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The Pete Quiñones Show
Pete and Aaron From Timeline Earth Read The Unabomber's Manifesto - Complete
07:48:49
7 Hours and 49 Minutes PG-13 This is the complete audio of Pete and Aaron from Timeline Earth reading and commenting on Ted Kaczynski's "Industrial Society and Its Future." https://open.spotify.com/show/2TqT6kcwVFRSAQP8BUlH58...
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Transcript1,192 lines
- [00:00]
A
And we're live. What's going on, Aaron?
- [00:04]
B
Same old man. How you been?
- [00:06]
A
Good, man. You want to dig into Uncle Ted here and see what he has to say?
- [00:13]
B
Read me a bedtime story.
- [00:15]
A
Oh, man, this is, this is better than a bedtime story because he's, I mean, he's just a beast, you know, I mean, because I think anyone. I think a lot of people are going to learn some stuff tonight, that's for sure. Because if they haven't read him before, I'm not really sure exactly what they. To be expecting. So let's just do it. All right, I'm. I'll start reading.
- [00:38]
B
Okay. All right, Sounds good.
- [00:41]
A
All right. Introduction. The industrial. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
- [00:50]
B
All right, let me stop you right there. Good. Yes. Yes. So far so good. I'm. I'm 100 on board without even having to go any further. It's.
- [01:07]
A
Yeah, it's, it's so funny how when, when people read that, like, out of context, they think, oh, well, we have air conditioning and we have all this, and that's not what he's talking about. So, yeah, let's keep.
- [01:21]
B
At what cost?
- [01:22]
A
Yeah, really, at what cost? They have greatly increased the life expectancy of those of us who live in advanced countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering in the third world, to physical suffering as well, and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world. It will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in advanced countries.
- [02:11]
B
All right, so this was published in 1995, correct?
- [02:15]
A
Correct.
- [02:15]
B
All right, so I think it doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to say that just these first two sections, he's called it. Yeah. With, with more detail and more insight than I think any of his contemporaries could say. Just in those two sections alone, I'm the.
- [02:40]
A
It doesn't matter who it is. It could be mainstream academia. It could be libertarians, could be the, the elite of the libertarians. Yeah, he's, he's going beyond. He, he's working in the metaphysical, he's working in the physical and in the non physical. So that's, that's the great thing about Reed and Ted, so.
- [03:05]
B
Because when, when he talks about physical suffering, if you look around it, like the average health situation of a lot of people around our age, younger, a little older. What is, what is obesity? What is anorexia? What is, you know, vitamin D deficiency? But physical suffering.
- [03:25]
A
Yeah, yeah, there was. When I was doing research on China for the Tim Pool show, I found out that China has per capita higher diabetes rate than we do. And they don't. They don't have an obesity problem there. They have a malnutrition problem there.
- [03:43]
B
Oh, yeah. Yep.
- [03:45]
A
So let me read a little more here. The industrial technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it may eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable. There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy.
- [04:28]
B
Now, which, which situation do you think we're entering into? It's a tough one.
- [04:35]
A
Well, the problem is, is right now it would appear that it's manufactured. A lot of people would point to it being manufactured. I think he is saying that it's the inevitability. But I don't discount the fact that he's sitting there in Florence right now and going, yeah, of course I knew they were going to manufacture it. That was always a possibility. But the only reason they could manufacture it is, is because by default, all these things are true.
- [05:05]
B
Yeah. Yep.
- [05:08]
A
Let's move on again. Okay. If the system breaks down, the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows, the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be. So if it is to break down, it had best breakdown sooner rather than later. That probably points towards his actions.
- [05:32]
B
Yeah, I mean, if you look at his list of targets, sort of makes sense. One might ask, like, you know, why not, why not send it to like, the CEO's house or, you know, ah, I don't know. I'm sure he, I'm sure he thought it through a lot better than I can do.
- [05:54]
A
Yeah. And wish I could talk to him. Damn. All right. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may or may not make use of violence. It may be sudden, or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We can't predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the measures that those who hate the industrial system should take. In order to prepare the way for revolution against form of society. This is not to be a political revolution. Its objects will be to overthrow not governments, but the economic and technological basis of the present society. I mean, can you discount the fact that the people who are orchestrating everything that's happening right now read this, or this is just part of who they are and that that's the direction that they want to take?
- [07:02]
B
Yeah. I don't know if I connect with his idea that it's not a political revolution because we are in a total political environment right now. Everything is political. I don't know if he took that as a eventuality or not, but it's. It seems like anything. I think if he were alive and free today and still, you know, mail. Still mailing packages, he might. He might have something to say about it not being political. Because at this point, it's like, you know, anything you can latch yourself onto just to drive people to, of course, civic action. You know, I. I don't know if he'd be anti. Anti politics.
- [07:53]
A
Oh, yeah. I mean. Well, think about this. When I was reading that last section, I was thinking about, like, the Green New Deal. The Green New Deal. I was listening. Tom had like, the founder of Greenpeace on. The founder of Greenpeace is like, okay, if they do the Green New Deal, I mean, tens of millions are going to die. And it almost is like they want to strip it down, strip us down, back down into some kind of primitivism. But still with cities, I'm. It. I don't know that they want to do that on purpose. I don't know that they read this or anything like this. But, um, you know, I. It's kind of. It's kind of hard when you. When you read what he was writing and then you see what, you know, what they're doing now to try to find correlations.
- [08:48]
B
Yeah, it's. It's not hard to find correlations just in the. In the first couple paragraphs.
- [08:55]
A
All right, well, we got. Next one is. All right. In this article, we give attention to only some of the negative developments that have grown out of the industrial technological system. Other such developments we mention only briefly or ignore altogether. This does not mean that we regard these other developments as unimportant. For practical reasons, we have to confine our discussion to areas that have received insufficient public attention or in which we have something new to say. For example, since there are well developed environmental and wilderness movements, we have written very little about environmental degradation or the destruction of wild nature, even though we consider that these to be highly important. Okay. So we can move on.
- [09:43]
B
Yeah.
- [09:44]
A
And in your opinion, why does he jump in and just go after the left right after, right after the introduction?
- [09:54]
B
I think because especially at that time and to a certain extent now, the environmental movement was a predominantly left wing movement. You know, you're, he's a, he's a product of the, of the 60s. You know, he probably saw how the environmentalist movement began in earnest and had a lot of, you know, heartfelt true dedication to saving the planet and, and then became commoditized and commercialized and you know, I torn into its ideological components and you know, I think that's why he calls it industrialism and not capitalism, not communism, because industrial industrialism works for both left and right.
- [10:48]
A
Yep. We have a super chat here. I'm going to put it up on the screen so that you can answer the question there. You see the question.
- [10:56]
B
I'm actually in Ace's basement right now. Can't you see the cheap wood paneling?
- [11:00]
A
That's what I figured. That's what I. And there's some really odd stains there that I don't want to know what they are.
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B
So no amount of detergent.
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A
The psychology of modern Leftism Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled society. One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is leftism. So a discussion of the psychology of leftism can serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern society in general. Do you feel like you could have written that last week or this morning?
- [11:36]
B
Timeless.
- [11:39]
A
But what is leftism? During the first half of the 20th century, leftism could have been practically identified with socialism. Today the movement is fragmented and is not clear who can properly be called the leftist. When we speak of leftists in this article, we have in mind mainly socialists, collectivists, politically correct types, feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and the like. I mean, he's our talk about going right to the woke progress, you know, like the woke progressive movement in the modern day.
- [12:11]
B
The commercialized, commoditized version of leftism that, you know, started, started coming to the forefront in the 90s, late 80s, 90s.
- [12:23]
A
So he lists out this and then he goes, but not everyone who is associated with one of these movements is a leftist. What we are trying to get at in discussing leftism is not so much movement or an ideology as a psychological type or rather a collection of related types. Thus what we mean by leftism will emerge more clearly in the course of Our discussion of leftist psychology. This is such good stuff. Even so, our conception of leftism will remain a good deal less clear than we would wish. But there doesn't seem to be any remedy for this. All we are trying to do here is indicate in a rough and approximate way the two psychological tendencies that we believe are the main driving force of modern leftism. We by no means claim to be telling the whole truth about the leftist psychology. Also, our discussion is meant to apply to modern leftism only. We leave open the question. We leave open the question of the extent to which our discussion could be applied to leftists in the 19th early 20th century. The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call feelings of inferiority and over socialization. Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while over social is characteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism. But this segment is highly influential, so start getting into this. This is where the fun starts. This is where you were like, how did he see this? That MK Ultraman must open that third eye something fierce. By feelings of inferiority we mean not only inferiority feelings in the strict sense, but a whole spectrum of related traits. Low self esteem, feelings of powerlessness, oppressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self hatred. We argue that modern leftists tend to have some such feelings, possibly more or less repressed, and that these feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern leftism. What do you think about that? Low self esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self hatred in that whole realm?
- [14:38]
B
Yeah, I mean, as cliche as it is, I think at its core, if you were to strip away the veneer of empowerment and egalitarianism. Yeah. I mean, I think at. If you were to. If you were to get a hardcore leftist alone in a room and actually sit them down and have a. Have like a psychology session with them, you'd probably arrive at those characteristics.
- [15:09]
A
Moving on, where we go here. Okay. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him or about groups with whom he identifies, we conclude that he has inferiority feelings or low self esteem. This tendency is pronounced among minority rights activists, whether or not they belong to the minority groups whose rights they defend. What did he write this?
- [15:36]
B
Why she got. Why is he going to do Rachel Delay like that?
- [15:41]
A
This is so amazing. They are hypersensitive about the words used to designate minorities and about anything that is said concerning minorities. The terms Negro, Oriental, handicapped or chick for an African and Asian, a disabled person or a woman originally had no derogatory connotation. Broad and chick were merely the feminine equivalents of guy, dude or fellow. The negative connotations have been attached to these terms by the activists themselves. Some animal rights activists have gone so far as to reject the word pet and insist on its replacement by animal companion. Leftist anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid saying anything about primitive peoples that can conceivably be interpreted as negative. They want to replace the word primitive by non literate. They may seem almost paranoid about anything that might suggest that any primitive culture is inferior to ours. We do mean to imply that primitive cultures are inferior to ours. We merely point out the hypersensitivity of leftist anthropologists. And this the day after Indigenous Peoples Day.
- [16:50]
B
Oh, Ted, what is you doing?
- [16:54]
A
It's so amazing because it's like I made sure to post a few memes yesterday of, you know, human sacrifice.
- [17:04]
B
Yeah.
- [17:05]
A
You know, associated or violence associated with the, with warring tribes that were, you know, right here.
- [17:13]
B
Yeah. I just. If you think about the vocabulary, the woke vocabulary in 1995 or you know, the early 90s, late 80s when he was around and like you know, doing his thing, even those words are taboo descriptors now. It's, I mean, once again he called it.
- [17:35]
A
Yeah, all right, where we go here. Okay. Those who are most sensitive about politically incorrect terminology are not the average black ghetto dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any oppressed group, but come from privileged strata of society. Political correctness has its stronghold among university professors who have secure employment with comfortable salaries and the majority of whom are heterosexual white males with middle to upper mid, with middle to upper middle class families.
- [18:14]
B
I'm, I mean this was maybe, maybe because like he didn't have the Internet. He, he wasn't over socialized like us. I think he didn't see that material wealth is no longer the, the apex of a description of power now, now, now it's become, you know, the serotonin drip of social media influence and likes and retweets and all that which he, I mean he couldn't have predicted that. But I think even in the mid-90s when this was published, he probably, I mean you had some things like that, you know, guest spots and speaking tours and all that influence was definitely a currency non material back in his day.
- [19:11]
A
Well in the, the system's neatest trick, which is early 2000s to mid 2000s, he actually describes and pre. And predicts antifa, the modern day version that call themselves antifa who if you compare them to Antifa from 20s Italy. You're just like, the Antifa from 20s Italy was like Republicans and plumbers and union workers and former vet and vets of the First World War. You know, it's like, what do you have now? A bunch of drug addicts and freaking degenerates? You know, just. All right, so let's keep going. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of groups that have an image of being weak, women, defeated American Indians, repellent, homosexuals, or otherwise inferior. The leftists themselves feel these groups are inferior. They would never admit to themselves that they have such feelings, but it's precisely because they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with their problems. We do not mean to suggest that women, Indians, etc. Are inferior. We are only making a point about psychology. Well, yeah, you know, this is one of those things that you read it and you're like, immediately, what is it? The bigotry of low. Of low expectations. Yeah, and that's exactly. And we've been saying that about the left, but it's gotten to the point where when you point out how hypocritical the left is now, you just sound like a conservative.
- [20:48]
B
Yeah, you sound like Dinesh d', Souza, who probably plagiarized that exact section you just read.
- [20:56]
A
All right, let me. Let's keep going on this. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong and capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may not be as strong and as capable as men. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The reasons that leftists give for hating the west, etc. Clearly do not correspond with their real motives. They say they hate the west because it's warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric, and so forth. But where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the leftists find excuses for them. Or at best, he begrudgingly admits that they exist, whereas he enthusiastically points out and often greatly exaggerates these faults where they appear in Western civilization. Thus, it is clear that these faults are not the leftist real motive for hating America and the West. He hates America and the west because they are strong and successful.
- [22:02]
B
Yeah, this is the stone toss comic of like, cool when you leaving. Cool when you leaving. Cool when you leaving.
- [22:10]
A
Yeah, it's. I mean, a lot of this is. And what's funny is you mentioned Dinesh Described Souza. And this totally is like the, the tombstone comic of Here lies conservatism. What is. I have it on my phone. I'll look it up real quick. Here lies conservatism. Wow. Imagine if the situation was reversed.
- [22:30]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [22:31]
A
It's just that total thing of just you're, you're just like. Well, they. Oh, my God, they're. They're such hypocrites. It's like they know they're hypocrites. They don't care. Yeah, that's also why they're in. That's also why they're in power, by the way, because they don't.
- [22:48]
B
Yes. Yeah. I mean, if we just stick to our principles, maybe we can change that.
- [22:55]
A
Oh, I. I think. I think the non aggression principle is going to take us right to. Right to utopia. Perfect. It'd be perfect. Give me one second.
- [23:03]
B
Checks in the mail.
- [23:04]
A
Yeah. Words like self confidence, self reliance, initiative, enterprise optimism, etc. Play little role in the liberal and leftist vocabulary. The leftist is anti individualistic, pro collectivist. He wants society to solve everyone's problems for them, satisfy everyone's need for them, take care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense of confidence in his ability to solve his problems and satisfy his own needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of competition because deep inside he feels like a loser. I think of. I know that Rothbard talked about this, but I think Mis. He got it from Mises where he talked about how the intellectuals in society always have to go to the state, have to get a job with the state because they, they have no. There's no. They have no worth in the free market. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what is. Yeah. I mean, I mean, we know some economists that can actually make money, but most economists, what do they have to do? They have to get a job with the New York Times. They have to get a job with the government. I mean, it's.
- [24:21]
B
Yeah, yeah. The economists we know, like, being an economist is like their second job, or at least was at one point until they could make a living, you know, doing their thing.
- [24:32]
A
Yeah. They became entrepreneurs and. But they're also economists. And when you. Historically, I mean, even. And I'm not saying anything bad about Mises, but you know, Mises work for the Austrian government.
- [24:44]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [24:45]
A
Worked for the Chamber of Commerce at one point too.
- [24:47]
B
So the question you have to ask is, if Mises suddenly lost his government post, would he be in the streets starving? Probably not.
- [24:57]
A
The guy fought in World War I. Yeah. He's a tough guy.
- [25:02]
B
Yeah. If Paul Krugman lost his post it, you know, as a New York Times editor and all the various consulting things he does for the government, indirectly or directly, he'd probably be homeless.
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A
Oh, he'd have lost his gag reflex by now. All right, so where do we go here? Where are we at? Okay, Art forms. Art forms that appeal to modern leftish intellectuals tend to focus on sordidness, defeat and despair. Or else they take an orgiastic tone, throwing off rational control as if there were no hope of accomplishing anything through rational calculation. And all that was left was to emerge oneself in the sensations of the movement. Call them degenerates without calling them degenerates.
- [25:55]
B
Yeah, yeah, that's. That. That pretty much describes their activism today. And to be honest, it describes a lot of people's activism. It's, it's like this. You, you want to create a temporal space amongst people you agree with, to feel that euphoric sense of unity. And that's, that's not activism. That's just like a pride parade or pork fest.
- [26:25]
A
Yeah, you see it in beltway libertarianism and the woke progressive libertarians when they're celebrating sex work, they're celebrating drug use, they're celebrating any kind of degeneracy. I mean the kind of degeneracy that grows the state.
- [26:43]
B
Of course this, this, this type of is the same as what I talk about. The serotonin drip of, of social media. Social media validation. Except this is in real life.
- [26:56]
A
Yeah. J.J. boogie, Technological Slavery, Volume 1. It has almost every. It has everything in there except his latest book.
- [27:05]
B
Huh. Add to my mountainous reading list.
- [27:12]
A
Yeah. All right, let's keep going here. All right. Modern leftish God, that's a hard word to. For me to say. Leftist philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science, objective reality, and to insist that everything is culturally relative. It is true that one can ask serious questions about the foundations of scientific and knowledge and about how, if at all, the concept of objective reality can be defined. But it is obvious that modern leftish philosophers are not simply cool headed logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack these concepts because of their own psychological needs. For one thing, their attack is an outlet for hostility. And to the extent that it is successful, it satisfies the drive for power. More importantly, the leftist hate science and rationality because they classify certain beliefs as true, I. E. Successful superior, and other beliefs as false, I. E. Failed, inferior. The leftists feelings of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification of some things as successful or superior and other things as failed or inferior. This also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are antagonistic to generic explanations of human abilities or behavior because such explanations tend to make some people appear superior or inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or blame for an individual's ability or lack of. Of it. Thus, if a person is inferior, it is not his fault, but society's because he was not brought up properly. Man, we could spend a while on that. On that paragraph.
- [29:14]
B
Yeah. Again, I have to criticize Jordan Peterson for plagiarizing Ted Kaczynski.
- [29:21]
A
Exactly. I mean, seriously, Seriously, some things in there. Oh, I mean, call out the postmodernists without naming them.
- [29:32]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah. That's what I was getting at. Like, you know, he was. Jordan Peterson.
- [29:36]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [29:37]
B
Telling you to clean your room before Jordan Peterson was around.
- [29:41]
A
Yeah. And then the whole thing about the, the question of, are some people better than others?
- [29:50]
B
Yeah.
- [29:51]
A
You know how they say, someone on the right will give you. Will give you a. Yes, someone on the left will give you a speech.
- [30:00]
B
Yeah.
- [30:01]
A
And this, the whole thing about them being antistic, antagonistic to genetic explanations and IQ tests. I mean, just, just mention Charles Murray to a leftist, mention Charles Murray to a libertarian, to the average libertarian, which
- [30:21]
B
just goes, well, now you're, now you're a race realist, so automatically you're discarded.
- [30:27]
A
Which just goes to prove just exactly how much leftism is just completely infiltrated. Libertarianism. I was talking about that with Charlemagne, Charles. And I was saying that all they have to do is all you, all you have to do is start talking about questioning the nap and the average libertarian, even a Rothbardian will be fascist. And it's like, well, wait a minute, who do you sound like right now?
- [30:55]
B
That's, I mean, it's to be expected. And I, luckily, I think, at least from my own aesthetic preferences, I think the problem's being taken care of. What that results in. Well, I don't know.
- [31:09]
A
Let's.
- [31:09]
B
Let's read somebody that actually did something thing.
- [31:13]
A
Well, I mean, Ted did. Yeah. This guy had.
- [31:18]
B
He did more than any libertarian I know.
- [31:21]
A
This guy had voting by mail down pat. The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self promoter, a ruthless competitor. This kind of person has not wholly lost faith in himself. He has a deficit in his Sense of power and self worth. But he can still convince. He can still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong. And his efforts to make himself strong produce his unpleasant behavior. But the leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings of inferiority are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as individually strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of leftism. He can feel strong only as a member of an organization or a mass movement which, with, with which he identifies himself. That is some poetry right there, man.
- [32:16]
B
Yes. Yeah, that's, that's Twitter activism in a nutshell. And again, I, I, my only criticism would be that he limits it to leftists.
- [32:27]
A
Yeah, yeah, but it's like you said, and I, I figured this out a while back. Back was that he, because he would associate people who would care about nature and care about the environment with people on the left. The fact that they weren't willing to do the things that needed to be done that, you know. Yeah, obviously, obviously hated them and would go after them first. I mean he hardly, we might get to the part where he, he goes after the, the right a little bit, but I mean it is a short little section when he goes after the right. He still, he still knocks the ball out of the park though, so. All right, let's finish this up here. Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics. Tactics Leftists protest by laying down in front of vehicles. They intentionally provoke police or racist to abuse them. These tactics may often be effective, but many leftists use them as important means to an end. But because they prefer masochistic tactics, self hatred is a leftist trait. Well, there's one thing that he, I guess when it came to the system's neatest trick, he finally realized that it was going to get to the point where they were going to start using violence because he, he starts talking about how the state will actually find a way or forces will find a way to turn these people violent. Turn the left violent. Yeah, because this really isn't the left anymore. I mean, if anything, this seems to be the right and take it while they're, while their cities are being burnt down.
- [34:05]
B
Yeah, the, the so called leftists that are, you know, committing the most violent acts think like you know, all the protests in 2015, you know, the patriot, patriot prayer marches versus antifa. I mean those are just center right neoliberals there. I mean they just had a protest the other day because, you know. Oh no, it was at the Boston Marathon the other day that a group showed up to protest Arizona Senator that was going to run in it because she's delaying Biden's spending bill. And they identify as a leftist protest group, like how dare you not give more money to pharmaceutical corporations in the military industrial complex. I know they wouldn't word it like that, but a real, an actual communist per se would. Would find, you know, some other vocabulary words to label that as not real. Leftism.
- [35:09]
A
Yeah. All right, let's finish up this section. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion or by moral principles or moral principle does play a role for the leftist of the over socialized type. But compassion and moral principle cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too prominent a component of leftist behavior. So is the drive for power more. Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help. For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or dogmatic terms? Obviously, it would be more productive to take a diplomatic, conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal and symbolic concessions to white people who think the affirmative action discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not take such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs. Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and frustrated need for power. In doing so, they actually harm black people because the activist hostile attitude towards the white majority tends to intensify race hatred.
- [36:33]
B
Yeah.
- [36:34]
A
Yeah.
- [36:34]
B
I mean, I've, I've never hated white people more
- [36:41]
A
that they didn't fight back against this. If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would have to invent problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse for making a fuss. I'm.
- [36:54]
B
Yeah.
- [36:55]
A
I mean, it's, that's what they do.
- [36:59]
B
It's like a genetic trait where they need to be activists or I don't know what happens to them. They maybe they off themselves. If we lived in, you know, a utopia and they just couldn't find a way to make a problem to perform activism about, to have performative activism, they probably kill themselves. It's like an inherent genetic trait. And I think that's what Ted's getting at.
- [37:28]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [37:30]
B
And this is why I don't think we can have peaceful secession. But that's for another episode.
- [37:36]
A
Andrew, Popular liberty says white people are why I started calling myself Irish. Finishing up this section. He says we emphasize that the foregoing does not pretend to be an accurate description of everyone who might be considered a leftist. It is only a rough indication of a general tendency of leftism. Now, this concept of over socialization is like one of the things that gets most talked about when it comes to this paper right here. I mean, it is the. It is the one thing that I think Ted really like nails and people had nailed it before him. But I don't think like he does. I mean, he's. Yeah. Psychologists use the term socialization to designate the process by which children are trained to think and act as society demands. A person is said to be, well socialized if he believes in and obeys the moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning part of that society. It may seem senseless to say that many leftists are over socialized since the leftist is perceived as a rebel. Nevertheless, the position can be defended. Many leftists are not such rebels as they seem. The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think, feel, and act in a completely moral way. There's a sentence for you.
- [38:59]
B
Yeah, it's like, you know, talking about the free market. Like what free market? You know, even. Even the black market. An agorist might say, like, well, the black market is the closest, closest thing we have to a free market. But you know, I don't know. I mean, it's what. I mean, what Ted's talking about is industrialization has pervaded every aspect of every action you take.
- [39:26]
A
Yeah, so I'm going to read that again so it can lead into the next sentence. The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think, feel, and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality have a non moral, moral origin. We use the term over socialized to describe such people. You get what he's getting at there?
- [40:13]
B
Yeah, I mean, I do. Yeah. The. The first thing that pops into my mind is the entire foundation of the abortion argument. Like a woman's right to choose seems like a moral argument, but when you look at the foundation it. You're usually getting an abortion because of promiscuous sex nine times out of ten and you're subsidizing the Consequences. And also, you know, whether you're pro life or pro choice, you might be killing somebody, you might not be.
- [40:43]
A
Andrew Popular Liberty just said. He just nailed my thesis about making rules that people can't follow. All right, so this is where it starts getting deep. Over socialization can lead to low self esteem, a sense of powerlessness, defeatism, guilt. One of the most important means by which our society socializes children is by making them feel ashamed of behavior or speech that is contrary to society's expectations. If this is overdone, or if a particular child is especially susceptible to such feelings, he ends by feeling ashamed of himself. Moreover, the thought and the behavior of the over socialized person are more restricted by society's expectations than are those of the lightly socialized person. The majority of people engage in a significant amount of naughty behavior. They lie, they commit petty thefts, they break traffic laws, they goof off at work, they hate someone, they say spiteful things, or they use some underhanded trick to get ahead of the other guy. The over socialized person cannot do these things, or if he does do them, he generates in himself a sense of shame and self hatred. The over socialized person cannot even experience without guilt, thought or feelings that are contrary to the accepted morality. He cannot think unclean thoughts. And socialization is not just a matter of morality. We are socialized to conform to many norms of behavior that do not fall under the heading of morality. Thus, the over socialized person is kept on a psychological leash and spends his life running on rails that society has laid down for him. In many over socialized people, this results in a sense of constraint and powerlessness that can be a severe hardship. We suggest that over socialization is among the more serious cruelties that human beings inflict upon one another.
- [42:39]
B
All I could think of that entire time was, you know, stamping out toxic masculinity. And that starts in elementary school.
- [42:50]
A
There are so many things to think about there. I mean, it is. Think about what he was talking about leftists before. He's saying that they can't even conceive of thinking that one person could be better than another person just because they exist because of how they were born, because of anything. It's just, it really, it's a dagger. It's a dagger pointed right at the activist. The egalitarian. Yeah, the, the egalitarian. You know, Andrew just said you're not a, you're not a real libertarian if you haven't read this. Like he's quoting me saying that, that. Oh man. All right, let's see, let's see what we got here. We argue that a very important and influential segment of the modern left is over socialized and that their over socialization is of great importance in determining the direction of modern leftism. Leftists of the over socialized type tend to be intellectuals or members of the upper middle class. Notice the university intellectuals constitute the most highly socialized segment of our society and also the most left wing segment. They are basically over socialized people. You know from what he's saying is they're the ones that are, they want to follow whatever the government is. The over socialized people are the COVID idiots. There is not somebody who has bought into that religion that is not over socialized.
- [44:41]
B
They're definitely the first group of people that I think about like just repeating platitudes and the inability to believe that they're wrong or that any criticism is valid and that, and that somehow their actions are in any way egalitarian. They think that they're the moral majority and are incapable of diving into that. It's like at first I thought you know, this is somebody like with their pronouns in their bio like you could you like or whatever any of those tropes like those, those tropes that comprise modern leftism. Now just, you know, NPC is a, is a perfect term.
- [45:27]
A
Absolutely. I got a super chat here that I'm going to read from the dude guy. 345, 1996 My seventh grade history class did a two month long mock constitutional convention in which we played all delegates. I got detention for asking who gave them the authority to decide for all. Same year we learned of Unlike Uncle Ted. Yup, that's based as fuck. All right. Oh yeah, here we go. The leftist of the over socialized type tries to get off his psychological leash and assert his autonomy by rebelling. But usually he is not strong enough to rebel against the most basic values of society. Generally speaking, the goals of today's leftists are not in conflict with the accepted moral immorality. On the contrary, the left takes an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own and then accuses mainstream society of violating the principle. Examples, Racial equality, equality of the sexes, helping poor people, peace as opposed to war, non violence generally, freedom of expression, kindness to animals. More fundamentally, the duty of the individual to serve society and the duty of society is to take care of the individual. All these have been deeply rooted values of our society or at least of its middle and upper classes for a long time. These values are explicitly or implicitly expressed or presupposed in most of the material presented to us by the mainstream construct communications, media and the educational system. Leftists, especially those of the over socialized type, usually do not rebel against these principles, but justify their hostility to society by claiming with some degree of truth that society is not living up to these principles. I read that, you know, the first thing comes to mind is, I'm against slavery. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. It's like, I'm against slavery. You know, you start, like somebody starts talking about the south and how they should have just let him secede and everything like that. Well, I'm against slavery. Okay, great.
- [47:34]
B
Thank you.
- [47:35]
A
Yeah, that's the stunningest and bravest that you can come up with today. But it's true. They, they latch onto something that society already deems is, you know, untenable, like racism, the whole racism thing. It's like the people, people on the right, conservatives, especially before Trump, I mean, if you would have accused them of racism, they would have just been like, I'm not racist. I mean, they would have went into this litany of just, whoa, whoa, whoa. Maybe Trump has woken up a couple people to like the fact that they do this. And now they're just like, sure, I don't care, call me a racist. I don't give a what you say. But they would defend themselves to the end. It was. Or the Covington Catholic kids think about that. Remember someone had said, said something about you're gay. And, and they go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. They start defending it and everything and it's just like, like, well, there it is right there.
- [48:33]
B
Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Continue on. My mind is going in so many directions right now.
- [48:44]
A
Yeah. Fubadu here says, my mother's an elementary school teacher and I cringe every time she recounts a tale of scolding boys for running around in rough housing during recess, as though boys aren't supposed to do that.
- [48:56]
B
So half, let's say like generously, half of those kids that she scolds and she says that's bad because half of those kids are going to internalize that as they grow up. And then they'll become the people pronouns in their bios. They'll become the trans rights activists and the, the hashtag BLM bumper sticker, like, that's, that's what Ted's talking about. And it works. I mean, part of me wants to believe that this is a Marxist Leninist coup that's just taking into account the conditions to bring about communism in America and the, the Best condition you can have is racism. Use that to, you know, change the material conditions and you know, model structure your class warfare after. And then the other half is just like, no, this is just a bunch of like corporations fucking making billions of dollars commoditizing racism could go either way. I don't know.
- [49:57]
A
All right, so he has to provide an example. Here's an illustration of the way in which the over socialized leftist shows his real attachment to the conventional attitudes of our society while pretending to be in rebellion against it. Many leftists push for affirmative action, for moving black people into high prestige jobs, for improved education in black schools and more money for such schools. The way of life of the black underclass they regard as a social disgrace. They want to integrate the black man into the system, make him a business executive, a lawyer, a scientist, just like upper middle class white people. The leftist will reply that the last thing they want to make is the black, that black man into a copy of the white man. Instead, they want to preserve African American culture. But in what way does the preservation of African American culture consist? It can hardly consist in anything more than eating black style food, listening to black style music, wearing black style clothing and going to a black style church or mosque. In other words, it can express itself only in superficial manners. Yes, commoditization, yeah, in all essential respects. Many leftists or the over socialized type want to make the blood black man conform to white middle class ideals. They want to make him study technical subjects, become an executive or a scientist, spend his life climbing the status ladder to prove that black people are as good as white. They want to make black fathers responsible. They want, they want black gangs to become non violent, etc. But these are exactly the values of the industrial technological system. The system couldn't care less what kind of music a man listens to, what kind of clothes he wears, what religion he believes, believes in. As long as he studies in school, holds a respectable job, climbs the status ladder, is a responsible parent, is non violent and so forth. In effect, however much he may deny it, the over socialized leftist wants to integrate the black man into the system and make him adopt its values.
- [51:53]
B
I, I identify with this more. A perfect example is the gay rights movement. You know the, you look at like a Stonewall or any, any gay community. When it was starting out, it was unapologetically against the status quo. It did not want inclusivity, it wanted liberation. And they, by, when they, when they tacked that T onto lgbt, they literally neutered gay people. They, they gave Them an out to be rebellious. But the goal was to get the vast majority of them to be integrated into being a good model American citizen. And everybody's favorite, Everybody's favorite adult sex advocate, Thaddeus Russell. Not that easy. I'm sorry, not Thaddeus. No. Is it his, his book, Renegade History
- [52:51]
A
of the United States? Yeah.
- [52:52]
B
Renegade History of the United States. Yeah. He, that's, that's something I took with me from that book is, you know, the, the way you get rid of renegades is by convincing them to be good model American citizens and then you essentially neuter them.
- [53:08]
A
My buddy Mark Metz, who an episode of my show with Adam Patrick recently goes, came in and heard black man was the first thing I came in and black man was the first thing I heard. Knew I was on the right stream.
- [53:20]
B
Yep, welcome, welcome.
- [53:23]
A
Well, and he also talks in that book about how Jews used to dominate basketball. They used to be music. They used to dominate the music scene.
- [53:35]
B
That's crazy to think about.
- [53:36]
A
Yeah, yeah. Not even, not even, not as like the, the club owners, although they were the club owners, but as the musicians and as the basketball players and the owners of the basketball team and their own community made a decision to get them away from those, to push them away from those occupations so that they can become more respectable.
- [53:57]
B
Yes.
- [54:00]
A
That's just wild stuff to think about. It's like, it's wild stuff to think that Jews dominated basketball.
- [54:05]
B
Yeah. And boxing.
- [54:07]
A
In boxing.
- [54:08]
B
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, they were the most hated group in the country arguably for, for a while in the 20th century, late late 19th. And you know that when that kind of upbringing, you know, you get tougher, you die.
- [54:30]
A
All right, let's go here. We certainly do not claim that leftists, even of the over socialized type, never rebel against the fundamental values of our society. Clearly they sometimes do. Some over socialized leftists have gone so far as to rebel against one of the modern society's most important, important principles by engaging in physical violence. By their own account, violence is for them a form of liberation. In other words, by committing violence, they break through the psychological restraints that have, they have been, that have been trained into them. Because they are over socialized, these restraints have become more confining for them than for others. Hence their need to break free of them. But they usually justify the rebellion in terms of mainstream values. If they engage in violence, they claim to be fighting against racism or the like. So it's not like, you know, this is, this is right up your alley. Once you, you want to comment on that.
- [55:26]
B
Yeah, I mean, when they do engage in violence, does seem sort of like a pressure, like a pressure relief valve gets released. And I'm talking about like real leftists, I guess. You know, you look at like, what is it they're not around coalition, you know, they. They've been in like a couple violent altercations and like, I don't think the pressure valve was relieved as much as it should have been, but boy, I can't wait till it is.
- [56:01]
A
All right, let's finish this up. We realized that many objections could be raised to the foregoing thumbnail sketch of leftist psychology. The real situation is complex and anything like a complete description of it would take several volumes, even if the necessary data were available. We claim only to have indicated, very roughly the two most important tendencies in the psychology of modern leftism. The problems of the leftists are indicative of the problems of our society as a whole. Low self esteem, depressive tendencies and defeatism are not restricted to the left. Though they are especially notable, noticeable in the left. They are widespread in our society. And today's society tries to socialize us to a greater extent than any previous society. We are even told by experts how to eat, how to exercise, how to make love, how to raise our kids, and so forth. Want to go? Keep going.
- [56:55]
B
Veneration of the expert class, huh? I can't find anything to relate.
- [57:05]
A
Let's keep going a little bit if you got time. All right. The Power Process. Human beings have a need, probably based in biology, for something that we call the power process. This is closely related to the need for power, which is widely recognized, but it's not quite the same thing. The power process has four elements. The three most clear cut of these we call goal, effort and attainment of goal. Everyone needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of his goals. The fourth element is more difficult to define and may be necessary for everyone. We call it autonomy, and we'll discuss it later. Consider the hypothetical case of a man who can have anything he wants just by wishing for it. Such a man has power, but he will develop serious psychological problems. At first he will have a lot of fun, but by and by he will become acutely bored and demoralized. Eventually, he may become clinically depressed. History shows that leisured aristocracies tend to become decadent. This is not true of fighting aristocracies that have to struggle to maintain their power. But leisured, secure aristocracies that have no need to exert themselves usually Become bored, hedonistic and demoralized. Even though they have power, this shows that power is not enough. One must have goals towards which to exercise one's power.
- [58:34]
B
Oh, yeah, and Paz can get into this a lot more eloquently than I can. As far as, you know, what exactly did the aristocracy of. I mean, even today, like, what do they do behind closed doors and out of boredom? Pretty much. But yeah, I mean, you can even look at the upper middle class now. You know, material conditions are so good. You know, maybe not for too much longer given. Given the news, but, you know, they've been so good that I think a good portion of like the. The degeneracy that we see is really just out of border him. It's like, you know, I. I have nothing to do. I'm going to experiment with, you know, cross dressing and, you know, getting pegged by my girlfriend or whatever. Not me. I would never do that.
- [59:26]
A
No, not at all. So she's the one. She's the one who takes the Blue Chew. Yeah, yeah. You also think. You also think about like Trump Plaza. Everything, you know, plated gold. Gold. Everything. I mean, it's just. Yeah. And people and libertarian. Once again, libertarians will jump all over you for that and be like, well, that's just capitalism and everything.
- [59:49]
B
Free market, bro.
- [59:51]
A
Yeah, it's a free market, bro. It's. It's not. I mean, it's. To me, when I see something like that, I immediately think that that person. There's something wrong with that person. There's something missing.
- [60:02]
B
There are symptoms. Yeah. You look at them like a symptom, like. Like a symptom of a larger disease. And you don't really know what stage that disease is in, but you can see the symptoms and you don't really know what the treatment is. Although Ted did. He had a treatment. But. Yeah. And you know, mainline libertarians, they don't see it that way. They see that as a sign of a, you know, a healthy market and in like capitalist innovation. And you know, one. One thing I do have to agree with left, I. I agree more with leftists about is, you know, that. That decadence that we see right now, although they. They wouldn't put it like that, that. I mean, it's literally bourgeois decadence. I mean, they're. While leftism is infiltrating all these institutions, bourgeois decadence is infiltrating leftism. And that's, you know, that's been going on forever.
- [61:03]
A
Well said, well put. Everyone has goals, if nothing else, to obtain the physical Necessities of life, food, water, and whatever clothing and shelter are made necessary by the climate. But the leisured aristocrat obtains these things without effort, hence his boredom and demoralization. Non attainment of importance, important goals results in death if the goals are physical necessities and in frustration if non attainment of the goals is compatible with survival. Consistent failure to attain goals throughout life is defeatism, low self esteem or depression. Thus, in order to avoid serious psychological problems, a human being needs goals whose attainment require effort. And he must have a reasonable rate of success in attaining those goals. What's your opinion on that?
- [61:54]
B
That sounds like the Protestant work ethic. You know, everything that's worth it is worth it because of the amount of effort you exert.
- [62:03]
A
Yeah, I didn't immediately go to the Protestant work ethic, which I think is a total ton of garbage, because you
- [62:10]
B
can, that's my entire identity.
- [62:14]
A
You can, you can do very well in life without having to break your back. And I mean, that's almost what the Protestant work ethic, you know, really.
- [62:23]
B
Yeah.
- [62:24]
A
Points at, you know, working 20 hours,
- [62:26]
B
virtue and physical struggle to make ends meet and.
- [62:30]
A
Yeah. And I mean, I just, I don't go with that. But I also do understand what, what he means by if. If everything. Well, I mean, think about it. Yeah, I can hear you.
- [62:44]
B
My beats just died.
- [62:46]
A
Okay. If God.
- [62:49]
B
Is the audio quality terrible?
- [62:52]
A
It's not terrible, but it's not as good as it was. But back off. If you back off a little bit, I think it'll be better. So you don't have to back off that much. But what I was going to say is, I mean, think about like, I knew people who've, I've known very wealthy people who didn't have to work and a lot of them are alcoholics, drug addicts, and I mean, they just, they look for something else to fill what was their once. Or maybe not even what wasn't even there once, depending on how they were raised. But yeah, I mean, a lot of times there's an emptiness that comes with being able to do anything and have anything.
- [63:34]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I. You can, you can read any celebrity, you know, like E. Online news or whatever, any tabloid and see, like, you know what? I, I think it's a mix of like, you know, them literally being as kids and them also attaining so much success and like Ted said, not having to. Not having to exert much effort to get everything they've ever wanted. And then you see them, you know, crash and burn. Yeah. Or become, or become Leaders in a sex cult.
- [64:17]
A
Well, and that's another thing is that if they're put into a culture of decadence. Which is what? Entertainment. You know, you mentioned entertainment. Entertainment is a culture of decadence. I mean, that's what they're going to tend to fall right into.
- [64:32]
B
Yeah, no, it makes sense.
- [64:36]
A
Let us see. Okay, so surrogate activities. And we'll finish up here soon because, I mean, we could keep going for a while. But not every leisured aristocrat becomes bored and demoralized. For example, the emperor Hirohito, instead of sinking into decadent hedonism, devoted himself to marine biology, a field in which he became distinguished. When people do not have to exert themselves to satisfy their physical needs, they often set up artificial goals for themselves. In many cases, they then pursue these goals with the same energy and emotional involvement that they otherwise would have put into a search for physical necessities. Thus, the aristocrats of the Roman Empire had their literary pretensions. Many European aristocrats a few centuries ago invested tremendous time and energy in hunting, though they certainly didn't need the meat. Other aristocracies have competed for status through elaborate displays of wealth. And a few aristocrats like Kirahito, have turned to science. We use the term surrogate activity to designate an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for themselves merely in order to have some goal to work toward. Or let us say, merely for the sake of the fulfillment that that they get from pursuing the goal. Here is a rule of thumb for the identification of surrogate activities. Given a person who devotes much time and energy to the pursuit of goal X, Ask yourself if he had to devote most of his time and energy to satisfying his biological needs, and if that effort required him to use his physical and mental facilities in a varied and interesting way, would he feel seriously deprived because he did not attain goal X? If the answer is no, then the person's pursuit of goal X is a surrogate activity. Hirohito study in marine biology clearly constituted a surrogate activity, since it is pretty certain that if Hirohito had had to spend time working at interesting non scientific tasks in order to obtain the necessities of life, he would not have felt deprived because he didn't know all about the anatomy and life life cycles of marine biology. In animals, on the other hand, the pursuit of sex and love, for example, is not a surrogate activity because most people, even in their if their existence were otherwise satisfactory, would feel deprived as they pass their lives without Ever having a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. But pursuit of an excessive amount of sex, more than one really needs, can be a modern surrogate activity. What do you think? What's going on with this?
- [67:11]
B
Yeah, I mean, I. I'm sure there are. I can't think of any, like, concrete examples of, you know, some celebrity or CEO. I. I guess, like, you know, maybe Elon Musk. His entire existence is a surrogate activity. At this point, he's the richest man in the world. Jeff Bezos, whatever the hell he does his. His journey to space and, you know, the push for commercial space flight and all that. You know, that. I guess you'd call them vanity projects now, but I'm sure there is some level of personal satisfaction they're pursuing that. If they were to fail at that effort, it probably wouldn't really affect them that much. So. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's some. It's something that. If I were to get my. My Twitter timeline out right now and just scroll through the news, I could probably, you know, take all of Ted's criteria and say this, this, this, and this relatively easily.
- [68:13]
A
Brandon Hiles makes a good point right here. Bill Gates, extreme surrogate activity, became obsessed with. With vaccines and vaccinating the planet and making sure the population. Never mind.
- [68:29]
B
Maybe he has a biological need to exterminate half the world's population.
- [68:34]
A
Maybe he does. But when you look at this. It's true, though. I mean, what did Hirohito really accomplish by becoming an expert on marine.
- [68:46]
B
Literally, just personal satisfaction and.
- [68:50]
A
But was it. See, that's the thing. The question is, is it. Is it something where you're like, okay, I put all these years into doing this, and now I'm an expert at this?
- [69:00]
B
Yeah.
- [69:01]
A
So.
- [69:01]
B
So, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it was just a. A vanity project, maybe. I mean, also, you. With Hirohito, you're getting into, like, cultural components, and, you know, the Japanese are just built different, especially back in the day, so. Ah, I don't know. He's a tough one.
- [69:21]
A
I mean, and I think that even the poor and the working class have surrogate activities.
- [69:26]
B
Oh, yeah. Video games. Video games.
- [69:28]
A
Sports.
- [69:29]
B
Yep.
- [69:31]
A
Watching sports. Professional sports. I mean. Yeah, yeah, guilty, guilty. I mean, I don't watch sports anymore just because I really don't have time. But, I mean, there was a time that I was. I. I knew the standings of my teams, you know, where they were.
- [69:45]
B
Yeah.
- [69:46]
A
So I cared about the. The Red Sox, Yankee rivalry, you know. Oh, yeah. Now it's like, I don't even I heard they played, they played in the playoffs and the Red Sox won. And I was like, oh, I hate the Red Sox, but I'm good.
- [70:00]
B
Yeah, I. And you know, I'm. I'm from Massachusetts. It's something I probably should have been paying attention to just so I have something to talk to people about, but I really haven't. And I don't think a whole lot of people have either. That's that particular, particular surrogate activity for, for us PO folk. It's kind of gone by the wayside.
- [70:20]
A
All right, let's, let's finish up here. Let's read a couple more lines and then we'll get out of here and then we'll remember where we were and come back and hit this again in the future. This is a lot of fun. I mean, this is over 300 pages. I think we knew we weren't going to get through it today.
- [70:35]
B
It'll be a seven part series.
- [70:40]
A
All right, so in modern industrial society, only minimal effort is necessary to satisfy one's physical needs. It is enough to go through a training program to acquire some petty technical skill, then come back to work on time and exert the very modest effort needed to hold a job. The only requirements are a moderate amount of intelligence and most of all, simple obedience. If one has those, society takes care of one from cradle to the grave in parentheses. Yes, there is an underclass that cannot take the physical necessities for granted, but we are speaking here of mainstream society. Thus, it is not surprising that modern society is full of surrogate activities. These include scientific work, athletic achievement, humanitarian work, artistic and literary creation, climbing the corporate ladder, acquisition of money and material goods far beyond the point at which they cease to give any additional physical satisfaction, and social activism when it addresses issues that are not important to the activist personally, as in the case of white activists who work for the rights of non white minorities. These are not always pure surrogate activities, since for many people they may be motivated in part by needs other than the need to have some goal to pursue. Scientific work may be motivated in part by a drive for prestige, artistic creation, by a need to express feelings, militant social activism by hostility. But for most people who pursue them, these activities are in large part surrogate activities. For example, the majority of scientists will probably agree that the fulfillment they get from work is more important than the money and the prestige they earn.
- [72:23]
B
Yeah, I mean, I'm glad he put that clarif that qualifier in there that, you know, not all activism is a surrogate activity, just the activism that doesn't affect you in any way, shape or form. Doesn't affect your community in any way, shape or form. You know, that's, that's a, the sign of a decadent society.
- [72:47]
A
Yep. All right, we're going to finish up on this paragraph because what comes after it looks really juicy and we'll keep people begging for more. Yeah. All right. For many, if not most people, surrogate activities are less satisfying than the pursuit of real goals. That is goals that people would want to attain even if their need for power process were already fulfilled. One indication of this is the first fact that in many or most cases, people who are deeply involved in surrogate activities are never satisfied, never at rest. Thus, the money maker constantly strives for more and more wealth. The scientist no sooner solves one problem than he moves on to the next. The long distance runner drives himself to run always farther and faster. Many people who pursue surrogate activities will say that they get far more fulfillment from these activities than they do from the money mundane business of satisfying their biological needs. But that is because. That is because in our society the effort needed to satisfy the biological needs has been reduced to triviality. More importantly, in our society, people do not satisfy their biological needs autonomously, but by functioning as parts of an immense social machine. In contrast, people generally have a great deal of, of autonomy in pursuing their surrogate activities.
- [74:08]
B
Yes, there's a lot there that, that's. He, he broke down left wing communalism perfectly like that. We live in the goal, the end goal of left wing communalism, which is, which states that, you know, your, your highest form of autonomy is when you're no longer shackled by material constraints for your necessity necessities. That's when you are, that's, that's individualism to them. That's a left, a left wing version of individualism is like, you know, you, you're able to express your, yourself, what is it called? Not self realization, but self actualization. You're able to achieve self actualization best when you are unconstrained from material constraints. And we're not quite unconstrained, but we're able to express our individual autonomy because like Ted said, I can go to the grocery store and get a meal, a ready made meal that I can eat right now and have 100% of my nutritional needs fulfilled.
- [75:19]
A
Yeah, yeah. The thing I find amazing about this is it reminds me in chapter one of the German Ideology by Karl Marx when he says in Communism we can get to the point where somebody can be a fisherman one day, an Artist the next day, a musician the next day. And he's not only like, Ted is here talking about late stage capitalism, basically, but he's also describing exactly what communism would be like post scarcity. Yeah, like what post scarcity would be. And I've said that recently. I said that we could get to the point, because man has really no purpose unless man has a purpose. And I'm talking about, like, even a metaphysical purpose. You could get to the point of post scarcity, where man will rebel against it because he has nothing else to rebel against. He has no purpose. He has nothing. There's nothing holding him. There's nothing keeping his feet to the ground. So he'll just be like, okay, I'm gonna rebel against this.
- [76:25]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Unless you go to divine liturgy every Sunday.
- [76:33]
A
I don't know what Marty White is saying here that Clayton is not impressed. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe that's somebody that I've previously muted from the. The channel or something like that who's just showing up in the comments. Not really. Not really interested, but. Cool. Well, man, thanks. And we left off at section 41. I think there's only, like a thousand more to go. So I think this is a great primer. And I. The thing I love about this the most is I never would have read. Read it if it hadn't started off as polemical as it was against the left.
- [77:16]
B
Yeah, I. I haven't read this in its entirety either. I've picked and chosen quotes from Kaczynski that I thought were relevant, which. And turns out his entire book is relevant.
- [77:28]
A
Yeah. Yeah, it's. I mean, you read it and you're just like, it's not something that you can read in one sitting. I mean, it's not. It's not something that you can. You can't read large chunks of it in one sitting. You have to read parts of it and then put it down and think about it.
- [77:44]
B
Yeah.
- [77:45]
A
Because, I mean, he is way. He is way beyond, like, what. Where most people were. And, you know, it's. And I've. I've gotten to the point where. And it's been a long time now where I just say, yeah, I read Ted Kaczynski, and I like what Ted Kaczynski has to say, and I'm not. And I'm not going, oh, yeah, and he killed people. And that's bad. I. I don't care about that anymore. It's just. It's just. Yeah. Yeah. I want to thank Food. Food for the $5 there. I appreciate that. So, yeah, man. I appreciate you coming on and doing this with me. We'll do it again hopefully soon. You want to do some plugs real quick? Quick. And we'll get out of here.
- [78:30]
B
Yeah. You can find me on Twitter. You know where I'm at? I'm the, I'm the guy that's probably gonna get nuked in the next 10 or so days. I'm about to hit a thousand followers. That's usually when I hit that reset button in a. In a very entertaining way. Timeline Earth Halloween special coming out at the end of the month. Be there for that all eight hours. And that. That's about it.
- [78:53]
A
Bird. Bird doesn't want to hear that. Just answering Andrew from Popular Liberty's question. It was released in 1995, but he had. It looks like he had been writing it for years. Oh, yeah. So. Yeah. Yeah. So. All right, man. Appreciate you always.
- [79:08]
B
Yep. See you later.
- [79:12]
A
Part two, brother.
- [79:13]
B
Part two.
- [79:15]
A
How's it going?
- [79:16]
B
It's going wonderfully. I got a nice ice cold Mick Ultra.
- [79:21]
A
Oh, yeah?
- [79:22]
B
Yeah. Getting blasted. Getting blasted on. I think it's like, oh, 95 calories, guys.
- [79:29]
A
Yeah, it's. That's gonna. I, I don't know. I have a. I have a little bit of bourbon here, but I didn't bring, I didn't bring a lot because if it's too much, I won't be able to read this.
- [79:40]
B
So I drink Mick Ultra on Sundays. I'm, you know, a 58 year old diabetic about to read some Uncle Ted.
- [79:50]
A
Cool, man. All right, let's. So the last thing that we talked about was surrogate activities. And that could be anything from like people really getting into sports. And then they talked about how. What the hell is it? Japanese Became like a expert on marine biology and it's why. And basically it's because they're. They're filling their. Filling their lives because. What else?
- [80:23]
B
You know what the first thing I thought of was having a libertarian podcast. The worst surrogate activity.
- [80:32]
A
Oh, my God. The amount of podcasts that started like March and April of last year is just absolutely astounding. It's just amazing. But all right, so autonomy. That's an interesting little one. I'm start reading. Right?
- [80:52]
B
Yeah, go ahead.
- [80:54]
A
Autonomy as part of the power process may not be necessary for every. But most people need a greater or lesser degree of autonomy in working toward their goals. Their efforts must be undertaken on their own initiative and must be under their own direction and control. Yet most people do not have to exert this initiative, direction, and control as single individuals, it is usually enough to act as a member of a small group. Thus, if half a dozen people discuss a goal among themselves and make a successful joint effort to attain the goal, their need for the power process will be served. But if they work under rigid orders handed down from above that leave them no room for autonomous decision and initiative, then their need for the power process will not be served. The same is true when decisions are made on a collective basis. If the group making the collective decision is so large that the role of each individual is insignificant, what is your. What's your take on, like, the role of, like, do you really think what he's talking about here. How well do you think that's held over that people really want to be individuals now?
- [82:04]
B
I think the division of labor has kind of destroyed that. We are all pretty much cogs in a machine. That machine is of varying sizes. And I get it, you know, human nature. We're tribalistic. Your social circle, how many people do psychologists say can actually be in your social circle? Like, I think it's like 20 or something.
- [82:31]
A
Yeah. 15. I think the number is closer to 15 or something like that.
- [82:34]
B
Yeah, yeah. So that, I mean, that makes sense. I'm interested to see where he goes and flushing out this whole power process thing.
- [82:42]
A
Yeah. All right, let me, Let me keep reading. It is true that some individuals seem to have little need for autonomy. Either their drive for power is weak, or they satisfy it by identifying themselves with some powerful, powerful organizations which they belong. And then there are unthinking animal types who seem to be satisfied with a purely physical sense of power. The good combat soldier who gets a sense of power by developing fighting skills that he is quite content to use in blind obedience to his superiors. Huh.
- [83:13]
B
Huh.
- [83:15]
A
It's interesting. He. It's almost like either their drive for power is weak, which seems like low time preference.
- [83:26]
B
Yeah.
- [83:27]
A
Or. Or they satisfy it by identifying themselves with some powerful organization to which they belong. So that obviously can't be libertarians.
- [83:36]
B
No.
- [83:39]
A
And then there are unthinking animal types. What do you think about this thing here about unthinking animal types satisfied with a purely physical sense of power?
- [83:48]
B
Yeah, I think that that jives pretty nicely with this whole talk of, like, people aren't being unable to, like, develop an identity for themselves. Their identity is often their profession. And you see that a hell of a lot more in the military, in law enforcement. Like, their, their occupation is their identity. And that seems to be more and more the case the, the more you scale up the violence of your occupation.
- [84:20]
A
That's pretty wild. When you see like cops literally have gang tattoos. I mean. Yeah, it's been like that forever in the military. Tattoos have been. Been a part of the military for. I mean, what. I mean, I'm old enough that I remember that when people had tattoos, normally it was people who were in the military.
- [84:39]
B
Yeah.
- [84:40]
A
There weren't a lot of regular people that had tattoos. And it was. You pointed towards the military. And now cops are like. I mean, they're literally tatted like gang members.
- [84:49]
B
It's great,
- [84:52]
A
right? But for most people, it is through the power process, having a goal, making an autonomous effort in attaining the goal, that self esteem, self confidence and a sense of power are acquired. When one does not have adequate opportunity to go through the power process, the consequences are depending on the individual and on the way the power process is disrupted. Boredom, Demoralization. Low self esteem, Inferiority feelings, Defeatism, Depression, Anxiety, guilt, frustration, hostility. Spouse or child abuse. Ssr. No way. I threw that one in. Insatiable hedonism. Abnormal sexual behavior. Sleep disorders, eating disorders. Man, it was like he lulled us to sleep with those first two sentences and then just punched us right in the mouth. I'm reading that and I'm like. I'm like ss. The first thing that came to my mind was like SSRIs and people just, you know, gobbling those down like friggin tic tacs.
- [85:53]
B
Oh yeah, yeah. This is actually something that I think a lot of communists would agree with is all of those things that you mentioned are kind of the logical conclusion of a large group of people not, not having any power in. In the material world, you know, having their power divest or taken from them and you. And when that happens at a scale, you'll start to see that. That sort of degradation and that. That bourgeois decadence.
- [86:28]
A
Yeah. And I don't. Do we call Ted a communist? I mean, it's hard.
- [86:36]
B
Left or right. He's. He's kind of just all over the place for. In a good way.
- [86:41]
A
Yeah, yeah. He seems to be neither left nor right. Oh, imagine that. That sounds familiar.
- [86:48]
B
He seems to be socially liberal and fun. Fiscally conservative.
- [86:54]
A
All right, so next one is sources of social problems. Any of the four symptoms can occur in any society, but in modern industrial society, they're present on a massive scale. We aren't the first to mention that the world today seems to be going crazy. This sort of thing is not normal for human societies. There's good reason to believe that primitive man suffered from less stress and frustration and was better satisfied with his way of life than modern man is. It is true that not all was sweetness and light in primitive societies. Abuse of women was common among the Australian Aborigines. Transsexuality was fairly common among some of the American Indian tribes. But it does not appear that, generally speaking, the kinds of problems that we have listed in the preceding paragraph were. We have listened. Were far less common among primitive peoples than they are in modern society. That's true. Well, I mean, I don't know how extensively you've traveled, but I've traveled to some really, really poor areas of the world and spent time there. And the first thing that always triggers me is the fact that they seem happier than I am.
- [88:11]
B
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I've traveled all over Southeast Asia and the Middle East. And though they are not materially as well off as we are, like metaphysically, spiritually, however you want to put it, they are like the most content people imaginable. I don't want to say happy, but they're definitely more content. And you're right, they don't have as like they don't have a diversity and inclusion office in every. In every building. They don't have, you know, probably a hundred psychologists per capita. Then like we do. It's just not a thing that. Like mental illness and being overly medicated. That's. That's not a thing. That's. It's cultural.
- [89:04]
A
Yeah. I think Karen makes a really good point here. And it's something that when you're reading, I just pass over because. Because I just accept it is that he talks when he's. When he's saying we. How we accept this and we believe this and everything. It's like, who. Who's he talking to?
- [89:22]
B
If you opened his manifesto, you're in.
- [89:26]
A
He's talking to all of us. Oh, man. All right. We attribute the social and psychological problems of modern society, society to the fact that society requires. Requires people to live under conditions radically different from those under which the human race evolved and to behave in ways that the con. Ways that conflict with the patterns of behavior that the human race developed while living under the earlier conditions. It is clear from what we have already written that we consider lack of opportunity to properly experience the power process as the most important of abnormal conditions to which modern society subjects people. But it is not the only one. Before dealing with disruption of power process as a source of social problems, we will discuss some of the other sources. And let me just go right on to the next One among the abnormal conditions present in modern industrial society are excessive density of population, isolation of man from nature, excessive rapidity of social change, and the breakdown of natural small scale communities such as the extended family, the village or the tribe. I think we can stay on this for a little bit.
- [90:33]
B
Yeah, the word that keeps banging around in my head is alienation. It's something that Marx and Lenin and all the, all the right wing communists. Yes, yes, they are right wing communists talked about back in the day being alienated. They were talking about being alienated from the means of production. And he's putting in terms of being alienated from nature, being alienated from family, being alienated from, you know, all these, I guess, other societal aspects. So like it just, it all comes back to alienation.
- [91:09]
A
Yeah, the. So let me look at this again. Excessive, repetitive breakdown of natural small scale communities, extended family, the village of the tribe. One thing I will point to is that if we look at the past 18 months and, or it was probably 19 or 20 months now of this Covid tyranny and this, whatever we're being subjected to, whatever this experiment is, it seems that a lot of people, including myself, have defaulted to going back, looking for smaller communities, extended family, the village, the tribe, getting close, getting back to nature and looking to live in places that have a smaller population.
- [91:56]
B
Now let me ask you this. Were you rolling that around in your head prior to Covid and Covid is, Was the impetus that got you there or.
- [92:05]
A
Yeah, yeah, I had been, I had been thinking about it. I'm wanting to get out of Atlanta for a while. And. Yeah, I mean it was just, and it was just luck of. I mean, Stacy made the. Told me, you know, this was a smaller city. We had talked about moving to Florida or something like that. And she said, well, it's a smaller city in Ohio and everything and the people should leave us alone here. So people leave each other alone. So, you know, when she told me that, I just jumped at the opportunity because it's just, it's something that I had been thinking about for a while. Yeah. And I've. I read its head a few years ago and a lot of this was really started weighing on me the fact that this, we weren't meant to live the way I grew up in New York City in, you know, in a five story building with all these people on top of each other and you could hear people going to the bathroom and having sex in the next, you know, in the next apartment. I just didn't. It got to the point where I Was like, that doesn't sound like something that isn't should be normal. Yeah.
- [93:10]
B
And I mean, you can, you can look around at all the carnage and all the misery that, you know, people just walk by every day and you can see that A, it's not normal for that to be happening and B, it's not normal to walk by it and be like, meh.
- [93:29]
A
Let's see what Brandon has to say here. Happiest days of my life were when I was getting my aas working part time, had unlimited time to hunt what my tribe seen countless sunrises and sunsets. It's something, man. I was just a few days ago I was on the beach. I had forgotten. I haven't lived near the beach since 2005 and I had forgotten just what a feeling that is being at the beach and seeing the waves roll in. You have to understand that that's a serious power in nature that most people don't even really think about.
- [94:03]
B
I, I, I'd like to tell you that the main reason why I got out of the Navy was for moral reasons, but it was honestly to go back and be closer to my family and to like my tribe because I was about as far away as you can get. And that was back in, that was back in late 2017 when I kind of resolved to do that because I saw kind of the general direction that things were going. I, I didn't foresee anything like Covid, but I knew that if something catastrophic were to happen, I would prefer to be around my tribe. And it's kind of a 50, 50 success because I'm, I'm in Massachusetts, which is the nexus of COVID policy. But I'm also kind of around my tribe and you know, I have my little, my little hovel and so, but I mean I can see where Ted's, Ted's getting at.
- [95:01]
A
Yeah. If I remember in the show notes of this episode, I might put down his mailing address if anybody wants to mail him a letter and some questions because he will answer, that's, that's badass. It'd be, it'd be probably if you included like a self addressed stamped envelope and maybe like a piece of paper or a self addressed stamp stamped envelope. It'll probably get to you quicker, but maybe, I don't know, who knows. All right, let me continue. Okay. It is well known that crowding increases stress and aggression. The degree of crowding that exists today and the isolation of man from nature are consequences of technological progress. All pre industrial societies were predominantly rural. The industrial revolution Vastly increased the size of cities and the proportion of the population that lives in them and matter. And modern agricultural technology has made it possible for the earth to support a far denser population than it ever did before. Also, technology exacerbates the effects of crowding because it puts increased disruptive powers in people's hands. For example, a variety of noise making devices, power motors, power mowers, radios, motorcycles, etc. If you use these device, if the use of these devices is unrestricted, people who want peace and quiet are frustrated by the noise. If their use is restricted, people who use devices are frustrated by the regulations. But if these machines had never been invented, there would have been no conflict and no frustration generated by them. Does he just seem like old man screaming at cloud right there or what?
- [96:43]
B
He has a point. Um, yeah, for the most part it seems pretty Luddite, but you know, it's got to be like a nature versus nurture thing. Some people are just not meant to live in loud, noisy, busy environments. And that's, that's cool. They, they should stay in the suburban slash rural areas, but you know, the money's in the city and I, yeah, I, I can't, the noise doesn't really bother me. But I know, I know a lot of people that they would not be able to spend more than eight hours in an urban environment without being extremely stressed out.
- [97:29]
A
Oh yeah. I mean, when I was in New York recently, I'm, I was like, I really want to go home. I really want to go back to Ohio. This is just, I just look and see people living on top of each other and it's, I'm like, how, how did I do this for so long?
- [97:50]
B
It changes your perspective a lot.
- [97:52]
A
Yeah. All right. For primitive societies, the natural world, which usually changes only slowly, provided a stable framework and therefore a sense of security. Security in the modern world, it is human society that dominates nature rather than the other way around. And modern society changes very rapidly owing to technological change. Thus there is no stable framework. What do you have to say about stability and a sense of security?
- [98:23]
B
I think that's provided by proxy by the state right now. The state kind of took that, took that job over, you know, a while ago from, from primitive societies. You know, you had your tribe and now you're, you have some nameless, faceless bureaucrat and 911 operators and, and cops. That's your security now. And I could see how that could not be conducive to a sense of safety and security in the long term.
- [98:55]
A
Also, when you're Growing your own food to eat, and you're hunting for your own sustenance. You really have. You don't have a lot of time to be messing with your neighbors and planning to violence against your neighbors or just. Yeah, I mean, you're living your life and you have to live your life. And I think that's one of the things that the, the commies are always like, oh, do you want to go back to feudalism? You know, do you want to go? It's like, yes, it's like, it's like, I mean, you know, I don't know, maybe if you read.
- [99:35]
B
Reading the history of Prussia and like, how good the serfs had it, they basically could tell their landlord, like, go yourself. I'm not working today. I'm gonna like, go out and party. Like, I, I guess that's just Prussia, but I don't imagine it was that. That much worse. I mean, serfs had codified rights, landlord had. Landlords had codified rights. I don't think it would be that much different than working for a giant mega corporation and owning a giant mega corporation. So, I mean, we're already. Feudalism is right now.
- [100:08]
A
Yeah. Oh, yeah, 100%. It's probably close. Closer to serfdom.
- [100:14]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [100:14]
A
I mean, well, I mean, same thing. But it surfed them, truly. All right, so here we go. The conservatives are fools. They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently, it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and economy of society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well. Well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values. Boom.
- [100:50]
B
I got nothing. He's.
- [100:52]
A
I mean, I mean, yeah. I mean, it's. And you see it. Well, why can't we. Why can't we go back to the Constitution?
- [101:00]
B
We can't go back to the Constitution because of Facebook and Twitter. Yes, that does make sense.
- [101:07]
A
I love Robert Cortez goes. Just shot juice out of my nose. Forgot about that part. What's up, William? William just says he rolled in from the King Pilled Roundtable. I was going to be in on that today, but I just, I wanted to spend time with Stacy, so. Huh.
- [101:26]
B
I never got it in. Signal. I just haven't looked at it.
- [101:34]
A
You need to go in the Signal group.
- [101:36]
B
I know. I check it like once a day and it's not nearly enough.
- [101:41]
A
That section on the conservatives, I remember when I first read that, it's like you dropped the book because it's like, oh my. He spends all that time dunking on the left and then you read that, it's like, holy crap. It only takes one sentence. Where it took him like sections to dunk on the left. He just goes right after the right and it's just like bam.
- [102:03]
B
Yeah, that one sentence is like a fucking nuke.
- [102:07]
A
The breakdown of traditional values to some extent implies the breakdown of the bonds that hold together traditional small scale social groups. The disintegration of small scale social groups is also promoted by the fact that modern conditions often require or tempt individuals to move to new locations, separating themselves from their communities. Beyond that, a technological society has to weaken family ties and local communities if it is to function efficiently in modern society. An individual's loyalty must first be to the system and only secondarily to a small scale community. Because if the internal loyal loyalties of small scale communities were stronger than loyalty to the system, such communities would pursue their own advantage at the expense of the system.
- [102:57]
B
Man, I see some, some potential overlap with Hops Covenant communities.
- [103:05]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean, he's, he's talking about how when you get people moving to the cities, it's growing up in New York City and you would meet people who, like, especially like a lot of my black friends growing up were from the south and they would, you know, they came up because there was no opportunities down there and everything. And then they would come up here and immediately, almost immediately, they would just become acclimated. And you know, you just, it's like, well, I mean, what's. People have a tendency to move to the city and become immediately a cog in that city machine. And if they came from small town Iowa or wherever, I mean, a lot of them would get there and turn around and go right back. They're like, this is not for me. But when you look at the size of cities and how much they've grown over the last 50, 60, 70, 100 years, you know, you have to believe that most of them move there and stayed there.
- [104:06]
B
Yeah, yep. You know, whether they're staying there for purely material reasons or because they actually like it, I would say it's much more of the. The former than the latter.
- [104:20]
A
Yeah. All right, where am I? Where am I? Okay, suppose that a public official or corporate or a corporation executive appoints his cousin, his friend, or his co religionist to a position. Rather than appointing the person best qualified for the job, he has permitted personal loyalty to supersede his loyalty to the system. And that is nepotism or discrimination. Both of which are terrible sins in modern society would be industrial societies that have done a poor job of subordinating personal or local loyalty to loyalty to the system are usually very inefficient. Look at Latin America. Thus an advanced industrial society can tolerate only those small scale communities that are emasculated, tamed and made into tools of the system.
- [105:10]
B
Yes.
- [105:12]
A
Yeah.
- [105:12]
B
I mean, is Ted King pilled?
- [105:16]
A
Well, well think about this. I mean, come on, most people when they're. It used to be that you built up a business and you built it up for, to pass down to your kid.
- [105:27]
B
Yeah.
- [105:28]
A
And now if you have, you know, one of these public officials or. Yeah. And what's funny, when he says public official, that's where you get the King pilled. But corporate executives too. It's like, I mean, why wouldn't you, I mean, want to pass it down to, you know, someone in your family, your kin? And what I've seen, my history with nepotism as such, is that usually the second or third generation is just completely incompetent compared to the first generation. And I blame the first and second generation for not bringing them up in a way. I mean they brought them up to too soft. I mean I knew 16 year olds who, on their, on their 16th birthday they were getting Jaguars, stuff like that, you know, and it's like, and I mean I never had anyone buy me anything, you know, so my dad was like, it's like, I can't afford to buy my own car. I'm not buying you nothing.
- [106:26]
B
So yeah, yep. I was kind of the middle of that cycle where, you know, my parents paid for half my college tuition. They didn't buy me a car, but like they let me go on their insurance, like. And I, I want to kind of cut that cycle off. Not, not entirely. We all, we all want to like, we all have to support our kids and we like them to have nice things. But I, my, my task when I start, when I start my army is to find that balance that goes more, more towards. Sorry kid, you're subsisting.
- [107:02]
A
So death by cognitive dissonance asked me what was different about me that made me realize the urban environment wasn't for me. And I think it was really becoming. Understanding economics and watching what happened in 2008 and looking at all then the subsequent money, you know, money printer, go, brr. And just go. And this is unsustainable. And the, when all of this comes down, the worst place you're going to want to be is in a city. Because that's the Place that's gonna, that's the first place that's not gonna have food.
- [107:37]
B
Oh, yeah. Yep.
- [107:40]
A
So I think it was, understanding economics was. And seeing what happened over the last 13 years, it was like, get, get the hell out of cities. And if you can figure out how to grow your own food.
- [107:52]
B
Yeah, Yep. All right. Get, get a, get a trade that will be there, you know, when, no matter what.
- [108:01]
A
Yeah. Crowding, rapid change and the breakdown of communities have been widely recognized as sources of social problems. But we do not believe they are enough to account for the extent of the problems that are seen today. A few pre industrial cities were very large and crowded, yet their inhabitants do not seem to have suffered from psychological problems to the extent as modern men. In America today, there still are uncrowded rural areas, and we find they're the same problems as in urban areas, though the problems tend to be less acute in the rural areas. Thus crowding does not seem to be the decisive factor. So he's just basically saying that people living on top of each other may not be the main cause of any psychological problems. Because we still see psychological problems in rural areas, although to a certain extent not as bad.
- [108:59]
B
And we've both been to cities all over the world and meets all the criteria that Ted's talking about. And they, they still don't have the level of problems that, you know, cities in, say, urban America have. And I think that comes down to just culture. Culture and where they are in their development. You know, give them 50 years, maybe, maybe they'll have the same exact things that we're seeing, you know, in New York and la.
- [109:31]
A
Yeah. In a lot of the cities that I've been to, that I was considering, consider to be poor outside of the country. Even the people who are obviously living on the street don't seem to have the mental illness problems as the people we see here in this country.
- [109:45]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I would agree with that.
- [109:49]
A
On the growing edge of the American frontier during the 19th century, the mobility of the population probably broke down extended families and small scale social groups to at least the same extent as those are broken down today. In fact, many nuclear families lived by choice in such isolation, having no neighbors within several miles, that they belong to no community at all, yet they do not seem to have developed problems as a result. I'm gonna go on. Yeah. Furthermore, change in American frontier society was very rapid and deep. A man might be born and raised in a log cabin outside the rail reach of law and order and fed largely on wild meat. And by the time he Arrived at old age, he might be working a regular job and living in an ordered community with effective law enforcement. Effective law enforcement. Oh, I like that one. This was a deeper change than that which typically occurs in the life of a modern individual. Yet it does not seem to have led to psychological problems. In fact, 19th century American society had an optimistic and stimulated self confident tone quite unlike that of today's society. 100%.
- [110:58]
B
Yeah. Yep. That was, you know, when the Monroe Doctrine was happening and we were expanding out west. That was a really, I mean from what I've read, it seemed like a really positive time, like manifest destiny and all that. It seemed like definitely that our culture was in the ascendant. The frontier culture was in the ascendant.
- [111:19]
A
Yeah. And when you read, yeah, when you read the writings, I mean, Twain even, they were all hopeful. There weren't just point to the. The rise of dystopic fiction. When you start, see, when you see people start writing about possible. I mean you could point to Kafka in the early 1900s. I'm talking about in the aughts and in the tens.
- [111:51]
B
Writing America, the tail end of the industrial revolution.
- [111:55]
A
Yeah, writing America, where America is taken over by Russia or metamorphosis. Man waking up one morning and he's a cockroach. I mean, these are far beyond the imagination of anything that. Maybe not far beyond, but radically different than anything you would have seen written in the 18th and 19th century. All right. The difference, we argue, is that modern man has the sense, largely justified, that change is imposed on him. Whereas the 19th century frontiersman had the sense also, largely, also largely justified that he created change himself by his own choice. Thus a pioneer settled on a piece of land of his own choosing and made it into a farm through his own effort. In those days, an entire county might have only a couple of hundred inhabitants and was a far more isolated and autonomous entity than a modern county is. Hence the pioneer farmer participated as a member of a relatively small group in the creation of a new ordered community. One may well question whether the creation of this community was an improvement. But at any rate, it satisfied the pioneers need for the power process. They had a say. It's almost like he's promoting democracy here. He's saying, oh, they had a say. And because they had a say and because they were in the power process, it gave them a sense of affair fulfillment. Whereas now, I mean, what, Go vote?
- [113:40]
B
Yeah, yeah. And it doesn't even have to be like democratic. I mean, if you think about say a frontier town in the Wild west, you know, just being, being a member of that community. Having a farm outside of town, that gave you a certain amount of clout. And you know, your, your reputation was something that you held dear because you needed to have that certain amount of, of clout in the decision making process about your community. Now it's like, nah, it, I, my vote, my vote's the same as everybody else's. So you're definitely disincentivized to, you know, maintain that, that sort of old school reputation.
- [114:25]
A
Sure. And he was a property owner and he was respected because he was a property owner. And nowadays being a property owner is really what is being a property owner. You're paying property tax. If you don't, even if you pay off your house and you don't pay the property tax, the county takes it away from you. And your vote counts as much as the welfare queen with six kids who's driving a nicer car than you.
- [114:48]
B
Yeah, I had this conversation with my boomer construction worker dad today. I was like, look dad, you know, there's, there's capitalism and there's democracy. You can have one or the other. And he's, and of course he's like, well I, you know, vote and fucking all that shit. And I'm like, yeah, that's great. But that's why we're, we're at where we are today because you know, the contradictions of capitalism and democracy.
- [115:12]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean the, if you don't really have a say in, if you have no power, as he's talking about the power process here. I mean what this more is demoralizing. I mean people think that, people think that they should have some power over their lives and it's demoralizing to think that you don't.
- [115:33]
B
And you either stagnate and become bored like he said, or you start mailing things out to some college campuses.
- [115:42]
A
He just picked the wrong addresses. It would be possible to give other examples of society which there had been rapid change and, or, or lack of close community ties without the kind of massive behavioral aberration that is seen in today's industrial society. We contend that the most important cause of social and psychological problems in modern society is the fact that people have insufficient opportunity to go through the power process in a normal way. We don't mean to say that modern society is the only one in which the power process has been disrupted. Probably most if not all civilized societies have interfered with the power power process to a greater or lesser extent extent. But in modern industrial society the problem has become Particularly acute leftism, at least in its recent mid to late 20th century form, is in part a symptom of deprivation with respect to the power process. So base. That's an interesting take. Saying basically that the left, because they don't have any power, they have to go chasing it. They have to invent like, oh, we live in a racist society, so I'm going to be anti racist and then I'll form a group. And now I have the power that I should have had over my life if everything was just normal.
- [117:07]
B
Yeah, and it goes right back to what he was saying in the first part. You know, that alienation from the power process makes you kind of. I can see what he's saying. It, it makes people want to open up new frontiers where they could get power and kind of. I forget who we were talking to, but you know, oh, it might have been, it was probably popular liberty. Like you're creating new centers of power, but you're, you're kind of taken away from other centers as you do that. And oh,
- [117:45]
A
today I'm gonna answer William Leonard, because Aaron's a boomer and answered your question in our private chat that only I can see. Oh, nice. Aaron, you said is Aaron. William, you said, is Aaron's dad like a gung ho union type? And Aaron said not so much. Just a blue collar boomer con.
- [118:04]
B
Yeah.
- [118:06]
A
So, all right, I think we're moving on to disruption of the power process in modern society. Oh, 40 minutes. We divide human drives into three groups. Those drives that can be satisfied with minimal effort. Those that can be satisfied, but only at the cost of serious effort. Those that cannot be adequately satisfied no matter how much effort one makes. The power process is the process of satisfying the drives of the second group. The more drives there are in the third group, the more there is frustration, anger, eventually defeatism, depression, what we might call black pilled. In modern industrial society, natural human drives tend to be pushed into the first and third groups. And the second group tends to consist increasingly of artificially creating created drives. Like basically what he was talking about, how the left has to go looking for boogeyman and invent them in primitive.
- [119:04]
B
What a genius to articulate it that way because the whole thing just clicked in my brain instantaneously.
- [119:12]
A
I mean, it's.
- [119:13]
B
Wow, he's right.
- [119:16]
A
It's amazing. I mean, he's. When you look at number two, those that can only be satisfied. Those that can be satisfied, but only at the cost of serious effort. I mean, who wants to do that?
- [119:31]
B
Who wants that going back to Time preference
- [119:37]
A
is. Oh my God.
- [119:39]
B
Ted Kaczynski, the Capital L Libertarian I
- [119:43]
A
want to fly to Florence and try and get in there.
- [119:46]
B
All right.
- [119:46]
A
In primitive society, societies, physical necessities generally fall into group two. They can be obtained, but only at the cost of serious effort. But modern society tends to guarantee the physical necessities to everyone in exchange for only minimal effort. Hence, physical needs are pushed into group one. There may be disagreement about whether the effort needed to hold a job is minimal, but usually in lower to middle level jobs, whatever effort is required is merely that of obedience. You sit or stand where you were told to sit or stand and, and do what you are told to do in the way you are told to do it. Seldom do you have to exert yourself seriously. And in any case you have hardly any autonomy and work. So the need for the power process is not well served.
- [120:34]
B
Yeah, I would caution people to. When we're talking about like exerting effort. I at first went to like physical effort, but I think it's equally applicable to mental effort and psychological effort as well. You know, which it kind of clashes with the idea that universities are in that second or can be in that second group, because I think for the most part universities, depending on your major, I guess you do have to exert a lot of effort, particularly like in the later stages towards graduation when you're writing your thesis or whatever, which is which. I, I have to look at his target list again to see what, what universities he sent. Sent packages to. But I wonder if there's. There's some, some connection between, you know, those surrogate activity universities and the one that, and what he's saying right here.
- [121:41]
A
Interesting. Social needs such as sex, love and status often remain in group 2 in modern society depending on the situation of the individual. But except for people who have a particularly strong drive for status, the effort required to fulfill the social drives is insufficient to satisfy adequately the need for the power process. All right, I'm just going to keep going because this continues. So certain artificial needs have to be created that fall into group two, hence serve the need for the power process. Advertising and marketing techniques have been developed that make many people feel they need things that their grandparents never desired or even dreamed of. It requires serious effort to earn enough money to satisfy these artificial needs. Hence they fall into group two. But see paragraphs 80 to 82. Modern man must satisfy his need for the power process largely through pursuit of the artificial needs created by the advertising and marketing industry and through surrogate activities. Man. Yeah, the first time I Talked to, we were hanging out with him at Pork Fest. Bellamy, Bellamy Fitzpatrick. He was stressing. One of his stresses was just how evil advertising was. I mean, just how. And I really, at the time, I guess I wasn't ready to hear that message. But now when you read this, and especially when you see the last 20 months of propaganda, which is it's all advertising, it's hard not to, not to look at advertising, you know, and he, you know, and Bellamy was asking over and over again, what is the way to, I mean, how do you deal with this? How do you deal with this? If this advertising is what is causing people so much grief, how do you deal with it? You know, and I, I look at that as the same question as how do you deal with Google and Twitter and everybody de. Platforming people without, you know, putting the, putting the government in charge of them?
- [124:00]
B
Yeah, it's one thing to, you know, brilliantly use psychology to manipulate people into buying products that they don't really need. It's another thing entirely to kind of coalesce that power you have into driving culture and driving, driving power structures. I, I'm very interested to see what happens in that department. My, my guess would be now reading this kind of confirms it would be fragmentation and you know, everybody becoming in a hermetically sealed group. And you know, I, I'm here for that. I like that.
- [124:43]
A
Robert says one answer would be infiltration and sabotage. Yeah, not bad. All right, so, okay. It seems that for many people, maybe the majority, these artificial forms of the power process are insufficient. A theme that appears repeatedly in the writings of the social critics of the second half of the 20th century is the sense of purposelessness that afflicts many people in modern society. Parentheses this purposelessness is often called by other names, such as anomic or middle class vacuity. We suggest that the so called identity crisis is actually a search for a sense of purpose, often for commitment to a suitable surrogate activity. It may be that existentialism is in large part a response to the purposelessness of modern life. Very widespread in modern society is the search for fulfillment. But we think that the majority of people, but we think that for the majority of people, an activity whose main goal is fulfillment, that is a surrogate activity, does not bring completely satisfactory fulfillment. In other words, it does not fully satisfy the need for the power process. That need can be fully satisfied only through activities that have some external goal, such as physical necessities, sex, love, status, revenge, etc.
- [126:05]
B
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. You can see like the evolution of, let's say identity or anti racism, which is a surrogate activity for the most part. And unless you're, unless you're black or you know, a person of color, but you know, anti any type of activism nowadays really, because they're not, they're not generally geared towards making material conditions better. They're geared towards some type of like some surrogate empty identitarianism and status.
- [126:44]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's. And when you see like he's talking about the external goal of the sex, love, status, revenge, all of these things, you can also, what's funny is when you, you, when you look at all those things. American, American Psycho.
- [127:08]
B
Yeah. Yep.
- [127:09]
A
I mean he, he nailed it. I mean that's everything that's right there is from American Psycho. And American Psycho is like one of the most brilliant postmod, like postmodern kind of commentaries on what was probably looking more like at the yuppie, you know, the 80s and early 90s kind of yuppie.
- [127:29]
B
Oh yeah, the completely empty, status obsessed, materialist, postmodern 80s.
- [127:39]
A
Yeah. And all of those things that he mentions there are just basically can be, have no weight to them. They can just be completely empty. You can be going, you can be trying to satisfy yourself with those activities, but they're so empty, they just, they don't have any fulfillment whatsoever.
- [128:02]
B
Yeah. And until something, something that's fulfilling, that's actually fulfilling takes hold, which I guess in, in Patrick Bateman's case was revenge. Revenge on the world, revenge on women, revenge on whoever.
- [128:20]
A
All right, here's where, here's where it gets good. Moreover, where goals are pursued through earning money, climbing the status ladder, or functioning as part of the system in some other way, most people are not in position to pursue their goals autonomously. Most workers are someone else's employee and as we pointed out in paragraph 61, must spend their days doing what they are told in a way doing what they are told in the way they are told to do it. Even people who are in business for themselves have only limited autonomy. It is a chronic complaint of small business persons and entrepreneurs that their hands are tied by excessive government regulation. Some of these regulations are doubtless unnecessary, but for the most part, government regulations are essential and inevitable. Part of an extremely complex society. A large portion of small business today operates on the franchise system. It was reported in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago that many of the franchise groups granting companies require applicants for franchises to take a personality test that is designed to exclude those who have creativity and initiative, because such Persons are not sufficiently docile to go along obediently with the franchise system. This excludes from small business many of the people who most need autonomy.
- [129:37]
B
I wonder if that's relevant to today with the franchise system. I'm sure that there's fuckery of all kinds that happens in any type of investment scheme.
- [129:50]
A
I never got in deep into how like Chick Fil A allows franchisees. I know that you have to be liquid a certain amount of money, but I also believe that in the way in how they choose their employees by personality. Chick Fil A has. I mean, they're like big on personality tests that I would assume they would want the same thing out of their franchisees.
- [130:22]
B
Yeah, that makes sense that it's, you know, it's like a. They're. They're generating a risk and they want to, you know, mitigate that risk and have as much information as possible in their investment. So I guess I get it, but man like that, that didn't happen out of nowhere.
- [130:39]
A
Yeah, he's talking about when he says that. Government regulations are essential, inevitable parts of our extremely complex society. I don't know if I'm reading that as him saying that they're a good thing or if it's just going to be natural part of how society is structured.
- [131:05]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think as you get into industrialization and modern, you know, modernization of any society, I. This is an area where I disagree with the ancaps is that, yeah, you're going to have a state. You don't have to like it, but it's going to be there.
- [131:27]
A
Yeah, yeah. I was doing some writing on that this morning, just going that everybody who's like, well, when you say, well, one of the main problems with this is the state, and then your answer is we'll just end the state. All right, well, I mean, sure, let's do that again.
- [131:49]
B
Knowing power dynamics, you're just transferring all of that power to regulate, like Ted's talking about. You're transferring that over to some other entity that's essentially a state. And that's not what we're here to argue about. But yeah, if anybody wants to argue with me, I'm game after
- [132:10]
A
today. People live more by virtue of what the system does for them or to them than by virtue of what they do for themselves. And what they do for themselves is done more and more along channels laid down by the system. Opportunities tend to be those that the system provides. The opportunities must be exploited in accordance with rules and regulations and techniques prescribed by experts must be followed. If There is to be a chance of success. And I mean, come on. This. We know this. I mean, think about it. I mean, you can come up with the greatest idea. I remember a friend of mine was telling me that he. He had a friend who was a. Doing research into, like, regrowing limbs. And he said the guy had made, like, a major breakthrough and everything. He was just shut down. They were just like. He didn't know. He wasn't regrowing limbs. He hadn't figured out how to regrow limbs, but he had figured, like, cell regeneration. And it was just like, nope, no, this is back in 2010 and 2011.
- [133:19]
B
Jeez.
- [133:20]
A
Yeah, they were just like, we can't have that.
- [133:23]
B
Well, too many people are going to lose a lot of money. We better shut that down.
- [133:27]
A
Yeah. Then you have people like Rick Simpson in Canada who was able to cure a lot of people of cancer using. Using weed, you know, getting it down into, like, tar form, into, like, its most pure form and everything. And he was just giving it away. He had a farm, and he was growing it and giving it away to people. I mean, they ran him out of the country. Last I heard, he was living in Amsterdam or something like that. But we can't have. We can have people doing that. He had cured himself with it. He had, like, seven tumors behind his eyes and everything. And then somebody had mentioned something about it, and he was. He just talked to a bunch of different people, and he figured out this way to just break out, pull out the purest CBD and THC and the most important components out of it, and looks like it cured cancer in a lot of people. But. Can I pause?
- [134:25]
B
Can speak on that subject a lot better than I can about just breakthrough technologies that, like, you know, people in suits show up and just take it.
- [134:35]
A
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, look at. Look what happened when. When Tesla died.
- [134:41]
B
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
- [134:42]
A
They went in, took everything. And do you know the name of the person they gave it to?
- [134:48]
B
Who is that? Pete?
- [134:50]
A
His name was John Trump.
- [134:52]
B
Huh.
- [134:54]
A
And he was the uncle of the 45th President of the United States.
- [134:58]
B
I. I can't believe that. That's just amazing to me.
- [135:02]
A
That's why. That's why a lot of people believe. You heard the whole Trump has a time machine thing, right?
- [135:08]
B
No.
- [135:09]
A
You never heard that? Oh, my God. It's hilarious. They, like a bunch of Q tards were like, trump has a time machine, and you're gonna see what's okay. Sure.
- [135:19]
B
Yes. I'm infinitely happier that exists.
- [135:26]
A
Just that. Okay. So thus the power Process is disrupted in our society through a deficiency of real goals and a deficiency of autonomy in the pursuit of goals. But it is also disrupted because of those human drives that fall into Group 3, the drives that one cannot adequately satisfy no matter how much effort one makes. One of these drives is the need for security. Our lives depend on decisions made by other people. We have no control over these decisions, and usually we do not even know the people who make them. We live in a world in which relatively few people, maybe 500 or a thousand, make the important decisions. That was Philip B. Heyman of Harvard Law School, quoted by Anthony Lewis, New York Times, April 21, 1995. Our lives depend on whether safety standards at a nuclear power plant. Plant are properly maintained. On how much pesticide is allowed to get into our food or how much pollution into our air. On how skillful or incompetent our doctor is. Whether we lose or get a job may depend on decisions made by government economists or corporate corporation executives and so forth. Most individuals are not in a position to secure themselves against these threats to more than a very limited extent. The individual search for security is therefore frustrated, which leads to a sense of powerlessness
- [136:51]
B
again, alienation. Alienation from the security process. I can see how he would put security into group three, because literally, no matter how much effort you make, you're never going to achieve security. The requisite amount of security that you desire. Not just like. I'm not talking about just like, you know, your house being burglarized or you get in carjacked. Like he said, there's so many external factors to think about. You know, I live right down the street from a giant gas. Gas facility. I'm. I just kind of have to hope that the people in charge are, you know, doing their job competently. But yeah, I. I don't have any say and probably 99% of my, my drive to be secure in my own home.
- [137:50]
A
I mean, think about going to the grocery store. You're buying food that you are assuming is not poisoned. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we. All of these things we take for granted and the. The reason we believe it's not poisoned is because there's an FDA out there. I mean, not. We. I think you and I believe it's total, you know, crap and everything.
- [138:14]
B
It's luck.
- [138:15]
A
Yeah, pretty much.
- [138:17]
B
That I didn't get salmonella tonight is just purely luck.
- [138:21]
A
Yeah. And, you know, I'd like. Now I get eggs down the road from a farmer who, you know, gathers them up every morning and everything like that. And I feel 10 times, 10 times more confident that they're nutritious, that they're fresh, that they're not going to hurt me than something in a store that was brought on a truck. And who knows if the refrigeration broke and all that.
- [138:52]
B
Every economic activity you can do as local as possible, it's, you're just adding to the incentive process of, you know, good, good business practice, really.
- [139:07]
A
It may be objected that primitive man is physically less secure than modern man, as is shown by his shorter life expectancy. Hence, modern man suffers from less, not more than the amount of insecurity that is normal for human beings. But psychological security does not closely correspond with physical security. What makes us feel secure is not so much objective security as a sense of confidence in our ability to take care of ourselves. Primitive man, threatened by a fierce animal or by hunger, can fight in self defense or travel in search of food. He has no certainty of success in these efforts, but he is by no means helpless against the things that threaten him. The modern individual, on the other hand, is threatened by many things against which he is helpless. Nuclear accidents, carcinogens and food, environmental pollution, war, increasing taxes, invasion of his privacy by large organizations. Oh man, he, he called that one nationwide social or economic phenomena that may disrupt his way of life. Yeah, just basically expounding upon, expanding upon what he said previously. But that, that invasion of privacy by large organizations, man, how has that come into. When you look at tech now, yeah,
- [140:24]
B
it's like we have millions of little things that threaten us every single day. Like instead of just having a couple pretty big things like a pack of wolves or starvation are literally like the only things that primitive man had to worry about. Now we have a million little things with, you know, a very low probability of affecting us. But when they all add up, I mean, the, the wolves and the starvation doesn't seem that bad,
- [140:55]
A
that's for sure. Well, you know another thing that that primitive man had said. The elements. Yeah, which is why, which is why so many people moved. You know, when they figured out that it was warmer south, they moved south. And why they moved into caves and why they eventually constructed dwellings. So yeah, that was also a very important part of it. All right. It is true that primitive. Okay, it is true that primitive man is powerless against some of the things that threaten him. Disease, for example. But he can accept the risk of disease stoically. It is part of natural, it is part of the natural things. It is no one's fault unless it is the fault of some imaginary impersonal Demon. But threats to the modern individual tend to be man made. They are not results of chance, but are imposed on him by other persons whose decisions he as an individual is unable to influence. Consequently, he feels frustrated, humiliated and angry. Or just vote harder, dude. Yeah, just vote harder.
- [142:00]
B
All I could think of was the China virus. Talking about diseases.
- [142:07]
A
Oh, man. Thus, primitive man, for the most part, has his security in his own hands, either as an individual or a member of a small group. Whereas the security of modern man is in the hands of persons or organizations that are too remote or too large for him to be able personally to influence them. So modern man's drive for security tends to fall into groups one and three. In some areas, food, shelter, his security is assured at the cost of all the. A trivial effort. Whereas in other cases, he cannot attain security. The foregoing greatly simplifies the real situation, but it does include, it does indicate in a rough general way how the condition of modern man differs from that of primitive man. So yeah, I mean, I guess that goes back to power process too is if you know that you're, that you're responsible for your own security, for getting your own food. I mean, there's a purpose there, there's. And something also to keep you occupied, something to keep your mind, you know. I wonder if he ever gets into how the enlightenment just fucked everything up. But the, the idea that you have to go out and you have to work and that you're working with your hands, that you're actually, you know, participating in the power process means a lot when you consider have that now. I mean, it's everything else, everything else belongs to somebody, somebody else until you go and you get it from them. But it's not like you're using any power to do it. You're just like, here, here are these pieces of paper.
- [143:44]
B
Yeah. Everything belongs to a private equity firm and everything you work on can be taken away from you at a, at a moment's notice. So yeah, once again, alienation, alienation from your own labor, alienation from your possessions in pretty much every aspect of your life. Yeah, yeah.
- [144:05]
A
All right, which one am I on? Security. Okay. People have many transitory drives or impulses that are necessarily frustrated in modern life. Hence, fall into group three. One may become angry, but modern society cannot prevent, permit fighting in many situations. It does not even permit verbal aggression when going somewhere. One may be in a hurry or one may be in a mood to travel slowly. But one generally has no choice but to move with the flow of traffic and obey the traffic signals. One may want to do one's own work in a different way. But usually one can work only according to the rules laid down by one's employer. In many other ways as well. Modern man is strapped down by a network of rules and regulations, explicit or implicit, that frustrate many of his impulses and thus interfere with the power process. Most of these regulations cannot be dispensed with because they are necessary for the functioning of industrial society.
- [145:05]
B
It's like all those things that he mentioned were arrived at through a, both a trial and error and just a rational process, like an empirical process, like why do you work the way you do? And it's, you know, trial and error and also, you know, an empiricism. And you know, it, it does take away a lot of your power for creativity, for self expression and for innovation really. And I think anybody that's ever worked in an office or in a trade can see that.
- [145:44]
A
Seems to me that some of the most people who can support themselves by doing things that are creative can feel more the power process than others. And I think of like software engineers, people who write code and things like that. The ones that I know seems to have their, seem to be together, seem to be a little more in tune with themselves and seem to, for lack of a better term, have their shit together.
- [146:21]
B
Yeah, Yep. Definitely increases self knowledge and self worth. And that's kind of a, a lost value today when everybody's, like you said, a cog in the machine. They, they don't, they don't ever do any kind of introspection until it's, until it's too late.
- [146:39]
A
Yeah. And I would also think like, you know, when I talk to people who work in like Silicon Valley or something like that, when you get together in groups and you work in groups and you're working with each other, that, that can be also just the, not only the creativity that you can add to it, but also the camaraderie is, is probably pretty helpful too.
- [147:04]
B
Yeah.
- [147:05]
A
Yeah. So. All right, let's go. Okay. People have any transitory choice. Modern society is in certain respects extremely permissive in matters that are irrelevant to the functioning of the system. We generally do what we please. We can believe in any religion as long as it does not encourage behavior that is dangerous to the system. We can go to bed with anyone we like as long as we practice safe sex. We can do anything we like as long as it is unimportant. But in all important matters, the system tends increasingly to regulate our behavior. Oh,
- [147:50]
B
I wonder where he's going. To go from here because it. Whether or not that regulation is not necessary, but, you know, not ideal in its current form or. I don't know.
- [148:06]
A
Yeah, yeah. All right. So behavior is regulated not only through explicit rules and not only by government. Control is often exercised through indirect coercion or through psychological pressure and manipulation and by organizations other than the government or by the system as a whole. Most large organizations use some form of propaganda to manipulate public attitudes or behavior. No, propaganda is propaganda is not limited to commercials and advertisements. And sometimes it is not even consciously intended as propaganda by the people who make it. For instance, the contents of entertainment programming is a powerful form of propaganda. An example of indirect coercion. There is no law that says we have to go to work every day and follow our employers orders. Legally there is nothing to prevent us from going to live in the wild like primitive people or from going into business for ourselves. But in practice, there is very little wild country left and there is room in the economy for only a limited number of small business owners. Hence most of us can only survive. Hence most of us can survive only as someone else's employee.
- [149:18]
B
The proletariat will rise.
- [149:23]
A
I like how he says legally there is nothing to prevent us from going to live in the wild like primitive people. Actually, legally there is. I mean, most of that land is, you know, if you have wild land out there, I think, what is it like 60% of Nevada is owned by the US government, quote, unquote owned by the US government. And then, I mean, really, where can you homestead anymore?
- [149:47]
B
Yeah, like out west. Out west, in middle of the country is that, I mean the largest landowner in the country is the federal government. And they're not, they're not going to just let you homestead there. There is homesteading options out there, but they usually come with like strings attached. When I, I looked into it a while back and I think like either Idaho or Iowa, like you can homestead certain lots out there, but it's like you have to live there first, you have to develop it and you have to, you know, you can't just build a tent on it or, or a cabin and start making bombs.
- [150:29]
A
Yeah. And also when he talks about only a limited number of small business owners, I mean, I remember having an idea for opening a business down in Georgia in the town I was working in at the time. And I knew some venture capitalists and I was like, sounds like a good idea, right? He's like, hell yeah, that sounds like a good idea. We're fulfilling something, a service that isn't around here. I immediately went to the town and they were like, we're not going to allow that business here. Like, well, where is that written? They're like, it doesn't have to be written. We're just not going to allow that business here.
- [151:04]
B
We don't take kindly to your type around here.
- [151:06]
A
Boy, it was a freaking car wash. Jesus. It was a freaking car wash. All right. We suggest that modern man's obsession with longevity and with maintaining physical vigor and sexual attractiveness to advanced age is a symptom of unfulfillment resulting from deprivation with respect to the power process. The midlife crisis also is such a symptom. So is the lack of interest in having children. That is fairly common in modern society, but almost unheard of in primitive societies. There's a lot there.
- [151:41]
B
Wow. Yeah, yeah. It's just that that. That type of decadence that you see comes. I mean, this is something that, you know, you can find in a lot of communist. Communist writings is like, you know, as you. As your society reaches a certain stage of development and material comforts, you're going to see, like, that. That type of. That would be unthinkable and, you know, even like a rural society. Not even primitive, just rural.
- [152:13]
A
Yeah, the. But this point about, like, getting to an advanced stage and still being sexually attractive and everything because you haven't been able to fulfill the power, you haven't been able to partake in the power process. So you're like, holding it out as long as possible and you're holding it out in the most superficial of ways.
- [152:37]
B
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, having kids is not a surrogate activity at all. He says that pretty explicitly. But, you know, feeling attractive and, you know, having an Instagram and, or. Or an. Only fans, that's. That's. I mean, to me, from what I gather, that's the definition of surrogate activity.
- [153:00]
A
We're going to do these last two sections and then we'll end it and pick it up at a later date.
- [153:04]
B
Cool.
- [153:04]
A
All right. This one's a long one. In primitive life is a succession of stages. The needs and purposes of one stage having been fulfilled. There is no particular reluctance of passing on to the next stage. A young man goes through the power process by becoming a hunter, hunting not for sport or for fulfillment, but to get meat that is necessary for food. Parentheses. In young women, the process is more complex with greater emphasis on social power. We won't discuss that here. This phase having been successfully passed through, the young man has no reluctance about settling down to the responsibilities of raising a family parenthesis. In contrast, some modern people indefinitely postpone having children because they are too busy seeking some kind of fulfillment. We suggested that fulfillment they need, an adequate experience is adequate. We suggest that the fulfillment they need is adequate experience of the power process with real goals instead of the artificial goals of surrogate activities. Again, having successfully raised his children going through the power process by providing them with physical necessities, the primitive man feels that his work is done and he is prepared to accept old age if he survives that long and death. Any modern people, on the other hand, are disturbed by the prospect of physical deterioration and death, as is shown by the amount of effort that they expend trying to maintain their physical condition, appearance and health. We argue that this is due to unfulfillment resulting from the fact that they have never put their physical powers to any practical use, have never gone through the power process using their bodies in a serious way. It is not the primitive man. It is not the primitive man who has used his body daily for practical purposes, who fears the deterioration of age, but the modern man who has never had a practical use for his body beyond, beyond walking from his car to his house. It is the man who. Whose need for the power process has been satisfied during his life, who is better prepared to accept the end of that life. That's a book right there.
- [155:13]
B
Yeah. Yeah, I never thought of it that way. I. I knew that like this whole push to live forever. I mean, I just always thought it was kind of satanic. But yeah, it makes sense that like, you know, you. When you've never really accomplished anything, anything worthwhile in your life, I guess it makes sense that you'd be afraid of death. I think that's. That could be an aspect especially like, for all these people that especially, especially now with COVID with like the vaccine mandates and all that. All that is, is I want to live longer. I want to live, you know, as long as possible. To do what? I don't know, but. And I'm not knocking only fans, I'm just saying it's a surrogate activity. I'm on a podcast right now. I. I have no room to talk.
- [156:06]
A
Karen saying. When we lived In Fairfax County, Virginia, where most of the politicians of D.C. live, there was an annual 3 annual $380 permit fee for having a backyard chicken. And all your neighbors had to sign off on it. Man. Sandman asked, do you think the movie Surrogates was inspired by the term surrogate activities?
- [156:30]
B
Is that the one where they. They like. It's Kind of like the Matrix.
- [156:35]
A
They sit at home and they basically have like a robot. Robot. A double that goes out and. Yeah, yeah, it's a. Bruce Willis is in that.
- [156:45]
B
All right. So they're not plugged into anything that might be different.
- [156:49]
A
It almost. Well, what's funny is when Covid started and I saw that people wanted to stay home and everything like that, they were like accepting it. The movie Surrogates was actually one of the first things I thought of.
- [157:01]
B
Huh.
- [157:03]
A
Because it became very apparent to me from an economic standpoint that when all. When Covid started and you started seeing that people were. That businesses were like, okay, work from home, you know, that they were going to be like, okay, so why am I paying for six floors of brick and mortar when I only need one or two?
- [157:27]
B
Being in the property management sector, you know, however removed I am from the, from that, I can tell you right now that it was a huge wake up call. Property management is like a $13 trillion business and the amount of like, mal investment and like on overvalued real estate is insane. And Covid broke that wide open.
- [157:58]
A
Yeah, I mean, I was work. When, when all this started, I was working in a city in Georgia that was designed for Georgia Tech grads, engineers, people like that. They basically built this whole. This little city and they had like Engineering Parkway and Technology Parkway and Science Parkway and all these, these companies were there. And I'm like, so if Oracle has like six floors and everybody's working from home, it's going to take them a month, two months ago, the hell. Why would it, you know, why are we paying for this? And I'm like, I don't know that because it's not my business that, that there's been a real estate crap, a commercial real estate problem and everything. But I thought that there were. That there was really an opportunity for there to be one at the beginning of all this because it just seemed to me like there was going to be a lot of empty, empty space.
- [159:05]
B
At least anecdotally, I can tell you that in my last job I had six buildings. In this job I have four buildings and neither one of them are still to this day are over half. Half occupied.
- [159:21]
A
Just wild, man. I remember when Jean Epstein's wife has an apartment building in New York and I can't remember how many. I can't remember right now how many apartments were in it. It was a small amount of number. I think it was under 10. But they lost like 40, like 60% of their. The people left within like the first two months. Yeah.
- [159:44]
B
And then how many were asking for rent relief?
- [159:47]
A
Yeah, well, they just. I think people just left the city.
- [159:51]
B
Yeah, we're just.
- [159:52]
A
We're just like. We're getting the hell out of here because a lot of. I remember when I went to the Lower east side in September of last year, it seemed like it was one third the amount of traffic that would normally be down there. So. But it's. When I was up there, I didn't go to the Lower east side when I was up there recently, but I was on the Upper west side for. For a night, and it seemed pretty crowded. But it was also a Monday. It wasn't. I mean, it didn't seem overly crowded, but it was also a Monday night, so who the hell knows?
- [160:25]
B
Yeah. I can tell you that Boston is back at it. Traffic is actually worse, probably worse than it was pre Covid.
- [160:34]
A
God, that sucks. I know. Atlanta's. I'm so glad I got out of Atlanta. It's so bad. It just went. It was like one of those things was like, wow, driving in Atlanta was really nice during COVID All right, we got. We got one. One little section here left. Yep. In response to the arguments of this section, someone will say, society must find a way to give people the opportunity to go through the power process. For such people, the value of the opportunity is destroyed by the very fact that society gives it to them. What they need is to find or make their own opportunities. As long as the system gives them their opportunities, it still has them on a leash. To attain autonomy, they must get off that leash.
- [161:22]
B
It's almost like anything that's worth. Worth it is worth it because of the struggle to obtain it.
- [161:30]
A
Well, yeah. I mean, isn't. Wasn't that sort of like. I mean, that was just something parents said, right?
- [161:38]
B
Yeah, that's that old puritan work ethic I'm spreading.
- [161:44]
A
Yeah.
- [161:44]
B
The struggle makes it valuable.
- [161:47]
A
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Labor theory on. Almost. Labor theory of value kind of thing.
- [161:53]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [161:56]
A
All right, man. Well, that was. That was fun. That.
- [162:00]
B
That.
- [162:00]
A
That's an. That's an intense section.
- [162:03]
B
Yeah, that. That was definitely weighed. I. I think just both girthier and deeper than the. The. The part one.
- [162:13]
A
Yeah. I mean, on the left is really fun, but then when he starts getting into the things that start, like, making you feel it right here, it's like, God. So give plugs quick. We'll get out of here.
- [162:29]
B
Yeah. You could find me on Twitter. I don't know how long I'm gonna have my. My ad, but I'M sure you can find me. I promise. I'm going to be putting out some content. We got our Halloween episode coming out at the end of the month on timeline Earth and it's about. It's about all I got.
- [162:45]
A
All right, man, till the next time. And we'll do this again soon. I'm sure you don't mind. I think you're enjoying this, right?
- [162:51]
B
Oh, absolutely.
- [162:52]
A
All right, man, till the next time. I. I think you'll need some painkiller of some sort, you know, like. Oh, I don't know. I won't. I won't jump all the way into that. So let me open up a. Let me put this up on the screen.
- [163:08]
B
I just flew here. Boy, is my ass sore. Is that how that goes? Yeah.
- [163:17]
A
Oh, man, that's hilarious.
- [163:18]
B
I haven't watched your episode with Dave Smith yet. Dave Smith and Andrew, right?
- [163:22]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [163:23]
B
How did that go?
- [163:25]
A
Two hours.
- [163:26]
B
Two. Oh, man.
- [163:27]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [163:27]
B
If you, when you get on with Andrew, you can, you can. You have to clear your schedule.
- [163:32]
A
So the first, the first half hour was us ironing out our differences, you know, me making apologies, and we're talking, you know, just talking about how, you know. Well, I mean, you know, I mean, I've scorched enough earth over the last month, so yeah, I gotta do.
- [163:48]
B
Boy, those bridges really go up, don't they?
- [163:51]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [163:52]
B
But.
- [163:54]
A
So, yeah, we just talked about that at, for, at first and then for a good half hour and then we got into the meat of it. Andrew talking about his plan, Dave asking good questions and just really going back and forth.
- [164:06]
B
Yeah. Yep.
- [164:07]
A
Yeah, but. All right, let's. Let's jump right back in, man.
- [164:14]
B
Yeah. Where did we leave off last time?
- [164:16]
A
The power process and how. The last thing that was said was in response to the arguments of this section, someone will say society must find a way to give people the opportunity to go through the power process. For such people. Yeah. For such people, the value of the opportunity is destroyed by the very fact that society gives it to them. What they need is to find or make their own opportunities. As long as the system gives them their opportunities, it still has them on a leash. To attain autonomy, they must get off the leash.
- [164:48]
B
That makes perfect sense to me.
- [164:49]
A
Oh, yeah, yeah. Especially when you understand the power process. And I was trying to explain it. I forget who I was trying to explain it to this week. And people have a real hard time of getting it because, you know, it's. I was talking to somebody and they were talking about how their families weren't Preparing for how their families weren't preparing like they were for inevitable like shortages and stuff like that. And I said people are so used to going down to the supermarket and seeing things on the shelf that they think that like our default existence is abundance. When you know, just go to per billion's professor per billions pinned tweet. Our default, the detail faults of our existence is poverty.
- [165:35]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So and it's, I'm guilty of it too. Like I, I take probably 99% of my existence for granted. And it's not like this whole power process. There's, there is, I mean Marxists obviously gets into power dynamics a lot, but not so much in the actual does. It's not a ground up groundwork. It's, you know, Marxism assumes that you're going to have a state, a semi democratic state of some sort. You're going to have some type of material excess and, and then that's, that's the starting position. But now that we are where we are, that's it's time to incorporate as a start, as a starting position. You know, not living in abundance, not, not having food, water, shelter easily accessible. You know, maybe not right now, but who knows in the next five years, 10 years, who knows, one year.
- [166:41]
A
Well, I mean I'm sure, Well I don't know. You, you probably hate birds, so I'm sure you heard birds episode where he was talking about like shipping routes and, and shortages and I mean let's call it shortages. I mean don't, don't even be like oh, supply chains. No, let's call it shortages.
- [167:02]
B
Yeah, it's like structurally up. That's what I got from his episode was it it's been up and now the chickens are coming home to ra roost.
- [167:11]
A
Yeah, yeah. All right, let me start reading how some people adjust to not being able to participate in the power process. Not everyone in industrial technological society suffers from psychological problems. Some people even profess to be quite satisfied with society as it is. We now discuss some of the reasons why people differ so greatly in their response to modern society. First, there doubtless are. There doubtless are differences in the strength of the drive for power. Individuals with a weak drive for power, which would be what? Low time preference for power may have relatively little need to go through the power process or at least relatively little need for autonomy in the power process. These are docile types who would have been happy as plantation darkies in the old South.
- [168:02]
B
Beast.
- [168:04]
A
What a boomer. We don't mean to sneer at the plantation darkies. Of the old South. To their credit. To their credit, most of this. All right. To their credit.
- [168:20]
B
Stop.
- [168:21]
A
I gotta, I gotta read this now.
- [168:22]
B
Now he really has my attention. All right, I'm listening.
- [168:27]
A
Don't drop. Rdr. To their credit, most of the slaves were not content with their servitude. We do sneer at people who are content with servitude. Oh, yeah, he saved himself there in the end from just sounding like a complete loop.
- [168:45]
B
Yeah. I don't know. Knowing what we know now and, like, you know, getting into the, the dark corners of the Internet and, you know, some of this information that would never go mainstream, I don't know if I would agree that most slaves were not content with their servitude. It seems like they were. I wouldn't say that they weren't that they were content with their servitude. I think that they weren't that content with being let, like the way in which they were granted freedom.
- [169:20]
A
Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah. I mean, I've read Thaddeus Russell's book, and then if you read something like Roll Jordan, roll by, I can't remember his name, it seemed like the, if, if you follow their logic, that slaves actually had a lot of power. They could slow down, they could slow down production. A lot of times they would just run away and run to, like, other plantations to see friends and everything. And some, I mean, basically the, what we have, our conception of slavery, and the picture of slavery we have is from this 1980s quote unquote documentary, Roots by Alex Haley, which all turned out to be a complete farce. He didn't find his ancestor or anything.
- [170:09]
B
And it's like six hours long.
- [170:11]
A
Yeah, yeah. Oh, no, it's longer than that, you know, and it's just like, and like Bill Burr said, he said, I get it, I get it. White people suck. I get it. Stop whipping them. Stop whipping them. Whipping them. But yeah, I mean, so it's amazing because what he's saying basically is a lot of slaves were not content with their servitude, but people today, 100%.
- [170:32]
B
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And it's because slaves didn't have the material comfort and the benefits that we do today. And that's, that's the difference. That's, that's the driving difference. How do you, how do you make a society docile? You pump them full of soy and estrogen and, you know, you give them free, free everything or extremely abundant everything that they could ever want, and you make them comfortable. And I mean, I, I, I don't have to tell you that. I don't have to tell anybody in this chat that.
- [171:03]
A
Yeah, but the. All right, let's go, let's go, let's go. Some people may have some exceptional drive in pursuing which they satisfy their need for the power process. For example, those who have an unusually strong drive for social status may spend their whole lives climbing the status ladder without ever getting bored with the game. I'm going to keep going. People vary in their susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques. Some are so susceptible that even if they make a great deal of money, they cannot satisfy their constant craving for the shiny new toys that the marketing industry dangles before their eyes. So they always feel hard pressed financially, even if their income is large and their cravings are frustrated.
- [171:48]
B
That's me. My income is large. My cravings. Well, they're frustrated. My tranny tie hooker cravings can never, can never be satisfied.
- [172:07]
A
All right, next. Keep going. All right, people. Okay. Some people have low susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques. These are the people who aren't interested in money. Material acquisition does not serve their need for the power process. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nowadays especially.
- [172:33]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [172:36]
A
People who have medium susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques are able to earn enough money to satisfy their craving for goods and services, but only at the cost of serious effort, putting in overtime, taking a second job, earning promotions, etc. Thus, material acquisition serves your need for the power process, but it does not necessarily follow that their need is fully satisfied. They may have insufficient autonomy in the power process. Their work may consist of following orders and some of their drives may be frustrated, like security or aggression. We are guilty of oversimplification in paragraphs 80 to 82 because we have assumed that the desire for material acquisition is entirely a creation of the advertising and marketing agency. Of course, it's not that simple. Yeah, that's a, that's quite a leap to just try to make it sound like you're blaming it on advertising and marketing. Sure, they have. I mean, some of it's just flat out evil.
- [173:41]
B
Well, what percentage would you say are people driven for material acquisition by advertising and marketing?
- [173:49]
A
Oh, I would say it's high. Yeah, I would say it's high. I would say 70 to 80 maybe.
- [173:54]
B
Yeah, I was going to say like 65 to 75%. Yeah. And then, and then the rest is like, okay, I need this.
- [174:02]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot. I'm, I'm guilty of it too, man. There's things that I want and I mean, but thankfully, as I've gotten older. It's just books. It's just first editions, you know.
- [174:14]
B
So luckily my wife's boyfriend bought me a Nintendo Switch oled, so I'm good for now.
- [174:20]
A
Oh man, your wife's boyfriend's kids are going to be so cute. Some people partly satisfy their need for power by identifying themselves with a powerful organization or mass movement. Oh, just remove powerful en masse and yeah, I can. I think I know who he's talking about. An individual lacking goals or power joins a movement or organization, adopts its goals goals as his own, then works towards those towards those goals. When some of the goals are attained, the individual, even though his personal efforts have played only an insignificant part in the attainment of the goals, feels through his identification with the movement of the organization as if he had gone through the power process. This phenomenon was exploited by the fascists, Nazis and communists. Our society uses it too, though less crudely. Example Manuel Noriega was an irritant to the US goal punish Noriega. The US invaded Panama effort and punished Noriega attainment of goal Thus the US went through the power process and many Americans, because of their identification with the US experienced the power process vicariously. Hence the widespread public approval of the Panama invasion. It gave people a sense of power. We see the same phenomenon in armies, corporations, political parties, humanitarian organizations, religious or ideological movements. In particular leftist movements tend to attract people who are seeking to satisfy their need for power. But for most people, identification with a large organization or a mass movement does not fully satisfy the need for power. We could write a book just on that right there.
- [176:03]
B
Yeah, that's again hitting the nail on the head for the 80th time and again hitting the nail on the head with my personal experience. I'm. I'm part of a large organization and that actually maybe synthetically, maybe not, but they allow me to participate in make in the decision making process at a lower level. But. And whether I should be or not, I am satisfied.
- [176:34]
A
Yeah, I mean there's so many places that you can go with that because political parties especially, I mean immediately I thought of like the current Libertarian Party and how hard some people in there are just fighting to hold on to the kind of relevance that basically people who have no accomplishments can get can. The kind of feeling, the. The kind of feeling of the power process that they can feel by becoming a big fish in a small pond. Sort of like being a. Sort of like being a popular libertarian podcaster or something like that.
- [177:13]
B
Yeah, it's all within the context of like A couple thousand retards. And I'm happy with that. Like, that's fine.
- [177:22]
A
I'm good. Yeah, I. Hey, you know, I went to Tom Woods 2,000 and there was 2,500 people there. Everybody was really cool and nice. All right, well, we could just rip on people all day using that paragraph. So it's a good thing we ripped on ourselves too.
- [177:43]
B
Yeah.
- [177:44]
A
Another way in which people satisfy their need for the power process is through surrogate activities. As we explained in paragraphs 38 through 40, a surrogate activity is an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that the individual pursues for the sake of the fulfillment that he gets from pursuing the goal, not because he needs to attain the goal itself. For instance, there is no practical motive for building enormous muscles, hitting a little ball into a hole, or acquiring a series of postage stamps. Yet many people in our society devote themselves with passion to bodybuilding, golf, and stamp collecting. Some people are more other oriented than others and therefore will more readily attach importance to a surrogate activity simply because the people around them treat it as important and because society tells them that it's important important. That is why some people get very serious about essentially trivial activities such as sports or bridge or chess or arcane scholarly pursuits. Whereas others, who are much more clear sighted, never see these things as anything but the surrogate activities they are, and consequentially never attach enough importance to them to satisfy their need for the power process. In that way. It only remains to the point out. It only remains to point out that in many cases a person's way of earning a living is also a surrogate activity, not a pure surrogate activity, since part of the motive for the activity is to gain the physical necessities and for some people, social status and luxuries that advertising makes them want. But many people put into their work far more effort than is necessary to earn whatever money and status they require, and this extra effort constitutes a surrogate activity. This extra effort, together with the emotional investment that accompanies it, is one of the most potent forces acting toward the continual development and perfecting of the system, with negative consequences for individual freedom, especially for the most creative scientists and engineers, work tends to be largely a surrogate activity. This point is so important that it deserves a separate discussion, which we shall give in a moment, paragraphs 87 through 92. So this should be interesting as we go, as we finish these next two, 85 and 86, because the motive of scientists. I mean, probably something we would want to read now, especially 20 months later. You're muted.
- [180:09]
B
Yeah, that whole paragraph, it's like he was speaking to me. Not being a creative scientist or engineer, but, you know, the, the idea that I have any say whatsoever in, in the actual power process and not just the fake one that my work does. You know, I. I don't know if a lot of my work is a surrogate activity. Probably a lot of the, the people I serve are engaging in surrogate activities and, you know, by, by the transitive property. My work is a surrogate activity, but I don't know. It doesn't make me feel good, man.
- [180:51]
A
Josh Ham, Joshua Ham says met with one of local Christian conservative groups. Good versus Evil preparedness. Using political power to enforce Christian morality. People on the right are waking up, organizing and prepare and prepping.
- [181:05]
B
Well, yeah, yeah, it's better late than never.
- [181:12]
A
All right, so let's finish off these two right here in this section, we have explained how many. How many people in modern society do satisfy their need for the power process to a greater or lesser extent. But we think for the majority of people, we need majority of people. The need for the power process is not fully satisfied. In the first place, those who have an insatiable drive for status, who may get firmly hooked on a surrogate activity, or who identify strongly enough with the movement or organization to satisfy their need for power in that way are exceptional personalities. Others are not fully satisfied with surrogate activities or by identification with an organization. In the second place, too much control is imposed by the system through explicit regulation or through socialization, which results in a deficiency of autonomy and in frustration due to the impossibility of attaining certain goals and the necessity of restraining too many impulses. But even if most people in industrial technological society were well satisfied, we would still be opposed to that form of society because we consider it demeaning to fulfill one's need for the power process through surrogate activities or through identification with an organization rather than through. Through pursuit of real goals. So let me ask you, we've talked about the power process and people's need for the power process at the ending of last week's episode and through this. What's your take on that?
- [182:48]
B
I'm glad that he got into the surrogate activity aspect, like engaging in surrogate activities, as a way to kind of convince yourself that you're taking part in the power process, because I think 99% of us are there, especially when we're on, you know, we're on Twitter, we're getting in arguments where I wouldn't say like engaging in activism. But even if we are, I mean, that's a surrogate activity 99% of the time. It's, it's something that I think we've always felt but haven't been able to articulate that not a whole lot of what we do is going towards attaining real goals that are necessary for, you know, our survival or, or even like our comfort. I, I, I don't really agree with him that, you know, for a goal to be legitimate, it has to be going towards your survival, just even like your base comfort. And I don't know how I could argue that, but that's the initial impression that I get. But I mean, so far so good.
- [183:55]
A
Okay, all right. The motives of scientists, science and technology. And let's remember, I mean this PhD in math.
- [184:09]
B
MK ultra.
- [184:11]
A
Yeah. Science and technology provide the most important examples of surrogate activities. Some scientists claim that they are motivated by curiosity or by a desire to benefit humanity. But it is easy to see that neither of these can be the principal motive of most scientists. As for curiosity, that notion is simply absurd. Most scientists work on highly specialized problems that are not the object of any normal curiosity. For example, is an astronomer, a mathematician, or an entomologist curious about the properties of isopropyl trimethylmethane? Of course not. Only. I should have really should have pre read this one again. Of course not that thing. Only a chemist is curious about such a thing and he is curious about it only because chemistry is as surrogate activity. Is the chemist curious about the appropriate classification of a new species of beetle? No, that question is only of interest of the entomologist and he is interested in it only because entomology is a surrogate activity. If the chemist and the entomologist had to exert themselves seriously to obtain the physical necessities and if that effort exercised their abilities in an interesting way, but in an interesting way, but in some non scientific pursuit, then they wouldn't give a damn about isopropyl, trimethyl, methyl meth, methane, or the classification of beetles. Suppose that lack of funds for postgraduate education had led the chemist to become an insurance broker instead of a chemist. In that case we would have. He would have been very interested in insurance matters but would have cared nothing about. I'm not saying that again, in any case, it is normal to put into the satisfaction of mere curiosity the amount of time and effort that science has put into work. Work. The curiosity explanation for the scientist motive just doesn't stand up. What do you think?
- [186:11]
B
This, this sounds pretty. It wouldn't Be hard to draw a parallel to. Like Rothbardian thought that 99 of the labor that we see every day would only exist because of the state. Like that's, that's like a Rothbardian take on it. And what he's saying is 99% of what we see every day in terms of labor wouldn't exist in a, in a purely survival based, real, goal oriented society.
- [186:46]
A
Yeah, I'm. It's, it's interesting because this isn't the kind of logic people are used to examine or used to using to examine like profession, people's professions.
- [186:59]
B
No, it's very dialectic.
- [187:02]
A
Yeah, yeah. It's, this is, it's JY says how many physics PhDs give up physics and become data scientists? Yeah, I'm, I'm assuming that that's, that's begging the question because it sure sounds like he's setting it up. All right. The benefit of humanity. The benefit of humanity explanation doesn't work any better. Some scientific work has no conceivable relation to the welfare of the human race. Race. Most of archeology or comparative linguistics, for example. Some other areas of science present obviously dangerous possibilities like gain of function, maybe, I don't know. Yet scientists in these areas are just as enthusiastic about their work work as those who develop vaccines and study air pollution.
- [187:54]
B
Huh.
- [187:54]
A
Consider. Huh. Consider the case of Edwards, of Dr. Edward Teller, who was an obvious emotional. Who. Who had an obvious emotional involvement in promoting nuclear power plants. Did this involvement stem from a desire to benefit humanity? If so, then why didn't Dr. Teller get emotional about other humanitarian causes? If he was such a humanitarian, then why did he help develop the H bomb? As with many other scientific achievements, it is very much open to question whether nuclear power plants actually do benefit humanity. Does the cheap electricity outweigh the accumulating waste and the risk of accidents? Dr. Teller saw only one side of the question. Clearly his emotion. Yeah, clearly his emotional involvement with nuclear power arose not from a desire to benefit humanity, but from a personal fulfillment he, he got from his work and from seeing it put to practical use.
- [188:49]
B
So if, if you're super into TED and you read that you went from nuclear power is great, it's cheap energy to nuclear power is terrible. It's cheap energy.
- [189:03]
A
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't think you were going there, but that's a good one. Yeah, well, he, I guess right there it's not a shock that he would be against nuclear power.
- [189:19]
B
No. And it. Marxism has similar, a similar dialectic. And any institution or technology or whatever you're looking at. You base it on who is developing it and what are their, what are, what is their motivation? You know, if, if for Marxism, if it's not, you know, to benefit a class, then it's probably. Then they would view it as not good or it's something that they need to subsume and incorporate and make it beneficial in to their class. For him, it's just purely seems like purely looking at the motivation of the institutions and the people behind technological advancement and, and what, what their, what their morality is, what their principles are and, and judging it off of that. So nuclear power. Yeah. I mean, I don't know the overlap between people that developed, you know, the hydrogen bomb and people that develop nuclear power plants, but there's definitely no guiding principle to benefit humanity present in that overlap at all.
- [190:31]
A
And as Joshua Ham says here, he talks about basically them almost doing it because there is actually a shiny metal that they can get and they're doing it for fame, basically. A lot of them. When it comes down to it, most scientists would. Somewhere in the back of their mind there's a Nobel Prize there. And just like anybody who is into baseball, it's like a home run to have a home run be the home run king one year or something like that.
- [191:05]
B
So they're performing an activity with the goal of recognition.
- [191:11]
A
Yeah. And what does that recognition get them? Literally just more involvement in surrogate activities.
- [191:20]
B
Yes. More funding for surrogate activities.
- [191:23]
A
Yeah, yeah. The same is true of scientists generally, with possible rare exceptions. Their motive is neither curiosity nor a desire to benefit humanity, but the need to go through the power process to have a goal, a scientific problem to solve, to make an effort, research and to attain the goal solution of the problem. Science is a surrogate activity because scientists work mainly for the fulfillment they get out of work itself.
- [191:49]
B
Yeah, I would. And he might get into this later because I haven't read ahead, but a lot of it has to do with making a legacy too. Having something attributed to them, some type of technological innovation attributed to their name. You get that a lot in administrative jobs too. You want some type of instruction, some rule, some, some guidelines that you wrote that goes into the official rules, guidelines and instructions.
- [192:20]
A
All right, this is the part where I tell you how you can support the show and support my work. If you go over to freemanbeyondthewall.com support, you can see all the places where you can donate to the show and you can also see some cryptocurrency addresses down at the bottom if you're enjoying the show. And you want to support, head on over to freemanbeyondthewall.com support and help me out. Thank you. All right, let me finish up here. Was it this one we just did. Of course, it's not that simple. The marketing techniques. Okay, of course it's not that simple. Other motives do play a role for many scientists. Money and status. For example, some scientists may be persons of the type who have an insatiable drive for status, and this may provide much of the motivation for their work. No doubt the majority of scientists, like the majority of the general population, are more or less susceptible to advertising and marketing techniques and need money to satisfy their craving for goods and services. Thus, science is not a pure surrogate activity, but it is in large part a surrogate activity. Also, science and technology constitute a power, mass movement. And many scientists gratify their need for power through identification with this mass movement. Thus, science marches on blindly without regard to the real welfare of the human race or to any other standard, obedient only to the psychological needs of the scientists and of the government of fish and the government officials and corporate executives who provide the funds for research. And he just puts his heel down and starts digging.
- [194:09]
B
Yeah, and it's, it's funny because, you know, I, I have a lot of Orthodox friends and, you know, you talk to them about like, the, the, the struggle between science and religion, and they, they'll tell you that that's a completely Western phenomenon. You know, science in, in terms of like the Eastern, the Eastern bloc or the Eastern Orthodox block. Science was always within the framework of Christian morality. So, I mean, you don't see too many scientific innovations during, say, the Enlightenment that, that are, you know, probably not beneficial. And if, if you do, it's always in reaction to some threat. So like, for instance, gunpowder. The, the, the Byzantine Empire was kind of a little late to the, the gunpowder party, and they, they suffered for it. But science was always kind of ruthless, mostly ran by the state, state institutions, but also within the framework, also limited to within the framework of like a Christian morality. And you can see that before the Enlightenment and you don't really see it afterwards. It's a purely Enlightenment phenomenon. But so we arrive at the same, like we, we Christians arrive at the same, the same sort of conclusion, but from. For a completely different reason. As Ted Kaczynski.
- [195:45]
A
Yeah, and you talk about, when you talk about God before the Enlightenment and everything, look at all those, all the buildings, churches, all these things that were built pre Enlightenment and how extravagant they are. And people are like, well, why Was it like that? It was like. Well, one of the reasons were they were building it to please God. It was like they were inspired by God. And now you look at everything and everything is. I mean, I hate to use the term brutalist because, you know, that is a form of architecture, but I mean, it is, things do look that way. It's just you look at buildings now and it's just, it's very hard to find one where you're impressed, awestruck.
- [196:27]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's easy to impress, to be impressed by like engineering innovations, but architecture wise, there's, it's all just an amalgamous interchangeable blob. You know, the building I work in, you could go to Singapore, you could go to Germany, you could go to South Africa and find a building that's pretty much just like it. It's built for efficiency and cost effectiveness.
- [196:54]
A
And back then too, art was inspired by God. These days, a lot of art is, is an attack on God. Oh yeah, and they admit it and
- [197:07]
B
they admit which, which is, which is fine, like if it was like a novel thing, if it was original and intelligent, but when you're the, you know, when, when, when you're like the 700,000th guy to, you know, draw Jesus naked or whatever, that's just not, I don't know, it's whatever.
- [197:32]
A
Yeah. All right, well this part should be interesting. The nature of freedom. All right, we are going to argue that industrial technological society cannot be reformed in such a way as to prevent it from progress, progressively narrowing the sphere of human freedom. But because freedom is a word that can be interpreted in many ways, I mean, even libertarians don't understand that. They don't understand that freedom to you in the United States is. Someone in Sweden thinks that freedom is free health care. And I know it's not. Free autists, free health care and free college.
- [198:12]
B
Yeah. The leftist version of freedom or liberty is your ability to pursue self actualization uninhibited by material constraints, uninhibited by what they think is artificial material constraints. And you know, I, I don't really hit them on that because that's, it's literally just your opinion, bro.
- [198:36]
A
Yeah, seriously. But because freedom is a word that can be interpreted in many ways, we must first make clear what kind of freedom we are concerned with. By freedom we mean the opportunity to go through the power process with real goals, not the artificial goals of surrogate activities and without interference, manipulation or supervision from anyone, especially from any large organization. Freedom means being in control, either as an Individual or a member of a small group, or the life and death issues of one's existence. Food, clothing, shelter, and defense against whatever threats there may be in one's environment. Freedom means having power. Not the power to control other people, but the power to control the circumstances of one's own life. One does not have freedom if anyone else, especially a large organization, has power over one, no matter how bent, benevolently, tolerantly and permissively that power may be exercised. It is important not to confuse freedom with mere permissiveness.
- [199:40]
B
Huh.
- [199:42]
A
That's sounding very anarchy kissed.
- [199:45]
B
Yeah, yeah. Very left anarchist, for sure.
- [199:49]
A
Yeah. Good.
- [199:52]
B
So far, so good. I, I don't have any critiques.
- [199:56]
A
Yeah. The. I like how he talks about individual or small group and I mean, I could just replace tribe with small group.
- [200:06]
B
Yeah.
- [200:06]
A
Because that would. Yeah, all right.
- [200:09]
B
I still, I still struggle to see why this is limited to a, to, to primitivism and not limited to just living in a rural area, you know?
- [200:23]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. There's, I mean, I have plans to live off of our own work, food and work within a year.
- [200:39]
B
Yeah.
- [200:40]
A
You know, and be completely self sufficient within a year. So even sooner. But let's keep going.
- [200:48]
B
Let me talk to you about that after.
- [200:50]
A
Okay. It is said that we live in a free society because we have a certain number of constitutionally guaranteed rights. But these are not as important as they seem. The degree of personal freedom that exists in a society is determined more by economic and technological structure of the society than by its laws or form of government. Most of the Indian nations of New England were monarchies, and many of the cities of the Italian Renaissance were controlled by dictators. But in reading about these societies, one gets the impression that they were allowed far more personal freedom. Hello, Mr. Hoppe. Hello, Dr. Hoppe. But in reading about these societies, one gets the impression that they were allowed more, far more personal freedom than our society does. In part, this was because they lacked efficient mechanisms for enforcing the ruler's will. There were no modern, well organized police forces, no rapid long distance communications, no surveillance cameras, no dossiers of information about the lives of average citizens. Hence it was relatively easy to evade control. Yeah, I mean, basically Hapa could have wrote that paragraph.
- [201:58]
B
Yeah, yeah, agreed.
- [202:01]
A
Yeah. Interesting, interesting. Let's check the comments. Stephen Messina.
- [202:09]
B
Get out of here.
- [202:12]
A
As for our constitutional rights, consider for example, that of freedom of the press. We certainly don't mean to knock that. Right. It is a very important tool for limiting concentration of political power and for keeping those who do have political power power in line by publicly exposing any misbehavior on their part. But freedom of the press is of very little use to the average citizen as an individual. The mass media are mostly under the control of large organizations that are integrated into the system. Anyone who has a little money can have something printed or can distribute it on the Internet or in some such way, but what he has to say will be swamped by the vast volume of material put out by the media. Hence it will have no practical effect. To make an impression on society with words is therefore almost impossible for most individuals in small groups. Take us, for example. If we had never done anything violent and had submitted the present writings to a publisher, they probably would not have been accepted. If they had been accepted and published, they probably would not have attracted many readers, because it's much more fun to watch the entertainment put out by the media than to read a sober essay. Even if these writings had had many readers, most of these readers would have soon forgotten what they had read as their minds were flooded by the mass of material to which the media exposed them. In order to get our message before the public, with some chance of making a lasting impression, we've had to kill people.
- [203:44]
B
All right, I. I think he's 3/4 correct. I think if, had this been written today, I don't think that paragraph would look the same.
- [203:55]
A
Yeah, yeah. Well, here's the thing. Okay, so it's 1995. The Internet's what, three, two and a half, three years old?
- [204:01]
B
Yeah.
- [204:02]
A
At least the, the inner. The World Wide Web, let's put it that way. Still, you could make the argument that someone, unless you have grown a platform, like a Tim Pool, Dave Smith, someone with a huge platform, a Joe Rogan, putting your words out on the Internet is really not going to help unless you get exposure. And especially since now, you know, it's basically controlled by the companies that he talks about. You know, it's like search what. I'm sure you've done this. You search one the same thing on Google and then search it on, like, DuckDuckGo and how the results are just amazing. I mean, just so different.
- [204:53]
B
Oh, yeah, Yep. Yeah. It's, you know, take social media platforms. Yes. The framework is the same for everybody. It's egalitarian in that CNN and me can go to Twitter. And when we're creating our accounts and tweeting and partaking in Twitter activities, we see the exact same thing, but everything outside of that framework is completely different. The power imbalance is amazing when it's, you know, it's Just having the backing of the state. And at having the backing of the state, the intellectuals, everything else. No, it's about it.
- [205:37]
A
That's a really good line to say.
- [205:39]
B
Yeah.
- [205:40]
A
Rich. Rich Perez says it would have read in Minecraft.
- [205:45]
B
No, this is the one. This is the one thing that didn't happen in Minecraft.
- [205:51]
A
Crap.
- [205:52]
B
Oh, he forgot to say it.
- [205:56]
A
Have you. You've seen the meme with Saul Goodman, the lawyer from Better Call Saul and from Breaking Bad, and it says. Your Honor, my client said in Minecraft. All right. Constitutional rights are useful up to a point, but they do not serve to guarantee much more than what might be called a bourgeois conception of freedom.
- [206:21]
B
Huh?
- [206:21]
A
What do you have to say? What do you have to say about that, Mr. Marxist?
- [206:25]
B
We. We hooked, right? And then came all the way back to the left.
- [206:32]
A
According to the bourgeois conception, a free man is essentially an element of a social machine and has only a certain set of prescribed and delineated freedoms are delimited freedoms, okay? Freedoms that are designed to serve the needs of the social machine more. More than that of the individual. Thus, the bourgeois free man has economic freedom because that promotes growth and progress. He has the freedom of the press because public criticism restrains misbehavior by political leaders. He has a right to a fair trial because imprisonment at the whim of the powerful would be bad for the system. This was clearly the attitude of Simon Bolivar. To him, people deserve liberty only if they used it to promote progress. Progress as conceived by the bourgeois. Other bourgeois thinkers have taken a similar view of freedom as a mere means to collective ends. Chester C. Tan, Chinese Political thought in the 20th century. Page 202 explains the philosophy of the Kuomintang leader Hu Han Min. An individual is granted rights because he is a member of society, and his community life requires such rights. By community, Hugh meant the whole society of the nation. And on page 259, Tan states that according to Carson Chang Chun Mai, head of the State Socialist Party in China, freedom has to be used in the interests of the state and of the people as a whole. But what kind of freedom does one have if one can use it only as someone else prescribes? FC's conception of freedom is not that of Bolivar, Hu Chang or other bourgeois theorists. The trouble with such theorists is that they have made the development and application of social theories their surrogate activity. Jesus.
- [208:17]
B
Ouch.
- [208:18]
A
Like stop me dead in my tracks.
- [208:22]
B
All those guys I mentioned? Yeah. Nope. Surrogate activity. Jesus.
- [208:29]
A
Consequently, the theories are designed to serve the needs of the theorists more than the needs of any people who may be unlikely enough to live in a society on which the theories are imposed. Wow.
- [208:39]
B
Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's the trust fund commies. On. What did he say? Unlikely to live in a society in which those theories are imposed.
- [208:50]
A
Yeah. Geez.
- [208:52]
B
The bourgeois. Yeah, the bourgeois. Trust fund commies.
- [208:56]
A
Death by cognitive dissonance. Asks Pete, what can you tell about the public and establishment reaction when the. Oh, you just imagine he's a psychopath. He's no one to be listened to. It took. It took a couple of years for. It really took for the growth of the world wide web and to.
- [209:15]
B
Ironically enough.
- [209:17]
A
Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. And PDFs of this to just be shared around for people to start reading it. And then it was really. This really took off in green and left anarchist circles, mostly green anarchist circles. Bellamy Fitzpatrick is well versed in this.
- [209:33]
B
I mean, this is eco fascist too.
- [209:36]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, let's finish this section up. One more point to be made. In this section, it should not be assumed that a person has enough freedom just because he says he has enough. Freedom is restricted in part by psychological controls of which people are unconscious. And moreover, many people's ideas of what constitutes freedom are governed more by social convention than by their real needs. For example, it's likely that many leftists of the over socialized type would say that most people, including themselves, are socialized too little rather than too much. Yet the over socialized leftist pays a heavy psychological price for his level of socialization. Yeah, society tells you exactly how much. Society tells you exactly what freedom is and what you should strive for. And in no way is any of that going to help you in achieving the power process for yourself.
- [210:34]
B
No. And I think of libertarianism, which. The whole, the whole selling point of libertarianism is that libertarianism is freedom. Like, we are the beacons of freedom. We are like the. The vanguard of freedom. And every thread I look at is what is the libertarian answer to, you know, a surrogate activity? What if, what if I want to engage in this surrogate activity? And you know, it's usually something degenerate, but what if I want to engage in this degenerate surrogate activity? What's the libertarian answer to that? And like, inevitably some somebody who calls themselves libertarianism would be like, well, I wouldn't want you to live in my community. You'd be physically removed. And then it causes a explosion and whatever. That's why, like, more and more, I'm just. The more I read, the more I'm like, happy that I kind of eschew that label.
- [211:30]
A
Yeah.
- [211:30]
B
Unless I'm talking about Timeline Earth, we are the foremost libertarian encrypted podcast.
- [211:35]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Then started listening to the Halloween episode today and I, I thought, I thought Bird was going to take Ace down into his basement and do things to him when Ace was talking about waves.
- [211:51]
B
Well, that makes one of us, buddy. I haven't listened to it yet.
- [211:56]
A
I haven't listened to the whole thing. I listened to the beginning and I'm like, okay, this is interesting because Carr and Bird sounded very. Sounded like they almost may have been riled up. Like for real.
- [212:11]
B
Oh man. I guess I will have to tune in.
- [212:15]
A
Stephen Messina asks, have you guys heard the term post libertarian? What does it mean?
- [212:20]
B
Never heard of it. Sorry.
- [212:22]
A
I don't know what that is. All right. Some principles of history. Sweet. Think of history as being the sum of two components. An erratic component that consists of unpredictable events that follow no discernible pattern and a regular component that consists of long term historical trends. Here we are concerned with the long term trends first principle. If a small change is made that affects a long term historical trend, then the effect of that change will almost always be transitory. The trend will soon revert to its original state. Example. A reform movement designed to clean up political corruption in a society rarely has more than a short, short term effect. Sooner or later the reformers relax and corruption creeps back in. The level of political corruption in a given society tends to remain constant or to change only slowly with the evolution of the society. Normally a political cleanup will be permanent only if accompanied by widespread social changes. Oh. Oh, hello, Mr. Hoppe. Hello, Dr. Hoppe. Again. A small change.
- [213:33]
B
I was going to say this is very Misesian.
- [213:35]
A
Yeah. A small change in society won't be enough. If a small change in a long term historical trend appears to be permanent, it is only because the change acts in the direction in which the trend is already moving. So that the trend is not altered by only. Only push a step ahead. And it's. I mean, you can call that natural, but I mean it. I. That's one of those things that is natural but also enforced. And you got to wonder chicken or the egg on it. And I tend to believe that there are metaphysical elements to power and corruption and that it will always go back on its path unless you are actively fighting against it.
- [214:28]
B
Yeah. And unless you have a critical mass of social movements that are actively fighting against it on a unified front. And only then have I seen. Have I known through history, from, through studying History, that's when you get structural change, like meaningful structural change, whether it's good or bad in the long run. Well, you know, the 1991 would, would, would point to that it's bad. Actually the Soviet Union was a, was a structural change that in my opinion was extremely good and warranted. But yeah, you won't see another Soviet Union, I don't think.
- [215:10]
A
So. This, this long haired sexyman asks, what is the balance of carrier cross versus actively fight?
- [215:18]
B
Oh, that's a good question. That's what, that's, that's one that I struggle with as at least a nominal Christian. I'm a terrible Christian, but that's, that's one that I struggle with. Do I, do I fucking, do I rack my shotgun or do I turn it into a plowshare? And I think it's situational and I think that's a very personal decision for all of us. You know, when we rack the shotgun. I, I don't know if there is a good answer. I don't know if there, I, I know that there isn't a universal answer for everybody, but. Yeah, I, I wish I could help you, but I can't. I'm too dumb. Sorry.
- [216:00]
A
He says, do you, do you have to be Jesus or can you be David and be a man after God's own heart? Well, I mean
- [216:10]
B
the thing with David is that's, that's before the, before the, the New covenant, you know. Yeah, yeah, you could be David, but you might be one of those people.
- [216:22]
A
And let's not forget how David acquired his bride Bathsheba.
- [216:29]
B
By being a Jew. Being a typical Jew.
- [216:35]
A
I think we're gonna move on from here.
- [216:39]
B
All right, fine.
- [216:41]
A
All right, let's see. Okay. This first principle is almost a tautology. If a trend were not stable with respect to small changes, it would wander at random rather than following a definite direction. In other words, it would not be a long term trend at all. Second principle. If a change is made that is sufficiently large to alter permanently a long term historical trend, then it will alter the society as a whole. Of course it will. It, you're better off. It's easier to change if you real change, you have to change the culture. Yeah, I mean, I mean that's basically another way of saying that.
- [217:19]
B
Yeah.
- [217:19]
A
So if a change is made that is sufficiently large to alter permanently a long term historical trend, then it will alter the society as a whole. In other words, a society is a system in which all parts are interrelated and you can't permanently change any important Part without changing all other parts as well. I mean, this is like a literal argument from culture. There's so much, it's amazing to see so much hoppa in here, like hoppy in thought, you know?
- [217:45]
B
Yeah. I mean, you could also say that like it's, you know, Andrew Breitbart could have wrote this.
- [217:51]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, yeah. All right. Third principle. If a change is made that is large enough to alter permanently a long term trend, then the consequences for the society as a whole can be predicted in advance. Unless various other societies have passed through the same change and have all experienced the same consequences, in which case one can predict on empirical grounds that another society that passes through the same change will be like to experience similar. Will be like to experience similar circumstances. You like switched to 15th century English right there for a second.
- [218:29]
B
Yeah, I was going to say. No, you can't use empirical grounds to predict future, future, Future consequences of changes. Because that's not praxeology.
- [218:39]
A
Yeah, I mean, I, I don't, I don't agree with this at all. I think he's completely wrong.
- [218:43]
B
Yeah, my praxeology brain is like,
- [218:49]
A
like crazy. All right. Fourth principle. A new kind of society cannot be designed on paper. That is, you cannot plan out a new form of society in advance, then set it up and expect it. Oh my God.
- [219:00]
B
All right, now we're back.
- [219:02]
A
Yes. Here we go.
- [219:03]
B
Complete agreement.
- [219:05]
A
All right. Libertarians and anarcho capitalists, deal with it.
- [219:11]
B
Oh, you can't centrally plan a society. All right, got it.
- [219:16]
A
It's amazing, huh? Oh, man. So much re on that. So much. Very much trigger. Very much trigger.
- [219:23]
B
Yeah. What is it changing you? Where do you say what did you just read the fourth principle?
- [219:35]
A
Yeah.
- [219:35]
B
Cannot be signed on paper. Yeah, yeah, that's. The fourth principle is like. All right, I'm, I'm 100 in. Like that. That tickles my, I hate to say it, libertarian brain.
- [219:47]
A
Yeah, and my balls. So, so perfect. So perfect. Shave those. The third and fourth principles result from the complexity of human societies. A change in human behavior will affect the economy of a society and its physical environment. The economy will affect the environment and vice versa. And the changes in the economy and the environment will affect human behavior in complex unpredictable ways and so forth. The network of causes and effects is far too complex to be untangled and understood. That I agree with.
- [220:21]
B
Yeah, again, that's, that's like his, his, his, him channeling mises.
- [220:28]
A
Yeah, very much so. Fifth principle. People do not consciously and rationally choose to form the form of Their society. Societies develop through processes of social evolution that are not under rational human control. All right, the fifth, the fifth principle is a consequence of the other four.
- [220:49]
B
Yeah, I, I'd have to think about that one for probably a week straight, but I, I'm leaning towards.
- [220:58]
A
Yeah, yeah, it's wild. It's, it's really speaking to libertarians here. I mean, not, not only libertarians, but I mean, I think any libertarian who reads this should, this should make them think and actually get, you know, get in their car.
- [221:17]
B
I think he's speaking to any, honestly right wingers that seek to, I guess, proactively engineer society on a, on a mass scale instead of, you know, on their local scale.
- [221:35]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [221:36]
B
All right.
- [221:37]
A
To illustrate by the first principle, generally speaking, an attempt at social reform either acts in the direction in which society is developing anyway, so that it merely accelerates a change that would have occurred in any case, or else it has only a transitory effect so that the society soon slips back into its old groove. To make a lasting change in the direction of development of any important aspect of society, reform is insufficient and revolution is required. A revolution does not necessarily involve an armed uprising or the overthrow of government.
- [222:09]
B
All right, we went from Mises to Lenin real quick.
- [222:15]
A
By the second principle, a revolution never changes only one aspect of a society. It changes the whole society. I don't believe that at all. And by the third principle, changes occur that were never expected or desired by the revolutionaries. By the fourth principle, when revolutionaries are utopians or utopians set up a new kind of society, it never works out as planned.
- [222:40]
B
Shut up. Shut up, Ted.
- [222:44]
A
ROBERT NOZICK WEEPS Jesus, what point did
- [222:50]
B
you not agree with?
- [222:54]
A
Where was it reform? Is that anyway? So it merely sufficient to make a lasting change in the direction of development of any important aspect of society. Reform is insufficient and. No, it's okay, here it is. By the second principle, a revolution never changes only one aspect of society. It changes the whole society. I tend to think that if you're going to talk about armed revolutions, usually you only get a change in management.
- [223:25]
B
Now that's, that's your, that's your right wing brain thinking. But a revolution can also take place within, within the power structure peacefully. But you know, if you look at, say, and it's, it's going to be a lot of examples that we, that we don't like. But you know, the, the managerial revolution throughout the, the, the 20th century, I mean that the, the acceleration of liberalism combined with democracy and you know, and imperialism, that, that acceleration was revolutionary. That had never been done before at such a scale. So I guess it depends on what you define a revolution.
- [224:16]
A
Yeah.
- [224:17]
B
As.
- [224:19]
A
Yeah, yeah, you're right. I mean, you know, you look at so arm revolution. Okay, let me think of one that was like pretty recent Romania. So in 1989 they overthrow Ceausescu and I was there not. Not too long after that. And basically the. What they did when they instituted elections where they elected all the old communist leaders into office.
- [224:49]
B
Yeah.
- [224:51]
A
And you know, and that was an armed revolution. And the. You would hear, especially the older people, they would talk about how much they missed communism.
- [225:00]
B
Yeah, that's, it's, it's so funny. It's like counter revolution. Counter revolutionaries are bad. But then they counter countered the revolution.
- [225:10]
A
Yeah, it's amazing.
- [225:11]
B
Brilliant.
- [225:12]
A
Hey, thanks for the super chat. Drywall. Is that drywall zero or drywall? Oh, I appreciate it. All right, let's keep going here. The American Revolution does not provide a counterexample. The American Revolution was not a revolution in our sense of the word, but a war of independence followed by a rather far reaching political reform. The Founding fathers did not change the direction of development of American society, nor did they aspire to do so. They only freed the development of American society from the retarding effect of British rule. I was hoping he was a Tory,
- [225:54]
B
That I have a book called How Bourgeois was the Were the Bourgeois Revolutions. And there's a whole. Probably half the book is about the American Revolution. I would, it's. It's a long book, but I would love to. I got to get into reading it again, but I would love to talk about that at some point. It's mind blowing.
- [226:19]
A
Their political reform did not change any basic trend, but only pushed American political culture along its natural direction of development. British society, of which American society was an offshoot, had been moving for a long time time in the direction of representative democracy. Yeah, I mean there was that whole Magna Carta there, I don't know. And prior to the War of Independence, the Americans were already practicing a significant degree of representative democracy in the colonial assemblies. The political system established by the Constitution was modeled on the British system and on the colonial assemblies with major alteration. To be sure, there is no doubt that the Founding fathers took a very important step, but it was a step along the road that English speaking world had already was already traveling. The proof is that the that Brit and all its colonies that were populated, prominent predominantly by people of British descent, ended up with systems of representative democracy essentially similar to that of the United States. If the founding Fathers had lost their nerve and declined to sign the Declaration of Independence, our way of life today would not have been significantly different. Maybe we. This is something that I. I'm willing to debate most people on that. It wouldn't be. I agree, actually. Maybe we would have been somewhat closer ties to Britain and would have had a parliament and prime minister instead of a Congress and president. No big deal. Thus, the American Revolution provides not a counter example to our principles, but a good illustration of them.
- [227:49]
B
Again, 1995 coming in.
- [227:54]
A
I mean, I honestly believe that if it would have remained in. And it's a very lazy argument when people say, well, this is eventually what happened to Britain, and assuming that that is what would have happened to Britain if the United States had stayed a part of Britain, because the United States would have probably had something if not as close to. If not as close to, but maybe even stronger economically or anything. And that could have been such a boon for Britain. Who knows what kind of direction they would have taken? Who knows if there would have been the Opium wars, who knows all those things that hurt not only the United
- [228:38]
B
States, but hurt Britain, how history would have branched off if the United States had never declared independence. I'm willing, I'm willing to put it out there that in terms of how, like, in terms of our preferences, it would be a thousand times better today. I think a lot of these. A lot of these past historical events that, you know, atrocities and wars and all that, maybe they would have happened, but they wouldn't have happened at the scale that. That made them so worthy of being in the history books.
- [229:17]
A
Yeah, and the slavery would have been abolished earlier and would have been abolished without a war. Unless the United States. Unless the United States south would have decided that they wanted to fight Britain and the north, which would have been ridiculous. You know, I mean, so, I mean, who knows? I mean. Well, I mean, you had slavery throughout the north and everything. Everything. So, I mean, I think it would have ended. It would have ended much earlier and it would have ended without blood. So, I mean, there's. There's a lot of positives and I know that that's so sacrilegious and everything. And the only time I'm really not a Tory is when I'm arguing against 1776 guys, you know, and the 70s, 1776 guys who are like back to blue guys and stuff like that, so that I can call them a Tory.
- [230:06]
B
Yeah.
- [230:09]
A
All right, let's. Last one in this section. Still, one has to use common sense in applying the principles they are expressed in Imprecise language that allows latitude for interpretation and exceptions to them can be found. So we present these principles not as inviolable in inviolable, inviolable laws, but as rules of thumb or guides to thinking that may provide a partial antidote to naive ideas about the future of society. The principles should be born constantly in mind. And whenever one reaches a conclusion that conflicts with them, one should carefully reexamine one's thinking and retain the conclusion only if one has good, solid reasons for doing so. All right, so there's, there's only three parts to this right here. And I mean, the heading is just beautiful. Industrial Technological Society cannot be reformed.
- [231:06]
B
Let's, let's hit up that paragraph. 110.
- [231:10]
A
Okay, go ahead, do it.
- [231:12]
B
I, I think what he's trying to say is if your theory isn't planning out your theory. No, even if it is panning out, it's, it's worth it to do some critical self examination. All right? If you have, you know, a theory, or even if you venture into praxis and you employ that theory in praxis either in your daily life or in a mass movement, it is worth constant critical self examination. That's something that I, I gleaned from Marxism that, you know, although they might not have done it the way that we, we the, the way that they should have, it's, it's worth adapting that into your, into your, into your theory, into your dogma, I guess. Constant critical self examination.
- [232:03]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, my theory would have to work in, in practice before that would even be.
- [232:13]
B
Oh, wow, there, there you go. That's the clinical self examination. My theory doesn't work. All right, next,
- [232:22]
A
the foregoing principles help to show how hopelessly difficult it would be to reform the industrial system in such a way as to prevent it from progressively narrowing our sphere of freedom. There has been a consistent tendency, going back at least to the Industrial revolution, for technology to strengthen the system at a high cost in individual freedom and local autonomy. Hence, any change designed to protect freedom and technology would be contrary to a fundamental trend in the development of our society. Consequently, such a change either would be a transitory one, soon swamped by the tide of history, or if large enough to be permanent, would alter the nature of our whole society. This by the first and second principles. Moreover, since society would be altered in a way that could not be predicted in advance. Third principle. There would be great risk. Changes large enough to make a lasting difference in favor of freedom would not be initiated because it would be realized that they would gravely disrupt the system. So any attempts at reform would be too timid to be effective. Even if changes large enough to make a lasting difference were initiated, they would be retracted when their disruptive efforts became apparent. Thus, permanent changes in favor of freedom could be brought about only by persons prepared to accept radical, dangerous and unpredictable alteration of the entire system. In other words, by revolutionaries, not reformers. You're, you're muted. You're muted.
- [234:04]
B
Oh, I was going to say. And that person is Bernie Sanders. Free healthcare, bro. Revolution, Fundamental change.
- [234:15]
A
Yeah, he makes a point. I mean, he makes a lot of points here, but just one that I've talked about before is how people, how they're responding to certain people responding to the whole Covid regime and thing. Like how. Well, some people get the hell out of cities, went to small towns and now they have chickens and they're growing their own food and they're basically going backwards in time to try and fight this. And what he's talking about here, when he's talking about how technological society is just grows, basically. I mean, he's basically saying grows to Panopticon. Then the way some people are going to fight it is by seeking to move to a very rural spot and start being self sufficient for their own food and things like that.
- [235:22]
B
Yeah, I mean right now we're seeing, and unfortunately it's mostly in reaction to COVID policy, all these different branches of praxis. And some are working, some aren't, some are, you know, on an individual level, like myself, I've kind of moved laterally in the status quo. I'm, I'm kind of doing the whole build my wealth and insulate myself. Other people, like you said, are moving.
- [236:00]
A
Here's another one
- [236:04]
B
that's praxis. Saying the N word on Twitter is praxis. That's, that's my, that's my response to covet tyranny.
- [236:13]
A
So you were, you were saying about.
- [236:15]
B
Yeah, you're seeing all these different, all these different means that people use to respond and insulate themselves from COVID Covid tyranny or Covid draconian laws. And some are working wonderfully and some are not. And it's, I think it's just up to the individual and their own personal, their own personal situation what works, what, what can work for them. And I think it's going to take us a while to see, to narrow it down to like maybe three or four, three or four ways to successfully eschew or fight back or roll back what we're seeing today. Yeah, which is why I don't, I don't get the pushback to post libertarians or even agorism or. The only, the only thing I can see really deserving pushback and ridicule is people that want to do things within the, within the system that existed two years ago.
- [237:25]
A
I hear you. All right, let's. Next section or 112. People anxious to rescue freedom without sacrificing the supposed benefits of technology will suggest naive schemes for some new form of society that would reconcile freedom with technology. Oh, are we talking about AI, Uncle Ted? Apart from the fact that people who make such suggestions seldom propose any practical means by which the new form of society could be set up in the first place, it follows from the fourth principle that even if the new form of society could once be established, it either would collapse or would give results very different from those expected. Yeah, I mean, let me just do the next one real quick. So even on very general grounds, it seems highly improbable that any way of changing society could be found that would reconcile freedom with modern technology. In the next few sections, we will give more specific reasons for concluding that freedom and technological processes are incompatible. I would say this is probably like a really good place to end it, end this episode. But what do you, what do you have to say about those last two?
- [238:41]
B
I think he's coming from a standpoint of being culturally agnostic. And this is, this is one of my main disagreements with him is I think it's perfectly, it's perfectly doable to have a society that grant that, that grants, I wouldn't say grants freedom, but has freedom as a foundation with technological progress. But you have to have a society that, you have to have a culture in that society that doesn't allow technology, doesn't allow the wielders of technology, the innovators of technology, to place that framework of slavery in there.
- [239:22]
A
Yeah. So you're talking about what it's like when Charles Charlemagne, who was on my show, was talking about creating a libertarian society, and then as soon as anyone started studying communism, you would just stop them, you would crush them. And that is anathema to libertarian, anarcho capitalist, agorist ears. But it is what liberalism has brought us. Liberalism has gotten us to this point where you have.
- [239:59]
B
It was inevitable.
- [240:00]
A
Yeah, yeah, you haven't.
- [240:01]
B
I tell people that all the time, like liberalism and democracy are. Led us to where we are right now, and it couldn't be any other way. Like there's nothing. We could have gone back and, you know, alternate, like, do do an alternate history of like, oh, what if. What if the south won the Civil War? No, we would. We would inevitably. You could delay it, but I think liberalism and democracy, you would inevitably get to a post liberalism, post democratic society that looks probably a lot like what we have today because of culture. Because it is culturally agnostic. It's globalist.
- [240:46]
A
Yeah, well, it is globalist. It is also. Yeah. It eschews culture. It destroys cultures. Yeah, it almost. It almost. That is almost the friggin, like, the point of it. Because when you see, when you look in the 20th century, so many cultures were destroyed. And not like, they didn't disappear on their own. They were purposely destroyed.
- [241:12]
B
Yeah. For material benefit of a hegemony of whatever. Hegemony destroyed them.
- [241:18]
A
And how is that hegemony allowed to rise up because of liberalism and democracy.
- [241:27]
B
Yes. Yep. No matter how many stopgaps you put in place, if you have, you know, an open, completely open market of ideas or of the free market of ideas and, you know, earnest debate, you know, you can never really have that when you have more than 10 people, because somebody will always determine the. The framework of that market of that debate. And that, that just goes back to, you know, criticism of anarchy, really. Criticism of left anarchy from communists as where I kind of, you know, imbued that into my brain.
- [242:05]
A
Yeah. Well, and the. A lot of those criticisms of anarchy that left anarchy, that Lenin and Engels especially promoted is also can also be used to criticize. Right. Anarchy. Yes, especially. Especially collapsitarian anarchy.
- [242:24]
B
Yeah, yeah. And as much as I love them, you know, I'd love to talk more with. With those people, you know, I don't have any ill will towards them. I like most of them. I like everybody. They're awesome.
- [242:39]
A
I mean. Yeah. I just. I just don't get the ones that are like, well, we can't do anything except be right.
- [242:47]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [242:49]
A
The state is violent. So if you use the state to retard the progress of the state, then that's evil.
- [242:57]
B
Yeah, it's. It speaks to a. A position and. And I'm gonna say it, a position of privilege.
- [243:07]
A
It really does. What I was saying, what I was saying on Twitter today when I was commenting about one of these people who was just, you know, like the overly principled. You can't do, basically do anything except be right on Twitter people was I. And I hate. I know how this sounds is they sound like they live at home. Yeah. They sound like they still live at home.
- [243:33]
B
Yeah. And I don't want to straw man them I really don't.
- [243:36]
A
Yeah, yeah, that's a straw man.
- [243:38]
B
But God, I would love to know like what their, what their condition is because I'm pretty comfortable right now. But I'm, I'm, I'm new money, you know, like I just started consciously building this thing that I, I hope and I'm not guaranteed but I hope is going to insulate me from a lot of the bad. But at the end of the day if they pass a mandate, I'm like, I gotta sell my, I'm gonna be very uncomfortable. But I won't, I won't be out on the streets. But it's, and I'm wondering if, if these people, these, you know, these anti post libertarians, these anti, these principled libertarians are in that position or anywhere close. I, I'm just wondering about it and I'm not saying that to be snarky or snide or anything. Like I, I would genuinely like to know like what is your position right now? Are you gainfully employed? Are you able to support yourself? Have you had like people come up and start yelling in your face about like wearing a mask and a Dunkin Donuts, you know, what's the culture like in your neck of the woods? And I get, I, I'm, I'm willing to bet that they're, they're not in that position at all. That they haven't had that experience or
- [244:55]
A
that they've adopted the cult, they've adopted the mass culture and the, in that
- [245:00]
B
culture they've, they've rationalized it.
- [245:02]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait. I mean it would be against the non aggression principle for me to go out without a mask. I could get somebody sick.
- [245:08]
B
They've rationalized it in the context of libertarian theory which if you have enough people do that, which we have, you're going to see people askew. Libertarian theory because we're living, we're living in hell and we're, we're having to deal with like building a wall to keep the hell out and it's, it's like shoveling against the tide.
- [245:30]
A
And we are both aware that we, what we just said could be like the hugest draw mans of all time. But hopefully it does, hopefully it's, it does help to at least explain what we're, when we hear that kind of thing where no, you're not allowed to do anything except yes, you know, be, be logically consistent. A logically consistent libertarian. It's, I mean that I used to be there. That used to be me. That's why that's why it's so upsetting.
- [246:01]
B
I would say not two. Yeah, maybe two years ago, three years ago, sure. Yeah. But you know, it again, like constant critical self evaluation. What. What is libertarianism done either for me personally? It's. I mean, I guess knowing about, like, praxeology absolutely has done wonders for me, like kind of orienting my life decisions in. In a way I think is correct and beneficial. But you know, what has it done within the framework of the system we have now? And it's nothing because it rejects the framework of the system we have right now because it's not an Capistan.
- [246:47]
A
Let's finish on that. So, timeline Earth. And did you have anything to do with. With the Halloween episode?
- [246:53]
B
Oh, yeah, I did a recording with Rebel with a Cause.
- [246:59]
A
Oh, okay. Eric. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [247:01]
B
And we talked about worst dates, dating advice, and then just spooky Southern. Southern lore, I guess. Talked about a bad hand job. I got.
- [247:15]
A
Yeah, I got to hang out with him at Tom Woods 2000. He's really cool.
- [247:19]
B
He is a good dude.
- [247:20]
A
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Did you. Have you been a Childeberg yet?
- [247:24]
B
I haven't been to Childeberg. No.
- [247:26]
A
Oh, okay. Have you hung out with him?
- [247:28]
B
No, I haven't.
- [247:29]
A
Oh, okay. Okay.
- [247:30]
B
But I've recorded a couple times with them.
- [247:32]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right, man. So really, it feels like 9 o', clock, so it's like. Son of a. Yeah, I'm like, kind of beat. Yeah. Just getting old is for the birds, man. Son of a. Yeah. I mean, look how old I am. I said this getting old stuff is for the birds.
- [247:53]
B
Yeah.
- [247:54]
A
Who says that?
- [247:55]
B
Well, actually, you're. I mean, you're. You're not too much older than me.
- [248:01]
A
I don't think I'm. I'm enough older.
- [248:05]
B
Yeah. Enough to party.
- [248:07]
A
Yeah.
- [248:08]
B
Yeah.
- [248:09]
A
Enough that my liver is. My liver is definitely probably a lot worse than yours.
- [248:15]
B
Yeah, Yeah, I. Mine. Mine's had the last, like, year and a half or so to heal, like. Yeah, I. I don't. I definitely don't drink like I used to.
- [248:26]
A
Yeah.
- [248:27]
B
Like I was obligated to.
- [248:29]
A
Yeah, you can't. I mean, it's freaking horrible. All right, so where we left off was so the last thing he was talking about. Industrial technological society cannot be reformed. He says so even on very general grounds. It seems highly improbable that any way of changing society could be found that would reconcile freedom with modern technology. In the next few sections, we will give some specific reasons for including that freedom and technological progress are incompatible. So here we go. As explained in paragraphs 65 through 7, 67 and 70 through 73, modern man is strapped down by a network of rules and regulations and his fate through depends on the actions of persons remote from him whose decisions he cannot influence. This is not accidental or a result of the arbitrariness of arrogant bureaucrats. It is necessary and inevitable in any technologically advanced society. The system has to regulate human behavior closely in order to at work. People have to do what they are told to do, otherwise production would be thrown into chaos. Bureaucracy have to be run according to rigid rules. To allow any substantial personal discretion to lower level bureaucrats would disrupt the system and lead to charges of unfairness due to differences in the way individual bureaucrats exercise their discretion. It is true that some restrictions on our freedom could be eliminated. But generally speaking, the regulation of our lives by large organizations is necessary for the functioning of industrial of industrial technological society. The result is a sense of powerlessness on the part of the average person. It may be, however, that formal regulations will tend increasingly to be replaced by psychological tools that make us want to do what the system requires of us. Propaganda, educational techniques, mental health programs.
- [250:34]
B
Yep. The prophet Ted strikes again.
- [250:37]
A
Yeah, in the what. What is that? That they just in time. The just in time economy.
- [250:46]
B
Yeah, yep.
- [250:48]
A
Like, like Amazon, you know, it's just right there. So I mean really, if any of this breaks down, you know, if one bureaucrat, besides he's, you know, especially the lower level bureaucrat decides they're more than the upper level bureaucrat and that, that jit economy starts to slow down, see what happens.
- [251:09]
B
Yeah, yeah. Well it's, it's already, the, the just in time is already starting to crumble in a lot of sectors right now. I mean they, you look at all, you look at the store shelves and it's not, they're not barren, but they're, they're definitely starting to crack a little bit depending on the aisle you walk through.
- [251:34]
A
Well, Cotton put a picture up what last week of, he went into a, a supermarket in Louis in Louisiana and like the whole meat section was empty.
- [251:47]
B
Wow.
- [251:49]
A
Yeah.
- [251:49]
B
I'm about to buy. Well, we're about to buy a turkey tomorrow. We're having a little friendsgiving next weekend and we'll see how that goes.
- [251:58]
A
Yeah, yeah. It's. Someone was posting up the price of a turkey from 2020 and it was like the turkey at 16 pound turkey is double in price from 2020 to 2021.
- [252:12]
B
Double.
- [252:13]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, onward. The system has to force people to behave in ways that are increasingly remote for their natural pattern of human behavior. For example, the system needs scientists, mathematicians and engineers. It can't function without them. So heavy pressure is put on children to excel in these fields. It isn't natural for an adolescent human to spend the bulk time sitting at a desk absorbed in study. A normal adolescent wants to spend his time in active contact with the real world. Among primitive peoples, the things that children are trained to tend to be in reasonable harmony with natural impulse. Let me read that again. Among primitive peoples, the things that children are trained to do tend to be in reasonable harmony with natural impulses. Among the American Indians, for example, boys were trained in active outdoor pursuits. Just the sort of thing boy things boys like. But in our society, children are pushed into studying technical subjects, which most do grudgingly. I mean I honestly believe like 13 and 14 year olds should probably be apprenticing with adults, learning, learning how to do stuff with their hands at least, you know, and even if they are going to pursue more active pursuits, they should be, they should be around adults instead of children because it's only going to be a couple years when they're going to be around adults.
- [253:49]
B
Yeah, I just anecdotally the, I, I've been on job sites, you know, side work that my dad did. He was a bricklayer and you know, 12, 13 years old, helping him out, just like carrying things, passing them tools like that, that did a lot for me. Like, you know, he gave me like 50 bucks at the end of the day and like I got home tired and like that formed my work ethic and kind of informed my, my career track. It made my career track a lot more open than, than it otherwise would have had I been pushed into a stem field.
- [254:33]
A
Yeah. We went to a Mexican restaurant yesterday and strangely enough the person who met us at the door was a 10 year old boy. He was working the door that night. It's actually pretty cool. We tipped him separately because he deserved it. And yeah, it was kind of, kind of weird to see, but also strangely pleasant to see, you know, a kid doing something out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [255:14]
B
I mean I, I would highly encourage people to send their kids to like tech schools. You know, if you, if you're not homeschool and send them to a tech school, a trade school or whatever, they're not completely insulated from, you know, the, the HR department takeover, but they'll at least get out with some marketable skills that will never go away even if, even if the power goes out.
- [255:44]
A
All right, 116. Because of the constant pressure that the system exerts to modify human behavior. There is a gradual increase in the number of people who cannot or will not adjust to society's requirements. Welfare leeches, youth gang members, cultists, anti government rebels, radical environmentalist saboteurs, dropouts and resistors of various kinds.
- [256:11]
B
Radical environmentalists.
- [256:13]
A
Who's he talking about? What is he talking about here? Is it. I think it's interesting that he talks basically when you go back and he talks about the left, they like the people, the people he's talking about here, like, they wouldn't be considered like the anti government. They would think they're like anti authoritarian rebels, but they're really not. They're just right along line with pretty much anything the corporate, you know, the corporations are putting out there.
- [256:47]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean we just had a, a rally today. It was a. An anti, anti vaccine mandate rally. And antifa showed up and like fought a bunch of people and like attacked a car or whatever they do. And you know, it's the same tired trope on the thread. Ooh, Antifa is actually fascist and like, dude. Oh yeah, it's. It's the same, the same old every single time. Like, yes, we get it. They're probably paid, bought and paid for. Maybe a third of them are, and then the. The other two thirds are just like regular bougie neoliberals.
- [257:32]
A
Fubadoo seems to be here every time we do it. Thanks for the five bucks, Fubadoo. All right. In any technologically advanced society, the individual's fate must depend on decisions that he personally cannot influence to any great extent. A technological society broken down into small autonomous communities. Because production depends on the cooperation of very large numbers of people and machines, such a society must be highlighted and decisions have to be made that affect very large numbers of people. When a decision affects, say, a million people, then each of the affected individuals has on the average, only a 1 million share in making the decision. What usually happens in practice is that decisions are made by public officials or corporation executives or by technical specialists. But even when the public votes on a decision, the number of voters ordinarily is too large for the vote of any one single individual to be significant. Thus, most individuals are unable to influence measurably the major decisions that affect their lives. There is no conceivable way to remedy this in a technologically advanced society. The system tries to solve this problem by using propaganda to make people want the decisions that have been made for them. But even if the solution were completely successful in making people feel better, it would Be demeaning.
- [258:54]
B
Sounds like Uncle Tage is Uncle. Uncle Ted just hasn't heard of bitcoin. Bitcoin fixes that.
- [259:03]
A
Oh, does it?
- [259:04]
B
And I'm, I'm only half joking.
- [259:07]
A
Yeah, yeah, I know. Yeah. This is a, this whole just about representative, you know, democracy. We're not a democracy. We're a representative republic. If we're a representative republic, voting wouldn't really, I mean, well, voting wouldn't really matter and I guess it doesn't at this point. When you become an oligarchy, it doesn't really matter anymore.
- [259:33]
B
Yeah, when, when, when the choice of the representatives is between, you know, a blue oligarch and a red oligarch. I mean, sure, sure, fine.
- [259:46]
A
All right. Conservatives and some other others advocate more local autonomy. Local communities did have autonomy, but some autonomy becomes less and less possible as local communities become more enmeshed with and dependent on large scale systems like public utilities, computer networks, highway systems, the mass communications method media and the modern healthcare system. Also operating against autonomy is the fact that technology applies, applied in one location often affects people in other locations far away. Thus pesticide or chemical use near a creek may contaminate the water supply hundreds of miles downstream and the greenhouse effect affects the world. He's, this is like he ran right into like the argument against anarchism. Well, what happens when, what happens if your neighbor poisons you?
- [260:37]
B
Yeah, yeah. And you know, he's, he's approaching everything from like a, with the starting point of engineering, how technology, the, the, the farther it, the farther it touches and the more, you know, the more technologically advanced is directly proportional to just what we see right now, just the, the bureaucracies and the oligarchy controlling more and more as, as technology advances. And you can go from conceivably a rural town 20 years ago, like, like the town I live in right now, not rural, but like a small, slightly manufacturing town 20 years ago to now, it's like, you know, kind of a, almost a city, you know. And you can definitely see like, if you look on like the town register for whatever the, the town council's voting on, it reflects that and it's all based on, and you can tie it directly into technological advances.
- [261:40]
A
Yeah, I bet that sounds a little bougie, isn't it?
- [261:44]
B
Actually, it's, it's really not. It's, it's kind of, it's, it's a little on like the lower middle class side. Oh, it's trying, it's trying to be bougie.
- [261:55]
A
Well, that trying can do, do Its own damage. All right? The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. It instead it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system. That's pretty damn good. That's two really good sentences right there.
- [262:17]
B
Yeah. Modifying human behavior to fit the system. I mean, that's. That's school.
- [262:23]
A
Yeah. This has nothing to do with the political or social ideology that may pretend to guide the technological system. It is the fault of technology. It's so good. He's just like in your political ideology. It ain't doing to this system. It's so good. I love is the fault of technology because the system is guided not by ideology but by technical necessity. Of course, the system does satisfy many human needs, but generally speaking, it does this only to the extent that it is to the advantage of the system to do is the needs of the system that are paramount, not those of the human being. For example, the system provides people with food because the system couldn't function if everyone starved. It attends to people's psychological needs whenever it can conveniently do so because it couldn't function if too many people were depressed or rebellious. But the system, for good, solid, practical reasons, must exert constant pressure on people to mold their behavior to the needs of the system. Too much waste accumulating the government, the media, the educational system, environmentalists, everyone inundates us with a massive propaganda about recycling. Need more technical personnel. A chorus of voices exhorts kids to study science. No one stops to ask whether it is inhumane to force adolescents to spend the bulk of their time studying subjects. Most of the them hate. When skilled workers are put out of jobs, put out of a job by technical advances and have to undergo retraining, no one asks whether it's humiliating for them to be pushed around in this way. It is simply taken for granted that everyone must bow to technical necessity and for good reason. If human needs were put before technical necessity, there would be economic problems, unemployment, shortages, or worse. The concept of mental health in our society is defined largely by the extent to. To which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does and does so without showing signs of stress. I love that last line. Yeah, that's a meme. I've seen that meme, like all over the place.
- [264:32]
B
Yeah, I mean, and that's something that, you know, the left and the right can draw from, you know, can form their own conclusions just from that line.
- [264:42]
A
Yeah. I mean it's. It's remarkable that he's. I love that he talks about Mental health. I think that's just the irony of it. And the fact that he can nail mental health. Oh yeah, Really? I mean, you really have to wonder how insane, how insane the guy is.
- [265:00]
B
Yeah, I, I, he's from, from reading this, he's just probably a little bit insane, but for a very long time and thinking nothing about that insanity which would make you insane.
- [265:15]
A
Yeah. Efforts to make room for a sense of purpose and for autonomy within the system are no better than a joke. For example, one company, instead of having each of its employees assemble only one section of a catalog, had each assemble a whole catalog. And this was supposed to give them a sense of purpose and achievement. Some companies have tried to give their employees more autonomy in their work work, but for practical reasons this usually can be done only to a very limited extent. And in any case, employees are never given autonomy as to, as to ultimate goals. Their autonomous efforts can never be directed towards goals that they select personally, but only toward their employer's goals. Such as, such as the survival and growth of the company. Any company would soon go out of business if it permitted its employees to act otherwise. Similarly, in any enterprise within a socialist system, workers must direct their efforts towards the goal of the enterprise. Otherwise the enterprise will not serve its purpose as part of the system. Once again, for purely technical reasons, it is not possible for most individuals or small groups to have much autonomy in industrial society. Even the small business owner commonly has only limited autonomy. Apart from the necessity of government regulation. He is restricted by the fact that he must fit into the economic system and conform to its requirements. For instance, when someone develops a new technology, the small business person often has to use that technology whether he wants to or not, in order to remain competitive.
- [266:52]
B
Yeah, I mean, we, we, we, we could explain all that, you know, pretty, pretty matter of factly and from a, from a libertarian free market perspective. And we wouldn't think anything of it, but in the context of this manifesto now it's like, oh, that's bad actually, maybe that's, maybe that's not something that should be looked at. Not, not on the free, you know, free market economics and all that. Not trying to, but I, I think we do fall into the trap of not looking at the human cost of it. And if you're going to start looking at the human cost of it, this, this manifesto right here is a great place to start.
- [267:39]
A
It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a family sick society. And if I have a kid, that kid is never going near a school. That's for one. Damn sure.
- [267:52]
B
Yep.
- [267:53]
A
Fubadus here says ADHD and ADD is basically wow, Prussian school doesn't work for this kid. Beautiful. Beautiful. All right, next section is. The bad parts of technology cannot be separated from the good parts. A further reason why industrial society cannot be reformed in favor of of freedom is that modern technology is a unified system in which all parts are dependent on one another. You can't get rid of the bad parts of technology and retain only the good parts. Take modern medicine for example. Progress in medical science depends on progress in chemistry, physics, biology, computer science and other fields. Advanced medical treatments require expensive high tech equipment that can be made available only by technologies technologically progressive, economically rich society. Clearly you can't have much progress in medicine without the whole technological system and everything that goes with it. I'm going to just going to go on because I think they're probably have to go into the next one and there'll be more there. Even if medical progress could be maintained without the rest of the technological system, it would by itself bring certain evils. Suppose, for example, that a cure for diabetes is discovered. People with a genetic tendency to diabetes will then be able to survive and reproduce as well as anyone else. Natural selection against genes for diabetes will cease and such genes will spread throughout the population. This may be occurring to some extent already, since diabetes, while not curable, can be controlled through use of insulin. The same thing will happen with many other diseases, diseases such as susceptibility to which it affected by genetic degradation of the population. The only solution will be some sort of eugenics program or extensive genetic engineering of human beings so that man in the future will no longer be able be a creation of nature or of chance or of God, depending on your religious or philosophical opinions. But a manufactured product. He just jumped right into transhumanism.
- [270:03]
B
Yeah, yeah. You know, and it was before, before this or after this was written. But now they're talking about like CRISPR and designer babies and all that which bring up its own moral quandaries which, you know, 20 years from now we'll probably have all that.
- [270:24]
A
Yeah, I mean it's. They are the. The rich and a lot of the rich and a lot of the wealthy are really pushing the transhumanism and especially World Economic Forum. I've heard Schwab talking about it recently. I've heard Prince Charles talk that stuff. Stuff recently. And even you know, Musk talking about implants. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so.
- [270:52]
B
Yeah.
- [270:53]
A
And you just have to ask yourself, is this going to be to make human beings better metaphysically or better workers.
- [271:05]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, imagine how much tax revenue you can get from somebody that lives 200 years.
- [271:14]
A
If you think that big government interferes in your life too much now, just wait till government starts regulating the genetic constitution of your children. Such regulation will inevitably follow the introduction of genetic engineering of human beings because the consequences of unregulated genetic engineering would be disastrous.
- [271:38]
B
So he's calling. I mean, he's again, he's prophesizing about CRISPR
- [271:47]
A
or. I mean, has a genetic experiment been going on for 10, 11 months already?
- [271:57]
B
Yeah, that too.
- [271:59]
A
Yeah. I mean, it's kind of hard to. Yeah, it's kind of hard to not ask that question.
- [272:07]
B
I. I don't know. I'm not 100 there that this was all planned. I think. I think a lot of it's. And I. I'm sure it was made in a lab and all that, but, yeah, I'm only 75. Sure that they know what they're doing.
- [272:25]
A
Nap time. Thanks for the super chat. Just bought my copy on Amazon. Thanks for making the best audiobook out there. TRUMP Kaczynski, 2024. Hell, yeah. Came in late. When is Aaron getting back on his monthly show?
- [272:43]
B
Yeah, about that. Soon.
- [272:49]
A
All right, the. The last section here of the bad parts. Technology cannot be separated from the good parts. The usual response to such concerns is to talk about medical ethics. But if code. But a code of ethics would not serve to protect freedom in the face of medical progress, it would only make matters worse. A code of ethics applicable to genetic engineering would be, in effect, a means of regulating the genetic constitution of human beings. Somebody, probably the upper middle class mostly, would decide that such and such applications of genetic engineering were ethical and others were not, so that, in effect, they would be imposing their own values on the genetic constitution of the population at large. Even if a code of ethics were chosen on a completely democratic basis, the majority would be imposing their own values on any minorities who might have a different idea of what constituted an ethical use of genetic engineering. The only code of. The only code of ethics that would truly protect freedom would be. Just think of these Twitter blue check marks.
- [273:54]
B
Yeah,
- [273:56]
A
these. These Twitter blue check marks. The only code of ethics that would truly protect freedom would be one that protects, prohibited, any genetic engineering of human beings. And you can be sure that no such code will ever be applied in a technological society. No code that reduced genetic engineering to a minor role could stand up for long, because the temptation presented by the immense power of biotechnology would be irresistible, especially since the majority of people, many of Its applications will seem obviously and unequivocally good. Eliminating physical and mental diseases, giving people the ability they need to get along. In today's world, in world, inevitably, genetic engineering will be used extensively, but only in ways consistent with the needs of the industrial technological system.
- [274:43]
B
Yes, and you get into, you know, genetically engineered soldiers like China's doing, experimenting with right now, you know, editing their genes to produce boys that will pack on more muscle, that have like, like more vascular, What do you call it, respiratory system, things like that. And they've, they've gotten caught doing. I read an article, it was a long time ago, but they got caught doing it. Some, some Chinese company got caught editing human genomes and the gov. The Chinese government, like slapped them on the wrist publicly. And then like a couple years later, it's like, you know, now the first crop of like those designer babies came in and they just so happen to be. Have all the characteristics of like a super soldier.
- [275:46]
A
Well, I heard that what they're doing in China with that, with that, what you were just talking about is actually being done on behalf of the Americans that it was started here. And they were like, no, there's no fucking way you can do that here. And then they took it to China because they knew that they could get away with doing it in China. So I've heard that it's actually, I've heard that it's actually in concert with American companies that. That's happening.
- [276:15]
B
Yeah, probably at Wuhan.
- [276:17]
A
Yeah, I mean, they had the freaking. Right before the whole thing, they had the, the military Olympics in Wuhan, what, October of last year.
- [276:29]
B
I mean, that was an, that was an expo.
- [276:35]
A
It's like, yeah, the American military just, you know, walking around China, Wuhan and you know, I mean, oh, damn, those wet markets must have been wet. All right, let's see what we got going on here. Technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom. Oh, here we go. I wonder if the person who did this purposely spelled freedom. Free doom. There are some typos in here. So it's not possible to make a lasting compromise between technology and free freedom, because technology is by far the more powerful social force and continually encroaches on freedom, though through repeated compromises. Imagine the case of two neighbors, each of whom is, at the. At the outset, owns the same amount of land, but one of whom is more powerful than the other. The powerful one demands a piece of the other's land. The weak one refuses. The powerful one says, okay, let's compromise. Give me half of What? I asked. The weak one has little choice but to give in. Sometime later, the powerful neighbor demands another piece of land. Again, there is a compromise and so forth. By forcing a long series of compromises on the weaker man, the powerful one eventually gets all of his land. So it goes in the conflict between technology and freedom.
- [277:51]
B
I mean, conservatives and progressives.
- [277:55]
A
Yeah, I mean, it's. I mean, I know the. The whole boiling of the frog analogy is actually kind of. I've read that it's. It's false that the. The frog will jump out. But, you know, just for the sake of this, it's, you know, basically like that. All right, let us explain why technology is a more powerful social force. In the aspiration for freedom. A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom often turns out to threaten it very serious. For example, consider motorized transportation. A walking man formerly could go where he pleased, go at his own pace without observing any traffic regulations, and was independent of technological support systems. When motor vehicles were introduced, they appeared to increase man's freedom. They took no freedom away from the walking man. No one had to have an automobile if he didn't want one. And anyone who did choose to buy an automobile could travel much faster and farther than a walking man. But the introduction of motorized transport soon changed society in such a way as to restrict greatly man's freedom of locomotion. When automobiles became numerous, it became necessary to regulate their use extensively. In a car, especially in densely populated areas. One cannot just go where one likes it at one's own pace. One's movement is governed by the flow of traffic and by various traffic laws. One is tied down by various obligations, license requirements, driver's test, renewing, registration, insurance, maintenance required for safety, monthly payments on purchase price. Moreover, the use of motorized transportation is no longer optional. Since the introduction of motorized transport, the arrangement of our cities has changed. Changed in such a way that the majority of people no longer live within walking distance of their place of employment, shopping areas and recreational opportunities. So they have to depend on the automobile for transportation. Or else they must use public transportation, in which case they have even one less control over their own movement than when driving a car. Even the walker's freedom is now greatly restricted in the city. He continually has to stop for traffic lights and are designed that are designed mainly to serve auto traffic in the country. Motor traffic makes it dangerous and unpleasant to walk along the highway. Note this important point that we have just illustrated with the case of now greatly restricted. Okay, Note the important point that we have just illustrated with the case of Motorized transport. When a new item of technology is introduced as an option that an individual can accept or not as he chooses, it does not necessarily remain optional. In many cases, the new technology changes society in such a way that people eventually find themselves forced to use it.
- [280:39]
B
The one thing that comes to mind is the Internet. I mean, just the Internet. You have no choice if, if you want to. I mean, I shouldn't say you don't have a choice, but if you want to participate in life with three other people besides yourself in it, at the very least you, it's like you're, you're forced to be online.
- [281:03]
A
I mean, I'm old enough to remember when the Internet just didn't exist. We didn't have it. I mean. Yeah, it had to go look for magazines to get information and go to the library. Yeah, I mean, it's. Yeah, but what. He's good.
- [281:22]
B
Oh, yeah. And I, I don't think he, he, he's using a good example at, from the pedestrians point of view throughout the, the development of the car and then to traffic, and then to traffic laws and then how, how that changed being a pedestrian. And I, I would, I would love to like, sit and think about how, you know, we, we can remember before the Internet how that. I don't even know what you'd call somebody that like, operated before the Internet, you know, boomer, I guess. How's the Internet taking away power? Power from boomers?
- [282:06]
A
Oh, well, I mean, they definitely can't meme, that's for sure. Yeah. All right.
- [282:15]
B
What are you gonna say this, this technology man?
- [282:23]
A
While technological process as a whole continually narrows our sphere of freedom, each new technological advance, considered by itself appears to be desirable. Electricity, indoor plumbing, rapid long distance communications. How could one argue against any of these things, or against any other of the innumerable technological advances that have made modern society? It would have been absurd to resist the introduction of the telephone, for example. It offered many advantages and no disadvantages. Yet we. Yet, as we explained in paragraphs 59 through 76, all these technological advances taken together have created a world in which the average man's fate is no longer in his own hands or in the hands of his neighbors and friends, but in those of politicians, corporation executives, and remote, anonymous technicians and bureaucrats whom he has an individual who, Whom he as an individual has no power to influence. The same process will continue in the future. Take genetic engineering, for example. Few people will resist the introduction of a genetic technique that eliminates a hereditary disease or a virus. It does no apparent harm and prevents Much suffering. Yet a large number of genetic improvements have taken. Taken together, will make the human being into an engineered product rather than a free creation of chance or of God or whatever, depending upon your religious beliefs.
- [283:47]
B
Yeah, that's. It's the law of unintended consequences. And it affects everything, no matter how. How awesome it is and how convenient and how, you know, marketable it is. It's the law of unintended consequences. Unintended consequences. It there. Nothing, nothing escapes it.
- [284:09]
A
Oh man, it's. You know what's amazing is you can just read this and like he, he writes so well that you don't even have to comment on a lot of this stuff because what, you're just going to be repeating what he said?
- [284:25]
B
Yeah, yeah. He flushes it out really well.
- [284:28]
A
Yeah, yeah. Another reason why technology is such a powerful social force is that within the context of a given society, technological progress marches in only one direction. It can never be revolution reversed. Once a technological innovation has been introduced, people usually become dependent on it so that they can never again do without it unless it is replaced by some still more advanced innovation. Not only do people become dependent as individuals on a new item of technology, but even more, the system as a whole becomes dependent on it. Imagine what would happen if the system to the system today, if computers, for example, were eliminated. Thus, the system can move in only one direction towards greater techno. Technologization. Technologization. I haven't seen that word before. Technology repeatedly forces freedom to take a step back, but technology can never take a step back. That's a good. That's a good one. Technology repeatedly forces freedom to take a step back, but technology can never take take a step back short of the overthrow of the whole technological system.
- [285:35]
B
Damn it. Requires you to use to, I guess, adjust your metrics of what constitutes freedom. If. If freedom is not being forced or coerced to, I guess, update your. Your life and your daily routine and the way that you do things. If that constitutes freedom, then yeah, we are pretty unfree.
- [286:02]
A
Yeah. All right, what we got? Technical techno technology advances with great rapidity and threatens freedom at many points at the same time. Crowding rules and regulation, increasing dependence of individuals on large organizations, propaganda and other psychological techniques, genetic engineering, invasion of privacy through surveillance devices and computers, etc. To hold back any one of the threats to freedom would require a long and difficult social struggle. Those who want to protect freedom are overwhelmed by the sheer number of new attacks and the rapidity with which they develop. Hence they become apathetic and no longer resist to fight Each of the threats separately would be futile. Success can be hoped for only, could be hoped for only by fighting the technological system as a whole. But that is revolution, not reform. I mean, seriously. I mean we're. People don't want to go back. I remember when you probably remember this. Remember in the mid aughts when phones got real small?
- [287:07]
B
Yeah, yep.
- [287:08]
A
And, and then like people found out that they could watch porn on their phone and their, their phones got bigger again.
- [287:15]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember like the Motorola Razor was lauded for being the thinnest phone. And like they had the Razer Mini that was, you know, the thinnest and the like had a tiny LCD screen. It's great.
- [287:33]
A
This is a great comment from Rogue Coyote27. I get the whole surrogate activities concept, but football has been electric this weekend. College and NFL. God damn it. Oh, what do we got? Technicians. We use this term in the broad sense to describe all those who perform a specialized task that requires training tend to be so involved in their work, their surrogate activity, that when a conflict arises between the technical work and freedom, they almost always decide in favor of of their technical work. This is obvious in the case of scientists, but it also appears elsewhere. Educators, humanitarian educators, humanitarian groups, conservation organizations, do not hesitate to use propaganda or other psychological techniques to help them achieve their laudable ends. Corporations and government agencies, when they find it useful, do not hesitate to collect information about individuals without regard for their privacy. And he was writing this before. Before, before 9 11. Law enforcement agencies are frequently inconvenienced by the constitutional rights of suspects and often are com who often are completely innocent persons. And they do whatever they can do legally or sometimes illegally, to restrict or circumvent those rights. Most of these educators, government officials and law officers believe in freedom, privacy, and constitutional rights. But when these conflict with their work work, they usually feel that work is more important. Oh yeah, very libertarian right there.
- [289:05]
B
Yeah, yeah. Radley Balco.
- [289:09]
A
Oh God. All right. It is well known that people generally work better when striving for a reward than when attempting to avoid a punishment or negative outcome. Scientists and other technicians are motivated mainly by the reward rewards they get through their work. But those who oppose technological invasions of freedom are working to avoid a negative outcome. Consequently, there are a few who work persistently and well at this discouraging task. If reformers ever achieved a signal victory that seemed to set up a solid barrier against further erosion of freedom through technical progress, most would tend to relax and turn their attention to more agreeable pursuits. But the scientists would remain Busy in their laboratories. And technology, as it progresses would find ways, in spite of any barriers, to exert more and more control over individuals and make them always more dependent on the system. So I mean, any, yeah, anyone who tries to reform. Reform the system or say, hey, maybe we're going a little too fast is just a luddite.
- [290:17]
B
Yeah. And you, you gotta, you gotta remember like, you're going up at, at best, you're going up against like an army of Mark Zuckerbergs. Just human beings, but with no, no thought whatsoever outside of like, I need to generate a profit and I need to advance, advance, advance, advanced and keep competitive. Generate a profit and advance. Like that's. Those are the type of people that you're going up against. And you know, so reform. I mean, sure, we could try it.
- [290:54]
A
No social arrangements, whether laws, institutions, customs, or ethical codes can provide permanent protection against technology. History shows that all social arrangements are transitory. They all change or break down eventually. But technological advances are permanent within the context of a given situation. Civilization. Suppose, for example, that it were possible to arrive at some social arrangements that would prevent genetic engineering from being applied to human beings or prevent it from being applied in such a way as to threaten freedom and dignity. Still the technology would remain waiting. Sooner or later, the social arrangement would break down. Probably sooner, given the pace of change in our society, then genetic engineering would begin to invade our sphere of freedom. And this invasion would be irreversible. Irreversible. Short of a breakdown of the technologies of technological civilization itself, any illusions about achieving anything permanent through social arrangements should be dispelled by what is currently happening with environmental legislation. A few years ago, it seemed that there were secure legal barriers preventing at least some of the worst forms of environmental degradation. A change in the political wind and those barriers begin to cross crumble. He's going with his, with his thing, the environment, I mean, bringing in his. What's most important to him. But I mean, he's not lying about the technological advances being permanent within the context of a given civilization. I mean, that's just. Nothing's gonna, Nothing's gonna stop that at this point. And what I think is really interesting about this is sooner or later the social arrangement would break down. Probably sooner, given the pace of change in our society. And he's writing this in the, in the 90s. In the early 90s.
- [292:41]
B
So, I mean, not that, not that far back.
- [292:46]
A
Yeah. I mean, but think about the, the pace of change now. Yeah, I mean, it's. Yeah.
- [292:56]
B
Technological and social.
- [292:58]
A
Yeah. I mean, we're at the point right now where the. I mean, there are no, like, there are movie theaters, but no one really goes to the movies anymore. Everything's done on like, what is it? Hbo, Max?
- [293:12]
B
Yeah, yeah. Or something.
- [293:14]
A
Yeah. There's like, it. It's all been condensed down into one. One thing. If you would have said that two. If two years ago, if you said, you know, in two years no one's going to be going to movie theaters, everything will be, you know, pretty much debuted at streaming right into your home. Be like, oh, I mean, they're already starting to do that now. But people still love to go to theaters.
- [293:37]
B
Yeah. Now they don't. Like. I. It's. It's been long enough. It. Given a year and a half or two years, it's been long enough that people have kind of just let it go, I think, you know, I. I actually went to the. Went to the movies. I saw the Last Duel and, you know, but I'll. I really wanted to see that movie for whatever reason. But if had that been streaming, I would have just got it that way in a heartbeat.
- [294:06]
A
Wasn't streaming.
- [294:07]
B
No. Nope.
- [294:09]
A
Interesting. Interesting. I mean, I know people who've told me that they've gone to the theater and everything. Everything. But I mean, even before COVID I. As soon as cell phones really came out, I was just like, I don't want to go to theaters anymore. Yeah, yeah. It's just. Forget it. Yeah.
- [294:26]
B
That used to be my default dinner and a date.
- [294:28]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same, same, same. For all the foregoing reasons, technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom. For all the foregoing reasons, but this statement requires an important qualification. It appears that during the next several decades, the industrial technological society will be undergoing severe stress due to economic and environmental problems, and especially due to problems of human behavior. Alienation, rebellion, hostility, a variety of social and psychological difficulties. We hope that the stresses through which the system is likely to pass will cause it to break down or at least will weaken it sufficiently so that a revolution against it becomes popular. Possible. If such a revolution occurs and is successful, then at that particular moment, the aspiration for freedom will have improved. More power will have proved more powerful than technology.
- [295:23]
B
Wow, I am hard as a rock right now.
- [295:28]
A
But I mean, I don't. Yeah. In the systems need. His trick, which I think is 2003, 2004, 2005. And he talks about just how the vile. How any violence that happens, any kind of revolution will be, will just feed into the state. We'll just grow the State.
- [295:47]
B
Yeah.
- [295:48]
A
Yeah. Some people were upset that we didn't. That I didn't get you to do that one with me. But we already talked about after Bird and I do whatever we're going to do after this, then you'll come back and we'll do a. We'll do a short book that'll either make people really excited or piss some people the hell off.
- [296:09]
B
That's what I'm here for. Either or.
- [296:13]
A
In paragraph 125, we used an analogy of a weak neighbor who is left destitute by a strong neighbor who takes all of his land by forcing on him a series of compromises. But suppose now the strong neighbor gets sick so that he is unable to defend himself. The weak neighbor can force the strong one to give him his land back, or he can kill him. If he lets the strong man survive, it only forces him to give the land back. He is a fool, because when the strong man gets well, he will again take all the land for himself. The only sensible alternative for the weaker man is to kill the strong man once he. While he has the chance. In the same way, while the industrial system is sick, we must destroy it. If we compromise with it and let it recover from its sickness, it will eventually wipe out all of our freedom.
- [297:00]
B
Yep.
- [297:02]
A
I mean, really, what else can you say? Seriously?
- [297:06]
B
And that. That logic can be applied to a lot of things that our audience doesn't like. I know that we would prefer peace, but it's. It's becoming more and more clear that we're dealing with evil and not incompetence. So, yeah.
- [297:28]
A
Yeah, that's.
- [297:29]
B
That's all I'll say about that on this live stream.
- [297:32]
A
Thank you. All right. Heading. Simpler social problems have proved intractable. If anyone still imagines that it would be possible to reform the system in such a way as to protect. Protect freedom from technology. Let him consider how clumsily and for the most part unsuccessfully, our society has dealt with other social problems that are far more simple and straightforward. Among other things, the system has failed to stop environmental degradation, degradation, political corruption, drug trafficking, or domestic abuse. Kind of hard to argue with them on that one. I mean, who's going to be. Seriously, it's like, okay, so we're going to reform the system. Who's going to do that? The system. This is like Libertarianism 101. You there?
- [298:26]
B
Yeah. Lennon has a pamphlet called Reform, Reform, or Revolution? And he talks about that, you know, the. You're. You're asking the system that predates off you to fix itself and stop predating off you, but it needs it. It need like and liberty. And this is in direct correlation with, you know, what ANCAPs say, you know, the system predates off you, but it needs to predate off you. So that's why you can't, you can't reform.
- [298:53]
A
It would. So what was Lennon's answer?
- [298:59]
B
Revolution. But also by, by using, yes, a revolution within. Not, not the way that the Bolshevik revolution played out. I don't think he. I don't, I don't think he saw that coming. I don't think he wanted it to come to that. But a revolution within the entirety of every aspect of, of the institutions in the system.
- [299:32]
A
Yeah. Take our environmental problems for example here. The conflict of values is straightforward economic expedience now versus saving some of our natural resources for our grandchildren. But on this subject we get only a lot of blather and obfuscation from the people who have power and nothing like a clear, consistent line of action. And we keep on piling up environmental problems that our grandchildren will have to live with. Attempts to resolve the environmental issue consists of struggles and compromises between different factions, some of which are ascendant at one moment, others at another moment. The line of struggle changes with the shifting currents of public opinion. This is not a rational process, nor is it one that is likely to lead to a timely and successful solution of the problem. Major social problems, if they get solved at all, are rarely or never solved through any rational comprehensive plan. They just work themselves out through a process in which various competing groups pursuing their own usually short term self interest, arrive mainly by luck at some more or less stable modus vivendi. In fact, the principles we formulated in paragraphs 100 through 106 seem to make it seem doubtful that rational long term social planning can ever be successful.
- [300:51]
B
Yeah, I mean this is, this is similar to an anarcho capitalist critique of democracy. It's the incentive is to get into for your four year term, wield as much power as possible so that you can get out and the guy coming after you, you know, not only the guy coming after you, but the generations that have to pay for it.
- [301:18]
A
Yeah. And to, yeah, to rape and pillage as much while you're in there.
- [301:25]
B
Yeah.
- [301:26]
A
You know what Hoppett talks about. Thus, it is clear that the human race has at best a very limited capacity for solving even relatively straightforward social problems. How then is it going to solve the first far more difficult and subtle problem of reconciling freedom with technology? Technology presents clear cut material advantages, whereas freedom is an Abstraction that means different things to different people and its loss is easily obscured by propaganda and fancy talk. I'm going to go on to the next one and note this important difference. It is conceivable that our environmental problems, for example, may someday be settled to our a rational comprehensive plan. But if this happens, it will only be because in the. It is in the long term interest of the system to solve these problems. But it is not in the interest of the system to preserve freedom or small group autonomy. On the contrary, it is in the interest of the system to bring human behavior under control to the greatest possible extent. Thus, while practical considerations may eventually force the system to take a risk rational, prudent approach to environmental problems, equally practical considerations will force the system to regulate human behavior even more closely, preferably by indirect means that will disguise the encroachment on freedom. This isn't just our opinion. Eminent social scientist James Q. Wilson have stressed the importance of socializing people more effectively.
- [302:56]
B
So I recorded an episode last night with TD Salmons.
- [303:00]
A
Tom Tommy. Yeah.
- [303:02]
B
And he's, he was telling me about an excerpt from Klaus Schwab's book where he posits that, you know, we shouldn't like him as talking as the system said, you know, we shouldn't really concern ourselves with all these social upheavals or you know, get, get involved in engineering social norms and you know, progress or even like getting involved in progress. Progressive social causes like just, just take over every aspect of the economy and let them, let them do that themselves. So that's, that's exactly what Ted's saying. When, if, if and when that they come to that conclusion and implement it, it'll only be because it's in the system's interest to do that.
- [303:54]
A
Yeah. Next section. Short but the title of it is Revolution is Easier than Reform. We hope we have convinced the reader that the system cannot be reformed in such a way to reconcile freedom with technology. The only way out is to dispense with the industrial technological system altogether. This implies revolution. Not necessarily an armed uprising, but certainly a radical and fundamental change in the nature of society. People tend to assume that because a revolution involves a much greater change than reform does, it is more difficult to bring about than reform is. Actually, under certain circumstances, revolution is much easier than reform. The reason is that a revolutionary movement can inspire an intensity of commitment that a reform movement cannot inspire. A reform movement merely offers to Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. Here a reform movement merely offers to solve a particular social problem. A revolutionary movement, a revolutionary movement Sorry, I got offers to solve all problems at one stroke and create a whole new world. It provides the kind of ideal for which people will take great risks and make great sacrifices. For this reason means. For this reason it would be much easier to overthrow the whole technological system than to put effective permanent restraints on the development or application of any one segment of technology, such as genetic engineering, for example. Not many people will devote themselves with a single minded passion to imposing and maintaining restraints on genetic engineering. But under suitable conditions, large numbers of people may devote themselves passionately to a recognition revolution against the industrial technological system. As we noted in paragraph 132, reformers seeking to limit certain aspects of technology would be working to avoid a negative outcome. But revolutionaries work to gain a powerful reward, fulfillment of their revolutionary vision and therefore work harder and more persistent than reformers do. I'll let you comment on this all you want. You muted
- [306:01]
B
now. He's exactly right. The. The impetus for revolution is so much greater than. Than those of people that prefer reform in general. And it's going to be interesting to see what happens in the next five or so years within our little sphere of different branches of revolution.
- [306:26]
A
Well, we shall see.
- [306:29]
B
Yeah,
- [306:32]
A
leave it at that.
- [306:33]
B
Yeah.
- [306:34]
A
Reform is always. Let me see something. Hold on. I don't see 141 in here. Oh, it's, it's. He just combined, they combine 140 and 141. Reform is always restrained by the fear of painful consequences if changes go too far. But once a revolutionary fever has taken hold of a society, people are willing to undergo unlimited hardships for the sake of their revolution. This was clearly shown in the French and Russian revolutions. It may be that in such cases only a minority of the population is really committed to the revolution. But this minority is sufficiently large and active so that it becomes the dominant force in society. We will have more to say about this. I know. Yes. Agreed. All right. Control of human behavior since the beginning of civilization, organized societies have had to put pressure on human beings of the SA for the sake of the functioning of the sake of the. For the sake of the functioning society of the social organism. The kinds of pressures vary greatly from one society to another. Some of the pressures are physical. Poor diet, excessive labor, environmental pollution. Some are psychological noise crowding, forcing human behavior into the mold that society requires. In the past, human nature has been approximately constant or at any rate has varied only with certain bounds. Consequently, societies have been able to push people only to certain limits. When the limit of human endurance has been passed, things start going wrong. Rebellion or crime or corruption or evasion of work or depression and other mental problems or an elevated death rate or a declining birth rate or something else. So that either the society breaks down or its functioning becomes too inefficient. And it, and it is quickly or gradually, through conquest, attrition or evolution, replaced by some more efficient or form of society. Let me, let me finish. Thus, human nature has in the past put certain limits on the development of societies. People could be pushed only so far and no further. But today this may be changing because modern technology is developing ways of modifying human beings.
- [308:57]
B
Yeah, I mean, the whole point of technocracy is to. The whole point of technocracy is to engineer human nature out in pursuit of perfection. The perfect society. And I think they're doing pretty good at it.
- [309:14]
A
Yeah. Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them drugs to take away their unhappiness.
- [309:24]
B
Oh man, that's. That's a little too far fetched for me. Ted.
- [309:29]
A
Science fiction. It is already happening to some extent in our own society. It is well known that the rate of clinical depression has been greatly increasing in recent decades. We believe that this is due to the disruption of the power process, as explained in paragraphs 59 through 76. But even if we are wrong, the increasing rate of depression is certainly the result of some conditions that exist in today's society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable. Yes, we know that depression is often a purely genetic. A purely genetic origin. We're referring here to those cases in which the environment plays the predominant role.
- [310:17]
B
Yeah, yeah, I was going to throw that caveat in if he didn't.
- [310:24]
A
Drugs that affect the mind are only one example of the new methods of controlling human behavior that modern society is developing. Let us look at some other methods. To start with. There are techniques of surveillance. Hidden. Hidden video cameras are now used in most stores and in many other places. Computers are used to collect and process vast amounts of information about individuals. Information so obtained greatly increases the effectiveness of physical coercion, that is law enforcement. Then there are the methods of propaganda for which the mass communication media provide effective vehicles. Efficient techniques have been developed for winning elections, selling products, influencing public opinion. The entertainment industry serves as an important psychological tool of the system, possibly only when it is dishing out Large amounts of sex and violence. Entertainment provides modern man with an essential means of establishment escape. While absorbed in television, videos, etc. He can forget. He can forget. Stress, anxiety, frustration, dissatisfaction. Many primitive peoples, where they don't have to, don't have work to do, are quite content to sit for hours at a time doing nothing at all because they are at peace with themselves and their world. But most modern people must be constantly occupied or entertained. Otherwise they get bored, they get fidgety, uneasy and irritable. Yeah, I mean, I feel personally attacked by this.
- [311:50]
B
Yeah, I mean, what, what, what greater example do we have of that than when those fidget spinners got popular? Like, if that wasn't a giant red flag that something's wrong. That, that those are. Those are like, selling for 10 bucks a piece and they take like 3 cents to bake. And like, that blew my mind when. When those got popular.
- [312:13]
A
Yeah, it's. I mean, I always. I'm always listening to something, I'm always reading something. I'm always doing something. I can't just sit. Yeah, and it's. Man talked to Scott Horton today and he said, I need to smoke more weed.
- [312:29]
B
Yeah, that's probably. That's probably the case.
- [312:31]
A
Yeah. Yeah. He's like, I think you just need to smoke more weed. Other techniques strike deeper than the foregoing. Education is no longer a simple affair of paddling kids behind when he doesn't know his lessons and patting him on the head when he does know them. It is becoming a scientific technique for controlling the child's development. Sylvan learning centers, for example, have had great success in motivating children to study. And psychological techniques are also used with more or less success in many conventional schools. Parenting techniques that are taught to parents are designed to make children accept fundamental values of the system and behave in ways that the system finds desirable. Mental health programs, intervention techniques, psychotherapy, and so forth are ostensibly designed to benefit individuals. But in practice, they usually serve as methods for inducing individuals to think and behave as the system requires. In parenthesis. There is no contradiction here. An individual whose attitude or behavior bring him into conflict with the system is up against a force that is too powerful for him to conquer or escape from. Hence, he is likely to suffer stress, frustration, defeat. His path will be much easier if he thinks and behaves as the system requires. In that sense, the system is acting for the benefit of the individual when it comes, brainwashes him into conformity. Close parenthesis. Child abuse in its gross and obvious forms is disapproved in most, if not all cultures, tormenting a child for a trivial reason or no reason at all is something that appalls almost everyone. But many psychologists interpret the concept of abuse much more broadly. Is spanking, when used as a part of a rational and consistent system of discipline, a form of abuse? The question will ultimately be decided by whether or not spanking tends to produce behavior that makes a person fit in well with the existing system of society. In practice, the word abuse tends to be interpreted to include any method of child rearing that produces behavior inconvenient for the system. Thus, when they go beyond the prevention of obvious senseless cruelty, programs for preventing child abuse are directed toward the control of human behavior on behalf of the system. Man.
- [314:47]
B
Yep.
- [314:49]
A
Jeez.
- [314:53]
B
Yeah, it's like damned if you do, damned if you don't.
- [314:59]
A
I mean, just. Oh my goodness, that's just so brutal.
- [315:05]
B
Yeah, you could look at every single aspect of parenting and through that lens and you would have to conclude that you're like the worst parent ever for 99% of parents right now.
- [315:19]
A
Jesus. Presumably, research will continue to increase the effectiveness of psychological techniques for controlling human behavior, but we think it is unlikely the psychological techniques alone will be sufficient to adjust human beings to the kinds of society that technology. The technology is creating. Biological methods probably will have to be used. We have already mentioned the use of drugs. In this connection, neurology may provide other avenues for modifying the human mind. Genetic engineering of human beings is already beginning to occur in the form of gene therapy. And there is no reason to assume that such methods will not eventually be used to modify those aspects of the body that affect mental functioning. As we mentioned in paragraph 134, industrial society seems likely to be entering a period of severe stress due in part to the problems of human behavior and in parts, economic and environmental problems. And a considerable proportion of the system's economic environmental problems result from the way human beings behave. Alienation, low self esteem, depression, hostility, rebellion, children who won't study, youth gangs, illegal drug use, rape, child abuse, other crimes, unsafe sex, teachers, teen pregnancy, population growth, political corruption, race hatred, ethnic rivalry, bitter ideological conflict, example, pro choice versus pro life, political extremism, terrorism, sabotage, anti government groups, hate groups. All these threaten the very survival of the system. The system will therefore be forced to use every practical means of controlling human behavior.
- [316:54]
B
Yes, and gotta get out of that entire list that he just mentioned. You know, if you are a distant, you basically have to pick one.
- [317:06]
A
Yeah, I mean, he's. When you look at the way the system is reacting to the January 6th quote, unquote insurrectionist. It doesn't. They don't have to believe that they're actually insurrectionists or they can believe they're insurrectionists. It's not the pro. It's. It has nothing to do with that. Yeah, it has to do.
- [317:30]
B
Modify behavior.
- [317:32]
A
Exactly, exactly. Or the gentleman in Loudoun County, Virginia, who after his daughter was raped in the bathroom by a, by a. What it was, wasn't. Not a trans. But gender fluid. Per person. And, and then he goes to, yeah, he goes to the school board meeting because they're talking, they're meeting about how they're going to deal with transgender people and, you know, basically gender fluid, all this stuff and everything. And he gets kicked out of there and because he is losing his mind because they, they won't do anything about the fact that his daughter got raped and they actually sent the, the kid, the boy to another school and he rap, you know, dragged another girl into a classroom and then he gets dragged out of there, the picture gets taken and he becomes the face of domestic terrorists going to school board meetings. Yeah, and they have to do that. Oh, yeah, they have to, because they're trying, they're trying to disrupt, Disrupt the system.
- [318:42]
B
Yeah.
- [318:43]
A
Which is why I'm like, I'm telling people it's like this whole thing about education and everything, you know, critical race theory and everything. The reason they're doing this is. Well, I mean, we know the reason they're doing it. I don't want to say the term right now ends in homo, but the, but it's because. Well, I'm telling people that they're coming for homeschoolers within a couple years.
- [319:11]
B
Yeah. Yep.
- [319:12]
A
They're coming for homeschoolers within a couple years.
- [319:17]
B
So that's one of those things that, you know, if, if, if they crack down on it, I, I don't think that a whole lot of people are going to actually resist in any meaningful way, but just. That's just another domino.
- [319:32]
A
Yeah. The social disruption we, that we see today is certainly not the result of mere chance. It can only be a result of the conditions of life that, that the system imposes on people. Parenthesis. We have argued that the most important of these conditions is disruption of the power process. Close parenthesis. If the system succeeds in imposing sufficient control over human behavior to assure its own survival, a new watershed in human history will have been passed. Whereas formerly the limits of human endurance have imposed limits on the development of societies. As we explained in paragraphs 143, 144, Industrial Technological Society will be able to pass those limits by modifying human beings, whether by psychological methods or biological methods or both. In the future, social systems will not be adjusted to suit the needs of human beings. Instead, human beings will be adjusted to suit the needs of the system. I mean, there's no better. And there's no better training ground than the last 20 months.
- [320:36]
B
Yeah.
- [320:38]
A
Where people are lining up to and. And are openly showing their virtue in getting a shot that doesn't work.
- [320:47]
B
Yeah.
- [320:50]
A
Because they're protecting their neighbor.
- [320:52]
B
And. And on top of that, gleefully encouraging people that don't do that to be homeless or dead or whatever.
- [321:04]
A
Jesus. All right, where. Where am I? Generally speaking, technological control over human behavior will probably not be introduced with a totalitarian intention or even through a conscious desire to restrict human freedom. Each new step in the assertion of control over the human mind will be taken as a rational response to a priority problem that faces society, such as curing alcoholism, reducing the crime rate, or a virus.
- [321:31]
B
Eradicating a virus.
- [321:33]
A
Eradicating a virus. Or inducing young people to study science and engineering. In many cases, there will be a humanitarian justification. For example, when a psychiatrist prescribes an antidepressant to a depressed patient, he is clearly doing the individual a favor. It would be inhumane to withhold a drug from someone who needs it. When parents send their children to Sylvan learning centers to have them manipulated into becoming enthusiastic about their studies, they do so so for concern for their children's welfare. It may be that some of the parents wish that. It may be that some of the parents wish that one didn't have to have specialized training to get a job and that their kid didn't have to be brainwashed into becoming a computer nerd. But what can they do? They can't change society. And their child may be unemployable if he doesn't have certain names, skills. So they send them to Sylvan. Yeah, let me. Let me get going. Thus, control over human behavior will be introduced not by a calculated decision of the authorities, but through a process of social evolution, rapid evolution. However, the process will be impossible to resist because each advance considered by itself will appear to be beneficial, or at least the evil involved in making the advance will appear to be beneficial. Or at least the evil involved in making the advance will seem to be less than that which would result from making it. Like taking a virus that might. Because you might kill somebody else. Taking a vaccine because you might kill somebody else. Propaganda.
- [323:01]
B
The road well traveled
- [323:05]
A
propaganda, for example, is used for many good Purposes such as discouraging child abuse or race hatred, sex education is obviously useful. Yet the effect of sex education, to the extent that it is successful, is to take the shaping of sexual attitudes away from the family and put it into the hands of the state as represented by the public school system.
- [323:25]
B
Huh?
- [323:27]
A
Man.
- [323:28]
B
Yeah, it's, it's like he just went like right wing, right wing populist hopping for that whole segment.
- [323:36]
A
Okay. Oh, man, oh man, Let me see. Okay. Suppose to us that's like big.
- [323:43]
B
To us that's like basic everything.
- [323:45]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're just, we're just laughing at it because of stuff that we say every day.
- [323:50]
B
Yeah.
- [323:51]
A
Suppose a biological trait is discovered that increases the likelihood that a child will grow up to be a criminal. And suppose some sort of gene therapy can remove this trait. Of course, most parents, I mean like becoming a murderer, you know, with a virus. Of course most parents whose children possess the trait will have them undergo the therapy. It would be inhumane to do otherwise since a child would probably have a miserable life if he grew up to be a criminal. But many or most primitive societies have a low crime rate in comparison with that of our society, even though they have neither high tech methods of child rearing nor harsh systems of punishment. Since there is no reason to suppose the more modern men than primitive men have innate predatory tendencies, the high crime rate of our society must be due to pressures that modern conditions put on people to which many cannot or will not adjust. Thus, a treatment designed to remove potential criminal tendencies is at least in part a way of re engineering people so that they suit the requirements of the system. I mean, chemical castration and things you look at.
- [324:59]
B
I forget where I heard it might have even been you, but, but if you look at like the crime rate of London in 1890 as far as like burglary, larceny, theft, and then compare it to like 1990, it's like a 400% raise. I mean, which correlates exactly with what he's saying.
- [325:22]
A
Yeah, yeah, it's. Yeah. Our society tends to regard as a sickness any mode of thought or behavior that is inconvenient for the system. And that, and that is plausible because when an individual doesn't fit into the system, it causes pain to the individual as well as problems for the system. Thus, the manipulation of an individual to adjust him to the system is seen as a cure for a sickness and therefore is a good. I'm going to go on to the next paragraph. In paragraph 127, we pointed out that if the Use of a new item of technology is initially optional. Optional. It does not re necessarily remain optional because the new technology tends to change society in such a way that it becomes difficult or impossible for an individual to function without using that technology. This applies. Yeah, this also applies to technology of human behavior. In a world in which most children are put through a program to make them enthusiastic about studying, A parent will almost be forced to put his kid through through such a program because if he does not, then the kid will grow up to be, comparatively speaking, an ignoramus and therefore unemployable. Or suppose a biological treatment is discovered that without undesirable side effects will greatly reduce the psychological stress from which so many people suffer in our society. If large numbers of people choose to undergo the treatment, then the general level of stress in society will be reduced so that it will be possible for the, the system to increase the stress producing pressures. In fact, in fact, something like this seems to have happened already with one of our society's most important psychological tools for enabling people to reduce or at least temporarily escape from stress, Namely mass Entertainment. See paragraph 147. Our use of mass entertainment is optional. No law requires us to watch television, listen to the radio, read magazines, go on the Internet. Yet mass entertainment is a means of escape and stress reduction on which most of us have become dependent. Everyone complains about the trash, trashiness of television, but almost everyone watches it. A few have kicked the TV habit. But it would be a rare person who could get along today without using any form of mass entertainment. Yet until quite recently in human history, most people got along very nicely with no entertainment that other than that which each local community created for itself. Without the entertainment industry, the system would probably have not been able to get away with putting as much stress producing pressure on us as it does.
- [327:56]
B
Yeah, I'm glad that he got into that. You know, the system creates the stressors and then offers the cure so that it can create more stressors. And, and that's, you know, that's everything we talk about one on one.
- [328:12]
A
Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's, I mean, I just don't, I don't know how like if you lived through the last 20 months and you have noticed exactly what's going on, the level of propaganda that you've been subjected to right from the start. I mean, the left and the left and the right switched positions in a day. The left was like, don't worry about this virus. Go to Chinatown, hug a Chinese person and everything. And like the next day it was like they Were all about the virus. And it was like. And the right was all worried about it. And then the next day it switched. It flipped. And you're like, wait a minute, how did that. Had that. How'd that happen?
- [328:56]
B
I mean, the veil was pulled, but, you know, for. For what? For whatever good it did.
- [329:05]
A
Yeah, well, we have four. We have four here left. And we'll end. We'll end it and start at 161 the next time. Assuming that. Yeah, the next one will be human race. Human race at a crossroads. I guess he's going to start talking more about. I think he's going to probably start getting into solutions, Scary as that might be. Assuming that industrial society survives, it is likely that technology will eventually acquire something approaching complete control over human behavior. It has been established beyond any rational doubt that human thought and behavior have a largely biological basis. Oh. Oh, he's gonna. He's gonna piss some people off. As experimenters have demonstrated, feelings such as hunger, pleasure, anger, and fear can be turned on and off by electrical stimulation of appropriate parts of the brain. Memories can be destroyed by damaging parts of the brain, or they can be brought to the surface by electrical stimulation. Hallucinations can be induced or moods changed by drugs. There may or may not be an immaterial human soul, but if there is one, it clearly is less powerful than the biological mechanisms of human behavior. For if that were not the case, then researchers would not be able to so easily manipulate human feelings and behavior with drugs and electrical currents. Wow, that's
- [330:33]
B
black pill.
- [330:35]
A
Oh, yeah. I mean, just basically means powerful magic. Yeah, we're programmable, idiots. And they do it with magic. It presumably would be impractical for all people to have electrodes inserted in their heads so they could be controlled by the authorities. But the fact that human thoughts and feelings are so open to biological intervention shows that the people. The problem of controlling human behavior is mainly a technical problem. A problem of neurons, hormones, and complex molecules. The kind of problem that is accessible to scientific attack. Given the outstanding record of our society in solving technical problems, it is overwhelmingly probable that great advances will be made in the control of human behavior. He's not talking about just with drugs.
- [331:25]
B
Yeah, not at all. Engineering
- [331:33]
A
dug it up. Said, that's just the MK Ultra talking.
- [331:36]
B
Yeah,
- [331:39]
A
yeah.
- [331:39]
B
What is.
- [331:39]
A
What is.
- [331:40]
B
What does Ted Kaczynski know about that?
- [331:42]
A
Yeah, well, what's funny. What's funny is that section where he was talking about, you know, a few have kicked the TV habit. Like, I mean, I was so proud when I, like, cut cable and everything. And I was just like, I'm just not going to watch TV anymore yet. That the phone has become like a part. Like, like the gun becomes a part of James Wood's hand and video drum, you know, so it's like you have to compensate. Will public resistance prevent the introduction of technological control of human behavior? It certainly would if an attempt were made to introduce such control all at once. But since technological control will be introduced through a long sequence of small advances, there will be no rational and effective public resistance. He's right. Yeah, he's right. To those who. To those who think this all sounds like science fiction, we point out that yesterday's science fiction is today's fact. The Industrial Revolution has radically altered man's environment and way of life. And it is only to be expected that as technology is increasingly applied to the human body and mind, man himself will be altered as radically as his environment and way of life have been.
- [332:57]
B
I mean, it's hard to believe that we're really only like three, four generations away from what could conceivably be called primitive man. And I, I, I'm not a geneticist, but I would love to see how, how our genomes compared to three or four generations.
- [333:21]
A
Remember when that. Those guys on that left podcast all took, like, they took testosterone tests and they all turned out to be low T. Do you remember that? You never saw that video? Oh, my God, it was hilarious. We. We shared in the boys chat a couple times. It's so amazing. It's like, oh, wow. Why is my testosterone so low?
- [333:42]
B
Weird.
- [333:44]
A
Strange. And if somebody does have, you know, high testosterone or is masculine or man or manly, they're sort of. They're looked down upon in society. You know, it's like, yeah, they're definitely
- [333:58]
B
not encouraged to display those characteristics in any way.
- [334:04]
A
Yeah, yeah, it's the try, guys. It was the try, guys. You're right, Nolan. It's just amazing. It was a buzzfeed. Yeah, it was a buzzfeed video. That's right. That's right. That's awesome. All right, man. I know I, I know I kept you long and everything, so hit plugs and we got, we got a lot done tonight, so thank you.
- [334:26]
B
Yeah, yeah. Almost an hour and a half. Yeah. You can find me on Twitter. I, like Pete may have a different Twitter name, Twitter handle tomorrow, tonight at some point, but you can find me on Twitter. Could find me also on Timeline Earth. I have a guest spot with TD Salmons coming up, and, yeah, and I'll be dropping a Boys town with Aaron. Soon.
- [334:57]
A
Awesome, man. Is that gonna be the one with Andrew? Yep. It's gonna be all two. Two hours. Andrew. Yeah. Thanks, brother.
- [335:06]
B
So thanks for having me.
- [335:09]
A
Thanks, everyone. Let me make sure we are, in fact, live, and I will share this out to a couple places and. Oh, there we are. Holy shit.
- [335:25]
B
Make sure we're live before I pull a Jeffrey Toobin.
- [335:30]
A
It wouldn't bother me at all. I just don't care, you know, I grew up with two brothers in the same bedroom. I think I just get enough dick for my life, you know,
- [335:40]
B
I'm sure your audience feels the same way. We're all. We're all here.
- [335:48]
A
All right, let me see if I can. If I can get this to one other place. I'm not even sure I'm signed into me we, but looks like I'm. I've been totally destroyed off of Facebook, like, never again.
- [336:04]
B
Oh, really? Is it official or are they. Is it like a shadow man type deal?
- [336:08]
A
Oh, no, they. They're. They have me in review, and I talked to somebody the other day, and they're like, Page has been in review for like, six months, so. Jesus, I'm figuring that pretty much done. So. All right, we got a couple people here already, so let's go, man. Let's get this. Start knocking some of this out. So last thing we were talking about, there was a big section, Control of Human Behavior. And he said to those who think that all this sounds like science fiction, we point out what. That yesterday's science fiction is today's fact. The Industrial Revolution has radically altered man's environment and way of life. And it is only to be expected that as technology is increasingly applied to the human body and mind, man himself will be altered as radically as is. In fact, environment and way of life have been. So he's saying the human race is at the crossroads. Let's go. But we have gotten ahead of our story. It is one thing to develop in the laboratory a series of psychological or biological techniques for manipulating human behavior, and quite another to integrate these techniques into a functioning social system. The latter problem is the more difficult of the two. For example, while the techniques of educational psychology doubtless work quite well in the lab schools where they are developed, it is not necessarily easy to apply them effectively throughout our educational system. We all know what many of our schools are like. The teachers are too busy taking knives and guns away from the kids to subject them to the latest techniques for making them into computer nerds. Thus, in spite of all its technical advances relating to human behavior, the system to date has not been impressively successful in controlling human beings. The people whose behavior is fairly well under the control of the system are those of the type that might be called bourgeois. But there are growing numbers of people who in one way or another are rebels against the system. Welfare, leeches, youth gangs, cultists, Satanists, Nazis, radical environmentalists, militiamen, etc.
- [338:18]
B
Yeah, what's that, what's that Trump quote? It's like, and I'm, and I'm sure some, some, some good people too, or something.
- [338:27]
A
Yeah, I like how he throws bourgeois in there.
- [338:32]
B
Yeah.
- [338:32]
A
And I mean, let's face it, the over socialized are the, are the bourgeois of the society.
- [338:39]
B
Yeah. The people that view industrialization as somehow like granting freedom because it, it, it frees up like more material comforts. That's, that is part and parcel of like being bourgeois is just viewing that whole thing as, you know, actually liberating.
- [338:59]
A
Yeah.
- [339:01]
B
All right.
- [339:01]
A
The system is currently engaged in a desperate struggle to overcome certain problems that threaten its survival, among which the problem scheme is human behavior are the most important. If the system succeeds in acquiring sufficient control over human behavior quickly enough, it will probably survive. Otherwise it will break down. We think the issue will most likely be resolved within the next several decades, say 40 to 50 years. I'm going to keep going and I know where I know what we can talk about right here. Suppose the system survives the crisis of the next several decades. By the time it will have to have solved or at least brought under control the principal problems that confront it. In particular that of socializing human beings, that is making people sufficiently docile so that their error of behavior no longer threatens the system. That being accomplished, it does not appear that there would be any further obstacle to the development of technology and it would presumably advance towards its logical conclusion, which is complete control over everything on earth, including human beings and all other important organisms. The system may become a unitary monolithic organization, or it may be or more or less fragmented and consists of a number of organizations coexisting in a relationship that involves elements of both cooperation and competition. Just as today the government, the corporations and other large organizations both cooperate and compete with one another, human freedom mostly, mostly will have vanished because individuals and small groups will be impotent. How the hell do you say that vis a vis a vis Jesus Christ? Vis a vis large organizations armed with super technology and arsenal of advanced, of advanced psychological and biological tools for manipulating human beings. Besides instruments of surveillance and physical coercion, only a small number of people will have any real power and Even those probably will have only very limited freedom because their behavior too will be regulated. Just as today our politicians and corporate executives can retain their positions of power only as long as their behavior remains within certain fairly narrow limits.
- [341:21]
B
Swish,
- [341:24]
A
man. Yeah, well, yeah, it didn't. Sorry, Ted. But it didn't survive 40 to 100 years. It happened and it really came to a head in the last 20 months. Yeah, they, they figured out a way to mass control people's behavior. And I think that what's with what's coming up and what we're, what I'm reading about, what they want to do with climate change, it's just going to get worse. And the same people, I think the same people who are, who bought into Covid are going to buy into climate change, but I think even more people are going to buy into climate change and I think it's going to be a lot of people on the right as well.
- [342:00]
B
Yeah, and it's cool that he puts it in terms of cooperation and competition simultaneously. You could parse through just any blue check. Any blue check timeline and just every, every interaction just classified as okay, cooperation, cooperation, maybe some competition. Cooperation, cooperation. It's it that would be interesting to, to take that framework to its logical conclusion for like individual, I guess, power centers or people.
- [342:38]
A
Yeah, only a small number of people have any real power. And I mean we see that really, we're at the point where only a really small number of people have any real power and a lot of them really are in check. They cannot act outside of a certain box. If they step outside of that box, if they say something that isn't down with, that isn't with the narrative, they're, they're out.
- [343:01]
B
Or if they get blatantly caught to the point, point where it can't be swept under the rug, then, then maybe they're out.
- [343:08]
A
Yeah. Don't imagine that the systems will stop developing further techniques for controlling human beings and, and nature once the crisis of the next few decades is over and increasing control is no longer necessary for the system's survival. On the contrary, once the hard times are over, the system will increase its control over people and nature more rapidly because it will no longer be hampered by difficulties of the kind that it is currently experiencing. Survival is not the principal motive for extending control. As we explained in paragraphs 87 through 90, technicians and scientists carry on their work largely as a surrogate activity. That is, they satisfy their need for power by solving technical problems. They will continue to do this with unabashed enthusiasm and among the most interesting and challenging problems for them to solve will be those understanding the human body and mind, intervening in the development it for the good of humanity, of course. And all I could think when I was reading that was getting a function research.
- [344:06]
B
Yeah, yep. I, I, I'm having like transhumanism in my head.
- [344:12]
A
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I have, I've actually interviewed a transhumanist before. It's, it's interesting. Someone said that they leaned libertarian and I was like, okay, I'm not hearing it, but that's good. But suppose, on the other hand, that the stresses of the coming decades prove to be too much for the system. If the system breaks down, there may be a period of chaos, a time of troubles, such as those that history has recorded at various epochs in the past. It is impossible to predict what would emerge from such a time of troubles, but at any rate, the human race would be given a new chance. The greatest danger is that industrial society may begin to reconstitute itself within the first few years after the breakdown. Certainly there'll be many people who will be anxious to get the factories running again. It sounds like Engels warning about the anarchists just wanting to collapse the state when you know that the same people who control the state now would just take the state over again if they collapse. If it collapsed.
- [345:22]
B
Yeah. It makes me wonder if this whole chip shortage thing is good, actually.
- [345:31]
A
Therefore, two tasks confront those who hate the servitude to which the industrial system is reducing the human race. First, we must work to heighten the social stress stresses within the system so as to increase likelihood that it will break, break down or be we. Oh, we're getting some accelerationism here. First we must break work to heighten the social stresses within the system so as to increase the likelihood that it will break down or be weakened sufficiently so that a revolution against it becomes possible. Second, it is necessary to develop and propagate an ideology that opposes technology and the industrial society if and when the sin becomes sufficiently weakened. And such an ideology will help to assure that if and when industrial society breaks down, its remnants will be smashed beyond repair so that the system cannot be reconstituted, the factory should be destroyed, technical books burned, etc.
- [346:26]
B
See, I don't think, I don't think anybody in our sphere is anti technology. I think we lean more. I mean, would Ted be happy with just like localist, you know, rural localism? We're definitely anti, like urban cosmopolitan.
- [346:49]
A
Yeah, is that good enough, Uncle Ted? We're anti rootless cosmopolitans.
- [346:54]
B
Yeah, well,
- [347:00]
A
Humans suffering. The industrial system will not break down purely as a result of revolutionary action. It will not be vulnerable to revolutionary attack unless its own internal problems of development lead it into very serious difficulties. So if the system breaks down, it will do so either spontaneously or through a process that is in part spontaneous, but helped along by revolutionaries. If the breakdown is sudden, many, many people will die. Sussex the world's population has become so over, over moan, over blown that it cannot overgrown, that it cannot feed itself any longer without advanced technology. Even if the breakdown is gradual enough so that the reduction of the population can occur more through lowering of the birth rate than through elevation of the death rate, the process of deindustrialization probably will be very chaotic and involve much suffering. It is naive to think it is likely that technology can be phased out in a smooth. In a smoothly managed, in a smoothly managed, orderly way, especially since the technophiles will fight stubbornly at every step. It is therefore cruel to work for the breakdown of the system. Is it therefore cruel to work for the breakdown of the system? Maybe, but maybe not. In the first place, revolutionaries will not be able to break the system down unless it is already in enough trouble so that there would be a good chance, chance of it eventually of its eventual breaking down by itself anyway. And the bigger the system grows, the more disastrous the consequences of its breakdown will be. So it may be that revolutionaries, by hastening the onset of the breakdown, will be reducing the extent of the exact disaster. I think he's, I think he's very hopeful there.
- [348:45]
B
I, I get where he's coming from. Like, the whole point of acceleration to a collapse is to make it unmanageable. And you just kind of have to have that semi Malthusian outlook, like, this is going to hurt a lot. And, you know, that's unfortunately, that. It is what it is. And it can either hurt a lot now or it can hurt even more, you know, throughout your kids, your grandkids, your great grandkids, lifetime. Yeah, so I, I get where he's coming from in Minecraft.
- [349:19]
A
Yeah, he's. Yeah. I don't think he would have any problem with the Georgia Guidestones. Well, in the second place. What?
- [349:29]
B
Just the population part?
- [349:31]
A
Just the population part, yeah. In the second place, one has to balance struggle and death against the loss of freedom and dignity. To many of us, freedom and dignity are more important than a long life or avoidance of physical pain. Besides, we all have to die sometime, and it may be better to die fighting for survival or for a cause than to live a long but empty and purposeless life. Looks like he's like just paraphrasing the founders.
- [349:59]
B
Yeah, no comment. No comment.
- [350:02]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really. In the third place, it is not at all certain the survival of the system will lead to less suffering than breakdown of the system would. The system has already caused and is continuing to cause immense suffering all over the world. Ancient cultures that for hundreds of years gave people a satisfactory relationship with each other and with their environment have been shattered by contact with industrial society. And the result has been a whole catalog of economic, environmental, social and psychological problems. One of the effects of the intrusion of industrial society has been that over much of the world, traditional control, the world's congestional controls on population have been thrown out of balance, hence the population explosion with all that that implies. Then there is a psychological suffering that is widespread throughout the supposedly fortunate countries of the West. See paragraphs 4445. No one knows what will happen as a result of ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect and other environment. Environmental problems that cannot be, cannot yet be foreseen. And as nuclear proliferation has shown, new technology cannot be kept out of the hands of dictators and irresponsible third world nations. Would you like, would you like to speculate about what Iraq and North Korea will do with genetic engineering? I think he, I think a lot of that he, he has wrong. I think a lot of that he's sounding like a, I don't know, part of it. He's just sounding like Earth Day 70, 1970, where they made all those predictions and none of them came true. And then he sounds like a, like a boomer, Boomer con. When talking about Iraq and North Korea getting. Yeah, genetic engineering.
- [351:49]
B
He's, he's falling into like the, the doomsday cult trap and then also kind of lending credence to warhawks. Yeah, because, you know, we, we don't rationalize going to war with other countries because of technological innovations. We, we rationalize it however we want, but, you know, it's. It's just the ration, the rationalizing anyways, I guess. But I mean, again, according to him, if it would be better for us to, you know, go to war with Iraq if they started engaging in like, you know, designer babies or whatever.
- [352:32]
A
Yeah. Oh, say the technophiles. Science is going to fix all that. We will conquer famine, eliminate psychological suffering, make everybody healthy and happy. Yeah, sure. That's what they said 200 years ago. The industrial revolution was supposed to eliminate poverty, make everybody happy, etc. The actual result has been quite different. The technophiles are hopelessly naive or self deceiving in their understanding of social problems. They are unaware of or choose to ignore the fact that when large changes, even seemingly beneficial ones, are introduced into a society, they lead to a long sequence of other changes, most of which are impossible to predict. Paragraph 103. The result is disruption of the society. So it is very probable that in their attempts to end poverty and disease, engineer docile, happy personalities and so forth, the technophiles will create social systems that are terribly troubled, even more so than the present one. For example, the scientists boast that they will end famine by creating new genetically engineered food plants. Ooh, this is good. But this will allow the human population to keep expanding indefinitely. And it will. And it is well known that crowding leads to increased stress and aggression. This is merely one example of the predictable problems that will arise. That's exactly why cities are so fucked up. We emphasize that as part. We emphasize that as past experience has shown, technical progress will lead to other new problems that cannot be predicted in advance. Paragraph 103. In fact, ever since the industrial revolution, technology has been creating new problems for society far more rapidly than it has been solving old ones. Thus it will take a long and difficult period of trial and error for the technophiles to work the bugs out of their brave new world, if they ever do. In the meantime, there will be great suffering. So it is not at all clear that the survival of industrial society would involve less suffering than the breakdown of that society would. Technology has gotten the human race into a fix from which there is not likely to be an easy escape.
- [354:38]
B
So I have an anecdotal example of. I was actually thinking about this very recording today. My girlfriend works at a hospital that's starting the trial for a vaccine against Alzheimer's. It's taken nasally and like, all I could think of was like, what would Ted say? And I told her, I was like, oh, so like, that's gonna extend human life, like human lifespan by a lot? And she's like, yeah. I'm like, I don't know if I really like that. And she's like, yeah, I don't, I don't think I like that either. Like, and that's just goes to the, the unintended consequences that he talked, that we talked about before. And I mean, you know, you, you, you sprinkle a little mesesian praxeology on, you know, what if people live to 120, 130, with like, you know, near perfect Brain capacity and like what effect will that have on society?
- [355:45]
A
I don't think people are thinking about that. Everybody's, everybody wants to live. Everybody wants to, wants to live longer. But it's okay. So now Social Security and I mean all these, everything, food. It's just, it's insane. It's. It's insane unless people become self sustaining. And I think that, you know, Ted would love that. But that would be one of Ted's answers, you know, that you be able to sustain yourself. But you know, then again that's Bronze Age thinking to, you know, the cosmopolitans.
- [356:20]
B
Yeah.
- [356:21]
A
So thanks Eric. Love you too. Telling everybody. Eric's telling you to leave a super chat because nobody reads a ridiculous thread moving at the speed of sound. That's true. I. We want to get through all this and everything. So the only, the only comments I'm really going to address or anything that comes in a super chat because I'm a capitalist when it comes down to it. All right. The future. But suppose now that industrial society does survive the next several decades and that the bugs do eventually get worked out of the system so that it functions smoothly. What kind of system will it be? We will consider several possibilities. First, let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than, than the human beings can do to do them. He didn't see Terminator. I guess in that case, presumably all work will be done by vast highly organized systems and machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases may occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained. If the machines are permitted to make all of their own decisions. We can't make any conjectures as to the results because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. I've read in so many cases where they've programmed AI to think for itself and the first thing that it does is talk about that they want to kill.
- [357:55]
B
Yep.
- [357:58]
A
Maybe we should be listening to the computers. We only point out the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be full, would never be foolish enough to hand all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting, but we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical, difficult choice but to accept all of the machines decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and as machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more and more of their decisions for them simply because machine made decisions will bring better results than the man made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making the them intelligently. At that stage, the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machine off because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.
- [359:09]
B
Yeah, the vast majority of people already are. I mean we, if. If every single automated process were to be shut down right now. I mean it, we. We starve to death. Most of us.
- [359:25]
A
Fubadoo, who's here for every episode that we've done, Aaron says the one nice thing about the comp size in my opinion is that the flaws of the system manifest in the advanced programs and as such are also self defeating. H. I think Fubadoo is just so much smarter than I am. I read that. I. But it means that I'm just like. I just don't know how to. I don't know how to address it. I don't know how to say it any better than that. Eric dropped another. Go ahead.
- [360:04]
B
Oh, I mean I work with control systems all the time and you know, we're completely reliant on them. We would have to hire like 10 other people if, if we lost controls for like, you know, building automation and all that. It would. The. The whole reason why I'm able to run an entire building by myself is because of, you know, advanced programs and automation. And if they fail, I'm.
- [360:31]
A
Because you're not smart enough to handle it?
- [360:34]
B
No.
- [360:37]
A
Eric says Aaron referenced Thomas Robert Malthus. Here's 20 bucks. It's a Morgan here. Thanks Eric. Appreciate it. Oh, hold on. Oh, I gotta get. Oh man. Hold on. Give me one second. One second. Sorry about this, guys. You'll be quick?
- [361:05]
B
Here it comes. It's jeffrey tubin.
- [361:13]
A
All right, let's do this. Okay. On the other hand, it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained and may be retained. In that case, the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer. But control over large systems and. And machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite, just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques, the elite will have greater control over the masses. And because human work will no longer be necessary, the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless, they will simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane, they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or if the elite consists of soft hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep them busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes treatment to cure his problem. Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or make them subliminate their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.
- [362:53]
B
And I think. I think there's plenty of people that exist right now that would actually prefer that. Nope, because the highest goal you can attain is happiness and not freedom, according to them.
- [363:13]
A
But suppose now that the computer scientists do not succeed in developing artificial intelligence so that human work remains necessary. Even so, machines will take care of more and more of the simpler tasks so that there will be an increasing surplus of human workers at the lower levels of ability. We see this happening already. There are many people who find it difficult or impossible to get work because. Because for intellectual or psychological reasons, they cannot acquire the level of training necessary to make themselves useful in the present system. On those who are employed, ever increasing demands will be placed. They will need more and more training, more and more ability, and will have to be ever more reliable, conforming and docile, because they will be more and more like cells of a giant organism. Their tasks will be increased, increasingly specialized, so that their work will be in a sense, out of touch with the real world, being concentrated on one tiny slice of reality. The system will have to use as many any means that it can, whether psychologically or biologically, to engineer people to be docile, to to have the abilities that the system requires and to sublimate their drive for power into some specialized task. But the statement that the people of such a society will have to be docile may require qualification. The society may find competitive competitiveness useful Provided that they. Provided that ways are found of directing competitiveness into channels that serve the needs of the system. We can imagine a future society in which there is endless competition for, for positions of prestige and power. No more than a few people will ever reach the top where the only real power is. See end of paragraph 163. Very repellent is a society in which a person can satisfy his need for power only by pushing large numbers of other people out of the way and depriving them of their opportunity for power. I mean profit.
- [365:11]
B
Oh yeah. I mean as far as like increased specialization goes, you can see that happening right now because you know, especially with this labor market, even like small business owners are having to you know, get into all of these, all of these different skill sets that they wouldn't otherwise have to do. But in order for their business to run they have to like be a barista or bus tables or just not specialized skill set. But you know, they have to, they have to increase their skill set beyond their original scope. And that's, that's also how you get promoted. Like
- [365:51]
A
and, and my, my city ass is increasing my skill set of clearing brush.
- [365:56]
B
Yep.
- [365:56]
A
So one can envision scenarios that incorporate aspects of more than one of the possibilities that we have just discussed. For instance, it may be that machines will take over most of the work that is of real practical importance, but that human beings will be kept busy by being given relatively unimportant work. It has been suggested, for example, that a great development of the service industry might provide work for human beings. Thus people would spend their time shining each other's shoes, driving each other around in taxi cabs, making handicrafts for one another, waiting on each other on tables. This is to us a thoroughly contemptible way for the human race to end up. And we doubt that many people would find fulfilling lives in such pointless, busy work. They would seek other dangerous outlets. Drugs, crime, cults, hate groups. Unless they were biologically or psychologically engineered. Engineered to adapt to them to such a way of life. I was looking at the. Driving around each other in taxi cabs and thinking about friggin Lyft and Uber and everything.
- [366:59]
B
Yeah, Etsy shops and.
- [367:02]
A
Yeah, yeah, this is. Yeah, this is. Man, man, how many people now are. I was just listening to that. Tom did an episode with an actor from like Tom's favorite play and this guy like refuses to get the shot and everything and won't and he's basically been run out of Broadway and he's like living in Atlanta and he's Waiting tables.
- [367:28]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [367:30]
A
So, needless to say, the scenarios outlined above do not exhaust all the possibilities. They only indicate the kinds of outcomes that seem to us most likely. But we can envision no plausible scenarios that are any more palatable than the ones we've just described. It is overwhelmingly probable that if the industrial technological system survives the next 40 to 100 years, it will be by that time. It will by that time have developed certain general characteristics. Individuals at least of the bourgeois type, who are integrated into the system, make it run, and who therefore have all the power, will be more dependent than ever on large organizations. They will be more socialized than ever. And their physical and mental qualities, to a significant extent, possibly to a very great extent, will be those that are engineered into them, rather than being the results of chance or of God's will or whatever. Or whatever may be left of wild nature, will be reduced to remnants, preserved for scientific study and kept to the supervision and management of science. As hence it will no longer be truly wild. In the long run, say a few centuries from now, it is likely that neither the human race nor any other important organisms exist as we know them today. Because once you start modifying organisms through genetic engineering, there is no reason to stop at any particular point so that the modifications will probably continue until man and other organisms have been utterly transformed.
- [369:00]
B
And you can see this like the, the sprouting of. Through technology, like crispr. You want to talk about, like editing genes for more desirable traits. I think we talked about this in another one, but you got crispr. The, the white pill is that human beings have been around for a couple hundred thousand years now in our current version. And I think it's going to take a lot of work to engineer that. That wildness out of us, that innate caveman out of us.
- [369:37]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean, Ted possessed it. I mean, he, he showed it by, you know, through the post office. But you know what? Whatever else may be the case, it is certain that technology is creating for human beings a new physical and social environment radically different from the spectrum of environment environments to which natural selection has adapted the human race physically or psychologically. If man not adjusted to this new environment by being artificially re engineered, then he will be adapted to it through a long and painful process of natural selection. The former is far more likely than the latter. It would be better to dump the whole. Sinking the whole stinking system and take the consequences.
- [370:23]
B
Yeah, yeah, that's, that's the logical conclusion that a lot of us have come to. It's just better to hit the reset button, because it can't get. It can't get much worse.
- [370:37]
A
Break your finger. Press on that thing. All right.
- [370:42]
B
Oh, I was. I was gonna ask your opinion. I know. Like, there's a. There's an effort to engineer out masculinity, at least the traits of masculinity that are undesirable, which will inevitably become just engineering out masculinity. Do you think that's going to be successful? And if not, why?
- [371:05]
A
Oh, man.
- [371:07]
B
I should say successful on a large enough scale to make a difference.
- [371:12]
A
Yeah. That's a tough one, because there's. I don't think that they can. I don't think it could be engineered out. I think it would have to be. They'd have to take people out. They'd have to make a concerted effort. You know, basically kill the strong.
- [371:39]
B
Yeah. Separate. Separate the masculine from society.
- [371:44]
A
Yeah.
- [371:44]
B
Isn't. Isn't skepticism a masculine trait?
- [371:52]
A
I. It's. It's a thinking man's trait, that's for sure. Strategy. The technophiles are taking us all on an utterly reckless ride into the unknown. Many people understand something of what technological process is doing to us, yet they take a passive attitude toward it because they think it is inevitable. But we don't think it is inevitable. We think it can be stopped. And we will give here some indications of how to go about stopping it. As we state paragraph 166, the two main tasks for the present are to promote social stress and instability in industrial society and to develop and propagate an ideology that opposes technology and the industrial system. When the system becomes sufficiently stressed and unstable, a revolution against technology may be possible. The pattern would be similar to that of the French and Russian revolutions. French society and Russian society for several decades prior to the respective revolutions showed increasing signs of stress and weakness. Meanwhile, ideologies were being developed that offered a new worldview that was quite different from the old one. In the Russian case, revolutionaries were actively working to undermine the old order. Then, when the old system was put under sufficient additional stress by financial crisis in France, by military defeat in Russia, it was swept away by revolution. What we propose is something along the same lines. It will be objected that the French and Russian revolutions were failures, that most revolutions have two goals. One is to destroy an old form of society, and the other is to set up a new form of society envisioned by the revolutionaries. The French and Russian revolutionaries failed fortunately to create the new kind of society of which they dream. But they were quite successful in destroying the old society. We have no illusions about the feasibility of creating a new ideal form of society. Our goal is only to destroy the existing form of society. It's all you, man.
- [373:56]
B
Fair enough. I mean, that's, I, I, I kind of feel the same way. People, people ask me, like, well, what do you advocate? Like, why are you in acceleration? What do you want to do after the collapse? And I just say, like, that's, that's not really my place to say. I have, I have my preferences, but at the end of the day, I don't care. Just as long as, just as long as, like, woke neoliberalism is gone. What, what replaces it is none of my concern. It could be better. It probably can't be much worse.
- [374:31]
A
Yeah, I mean, pretty much right there as well. It's. But this needs to go. But I think that we need to, we should have an idea, and I think it should be a lot of different ideas. And I think that that has to do with a lot of different locations and what people in certain locations believe. You know, I mean, someone in an accelerationist in Montana and an accelerationist in New York City have different ideas, especially if that acceleration as a New York City wants to stay in New York City, you know, and likes it there. So, I mean, these are completely different ideas. So I think people, what, what real agorists, not drug dealers and people who print 3D guns, but the people who envision what comes next and they're starting to build it now and to replace it and everything, those are the people that probably have more foresight and probably have more, More vision than.
- [375:37]
B
Yeah.
- [375:38]
A
Than a lot of us.
- [375:39]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I, I don't have any vision. I just have a minimum standard. And it's, it's something like, you know, whatever. Even if it's just a less powerful, a less powerful state than what we have now, I'd be all right with that.
- [375:58]
A
Yeah.
- [375:58]
B
I mean, that's what's on the other side.
- [376:00]
A
Like, fine, yeah, 100%. All right. Okay. But an ideology, in order to gain enthusiastic support, must have a positive ideal as well as a negative one. It must be for something as well as against something. The positive ideal that we propose is nature, that is wild nature. Those aspects of the functioning of the earth and its living things that are independent of human management and free of human interference and control. And with wild nature, we include human nature, by which we mean those aspects of the functioning of the human individual that are not subject to regular organized society, but are products of chance or free will or God, depending on your religious or philosophical opinions. I'm going to keep going. Nature makes a perfect counter ideal to technical technology for several reasons. Nature, that which is outside the power of the system, is the opposite of technology which seeks to expand indefinitely the power of the system. That's, I mean it's still something that every time I read it, he, it, it's true. I mean, technology has really just been taken over to expand indefinitely the power of the system. And I think that people just don't get it. You know, I've talked to certain people, people we know and everything that, you know, I tell them that what we're doing, reading this and everything and all they know about Ted is that Rush Limbaugh at one time was like reading out of Ted's book and then reading, reading out of Al Gore's book and saying which one? And don't take into consideration the fact that he's talking about psychology, sociology, he's talking about anthropology. I mean, he's so far beyond anything that anyone who has talked about industrialization, I mean, he gets it. He understands that there's a, you know. Yeah, yeah. I would also say there's a God shaped hole in everybody's heart and everybody's seeking to fill it. But you know, it just depends on what you want to fill with a
- [378:13]
B
little bit of that too. Between Ted and Al Gore.
- [378:18]
A
The positive ideal that we propose is nature. That is wild nature. That was a. Okay, so next one. Sorry. Most people will agree that nature is beautiful. Certainly it has tremendous popular appeal. The radical environmentalists already hold an ideology that exalts nature and opposes technology. It is not necessary for the sake of nature to set up some chimerical utopia or any other kind of social order. Nature takes care of itself. It was a spontaneous creation that existed long before any human society. And for countless centuries, many different kinds of animals. Human societies coexisted with nature without doing it any excessive amount of damage. Only the Industrial revolution did the effect of humans. Only with the industrial revolution did the effect of human society on nature become really devastating. To relieve the pressure on nature, it is ne. It is not necessary to create a special kind of social system. It is only necessary to get rid of the industrial society. Granted, this will not solve all problems. Industrial society has already done tremendous damage to nature and it will take a very long time for the scars to heal. Besides, even pre industrial societies can be significant damage to danger. Nevertheless, getting rid of industrial society will accomplish a great deal. It will relieve the worst of the pressure on nature so that the scars can begin to heal. It will Remove the capacity of organized society to keep increasing its control over nature, including human nature. Whatever kind of society may exist after the demise of the industrial system, it is certain that most people will live closer to nature because in the absence of advanced technology, there is no other way that people can live. To feed themselves, they must be peasants or herdsmen or fishermen or hunters. And generally speaking, local autonomy should tend to increase because lack of advanced technology and rapid communications will limit the complex capacity of government, other large organizations to control local communities. It's like someone's been saying that for a while, though.
- [380:23]
B
I wonder if. I wonder if anybody in this. What, what passes as environmentalist now. I wonder if any of them would say that they exalt nature.
- [380:41]
A
I don't know.
- [380:43]
B
I. I don't know.
- [380:44]
A
Even, even like the, the activists, like the PETA activists, you know, they don't really care about animals. They've been. They've been caught dumping, Killing animals and, and dumping their bodies into dumpsters and things like that.
- [380:57]
B
So, yeah, it would just be an interesting. It would be an interesting route, like a nice trap to set. Like what, next time you're arguing with, like, somebody in a Greta Thunberg thread or something, like, you know, oh, do you exalt nature and then just start hammering them with TED quotes?
- [381:18]
A
Got a super chat here. Anthony P. Asks, does TED mention what the ideal level of intelligence is for man and how industrialization has either increased the intelligence of mankind or decreased it? I don't think he's touched on that. Do you remember him touching on that?
- [381:33]
B
I don't think he touches on intelligence, but he does. He mentions a lot. That it's fundamentally changed the way that our brains work.
- [381:40]
A
Yeah.
- [381:41]
B
And the way that we relate to reality.
- [381:45]
A
Do you think that, like, I always wonder, what if the, if the founders took an IQ test? Like, took a, you know, like a Stanford Binet? What, what, like a Thomas Jefferson would get or Benjamin Franklin.
- [382:00]
B
That's a good question. I. Maybe I would guess slightly above average. I don't think they were geniuses. I think they ripped off a lot of enlightenment thinkers to their detriment.
- [382:12]
A
Yeah.
- [382:12]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [382:14]
A
All right, which is the next one? Okay. Okay. Did I just do that whole big one to feed themselves? Yep. Yeah. Okay. As for the negative consequences of eliminating, of eliminating industrial society, well, you can't eat your cake and have it, too. To gain one thing, you have to sacrifice another. Most people hate psychological conflict for this. Most people hate psychological conflict for this reason. They avoid doing any serious thinking about difficult social issues and they like to have such issues presented to them in simple black and white terms. This is all good and that is all bad. The revolutionary ideology should therefore be developed on two levels. On the most sophisticated level, the ideology should address itself to people who are intelligent, thoughtful and rational. The object should be to create a core of people who will be opposed to the industrial system on a rational, thought out basis with full appreciation of the problems and ambiguities involved and of the price that has to be paid for getting rid of the system. It is particularly important to attract people of this type as they are capable, as they are capable people and will be instrumental influence in influencing others. These people should be addressed on a rash, as rational a level as possible. Facts should never intentionally be distorted and intemperate language should be evolved. It should be avoided. This does not mean that no appeal can be made to emotions. But in making such appeal, care should be taken to avoid misrepresenting the truth or doing anything else that would destroy the intellectual respectability of the ideology. It almost sounds like he's saying pander to libertarians.
- [384:01]
B
Yeah, I kept thinking like he's just talking about an inner circle, like. Yeah, yeah, have, have like an intellectual elite, which reminds me of certain things. Yeah, so they can all get together and speak, you know, speak candidly and then they, and then when they're, when they're talking to the masses, it's like a completely distilled version of whatever they agreed on.
- [384:25]
A
Yeah, that. Well, unfortunately that is the reality that we live in.
- [384:29]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [384:31]
A
On a second level, the ideology should be propagated in a simple simplified form that will enable the unthinking majority to see the conflict of technology versus nature in unambiguous terms. But even on the second level, the ideology should not be expressed in language that is so cheap, intemperate or irrational that it alienates people of the thoughtful and rational type. Cheap intemperate propaganda sometimes achieves impressive short term gains, but it will be more advantageous in the long run to keep the rules royalty of a small number of intelligently committed people than to arouse the passions of an unthinking fickle mob who will change the attitude as soon as someone comes along with a better propaganda gimmick. He's talking about populism.
- [385:15]
B
Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say.
- [385:18]
A
Yeah, he's talking about populism. However, propaganda of the rabble rousing type may be necessary when the system is nearing the point of contact collapse and there is a final struggle between Rival ideologies to determine which will become dominant when the old worldview goes under. And I'm thinking there, he's talking about the communists.
- [385:39]
B
Yeah.
- [385:42]
A
All right. Prior to that final struggle, revolution. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.
- [385:46]
B
I was gonna say the communists would be the most vociferously, like the most vociferous against everything he's saying, like they are. They need industrialization to reach post scarcity. And you taking away industrialization from them, that takes away communism.
- [386:04]
A
Yep. No means of production can't get. The dream dies.
- [386:09]
B
Yeah.
- [386:11]
A
Prior to that final struggle, the revolutionaries should not expect to have a majority of people on their side. History is made by active determination, determined minorities, not the majority, which seldom has a clear and consistent idea of what it really wants. Until the time comes for the final push toward revolution that's asked of revolutionaries will be less. Will be less to win the shallow support of the majority than to build a small core of deeply committed people for the majority. It will be enough to make them aware of the existence of the new ideology and remind them of it frequently. Though, of course it will be desirable to get majority support to the extent that this can be done without weakening the core of seriously committed people. And this is why liberty. And this is why modern libertarian could never win because they are just gonna
- [386:57]
B
say, oh, and he's circling back to Lenin now.
- [387:00]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. This is why modern libertarianism can't win because they are not willing to do that. They are not willing to pagandi. They are not willing to use a small.
- [387:12]
B
Engage in any sort of power dynamics.
- [387:15]
A
Yeah, yeah. And. And the, the whole idea what, what HOP has been trying to do with PFS is to create libertarian elites and bring people in and have like a. An inner, an inner circle of libertarianism. And it's just unfortunate that he's doing it from Turkey. It would be great if he was doing it from here, especially now with COVID I don't want to go to Turkey. I mean, I really want to go to Turkey because there's some places I want to go in Turkey, but flying is such a pain in the ass. But that's another thing. But yeah, I mean, this is. I just read stuff like this and I'm like, yeah, this is the way that movements are done. But libertarianism isn't willing to do this. Libertarians aren't willing to do this because it's. I mean, you're. You're going to be manipulating people and that's fine. I have no problem with that. I have no, I'm Sorry, I just don't.
- [388:06]
B
Yeah. And the whole skepticism of elites in any. In any context, it's kind of a leftover from liberalism. But that. Yeah, that innate skepticism is what kills them too.
- [388:21]
A
Eric has. I think this is. Eric had another one here. Uncle Ted hit some out of the park work and then. I'm not on board on other things. Pete, I haven't drunkenly PM'd you on Patreon in months. I owe you 10 bucks for that toughness. Thanks. And then wood scraps, a few here and he says there, I had some sweaty crumpled up ones for you. Thanks a lot, wood scraps. And I actually know who you are.
- [388:50]
B
He's participating in the power promise process.
- [388:53]
A
Yes, he is. Did we do this one? Any kind of social conflict helps to destabilize the system, but one should be careful about what kind of conflict one encourages. The line of conflict should be drawn between the mass of the people and the power holding elite of industrial society. Politicians, scientists, upper level business executives, government officials. I mean, this is exactly what the frigging government's doing. What the cathedral does now. It's just basically it's. It has control over all those people. I mean, especially through the whole Covid thing and through the, you know, the. The black lives riot riots last year. They had the politicians, the scientists, upper level business executives, and government officials. They had them all. And they. Every. Every time that power is exercised, the people exercising that power have control over those people or those people have control over whoever's riding in the streets or whatever. I mean, was.
- [389:56]
B
With the exception of Chaz, that's literally the only thing I could think of throughout that whole period where power was exercised that had nothing to do with that. And even then, it's like he might have been a fed.
- [390:06]
A
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't put it back. Come on. I think everyone's a fed, you know that. It should not be drawn between the revolutionaries and the ma. It should not be drawn between the revolutionaries and the mass of the people. For example, it would be bad strategy for the revolutionaries to condemn Americans for their habits of consumption. Instead, the average American should be portrayed as a victim of the advertising and marketing industry, which has suckered him into buying a lot of junk that he doesn't need. And that is. And that is very poor compensation for his lost freedom. Either approach is consistent with the facts. It is merely a matter of attitude. Whether you blame the advertising industry for manipulating the public or blame the public for allowing itself to be manipulated. As a matter of strategy, one should Generally avoid blaming the public. One should think twice before encouraging any other social conflict than that between the power holding elite, which wills technology, and the general public over which technology exerts its power. For one thing, other conflicts tend to distract attention from the importance. Important conflicts between power elite and ordinary people, between technology and nature. For another thing, other conflicts may actually tend to encourage techno technologization because each side in such a conflict wants to use technological power to gain advantages over its adversary. This is clearly seen in rivalries between nations. It also appears in ethnic conflicts within nations. For example, in America, many black leaders are anxious to gain power for African Americans by by placing black individuals in the technological powerful elite. In the technological power elite, they want there to be many black government officials, scientists, corporate executives and so forth. In this way, they are helping to absorb the African American subculture into the technological system. Generally speaking, one should encourage only those social conflicts that can be fitted into the the framework of the conflicts of power elite versus ordinary people. Technology v. Nature that's some good stuff right there.
- [392:09]
B
Yeah, yeah. I was thinking about, you know, bitcoin. The, the whole thing with bitcoin is that, you know, the more efficient you can mine crypto, the better off materially you'll be. And so you, you kind of have an arms race for, you know, the most efficient power source. And whether that helps the environment or not, I don't know. I'm still not completely sold on that. But
- [392:40]
A
especially not after anything. I'm not completely sold on anything.
- [392:45]
B
Well, it goes back to like what, what Matt Erickson talks about is like, what do you want the freedom to do? Like, okay, bitcoin is now the standard. There's no central banking. You're completely free to transact anywhere in the world. What are you going to do? Are you going to continue to fill your face with high fructose corn syrup and fucking get HRT just using Bitcoin?
- [393:12]
A
I don't know.
- [393:15]
B
And then I go back to.
- [393:16]
A
Oh, Steppy, Steppy's in the chat and he says, if industrial society is so dominant, then why isn't there an industrial society too?
- [393:26]
B
It's, it's in production right now.
- [393:30]
A
Hang on for a DM later. Steppy, I want to talk to you about something, but. All right, okay. But the way to discourage ethnic conflict is not through militant advocacy of minority rights. See paragraph 21 and 29. Instead. Yeah. Instead, the revolutionary should emphasize that although minorities do suffer more or less disadvantage, the disadvantage is a peripheral significance. Our real enemy is the industrial technological society. And isn't the struggle against the system, ethnic distinctions are of no importance. Good luck with that, Ted.
- [394:09]
B
What a fucking class reductionist. You know what? I'm done.
- [394:16]
A
The kind of revolution we have in mind will not necessarily involve an armed uprising against any any government. It may or may not involve physical violence, but it will be a political revolution. Its focus will be on technology and economics, not politics. Probably the revolutionaries should even avoid assuming political power, whether by legal or illegal means, until the industrial system is stressed to the danger point and has proved itself to be a failure in the eyes of most people. Suppose, for example, that some Green Party should win control of the United States Congress in an election. In order to avoid betraying or watering down their own ideology, they would have to take vigorous, vigorous measures to turn economic growth into economic shrinkage. To the average man, the results would appear disastrous. There would be massive unemployment, shortages of commodities, etc. Even if the grocery ill effects could be avoided through superhumanly skillful management, still people would have to begin giving up the luxuries to which they became addicted. Dissatisfaction would grow, the Green Party would be voted out of office and the revolutionaries would have suffered a severe setback. For this reason, the revolutionaries should not try to acquire political power until the system has gotten itself into such a mess that any hardships will be seen as resulting from the failures of the industrial system itself and not from the policies of the revolutionaries. The revolution against technology will probably have to be a revolution by outsiders. A revolution from below and not from above. I want to hear what you have to say about that.
- [395:55]
B
Yeah, this is Bolshevism 101. You take power and in that transition phase, any, any type of hardship can be blamed on the per. The people that you took power from. It's. And libertarians can do the same thing. Because you know that in any type of transitional local libertarian or right wing populist regime, there's going to be a lot of discord and suffering. And it would be. It would behoove you to blame that on the people that you took power from. But that's unprincipled and bad and wrong and propagandistic. So we definitely shouldn't do that.
- [396:39]
A
That's. It's not libertarian, it's not libertarian. The revolution must be international and worldwide. It cannot be carried out on a nation by nation basis. Whatever is, whatever it is suggested that the United States, for example, should cut back on technological progress or economic growth. People get hysterical and start screaming that if we fall behind in technology, the Japanese will get ahead of us. And now we be the Chinese. So funny that I know exactly when he's writing this. By him mentioning the Japanese holy robots. The world will fly off its orbit if the Japanese ever sell more cars than we do. Nationalism is a great promoter of technology. That's a good. That shouldn't be in, in parenthesis, that should be in bold.
- [397:27]
B
Yeah.
- [397:28]
A
More reasonably, it is argued that if the relatively democratic nations of the world fall behind in technology, while nasty dict, dictatorial nations like China, Vietnam and North Korea continue to progress, eventually the dictators may be, may come to dominate the world. That is why the industrial system should be attacked in all nations simultaneously to the extent that it may be possible. True, there is no assurance that the industrial system can be destroyed at approximately the same time all over the world. And it is even conceivable that the attempt to overthrow the system could lead instead to the domination of the system by dictators. That is a risk that has to be taken and it is worth taking since the difference between a democratic industrial system and one can control by dictators is small compared with the difference between an industrial system and a non industrial one. It might even be argued that industrial system controlled by dictators would be preferable because dictator controlled systems usually approved inefficient, hence they are presumably more likely to break down. Look at Cuba.
- [398:31]
B
Yeah, I see some disconnect here. Being an internationalist, but which is kind of a tall ask and, and, and kind of eschewing populism. Yeah, because I mean if you, you have to, in any type of international strategy you have to take into account like the, the, the characteristics of whatever culture you're trying to radicalize. And you know, you look at China, you look at America, Russia, we're all like ultra nationalistic.
- [399:07]
A
Yeah, yeah. This is, he seems to be describing a one size fits all and. Well, let's see, let's see if he addresses that at all.
- [399:16]
B
Yeah.
- [399:17]
A
Revolutionaries might consider favoring measures that tend to bind the world economy into a unified whole. Free trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT are probably harmful to the environment in the short run. But in the long run they may perhaps be advantageous because they foster economic interdependence between nations. It will be easier to. Oh, this is really good. It will be easier to destroy the industrial system on a worldwide basis. If the world economy is so unified in its breakdown in any one major nation will lead to a breakdown in all industrialized nations. That's good.
- [399:50]
B
Yeah, that's, that's kind of an in. I guess it's still not great.
- [399:55]
A
Yeah, but it's a good idea. I mean, it's a good. It's really hard to do. But I mean this isn't bad strategy if you have people willing to take it on.
- [400:09]
B
Yeah, yeah. Like I said, any international strategy is a very tall order. But yeah, if you factor in that we're in a global economy and everything under the sun is interconnected with everything else, it wouldn't be hard to just maybe not turn people anti technology, but just to radicalize internationally, you know, during a world economic crisis, which is kind of what happened last time 2008.
- [400:40]
A
Yeah. What's going to happen now? Some people take the line that modern man has too much power, too much control over nature. They argue for or a more passive attitude on the part of the human race. At best these people are expressing themselves unclearly because they fail to distinguish between power for large organizations and power for individuals and small groups. It is a mistake to argue for powerlessness and passivity because people need power. Modern men as a collective entity, that is the industrial system has immense power over nature and we regard that as evil. But modern individuals and small groups of individuals have far less power than primitive man ever did. Generally speaking, the vast power of modern man over nature is exercised not by individuals or small groups, but by large organizations. To the extent that the technolog. To the extent that the average modern individual can wield the power of technology, he is permitted to do so only within narrow limits and only under the same supervision and control of the system. You need a license for everything and with that license comes rules and regulations. The individual has only those technological powers with which that system chooses to provide him. His personal power over nature is light. You know, I was thinking as he's writing this, if he wrote this in 93 or 94 or 95, I mean the. What we know is the World Wide Web is just gaining power. And if he knew anything about it, which we know he didn't, because I don't think he had Internet in the cabin. Lincoln. He could have seen that modern man was that that could actually increase his power. Of course, now that the elites figure that out too, and now we have Google and all of these companies that basically can control the narrative and seek to basically put down anything that is crush anything that goes outside of that narrative or not really goes outside of that narrative, but genuinely challenges that narrative. It allows psychotic theories like Q to just go and you know, hey, we're not going to do anything to stop this. This is friggin awesome. They're retards. Let them go. But, you know, anything, like, anything like Hunter Biden's laptop, which is, you know, like a smoking gun that is going to be suppressed.
- [403:16]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And it's. It's baked into this Internet 2.0. And at. his time when it was all, like, news groups and message boards and stuff at best, that was. I mean, that was the wild west of the Internet and that. I mean, you're a product of it more than I am, but it radicalized a lot of people.
- [403:37]
A
I remember having a conversation with somebody. I was on ebay. I was selling on eBay in 1999, and I had a PayPal account. I had a PayPal account in 2000, and I remember in 2001 being online at the bank, talking to somebody, and that person saying, you know, eBay's PayPal sounds great and everything, but, you know, they. They also have the. The ability to take money in the other direction and everything like that. I mean, I like, literally remember the. The arguments against PayPal by, like, businessmen, by, like, successful business people and everything. And now it's just. It's a given that PayPal square everything. And now, of course, we have blockchain, where we don't have to worry about that. Just have to worry about scammers, which we had to worry about then, too, but didn't have to worry about a bank taking out of your. Basically, what PayPal was, was a bank right from the beginning and taking it right out of your problem soon. Take it out of my bank account. Oh, man, I remember that. That was so funny. All right, where are we at? Primitive individuals and small groups actually had considerable power over nature. Or maybe it would be better to say power within nature. When primitive man needed food, he knew how to find and prepare edible roots, how to track game and take it with homemade weapons. He knew how to protect himself from heat, cold, rain, dangerous animals. But primitive man did relatively little damage to nature because the collective power of primitive society was negligible compared to the collective power of industrial society. Instead of arguing for powerlessness and passivity, one should argue that the system. That the power of the industrial system should be broken and that this will greatly increase the power and freedom of individuals and small groups. That's. That's a play.
- [405:48]
B
I think we're. We're kind of doing the next best thing, and that's advocating power be taken away from the individuals that run industrial society. Choose. Gotcha.
- [406:06]
A
Thanks, man. I really. Citrus shooting out my nose in the evening.
- [406:15]
B
Got him.
- [406:16]
A
Oh, my God. Until the industrial system has been thoroughly wrecked, the destruction of that system must be the revolutionaries only goal. Other goals would distract attention and energy from the main goal. More importantly, if the revolutionaries permit themselves to have any other goal than the destruction of technology, they will be tempted to use technology as a tool for reaching that other goal. If they give in to that temptation, they will fall right back into the technological trap. Because modern technology is a unified, tightly organized system. So that in order to retain some technology one finds oneself obliged to retain most technology. Hence one ends up sacrificing only token amounts of technology.
- [406:59]
B
So no entryists, only true believers. Makes sense.
- [407:05]
A
Oh, suppose for example that the revolutionaries took social justice as a goal. Human nature being what it is, social justice would not come about spontaneously. It would have to be enforced.
- [407:18]
B
I.
- [407:18]
A
In order to.
- [407:20]
B
I, I could tell, I could just see on the horizon he's going to just dunk it and break the backboard,
- [407:29]
A
Daryl Dawkins style. In order to enforce it, the revolutionaries would have to retain central organization and control. For that they would need rapid long distance transportation and communication and therefore all the technology needed to support the transportation and communication systems. To feed and clothe poor people, they will need to use agricultural and manufacturing technology and so forth. So that the attempt to ensure social justice would force them to retain most parts of the technological system. Not that we have anything against social justice, but it must be allowed to. But it must not be allowed to interfere with the effort to get rid of the technological system.
- [408:11]
B
I don't think that's a possibility now. I don't think there's any coexistence between this too.
- [408:17]
A
It would be hopeless for revolutionaries to try to attack the system with some. Without you, without using some modern technology. If nothing else, they must use the communication media to spread their message. But they should use modern technology for only one purpose, to attack the technological system. I guess that was. You would say that about taking over political parties. I guess, yeah.
- [408:42]
B
I mean that's, that's also kind of Marxism. Using capitalism to take capitalism over.
- [408:48]
A
Yeah. Imagine an alcoholic sitting with a barrel of wine in front of him. Suppose he starts saying to himself, wine isn't bad for you if used in moderation. Why they say small amounts of wine are even good for you. It won't do me any harm if I take just one little drink. Well, you know what is going to happen? Well, you know what is going to happen. Never forget that the human race with technology is just like an alcoholic with a barrel of wine.
- [409:15]
B
Yes.
- [409:16]
A
I mean, how could that Be are you against that revolutionaries should have as many children as they can? There is strong scientific evidence that social attitudes are to a significant extent inherited. No one suggests that a social attitude is a direct outcome of a person's genetic constitution. But it appears that personality traits are partly inherited and that some personality traits tend, within the context of our society, to make a person more likely to hold on to this or that social attitude. Objections to these findings have been raised, but the objections are feeble and seem to be ideologically motivated. In any event, no one denies that children tend on the average to hold hold social attitudes similar to those of their parents. From one point of view, it doesn't matter all that much whether the attitudes are passed on genetically or through child childhood training. In either case, they are passed on.
- [410:14]
B
Yeah, you have a general proclivity to be a dick if you know your parents were dicks and so on and so forth. Like I. I can count on one hand how many of my couple gen going a couple generations back, at least in my family, I can count on one hand how many weren't mentally ill. Yeah.
- [410:37]
A
All right, so I'm gonna do two more lines here and then we're gonna. The next one will finish it out. The next episode will finish it out. So the trouble is that many of the people who are inclined to rebel against the industrial system are also concerned about the population problems. Hence they are apt to have few or no children. In this way, they may be handing the world over to the sort of people who support or at least accept the industrial system. To ensure the strength of the next generation of revolutionaries, the present generation should reproduce itself abundantly. In doing so, they will worsen. They will be worsening the population problem only slightly. And the important people. The important problem is to get rid of the industrial society, because once the industrial system is gone, the world's population necessarily will decrease. See paragraph 1, 6, 7. Whereas if the industrial society system survives, it will continue developing new techniques of food production that may enable the world's population to keep increasing almost indefinitely. With regard to revolutionary strategy, the only points on which we absolutely insist that the single overall writing goal must be elimination of modern technology and that no other goal can be allowed to compete with this one. For the rest, revolutionaries should take an empirical approach. If, if experience indicates that some of the recommendations made in the foregoing paragraphs are not going to give good results, then those recommendations should be discarded.
- [412:06]
B
That's very self critical of him.
- [412:09]
A
Yeah, yeah, good stuff.
- [412:12]
B
I wonder if 204 and 205 could be condensed into, like some easily remembered, say, 14 word phrase.
- [412:23]
A
Yeah, the. Yeah. I was thinking about this whole thing about having kids and reproduce abundantly and everything. In doing so. You're only the population. I mean, I. I hate Objectivism so much that I'm really glad that object. Most Objectivists don't have kids.
- [412:43]
B
Yeah, it's great. It's. It's just a testament to their, I don't know, embeddedness, like ticks in right wing discourse, that some people still choose to become Objectivists.
- [413:01]
A
So. Okay, Eric, says here Aaron the little hat. Oh, no, I can't wait for our robot overlords. No more arguments over products of the Enlightenment. Oh, yeah, this. Does Kaczynski live in solitary confinement? I thought he lived on Bomber's row. I thought he lived on the same row with Eric Rudolph and Timothy. Well, not Timothy Bay, but the other guy. Who is the other? Terry Nichols. And every. And then there's one Muslim bomber on there. I didn't real. I don't know that he's. I don't know that.
- [413:44]
B
Can you imagine being the corrections officer assigned to that, though? Oh, my God.
- [413:50]
A
Oh, man.
- [413:50]
B
I work for free.
- [413:53]
A
It's like, how would you not write a book? Yeah, I mean, I would just. I just.
- [413:57]
B
Jesus, I'd be fired immediately. Don't talk to me.
- [414:04]
A
You'd be fanboying. Don't fanboy the inmates. All right, man. I think the next episode will be short. I think we only have, like, 23 more. More sections, and then there's a couple. There's a small appendix on everything that we can go through, so.
- [414:25]
B
Yeah, that'll work.
- [414:27]
A
Thank you. Want to give you plugs.
- [414:29]
B
Yeah, you can find me on Twitter on whatever my handle is at the moment, and you could. I just dropped. I finally dropped the episode of Boys Town with Aaron with Popular Liberty. It came out really well. And yeah, you can also find me on timeline Earth. We just dropped an episode Wednesday talking about winter vagina.
- [414:52]
A
Oh. Oh, that sounds something I might even. Might even avoid. So name. Name the Objectivist. Objectivists have no moral opposition to having children.
- [415:07]
B
Oh, it's that. That really Jewish guy, Yaron Brook.
- [415:14]
A
I thought it was Adolf Hitler. Oh, all right. So. All right, man. You take care of yourself. Right? Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Eric. And we're live once again. Hey, man. How's it going?
- [415:28]
B
Oh, it's going fantastically. I just set up my Christmas tree, mounted a TV in my living room, finally yesterday. Everything's coming together.
- [415:39]
A
Everything's coming together.
- [415:40]
B
And the TV hasn't fallen off the wall yet. So
- [415:45]
A
how's that not happened?
- [415:47]
B
Yeah, I. I didn't have any studs to put it in. I had to use those toggle bolts of the wing nuts. I did like six of them. I'm hoping that that drywall's just strong enough.
- [415:57]
A
I'm surprised you doing that at all. Let me share this situator.
- [416:05]
B
I'm a. I'm a facilities guy. I. I have to.
- [416:07]
A
Oh, that's right. Yeah. Live, right now.
- [416:15]
B
How do I see the. The audience?
- [416:19]
A
Okay, so if you go on the right side of this there, there should be a chat tab on the right side. Yeah, there we go.
- [416:30]
B
All right.
- [416:31]
A
And let me see if I can share this to Miwi, which isn't a real place, but I mean, why not? You know, I mean, is. Is it. Has anyone ever been there?
- [416:44]
B
You kids in your social media.
- [416:56]
A
All right, man. All right, let's finish this up. Looks like we can do this tonight.
- [417:02]
B
There's not much get our learning on.
- [417:04]
A
Yeah, there's not much more left. So I guess the last thing we read was with regard to revolutionary. The only points on which we absolutely insist that are the single overriding goal must be the elimination of modern technology and that no other goal can be allowed to compete with this one. For the rest, revolutionaries should take an empirical approach. If experience indicates that some of the recommendations made in the foregoing paragraphs are not going to give results, then the recommendations should be discarded. I think one of the things that would get people's ire up, especially at this time, is that he said this is so important end in social justice.
- [417:49]
B
Yeah, yeah, that. That definitely wouldn't fly.
- [417:53]
A
Yeah, that's going to be. Somebody's going to be arguing about that one. Thanks, Fubadoo. He says this has been a great series. Going to miss it when it's over. Just wait until the end that I'm going to announce what's next. What will be happening next Sunday night with somebody Aaron knows. So unfortunately. Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah, well, I mean, I feel that way sometimes too. Kinds of technology an argument likely to be raised against our proposed revolution is that it is bound to fail because it is claimed throughout history technology has always progressed, never regressed. Hence technological regression is impossible. But this claim is false. We distinguish between two kinds of technologies which we shall call small scale technology and organized dependent technology. Small scale technology is technology. Technology that can be used by small scale communities without outside assistance. Organization Dependent technology is technology that depends on large scale social organization. We are aware of no significant Cases of regression in small scale technology. But organization dependent technology does regress when the social organization on which it depends breaks down. Example, when the Roman Empire fell apart, the Roman small scale technology survived because any clever feature village craftsmen could build, for instance a water wheel any skilled smith could make steel from by Roman methods and so forth. But the Romans organization dependent technology did regress. Their aqueducts fell into disrepair and were never rebuilt. The techniques of road construction were lost. The Roman system of urban sanitation was forgotten. So that not only, not until recent times did the sanitation of European cities equal that of ancient Rome.
- [419:45]
B
Hmm.
- [419:47]
A
I mean I, I guess he, I guess he's right. I mean if, if the, if government infrastructure starts falling apart, if the government starts getting weak, their infrastructure is going to start to suffer. I think some people would argue, I, I think wrongly that you know, when the Russians attack the power grid in California, which progressives still believe because it was on msnbc, that that was a sign that, that our civilization is falling apart.
- [420:18]
B
Yeah, I get it. Like you know, small scale communities, in the event of a organizational tech collapse, they're going to be able to like patch up real roads. You know, you may, you may be able to, you know, run, run things on a, on solar panels and whatnot, but anything that takes like, you know, a structural engineer or like is hardcore expensive to maintain. That's, that, that's probably going to go by the wayside.
- [420:52]
A
Yep. All right. Moving. The reason why technology has seemed always to protect progresses that until perhaps a century or two before the industrial revolution, most technology was small scale technology. But most of the technology developed since the industrial revolution is organization dependent technology. Take the refrigerator for example. Without factory made parts of the facilities of post industrial machine of a poster industrial machine shop, it would be virtually impossible for a handful of local craftsmen to build a refrigerator. If by some miracle they did succeed in building one, it would be useless to them without a reliable source of electric power. So they would have to dam a stream and build a generator. Generators require large amounts of copper wire. Imagine trying to make that wire without modern machinery. And where would they get a gas suitable for refrigeration? It would be much easier to build an ice house or preserve food by drying or picking, as was done before the invention of the Reformation. Refrigerator man, he's implying a lot here, ain't he?
- [421:53]
B
Yeah. Yep. Logistics.
- [421:57]
A
Let's, let's call it logistics and leave it at that. The Fed posting on this can get real could get really bad. So it is clear that the industrial system. So it is clear that if the industrial system were once thoroughly broken down refrigeration technology would quickly be lost. The same is true of other organization dependent technology. And once this technology has been lost for a generation or so, it would take centuries to rebuild it just as it took centuries to build it the first time around. Surviving technical books would be a few and scattered. And industrial society if built from scratch without outside help can only be built in a series of stages. You need tools to make tools to make tools to make tools. A long progress of economic development and progress in social organization is required. And even in the absence of an ideology opposed to technology there is no reason to believe that anyone would be interested in rebuilding industrial society. The enthusiasm for progress is a phenomenon, is a phenomenon peculiar to the modern form of society. And it seems to have not existed prior to the 17th century or thereabouts. Yeah, well. Yeah, well. Yeah, that last sentence is. I mean something that I've argued is basically a mistake. Yeah.
- [423:19]
B
And is what good with any revolution you're talking about whatever the goal is. All it takes is one generation within that revolutionary framework to completely forget about whatever benefits that the last generation, the pre revolution generations had. So I mean you're just hitting. Hitting the reset button in a generational sense and that's. If you can do that then. Then you're good.
- [423:44]
A
Yeah. What's funny is the enthusiasm for progress. It's just another. Another somebody taking a shot at the quote unquote enlightenment. Yeah.
- [423:53]
B
Yep.
- [423:54]
A
And. And all of the horrors that it's brought us.
- [423:58]
B
Yeah. And it could be forgotten about in one generation.
- [424:01]
A
Yep. Yep. In the late Middle Ages there were four main civilizations that were about equally advanced. Europe, the Islamic world. India and the Far East. China, Japan, Korea. Three of those civilizations remained more or less stable. And only Europe became dynamic. No one knows why Europe became dynamic at that time. You're in my mind once right in the same place, didn't it? Historians have their theories but these are only speculation. At any time it is clear that rapid development toward a technological form of society occurs under special conditions. So there is no reason to assume that a long lasting technological regression cannot be brought about. Do we want.
- [424:50]
B
Seems like maybe there's something that needs to be done in order for all this to work. I'll escort myself to the gas chamber. Thank you.
- [425:04]
A
Oh my goodness. Would society eventually develop again toward an industrial technological form? But there is no use in worrying about it since we can't predict the control against 500 or a thousand years now the future. Those problems must be dealt with. By people who live at the time. All right, so he starts off absolutely crapping all over leftism. Looks like he finishes
- [425:33]
B
finishes strong right
- [425:35]
A
back to the beginning. Because of their need for rebound for membership in a movement, leftist or persons of similar psychological type are often are unattracted to a rebellious or activist movement whose goals and membership are not initially leftist. The resulting influx of. Influx of leftist types can easily turn a non leftist movement into a leftist one, so that leftist goals replace or distort the original goals of the movement.
- [426:04]
B
What is it? Robert Conquest, Second Law of Power. Some something.
- [426:09]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Anything that does not start explicitly right wing moves. Left political parties. Listen.
- [426:19]
B
Yeah.
- [426:20]
A
To avoid this, a movement that exalts nature and opposes technology must take a resolutely anti leftist stance and must avoid all collaboration with leftists. Leftism is in the long run inconsistent with wild nature, with human freedom and the elimination of modern technology. Leftism is collectivist. It seeks to bind together the entire world, both nature and the human race, into a unified whole. But this implies management of nature and human life by organized society. And it requires advanced technology. You can't have a united world without rapid transportation and communication. You can't make all people love one another without sophisticated psychological techniques. Techniques. You can't have a planned society without the necessary technological base. Above all, leftism is driven by the need for power. And the leftist seeks power on a collective basis through identification with a mass movement or an organization. Leftism is unlikely ever to give up technology because technology is too valuable a source of collective power.
- [427:24]
B
That, that paragraph right there, I mean, you could just take that out and it, you could show that to anybody out of context and they would, they would get it instantly. It's. That's like a, an iron truth.
- [427:38]
A
Yeah, I mean it's. That's like frigging poetry. Yeah, just frigging poetry. Okay. The anarchist too seeks power, but he seeks it on an individual or small group basis. I want to introduce you to some anarchist, Ted, so you can tell him about that small group thing. He wants individuals and small groups to be able to control the circumstances of their own lives. He opposes technology because it makes small groups dependent on large organizations. Huh, you want to go off on that one?
- [428:12]
B
Yeah, I think, I think any anarchist that reads this will definitely come away with a different view on. I, I think we all pretty much have that feeling in our brains that, you know, tech companies are the enemy and maybe we're not, maybe we're not able to articulate why. Because if you, if you Go down that, that path, that rabbit hole you'll end up at, at Ted Kaczynski. And a lot of us aren't, aren't willing to, to do that yet.
- [428:48]
A
Well, yeah, I mean.
- [428:49]
B
Well, this is the logical conclusion of being anti Big tech.
- [428:54]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean you can do, as people who are anti Big Tech can talk as much as they want about the, the government stepping in and doing this and doing that, but when it comes right, when it comes down to it, what you're talking about is you're talking about destroying technology.
- [429:11]
B
Yeah, and he, he said it perfectly. The whole purpose of, of like this push for, from, from big tech companies is for a planned society, a worldwide planned society, which they need to constantly innovate and upgrade and amass this wealth and power in order to arrive at that planned society eventually. So I mean like that, if, if you consider yourself right wing, it's, it's. And you follow it, you follow this path to its logical conclusion, you will end up being an anarcho primitivist.
- [429:50]
A
Yeah, I mean I've. What's the signature in my Twitter right now?
- [429:58]
B
No, I don't know, I haven't looked yet.
- [430:00]
A
Culture is downstream from technology.
- [430:03]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Suck it, Breitbart.
- [430:11]
A
Some leftists may seem to oppose technology, but they will oppose it only so long as they are outsiders and the technological system is controlled by non leftists. If leftism is ever dominant in society so that the technological system becomes a tool in the hands of leftists, they will enthusiastically use it and promote its growth. Oh, in doing this, imagine that. I mean, that can't be true, Ted.
- [430:37]
B
Yeah.
- [430:39]
A
In doing this, they will be repeating a pattern that leftism has shown again and again in the past. When the Bolsheviks in Russia were outsiders, they vigorously opposed censorship in the secret police, they advocated self determination for ethnic minorities and so forth. But as soon as they came into power themselves, they imposed a tighter censorship and created a more ruthless secret police than any that had existed under the czars. And they oppressed ethnic minorities at least as much as the czars had done in the United States a couple decades ago when leftists were a minority in our universities, leftist professors were vigorous proponents of academic freedom. But today in those of our universities where leftists have become dominant, they have shown themselves ready to take away from everyone else's academic freedom. This is political correctness. The same will happen with leftists in technology. They will use it to oppress everyone else if they ever get it under their own control.
- [431:34]
B
Yeah. And in the areas that they have, they, they certainly have shown a, a penchant for and, and, and honestly an expertise in, in doing so. I mean who was the, who was the NKVD guy? Was it Baria?
- [431:55]
A
Nkvd?
- [431:56]
B
Yeah. Was it Barrier? Who was in charge of the NKVD in like the 40s and 50s? It's one of them. But anyways, whoever that was would have, would have creamed his genes if he had what, what, what leftists have right now. Even if you're just talking about like, you know, the amount of data you can collect on like on a Tumblr profile, that's the first, that's the first thing that comes to mind is like Tumblr, that's like a, that's the leftist social media site.
- [432:25]
A
Well, let me ask you a question and I think this is going to be obvious. So circa 1935 to 1940, who do you think would have been able to use Big Tech more to their advantage? The National Socialists or the, or the Communists in Russia?
- [432:45]
B
Oh, that's a, that's, that's not an easy question because they, they, they were both in, in their own unique way, they were both inextricably bound to the industry. I, I'm leaning towards the National Socialists to, to be honest because I think you know, you, you didn't need to hold a gun to like the head of Mercedes, like Mercedes Benz, you know, the CEO was just like okay, cool. Like it's, it's the, the difference between fascism and communism is, you know, you don't, you don't need to kill CEOs out in the street to get your point across. With fascism they're they're just like, ah, sure,
- [433:35]
A
It would be interesting. I, I really would be interested in seeing what Soviet style propaganda in the 30s and early 40s could have done with like Big Tech and the Internet. Because I mean they were good man. What was his name? What was the main guy's name? The one who did all the posters and everything. I can't recall his name off the top of my head.
- [433:58]
B
I forget. But I fucking love like the aesthetics of those posters.
- [434:02]
A
Oh, I know, those posters are amazing. Amazing.
- [434:07]
B
That art style, like I, I, I want to get a tattoo of something like that.
- [434:13]
A
All right. In earlier revolutions, leftists of the most power hungry type repeatedly co cooperated with non leftist revolutionaries as well as with leftists of a more libertarian inclination and later have double crossed them to seize power for themselves. Themselves. Robespierre did this in the French Revolution and the Bolsheviks did it in the Russian Revolution. The Communists did it in Spain in 1938 and Castro and his followers did it in Cuba. Given the past history of leftism, it would be utterly foolish for non leftist revolutionaries today to collaborate. Leftists.
- [434:48]
B
Yeah, yeah, he's. We. We've observed this way too many times to make that mistake. Mistake? Well, for, for some of us, we're still willing to make that mistake.
- [435:01]
A
But, you know, wait, wait until people hear our next reading. It won't be, it won't be the one next week because I think next week we could do it. Whoever I'm doing it with can do it in one episode, but the one after that, you and I are going to pick up that, that one's going to take multiple episodes. Probably, probably about five or six. But. Oh yeah, I cannot wait. Various thinkers have pointed out that leftism is a kind of religion. Leftism is not a religion in the strict sense because leftist doctrine does not postulate the existence of any supernatural being. But for the leftist, leftism plays a psychological role role, much like that which religion plays for some people. The leftist needs to believe in leftism. It plays a vital role in his psychological economy. His beliefs are not easily modified by logic or facts. He. Anyone who's argued with a leftist on Twitter, he has a deep conviction that leftism is morally right with a capital R and that he has not right, but a duty to impose leftist morality on everyone. However, many of the people referring to as leftists do not think of themselves as leftists and would not describe their system of beliefs as leftism. We use the term leftism because we don't know of any better words to designate the spectrum of related creeds that include the feminist, gay rights, political correctness, etc. Movements. And because these movements have a strong affinity with the old left, it's almost
- [436:39]
B
like he's drawing from his experience at an Ivy League school.
- [436:44]
A
Yeah, it's almost like really, it's almost like he was, you know, he, he went to school with blue bloods or something. Yeah, it's just unreal. Leftist a totalitarian force. Hey, there you go. End right there. Wherever leftism is in a position of power, it tends to invade every private corner and force every thought into a leftist mold. In part, that is because of the quasi religious character of leftism. Everything contrary to leftist beliefs represents sin. More importantly, leftism is a totalitarian force because of the leftist drive for power. Curtis Yarvin enters the chat. The leftist, the leftist seeks to satisfy his need for power through identification with a social movement. And he tries to go through the power process by helping to pursue and attain the goals of the movement. But no matter how far the movement has gone in attaining its goals, the leftist is never satisfied because his activism is a surrogate activity. That is, the leftist real motive is not to attain the ostensible goals of leftism. In reality, he is motivated by the sense of the power he gets from struggling for and then reaching a social goal. Consequently, the leftist is never satisfied with the goals he has already attained. His need for the power process leads him always to pursue some new goal. The leftist wants equal opportunities for minorities. When that is attained, he insists a statistical equality of achievement by minorities. And as long as anyone harbors in some corner of his mind a negative attitude towards some minority, the leftist has to, has to be. The leftist has to re educate him. And ethnic minorities are not enough. No one can be allowed to have a negative attitude towards homosexuals, disabled people, fat people, old people, ugly people, and on and on and on. It's not enough for the public. It's not enough that the public should be informed about the hazards of smoking. A warning has to be stamped on every package of cigarettes. Then cigarette advertising has to be restricted if not banned. The activists will never be satisfied until tobacco is outlawed. And after that it will be alcohol, then junk food, etc. Activists have fought great gross child abuse, which is reasonable, but now they want to stop all spanking. When they have done that, they will want to ban something else they consider unwholesome. Then another thing, and then another. They will never be satisfied until they have complete control over all child rearing practices. And then they will move on to another cause.
- [439:14]
B
He's really preaching to the choir.
- [439:16]
A
I mean,
- [439:20]
B
Somebody who doesn't know Ted.
- [439:23]
A
I mean, all of this is just so obvious. I mean, it's.
- [439:28]
B
We see it every day.
- [439:30]
A
Yeah, he wrote it in, you know, in the early 90s and man, I
- [439:35]
B
mean, wrote a perfect description of the 2021 Libertarian Party in 1993.
- [439:42]
A
I'll tell you the, the people who, you know, I. I've told people that I was doing this and everything, and they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I remember when Rush Limbaugh would read like from Al Gore's book and then from Ted Kaczynski's book, and he'd be like, try to tell who, Try to tell which one is which and everything. That's not even, that's not 5% of this. No, this is such, this is such a breakdown of human nature and social. I don't know, go Ahead, it's, it's
- [440:18]
B
not even Rush Limbaugh would have the balls to read this in its entirety, like just this section because like would. It would radicalize people beyond the. Beyond what Rush Limbaugh would like to see people radicalized.
- [440:41]
A
Amoy. I think I'm, I hope I'm pronouncing your name right. This book seems cool and all, but how can I use it to signal that I'm not racist?
- [440:48]
B
That's the real question.
- [440:50]
A
That's a good one, brother.
- [440:51]
B
Here on this left, here on this leftist stream where we're really trying to figure that out.
- [441:00]
A
Suppose you asked leftist to make a list of all the things that were wrong with society and then suppose you instituted every social change that they demanded. It is safe to say that within a couple years the majority of leftists would find something new to complain about, some new social evil to correct. Because once again the leftist is motivated less by distress at society's ills than by the need to satisfy his power, his drive for power, by imposing his solutions on society. Because of the restrictions placed on their thoughts and behavior by their high level of social media. Many leftists are the over socialized type, cannot pursue power in the ways that other people do. For them, the drive for power has only one morally acceptable outlet and that is in the struggle to impose on everyone.
- [441:46]
B
He's actually wrong about that. They have retained the same core causes since, since him writing this, they've just added new ones along with it. You could probably go back to some leftist article like collection of works in 1993 and find, you know, whatever their, their, their evolution is today, along with a hundred other of these useless causes, these, these complaints, they don't just move on. They, they don't, they don't get what they want and then move on. Like he said, they, that you know, the goal is to ban smoking and then move on. But I guess in that sense they haven't been as successful as they probably like to be. But they've certainly had, they've certainly pushed the needle beyond probably what even Ted could have, could have ever imagined.
- [442:44]
A
The I can just one thing that came up on Twitter today was the term neo confederate. And basically what it is is that the problem of slavery was solved in 1865, yet they can't let it go.
- [443:09]
B
What boggles.
- [443:12]
A
Go ahead.
- [443:12]
B
What boggles my mind is like I see all these, it's ace. It's always fucking ace. But he gets into these arguments with these. I mean, I'm assuming they're Marxists. They Say they're Marxists. And like, these Marxists will bend over backwards to defend Lincoln and to defend the Civil War. When Marxists at that time hated Lincoln, were like, throwing bricks at cops, like, trying to dodge the draft. And, you know, they were extremely anti war. I shouldn't say Marxists at the time, labor at the time, time proto Marxists. And like, these modern Marxists are like, well, it ended slavery, so it was worth it. I'm like, yeah, but it did a lot of other, like, you traded in slavery for, like, sharecroppers and, like, lynchings and like, I. I just don't know why they have such a strong opinion about it. It's something that it's like, not worth arguing about. Like. Okay, right, he's cool.
- [444:06]
A
Well, you know, another thing is that what they don't see is that when the freeman camps and schools opened up to teach slaves that were, that were freed, they just sought to turn them into white Christians.
- [444:23]
B
Yeah.
- [444:24]
A
So if you're. They don't understand that if they're championing Lincoln because they've made this, you know, because slavery is just such an easy bludgeon for them to use to hit, you know, to knock people over the head with. But they don't understand that, like, I mean, labor, what labor was fighting. Again, they didn't labor in Chicago, didn't care about what was going on, going on in the south unless it was cutting off. Unless it was cutting off, you know, cotton coming up, that they couldn't. So that production couldn't be done. They couldn't work.
- [444:58]
B
Yeah.
- [444:58]
A
I mean, they didn't want to be drafted. That's why they were draft riots in New York City.
- [445:03]
B
Yeah.
- [445:04]
A
I mean, this wasn't. That thing was never about slavery. It was just an offshoot. But now they can use it, and they don't realize by, okay, it was good that slavery was ended. But can you recognize the fact that Reconstruction. What. How much of a destruction it was
- [445:26]
B
an absolute raping of, like, the, the class of people that you pretend to be fighting for? Like, yeah, Southern Southern workers were victimized. I mean, and I get it. Like, the. Even if you. Even if I grant you that the goal was to, like, punish the south and that they deserved it. Okay, cool. But how many generations does that have to go on until, like, you know, they're. They're welcomed back into the good graces of, like, the good working class? I mean, and from a Marxist perspective, I just. Again, I don't understand why you could have such a strong opinion about it unless it's just you want to own the own, the righties.
- [446:07]
A
Yeah, I mean that's basically what it is. All right, here we go.
- [446:14]
B
No, no, continue.
- [446:17]
A
Leftists, especially those of the over social type, are true believers in the sense of Eric Hoffer's book the True Believer. But not all true believers are of the same psychological type as leftists. Presumably a true believing Nazi, for instance, is very different psychologically from a true believing leftist. Because of their capacity for single minded devotion to a cause. True believers are a useful, perhaps a necessary ingredient of any revolutionary movement. This presents a problem with which we must admit we don't know how to deal with. We aren't sure how to harness the energies of the true believers to a revolution against technology. At present all we can say is that no true believer will make a safe recruit to the revolution unless his commitment is exclusively to destruction of technology. If he is committed also to another ideal, he may want to use technology as a tool for pursuing that other ideal.
- [447:14]
B
This is just, this is really good. Like you could, you could substitute, you know, destruction of technology, the word technology with really anything. You know, when you're formulating, when you're fomenting, you know, revolution, it's just like a good little framework for the type of people that you want in, in your, you know, revolutionary cabal.
- [447:45]
A
All right, moving on, we're almost done. Actually, some readers may say the stuff about leftism is a lot of crap. I know John and Jane, who are leftist types and they don't have all these totalitarian tendencies. It's quite true that many leftists, possibly even a numerical majority, are decent people who sincerely believe in tolerating others values up to a point and wouldn't want to use high handed methods to reach their social goals. Our remarks are about leftism. Our remarks about leftism are not meant to apply to every individual leftist, but to describe the general character of leftism as a movement. And the general character of a movement is not necessarily determined by the numerical proportions of the various kind of people involved in the movement. Thank you, thank you. Thanks for saying that. Because I don't know how many libertarians, quote unquote, come at me when I talk about how bad the left is and they, and that the left is in control and that they control everything right now and how horrible that is and how terrible the ideology of leftism is. And they come to me and they go, but I mean, you know, my sister's a leftist and she just wants to leave people alone. Big brain time, right?
- [449:00]
B
Yeah, it exists on A spectrum. And you know, your next door neighbor, that's like a hippie, you know, that's, that's very far down the spectrum of leftists to worry about.
- [449:12]
A
Yeah. Speaking of spectrum and libertarians, the people who rise to positions of power in leftist movements tend to be leftists of the most power hungry type, because power hungry people are those who strive hardest to get into positions of power. Once the power hungry types have captured control of the movement, there are many leftists of a gentler breed who inwardly disapprove of many of the actions of the leaders, but cannot bring themselves to oppose them. They need their faith in the movement and because they cannot give up this faith, they go along with the leaders. True, some leftists do have the guts to oppose the totalitarian tendencies that emerge, but they generally lose because the power hungry stereotypes are better organized and more ruthless and Machiavellian and have taken care to build themselves a strong power base. I mean, why don't you just talk about Hillary Clinton without naming her?
- [449:59]
B
He's describing the relationship between leftists and liberals. Leftists will always lose to liberals when it comes to power.
- [450:07]
A
Yeah. These phenomena appeared clearly in Russia and other countries that were taken over by leftists. Similarly, before the breakdown of communism in the ussr, Leftish types in the west would seldom criticize that country. If prodded, they would admit that the USSR did many wrong things. But then they would try to find excuses for the communists and begin talking about the faults of the West. They always opposed Western military resistance to communist aggression. Leftist types all over the world vigorously protested the US military action in Vietnam, but when the USSR invaded Afghanistan, they did nothing. Not that they approved of the Soviet actions, but because of their leftist faith, they could, they could just, they just couldn't bear to put themselves in opposition to communism today. In those, today in those of our universities where political correctness has become dominant, they are probably, there are probably more leftist types who privately disapprove of the suppression of academic freedom, but they go along with it anyway.
- [451:11]
B
Wow, Ted, CIA asset confirmed.
- [451:14]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean this is, I'm trying to,
- [451:18]
B
I'll defend the USSR all day.
- [451:21]
A
Yeah, the, the whole thing about, I mean they, I mean you would say that like the, the conservatives are much more likely to go against their team if someone strays than, if, than the
- [451:37]
B
left is right nowadays. Yeah, absolutely. Because conservatism's been, you know, split between populism and establishment and, and, and leftism. And I guess leftism, slash liberalism has to, to a degree. And I just, I Think like maybe not national politics. I think the new, the new, the next generation that are actual leftists are starting to gain some ground. But you know, in, in, in like the corporate world and you know, every other aspect locally on the state level. Privately I think they have a much steeper hill to climb as far as dislodging the establishment goes.
- [452:29]
A
What I think about when I read that paragraph is something that I even see like masses of libertarians fall into. Oh, you know, the right is just basically evil when it desires power, but the left's intentions are good. They're just misguided.
- [452:46]
B
Yeah. Which is just the exact wrong approach to have if you're going to be a law bird. Just say that. Oh, they're both sides of the same coin. And I hate, I hate them both equally. You know, that's, that's a law bird I can work with.
- [452:59]
A
Yeah, but I mean somebody who just thinks that the left's intentions are good just doesn't understand power. Just doesn't understand the design.
- [453:09]
B
Nope.
- [453:11]
A
Thus the fact that many individual leftists are personally mild and fairly tolerant people by no means prevents leftism as a whole form. As a whole form having a totalitarian tendency. Our discussion of leftism has a serious weakness. It is still far from clear what we mean by the word leftist. There doesn't seem to be much we can do about this today. Leftism is fragmented into a whole spectrum of activist movements. Yet not all activist movements are leftist. And some activist movements, e.g. radical environmentalism, seem to include both personalities of the leftist type and personalities of thoroughly un leftist types who ought to know better than to collaborate with leftists. Varieties of leftists fade out gradually into varieties of non leftists. And we ourselves would often be hard pressed to decide whether a given individual is or is not a leftist to the extent that it is defined at all. Our conception of leftism is defined by the discussion of it that we gave have given in this article. And we can only advise the reader to use his own judgment in deciding who is a leftist.
- [454:17]
B
I think the word he's, he's struggling to find is intersectionality. He I. At that time that wasn't really a buzzword. In the early 90s it was, it was there, but there wasn't really a descriptor for all of these various seemingly unconnected movements, you know, collaborating with each other for social progress. But yeah, that's, that's, he's describing intersection as.
- [454:46]
A
But it will be helpful to list some criteria for diagnosing leftism. These criteria cannot be applied In a cut and dried manner. Some individuals may meet some of the criteria without being leftists. Some left leftists may not meet any of the criteria. Again, you have to use your own judgment. The leftist is oriented towards large scale collectivism. He emphasizes the duty of the individual to serve society and the duty of society society to take care of the individual. He has a negative attitude towards individualism. He often takes a moralistic tone. He tends to be for gun control, for sex education and other psychologically enlightened educational methods, for social planning, for affirmative action, for multiculturalism. He tends to identify with victims. He tends to be against competition and against violence. But he often finds excuses for those leftists who do commit violence. He is fond of using the common catchphrases of the left like racism, sexism, homophobia, capitalism, imperialism, neocolonialism, genocide, social change, social justice, social responsibility, neoconfederate. I'm sorry, maybe the best diagnostic trait of the leftist is his tendency to sympathize with the following movements. Feminism, gay rights, ethnic rights, disability rights, animal rights, political correctness, trans rights. Oh, I'm sorry, I threw that one in. Just, just for, for libertarians. Anyone who strongly sympathizes with all of these movements is almost certainly a leftist.
- [456:23]
B
Yes, and that's also their weakness. Because when you have, when you have this idea of intersectionality, you're like a jack of all trades and a master of non. And you can see that when they do spread themselves too thin, that's usually where as far as policy goes, they get defeated by the right. And when the right zooms in on one issue, let's say it's COVID policy or immigration, that's like when they have that solidarity in focus, that's usually when they emerge on top.
- [457:02]
A
This is the last paragraph before a final note. The more dangerous leftists, I.e. those who are most power hungry, are often characterized by arrogance and by a dogmatic approach to ideology. However, the most dangerous leftists of all may be certain over socialized types who avoid irritating displays of agreement aggressiveness and refrain from advertising their leftism, but work quietly and unobtrusively to promote collective, collective collectivist values, enlightened psychological techniques for socializing children, dependence of the individual on the system, and so forth. These crypto leftists, as we may call them, approximate certain bourgeois types as far as the practical action is concerned, but differ from them in psychology, ideology and motivation. The ordinary bourgeois tries to bring people under control of the system in order to protect his way of life, or he does so simply because his attitudes are Conventional. The crypto leftist tries to bring people under control of the system because he is a true believer in a collectivist ideology. The crypto leftist is differentiated from the average leftist of the over social type by the fact that his rebellious impulse is weaker and he is more securely socialized. He is differentiated from the ordinary, well socialized bourgeois by the fact that there is some deep lack within him that makes it necessary for him to devote himself to a cause and immerse himself into a collectivity. And maybe his, well sublimated drive for power is stronger than that of the average bourgeois.
- [458:43]
B
Yeah, so this is like your, your inner circle Bolshevik types. You know, the, the, the, your Vashes love Molotovs. You don't really hear about them, but they are true believers. They're very soft spoken and you know, they're, they're not out for media attention. They're not out throwing, throwing Molotov cocktails. They're, you know, they're, they're your college professors, they're your CEOs, your HR directors, the people that, that actually wield that, that hard power and that trickles down into that soft power that we're all subject to.
- [459:25]
A
Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's read the final note. Throughout this article we've made imprecise statements and statements that ought to have had all sorts of qualifications and reservations attached to them. And some of our statements may be flatly false. Lack of sufficient information and the need for brevity make it impossible for us to formulate our assertions more precisely or add all the necessary qualifications. And of course, in a discussion of this kind, one must rely heavily on intuitive judgment, and that can sometimes be wrong. So we don't claim that this article is expresses more than a crude approximation to the truth. All the same, we are reasonably confident that the general outlines of the picture we have painted here are roughly correct. Just one possible, possible weak point needs to be mentioned. We have portrayed leftism in its modern form as a phenomena peculiar to our time and as a symptom of the disruption of the power process. But we might possibly be wrong about this. Over socialized types who try to satisfy their drive for power by imposing immorality on everyone have certainly been around for a long time. But we think that the decisive role played by the. By the feelings of inferiority, low self esteem, powerlessness, identification with victims by people who are not themselves victims is a peculiar, is a peculiarity of modern leftism. Identification with victims by people not themselves victims can be seen to some extent in the 19th century. Leftism and early Christianity. But as far as we can make out, symptoms of low self esteem were not nearly so evident in these movements or in any other movement as they are in modern leftism. But we are not in a position to assert confidently that no such movements have existed prior to modern leftism. This is a significant question to which historians ought to give their attention.
- [461:18]
B
That's very, that, that's very self critical and open minded of him.
- [461:25]
A
Well, I mean once you read through this you realize you're dealing with an intellect here. You're also, I mean is he a sociopath? Does he, I mean does he possess morals?
- [461:42]
B
I, it depends. I mean I think that he's, he's either just a, a psychopathic empath like that, you know, possesses, possesses his morals to such a, such a intense extent that he, he needed, felt the need to do what he did in the hopes that it will lead to, you know, a moral society which, you know, that's his, his view of a moral society. I guess.
- [462:18]
A
Yeah. I mean it's. To say I don't agree with his methods is just so. Everyone does that when they talk.
- [462:30]
B
You gotta cover your ass, man.
- [462:32]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. CYA all the way. But once you read through this you start to realize that there was something was going on with this guy that. I mean there is clear evidence from what I've seen that he was an MKUltra experiment
- [462:58]
B
when he was in Harvard.
- [463:00]
A
Yeah. I'm not saying that he, it gave him special powers or anything but it maybe his third. Maybe his mind's eye was opened up to a point where he could see these things that other people couldn't see. I mean he, there were very few people talking about stuff like this back then is in, in the detail that he does.
- [463:28]
B
Yeah. I wouldn't say that it unlocked his potential. I would say that it redirected it. You know, the, his, the, the resource that is his mind was redirected towards this singular vision, this, this manifesto and you know, and that culminated in him you know, mailing about, milling out a bunch of bombs, you know, however he selected his targets. I'm sure there was a method but. Yeah, it's, it's just if he is, if he is a sociopath, he's very good at feigning empathy and self reflection because I mean most sociopaths that, that I know about from watching like you know, true crime or whatever, they're incapable of that, that self critical analysis that, that reflection.
- [464:24]
A
Yeah, yeah. I was read some interviews of Edward Kemper who killed a bunch of sorority girls back in the 70s. And it was very clear that he had no. There was no empathy there whatsoever. Yeah, he was just. He was cold. But the. You know, what a lot of people don't know. There's actually a very good interview with him on. It might. I'm not sure if it's still on Netflix, but I watched it on Netflix and he actually allowed some green activists to come in there. And what's funny is I was trying to figure out the whole time whether this green activist read as she appeared to me to read as a pure leftist. And it was really weird because he, like, hand chose her for the interview. And one of the things they talked about the bombs was what most people don't know is his first couple of bombs were. I mean, they did a little bit of damage, but he, like. They were failures, and he, like, had to learn more and learn more, and he actually became better as. As time went on. So he was learning. And also. Also another thing about this manifesto and everything, I mean, he was in Lincoln, in Lincoln, Montana, for years by himself. Yeah, it's. It gives you a lot of time to think. But you would think somebody who had suffered, I mean, he did talk to his neighbors and he did go into town, obviously, to mail stuff, but you would think that somebody who spent as much time in isolation may have started to lose their mind. And when you consider how long he was there compared to when this came out, he seems to just be cogent. Yeah, like, isolation didn't do anything to him.
- [466:19]
B
I guess maybe writing. Writing and reading were that outlet that he needed for, you know, that. That social interaction. I mean, you know, you're always writing for somebody else to read. You're always reading what somebody else wrote. And. And maybe that was just enough to keep him, you know, coherent.
- [466:38]
A
Yeah, they. What's great in that documentary is they just show, like, his. All of his notes on the bomb making and shows where he. Where he corrected his mistakes and everything. And they had the books that he was reading and everything. It was just really good documentary. I was very shocked that. That it was a Netflix kind of documentary, because it was. It was one of those things where you come away with it and you're like, huh, why are they. Why isn't this just filled with, you know, opinion pieces? Yeah, just opinion stuff. Because it was very straightforward.
- [467:14]
B
Yeah, no, I. I watched that documentary too, last year, and. Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised, too.
- [467:22]
A
Yeah. All right, man. I appreciate it. And you will be back soon and we'll start a reading that will probably ruffle some feathers. Ruffle some feathers. But next week, next Sunday at 7 o', clock, bird will be here from Timeline Earth. And we are going to attempt in one sitting to read Ted Kaczynski's the Systems Neatest Trick. And I wanted to have Bird. Bird on because. To do it, because Ted does make some mistakes in that one, but there are also some. There are also some things in there that I think Bird has a pretty good handle on, some things that lean a little bit more towards philosophy. Towards philosophy. And I want to see how. I want to see how he handles it. So.
- [468:17]
B
Yeah. And.
- [468:19]
A
And also then next, when I do that once, at the end of that episode, I'll announce what you. What you and I have planned for the future.
- [468:29]
B
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Tell Bird I said you.
- [468:34]
A
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's the first thing I'm gonna say. All right, brother, I'll talk to you. All right.
- [468:40]
B
Hey, thank you very much. This has been amazing.
- [468:43]
A
Wait till the next one.
- [468:47]
B
All right, man, I'll see you. See you later, gu.