The most offensive video I have ever made.

once in a while a record a video that I
think is so deeply offensive to my audience that I'm really not sure if I'm going to end up sharing it with the public uploading it when I start speaking of the camera life is unfair life is unequal in many videos in the past I've emphasized that when we're dealing with the shallow skin deep world of beauty weight loss diets fashion acting you know going to auditions as an actor we're dealing with a part of life on earth that is maybe especially unfair that's maybe especially judgmental about things that none of us have the power to change I wish I could tell you that when we get into the life of the mind or the life of the Spirit that life becomes more equal certainly when I was a child that was a delusion that was very precious to me I wanted to believe that in terms of intelligence we were all born equal that related to things I was taught in school that related to things I was taught by television and going through you know a government school system it's a very convenient sort of myth to live by one of the very few concepts I can say I inherited from my father that was really wise and useful is the concept of attitudinal learning we don't just learn facts we learn attitudes where I differ from my father is the emphasis I place on the way in which attitudes tend to prevent us and preclude us from learning new facts from having new experiences in life I was just looking at yet another channel from yet another person who went to Chiang Mai Thailand and went to Laos went to places that have been a big part of my life and this person is still living with the delusion that what the internet needs is yet another video titled what I eat in a day in Chiang Mai Thailand high-carb low-fat vegan etc as if the question of what a high-carb low-fat vegan would eat in Chiang Mai Thailand is a mystery that nobody knows the answer to and that all of us on the internet are waiting for this information this is the most over publicized over documented question ever to be answered in the internet and how many people were ever interested answer that question the first place it can't be that many so it's a niche market with a niche market so saturated but that's not what this video is about i really wish i were shizune enough to make a video right now saying that this person who's on permanent vacation in Thailand I think more than a year long vacation in this case i wish i could say if only this person would enroll in language classes learning the thai language you're learning the language or cambodian or something or hmong many different languages there or burmese shan if only this person enrolled in a language course if only this person volunteered to do humanitarian work they would have a much more meaningful experience entirely in this part of asia but the reality is if you're on the ground and you meet the people who do that the vast majority of people who enroll in language classes do not have any kind of meaningful experience or any kind of meaningful engagement they don't learn anything from it the vast majority of people who do humanitarian work especially when that humanitarian work is directly linked to a vacation basically holiday humanitarian work learn nothing from the experience etc etc the shallowness that people bring to those opportunities tends to totally preclude any possibility of learning something having transformative experience are just just gaining new information asking worth all questions and coming up with new answers while they're out there and this is the strange thing about you know attitudes as opposed to facts as opposed to questions of raw innate intelligence as opposed to questions of the capacity to learn I'll always remember that I got off a bus in lung / bong northern Laos and there was a young American woman who was there as a tourist alone she was a single female tourists and she had just overheard the conversation I was having with my girlfriend of time this is a long-term girlfriend she was a Canadian like myself she wasn't a loud person but on the bus I was talking to my girlfriend about history and politics of Laos you know the history of that area and what have you and so for whatever reason this this American tourists you know her ears pricked up and she got interested oh look you know do you mind if I talk with you as we got off the bus do you mind if I go along with you because you wanted to learn more about this place she had bought a very expensive airplane ticket to visit and that she knew nothing about so immediately after getting off the bus we did something that at that time was very common for tourists to do we walked up the little mountain that's in the middle of the city of Loompa bong it's really a hill people call it a mountain whatever we walked up to the top of it and at that time there was the rotating bracket for a large anti-aircraft gun a machine gun used to shoot down aircraft uh I knew it was going to be there before I got there so I wasn't shocked to see it and I knew of course the history of the Wars of the area so when we got to this thing and we did while walking up me and my girlfriend the stranger we're talking about politics and history of the area and the you know the tourists had questions my girlfriend had questions and I had answers and whatever it was I was a very unequal conversation it wasn't like there were all three people that had that kind of background so i was doing most of the answering and the two women were doing asking most of the questions and we got to the top and my girlfriend who knew to expect to see this also she said something oh you know there it is oh yeah you know he said oh yeah right and this tourist had no idea what this sort of strange machine was the strange attraction I don't know if it's still there by the way it may be still there may be that the government said to remove it at long last and I said yeah it's a it's a Russian anti-aircraft bracket it's a rotating bracket for a you know a giant russian-made machine gun as I recall maybe misremembered there were a few stamped in letters you know tooled in letters into the into the metal that still reflected the fact that it was Russian of Russian origin to distant memory now uh and this American tourist was completely shocked and astounded and she asked what do you mean why would the Russians have built a military installation here whose airplanes were the shooting at I looked at her and I said do you not know that your country the United States of America dropped more bombs on this country on Laos then they dropped on Germany in the whole of World War two do you not know that louse is either the most heavily bombed country in the history of the world or at least in the top three and how those are debated statistics the amount of munitions dropped on Laos is absolutely unbelievable and when you look into details it's very hard to calculate because the United States operated so many separate legally separate covert Air Force's primarily ought to be saen thailand other drunk other bombs were dropped by airplanes coming from the ocean flying over Vietnam but it's not the case you can just add up the bombs dropped by one air force there were many many many different air forces legally and jurisdictionally all to all of them of course under the American umbrella bombing the hell out of this incredibly poor remote country that was not a threat to anyone it was not even a threat to Thailand which is right next door so you know I walked up the hill with this girl obviously we had this very memorable moment at the top of the hill by this giant machine gun bracket and then he we at least continue talking as we walk down the hill I think we parted ways with her at a cafe or something cafe or restaurant went off to some vegetarian restaurant or what have you um doesn't matter she didn't learn anything from what I told her at that time I mean I had all kinds of facts memorized I mean I right now this is from memory but I don't remember I knew about how many bombs I knew what year the bombing started and when it stopped and I knew about you know the French presence and the American presence of the Holy Spirit was all fresh in my mind I probably knew the dates of you know a lot of the legal agreements surrounding the war and all kinds of stuff doesn't matter and you know I'm not saying I burden her with that stuff but you know at that time the depth and variety of facts I had at my disposal was tremendous but she did not have an attitude of wanting to know of wanting to learn of wanting to get out of that experience anything I don't even know she probably had some idea of Lao culture in the same kind of shallow way that tourists to go to Hawaii often have a shallow idea about indigenous Hawaiian culture like literally you know women dancing in revealing attire Riley what she came there to see what she expected Lao culture to be or why she ever went to Laos is hard for me to guess but obviously had had nothing to do with the political reality of what that country was at that time and nothing to do with the fact that the United States had a budget in the millions or billions that totally reshaped the history and fate of that culture that country the culture of what it is today etc um the people who choose to go to Thailand now and to completely ignore that it's a military dictatorship it's a military dictatorship that destroyed a system of elected democracy people who go to Laos and have no the fact that it's a communist dictatorship the problem is not access to fax the problem is not even knowing or not knowing facts the problem is a matter of attitude that you know it's not within my power to change and it's very difficult you know both philosophically and practically once you get into questioning what it is that changes people or that allows people to make that kind of change why is it that two different guys can do exactly the same gig of humanitarian work and one of them sees the social problems and another doesn't the others just totally blind to one of them learned so much learn so much about that place loans learned so much about himself changes as a person and has deep and meaningful connections with other people in that locale that change them and for someone else it's just a job and they feel none of that and you know obviously they may do things to amuse themselves they may go swimming or enjoy themselves would have you I mean really living in the field you see that again and again and again and even though it may seem pinal by contrast contrast to the humanitarian worker contrast of learning languages to the process of learning language can really change you can change you in ways you don't even anticipate just being on a university campus just taking the same course naturally I can sit through lectures and has a totally different meaning for me than it has for the person sitting next to me and for some people it's nothing and for some people it's deeply emotionally effective I had one course we were talking about massacres that took place in China and down to some details where it's not just that people killed each other acts of cannibalism acts of revenge gruesome brutal human reality that were little facets of you know communist revolution communal violence in in China you know there were points at which the only people who are getting emotionally choked up or emotionally involved or me and the professor no I noticed that mean it's possible there was someone at the back of the class but I doubt it was a small classroom and by that point the course I knew most of the students and there are students who are sitting there checking their Facebook on their mobile phone you just don't give a damn any of there are students in the middle who are kind of this is mildly interesting for them but they'd rather be at home watching reruns of Seinfeld on TV or something and is arranged there but what is that what is the difference in attitude between me and another student that class that makes me take that seriously and leads me to learn something much more than mere facts and you know obviously in that case that Professor some professors don't care but that particular professor of that course he really did care he really was connected to that history in a way that's much more than factual I made this video partly because i have always since the start of my channel i have always received email from people who themselves are in thailand or somewhere on that spectrum living something like the permanent vacation left though i have always received email from people asking me for advice about what they should do to lead a more meaningful life given that they're already in Thailand or given that they've already bought their airplane ticket or planned their six months or their one year in Southeast Asia I get messages from people who I don't know asking me how can they be a better person and it's not fake that's the realest thing there is and you think about the kind of humility and poise and self this is what process brought them to write me that email you know today in the 21st century how many people ever talk to a priest that way how many people ever talk to a religious leader and ask that kind of question like what do you think I should do to be a better person given these circumstances and a lot of them are hoping alas all right back saying here's a humanitarian project you can volunteer for here's a library you can go to here's a course you can sign up for whether they may be thinking about a language course they maybe think about a meditation course or you know a Buddhist monastery that has a course but it's philosophy they may be thinking about some other experience everything about going kayaking I mean oh come on let's let's be real they may be hoping I give them something more entertaining to do but sure some of those people want to roll up their sleeves and wash the feet of the poor or roll up their pant legs and get out in a rice field and see what it's like to plant rice on a farm in third world conditions let me tell you if you do it barefoot there are leeches depends where you get you can get leeches on your ankles working on those working in those fields and you get used to it too um anyway um but the truth is I mean I find it very very hard to give advice to people where I don't know them I don't mean that in a profound and personal sense but where I don't know their attitudes I don't know what attitudes they are bringing to the game because those attitudes will really profoundly shape their experience and it will preclude them from learning some things and it will even preclude them from perceiving some things what problems they see what problems they seek to solve and what kind of a process they go through as they change as individuals and as they seek to change the world and make the world a better place that is just a very very tough call by email over the Internet if I don't really know you so that's where I'm going to wrap up this video all you people have written to me I don't know how many of you are still with my channel are still watching over the years um I appreciate you know those questions you sent me that the realest questions in the world but that's the realest answer I can give there are just so many people you know where literally you know there's no way there's no way i can recommend that you repeat the mistakes I made in life and there's no way i can recommend that you even do the things that I thought were we're wonderful or meaning in my life because I don't know you