AR&IO (The original concept & future of the channel)

melissa is just off camera here and this
is a story I started to tell you I think a few different times when we were on the bus or getting on off an airplane and something interrupted it or the type of conversation change the story of how I first got the idea for a RI Oh even for that specific name active research in a foreign opinion and it relates to some kind of parallel issues and themes in my life that are ongoing now and that were ongoing like whatever 10 years ago and more so had a period of my life that culminated at Cambridge and Oxford in England and for those of you don't know Cambridge and Oxford although they look far apart on a map relative to the size of England which is just not that big a country there was a direct bus going from Cambridge to Oxford and had like a catchy name like the gx7 that was this special express bus from Cambridge Oxford that really made it very quick to get back and forth to new places and my ex-wife and I like partly because we were we were cognizant with this bus we actually moved to a town that actually made it even quicker and easier to get between the two so earlier we were living in in downtown Cambridge itself then we moved to this place called st. Nia's that was on the bus line and you could really quickly add to Cambridge or Oxford so I had a period of time and I gave some lectures and was talking to people and hobnobbing with people and tied with doing applications for getting in and doing a PhD in Buddhist studies right so I don't even want to bother estimating the year obviously this before my daughter was born this is before a lot of things happened but it already had years of experience in the field as a scholar in Buddhism I already had articles and publications and I just given these lectures and you know the lecture I gave at Oxford especially the professor he'd been hosting a series of lectures and this stuff you can verify the internet he really said like wow like that was better then these other people PhD is giving lectures he praised it in very hard terms very high terms he said that he said that there was more content in that one leg than they have in one of their normal semester long courses and stuff like that you know and it's true I mean in some ways I was there and it was like look I'm just back from like Cambodia Laos Thailand India and I have so much to say I've done so much research in terms of the dry books and textual study so much in terms of life experience so much there was a humanitarian work in politics but also yeah I mean you know you know both lived experience direct cultural experience and book reading like to give an example this is just the kind of thing that normally isn't there in academia I talked about at one point the lecture this wasn't written in the in the text I put up a map and I talked about the fact that most people misinterpret the map because they hadn't walked in real life in person on the banks of the Mekong River at both high tide and low tide and know that the map changes that historically to understand the trade routes you had to know that at when the water was low there was a kind of you know there was really a lot for me to share you know obviously on things like Strait philosophy of mind ethics you know Buddhist philosophy per se but also on things like the history of slavery and trade the history of civilizations in Southeast Asia the politics I had so much to put on the table and kind of everyone around me in that environment was picking up on it was kind of excited to meet me people would anthropology people in Asian Studies people but his studies whatever um but of course it became obvious oh look it was obvious to me before I got there that I would never get into a master's degree or PhD program or you know both as a package normal what you're looking for is where they say look get the MA and get the PhD here's how it's gonna work I would never get into that kind of path or package academically unless someone wanted to bend the rules for me and what I found there and the reason for that is my first university degree is in political science so you normally can't get into a degree in Buddhism or Asian Studies so unless they they say okay you'll do this transitional program now on the other hand have that happens all the time so even my ex-wife she got one of those transitional deals I think her silver first degree was in literature and they said okay you're going to make the transition from and anthropology by taking some courses we're gonna set you up we're gonna do the x y&z so that is an exception of the rules but it is a commonly made exception the rules and I was looking for someone to recognize the work I'd done formally and informally say okay now before I even got there I realized how the method that was going to be and then I spent some time there and I realized that even without people bending the rules like if you took the narrow path of applying on paper that even that was going to be impossible for me I've never seen that before okay I guess I'm lying I guess I have seen that before but it's really sickening when in academia the level of prejudice and awe Stila t is so high that you cannot even get the application like you can't get the physical paper to fill out to apply for a perk that won't let you have it right like there's this level of like secrecy and skullduggery where they're um they're basically sabotaging your ability to even be a candidate right not that's very different from rejecting you later on like okay you applied we evaluate you and guess what only ten people win and you aren't one of the ten but of course one of the reasons they're doing that is that they're afraid they might only have eight applicants so you might be one of the best ten no matter what even if they don't want you where they know you know they know that if you're allowed to apply fair and square you have a chance or maybe you're even maybe you're even likely to win so they're they're undermining they're cheating their own systems and like I had this kind of experience where I couldn't even get could even operations and I remember talking about that with people and you got this whole range of kind of denial istic reactions most of the people inside the system wanted to believe in the system once in a while you got someone who was truly genuinely cynical but there was a lot of phony cynicism I remember one guy getting very angry at me and saying to me no like you must be hallucinating and paranoid like this is not possible like the whole system is based on real merit and so on and I just said to myself wait wait let's let's talk about your case what happened to you how did you get in here and we went through it step by step and yeah people open doors ribbon people made exceptions if people wait accommodations and people said hey oh I'm gonna fill out this form for you and get you money get you back in from actually a bank in this case we're gonna get you a bursary we're gonna do this screen to that I said in my case I can't I literally can't get in the door I can't get the meat in I can't get the application so both were true I mean I've already mentioned there was a lot of positive response to me I made a big impression on people I was very warmly received in a lot of different forms including stuff like anthropology which is not technically my field but I have a lot to say about anthropology especially in the area I've been doing research I knew a lot about those travel peoples and their histories and cultures there was a lot of positivity come back a lot of positive recognition but then on the other hand formally and informally a lot of people were telling me it's hopeless don't even apply don't even waste your time don't think about it both Cambridge and Oxford and I talked to other people too like the University of London which has so as and you know different answers in different cases but this is again so at that time the next step in the thought process is look what is it I would want to do if I got in what is the project I would want to do if I actually got an MA or PhD and the reality is I can probably do that now without getting an American the reality probably is getting the MA or PhD would only help to some extent towards that goal towards getting that so I wrote up a proposal for a for publication a magazine I guess and it was a publication that one man could do alone so this I don't know if this is before YouTube existed or was just before I was aware of YouTube myself or before YouTube had expanded his best-ever I didn't think about YouTube YouTube didn't exist for me subjectively at this time I remember first becoming aware of YouTube when I was when I was living in Cambodia the last time he must have already existed just wasn't part of my life anyway partly cuz I was living in parts of the world where the internet was very slow like you know you could do email but to load a video or something I didn't even was sorry I didn't try to do in general so you know the idea was to do publication that in some ways provided in the 21 century what the 19th century had and the 20th century was lacking in Buddhist studies in Asian Studies there were a bunch of really brilliant and original publications that normally were the product of one hard-working man there was one I remember where the editor was actually a British soldier deployed in the barracks of India so he was part of the British military occupation of India and there was no internet but just to the British postal service he was sending out wire transfers and letters and stuff and people were saying example him and he was putting together and collating and publishing like the news forum were then new discoveries in archaeology anthropology study of Buddhism history you know things being translated from Sanskrit in English for the first time this hoping done on paper obviously a great expense and this guy had no academic library or institution behind him so it was aware of examples like this back when the work was a lot harder to do and in some ways was less rewarded and less rewarding because you could reach only a very small audience I'd spent a lot of time in archives looking at these kinds of things I'd seen I'd seen the substance that the progress of Buddhist studies and Asian Studies was was made of back in the 19th century small numbers of extraordinary people like this and by the way the process not being peer reviewed so you get you know brilliant and sometimes flawed letter is coming for people I remember one that was a letter from a soldier who had himself participated in piling up and burning Buddhist manuscripts so you've been involved in looting burning and destroying but it's manuscripts on behalf of the British Empire and writing in describing that and what was going on and putting some stuff it's not peer-reviewed right it's not it's also not journalism but like now you look at when if you look at 100 years later you'll wow it's so valuable that someone got that telegram or got that wire or that letter and took it and put it into this you know somewhat scholarly magazine then the other thing that I saw in those magazine 19th century again without peer review was really just making a survey of what the new publications were like oh when you book came out of this new book a minute so put together this PowerPoint presentation saying look this is what I do you know this is what I want to do it doesn't take zero funding gonna take very very little money and pointed out you can put together a list of what are the new publications one of the new publications on Myanmar new publications on Thailand Pavitra you can be looking at what's happening in these places around the world every month or every three months you can be looking at what is the new scholarship about Asia being published in Russia right English isn't the only language of scholarship Russian German Italian there are a few others to check not that much you can be doing a survey even if you're just one man working alone that's really providing something valuable for all the people concerned and there is an interesting kind of second second punch there's a one-two punch here so that's kind of the positive proposals look this is something wonderful we can do all right and there were other specifics to it like I pointed out hey there are academic conferences happen around the world some on Buddhism some one Asian Studies some one politics be something like the 12th annual conference of Thai studies happens in Thailand and most people never even found out what they missed like even just to have someone write up a brief summary of this guy presented this paper on this topic here's what happened if you just do news reporting on some of the academic events it normally is possible to get the whole essay whether or not we would publish the whole essay to have a brief summary of the most interesting things going on because if you don't have somebody doing that then people put in all this effort to put to perform present a conference paper like five people see it 5 5 to 15 people's it and then it disappears and like one guy like me I was the one guy going and spending the time of the archives and finding those things around Wow you know oh wow I found this obscure paper by Volker Grabowski dealing with this issue in linguistics that has connections the history and politics and matters and I knew I was like the only I was one of them I was a tiny tiny fraction of the people who would care about that and who should know about that finding out about that paper and understanding its implications so I saw a big positive opportunity there that's one punch the other punch oh god no but try to find another punch was the negative side of it the other punch is pointing out oh god Sarah a rare case of this I've really lost her train of thought the other punch was was pointing on something something really a negative about this situation the very middle maybe will come to me a bit later so I I did a search this is also part of the the transformation of the world by Google Google made it possible to do a keyword search through a big body of literature pretty easily Google Scholar or what have you I was able to use Google to search like all the Asian Studies academic publications and all the Buddhist studies academic occasions and you search for like a word that's the equivalent in Buddhism to the Pope right the leader of the Buddhist the Buddhist church in Thailand has a particular title or particular name and yet look for other words like slavery you know and you'd be able to show look all this paper is being published but the level of mutual ignorant between Buddhism and politics Asian Studies and politics or academia and political reality point out do you think we could do a similar search of Catholic publications and have no mention of the Pope like his name doesn't even appear once in a 10 or 15 year period do you think we could have you know any Christian or Muslim literature that we're slavery just doesn't appear there's no discussion and you know there were a couple other keywords on this there was a one-two punch that where the the second punch was hey and the other thing is what you guys are sleeping on what your whatever one is participating in a kind of conspiracy in Buddhism and Asian Studies would have you is is burying and avoiding you know political reality so that was that proposal at that time and what's been going on in the last five years of my life is kind of parallel but post Buddhist Melissa you've heard me asking this question a lot lately where I asked in an open way okay it seems to be impossible for me to get a master's degree and PhD and not because I have low grades because of what's wrong with Canadian academia there's really no program for me to even apply for there's a lot wrong with the system in the classes whenever I have high grades have a new degree from University of Victoria and Asian Studies I should be able to progress to an MA and PhD in Asian Studies but I can't so I won't so then the next step is to ask what is what is it I would do after having an MA or PhD if I could do anything and then what's really stopping me could I do that now anyway without getting the America giotto how much does it really help me to have the MA page to do that and the truth is probably the best thing I could do after getting an MA or PhD would be to come on YouTube and do something like AR I hope to do this kind of you know survey of what's going on in in in politics not just in Asia for me of the Asia Europe North America and the links between them and Asia by the way includes India includes Cambodia not just China and Japan but to try to take on as much of Asia as I can and obviously the the Muslim world in the core of Asia a huge amount of work just just to cover what's happening in Iran and Iraq that's going to be the real challenge for me is budgeting my time so I can cover as much of Asia as possible as well as Europe Europe in North America and like the original idea with doing this in in Buddhist studies in Asian Studies the main benefit is also how it's gonna transform me over time I really don't like what would happen to me in most academic programs when you think about what I'm gonna have to learn I'm gonna have to do with my time for six years maybe getting an MA and a PhD what it is I'm gonna be studying and what it is I'm gonna be forgetting what is gonna be doing and not doing with my brain it's actually pretty dark path for me to get on to say it's a waste of my time this is another statement it could really have a lot of negative impacts in my life whereas doing this kind of systematic survey and analysis not just need your commentary but really meaningful analysis of what's going on in politics and history as it unfolds that to me a sudden I think is going to transform you in in a really positive way so the name active research and informed opinion has really been with me from the time I gave up on Buddhism as a religion is over five years ago because I remember that time thinking okay so now that brit ism doesn't have the role in my life that it used to have what would that publication be what would it be that i would want to do you know with or without a page in education what is it really that you know i'd want to sink my own resources of time into and so on and at that time I really thought okay you know what it is the the real core of this is about active research and informed opinion and then at that time the problem was I was still thinking about a magazine you still thinking about paper you know and that's hard to do alone and definitely the strength of YouTube if it's my full-time job if I really give it my all I do think that that concept and what I want to do I can adapt that to cinema here and I can do that as pretty much a daily upload schedule but more importantly their daily uploads based on reading research report me when I'm learning from academic and non-canonical resources on an ongoing basis or I'm not happy that's what I hate about mostly journals I'm not just repeating kind of hackneyed talking points that haven't changed since I was the university student myself so many of these guys you know Jake Uighur and jimmy dore it really is a broken record it's the same the same sense of smug superiority again and again and again they're just taking bits and pieces of things from the news and never challenging themselves and never learning new things they're just reinforcing their sense of smoke superiority whether it's over Donald Trump or you know whoever is the butt of their jokes for this week I do think the other thing that really makes this important it's not it's not about talking ultimately it's about learning for me is the potential that I'm going to be pushing myself not just to make better use of the background I have in a research and political analysis but to be really extending the frontiers of of what's known into what known as history unfolds and also as new and important research publications come out about political history from the past