What is the most Conservative thing you've ever done? (Or said… in your life.)

all right I think this is an exercise
that's kind of meaningful for you and you and you to do on your own sitting at your own computer or make your own YouTube video in response to this one I think it's actually meaningful to reflect in your own life and ask yourself what is the most conservative thing I have ever done or said and ask yourself also what's the most left-wing thing I've ever done is that and this is not merely meaningful because it's a reflection on Who am I and what's the meaning of my life it's meaningful also because it forces us to reflect on what is this political category called conservative what does that mean now on 2019 I don't think it means the same thing in 2019 that it meant in 1999 and I think right now the very concept of what it is to be a conservative it's really quite unstable it's really quite volatile and shifting even if people who are like political insiders within that category you know they may not have any clear plan or vision of what this is supposed to be or become in the future but that that can make it all the more unstable right oh I don't consider myself a conservative I would never describe myself as conservative but I know there are reasons why other people sometimes describe me as conservative and it's not because like I'm in the middle of a political movement where people share the the ideology of john sack hearts capitalism there are props you gotta stop shared a sign for post-capitalist up yes comrades money isn't even real it's imaginary we're destroying the biosphere something that's real for money something that's imaginary that makes zero sense [Music] you know jeonse a car is like the bad stereotype of the ante anti-capitalist fool the last time I saw that guy he was wearing sneakers like Nike sneakers brand name sneakers but he had covered up the logo with the words and the caption so you know when you show up at an event and everyone is like so far on the left wing that they're like degrees separated from from communism and in some cases they're overtly Cometh yeah in some contexts people perceive me as a conservative anyway that the topic of this video came up I was having a sincere and somewhat deep conversation with JJ McCullough about what is the meaning of the word conservative I said you know exactly this way I challenge it when you reflect on your own life do you have a story do you have an anecdote we think yeah that was the most conservative thing and he did he had he had a story one came to mind so the word conservative still means something you know what I mean if we're fighting on your life you can come up with all that that's gonna indicate to you that maybe even just implicitly maybe just in an unexamined way you still have a strong sense of what the word conservative means and maybe in your case it's something you did you know in a kind of spontaneous sir or unplanned way anyway Jigme colas got to make his own video telling that story it's not my story to tell us it's a good anecdote though um for me reflecting on that you know what came to mind was this bizarre situation when I was living in Cambodia doing social science research and at that time I was a member of the Buddhist faith and I would describe myself actively as an Orthodox tera vaada Buddhist and a lot of people here in the decadent West imagined that Buddhism is a tremendously liberal and liberating religion well it is if you were born Muslim if you were born Muslim and you convert to tear about of Buddhism you'd find it very liberal and liberating no doubt probably if you were born conservative Jewish conservative Catholic would have you however the religion itself is in many ways fundamentally conservative as even the adjective Orthodox might suggest to you and I was a scholar in the religion I was studying the ancient texts and I had the feeling a feeling I still can't quite shake that most of what was wrong and bad with the religion things that had crept in afterwards later historical accretions or corruptions and that you know if the religion could kind of clean up its act [Laughter] yeah not gonna make this into a video about Buddhism but I big-spending this is the context for for why in this sense in this anecdote I said it did the most conservative thing it ever did in my life so living in Cambodia I'm pursuing a combination of humanitarian work and research and it's including at this time oh and also languages in history and politics all that stuff too but at this time I'm earning my money doing research in the humanitarian sector and there's a new client announced at the firm's it's a for-profit company doing research in the nonprofit sector tricky business the new client is Mary Stopes well if you don't know the name Mary Stopes the worst stereotypes you could possibly have about 19th century eugenics and racism all of the like conservative fear-mongering about Planned Parenthood all the stuff that's [ __ ] about Planned Parenthood it's literally true of Mary Stopes and she took these crazy theories and prejudices of 19th century eugenics and she brought them into the 20th century let me tell we literally have you know evidence of Mary Stopes writing letters to Adolf Hitler for approving of Adolf Hitler approving of them because of his eugenics that were and racism we have tones and tones of her explaining her insane you know racial theories and these theories they really did her people you know she specifically endorsed um you know kind of slow-motion genocide by sterilizing men with x-rays you know having x-rays intentionally put on the testicles to sterilize them and when I was doing research on Canada's native people Canada's First Nations or American Indians whatever you want to say you know I've read accounts of that being done of men being sterilized through exactly these racist eugenic policies those were government policy primarily in the westernmost provinces the two problems is furthest west some very interesting history but these were influential ideas the worst kind of proto Nazi I mean and she was an elitist a lot of her theories about abortion and birth control were all about repressing and suppressing poor people and she actually I mean in a sense she was worse than Adolf Hitler because she actually wanted to divide up everyone in the population she wanted to classify the population of England and give them a grade for how good their DNA was like a1 a2 a3 b1 beaten she actually wanted a social hierarchy of who was allowed to breed and how much and this kind of thing she wanted forced breeding of the best people and forced sterilization there were people this is [ __ ] the nightmare or client for me in every way all right I mean I'm an orthodox terribad a Buddhist at least in my own mind you know genetically and ancestrally I'm Jewish I'm not a member of the Jewish religion so my family has a direct connection to the horrible history of you know genocide 'el eugenics theories of this kind and I'm Canadian I'm from Canada I grew up in the ashen remains of the tragedy of Canada's own slow-motion genocide that much included these these same British Empire eugenics theories and themes and you know I'm at the office when this comes in okay the new the new project is this and we're gonna have I'm gonna have a small meeting that's why were there for people to talk about this new this new client this new project and I go through the the internet really quick cuz I've got a double you know this isn't something I like a studied intention like going through the okay I better double-check what I think I know about Mary Stopes this foundation and it's you know history of eugenics say I think I went to archive.org and you know I'm looking at like the act like it you know are digitized archive photograph of the the letter she wrote a to Hitler all this horrible stuff out of her personal life and horrible racist theories new you're looking at you know like a photograph of the first printing whether you're seeing the real document good you know I go to this meeting and this is this is the most conservative thing I've ever done said look guys I'm an Orthodox Tara betta books okay I see my future in my career as being a scholar in that religion as doing humanitarian work in that religion as working with Buddhist monasteries working with Twitter sucks and this stuff you know like this is what I see if my future okay if this company is gonna do a project its Mary Stopes foundation well you know a name Mary Stopes that's directly linked to eat off his book you know it's directly linked to eugenics and racism and it's not just abortion as a vague concept here you know this this is really loaded um my name can't be on ok I can't have my name on anything I can't be involved I can't I can't be part of authoring this report or doing this research as I know look I'm not gonna walk out of the room or something I'm not gonna protest not gonna obstruct you but look you guys you have enough researchers in this company assign somebody else do it because my name can't be and that was that was a real conservative moment and you know everyone the rooms like whoa I mean I remember there was one guy in the room he had a PhD at that time he was cheating on his wife with a Cambodian prostitute it was the most expensive kind of Cambodian prostitute it was a karaoke singer I never met her never saw her within like a week of us having that conversation the prostitute I maybe should phone his house or something somehow his wife discovered the prostitute his wife packed up and left that night destroyed his marriage his whole life was ruined really the particular circumstances were terrible he was living his you know ridiculous self-indulgent life I remember this this guy this guy is sleeping with a prostitute yeah he was that he was an Australian with a PhD in psychology he just finished his PhD if he hadn't actually received the paper yet you know he said well you know Mary stove's you know she approved of Adolf Hitler but that was before and I said to him before what before mine cops I wasn't I wasn't laughing then yeah so you know I've made a video already stating my view on abortion I think I'm a moderate on that I don't think my position on is left-wing or conservative but I've had fan mail from both left wingers and conservatives saying wow you know your approach to the issue something new it's something different it's maybe something positive because right now certainly the United States of America and in other countries too the whole question of whether or not you can have a meaningful discourse between conservative and whatever the other whatever the opposite of conservative is it's very much hung up on this one point of the legality of abortion capitalism capitalism I'm trying to live on not much money but you're even going farther with that in living without money yes I'm just sharing with you so you're helping me live without money yes and you've done a lot of coach surfing like I have it's been over three years now where I haven't paid rent anywhere I've just been traveling around and couchsurfing and what I'm I home base is still the Niagara region Toronto area for me and I have siblings who have let me I stay with them and I try to help boats and but I know sometimes I still feel like a mooch once in a while and you said you've experienced that sooo a little bit maybe maybe feeling like a mooch how do you deal with that I'd say I feel the perception from others that they think were mooches and I don't want them to feel that way it's I think a condition of the way that we are grown up in the community they don't want they don't think so much about the waste the overproduction they want everyone to participate in the community even if we have an overabundance and it's not being shared and there's people's needs not being met that don't have money to have those needs met in that system so yeah I think some people think ok yeah great you're a freegan but you're using my money you're using my couch you're using my food you're using my car I would hope that they would be open to consider it as sharing system so sagen closed the video I do not consider myself a conservative it's not a term I used to describe Who I am or what I do much less what I believe but it's interesting why other people call me a conservative I was on an internet discussion forum voice voice Jack and then I was screamed at and insulted and kicked out by a left winger left winger who was a moderator because as she said my insistence on facts and statistics was implicitly right-wing that was the obstacle II so real quick two topics that came up where I was taking a facts and figures approach to reality other people in the chat just said really lazily oh well you know Japan has a really high suicide rate now of course they were saying this as one step on an ideological staircase they're building their case they're building up to you know a much a much wilder left-wing hypothesis but I'm not interested in the crazy ideological claims now wait wait wait a minute why do you say Japan has a high suicide rate compared to the United States compared to Russia compared to what let's let's do a Google search here let's talk about it what is the rate of suicide Japan and why do you think that where did you get that assumption from right that's what I'm interested in and you know guess what if you do a Google search go ahead you compare the suicide rate in Japan United States and Russia - are your own conclusions but what's interesting to me and that conversation is where did your assumption come from like how did this become a left wing talking point and another conversation I think this is the one where she freaked out and kicked me Elvis and this in this context one or the other I was in the middle of a conversation with people about drug policy well you know what that wasn't even the table conversation someone just jumped on the mic and started justifying some crazy left-wing ideological claims by pointing to Switzerland and Portugal and claiming that drugs have been totally legalized they're claiming that like in Switzerland and Portugal anyone can just buy cocaine and anyone can just buy heroin the same way you buy a tube of toothpaste it's completely legalized and they were claims that's only step one then we get into the next step building this ideological stairway to heaven the next claim is that since this happened crime wait crime rates declined dramatically and the rate of drug use in the rate of drug addiction declined dramatically the people were using less and less cocaine less and less heroin because now it was legal readily available and wait I think we're just a few Google searches away shall we shall we just find out what the actual law and courts and procedures are it's Switzerland and Portugal yeah that was something I've done a little bit of reading about earlier because of a debate that took place on this channel debate that ended my friendship or the person I was debating with so I had an idea you know what just a few Google searches there's some good articles on that and guess what the first step the first step on your stairway to heaven is false so can we talk about that can we talk about the facts good so we live in a time where that trait makes you right-wing or makes you conservative that tells us something about what does the left-wing category mean who do they think they are and it may tell us something indirectly about what is the conservative category who do they think they are or who now in the next 10 years is going to migrate over to that category and start creating a new idea of the future because they have no other place on the political spectrum that they can be people like to disrespect my truth but the fact is that you know my name is I don't know