Lack of Economic Opportunity = Political Perspective?
30 March 2019 [link youtube]
An autobiographical and political conversation with my girlfriend, Melissa.
Youtube Automatic Transcription
one of the things my girlfriend and I
really have in common is that we were deeply uncomfortable with and really rejected the culture we happen to be born into and the cultures were born into or on opposite sides of a border but are very very similar so my girlfriend is from Detroit Michigan and I'm originally from Toronto Canada now the United States is a huge country if my girlfriend had grown up in Texas different kind of thing but Detroit and Toronto we really come from a similar background and what makes it deeper is that we both really rejected and profoundly uncomfortable with that cultural background let me ask you a question why was my own father a Canadian nationalist why did he like and support Canada so much and if I had been born into some of the advantages in life would my fealty have been kind of bought and sold would I have been way more positive about Canada or would you have been more positive about Detroit so here's what here's what raised that question for me I found a really strange quotation from my father and I was from 1967 I stayed okay so how old how old was my father in 1967 when he said this okay from a little biography newspaper article but my father it says in 1967 he was chose to curate the history of painting and Canada exhibition at Expo 67 so Expo is an international it's paid for by the Canadian government the Party supported international exhibition by then he had already been a curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery and the new brunswick museum and sejong my father had nothing but a BA those opportunities don't exist for our generation people with nothing but a BA he had this SAP and a BA in philosophy not even a BA in our history or NHANES he had a fabulous career handed to him by the Canadian establishment despite the fact that he was a communist despite the fact that he was an eccentric in so many obvious ways he had opportunity after to opportunity handed to him and of course you know the world was a different place economically as well as politically in the 1960s right now he was only 28 years old at that my girlfriend's 26 he'd already had this fabulous career from the minute he finished his BA right now I mean my my mother was earning money in architecture in a fabulous wage she was earning money writing for one of the biggest newspapers in Canada I guess around the time she finished high school but while she was a university student you know she was getting paid real money to go in and write articles for a newspaper again it's not it's not gonna happen today so look I mean not it not at 26 not at 28 not at 36 not at 38 yeah but I mean this is my point I mean in a sense success can be corrosive failure can be corrosive to I really had to ask myself when I lived in a communist country when I lived in Laos because Laos did hand me certain opportunities a certain level of comfort Laos by the way it was a grimy third-world country at that time when I arrived there were there was literally not a single ATM in the whole country not a single cash machine like the the level of technology and comfort by first world standards was low it was tough there were stray dogs in the street everywhere he can attack by dogs but that aside nevertheless okay I was in a situation in Laos or it's like if I sell out if I just become pro-government and pro-establishment within the tiny third-world country I can have a certain level of income and a certain quality of life in a certain level of privilege and I've probably told you this at one point my boss who was a government official a Communist Party official he he said to me like look if you stick with this program to some extent you're above the law like don't don't worry about it you know you know even like and he was saying it because the police would take people in and interrogate them to get bribes out of them or something look look even if you're put in prison like we'll get you out kind of thing and you're above the law here okay um but like I remember thinking like no like even if they paid me ten times as much or hundred times like even if this was real money even if this was real luxury like I could never I could never be kind of a pro I I can't be a pro establishment person I can't be a nationalist for a louse even reported that way more vaguely and I I felt I couldn't be for any country like maybe even if you imagine like a Dubai or something I know a lot of white guys go to Dubai teach English or get a position get it get a get a good career going but I felt for me that was because like my capacity to be a conformist was already shattered by the negative experience of Canada you know what I mean like my experience in Canada is so negative it didn't just turn me against being a conformist and national speak for establishment Canada but it kind of soured me on that or made it impossible for me to conform anywhere in Laos or in Dubai you know and maybe maybe I'm wrong right but like my point is for people like my father and it's it's got to be true for some people in current generation I think it's true you see I don't know if you don't need these guys do you know any young white man who became like successful computer programmers at an early age back during the tech boom you know what I mean like like you know what I mean like they maybe they just finished high school and then went straight into doing computer programming and making a lot of money or maybe a lot of time it's like they did to you of university but then they were making so much money in computer programming or or making websites for the internet you know what I only met a couple times had no university education but he has been able to you know he didn't have an easy life he initially was working as a chef for many years and then he got into computer programming and he made some I don't even know what it was but he made something that earned him a ton of money and he was able to buy this nice place in Florida and basically have an early retirement and he's just living off of those savings so yeah and in effect he he got lucky what right at the time yeah the time that he got involved in what program he created so yeah you know I just I think so I'm especially if that kind of success comes young I think a lot of the time that fosters pro-establishment Pro conformist attitudes whether or not they're nationalist attitudes we're like I mean this is all it is ultimately this shallow it creates the feeling that this whole society is working because it's working for you because it's giving positive opportunities for you yeah yeah so I don't know if he was like that I don't know the economic opportunities for my own father also have made him feel this way but he recognizes how difficult it is for people my age you know neither of my brothers stayed in it this is Detroit so just to be clear this is Detroit is economic disaster I mean it's especially tough food truck yet yeah neither of my brothers were able they didn't want to stay in Michigan there were no opportunities so of course they moved all the way across Missouri because of this even though they had very marketable degrees so you know III think he realizes the devastation of this actual city and also around the country in in the areas surrounding Detroit as well yes a lot of lost economic vibrancy yeah um how that impacts everything how its I mean maybe my mind is just on this for whatever reason but I mean you know many of my my father's friends graduated from high school and were able to get married have kids and have owned a home owned a home stay job then you know you were able to have start this life right out of high school I mean it's it's something that my generation didn't have for my father's generation specifically University tuition not even $500 future transcripts you know there are seeds from my my mom got an education at the same University I want to yeah oh so much cheaper it had it had gone up by like 40 times basically you know like well wait there's the cost but then there's the value of the diploma when you finished it I mean so for my father in the 1960s having a BA actually opened doors for him and for me you know any job I thought oh you have a bachelor's degree and and what you know it's it's now right in order to get a terrible job yeah I'm not even a job you know anyway yeah I didn't I do I do have extraordinary things about me yes but in Canada there's certainly no no opportunity for me but look you don't I feel what dis satisfies me about Canada politically and culturally is profound and important and real I don't feel that it's in any way like resentment over the fact that I didn't have the kinds of opportunities my father had right but like in a sense what I'm doing here is challenging myself because I'm also acknowledging like okay well what if Canadian Society or any society offered me the kind of unbelievable upward social mobility my father was offered we usually also includes elements like a home you know education social status income homeownership you know it's a joke today even if you're really quite successful as a young person living in Vancouver today is an exam for income it's just gonna go into rent you're gonna be a rent slave your whole life even if you really up quite a good job let's let's say you become a dental hygienist you know it's a high-paid job boring repetitive job yeah what do you think you can buy a house in Vancouver buy a condo in Vancouver maybe you know anyways you know life long your only priority you know whatever you know so I mean the problem here isn't really poverty the problem is opportunity and and lack of opportunity but like what I'm saying and challenging myself and challenging the audience is to what extent you know to what extent do you feel your critique of the society you're born into or even the society you choose to move to to what extent is that really motivated by a kind of resentment and hopelessness or or or the opposite or or opportunity and hope that you happen to have handed to you by these by these circumstances just want to Stevens on one second so you know my my ex-wife's father he was part of this golden generation of computer programmers where nobody needed a bachelor's degree there was so much demand there were so few people who were competent at doing computer programming that whatever straight out of high school all kinds of people were more successful made a lot of money and I had one friend who was really in the last period what we normally call kind of the internet boom the last period where people get ahead with no no BA and and really make a lot of money and then I saw that I saw that disappear where those and with both so with all those people my ex-wife's father and this young man I met in Asia so he was a young white guy from Australia and he got money fast without getting a BA and he started getting corrupted by the lifestyle that he could afford himself as a computer programmer traveling around Asia where the cost of living was even lower so he's earning Australian dollars and he's vacationing in the Philippines and Thailand and then China China became more and more part of his life I mean look it's so fundamentally stupid to say well I own a gold mine I'm making lots of money so all of society is doing fine the system works and like you know obviously I'm using the gold mine as a ridiculous example it's true when I lived in Laos by the way the the single biggest company the single biggest employer was literally a gold mine the economy really the economy really hinged on this one company doing coal mining some people aren't literally gold miners or investors and executives and Goldman kept so it's a real example but what a ridiculous delusion to think this society works or this nation is good or to have these other things Israel and likewise I mean the thing is computer programming is like a gold mine in one sense in that there's there's this fleeting period of opportunity that gold mine in Laos there's no five good years and guess what you run out of gold gold there was this period of time when there was easy money in computer programming and you know it's if you talk to young people in computer program today even a Silicon Valley and stuff it's like well you know it's not minimum wage but no one would say today it's it's an easy way to make a living so what so now now that the gold is gone with the comb so now do you sympathize with the people who are literally on the street of the people who are strong in a survivor say now do you have some kind of criticism of society and again a lot of this comes back to the educational establishment people bankrupting themselves to get a bachelor's degree and then doing what after that you know I look I I have the delusion that my my critique of Canadian society is not based on that kind of personal economic perspective or experience III think it's real but you know I also have that delusion as you know this is something that we connect on there are reasons why the economic opportunities aren't so so great and you know we're at where I grew up but part of it is North America was this land of opportunity for colonists and you got to see how like the culture there's so many things that I don't like about American culture but part of it is that it's a result of colonization like you know you've talked about as we've been going around Taiwan how the actual buildings were put up with such speed and you know they wanted to build as fast as possible we just went to the port city of Geelong and you know got to see how it's been run down after you know this initial period of economic opportunity and optimism and that to me mirrors you know Detroit and many of the surrounding City owes maybe maybe like Columbus or you know different places in Ohio Illinois you know at one point these tons of structures were put up and oh there's gonna be so much opportunity here and in the Detroit area it's good with car manufacturing now that that's no longer something that's no longer an actual opportunity what is there you know it's it's like you say with the with the Gold Line there was this rush this gold rush in Detroit and then now there's what what is there to hold on to and you know I remember we we had this discussion sorry-sorry I found you know just trying to form my thoughts here but when we were in Brussels you know I remember we were walking around he were talking about Europeans tend to be more like care about their hometown and you know you're making this connection between like Europeans who even though their hometown isn't you know a very economically vital place they still feel some connection to it like this is actually my ancestral home this is what I want to hold on to and you know maintain the traditions of but what is what is there in Michigan for my family I mean as soon as the factory closes or something what are you trying to build there what's the connection there was an economic opportunity but then when that's gone what's the meaningful connection what is it you're trying to build in that time unlike someone whose whole family is from a certain town in Switzerland or Iceland like hey we have a thousand years of heritage here and we're trying to build on it right great grandparents grew up well my great grandparents across the ocean and in Norway England Germany I mean what connection do I really have to Michigan other than similar climate similar krabi climate in some places that my you know relatives were from so yeah I mean you don't have this this deep connection to the land unlike I mean or any institutions or something that's because I know the reason why I'm there is because of you know this opportunity from wiping out the native people I mean the native people actually have this connection to their land and it's now gone because it's all been ruined by white people coming in and changing the landscape completely changing the you know natural landscape - it's not just it's not just cities going up it's like deforestation changing of actual waterways and how dams and so so yeah yeah I mean I'm just kind of saying like what is there um holding people to North America know if it's not a NASA ancestral homeland if there's no real life if if the gold mine has been deprived or depleted of its gold yeah what is there now well so I just say we can Melissa and I have all this stuff in common but Toronto downtown Tehran I didn't come from one the suburbs like I was walking distance from the banking districts I was really down I was walking distance from Parliament and the University campus I walked everywhere dented Ron I'm not from the suburbs in downtown Toronto everyone was just there to make money and get out you know and like you felt like you were in a place that had this kind of merely economically instrumental value that it had no meaning in itself and on the country was very common to hear people say about Toronto you know they were gonna move they were gonna get out as soon as they could they were gonna move back to Whistler British Columbia or the East Coast like you know as soon as they get this money they're out cuz in interesting I don't know if people still feel that way what's wrong today but it was seen as this kind of dark bleak awful city gets your money to get home and anyway regardless of it whether or not individuals feel that way about Detroit so look right now we're having this conversation in Taiwan and Taiwan is basically in a period of economic boom there's basically zero unemployment here we're in an industrious steel manufacturing town we're actually in an industrial district we walk past huge factories and smokestacks every day here this is the opposite extreme from Detroit Detroit is a landscape of empty and abandoned factories and this is you know this this is a this is an economically and industrially booming place and Taiwan I mean this is more parallel to what I was saying about last before it offers you Melissa you know a certain level of you know economic yeah okay that's a good way to put it offers you a middle-class quality of life if you'll just sign up for it if you'll just conform um I mean again we're both both just kind of too old to get swept up in this girl into 26 thank you it's really not everyone thinks my girlfriend's young compared to me but 26 is already old she's already burdened with a lot of the you know sorrows of life but you know we're not swept up in this like Oh Tom Juan's the most wonderful place or something we're not becoming nationalists or enthusiasts or uncritical supporters of Taiwan just because it offers us that and I think we're both very skeptical about the nature of the opportunity and we're both skeptical about what we'll lose if we sell out and take that opportunity and commit to it you know but no one's offering me a position as a as a [ __ ] museum curator these were really elite positions being offered my father we'd he had nothing but a BA in philosophy and he published insane articles in communist magazines and newspaper me no I'm sorry I was just looking it up but stuffs on the internet now log has been digitized whoa you know the the the level of privilege and opportunity that was handed him and you know he was he was offered you know scholarships get a PhD and all this stuff he's offered all these these opportunities as a young man that he very much took for granted and in some ways of course in his own mind he thought you know he became a rebel you know as a as a communist extremist he thought of himself as a revolutionary um so many ways he sold out I mean he absolutely became part of the Canadian establishment not even the middle class establishment I've been stretching the middle class here um you get part of the upper-middle class now shall we say and he really did become a nationalist and this kind of Pro Canadian demagogue and so on that's that's what he was he was all about so look I mean that's it that this video is already going on long enough I mean for me it's just a reminder about the riddle of how Economic Opportunity and you know maybe resent about lack of Economic Opportunity can be profoundly linked to what you perceive as you know your political identity um and the ethical objections and the ethical motivations that shape your political today
really have in common is that we were deeply uncomfortable with and really rejected the culture we happen to be born into and the cultures were born into or on opposite sides of a border but are very very similar so my girlfriend is from Detroit Michigan and I'm originally from Toronto Canada now the United States is a huge country if my girlfriend had grown up in Texas different kind of thing but Detroit and Toronto we really come from a similar background and what makes it deeper is that we both really rejected and profoundly uncomfortable with that cultural background let me ask you a question why was my own father a Canadian nationalist why did he like and support Canada so much and if I had been born into some of the advantages in life would my fealty have been kind of bought and sold would I have been way more positive about Canada or would you have been more positive about Detroit so here's what here's what raised that question for me I found a really strange quotation from my father and I was from 1967 I stayed okay so how old how old was my father in 1967 when he said this okay from a little biography newspaper article but my father it says in 1967 he was chose to curate the history of painting and Canada exhibition at Expo 67 so Expo is an international it's paid for by the Canadian government the Party supported international exhibition by then he had already been a curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery and the new brunswick museum and sejong my father had nothing but a BA those opportunities don't exist for our generation people with nothing but a BA he had this SAP and a BA in philosophy not even a BA in our history or NHANES he had a fabulous career handed to him by the Canadian establishment despite the fact that he was a communist despite the fact that he was an eccentric in so many obvious ways he had opportunity after to opportunity handed to him and of course you know the world was a different place economically as well as politically in the 1960s right now he was only 28 years old at that my girlfriend's 26 he'd already had this fabulous career from the minute he finished his BA right now I mean my my mother was earning money in architecture in a fabulous wage she was earning money writing for one of the biggest newspapers in Canada I guess around the time she finished high school but while she was a university student you know she was getting paid real money to go in and write articles for a newspaper again it's not it's not gonna happen today so look I mean not it not at 26 not at 28 not at 36 not at 38 yeah but I mean this is my point I mean in a sense success can be corrosive failure can be corrosive to I really had to ask myself when I lived in a communist country when I lived in Laos because Laos did hand me certain opportunities a certain level of comfort Laos by the way it was a grimy third-world country at that time when I arrived there were there was literally not a single ATM in the whole country not a single cash machine like the the level of technology and comfort by first world standards was low it was tough there were stray dogs in the street everywhere he can attack by dogs but that aside nevertheless okay I was in a situation in Laos or it's like if I sell out if I just become pro-government and pro-establishment within the tiny third-world country I can have a certain level of income and a certain quality of life in a certain level of privilege and I've probably told you this at one point my boss who was a government official a Communist Party official he he said to me like look if you stick with this program to some extent you're above the law like don't don't worry about it you know you know even like and he was saying it because the police would take people in and interrogate them to get bribes out of them or something look look even if you're put in prison like we'll get you out kind of thing and you're above the law here okay um but like I remember thinking like no like even if they paid me ten times as much or hundred times like even if this was real money even if this was real luxury like I could never I could never be kind of a pro I I can't be a pro establishment person I can't be a nationalist for a louse even reported that way more vaguely and I I felt I couldn't be for any country like maybe even if you imagine like a Dubai or something I know a lot of white guys go to Dubai teach English or get a position get it get a get a good career going but I felt for me that was because like my capacity to be a conformist was already shattered by the negative experience of Canada you know what I mean like my experience in Canada is so negative it didn't just turn me against being a conformist and national speak for establishment Canada but it kind of soured me on that or made it impossible for me to conform anywhere in Laos or in Dubai you know and maybe maybe I'm wrong right but like my point is for people like my father and it's it's got to be true for some people in current generation I think it's true you see I don't know if you don't need these guys do you know any young white man who became like successful computer programmers at an early age back during the tech boom you know what I mean like like you know what I mean like they maybe they just finished high school and then went straight into doing computer programming and making a lot of money or maybe a lot of time it's like they did to you of university but then they were making so much money in computer programming or or making websites for the internet you know what I only met a couple times had no university education but he has been able to you know he didn't have an easy life he initially was working as a chef for many years and then he got into computer programming and he made some I don't even know what it was but he made something that earned him a ton of money and he was able to buy this nice place in Florida and basically have an early retirement and he's just living off of those savings so yeah and in effect he he got lucky what right at the time yeah the time that he got involved in what program he created so yeah you know I just I think so I'm especially if that kind of success comes young I think a lot of the time that fosters pro-establishment Pro conformist attitudes whether or not they're nationalist attitudes we're like I mean this is all it is ultimately this shallow it creates the feeling that this whole society is working because it's working for you because it's giving positive opportunities for you yeah yeah so I don't know if he was like that I don't know the economic opportunities for my own father also have made him feel this way but he recognizes how difficult it is for people my age you know neither of my brothers stayed in it this is Detroit so just to be clear this is Detroit is economic disaster I mean it's especially tough food truck yet yeah neither of my brothers were able they didn't want to stay in Michigan there were no opportunities so of course they moved all the way across Missouri because of this even though they had very marketable degrees so you know III think he realizes the devastation of this actual city and also around the country in in the areas surrounding Detroit as well yes a lot of lost economic vibrancy yeah um how that impacts everything how its I mean maybe my mind is just on this for whatever reason but I mean you know many of my my father's friends graduated from high school and were able to get married have kids and have owned a home owned a home stay job then you know you were able to have start this life right out of high school I mean it's it's something that my generation didn't have for my father's generation specifically University tuition not even $500 future transcripts you know there are seeds from my my mom got an education at the same University I want to yeah oh so much cheaper it had it had gone up by like 40 times basically you know like well wait there's the cost but then there's the value of the diploma when you finished it I mean so for my father in the 1960s having a BA actually opened doors for him and for me you know any job I thought oh you have a bachelor's degree and and what you know it's it's now right in order to get a terrible job yeah I'm not even a job you know anyway yeah I didn't I do I do have extraordinary things about me yes but in Canada there's certainly no no opportunity for me but look you don't I feel what dis satisfies me about Canada politically and culturally is profound and important and real I don't feel that it's in any way like resentment over the fact that I didn't have the kinds of opportunities my father had right but like in a sense what I'm doing here is challenging myself because I'm also acknowledging like okay well what if Canadian Society or any society offered me the kind of unbelievable upward social mobility my father was offered we usually also includes elements like a home you know education social status income homeownership you know it's a joke today even if you're really quite successful as a young person living in Vancouver today is an exam for income it's just gonna go into rent you're gonna be a rent slave your whole life even if you really up quite a good job let's let's say you become a dental hygienist you know it's a high-paid job boring repetitive job yeah what do you think you can buy a house in Vancouver buy a condo in Vancouver maybe you know anyways you know life long your only priority you know whatever you know so I mean the problem here isn't really poverty the problem is opportunity and and lack of opportunity but like what I'm saying and challenging myself and challenging the audience is to what extent you know to what extent do you feel your critique of the society you're born into or even the society you choose to move to to what extent is that really motivated by a kind of resentment and hopelessness or or or the opposite or or opportunity and hope that you happen to have handed to you by these by these circumstances just want to Stevens on one second so you know my my ex-wife's father he was part of this golden generation of computer programmers where nobody needed a bachelor's degree there was so much demand there were so few people who were competent at doing computer programming that whatever straight out of high school all kinds of people were more successful made a lot of money and I had one friend who was really in the last period what we normally call kind of the internet boom the last period where people get ahead with no no BA and and really make a lot of money and then I saw that I saw that disappear where those and with both so with all those people my ex-wife's father and this young man I met in Asia so he was a young white guy from Australia and he got money fast without getting a BA and he started getting corrupted by the lifestyle that he could afford himself as a computer programmer traveling around Asia where the cost of living was even lower so he's earning Australian dollars and he's vacationing in the Philippines and Thailand and then China China became more and more part of his life I mean look it's so fundamentally stupid to say well I own a gold mine I'm making lots of money so all of society is doing fine the system works and like you know obviously I'm using the gold mine as a ridiculous example it's true when I lived in Laos by the way the the single biggest company the single biggest employer was literally a gold mine the economy really the economy really hinged on this one company doing coal mining some people aren't literally gold miners or investors and executives and Goldman kept so it's a real example but what a ridiculous delusion to think this society works or this nation is good or to have these other things Israel and likewise I mean the thing is computer programming is like a gold mine in one sense in that there's there's this fleeting period of opportunity that gold mine in Laos there's no five good years and guess what you run out of gold gold there was this period of time when there was easy money in computer programming and you know it's if you talk to young people in computer program today even a Silicon Valley and stuff it's like well you know it's not minimum wage but no one would say today it's it's an easy way to make a living so what so now now that the gold is gone with the comb so now do you sympathize with the people who are literally on the street of the people who are strong in a survivor say now do you have some kind of criticism of society and again a lot of this comes back to the educational establishment people bankrupting themselves to get a bachelor's degree and then doing what after that you know I look I I have the delusion that my my critique of Canadian society is not based on that kind of personal economic perspective or experience III think it's real but you know I also have that delusion as you know this is something that we connect on there are reasons why the economic opportunities aren't so so great and you know we're at where I grew up but part of it is North America was this land of opportunity for colonists and you got to see how like the culture there's so many things that I don't like about American culture but part of it is that it's a result of colonization like you know you've talked about as we've been going around Taiwan how the actual buildings were put up with such speed and you know they wanted to build as fast as possible we just went to the port city of Geelong and you know got to see how it's been run down after you know this initial period of economic opportunity and optimism and that to me mirrors you know Detroit and many of the surrounding City owes maybe maybe like Columbus or you know different places in Ohio Illinois you know at one point these tons of structures were put up and oh there's gonna be so much opportunity here and in the Detroit area it's good with car manufacturing now that that's no longer something that's no longer an actual opportunity what is there you know it's it's like you say with the with the Gold Line there was this rush this gold rush in Detroit and then now there's what what is there to hold on to and you know I remember we we had this discussion sorry-sorry I found you know just trying to form my thoughts here but when we were in Brussels you know I remember we were walking around he were talking about Europeans tend to be more like care about their hometown and you know you're making this connection between like Europeans who even though their hometown isn't you know a very economically vital place they still feel some connection to it like this is actually my ancestral home this is what I want to hold on to and you know maintain the traditions of but what is what is there in Michigan for my family I mean as soon as the factory closes or something what are you trying to build there what's the connection there was an economic opportunity but then when that's gone what's the meaningful connection what is it you're trying to build in that time unlike someone whose whole family is from a certain town in Switzerland or Iceland like hey we have a thousand years of heritage here and we're trying to build on it right great grandparents grew up well my great grandparents across the ocean and in Norway England Germany I mean what connection do I really have to Michigan other than similar climate similar krabi climate in some places that my you know relatives were from so yeah I mean you don't have this this deep connection to the land unlike I mean or any institutions or something that's because I know the reason why I'm there is because of you know this opportunity from wiping out the native people I mean the native people actually have this connection to their land and it's now gone because it's all been ruined by white people coming in and changing the landscape completely changing the you know natural landscape - it's not just it's not just cities going up it's like deforestation changing of actual waterways and how dams and so so yeah yeah I mean I'm just kind of saying like what is there um holding people to North America know if it's not a NASA ancestral homeland if there's no real life if if the gold mine has been deprived or depleted of its gold yeah what is there now well so I just say we can Melissa and I have all this stuff in common but Toronto downtown Tehran I didn't come from one the suburbs like I was walking distance from the banking districts I was really down I was walking distance from Parliament and the University campus I walked everywhere dented Ron I'm not from the suburbs in downtown Toronto everyone was just there to make money and get out you know and like you felt like you were in a place that had this kind of merely economically instrumental value that it had no meaning in itself and on the country was very common to hear people say about Toronto you know they were gonna move they were gonna get out as soon as they could they were gonna move back to Whistler British Columbia or the East Coast like you know as soon as they get this money they're out cuz in interesting I don't know if people still feel that way what's wrong today but it was seen as this kind of dark bleak awful city gets your money to get home and anyway regardless of it whether or not individuals feel that way about Detroit so look right now we're having this conversation in Taiwan and Taiwan is basically in a period of economic boom there's basically zero unemployment here we're in an industrious steel manufacturing town we're actually in an industrial district we walk past huge factories and smokestacks every day here this is the opposite extreme from Detroit Detroit is a landscape of empty and abandoned factories and this is you know this this is a this is an economically and industrially booming place and Taiwan I mean this is more parallel to what I was saying about last before it offers you Melissa you know a certain level of you know economic yeah okay that's a good way to put it offers you a middle-class quality of life if you'll just sign up for it if you'll just conform um I mean again we're both both just kind of too old to get swept up in this girl into 26 thank you it's really not everyone thinks my girlfriend's young compared to me but 26 is already old she's already burdened with a lot of the you know sorrows of life but you know we're not swept up in this like Oh Tom Juan's the most wonderful place or something we're not becoming nationalists or enthusiasts or uncritical supporters of Taiwan just because it offers us that and I think we're both very skeptical about the nature of the opportunity and we're both skeptical about what we'll lose if we sell out and take that opportunity and commit to it you know but no one's offering me a position as a as a [ __ ] museum curator these were really elite positions being offered my father we'd he had nothing but a BA in philosophy and he published insane articles in communist magazines and newspaper me no I'm sorry I was just looking it up but stuffs on the internet now log has been digitized whoa you know the the the level of privilege and opportunity that was handed him and you know he was he was offered you know scholarships get a PhD and all this stuff he's offered all these these opportunities as a young man that he very much took for granted and in some ways of course in his own mind he thought you know he became a rebel you know as a as a communist extremist he thought of himself as a revolutionary um so many ways he sold out I mean he absolutely became part of the Canadian establishment not even the middle class establishment I've been stretching the middle class here um you get part of the upper-middle class now shall we say and he really did become a nationalist and this kind of Pro Canadian demagogue and so on that's that's what he was he was all about so look I mean that's it that this video is already going on long enough I mean for me it's just a reminder about the riddle of how Economic Opportunity and you know maybe resent about lack of Economic Opportunity can be profoundly linked to what you perceive as you know your political identity um and the ethical objections and the ethical motivations that shape your political today