49:54
to be serious, at least we got a little bit outside of the Anglo
1:49:58
box for about two hours. Two hours. Holy shit. I want to
1:50:03
thank Diego so much for coming here. If you've been I don't know,
1:50:10
Like, what do you say? Am I inspired by you? Diego?
1:50:13
No, I'm kind of like, I don't say that. I mean,
1:50:15
you guys expressed by everything that you just said. So it's not it's not
1:50:19
like I'm being breathed in by the Holy Spirit here. It's more like,
1:50:23
oh God, now what. But anyway, to our listeners, if you
1:50:28
want to catch up with Diego. Last week he released a YouTube channel in
1:50:33
English. Do you know what the name is? Diego Diego Rosarin English?
1:50:41
So Diego rosin English? Yeah, as simple as that. We couldn't we
1:50:45
couldn't come up with any other like catch catchy things like what would you say
1:50:49
like Brazilian Marxist, pessimist, non leftist, battalist. Anyway, Diego,
1:50:57
I want to thank you so much. We've been going for at like almost
1:51:00
three hours now, so it was such a pleasure to talk to you in
1:51:04
person instead of on Instagram, dms and Victor also like defending your view of
1:51:15
liberalism to you know, the trash talkers. It's the easiest thing to trash
1:51:19
talk and you always dig your feet in and you always got your feet in
1:51:24
the right place. It's so enjoyable. It was really an absolute pleasure to
1:51:30
talk to you, Diego, and I hope we can have an opportunity to
1:51:31
do something like this again because it was a lot of fun. I feel
1:51:33
like there's a lot more to talk about, but we're just running out.
1:51:35
Yeah, we'll come on your English channel. Yeah, please do. And
1:51:40
actually you remember, I think I told you about this a while ago,
1:51:44
Pills that I'm organizing a live event in Mexico in September and I'm bringing I'm
1:51:48
bringing in a couple of friends from Spain, Germany and Argentina to have a
1:51:55
discussion about Iberofonia like the the e better world. Like what do we as
1:52:02
Spanish as as a Spanish speakers? What do we do? Where do we
1:52:06
go from here? Where do where do we think from? Like? What
1:52:09
does it? What does it imply to thinking Spanish? Is there some level
1:52:14
of autonomy that we can aspire to? What do we do politically? Like
1:52:18
where do we rally? Like what aims? What goals? What type of
1:52:23
objectives can we create and construct together? That makes sense for us as a
1:52:26
region because because again, like I feel like Latin America was for the last
1:52:31
almost one hundred years the backyard of the US, and now that the US
1:52:36
and the neoliberal hegemony is like showing cracks in the armor and we are like
1:52:44
truly opening up to alternatives. Like we can discuss if if China is a
1:52:48
better or worse alternative, but at least it's an alternative we we do.
1:52:53
We didn't have those, Like we used to live in countries that were constant
1:52:57
targets for kude tasks from the US and we still have to go back and
1:53:00
make business with them because we have no choice. Now we have choices.
1:53:04
At least now we can say, okay, you keep doing this and we
1:53:09
are going to keep building these hay towards you, and this is going to
1:53:12
be detrimental to our commercial possibilities, and it's going to be more expensive to
1:53:16
you to build up your reputation in my region. At least now we have
1:53:20
possibilities. So possibilities are better in the sense that they're not stagnated in time,
1:53:26
they're not trapped. They break us away from this sense of empty nostalgia
1:53:31
that is addictive, that we are just like falling again and again into the
1:53:34
same problems and the same questions. And I think it's an interesting moment for
1:53:38
Latin America. We're having like this Latin American spring, you can say.
1:53:43
And at the moment, we are looking at Latin America with different eyes.
1:53:45
So my invitation is for people to take a look at the region with a
1:53:51
different set of eyes, with a different set of possibilities. And I prefer
1:53:56
change than repetition. Yeah, I mean, I gotta say, we're looking
1:54:00
because what the hell are we doing? Awesome? And and I just subscribed
1:54:05
to your English YouTube channel and I see that you had an interview with DJ
1:54:10
Tiesto, which is kind of interesting. I have no idea what the content
1:54:12
is, but yeah, I used to. I used to love going to
1:54:15
Shaves back in the day, so I saw him live a couple of times,
1:54:17
but it's been a while. My content is the most rainbow thing ever,
1:54:20
Like I will do like I loved. I loved music, so I
1:54:24
do a lot of song analysis. Like what I do is that I read
1:54:27
the lyrics of songs, and I do like the psych analytical and philosophical analysis
1:54:32
of lyrics of some of some songs. But I have done like from super
1:54:36
like these deep songs from niche cult groups, and I have analysis of songs
1:54:42
from reggaeton and popular culture. I'm really not analysis here. I really believe
1:54:46
all music has some sthetic value, so I try to do analysis from the
1:54:49
first and that's how I got an interview with Tiesto in Las Vegas. But
1:54:53
I also do, for example, analysis of animes, of movies, of
1:54:57
books. I do live review of news, so I just open news report
1:55:00
every morning and I life react to what's happening in the news, which is
1:55:03
super fun because it's kind of this topic and it's like a body art sense
1:55:09
of this is where the world is actually happening in CNN, so it's quite
1:55:12
fun. So you will see in my channel a lot of mix of everything,
1:55:15
and I just wanted to say thank you guys for the invitation. It
1:55:17
was super nice. I ringstate the fact that I'm a super fan of the
1:55:20
of the pill pod. It's one of my favorite things to listen to when
1:55:24
I'm in the gym, while I'm driving. It's a pity that the other
1:55:27
two guys could not be here. I extend the invitation that we can repeat
1:55:30
the talk and I have another conversation on my channel. Will we have great,
1:55:33
great pleasure? All right, excellent. I got to say thank you
1:55:36
so much for dealing with my technical incapacity, and yeah, I'll talk to
1:55:45
you soon. Sure see it. And to the listeners, thank you so
1:55:49
much for listening. This has been great. I hope it was great for
1:55:53
you also, and you'll hear from us when you do