The Curse of Andrew Cuomo; Cultural Nihilism.

today is thursday august 10th 2021 and i
have just gotten the news that andrew cuomo's political career has come to an end now the political career of andrew cuomo is something i've had quite a lot to say about i actually made a youtube video about it that nobody in the world saw i think melissa might have seen you saw a rough draft or something okay you saw it in process uh because it was deleted accidentally from my hard drive before it could ever be shared with the public i'm going to talk about the andrew cuomo affair and its implications and the lessons we all have to learn in our own lives connected to this um i don't know set of important interconnected legal moral and political issues and um then what i imagine will be the second half of the video i'm going to answer a question that is completely unrelated from a supporter on patreon a question that is following up further on uh issues of what is culture so that's why the title of this video i have separately culture and or as cultural genocide so got a lot to talk about if you guys want to hit the thumbs up if you want to ask questions i can reply to what you're saying at the audience also i'm quite happy for you to take this in one direction another now you know okay so where to begin andrew cuomo his situation with charlotte bennett is something i can relate to on many different levels and from many different angles and i neither sympathize with andrew cuomo nor charlotte bennett now interesting factoid we do not know the precise age of charlotte bennett i saw it reported in newspapers that she was 24 when the story first broke which is now six months ago or eight months ago i mean this is quite a while ago and i see her age now estimated at 25. she graduated from university in the year 2017. she was hired by andrew cuomo into his office in 2019 okay i'm just double checking on screen that is from memory but i believe that's what it says so yes it was right at the beginning so january of 2019 so she had maybe been out of university for a year and a half i i don't know exactly what month she graduated from university graduated of university 2019 she ends up becoming a researcher a policy advisor and the senior briefer to andrew cuomo in the year 2019 she is only in his employment for one year and 11 months we could round that off and say two years she has a meteoric career in the office of andrew cuomo now let me tell you something i would be much more highly qualified to be a policy advisor or a senior briefer to andrew cuomo i have much more of the formal education and informal life experience and background that would be required to take on those jobs it would still be a very intimidating very difficult job for me to take on i would think about it carefully if i were offered a position in government like that specifically working for andrew cuomo or for the governor of new york okay i am an old ugly major in political science i really do understand i really do have the preparation necessary to understand the gravity of the task in being a senior briefer so what this is and i have applied for a job like this once i'll say a little bit about that just know i only once applied for this and didn't get it and in some ways of course i can be glad i didn't get it you're gonna you have a sense now of what this job is all right you are the final stage of research and analysis where there is some complex issue and there may be a stack of reports some of which are from 10 years ago some which are from 20 years ago and very likely some of which are kind of breaking news being published by the new york times or some mainstream source like that right and you have to take all this information put it together and decide in five minutes what it is the governor needs to know so a great example of this i'm sorry i forget the exact details but in flint michigan a couple of years ago there was a bad decision made i'm sorry it was the governor wasn't it so i think ultimately the responsibility right so the governor was responsible but i think the mayor was also like there were a few people involved but ultimately you know the governor was probably given a five-minute briefing on the water pollution issue and probably was given a briefing by someone who knows just as little about water pollution as charlotte bennett knew in the year 2019 so i'll say a little bit more about her education her level of preparedness but you should hire someone old and ugly for that job that's a deadly serious incredibly important job and you know no matter how judicious and wise and sagacious you may be as a researcher there is really a special talent in looking through this stuff noticing the contradictions noticing the problems what do we know what do we not know and the ultimate question is what is actionable in this advice and then getting your elected official on page on the right page he knows the right facts he can answer questions given to him by the press he knows what the problem is and ultimately he knows what the solution is like in some ways you're the most powerful person in government okay that was this young woman's role okay she had only graduated from university a year and a half earlier okay so i have a lot more to say about this but let me let me just ask you the stage why why did he hire her why didn't he hire me okay let's be egocentric about it let's put that kind of perspective he could have had a charming erudite highly educated highly experienced person with a degree in political science like me namely me i can't name anyone else like me i don't know anyone i would have been a candidate for that job okay so now i'm going to put in charlotte bennett into google image search right oh and here are some here are some photos of what she looks like here she is okay here's the photo i can use here's her hugging andrew cuomo posing for a picture okay guys i'm gonna i'm gonna share this probably it's a really long link if you guys do not know what this young woman looks like oh it's okay the link is too long i can't use that okay i'm gonna try to share with you guys a link in case you have no idea what this young woman looks like let's let's get an image of her here oh here we go very respectable turtleneck and glasses i assure you this is safe for work nothing uh no bikini shots here there you go that that's what this young woman looks like you tell me why why did andrew cuomo hire her and once he hired her she only worked there for one year and 11 months why did he keep promoting her to higher and higher levels of responsibility until ultimately she was the senior briefer this really crucial linchpin positions and you know now we can be honest about who andrew cuomo is too he's not a great intellectual he's not someone who's how much does andrew cuomo know about rna vaccines and mrna vaccines and the problems he had to suddenly govern in the middle of a medical crisis uh yes in case you didn't know she was a senior policy advisor for health prior to becoming senior brief um yes what background do you think she had in in health sciences and hospital management and in managing a unique crisis such as unfolded in the year uh 2020 i mean already starting in 2019. well what oh yes so um let's come back to that question for university um she is a graduate of hamilton college now melissa have you ever heard of hamilton melissa is [ __ ] i will have you know that um forbes in 2019 rated it 59th in america's list of top colleges you know not universities college um among liberal arts colleges another ranking service rated it 25th okay so look hamilton college if if if it were possible for someone to have formal education in political science at such a high level that they're ready to go directly from the university into being the briefer for andrew cuomo or being the health special the health policy analyst for andrew cuomo okay i i don't think anyone is that prepared uh it was straight out of university i wasn't prepared for that when i finished my ba in political science okay no chance but if there is anyone on earth with that level of preparation for that level of responsibility it would not be this young woman having completed her studies at what i would call a bird college hamilton college all right that's old-fashioned slang okay and what what was her specialization what was her area of expertise at hamilton college women's studies why did you hire this woman for this job she's the wrong one for the job she's the wrong person for the job she was apparently 23 years old maybe 22 years old it's not clear we don't know she had just finished her bachelor's degree in women's studies at a bird college how old the coach are you seriously telling me andrew cuomo that you didn't hire her because you attracted her this was an incredibly important incredibly powerful position you put her into she was your your health policy advisor and then she goes on to be your senior briefer for a full year she was the she was your time this is you know the research and analysis side of political science and specifically your senior briefer this is there on the basis of a ba in women's studies with two minors in psychology and creative writing [Laughter] all right now we know some other things about this young woman you can watch the interviews with her okay look look guys some of you in the audience some of you don't like me okay let's people you can you can say it all right we have an open comment you can let me know how you feel about me okay all right this is government all right this is executive level politics you need someone who is in the parlance of the wu-tang clan in the parliaments of rap music from the 1990s you need someone on your team who is going to give it to you raw okay you need someone who has the self-confidence and acumen and perspective no no no no governor you got it wrong that's the other way around you need someone who is on your ass on the details you need someone who is on point and holding you to a higher standard who is briefing you for again for her first on health policy in the middle of a pandemic and then secondly she was promoting even higher so she's the briefer for everything so she's in charge of everything all the research analysis on every political issue homelessness police brutality healthcare this is who you're trusting to do this you can tell just watching the interviews this is not someone who is going to give it to you rob this is not someone who is tough enough and self-confident enough to really get and again if you're the one doing the research you're the research analyst you're the brief and i have been in that position in some jobs i get into it you know there's someone else who is in effect the you know the spokesperson for the organization the person presenting they're usually like no no no it's not 15 it's 50 percent you screwed it up they make those mix all the time with no with no bad intentions and you know what sometimes there are bad intentions sometimes people in positions of power are susceptible to wishful thinking you know self-fulfilling prophecies and so on they want to believe something and you have to talk about no no you're reading it this way but that's not the policy recommendation that's not what happened oh no no we already tried that 20 years ago they changed the law and then they changed it back because it was a failure you've got to know the background on all the legislation upcoming outgoing you know controversies that are in the newspaper controversy that aren't yet in the newspaper say hey this is what's coming up next big guy this is what you got to be you know this is what you got to be on point about you need someone who is really tough and mean with you let alone with the public they may have to stick up for you i mean that's another question hey what happens when you have a sex scandal do you have someone like this on your team and they're tough and they're mean but they're on your side this girl is not on his side in case you haven't right now his political career is over now you guys know the word dungarees dungarees let's let me look up here the etymology of dungarees what what is the animal okay maybe sanskrit wouldn't be surprised what is the etymology of dungaree a coarse cotton stuff generally blue worn by sailors from hindi dhungri course calico so there we go so there is a real that is a real british empire piece of slang that has come into modern english so another example of that by the way shampoo shampoo juggernaut okay so in the 1610s dungaree came into english a bungalow thank you melissa coming through with the sanskrit cognate etymologies okay okay dungarees now what is the difference between dungarees and a bib overall can anyone tell me maybe it's the same thing i'm doing a google image search here okay it looks like bib overall is a bit more specific like there's kind of a a range of garments that could be dungarees whereas the bib overall is a specific type of dungaree that's what i'm getting here from the internet okay okay so if you don't know dungarees if you know this exotic foreign hindi word if you were if you were the governor of new york state some of the people you employ are beautiful and some of them are ugly and let's just say you're hiring them all according to their merit not in their works would it hurt to have a dress code where everyone wears dungarees would it make the office better or worse you say you know what some of us are fat some of us are thin all of us need pockets every single person here is going to wear bib overalls or dungarees and that's it i made the decision because i haven't charged this office okay you can go full painter pants they'll let you identify those what what would be wrong with that we just say to people look guys we're not here to seduce one another we're not here to show off how much money we've got like to wear expensive suits i'm gonna make life easier for everyone you know what if you come to the office and you're wearing your gym outfit because you know you came you went to the gym before work or something that's fine go in the bathroom and change and put on the dungarees over them because you can wear dungarees if it's cold enough you can wear them over pants like you know you can have something else on them you have tights on or something you know and wear numbers fine but you know what you know what ladies and gentlemen all of us at the office from now on can wear bib overalls let's let's actually de-sexualize the office right let's really actually do it you know like i've never heard of anyone i mean we live in this you know so-called woke world of politics look at the right wing guys in politics i i won't be able to name these guys there were all these guys attached to trump the pro-trump republicans and all of them would have these kind of half-naked women in conservative power suits you know the conservative right wing they managed to have women wearing clothing that's simultaneously conservative and pornographic and they have these women next to them it's like oh that's your executive assistant or like that's your pr person like uh okay you know the former prime minister of italy and stuff all these right-wing guys where like for them the status symbol is to have this you know good-looking woman in revealing attack it's a huge problem on the right way but it's a problem on the left also like why are we doing this to ourselves don't sexualize the workplace and god like you know as i've gotten older i've realized like i seem to be uniquely gifted at separating sex from politics why is that so hard field separating sex from work sex from from life in different ways so you know melissa has been with me for more than four years and even she even within this relationship she's been through this me there are times when i know and i'm talking to a woman and okay i'm sorry i have all kinds of friends who are not good looking or ugly you don't have to be good looking besides there's a good looking woman who's talking to me and i just said her straight i was like oh no yeah she's good-looking but that's not what our relationship's about like no that's not excuse me i knew a good-looking woman and we're both studying chinese and when i talk to her i'm talking about studying chinese period there is no flirtation there's like it doesn't come up unless okay i was gonna say unless we start talking about weight loss or something but we don't i don't talk to people just be honest i never once talked to her about weight loss or getting in shape or something i don't talk to people i'm sorry okay i guess i have some friends who are overweight and they talk to me but weight loss because they want fighting fights they think i'm better off than they are so yeah i mean sometimes i talk to some people with less but you know like where i have a friendship with someone it's like okay this is what we have in common is politics or this is what we have in common is studying this language and that's what our relationship is about and if you happen to be a beautiful woman i am gonna treat you exactly the same way i would treat a man in your position in this relationship i'm gonna treat you exactly the same way i would treat an older ugly or fat person because that's not what this is about and you know i'll be honest with you i don't feel like that's a strain for me i don't feel like i'm suppressing something or subliminally i really don't i really think like as human beings you put people into different categories this person is my colleague this person is my close friend this person is my lover or this person is you know like you know you have yeah yeah so we have some we have some comments here yeah someone suggests where are the pregnancy flight suits okay i can go next level how about beekeeper costumes you know you know the beekeeper outfit now um you know okay you know the point is like you know if you can't discipline yourself inwardly you can discipline yourself outwardly you know what i mean and like where does it stop like the workplace is it a place to display your wealth your athleticism and your sex appeal because the clothes you wear and the jewelry you wear it's all these things you can show off how athletic you are is that what you want your workplace to be like and be about and look i know i i had a friend uh who worked at a gym uh she did the she basically did the sales pitch at the gym she didn't give people instruction and physical training um but you know her job everyone i remember i went and visited her at work and i was like oh you you work with a lot of good looking people you know i think it was kind of blatant that the job was like seductive towards men it was like these women were like to come out with a clipboard and say hey can i talk to you about signing up for a membership they were as good looking as possible wearing as revealing a tire as possible but you know and there was a different kind of game with women who are presumed to be heterosexual i mean if they're lesbian women i don't know what they do but you know where it's you know saying to these straight women hey you can look like me like you could be as attractive as me like i get it there are some work i mean some people work at strip clubs some people do whatever you know okay fine you know but like for me when i go to the bank i do not want the bank tellers to be dressed up like sexy cocktail waitresses you know i really don't want that and we're living through a period of time on the left and the right and the center where people seem to have accepted that every workplace should be women dressed up like sexy cocktail waitresses you know like whether it's the bank or it's andrew cuomo's office nobody sees the problem with this now look if you can discipline yourself inwardly if you can have that kind of detachment it is ten thousand times better to have a workplace where everyone is an angel and nobody has to wear dungarees nobody has to wear bib overalls all right okay but you know what i mean even then even so even then you're actually making life better for the women themselves by relieving them uh of this pressure so okay i knew someone who worked for a right-wing television station here's my attempt to anonymize this uh this anecdote and he said it's obvious if you've ever watched fox news or any of these you you can see it you know by the way there was a movie made about this specifically with fox news called bombshells not a great movie but there was a movie it's interesting that a movie was made about this political issue and the movie bombshells was really about the workplace politics and the misery of being in a workplace where it's all these women and each is trying to be sexier than the other and the men are not allowed to actually seduce them or sexually harass them but they everything's kind of constantly on the line where they kind of sort of do and then ultimately there are allegations of you know uh people crossing the line but where the whole workplace is held on this needless kind of razor's edge of tension and where all the women again that in that case it really is what i just described before it's this kind of conservative barbie doll thing where it's like you're simultaneously being as conservative as possible and as sexually provocative as possible and nobody sees the the contradiction in this there's a lot of that going on i am not saying the left is better i think the same i think i i look they're both maybe they're both equally bad but i mean we have a lot of the same issues uh going on on the left i mean the left compensates by just people accusing each other of rape more often i guess i mean you know it's a it's a really mutually invidious dangerous situation that we'll put ourselves into again again and look you know i i don't comb my hair in the morning okay i roll out of bed i can walk out of bed and walk straight out my door and go to the bank or go to the bakery or go to i can do whatever i want to i never put on makeup i don't put on glasses i don't brush my hair i don't do anything i know the privilege i have living the way this is one of the reasons i started shaving my head as a t-shirt as it pardon me one of the reasons i started shaving my head as a teenager you know um you know the the just the amount of time and effort women are expected to put in i mean okay so if you have a job this is a serious job like we're talking about andrew cuomo you're doing this research you're doing these briefings can't you take the pressure off them a little bit by saying look don't wear high heels don't wear a skirt don't wear nylons don't wear this sexy outfit that shows off your cleavage while pretending to be conservative don't wear earrings and you know necklaces and makeup and all this crap you know what we're gonna have a dress code everyone is going to wear dungarees everyone's going to wear bib overalls so that you don't have to deal with it so that you get to wake up in the morning and just put on the bib overalls and go to work and that's it now look does it solve the deeper underlying problem like if andrew cuomo you know really likes the shape of your body underneath those uh dungarees of course he's still going to see it let me tell you something millions of years of evolution men don't have x-ray vision but you know we're evolved to feel and act like we do of course i mean men can fall a man can fall in love with a woman he's wearing a sack of potatoes there's no doubt he'll have a very vivid imagination as to just what the size and shape of those potatoes are underneath that sack you know there's no doubt you know all human evils can still progress with everyone dressed in a you know in this in this kind of baggy costume but still you're making everyone's lives easier every day and you're making a very clear symbolic commitment to saying no you know this is the workplace this is a nightclub there are two different things that like that's it we're not gonna dress like we're at a nightclub we're not gonna dress like we're cocktail waitresses you know we're gonna we're gonna respect each other or disrespect each other on the basis of you know our actual intellectual integrity and what we contribute to this so on and so forth so look i have now said my piece i feel like the fundamental sin that andrew cuomo is guilty of is hiring this young woman in the first place okay it's not just that hiring her for this job was incorrect i am saying hiring her for this job was morally wrong it is not plausible that her personal appearance and sex appeal and andrew cuomo's romantic feelings towards her that they were unrelated to her hiring for this position and her being repeatedly given promotions within this within the first year of being there it is not credible that her appearance was irrelevant to this and again this is the governor of new york state okay for a senior position like this a really important position in the government of new york state are you telling me you can't get someone better than a new graduate someone who maybe graduated a year and a half before someone who graduated in 2017 and she's hired i mean presumably the interviews would have been in 2018 because she's hired in january of 2019 for this senior position in the government new york you can't get someone more experienced more distinguished and someone who's only credential is a ba in women's studies from hamilton college okay i don't care what this dude says to me like if you nobody asked him this okay okay andrew okay governor cuomo take me back to what you were thinking during this job interview he was thinking that he wants to [ __ ] her take me back to what you were thinking when you promoted her repeatedly until she eventually and for one full year achieves the status of senior briefer to the governor which is a position where she's spending a lot of time alone with them in the same room and talking to him face to face probably every day but at least multiple what were you thinking of course he was thinking that he wants to [ __ ] her the only question is to what extent was he at peace with this like was he aware of it and attached to it and to what extent was he suppressing this was he having this job interview he's like yeah you're you're really good at policy analysis you know what's this you know something tugging at his catholic repressed soul oh i really feel this young woman is going to bring just what we need into the office in terms of her energy and verve and tenacity and her her insight into the his health advisor she's really been going gangbusters you know uh health policy let's let's let's do what can we promote her to what's her i only see her once a week as the head of health policy what can we what do we do why bother positions are a little bit higher up the ladder or young miss charlotte bennett [Music] you know part of the problem with human nature is that people want to go back to slavery okay they don't think they do but really they do okay like that's what people want like andrew cuomo didn't want somebody like me in the room with them and let's be real so we're talking about 2019 through 2021 okay the single greatest talent pardon me the single greatest talent pool of men who really have the acumen and experience to do this job this type of research analysis and briefing are ex-military they're either going to be ex-military or ex-fbi or like both those are the dudes with that kind of background who can do that kind of job and they're scary dudes and a lot of them are ugly and a lot of them are fat and they're not vegan and you and those are dudes and they'll come in and say yup i did research and analysis and briefing maybe they did it maybe they did this job for the state department maybe for the cia maybe for the fbi but there were a lot of positions like that in the military i'll come back to that just a second you'll see why in a moment okay that's the in the united states there are lots of people with the background that'll help them but those are really dudes and you know what you know what you wanted andrew you wanted someone who was messy and meek and wouldn't talk back to you not even when you sexually harassed her right now when you had these kind of creepy conversations that have been that have important that's that's true that's you got just watching the interviews with this young woman you can tell she does not have what it takes to stand up to this guy and put him in his place here's exactly what you need your your senior briefer in research and analysis people to do you got a mousy meek woefully underqualified person to to do this job instead of i mean again imagine if it's someone who used to work at the nsa national security security agency or used to do this kind of job for state department any branch of the military air force air force has a lot of these guys you know sorry in case you can't imagine i could talk about all the different kinds of data you have to bring together for the air air force it's like okay well when you look at the maps these are the issues related to artillery placements and these are relations related to where the civilians are and you bring together a whole lot of information and do a briefing and it includes political information includes anthropological information apparently um i just say there are a lot of guys doing this kind of research analysis and briefing in a military background he he didn't want that um the only job i ever applied for this way is a funny story so it was doing research analysis and briefing and they specified to me so it really is not so different a job it was doing research sorry they specified for me that's like look you can do all this research but ultimately it's got to be like a five minute like you know you write two paragraphs presented in five minutes and that's it and then there's maybe some q a like no matter how complicated the situation is your synopsis has to be the same length right like well it's a real complicated situation i was i did a job interview for a position like that for the canadian navy so the canadian military but specifically for a naval base here and you know the guys who interviewed me they were real they were real bros they were real manly men let me tell you and i remember they especially they say you know the job is actually on a base so it's a lot of it's a lot of guys it's a lot of male energy in the room you know you can't handle that yeah um anyway i go in and do this interview and you know really for that particular i was really overqualified for the job in terms of i i know i don't specifically do table intelligence but it was funny i'd done a lot of reading at that time i've done a lot of reading relative to that probably relevant to that job so they asked me questions that i think other like recent university graduates would not be able to answer like okay so tell me about a current uh military conflict that has um naval dimensions related to international shipping and you know surveillance and boats being coming in and out and you know this guy oh okay sure and like off the top of my head i was naming specific islands that are contested off the coast of japan and now that involves china and north korea and the japanese navy and taiwan and stuff i was able to you know off the top of my head do a briefing and answer questions and talk about these kinds of oh yeah sure no problem bro at that time it's it's because i i'd been doing asian studies and i switched from chinese to japanese and doing a lot of japanese politics you know i really at that time i had a lot of stuff with the head um i was certainly able to do that job but probably it's for the best i didn't i didn't get the job do you honestly anyway so i do this whole thing and like i can totally imagine for anyone else these would really be kind of the questions that would stump you you said they're going um oh well okay um boats um the navy this is like okay so this is it's the the job is you take a complex situation you do an analysis and a synopsis and okay i get up and and leave the room after doing this interview and i can see the girl sitting there who's the next one to go in on the schedule for this job and she is one of the most attractive women i have ever seen in my life and she is wearing the stereotype fox news broadcaster attitude she is wearing you know a tire that is mysteriously appropriate for a job interview while being completely pornographic and revealing you're wearing this you know incredibly you know revealing you know outfit you might as well be dressed up to be a cocktail waitress and it's even more strange because i remember she was so nervous you know i came out the door and she looked up at me and you know she's kind of quivering this i caught that snappy dog she's wearing this short skirt and everything you're seeing the whole thing quiver i thought she's going to get the job [Laughter] these guys had just told me i wouldn't say they complained to me but they told me you know they're cooped up on this military base it's a lot of guys you know it's it's that [Music] i thought hmm this is this is in some ways an unfair competition and and probably they are going to hire this young woman instead i did not get the job i never asked who did get the job there are innumerable jobs in life that people are hired for on the basis of you know their appearance and they shouldn't be okay it's bad and evil and wrong sexual harassment is bad evil and wrong of course rape is bad and evil and wrong but there's a deeper broader more important kind of evil here that i'm talking about right which is people being hired inappropriately in the first place you know because they're parents and where for the employer and for the co-workers you know what i mean like this is a big part of their day every day you know even if they don't harass the person like even if they don't actually try to sleep with a person where every day you know oh i have to get dressed up i have to look my best i have to you know even if they don't flirt i have to talk to this person we're like the politics of the workplace and the lived experience of being in the workplace every day it's you know electrified by these suppressed or scarcely suppressed sexually desire sexual desires and andrew cuomo is not the only one i don't know how many other people in that office and you know the women compete with the other women for who's going to be more attractive and more powerful assuming that women are heterosexual if women are bisexual or homosexuals yet more permutations accommodation and there are men competing with the men for who's best looking or who is most dominant or who is most admired by the women or who's flirting with who who's going to lunch with who whatever it's awful and like i really think it seems to me like nobody in my generation is willing to really think through what it means to have a de-sexualized workplace where you say look okay guys this is 21st century we have sexual freedom we have sexual liberty not at work okay and this may seem like uh you know an unusual um you know comparison but i know i mean it's in some ways this is deeply hypocritical but i know that walt disneyland they actually have an enforce like you know no kissing rules you know and you're not allowed to wear a sexy outfit at uh at disneyland now i know there you can add here a bunch of iron ironies like oh okay well what about the women they have dressed up as pocahontas and what about the you know okay they're all kinds of pharmacies disney is not but i know i mean disney they have people who come over and approach you if you and your girlfriend are sitting and you start kissing heavily on a park bench i don't think they i mean if you peck someone on the cheek they're probably not going to complain but you can imagine people go there people go for their honeymoon people go one day people go as a romantic day out or night out or something and they come and say look you know sorry this is a you know this is a family park this is you know you can't do this sure right i've seen it at the swimming pool i've seen people in bathing suits making out you know in a public swimming pool you know what i mean you're like right this is a spectacle you know um yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so look so melissa was saying she's seeing the same thing at hotel hotel swimming pools yeah so you know like you know i i'm not saying it's easy like i'm not saying it's automatic and i'm not saying the kind of you know i'm not vilifying the sort of evils on the other side of it but like let's get real and let's really be responsible and let's really let's really make those those decisions work and you know sorry like honestly i could talk about this all day but like you know okay part of what i'm saying is that society is unnaturally biased against ugly people which we all know nobody's going to dispute that with me nobody's going to say hey you know what i'm ugly and everything's going just fine our society is massively biased against ugly people and that particular example i gave of a job interview i did i i think the fact that i am an ugly man was uh you know it's very much biased things against me by the way melissa had the experience of doing job interviews when she was considered incredibly beautiful and then later when she had an acne outbreak if you guys don't know there's a whole story with her getting acne treatment blah blah blah but anyway at one point she had clear clear skin and there's another point where she did job interviews where she had all this acne on her face she she could tell the difference just just so you know the difference was not subtle that's a rare case where you can you know without putting on a costume you can see how different your life is if you're considered ugly or beautiful anyway yeah um but look you know okay so part of what i'm saying is about the way in which these the whole of society's pressures against ugly people and andrew cuomo should have been hiring ugly people regardless of their gender people who were really qualified and reliable do these jobs and also people who would really be on his side when the going got tough because none of them were and now it's ruined his career you know like i mean there's more than one quality uh to be hiring for here okay but isn't there also an interesting sense in which we're talking about society being prejudiced against the beautiful and where like all they can be is beautiful and they're perceived as beautiful first and foremost if not exclusively right so i gave an example of someone a friend of mine who she's incredibly beautiful but she talks to me about studying chinese and that's it there's nothing flirtatious in a relationship with me it's just business okay now what if i don't do that and what if sorry so what if her own no this is very real um i i have um okay in the past i had friends from italy i currently don't have any italian friends i remember i had friends from italy and they were like dude you don't know what it's like to be good looking in a university in italy just like you know like the what the level like where you're sexualized you know at the university campus every day and then this is all it is you know like you're better off being ugly than good looking at university camps and everything so i mean what if how she relates to her co-workers how she relates to her boss how she relates to her professors throughout life what if everything all the time is being warped and skewed by the fact that she's beautiful isn't that awful and oppressive in a way too like can't we all just put on our dungarees and study chinese together or study politics together or do this job or do research for [ __ ] military policy i mean sorry but if anything should be decentralized can't we all come together and work as bank tellers in this bank without acting like we're seducing somebody you know that's the reality is this is like workplace seduction and i know in andrew cuomo's case people look at it as if the problem is one guy trying to seduce one woman my hypothesis is the opposite is that culturally we set up these workplaces where everyone is trying to seduce everyone where there's this sexually competitive atmosphere and everyone's trying to be the prettiest and the most important and the best and this is we have to make a conscious intentional decision to de-sexualize the workplace like you have to make a statement and say no my secretary is not supposed to be beautiful she's supposed to be a secretary or he or her man i don't care but like you you don't know like i don't choose my surgeon at the hospital based on how attractive they are i don't want any of these institutions to be about how good looking people are and i don't want people to live with that strain of trying to look good at the office i want to take all of that out i want all of you to just wear dungarees you know what i mean now again sorry the exceptions proved the rule okay you work at a gym you're a personal trainer at a gym fine i totally get it right because your job has to do with athleticism and showing how good your body i i agree but my point is the bank is not a gym andrew cuomo's office is not a gym government offices the military like any anything okay but 99 of workplaces are not the gym okay uh you have a showroom for jewelry you know you have a high-end jewelry store with a showroom okay i get it so you want not just beautiful women probably beautiful men too you want good-looking men and they want to dress a certain way and show off the necklaces and the watches oh pardon me okay so this is about selling gold jewelry or diamond jewelry or whatever you okay you know like there are there are a tiny tiny percentage of workplaces that are that are you know exceptions but look i got to tell you something there's so much left-wing [ __ ] about feminism all right i when i go to a restaurant to order food i do not want a good looking waitress to flirt with me i don't want an ugly waitress to flirt with me i don't want to look at a waitress in a short skirt and a tight clothes that are showing off her breasts or whatever you know is this about food or is this about sex like period then and it's like sorry it's not just that i don't want it i don't want my whole society to be like that right you know where i feel comfortable chipotle you know what i mean like you know where i feel comfortable like you know and i know i look i don't even think this is feminist i think this is just [ __ ] rational i think this is [ __ ] universal okay if i go to chipotle to buy food i'm not here to flirt with or try to seduce the woman behind the counter who's you know taking a spoon and putting the beans in a bowl and that's going to chipotle is a lot like going to prison okay it really is there are no bars on the windows but there's stainless steel there's glass with chicken wire there's so much down here yeah what do you want uh-huh yeah yeah it's vegan yeah yeah you know chipotle this is not a paid advertisement you think it you think it is but it's not you know but like there's an honesty to what's going on at chipotle now so i don't think i've ever told the story before on the internet i know i told it to melissa when we first came here to victoria because this story it was burned into my head so i'm a father i never get to see my daughter because the french divorce system is what it is um but you know i i have a daughter i am a father and you know i walked past a uh a bar this is now years ago but it's a bar here in victoria that still sometimes i walk past i think it's still there um anyway there's a bar and like many bars in victoria we have many many bars that do this they have young women wearing impossibly revealing attire serving drinks waiting tables working as waitresses whatever you want to say all right i walked past this bar so this is several years ago i was actually a bit younger and i look actually another thing i was gonna say was younger and more handsome i think it was fatter than i am now actually i think i was probably 10 or 20 pounds fatter even actually actually so anyway interesting i was thinking i was younger and more handsome maybe i was younger and worse looking anyway i was younger um i walked past this this bar and you know there's an old man uh i think the old man was with his wife actually there's an old man sitting at this table ordering whatever beer and french fries you know it's this kind of this guy he's or whatever and the waitress who's wearing you know it's a skirt that's as revealing as a bikini it's the shortest skirt possible and a more or less skin tight top with uh you know loca thing and there's this young woman taking his order and she looks like she is 16. she i mean she could pass for 15. like this is a young woman and in canada you can you can employ people who are under the drinking age to be employees and bars you know of course maybe i'm wrong and she's actually 17 you know this is just based on but i looked at her and you know i remember what i was thinking and feeling i wasn't feeling a tractor i thought that should be illegal all the time i look at things that i think to myself that she just looked at that i thought you know like and i'm thinking about all the ways in which this job is going to [ __ ] her up for the rest of her life that she will never even be aware of until she's like 30 in the most in all likelihood um i've only had a few female friends to talk to me about this uh but just being real with you this isn't saying i'm talking with a lot of female friends uh but probably if i search my memory a bit i can come up with some other examples yeah you know what now i'm thinking about it probably at least five of my female friends talking about this anyway so i could i could list up soon i have talked to several of my female friends who worked as waitresses or as uh bartenders you know when they were really young when they were like 18 or something and it's like you know obviously each of them had a slightly different perspective be like yeah you know what there's sexual exploitation involved there's flirting involved there is touching and padding involved there's groping involved whatever you know but what makes it even worse is there's an ego trip and you're proud and you're hotty and you feel like you're you're suddenly you're hotter than all the other girls in your high school who you felt were more attractive than you and you're making money you're getting all this money and tip you know for a young person you're 16 17 18 or something it's a lot of money or you're still living at home with your parents you're not paying rent all of a sudden you seem to have more money than you do with and you know you you simultaneously are experiencing being sexually powerful and sexually powerless right in some ways you're a pawn of like you know male fantasies and old drunk men you know is what is it maybe they're with their wives they maybe they're you know okay you know but then on the other hand you feel like you have all this power and you can you can ask the bouncer to kick somebody out you know you can you can go tell the co-workers somebody's causing a problem you know you can slap them like the guy touches you then you get to slap him and stuff and there's all these kind of games and excitement and you know i mean some women never really reflect i'm sure there's someone who says oh yeah and then it's fine they got on with their life and that was it but like i have talked to female friends of mine who reflected like yeah you know then the way they treated their boyfriends and the way they treated their other just they're all their friends and colleagues in their life and the way that ego trip changed them and changed the way they perceive society and the way they perceive men and the way they perceive money has a huge impact everything i've just said obviously if a young woman becomes a stripper at age 18 you know a young woman becomes a porn star i'm just saying this role of female bartender and cocktail waitress you know which for some people starts at age 16. okay i'm walking down the street this is an actual anecdote about a real thing really and i look at this young woman in this incredibly you know revealing attire and i look at her and i like you know in my i don't even know what my expression would be like i imagine [Laughter] you know and i really am just thinking and feeling that that should be illegal and i'm thinking about the kind of knock on repercussions for this young woman how sad this is and you know yeah on some level i'm thinking what if my own daughter ends up in that situation and i'm you know this is half a second but sometimes i'm thinking about conversations i've had with maybe these five different women in my life or whatever you know about this kind of thing maybe i've only talked to four of them at that time or something but you know okay you know have this and this kind of responsive i'll go fast so go downtown i i was there to do some errands i think i went to the bank i think i bought some some kind of dry goods probably about dried tofu or some crap because i'm vegan in case i haven't mentioned i think i haven't mentioned it all video there you go first mention if anyone in the crowd did not know i was vegan shout out to you and so i finished doing marriage i turn around and i walk back past the same bar okay and the girl sees me through the window she recognizes me like she saw me the only time she saw me walk past whatever it was 15 minutes earlier she waves at me smiles and she comes over trying to flirt with me and get my phone number andrew cuomo's resigned ladies and gentlemen that's the end of enter columbus great okay guys i will look at the questions comments from the audience and i'm going to move on to the second totally unrelated issue which is a question uh question sent in via patreon you can support the channel on patreon.com for one dollar a month i think i currently recommend three dollars a month at least in canadian dollars one dollar canadian is really not worth very much these days so somebody asked so somebody says shout out to my girl melissa that was nacho also known as nachat nacho who is in fact female wicked energy says didn't jordan peterson try to bring up these points question mark and got heavy criticism i have so much in common with confusion can you can you give me the book babe do you know where it is i have no clue okay oh there you go there you go it's on the [ __ ] shelf we have a very strict system of organizing our bookshelves and one of the bookshelves is labeled [ __ ] and there you go jordan peterson beyond order now you tell me i was thinking i would do a kickstarter page it would have to be gofundme one of these donation pages there you go beyond order i was gonna do a fundraiser where i say hey pay me one hundred dollars to read jordan peterson's book cause i don't i don't feel i should have to read this crap without getting paid you know look um it's a terrible book i could do a book review right now just be real with you it's a terrible book um [Music] jordan peterson drinks water and breeds air he can't be wrong about everything i feel for real like a significant bro oh camera's out of focus cam the camera's offended the internet's offended i'm insulting different peers in here um it's not possible for him to be wrong about everything and a significant part of this book is just like stupid pointless folksy anecdotes where he's like you know one time my grandfather was out on a date with my grandmother and he said to her like it's just it's just like quote wisdom unquote on this level of like some crap your high school gym coach could have told you you know what i mean like that is really it so i as bad and evil and wrong as jordan peterson might be i mean i must have something in common and you guys know he's come to my youtube channel before so we know we know jordan peterson and his daughter both have visited it's it's possible it's possible i've been more of an influence on their lives than we'll ever know but i doubt it um [Music] okay so somebody else asks it's awful but isn't it part of the human condition given that the workplace is a modern version of a chimp troop you know i i think you've got a i think you've got to make tough decisions under this heading you know what is a limitation for some you cannot allow to be a limitation for all you know this is going to seem like a really weird example i saw an amazon review so the website amazon that sells merchandise amazon review that if you were colorblind you couldn't tell the color of the chess pieces apart with this particular chess so this must be this can't be red green color bonuses most people were totally color mine i think some of the pieces they're kind of maroon purple or something and like yeah so i you know i don't know i don't know i had to do with the red or the purple or what what the issue was i remember just reading this thinking like do you really expect the whole world to redesign and reform itself for those of us who are colorblind and you know what this person said also this is a very human detail they said they took twist ties so little pieces of plastic and they put twist ties around half of the pieces so that a colorblind person could tell the two sides apart good for you i am happy for you colorblind people cannot use this chess set you know who else can't use this chess at blind people if you're blind you can't tell the difference between black and white at all like what is a limitation for some of us we can't redesign society to be a limitation for all i think there are some people you know and their combination their their sex drive and their intellect and their self-discipline and their detachment they can't cope and currently we don't really have a way to uh we don't have terms to really kind of medicalize that or diagnose it you know we talk about people being diagnosed as sex addicts basically but it's not it's not really addiction is it and what we're talking about is a lack of self-discipline and separating you know your sex life from a professional life your intellectual life from your emotional life like having that having that kind of this one you know i don't know what percentage of people have that problem you know but it's a minority it really is there's a small minority of people who can't turn it off and can't treat the other other human beings with the respect they deserve and let's say also with the disrespect they deserve like you know if because workplace can involve confrontation and competition it can involve disrespecting people okay there's a small minority of people who who have that problem i refuse to reorganize the workplace to suit that you know lowest common denominator you know i just i you know i just don't think it's i you know when you go to a dentist's office do you think the receptionist should be this kind of sexy this kind of sex symbol wearing revealing attire and so on i'm just be with you i don't like it's not it's not just that i regard that as neutral or indifferent i see this is a really serious sort of corruption of society where all kinds of workplaces are made to resemble a nightclub where all kinds of jobs are made to resemble the cocktail waitress the sort of sexualized or again the personal trainer at the gym there's some of these positions that are sexualized or a lingerie model or a jewelry model you know it's like you know no like this should be about dentistry guys this should be about health that you know i i really really can't accept it so you know that's that's my moral position on it and i would just point out my position is not considered feminist i mean i think it's it's not acceptable on the left or the right or by any ideology right now i stand as a nihilistic uh outsider but no you know i refuse to kind of lower my standards um [Music] and and what i'm saying here okay so like i'm cool with chess sets that oppress colorblind people like that's what we're saying like okay if you're colorblind maybe you got to get out some nail polish you know what that's a significant or shiny or something you know you get nail polish that's like silver or something maybe you got to modify the chess pieces because your color mine nobody else has this problem but you you can't see the difference between the chess pieces like i get it it's a real disability but like you know okay i mean some people are like andrew cuomo you know and you know what are we going to say are we going to try to set the standard and say no andrew cuomo if you want to be in politics this is what you have to live up to or we're going to set the standard the other way and say this is what we're all going to live down to you know um and the reality is in 2020 that's what everyone's saying do you guys remember a tv show called ali mcbeal anyone else remember that's what happened to the whole [ __ ] world what is it 20 years ago we watched allie mcbeal and it [ __ ] corrupted our whole goddamn society ally mcbeal year was going to google this what year was that you know 1997 to 2002 was ali mcbeal jesus terrible tv show you know if you don't know it i'm just going to add this here for you so you know uh uh shows like ally mcbeal at that time were presented as if they were feminist because they were showing women in you know important positions as lawyers wearing sexy power suits some of them were lawyers some of them were judges some of them were district attorneys and so on but it was showing this hyper-sexualized flirtatious workplace this kind of competitive i'm just saying i think that a lot of tv shows oh man i wouldn't want to start to count how many how many tv shows you know i sorry i mean you know you know i don't i don't watch mainstream american television but i mean that kind of portrayal of the workplace um yeah anyway i think yeah yes oh house md so i don't know that many features you know house md that was really like that definitely you know maybe not in the very first season or something but house md really got into that sexy female doctors showing up they said they had several sexy male doctors they were the way to be fair and this is you know uh meaningful eye contact with people with the office and stuff yeah so you know let's just say this is a whole you know all right we got some more uh complaints about andrew cuomo here that i'm gonna we're gonna skip over okay so so totally good critique from the audience uh someone who uses the name don't you want to give me la kiss ironically enough um stop sexualizing my comment section on youtube [Music] uh says doesn't the dungaree dress code for everyone just move sexual signals consider societies with burqas showing a bit of forms on it okay no all right it's totally good objection no why because you're just defining the workplace you know so you know look guys you can say i'm guilty of this myself i go to university wearing my gym clothes and in the old days used because i was going to the gym immediately before or maybe immediately after going to university or both you know it's you know i know i go to university in my gym clothes a lot of young women go to university in their gym clothes here where i live people wear skin tight under armour do you guys know the brand i remember oh god what's the other one lululemon you know so lycra spandex i do not wear lycra but you know you know okay you know what is the power and what is the point of saying look when you come to the classroom don't wear gym clothes wear study clothes okay there is a point and you know the the nike i'm not saying closing on all the nightclubs i'm saying the nightclubs are neglected i'm not saying close down the strip clubs i'm not saying banned pornography sex is one thing and the office is another that's what i'm saying dentistry you know the dentist's office should not look like a nightclub that is that is what i'm saying so no but you know look okay there are a lot of levels to this but you know i understand for a lot of people to be honest i'm remembering this more being women than men i've known in my life i have known a lot of women who really told me that what they wanted was a man with a certain intellectual character and certain interests in common and they meet those people at work right like if you want a man who's kind of hard working and sober and shares your interests okay so i used to work in the humanitarian sector in cambodia so if you're a woman and you start going into that sector you meet guys who have those interests in common with you and you know whether it's being a lawyer or being in those like i i see how from the women's ministry like oh these are exactly the kind of people you wanted to meet you know your whole life okay but guess what it's bad wrong i had one friend um this only happened once at one friend it was a female professor i know i mentioned this on youtube a million years ago she was a female professor and she started talking to me about her plan her intention to seduce a male student i forget how old the male student was he was over 21 though i mean he wasn't he wasn't 19 or something he was over he was over 21. and i was like look i've made youtube videos talking about this i can send you those links i forget if i did send the links or not say look like if you expect me to be sympathetic or cheer you on or say like you go girl talking to the wrong guy like here's what i've got to tell you is when you took that job you made a vow you gave your word you took an oath all right and if it were anyone other than you if you were evaluating and by the way she's a good-looking woman if you were evaluating a fat ugly older man in the same position you're in and he was going to do what you're going to do with a good-looking young woman what would your opinion be you know i'm sorry but you're a [ __ ] hypocrite like this excuse you're making for yourself which may be because she feels she's a good looking woman she feels she's entitled she feels that you know she feels that she isn't dragging this guy down to her level but she's lifting them up they're in love with saying i know i mean all these things go on in the human mind oh well it's okay for me because i'm hot you know yeah right you know um you know but no i really told her you know i wasn't cruel i was like and i remember she didn't respond on that she didn't was like you know well okay if you didn't believe in it like why did you take the vow and why do you expect other people to take the vow and live by that vow you know because you you're all your colleagues and your boss you expect your like higher level professors like the head of the department or you expect him to not do this to you like you think that's a firing offense if he does it to you and you don't think it's a firing pass or you do it um anyway so she kind of responded with silence and i forget it was a couple weeks later a couple months later but she wrote back and thank you look you're right so i don't know what happened maybe she slept with him first and then she said that i don't know but it seemed it seemed like she the advice made an impact with her she didn't want to hear it she thought about it then she wrote to me and said you know she said that you're right but you know obviously in her situation this was a younger man who had some common intellectual interests or surgeons she had that kind of had the kind of characteristics you know she was looking for but you know what if you are a plastic surgeon and you know the type of women you're really attracted to are you know skinny starlets in hollywood with fake breasts and your whole business practice is taking skinny athletic women in hollywood who are trying to get in their careers and you help them by giving them plastic surgery to give them fake breasts you know either you can recognize the problem with it so you can't you know um what if you're a police officer and you're really attracted to women who happen to be drug addicted prostitutes comes up all the time all the time oh yeah sorry you could i read about it all the time um very often it'll be a police officer who met the women while doing undercover work and he starts using them as quote unquote informants you know to try to get to higher level drug dealers these are women who to some extent on a small scale buy buy and sell and use drugs and they're prostitutes and he starts sleeping with them and he starts sleeping with their friends the line between policing and pimping you know gets blurred uh really quickly no you know so if it's wrong it's wrong all right uh frieda comments that sometimes it's not because the person is very attractive but it's because they're the most reachable person so here's a here's a shocking opinion frida says i didn't say this frida says monica lewinsky wasn't very attractive but she was working there um i think there was both more and less to the story of monica lewinsky and why and how that happened um i will say sorry i know i've mentioned this at some point on youtube before back when i was at cambridge university england the sexual transgressions were just endemic and that environment is mind-blowing but you know people with phds sleeping with phd candidates professors sleeping with students like graduate students sleeping with undergraduate students that they're tutoring um and of course and men cheating on their wives and professors sleeping with their secretaries like department secretaries having sex with the professors and the professors were almost always married before they had these affairs that stuff was rampant and you know i don't think that's the case with monica lewinsky i think the market links his story is something different but this question of is it just laziness and proximity that results in these things well you know again what what excuse you're gonna make for people so this police officer you know his whole job is hanging around drug addicted prostitutes you know i'm sorry but you gotta hold yourself to a higher standard you gotta you know you have to suffer in your turn what can i tell you you know so being a man being a woman being an adult means that you are committed to doing the right thing just because it's the right thing to do not not that you're committed doing the right thing when you would enjoy it not that you're committed to doing the wrong thing when you would enjoy it okay not that you're committed to your own personal happiness or your personal convenience it's you're committed to doing the right thing because the right thing to do and we expected of the police officer and we expected the university professor and we expected of governor cuomo you know and we expected of lawyers and that's why it's really corrupting to have a tv show like ali mcbeal or uh all these all these sexy medical doctor dramas you know um yeah sexualizing the workplace is is a big problem that way all right uh okay so i'm trying to just catch up with your your comments before i move my next topic here um [Music] so the art of life comments that he feels that sexuality is fundamentally irrational so what the desire to snort cocaine is irrational so what i i just doesn't change the discourse foreign iota like if you think it's irrational rather than rational so what like you know i'm sorry people still have to make uh people's self to make these decisions they still have to live with the consequences so i'm sorry but to me you know something i said many years ago in discussing my own philosophy of nihilism you really have to think about the relationship between words and things profoundly preferably you should do when you're a teenager and then apply it you know for the rest of your life the difference between a plant and a weed you know is up to me am i intentionally growing a garden of dandelions or organ or are the dandelions weeds that have invaded and destroyed my garden okay dandelions are beautiful flowers it's the beauty is in the eye the beholder what is more beautiful a dandelion or a rose it's completely subjective you can decide you're growing roses and you want to exterminate the dandelions because they're ruining your rose garden dandelions have other reasons you can make dandelion salad you may not know this you can make dandelion root into a variety of foodstuffs including a substitute for coffee dandelion root cup it has no caffeine but it has this uh nice coffee-like flavor you can eat dandelion root if you are intentionally farming dandelions they are not a weed so i just say whether it is a plant or a weed whether it is a beautiful flower or an ugly weed to be exterminated is entirely up to me so you know whether this is rational or irrational this is just a subjective judgment it would just in most cases self-serving and dishonest yeah do you want to say that no kidding okay so melissa had a relative who made dandelion wine so yeah that's that's real uh po buckler stuff man that's real frontier you know yeah i mean that's real came over on the mayflower technology you know yeah i don't know i think only yeah i know i just i think of dandelion wine as being you know those people who are really living on the frontier that way um prove me wrong i don't know who the hell else make dandelion wine i've been to bordeaux ain't nobody drinking dandelion wine bordeaux france oh yeah there you go okay okay wicked energy says well maybe i shouldn't repeat this i don't know if it's true okay wicked energy alleges that allegedly jordan peterson was accused of sexual harassment several times allegedly sources say i have no source in that i've never do you think it's covered in this book you think if i look at the index sexual harassment allegations in there i doubt it all right okay so again i i'm not offended i'm i'm happy to reply to this question in some ways i think it's not uh it should have been earlier so exe.exe says so the muslims are partially right about modesty huh lol but the issue is they believe it's mandated by god and it should have some punitive consequences if it's not uh uh followed okay i am not saying the muslims are right i am not talking about modesty i'm talking about work all right talking about a job so like i said before i'm not trying to ban pornography i'm not trying to close down nightclubs or bars if you like people dress in a sexy way for all [ __ ] we're looking at a youtube video from a skiing town and it's cold in winter and women are still like 90 percent naked women are out in this skiing town showing off their whole body you can see every crack and crevice and it's cold enough to go skiing you know what i mean like okay you're on your ski vacation and you want to show it off and go you know walking around you know you know it's one of these places where there's like a there's a nightclub adjacent to the ski lodge or whatever okay i am not trying to shut down the human tendency to show off and sleep together and flirt all right i'm separating it from the workplace i'm saying you know what that is a nightclub and this is the office of the governor of new york state you know like whatever the office is you're talking about whatever response was saying look that's a nightclub this is a dentist's office that's a nightclub this is a bank whatever it is so no i'm not i'm not uh pro-muslim in any way and by the way you notice i didn't say this about the customers at the bank if you're a woman and you're wearing sexy clothes because you're going to the gym or because you're going to the nightclub because you're going skiing if you're a woman wearing sexy clothes you can go into the bank dress that way i'm saying the employees of the bank shouldn't dress and i think you know if you are a good-looking woman wearing revealing attire you will get a certain kind of attention at the bank and if you want that or if you can tolerate that that's up to you so no i don't i don't agree with the muslims at all for me this is just a separation of of genres i just mentioned under this headache i've told the same thing to melissa but i think i've never said it on youtube one of the interesting things is um oh shut up from the audience somebody says that undisclosed sources say that dandelion wine is fantastic but anyway once i once told this to melissa that you know um in the history of sanskrit poetry uh this is the number one channel for off-topic references to the history of sanskrit poetry find another youtube video about andrew cuomo that mentions sanskrit poetry but you know in sanskrit their idea of censorship was not that erotic and horrifying uh texts shouldn't exist their attitude was not that erotic poetry should be suppressed or destroyed but that it had to be separated into genres that it wasn't acceptable for example to mix the erotic with the tragic that it wasn't acceptable to mix the erotic with the comedic or to mix the erotic with the sacred you know like a sacred sacred text shouldn't or should know this and it came up so there was an example of a text that was in some sense censored or discussed as a as an example of being censored where in a tragic scene a man has been uh cut down in battle so a big part of ancient you see this in the the buddhist writings too in pali citizen buddhism is the the shock and horror that the high quality steel blades at the time can really cut a human body apart you can just be cut into small pieces you know remarkably quickly so i think this is as compared to a more primitive time when metal implements were not so impressive but anyway you see quite a lot of this in ancient literatures the the shock and astonishment that seeing a human body reduced to several pieces you know with a few uh rapid movements of a blade in the hands of a an expert experienced warrior but anyway so this guy loses the battle and um both of his hands have been locked off and i think his body has been chopped into other pieces so that's i just mentioned that's in real medieval battles that's relatively common you can imagine that you know if someone else is holding a sword that you cut their hand off you know with this with the sword it's part of playing the battle anyway the man's uh widow so his wife runs over weeping and picks up his disembodied hands that are still bleeding and have just fallen from his corpse picks up his hands and weepingly says these are the hands that once caressed my full round breasts she gives this erotic you know it's a it's poetry she gives this poetic monologue about the romance she had with this man and how heartbroken she is so this is an example ah you're mixing the genres you know so just mention you know the idea that things should be separated that tragedy should not be pornography that's different from believing that pornography should not exist and saying i want to separate human sexuality from this kind of workplace that is not so no no i do not feel i have anything in common uh with the the muslim side of the equation and i've actually i have made some youtube videos okay melissa's going to jump in can you want to stand up just to get more get more so this is something that i think you mentioned not too long ago we were out together you were talking about if you take politics seriously why don't you have a dress code as serious as you would have in a laboratory or that you would have uh on a construction site smart kid huh she's 28. i have to stop calling her kid my old lady she's smart my old she's smart my old lady now you know she knows what she's talking about my old lady yeah babe that's a great way to put it so melissa just said you know if you're taking life seriously if you're taking politics seriously why wouldn't you have a dress code as serious as a laboratory that says it's just a great comparison like look guys this is a laboratory this is serious i don't give a [ __ ] if you want to show off your jewelry and you want to show off how sexy you are how athletic your your your body you know you know sorry but this is not the place to be showing off or trying to look sexy this is a lab so you got to wear a lab coat you got to or something it's not even lab with some of those coveralls you know laboratories were white zip up coveralls that's it's about guys so great great call babe yeah no i think i honestly i think that's better than what i was saying i think that's more to the point you know and look in saying that and saying that we should take politics seriously and we should take the workplace seriously um you can take sexuality seriously too if you you know by all means you know put you can put just as much work into your sex life as you do into your professional life i'm just saying they shouldn't be one of the same thing and if you don't believe me take a good [ __ ] look at andrew cuomo holy [ __ ] think about the sex life that guy could add think of if he just could get if he could just have the detachment and self-discipline when he was hiring someone for that position as senior researcher and briefer he could have hired the best person in the united states of america or at least in the best person in new york state he could have had a wonderful highly qualified experience tough honest person in that job and someone would have backed him up to this day when the allegations came and if he wanted to he could have had an amazing sex life he was handsome and rich and famous and beloved by the public think about the sex life he could about the one thing he couldn't do is sexually harass his 23 year old employee who was a graduate majored in women's studies she was the [ __ ] head of the she was the head of the special task force at her university for sexual trauma so i can look this up i'm sorry here the she was the head of the sexual misconduct and assault reform task force at her university this is who she is that's you can't try to sleep with her the one person and all of you and here's the other thing i said this melissa in a walk if he had met this young woman at the job interview if he had met her and he really fell in love which we all know didn't happen but if he met this young woman and fell in love he should have not hired her he should have hired the right person for the job based on the qualifications and then he could have on his own time got in touch with her probably by twitter or by instagram he could have sent her she said hey you know i met you at the job interview i'd love to meet up and get lunch sometime okay and guess what there's a risk there you know yeah you're taking a risk meeting up with someone like that and could still ruin your life but sure if he actually wanted to have an affair of this kind let me know he could have gotten married i don't care he could have whatever could have been the love of his life for all i know he's lying to us he felt he was deeply in love with this young woman or all of them maybe he was in love with all six women i don't know i don't know what kind of i don't know how he swings but you know if you if you're really going to do that it has to be outside of the workplace absolutely has to be non-negotiable all right okay guys so we're now moving on that's enjoyable thank you all for your comments you all contributed a lot if you guys want to hit the thumbs up it helps more people join the crowd if you guys want to share the link share it to your facebook friend group or what else you got these days share it on tumblr i'm a boomer i remember when tumblr was a big website when was that back in back in 2014 tumblr was what all the kids were into but anyway yeah if you guys want to share the link somewhere people can join the crowd but yeah so that to me that added hope it added so much to tim bell for you i admit i admit the video would be half as long if i didn't do q a with the audience but hey uh spice of life all right so i got a message from a supporter on patreon uh i'm just gonna use his first name which is apparently ivana all right so ivan writes into me he says hi isil in the last two discussions you have presented why you would want to end the culture and religion over a long period of time now i am not complaining but that is obviously an attempt to summarize a pretty complex argument that occupies like maybe three hours of videotape um it's a little simplistic to say i want to end a culture but i talk really openly and really honestly about the extent to which innovation and improvement in culture is also going to involve demolition of culture it's going to involve really challenging and changing and destroying a lot of our assumptions in the past things that we think are sacred today will have to be destroyed you know so let's get real uh but no i would not state my own position as just being the end of culture it's a charming phrase but i've not said that when i was asked to summarize my view i coined the term cultural nihilism so they would call this part of the video uh discussion of cultural nihilism and to my knowledge nobody else has used that term i have a lot of weird i was searching today melissa made a video which i titled i want credit for the title i titled it the vagina trap and you learn nobody's ever made a youtube video called the vagina trap it's no chance a great title nobody's using this by the way it's not a shallow video you haven't seen it's a great video okay it's it's melissa speaking but i i influenced it in some ways i made up the title and sometimes but um uh all right continuing this comment from ivan in the last two discussions you've talked about the negative role towards the demolition of culture in relation to the creation and progress of culture adaptation and change of culture all right quote however there seems to be a duality in this meaning that confuses me on one side you present why culture is bad and the other side recognize its value taking note of opportunities that were lost as a result of the destruction of culture slash people and it's mismanagement and that's an interesting critique i can quote you yourself or a lifelong language learner just just mention i have completely stopped learning languages because i'm trying to finish this book this is weird for me this is a long period of not learning languages that's been created by writing this book for all you guys i mean ultimately it is for my audience that i'm writing the book it's been a lot of work finished the book yeah i assume really probably by august 15th or something i should be back to studying chinese but it's been a shockingly long time that i have not been learning languages now but yes generally for most of my life uh lifelong language anyway uh you yourself are a lifelong language learner who has studied now obscure languages for humanitarian purposes and have been a scholar of buddhism few people could be in as invested in culture and a form of religion as you have all right i'm going to continue but i think already you and the audience could probably argue against that probably just the average person who voted for donald trump is way more invested in relation it's you know it's pathetic but it's true all right uh continue quote you speak of multiculturalism as lost opportunity for example for canadian education and unexplored topics for history and politics and furthermore you lament the detachment of canadian culture to its first nations roots in comparison to what mexico has so a little bit of peculiar syntax and grammar there but i think you know what he means continue quote uh there is this part of your message that sees value in culture and at the same time wants to destroy it new paragraph quote i just want to clarify the details of this vision for instance say there was a distant future where a significant iso-political faction that represented a good 45 percent of 55 of the population dominates politics where this dream of ending culture and religion is a generation away how would it treat people who still belong to an old culture and a form of religion will some cultures be tolerated more than others such as that as first nations of the like the korean ojibwe ideally how homogeneous would society be do we still go to music festivals and take our kids to the cinema perhaps you mean to break old culture or apart and replace it with a newer or more ethical one okay so very interesting very provocative questions good to know people who pay me one dollar a month um have what it takes to to criticize me and cross-examine what i'm saying here now i i do think that his perspective is sort of based on a misunderstanding of what i'm saying totally well-intentioned misunderstanding but i do think he's partly misreading so i'm gonna have to answer this in a several parcels by the way so guys i can see your comments as they come in if anyone wants to say anything you can jump in any time the water is fine okay so if you guys you guys want to participate i think many of the people in this audience are aware of my recent videos you've seen one or the other apart i'm talking about multiculturalism you might have related questions you might agree with this guy you might disagree i'm i'm happy to uh to add you to the mix okay the first parcel i'll deal with is the status of first nations people in canada if you don't know first nations is a polite term for what used to be called american indians the indigenous people of the united states and canada people like the creed the ojibwe the navajo the dene the inuit the people who lived on this continent prior to the arrival of christopher columbus and then ensuing waves of genocidal more or less genocidal european colonialism uh and of course uh the enslavement of africans and bring them over to so that is what we mean by first nations all right now if someone were to ask the question she doesn't ask he's sort of hinting at this question without asking if you were to ask the question why is isil mazzard sympathetic to the preservation of first nations languages and culture whereas he seems to be such a harsh critic of the culture of saudi arabia or even the catholicism of paris france as to say openly look guys in the next century this is something that has to be destroyed like what's it going to be it's going to be 100 years 500 years 50 years i asked that too so i shouldn't have specified a century i say in the future this is something we really have to talk about destroying christianity destroying islam and as i've repeatedly indicated if you do it in 500 years that's one thing if you do it in 100 years you do it in 50 years like you know let's get serious unless you're really talking implications of overcoming our our cultural traditions of christianity so someone could ask well why do i speak in such a different way about cree culture and ojibwa culture and i'm not saying this to insult ivan who sent this in probably ivan has never met or spoken to any cree people or ojibwe people or mohawk people or den a people and doesn't know anything about their actual culture and political situation like probably i'm not just given various things about this message and my prior message this person you know very very few people have right it's just not something you can assume no i don't i don't think that that prejudices what he's saying here um but it certainly shapes the way the question is posed okay so mexico in the year 2021 how much of a problem is human sacrifice by the indigenous people how much a problem is the catholic church who has power in mexico what is the religion what is the culture that has to be overcome is it the indigenous people's culture no and that is in large part because the indigenous people's culture already was destroyed by catholicism all right now if you actually watch both of my long videos about multiculturalism i did say at some length i digress to say look if you think first nations culture was utopian with some kind of amazing wonderful ideal you don't know first nations culture but that's past tense that's talking about what it was what exists today is a little more than a set of decorative motifs because their culture was destroyed partly by the catholic church partly by the anglican church there was more than one church involved but in brief it was destroyed by christianity now i mean likewise if we were talking about afghanistan it would be completely surreal to say you know what the problem with afghanistan is the problem with afghanistan is the influence of buddhism on their culture in the past afghanistan was a buddhist country right that's not the reality today the reality is the problem with afghanistan is islam is muslim culture now i think you know you guys may not sorry you may not have caught this in my earlier videos they were very long they covered many topics or many angles so i i'm not criticizing ivan for failing cactus and i'm not criticizing you in the audience but i did say all right i will say now expanding on what i said briefly in the earlier video i can imagine a parallel universe in which the inca culture of mexico i mean we could pick any of them the inca or the olmec or what have you you know but where the indigenous culture of mexico continued uninterrupted by christianity and where today we really had to deal with it in this same kind of way where i had to use the same kind of tough talk that i'm using talking about the notre dame cathedral in paris and saying look guys what is the future of the catholic religion in paris and what is the future of islam in saudi arabia and in afghanistan let's really get serious let's really face up to it of course we have to look at the future of christianity and islam in canada all right but it would be completely surreal today in this world to talk about the indigenous religion and culture of mexico as if that is the problem as if that's the barrier to be overcome now again i i do have some personal experience with this as well as kind of on paper research experience um okay i will tell you a story about a particular first nations person i knew whose life really was shaped by uh you know traditional religious culture okay so she was a very young girl she was either 11 or 12 or 13 something like this i'm sorry i don't remember that that year let's say she was 13. but you know what i'm sorry i really think she was more like 11. i think i'm now that i'm just remembering okay so i i got this story when she was a fully grown middle-aged woman okay so let's say she's 11 years old and she has a dream and the main image in her dream is of a buffalo and there are a few other images all right and the other members of her tribe like ultimately her parents listen her about this dream and they take her to see a more senior member of the tribe and some kind of medicine man or medicine someone who's a kind of expert in their religion and they interpret the symbols of this dream and they're like oh this is serious okay because that this is one of this is one of the only places in the continent where the religion is this intact like from coast to coast from north to south in most places the indigenous religion has been totally destroyed and replaced with christianity really go to james bay the james bay cree are divided between hyper catholic and hyper protestant the two hate each other the catholics and the protestants you know they're kind of at war with each other where everyone's super christian and hates each other and there's no trace the indigenous culture left or very very little okay but she is living in one of the last places of this so they take her to the medicine man or spiritual leader of the of the tribe and talk about symbols and say okay well here's what we got to do we got to take a tent and we got to burn these special herbs and she's got a fast you know eat no food and drink no water and kind of dance in a circle where she's giving herself heat exhaustion while inhaling this smoke and smoking tobacco by the way i presume this is wild tobacco but according to antidote they use normal cigarettes to process tobacco um in order to induce hallucinations and then you know some spiritual thing will happen as a result okay okay so you know it is unbelievably rare it is incredibly rare in the year 2021 that you will be talking about the indigenous religion having this kind of power and influence in people's lives and having been overcome i heard a really interesting very brief but very interesting interview with a catholic priest who was out a remote northern saskatchewan i mean he represented christianity obviously he was trying to encourage people to be good christians but he competed with uh spiritual leaders of this kind who were still practicing the aboriginal tradition that involved interpretation of dreams and smoking tobacco and fasting and dancing and playing music while you're dancing and so on you know to induce hallucinatory experiences and so on and i remember it was just not what i was expecting to hear at all from this catholic guy the catholic he was indigenous his own ancestry his own dna he was not a white catholic he was an indigenous person who'd become a catholic leader and i remember he said um that he very bluntly he said that he believes that the spiritual forces that are used by the other side are real that he believes that when these people see demons or other visions he believes that they're real he believes they have real supernatural powers and it's precisely for that reason he wants them to convert to catholicism instead you know obviously from my perspective i'm expecting him to say like oh uh christian superstitions are real and the superstitions the other side are imaginary it's like no he he says oh no the spiritual forces used by the said those are real too and that's exactly why it's so important so important not to you know not to dabble in them not to dabble in black magic or or witchcraft you know so you know look i'm kind of conceding a point here but you know the concession is is minuscule right you know could some people so so the particular woman who's anecdote i just related when she was a child having this experience and there were other kind of bad things about this experience um sure you know in her case you could engage in a kind of critique critique and say look this religious tradition this is something you can't do this to your own children you can't do this to your grandchild i mean i understand your parents and grandpa they thought this was the right thing to do but like obviously you now have to adopt some kind of skeptical attitude towards this you know what what is the role this going to be in your life now i have an answer for that question you know my vision of human history is not that it's you know either it dominates you or it doesn't exist it is not to use an over an overused phrase a zero-sum game okay i normally my most commonly used example is about the literature of shakespeare you know people quote shakespeare at weddings people quote shakespeare at funerals shakespeare's theater adds some meaning to their lives nobody worships shakespeare nobody is celibate until marriage because of shakespeare you know shakespeare is not dominating and oppressing people in their lives it's just not the case okay it is totally possible to take the literature of buddhist philosophy and regard it like the poetry of william shakespeare it is totally possible to have the traditions i mean frankly it's the easiest way it's the main way that definitely cree and ojibwe literature will now survive if it can survive in the 21st century you have stories about magical talking animals you have a story about you know the trickster god or you have a story about um uh the wolverine they have these different characters from mythology okay do you uh like i can ask you again if i actually knew this guy ivan i said do you really think people are having their lives destroyed by reciting these stories about talking animals that happened by the way before humans existed on earth it's also an interesting part of the mythology it's kind of like having an adam and eve story it's set in this this period prior to human history on the planet when there were all these talking animals but no humans or something you know okay so like like what do you what do you think the significance of this is going to be now and in the future especially given the reality that these religions and cultures already have been destroyed by um by christianity okay so you know look um you know is there a positive role for culture in the future you know yes okay but my answer to that it's it's neither monoculture nor multiculturalism now all right i think this is meaningful enough i should i should go and nobody in the audience is complaining nobody's complaining that i'm going too deep on this so i'm going to go uh you know a little bit deeper okay how do you know you like shakespeare what if you don't like shakespeare what if where you grow up shakespeare was really the only play in town it was really the only thing you could watch what if you grew up in a subculture where you were constantly told that the plays of william shakespeare are the most refined erudite important things where this supreme cultural value and that every refined and educated person should go to see a play by shakespeare three or four times a year and how can you fail to appreciate shakespeare where there was there was also guilt and shaming put on you by your culture was like oh if you say shakespeare is boring oh well then you must be some kind of vulgarian you must be you know you must be someone with absolutely no mental or emotional depth whatsoever how can you fail to appreciate romeo and juliet right now look guys i got people who watch this from all around the world some of you have grown up in a place where this was the attitude towards opera you know certain places in italy certain places in austria like there's an opera culture where within a particular town or city oh everyone has to appreciate the opera you know where everyone has to appreciate ballet or you know again depending where you are it could be everyone has to appreciate shakespeare now that is much less oppressive than the catholic church or islam especially islam as it exists in saudi arabia okay but you know you can't really know how much or how little you appreciate shakespeare if you don't have a choice all right you can only appreciate shakespeare or critique and reject shakespeare you can appreciate it as much or as little as you do if you approach it analyze it as a nihilist and as a nihilist who has a lot of options okay so you know i've known i've known indigenous people from different parts of the world all right i knew one indigenous guy from hawaii i knew his whole life story i'm not going to kind of go into it um if you are born and raised in hawaii and the only culture you have ever known are the legends and literature of hawaiian native people okay that's one thing and if you are from hawaii and you have traveled the world and you've studied buddhism and hinduism and the literature of europe over many centuries and then you say you know what you know having become a sophisticated worldly person who doesn't believe in any of this stuff you know like i don't worship shakespeare i just know shakespeare you know i don't worship cicero but i know i know this literary heritage whatever you know you know what there really is something special there is something i appreciate about this literature of you know the indigenous people of why that's something all right i don't think you're going to carry out human sacrifice for it i don't think you're going to carry out horrible rituals like circumcision you know for it i don't think you're going to kill people over it i don't think you're in a fight warsaw you know these things can have you know a status you say but it's important to really consider and really emphasize the extent to which we are totally robbing culture of all of its power you know not just the power to choose who you're going to marry which you talked about like arranged marriage it's unbelievably powerful thing for a church to have a cultural tradition at to choose you're going to marry and shape the rest of your life or choose your career or choose your education for you or something okay but beyond that i don't even think culture should bully you in this way where you have to appreciate shakespeare because if you don't appreciate shakespeare who are you what kind of person are you right and it's very easy for culture to take on this this kind of oppressive role in our lives and i do think i mean again so i'm continuing the criticism opposition i do think there are some indigenous people not many but there are a few who still live in communities where there is that kind of pressure on them to appreciate their own heritage and to be beholden to their own heritage and i have just being honest with you i have met those people when they're rebelling against it i've met those people when they're talking to me because they they come up to me and they say that they are first nations people whether they're korea or ojibwe or they say and that's exactly why they got interested in buddhism i remember one case that's why they went to japan and got interested in japanese culture and japanese buddhism and they were really interested in challenging the kind of ignorance and assumptions of their parents and of course that'll that'll take them to a more erudite position of you know appreciation for it whatever there is to be appreciated you know it's possible they'll have that more cosmopolitan world they'll come back from japan there was one i met who had been to taiwan actually but you know you can read lord shang and you can read sunset you can you can read confucius and you can read buddhist philosophy and you can get familiar with hinduism and again you can get familiar with the whole treasure trove of european philosophy and politics as i've continued to do in the last several years you can read appian and salast and you know um you know and then you can see that culture and that literature and that tradition in some kind of comparative and analytical context and i am suggesting that each and every one of us should in effect be uh via nihilist right so now you know it may be if you are listening to this you may not see that as the demolition and destruction of culture but really it is right because i am talking about robbing culture of its of its power in that way and then what happens then you're really empowering people to not only be a much more analytical audience for culture but also to be much more dynamic and creative and and then you know challenging creating the next phase whatever's gonna happen next uh culture okay i'm just reading some of the more recent uh some of the more recent comments okay i'm rereading this question here too okay so i think there's another sort of deep question raised here i i could quote what he says exactly but you guys probably remember it well enough one of the things he's getting at in effect is um is it or is it not possible to say that some cultures are better than others so that is not exactly how he words it but he's saying well you you talk about these negative aspects of multiculturalism but on the other hand you lament how the genocidal culture of the british empire is worse than some other culture right um now you know i think there's something profoundly wrong indicated by the question i'm not criticizing i think this person's writing with totally good intentions and they're raising interesting important points but there's something really wrong there because what you're saying to me in effect is how can you criticize culture while also saying that some cultures are better than others and my replies what do you mean how can you how can you criticize culture without saying that some culture that some cultures are better than others if you criticize movies if you engage in the critique of cinema it's completely inevitable and essential that you're going to say some movies are better than others and your critique may include there may be some criticism that applies to all movies or 99 percent of movies or 95 percent you may say well you know what the batman movie was really bad and the wonder woman movie was bad and the x-men movie was bad and the star wars movie was bad and there are some ways in which all these movies are bad they have some things in common that are bad but then you turn or ask the person oh well but you seem to think some movies are better than others yeah of course of course and again this just seems a little bit detached from the kind of real world examples that i've used to to propel these these questions i made a video earlier today in which i asked you would you rather live in iran or communist china for most of us in the science it would be incredibly tough to live in iran you know the main reasons are cultural okay now i could use any would you rather live in saudi arabia or thailand you may not know this they have something in common politically they're both monarchies they're both kingdoms so there's the kingdom of saudi arabia and there's the kingdom of of thailand well they're profoundly different because of culture and of course i can choose and of course i can judge there's no reason why i wouldn't be able to judge that some cultures are are better than others okay then this next question why why are some cultures better than others and the answer is in effect some cultures are more compatible with nihilism whereas others suffocate it and snuff it out make it impossible to be a nihilist make it impossible to be a free thinker right and some cultures are open to and actively engaged in the critique of themselves right what do i love about american culture there are things i love about american culture i remember a rap lyric uh my life is so [ __ ] up but i love it you know the whole genre of rap music is teeming or it was okay maybe rap music is dead the rap music of the 1990s or something rap music i i appreciate it it was teeming with this sense of discontent with the mediocrity of of society and the mediocrity of life and raging against you know what what people's life had become you know the it wasn't all from young people it was going to say the kind of the the rambunctious pessimism of youth that there must be something better and hating the neighborhood you grew up in and hating the people your school you grew up in and hating the other members of your gang and hating the rival gang members and hating your teachers at school you know there's a lot of you know there's a lot of agony there in rap music i mean you know american culture is constantly engaged in the examination of what's wrong with the united states of america you know the united states of america is constantly engaged in psychoanalyzing the american dream and evaluating the extent to which it's a nightmare you know what i mean um so of course you know there are things i really positively appreciate about american culture that is completely lacking from saudi arabian culture that is completely lacking from chinese communist culture let me tell you the culture of communist china this is not the attitude of chinese common culture in any given year if you look at kind of the list of hit movies in the united states and even the list of hit songs a lot of and if you get into books that's all and unfortunately very few people read books it's a much smaller market but if you look at the hit books in america many of them whether fiction or non-fiction this stuff is actively engaged in an examination of and recrimination about what's wrong with the united states of america there are best sellers you know uh year after year and then they're also asking i mean i think honestly without exception they're raising the question of what should america be next what should america become okay let me tell you something if you are in communist china if you are in thailand if you are in laos it is an understatement to say that this is taboo nobody can talk about the past this way nobody can talk about the present this way nobody can talk about the future this way there there is no saudi arabian rap music engaged in reflecting on how awful life in saudi arabia is for women for example there is no saudi arabian rap music talking about how tough it is to be gay i for as homophobic as american rap may be or something i've heard tons of gay rap music you know gay rapper talking about what it is to be to be gay sometimes seriously someone's joking around or you know all that stuff you get you get all the recrimination and you know the whole every every possible complaint about modern life and modernity itself is so out in the open in in american culture it's a huge advantage i mean it brings them closer to nihilism and it brings america uniquely close to you know that that creative and destructive side of human nature that makes a better and different future possible just a really quick exam i remember i met this guy and he was black black guy born and raised in england and i said just a few words about police brutality and police violence i like it it really wasn't like a long conversa like i forget we're talking about something else in politics and i was like yeah you know and i was by the way i wasn't making any claim about him i was really struggling with my own experience and my own perspective i wasn't saying like you you know how it is or you've been through this i was just saying well you know with the police you know i remember this guy even though he was black he was british black he responded with absolutely zero irony and he was highly motivated he immediately insisted to me that i was wrong that there is no better police service in the world than the british bobby that was how he put it the british bobby this was his pet name for for the british police and he said anyone in england knows if you ever have trouble you can go up and ask the local policeman and he'll help you out he's your best friend he gave me this propaganda statement about how wonderful the cops were in england and i'm just sitting there looking at this guy like so foreign to me it's it's i i it's so alien i mean it makes my skin crawl you know and i'm just saying this guy i don't think he's ignorant i don't think i think he's someone who reads the newspaper once a week or something like i'm not saying he's super political i think he does know examples of the police being corrupt and the police being brutal and just violent and exposed and i think he does know those things but he's asserting this nationalistic propaganda narrative on top of it he's he's imposing this um this uh this false optimism and saying no you have to live up to it a lot of cultures are like that around the world i mean again whether you're talking about muslim culture or whether you're talking about uh communist culture i'm i'm gonna be real with you i've never dealt with that side of japanese culture i had friends who lived and worked in japan who said to me look dude you're not gonna cope with it here like you warned me like you know you're not gonna this kind of thing was was being discussed or being headed at um i don't know how how willing the japanese are to engage in the in the critique of their culture but you know um i wouldn't i wouldn't uh i wouldn't generalize too widely but you know i remember i had one french friend he's a fat guy and not vegan and i remember he said to me he spoke english fluently with this thick french accent and i just recognized in him like oh okay so you're really willing to to criticize the city like i was kind of careful with them like talking about london talking about paris and talking about places like bangkok and mitchell and he was like oh you know how it is uh wherever you live you have to [ __ ] on it you know it was just i do not know what percentage of french people like that but he just went on to say that he thought you know wherever you live you have to become the harshest possible critic of the culture and the economy and the and the political conditions okay so look i just want to point out i'm keeping it real with you guys i didn't talk about human rights i didn't talk about freedom of speech i didn't talk about any [ __ ] here all right that's i think what most people would fall back on they'd say well you know the difference between islam and democracy is freedom of speech and human rights well you know the difference between people in communist china and people in the united states of america no it's not no it's not i mean that's part of the [ __ ] nationalist narrative right i really want to get at something a little bit deeper here and i know it's a polluted term i know it's a term probably none of us are comfortable using ironically but you can talk about counter culture you can talk about the extent to which your culture is really engaged in uh the critique of itself in which it's really radically open to uh challenging and overturning its own assumptions and then the life of a dissident intellectual within that culture and so briefly guys i mean this is the last thing of the video we'll wrap it up now if anyone wants any last comments since you're this is your last chance but you know i i'm sorry most yes you haven't lived in all these countries you don't have a census okay what do you think the life of a dissident intellectual is like in sri lanka what do you think the life of a distant intellectual is like in myanmar in cambodia in thailand in communist china in iran you know and now what do you think the life of a dissident intellectual is like in paris france in berlin germany in texas in austin texas let's be equally specific okay the role of the dissident intellectual and you know the difference they can make and what they can do to change the world and make make a better make it a better place all right there are some cultures where that is suffocated and sign-lined and and and blotted out and there are some cultures where it's celebrated you know um so you know if your critique of me is to say that i am suggesting or implicitly assuming or insinuating that some cultures are better than others you're god damn right