05 - The Vanity Exhibitions

Transcript

hi welcome to intimate discourse my name is jason this episode the vanity exhibitions was

recorded on may 1st 2022 in toronto ontario canada

thanks a lot for listening and i hope you enjoy the show [Music]

hello welcome to intimate discourse this is jason and i'm here with dimitri hello

today we're going to be taking you through a journey on virtue signaling what it is what it's good for

is there any benefit to it uh how has this evolved in our society and um

what can we do about it or do we need to do anything about it um just for the uninitiated uh quick

sort of summation of what virtue signaling is this is not a standard definition but

um i you know i would i would categorize it as something that

uh it's something that somebody does in order to indicate um a

an advocation for one side or another of an issue

with the main purpose of sort of advertising that position to the

world regardless of whether they're even that interested in the issue in the first place

um you know you've obviously seen this before and i think most people who are listening to this have um you know know

what i'm talking about there's all kinds of ways one can virtue signal and we see it more and more in

today's society everyone's doing it your friends your family corporations are certainly doing

it the places you work at even government who are probably the i guess the

original virtue signaler um i think one thing that we want to explore today is

well one of the main things that we want to make you know sort of distinguish is the where the line is

uh between somebody genuinely supporting something like an idea or a movement or a cause um

or when when they are sort of advertising this position only

to receive adulation or um some sort of i really wonder why why

people do it sometimes but to i assume is to receive adulation from um those

around them or in many ways to feel part of a clique um and to make themselves feel important so

those are the sort of things we're going to be exploring today uh but i think that's a crucial thing because i you

know there used to be genuine um you know people would genuinely take a side people would you know support like

protest the war in vietnam for example um i mean there's probably some virtue signaling at some point in some

areas there but it's just been magnified by um i guess technology for the most part

over the last few decades and now it's just hit this sort of monstrous proportions

and um would you say would you say uh dimitri that that's sort of a good

um you know am i am i describing that right virtue signaling like is there something my interpretation made a great point too

but you know back in the past where people well we certainly still have protests in real life today

but um protests today are in conjunction with a much louder perhaps a virtue signaling

whereas in the 1960s in vietnam in 1970s it was much more of a real

feat on the ground protest and some skin in the game like

you're willing to go out there and show your face and protest and perhaps take some backlash from let's say police

officers or the authorities or whatever because you truly believed that this is what you wanted to see

changed in the world and you were willing to risk something of your own whether it's your own reputation your own bodily harm

because you um you were the underdog you know you really the the the small versus the

mighty in a sense whereas today i think it's shifted a lot to i actually don't care to i like my

conveniences and i don't care to have any skin in the game but i want all the benefits right of being virtuous

yeah without without actually working for it risking for it and it

takes the nobility out of the actual uh um experience yeah yeah that's a good

way to put it um because yeah there was a sort of

nobility in um protesting um and you know i guess there still is to some extent because we

we should the one thing i wanted to make sure we did in this episode is i don't want to like i think it's important that people

you know stand up for what they believe in and protest and you know exercise their their right to

um disagree with policies that are coming out and even to even to say to somebody on the street

like hey i don't agree with that um whatever you know in a polite way but um

but you want to you know distinguish that from people who are just it's just so prevalent now like you

can't um uh and i think it takes on many different forms like you get the thing

where you have people you know like i said like putting the ukrainian flag on their twitter and and you know you start thinking well

that's not necessarily in itself a bad thing um but but that is sort of an example of

what you're talking about where there's not there's not a lot of um you're not investing much of yourself into that

it's just easy to do i remember a stat from 25 30 years ago that said something to the effect of in america

74 of americans couldn't find germany in a world map right imagine not being able to find

german in a world map and having an opinion on world war ii right right and now today you're like ukraine and

then half the little icons you see have like uh the colors and verse instead of the blue on top and yellow below let's

say area yellow they don't they don't know which is even right side up right side down you know yeah

yeah i feel like they spend more time you know i want to get i want to not launch just right into ranting um but um

yeah i do feel like they spend more time trying to tweak their you know twitter bio or trying to get

the right sort of combination of things to advocate than they do um

taking the time to even understand what's happening the problem is that this virtual virtue

signaling does have real world can have real world benefits to the individual seeking it

not necessarily the people that are actually receiving their virtue so you know maybe they've applied for a

job and the employer is like well let me check out this person's social media profile before i even entertain

uh oh look they're into all the newest uh trends that we need to oh this is our kind of person we as a company will also

look now more virtuous because we're hiring these people who basically advertise their virtue

to the world at large yeah in their off time you're going to be making us as a corporation looking

good even when you're at home excellent right yeah yeah it's a nice marketing

you know it's a it really it seems a lot like marketing it's like the individual is marketing themselves as look i'm on

the right side of all these things i look at the little vaccines sometimes self-serving oh yeah yeah yeah because it's complete

antithesis of what the virtue well that you're trying to signal is supposed to indicate of course i stand

with no you don't you don't even know where this place is on the map you probably have never i don't know i met a person in that

world um dated somebody from that part of the world thought about what religion they are what currency do they use how

many flights travel their daily what monuments do they have you don't know anything but all of a sudden now you're

proclaiming it as if you're the front of 10 000 people coming down the street and you're the one holding the flag the

highest you know most proudly you know this is my my my rally that i wish to uh

you know show the world that i am the champion of these peoples because you put a little

380 by 480 pixel on top of your facebook page it reminds me of um

you know um high school or uh like college where it's like

you get the um just people almost like advertising their clicks like so we have a mutual

friend i'm not i'll tell you after who it is because i don't want to embarrass him but like um i remember it was like five or six years

ago he posted this is when i was still you know going on facebook but um he posted a picture of himself with

uh a leather jacket on and you know real kind of tough looking or whatever and

had a big circle that said racism homophobia uh and it was like sexism or

something that had a big cross like x through it or whatever like no no of those and like posting it as if it was

like groundbreaking or something like you know what i mean it's like yeah man like obviously like you know it's like we broke those barriers decades ago like

and yeah you know still residual effects or whatever but you this is not like some brave you know position you're taking so like it

i have you know i have a problem i guess with people who are like like this is all for you like don't

don't pretend that you're advancing some movement here like uh you know the you know the war in that front has

already been won in the public opinion like we like everybody knows that stuff's bad like uh

um i'll try to tell you who it is after but um but but you're right that's it's

true it's all for them so what would be the antithesis like what is not for that person

and would that be real virtue then the antithesis of yeah so you know like um coming out for gay rights in the late

1950s per se like those are the rebels oh for sure yeah yeah you know so yeah and you start to think and just

before i i want to wrap up because i forgot to sort of like bring that home but like uh yeah this is the

same person would wear uh skinny puppy jackets but he didn't like skinny puppy but he

just liked the jacket they thought the jackets look cool and then it was like trend these days you know that hey what else against instagram guys and girls

wearing t-shirts of rock bands so they have no idea oh really yeah yeah but it's a cool symbol yeah yeah it's like

when i see that joy division uh closer one and i'm always cringing because i'm like you know you don't listen to joy of

it is it that burning man the festival they have out like in the desert somewhere in the states and it's quite visual but everyone there dresses up and

it looks like mad max and it's like a concert like rave yeah yeah yeah but um yeah it's very instagramable

where people literally just go to take their shots and you know right right up their points yeah and come home and the

t-shirts are very much part of that type of culture yeah but again if they were authentic and they were like listening to um

i don't know like i used to listen i'm sure you did too when you were younger like depeche mode and martin gore would wear black nail polish in 1984 and we

were the kids in the halls of this high school defending them right yeah no for sure

everybody's like no man there's no drummer in the band they ain't cool all right no they can be yeah you know and

now it just becomes like look at me i'm wearing this shirt aren't they so like open-minded yeah yeah no it's easy to be

open-minded now like that's in fact it's almost like being close-minded would be would be the

the kind of like closed-minded to their fake open-mindedness yeah you can just call them out this is just not real yeah you

don't believe it it's all just superficial and you're a couple decades late to the

game yeah yeah and i mean not to belabor the the um parallel between like

liking certain music or whatever but i i that is true like you know um

sort of when where we grew up and where we uh like um i guess in our sort of formative years or whatever and in

university it was like we would sort of uh seamlessly hang out with people who were gay or were um you know

cross-dressers or um they just there seemed to be a lot in the the the clicks

that we sort of associated with and uh it was never a thing like uh we're where we

felt like we had to like you know advocate on it for anybody but they're all just people that we associated with

and it was just like um i don't know it was almost like something happened uh in

the decades that followed where it became like um

i don't know like there was a progression upward where like in my mind in those days everybody was sort of like

i know this sounds very easy to say now or whatever but it's like everybody was equal like there was no like i mean there might have been some like joking

around or whatever but like everybody i think was sort of all one all on the same team like it never occurred to

anybody there's no real bigots like i didn't really know anybody was like actually bigoted and um and that was in

like you know the 90s so it's like um so you would assume that the progression would be up and it's like

now it's all of a sudden we're dealing with um you know like you would think if you were an

alien coming down here that like you know we just had race wars or something like with all the well a club is a good

metaphor because a club you were bringing together let's say back in the day especially one of the smaller nichire type of scene

uh musically you're bringing like-minded people together but like-minded could be like you had the biker you're the skinny

puppy person you had the trans cross dresser and it didn't matter because the commonality was you were there for the

underground music scene yeah and you saw unity in that yeah whereas today we only see division amongst all these different

groups it's a good point yeah the box in a sense was for the island of misfit toys and in that we rejoiced in just being

equal right you know it was maybe in a sense one place you could just totally let loose dancing music is very like

vibration spiritual sort of and you just like just you be you man no problem yeah and then

now somehow we've taken that unity and like you said if somewhere to come down to the world today like man you guys got to get along

because you're all like tearing each other apart yeah yeah and it wasn't like it wasn't unspoken about and we just

didn't know about it it i i've i've never seen in my lifetime

um i've never seen a person like at work be put down or not get hired

because of their gender of color and i've worked in places perhaps that are a little more progressive because they're in the beauty industry and whatnot so

you do tend to kind of like our clubs you do bring in our music clubs a more eclectic set of people

but i haven't bumped into it and um a lot of people i talk to haven't really bumped into it not to say it doesn't exist but i'm just not sure it's the

impenetrable wall it's portrayed as yeah i mean i think that

and and i i want to be careful because i hear myself talking and i think to myself like you know this is i can just

hear somebody you know echoing you know saying back to me like whoa that's what you would think being a straight white

male but like i um you know i we both sort of went like our in my industry is

different than yours and i've never seen that kind of thing either um like i've never seen people being held back you know i've

been on the point of like you know being able to hire somebody and i've it's never even occurred to me um

and you know i i've never i've just never seen it in practice and it's not to say that it hasn't happened and maybe i don't maybe that's the whole point is

it was so prevalent the average person should have seen it a couple times in a lifetime and when you talk to the average person for the most part when i

talk to them and what i've you know amongst people everybody who i talk to um

it seems quite rare yeah yeah and again we're in toronto maybe it's something that happens more in the states or in

less progressive um cities but uh yeah it's not and you know this does

like it's not to say of course like the disclaimer that you know racism sexism all that stuff doesn't happen it's just

that the the um the the level to which it's being

um fought against uh seems to be something that would belong

would be more appropriate in like you know the civil war area or something where it's like different countries in

2022 other than right right yeah yeah or a lot of other countries that are around now yeah it's like we got 90 percent on

the test what happened to the other person yeah yeah meanwhile you've got yeah i mean while you've country's

failing you know what i mean all over the place and they just sit there and they point out the ten percent of um you know your error

not acknowledging the 90 percent in 90 of the correctness and then also that you're probably in the top 10 percent of

all the countries in the world anyways by such behavior yeah yeah so i agree with you so that's where we're bringing

it back to virtue um it does seem to be like a hollow a hollow drum they're beating you know it

doesn't it doesn't really resonate it doesn't i don't see too much substance and just like virtual virtual

signaling you know yeah i love my rebels i love my misfits i love people who are um the outliers of a distribution curve

yeah by the very definition they're the more interesting people because they're more rare yeah you wonder to what extent it's um

you know i think of the you know the 60s sort of uh civil rights movements as like

there was a big discrepancy like there there there need there needed to be real change so it's like you they put the

foot on the metal and they um they accelerated and like and but now we're kind of at almost like cruising altitude

and i think it it's almost like um things will eventually gravitate toward a norm

if we just sort of um like i think there's enough momentum now is what i'm saying for the for the

final barriers to be broken explained to and like in evolutionary terms like for instance uh

hunter gatherers when you go and collect berries and uh you know you're looking at your the way the human mind looks at

things it's like you grab the biggest and freshest berries first because they're the ones that are right in front

of your eyes and they're obvious this is what i need to eat let's go for it but once and those would be the initial the

metaphors or those would be the initial problems you would see in the pro in society in the 60s what are the most obvious problems let's tackle them but

then as you start to clear out those things and you get your successes and equality and everything

you start looking for more berries but there can only be so many big varies and so then your eye finally tunes on for

the smaller berries and then you get those and you look for even more problems or more berries right so what's

happening is that the progression is creating i think almost this evolutionary pressure where we're looking for problems where they may not

they're not certainly not critical to the functioning of society and it's ever diminishing returns for the amount of

effort we're putting into them right you know and that can tear you apart yeah splitting hairs you know yeah sort

of thing yeah and in many ways you instead of looking at the major problems of the world which you know would be uh

totalitarian regimes you know arming nuclear proliferation um you know

environment like there's a lot of problems that we have you know it's almost it's almost like

these people got their social science degrees and set about justifying their education by creating

or amplifying problems where they didn't necessarily exist you know it's like they like you said there's no more big

berries to pick but they have to somehow make a living so it's like let's start like making up berries like um

yeah yeah that's a good enough actually than making virtual berries there are more berries left but we shall invent

some yeah yeah the invisible dots between points yeah so

um how did things how do you think things got this way uh

like where was the point like i i think of um like i started to clue into like i

don't know is this this is sort of a the line between virtue signaling and

genuine uh support for a cause i think is sometimes blurry like i remember uh during the iraq war like a lot of people

were against the iraq war and i remember um cities flaring up in protest uh at

the beginning of it like across the united states like the first the first iraq war was it the second one it was the second one where the protests

started flaring up uh they you know i remember i just remember the you know that i support i support the

troops or we support the troops the bumper sticker like everybody would get it i i still see it but yellow flowers i think they were putting on their

mailboxes to show everybody as well oh yeah yeah yeah some sort it was it was and at the time i thought what a nice

gesture yeah yeah simple it was fresh it was uh you know and kind of invigorating like oh that's such a kind thing well if

you're actually going to people's mailboxes i mean at least you're doing something about it or i think the people that lived in the houses were putting

them out in their mailbox to show we support our troops you know that was a nice oh okay okay yes i am with you sort

of thing um but i felt genuine fresh and new but i also thought that the whole i support

our troops like i it just seems like a very you know what it seems like propaganda like it seems like it's like

um what is that you know what does that mean well you could be using people's virtue to achieve a political end of

course because you're like basically so they invade iraq and then it's like um

you want to get the populace behind it so it's like well you can't say like i support the war or i support the you

know the bush administration yeah you have to support the troops right like flower yeah well and it came

from the backlash i think there was a lot of like i know when uh vietnam vets came back there was like a lot of backlash against because the war was so

unpopular is that somehow that translated into the vets being you know it's like they they still went they

still fought you know what i mean it's not their fault um but i think that people were really aware of that in the

iraq war so they the it was almost like this whole idea of like let's put out this i support the

troops you know trope and um yeah get ahead of the story and then it's like people are going to be

um you know they know you can't say a bad thing about that and but but really when you think of that what does that mean do

you financially support the troops do you just emotionally support them like do you support you don't want them to die the majority of it was having the

population behind whatever the government wanted yeah that's what really interests the

government right right and you're right like you're putting a flower they say i support this first world nation with the

largest military ever put together to go bomb one of the poorest places on earth right right right by that i'm going to put a flower outside my house

yeah yeah yeah it's something i mean well you think of now the the russian people are very supportive

of the war right so the war in the ukraine so it's like you know and we see that and was like

well that's crazy why would anybody like why would are they so brainwashed or whatever but it's like what were we

doing you know like true and i i'm not ukrainian nor russian and i don't know too many

um i i know some but not too too many of those peoples here in canada to get into the the problem is is that

these are complex geopolitical issues that have a lot of nuance and a lot of

muddy history you know and certainly for me a war

just by its by the fact that it starts is a failure it's a failure yeah previous negotiations and everything

else war is failure but i can see a russian person's point of view i may not accept it but i can

see when they would say well as an american you didn't like missiles in cuba

and you supported you know john kennedy john f kennedy yeah bombing cuba

so uh that's what we're doing with ukraine and they have to a degree a point you know yeah so now

if you have state controlled media and russia and they don't get the full story that's what happens yeah for sure behind

you that's their version of the flower right you know yeah and then the iraq war was the whole you know weapons of mass destruction

axis of evil so there's a reason um yeah you know i agree and i think most people would

agree like just wars was horrible uh you know and um but

it's the yeah it's it's the it comes back to it's like the it's like

the governments of the world i don't know if this is conscious or whatever or if it's an actual they do have a

propaganda arm that kind of does this but like it's like they like to prep the the populace for these things so like um

you know with the i support the troop i support the troops it's like um it's just a way to it's just an easy way

for the government to kind of get people behind the war because you can't go against you can't go against that

um but um you know and it's sort of it's almost sad to see

um whole populations fall victim to a kind of virtue signaling where it's this like dumbed-down version of a complex

issue and be and then sold to us to then sort of so we have a side to cheer on um

yeah it's um it works over and over again yeah yeah it does lend into the the topics of the day of like mass

psychosis mass formation and whatnot where you have free floating anxiety what is this war who's dying i don't

know are they going to attack us well the solution is and you're provided a single solution right right we will put

the flower in front of our house and we will put the sticker on our facebook and government will go there and do the single right thing and we will end this

yeah yeah and it just you repeat and as long as you don't have much um

narrative out there like for the nuance and the discussion to break and fragment society to different points of view over

it people will coalesce around the one provided answer and get behind it right it's very tribal

i remember um when bush was running for re-election and um i would talk to there

was this one friend of mine who's american and she was really she's very smart and um

and and she was going to vote for bush and i'm like and she's like well you know we're in the middle of a war you can't change

presidents in the middle of the war you don't want to do it i'm like yeah but he started the war like you know what i

like yeah like obviously yeah it's we'll mean amazing how it's the same thing with the vaccines and everything like that but

it's like um you know otherwise really intelligent people it's

sort of fall for this and are victims to this um whatever you want to call it like a mass

uh mass psychosis or information yeah yeah that's that's how it goes how it definitely goes um and again in that

case her single solution was the president and we're not switching the president because he's a solution to the problem we have at hand yeah yeah

and it probably works there's probably you know evolutionary processes that make this sort of work but it's being manipulated and the governments and the

corporations are very smart about how they use this and it is kind of like hacking your brain because now it

bypasses like you said your intelligence and hits you on a sort of really cerebral primal level

that you just like oh no this is my tribe and i got to do everything to protect my tribe yeah

you know whatever that may be and you may not want to admit that it's evil because it'll be presented in a nice yellow flower that's put in front of

your house but that's you're protecting your tribe because you're scared yeah right right

so yeah bringing it back to virtue signaling and stuff i it's uh all these things we're talking about are

the real tangible things but you know today so much of it is just um

it reminds me somewhere in my back of my head it reminds me of what it must have been like 200 years ago when everybody

went to a church to church on sunday simply because they were afraid in their small little towns other people would

notice they didn't go to church right right yeah you know and are you going for altruistic reasons do you enjoy are

you getting anything out of it or are you better off just not going and pretending you know pretending that and showing your truth that you don't really

care about this yeah so there's there's something there's something in our us as humans that um

we we are constantly signaling as humans we we

sort of huddle together and we want to be you know um you know i just think of us

or you know our ancestors in caves like huddling together like terrified of the dark terrified of going outside

and um [Music] you know i think that we've evolved this um

this kind of need to belong to a tribe so and i i think that's a big part of this is

like um people and because there aren't as many

institutions anymore like you know a lot of people live in cities so it's just this big sprawling area or

you know there's not really churches like even people's families are fairly um

disparate at this point like there's there's a lot of different elements to it and it's not quite as cohesive as maybe it used to be on average

um but uh and so so i think there's this kind of like almost yearning to belong to something and this can play out this

might be one of the things that kind of feeds into this where um you know if

if if you if you want to belong again now you can identify as somebody who is

you know somebody who um is against against racism or against like like

there's solutions that are offered to you you just have to you just have to say that you want to belong to the group

and then if you advertise that you belong to the group you're part of that group and of course every every one of these movements sort of needs an enemy

or a you know a lex luthor to go against so it's um you know you have that

double satisfaction of belonging to the group and feeling belonged and you're also like can point your fingers at somebody else and say you're the bad one

automatic acceptance there's no gatekeeper can you come to the group or not i'm in you're right corrected right

away and if it's the predominant view in the geographic area then all of a sudden you're on the winning team

you're like oh of course and you're right when you're living in a larger city where you're anonymous most of the time this would create a sense of

connection yeah that you just as you're walking you know down the streets where nobody knows your name you feel a sense

of connection because you're getting likes and tweets on something you posted in a virtual reality yeah which i wonder

i mean it must be a more hollow feeling now because you don't have the same like because a lot of it is

made easier by technology like there's not the same investment of your time but it's also

you know when you think of the old days and like everybody sort of belonged to um you know

i don't know like a church or like a just a community or whatever you would have these kinds of the same debates

we're having now online where people are tearing each other's throats out over the smallest of things they used to have

these kinds of debates amongst themselves like in um you know communities and or even your

work colleagues you that the water cooler wherever but these are people that you already know and you have a mutual respect for so like you're not

going to start like you know there's almost a um predisposition to kind of assume that

they're like well they're not well i know they're not crazy so i'll just listen to them and hear them out and then there's just it's more conducive to

like a compromise kind of chat the uh the virtual way of chatting is um

is horrific you know right we haven't it's just it's you're right all the underlying like for instance you're i'm standing in

front of you now and if we were disagreeing on something tremendously um at the end of the day you just

you do want the other person there's something about us as human so you do want the other person to appreciate you like you be recipe you know reciprocal

and they're in their tone towards you there's just something inherently human

about that how we communicate and that entire layer of that gets wiped out by talking

online yeah right so yeah unfortunately if you think of it

this way the majority of communication today is happening virtually virtu virtually and it's the worst form of

communication we've ever really devised in terms of actually being able to sess out a nuanced conversation yeah so

having the most conversation in the worst forums which brings you back that's right i'm such a fan of the way

and it just happened by fluke but how europe which most of it was you know put together before the car was invented

each town has its town square and a town square gives you a rallying point where you like today today at 6 00 p.m on

sunday we're gonna be talking about this sort of thing right and around the square you have your assortment of cafes

and bakeries and things you're going to need to be somewhere for three four hours so now you can all and you see the

people and it's very similar i would think to what it would be like saying well why go to a live music concert when

you can just get the dvd and sit at home in the comfort of your sofa people like to be around the noise of other

other people and probably even the noise of other like like-minded people very bringing back to like the clubs we used

to it brought everybody together despite all their differences because they were there for one common theme and so then when you have that common

theme might be you know the topic of the day but it's a going to be a rally at a square and those squares are accessible

by foot from your house that creates a radically different society and in north america we don't

have squares in our suburbs they might have little parquets and downtown urban cores and i almost wonder if it was done

by design because it really then isolates us you know i have a dream sometimes like how could you possibly

introduce the european town square into the geography of a suburban landscape in

north america and the only thing i can really come up with is that we do have schools and schools of public parks so

how hard would it be then to take a portion of the public park where you have your soccer field and your baseball diamond and carve out spend a couple

thousand dollars and carve out a mini podium with a couple like amphitheater-like seating and you could

actually have the school come out and you know that's where they would do their debates and you know the tradition of the aristotle and plato or whatnot

right right and you could then put like say your kids are into um some sort of a pilot they want to support a black lives

matter and they can literally go around to the houses in their neighborhood and drop off flyers in the surrounding houses and say you know what sunday

afternoon we're having a rally at that school yeah it's a big open grassy field come there let's do this or not even a

rally they could have their you know that's where they're going to be talking about it and like other people can ask questions about it so that people

because yeah like it's so polarizing like you don't know um you know you say like black lives matter and it's like people have such

different reactions to that and it's usually a like um like a strong reaction and and maybe

even for no reason but they it's like visceral either we have this strong reaction to certain i would be willing to bet in an organic setting like a

schoolyard a town square you're actually going to get then people who are not particularly interested in that point of

view but they want to hear it still for themselves and they want to see the people that support this yeah for

themselves what type of people are these people that are coming to this yeah what do they look like are they there if they're children in cotton candy or do

they have large beards and confederate flags right right like who are these people whereas in an online world you

can't simply tell who that person is you're chatting with yeah and if they were sitting in front of you you might actually find them repulsive or

a wonderful human just a completely different point of view you will not get that from virtual signaling online or

even talking online so we got we got almost like i don't know we almost have to regulate or

just encourage a whole new layer of uh civil discourse that is really um face

to face yeah no i it sounds like um an interesting idea and you have um because

you would be also kind of uh this would be kids that were doing it so it's like the next generation would

have that um they would have done that in school so it'd be more inclined to do it as well in the school yard like well we've

been doing this since grade eight yeah you know and i love that i know how to set up i know how to organize i know how many people can fit here we got the

little podium yeah voila all the parents come out what's going on what are they chatting about i don't think i like this

but i want to see for myself amazing yeah right then you go back to your houses in the kitchen put on some

coffee and talk about what the heck you just saw yeah interaction yeah that would be human interaction yeah um yeah

i was just as you were saying that i was also thinking like i think a lot of it um another

bad thing about um the virtual interaction is you have a lot of you know you say you know if you go to

see people in person you know you get a sense of what kind of person they are you talk to them all this but like

online you really don't even know if they're real people so it's like you might have you might have spam bots you might have uh

um yeah just bots that are advocating some idea or even if it's not bots maybe

it's somebody ostensibly portraying themselves as for example like um you know trump supporter or a

black lives matter supporter but they're actually working for the other team like macedonian troll farms right right right

oh can you imagine like how absurd this would be like imagine a presidential debate in which they didn't actually

stand in the same room and talk together but they were just chatting in some chat room and you had to follow the conversation right you would never be

able to just like understand who you wanted to vote for right even if it was your only two options and they were the

two parties and you've always been one party so if you can't understand that how are you gonna understand and unravel the nuances when 75 people are chatting

underneath a toronto star article about um the topic of the day yeah you couldn't you can't possibly get anything

out of it yeah yeah but i don't think we can like turn it off we just have to build around it

yeah you're right i don't think we can turn it off either now because i was just trying to think of how difficult it would be to get our generation or even

really you know most generations below us

to try to get them to just go out to a public sphere like everybody would be really skeptical about it like i you know if it was advertised as like come

on we're going to talk about uh black lives matter or something uh just trying to convert me yeah it's like what is

this like i don't have time for this or whatever but it's but if you get kids doing it then it's like you start getting that

you know and it's you know it stimulates interest in both the issues and the issues that

people would care about and also in talking to other people to talk about those issues and solve those problems

people can set it up as you know single speakers from just one point of view or or they can actually have you know from

two or three different points of view like share the space and just come and listen shakespeare in the park you know sort of right right

yeah i i you know it's it i think it was one of them socrates aristotle was like you know don't spend your energy you

know tearing down the uh old spend your energy building up the new yeah and it's true because you can't

tear down the old it's embedded it's it's there it's legacy just go around it

right create a whole new ecosystem of communication right around it and people will follow if it's truly better you

know i i don't go out like in the park to like socialize like i'm not a very social person but

um every time that i do go to like you know a play in the park or like a high park

or like um any you know i don't know skating or whatever um i usually have a

really good time and i usually feel stimulated i'm like i come back i'm like i was worth it like that felt good um

yeah it's almost like i feel almost starved for that kind of uh it's everything we're meant to be there's fresh air there's human

communication you're taking a bit of a walk you know you get distracted you can look at the beautiful nature around you you come back to the focused ideas and i

i'll be willing to bet you would get more out of two hours being in that sort of environment intellectually than you would eight

hours in front of the computer right yeah it's also ironically more efficient yeah

yeah i think um you know talking about the evolution of of

how we sort of found ourselves in this situation where um virtue signaling has has become so um

prevalent um for sure you know as as we've said like has something to do with technology and

how easy it is to just sort of like be a good person um

uh by just sitting on your couch and like you know liking a tweet or something like that

uh but i think another well you sort of you you hinted at it with your um

um people cultivating their their bios for

job potential job interviews or whatever like the average person didn't used to have a public image or have to worry about a

public image like they had to make sure they weren't you know they didn't do anything really horrible but exactly yeah but they never used to

have to worry about things they would say to other people even you know if they drink drank too much or whatever

they say say the wrong thing it's like okay they need to patch things up with that person or whatever but now it's just like a permanent record so it's

um you you have to be more careful about what you say anywhere

online or off because you know offline everything is just so um you know there's cameras everywhere

you never know who's listening why are you just pull the donald trump elon musk card and be like i've just always been

crazy right you're not going to be able to pull out any single tweet you know like no the whole thing

is just like that dear like me or not yeah because because if we do that um you know censorship

leads to self-censoring because you see people getting censored well i don't want that to happen to me

yeah and you in turn self-censor and if you don't have in that open honest dialogue like you said

on your online public life let's say where you feel comfortable let's say is you know your first and last name on

facebook chatting underneath the toronto star and you say something that perhaps lands the wrong way and i mean it but

like that's your name and you commented it publicly that's it you're toast yeah you won't want to make that comment

so you can't even have this virtual conversation any honest thing everybody's just picking the side that they think is gonna be the predominant

prevailing force in the uh place they live and stick with that one thing yeah you know

um you know as you said i was conscious of the fact that we're doing this podcast but only giving our first names

because we're authentic enough uh you know we'll use the right names but uh i i don't uh

but you know you never know what's gonna happen so the same just like hedging your bats a little um

but i you know i'm not a football guy but is it kaepernick is that what that's his name

and i don't know the level of quality of player he was at all but i found i didn't follow the story

tremendously but i have something to say about it so assuming assuming kneeling is considered

a bad thing towards anthems because i've heard both positive and negative it can also be done in a form of reverence you know but let's just assume because that

was how the general media took it it was a negative thing um perhaps i'm old school but i'm going to

tie this to exactly what we're talking about virtue signaling because there he's showing he's showing a certain virtue that he wants to signal to

everybody so he's upset about something even though he's at work at the moment right it's not his private life

he's in his place of occupation in his uniform with the people paying for them in the stands or behind them he's on

he's at work right and he decides no i wish to now signal my personal virtue whilst at work

okay so you brought your personal stuff into the workplace what do we used to say when we were growing up you know

leave all your problems at home when you come to work it's work time now right yeah it's it's a different switch but

conversely so i for me personally i would disagree like if i'm paying you on my payroll i ask you to do these things please do

them we'll talk about it but if not this is what i need you to do at work but i would also draw the line that the boss

doesn't have any right to then follow them in their private lives if he wishes to go to every rally in neil god bless

him that's his right to do in his private life and as a boss i cannot talk about his private life unless of course it's some egregious thing where it

breaks the law you know not because it's perceived in the wrong way so we've instead of

we've brought our personal lives into work and we've allowed work to follow us in our personal lives yeah as opposed to

delineating them when you're at work you're at work man this is what the boss wants you to do do you like it stay you don't like it you can leave right but

also the boss does not have the power or shouldn't have the power in my opinion to follow you outside of your work and

track your social media posts and see if you're staying you know congruent with the philosophy of the company you work

for did they do that the nfl did they follow him outside yeah like i don't think they

had an issue because it was the all the hot topic was him bringing it into work right right people do get fired for

things they do outside of correct yeah they're unrelated to their work yeah right and i don't think that's fair

either well yeah i mean actually just bring it back to the podcasting again like i mean um i was telling you before this started

that you know there's some stories i would have about you know my employer but um

you know i probably wouldn't say that it was that i wouldn't speak specifically about them or name or anything but it's like

you know i i'm at least conscious of the fact that there could be backlash against something if if it kind of got

out um that i was you know speaking in even a um slightly

bad way about something um but it's interesting how i mean i

guess we've just as a society never really been in this position before like we've never had our private life so screw so the

ability to have it so scrutinized but see if this is an unstoppable momentum

that the corporation you work for you have fear that they may see something one day and then you know pull you aside

and say something to you and then people who work for the government certainly feel like this

the only person that can really then have the freedom and i'm lucky enough i just stumbled to have stumbled into the script i own my own business and other

than having maybe 30 people show up and protest me in front nobody can really do anything i have such extreme

independence both at work and outside of work because i own my own business well should we not

be encouraging more independent business owners because that action create encourages therefore more independent thought throughout society yeah oh for

sure for sure um but i would say that that that wouldn't necessarily be true because um you know the i i think of

that guy the smokehouse guy who wanted to go against the mass mandates

or whatever and like jameson was that jamie i forget i can't i can't remember his name but um but like you know if you

are vocal enough about something or if you don't have the right um

position or it's not obvious that you're that you're standing by some principle that most

people would want you to stand by your it'll affect your business like i wonder how many people have you know

if you're you know adamson barbecue that's what it was called oh adam's right right okay

yeah but he had a greater he had a greater ceiling in which to maneuver there like they literally had to bring horses

and what is the deal with the horses like i so i was driving to work the other day and i saw this like cop on a horse huge

a front like and um just walking in the bike lane like um you know and i'm i'm driving and it's like brush hour and

just they're just kind of going not a trot it would be like a i don't know what a trot is like a real slow just walking the horse is just like grazing

almost and it's um and i'm like what is the point of this like there's no practical reason why

they should be on a horse like they're not gonna catch more criminals they've got the horses like you know um

on the bike lane the bikes can't get around them because it's like and they say they have to go at his pace and it's

like what is what is what benefit is this and the horse doesn't like it the horse is like why am i not in a field like why is this guy sitting on me like

so what is the reason for it i don't know you can't be undercover under a horse either no i know

sctv yeah right yeah

this you know size and weight matters in height so it's got to be something to that but yeah it's it's it's a very

archaic sort of way of handling things yeah like i get the whole like cavalry thing like you know i

like yeah if it was a war but it's like he's just patrolling downtown toronto and i don't know it really just doesn't

make any sense to me but bringing it back to adam's bbq he had to push it quite far before before before they brought in the horses where someone else

could like just one or two tweets let's say and you've lost your job so he had a greater room to maneuver in

his own personal opinion than somebody who was you know running for a corporation which brings me back to the

topics of the day lockdowns and whatnot and how you know it was this time last year that small businesses in canada

were still continuously closed since november right and costco was open the whole time

yeah unbelievable it seemed ludicrous then and even tenfold now that we know

more and certainly they knew the data back then these people are very smart they know the rate of infections and everything else

so um it does you might have to wonder if all the new bills that are being passed

uh federally and one would just passed provincially in ontario bill 100. if you look at the direction in which these

bills are skewing they're always about tightening control control of what you can say online and

we can debate all the little nuances the point is they're moving in a certain direction it's more tightening more restrictions more censorship

less freedom if you want to call it that less room to maneuver and part of that was also just how

disproportionately small businesses were shut down while the big corporations were allowed to stay open it's a virus

it spreads it affects everyone so i i wonder sometimes this may get a little conspiratorial but is there a war

against free speech and is there a war against small business because small business allows you to have far more

free speech than if you worked for a corporation and it's just simply a restriction-ish

movement in a direction that um they just don't want society going in that way and they may be playing a long game

i'm talking something that may happen slowly over a hundred year period

i did mention one day i don't know if you saw this about a year ago amazon is opening up

hair salons in the uk amazon branded hair select big business is getting into the

business of small business right unbelievable and i remember mentioning this to some clients and a

few of them were like well that's fantastic imagine they can buy the whole plaza and they'll have an amazon cafe and amazon dry cleaners amazon and then

the pay rates might be better they'll have hr departments and i can see it from a simple algorithmic point of view why that might

be better for society right yeah but inevitably though it means you are working for someone else

and you will have less independence yeah yeah well and it's just this consolidation of power i mean

like how big can amazon get and um i mean we all want jeff bezos to have more money i know that is definitely

important to most people but yeah yeah and you know the funny thing is like i like amazon like i like aws i

like the amazon um the convenience of amazon is is great like i i couldn't say

a bad thing about it like even the return policy but like it's just always dangerous to have

um like you need the independent this is the thing fragmentation is good yeah and and centralization even

if it adds more convenience has to be dealt with very carefully because that's just that's a

consolidation of so much power that if it were to ever turn negative

you would have very little recourse right yeah which brings us back to bitcoin

um and so all this virtue signaling like the reason why we're here today all this virtue saying it's it's for naught

because it's not it's like esg scores um are you familiar with esg scores

uh are they the social credits yes yeah so they're out there oh yeah the ethic um environment social governance

governance okay and you know it's just not to go too long on it but you know you have companies like lockheed martin

who build missiles that kill people right have a higher esg score than tesla as if he's going to like launch cars on

the people's heads or something right you know yeah it's uh it's fake right yeah and it may sound good it may sound

good uh on the surface but um it's not backed up by anything

substantial well i've i've also read that there is um that is used as a weapon like you can

get there's something similar to the esg score uh whereby you know certain groups

that have you know very benign sounding names uh or positive sounding names will

um but you know are actually fairly hard to distinguish between just well-funded lobbying groups in terms of the amount

of money they have coming into them and and the pressure they can exert on you

know companies and institutions to ensure that their practices are consistent with whatever the ideology is

that they are that that that group is subscribing to um

but i know uh you know johns hopkins for example got into some trouble with one of them um after receiving

excellent scores on their tally sheet um in prior years you know one year they had uh

uh i forget the doctor's name i think mchugh um issued a um did a study with some

colleagues on um you know gender and sexual orientation um

you know very um i didn't actually read the report but from my understanding it was a fairly um you know fact based just

you know just following the science kind of uh report and also fairly um uh non-incendiary from my from my

interpretation of what i've heard about it um but it you know this this report was sort of claimed as tran

um there was a claim that it was transphobic so they demanded the one of these groups demanded that johns hopkins

um condemned the report as transphobic as well and johns hopkins position was well you know they were sort of i think

playing you know um weren't necessarily standing by their doctor but they were um

they were sort of not getting involved and um you know these these kinds of things it

really is it's tough because um there may be some actual benefit to

having groups that monitor these kinds of um you know that companies don't go um

you know sort of run amok but it uh it really is a tightrope that you're

walking because you know they can also have an ideology which isn't not necessarily consistent with science or

not consistent with um even what the majority of people would consider um

uh reasonable so it's um it's the codification of virtue

yeah the codification of one thing totalitarian societies have always been good at is data recording you know

they're immensely good at this this is how they tried to control and centralize everything so when you see the central light going back to amazon

centralization efficiencies uh now you even have people's virtues codified you are centralizing

all the data so you can become more efficient yeah and um i can see why a certain

humans think like this to a degree because like look at all the inefficiencies in the world how much food goes to waste how much electricity

just gets thrown you know uh we sell it at a loss so we don't because we over produce like these

inefficiencies are creating problems on the earth and so when you try to then the problem is when you try to organize the planet

as one giant efficient amazon warehouse you're going to squish that which is why

we exist in the first place which is that independent thought the new ideas the innovations

and it will suffocate itself in the end yeah a little bit of inefficiency i think breeds um adaptive adaptiveness

and creativity because someone's like this doesn't work we need a better way and then you have 15 different companies

trying to solve a problem rather than just one giant company you know now i've heard they're going to try to get around these then what

happens to be inefficiencies of centralized totalitarian states with you know algorithms or whatnot and just you

know let the computer decide which it may work but something just every every regime in human history

promises like this time will be different yeah and it never is

so um what effect

does the preponderance of virtue signaling have like is this a really bad thing for society is this something

we're going through is it a temporary phenomenon or is it um is it something

that's really harming society wow i guess it's a leading question well i guess

spoiler alert it is yeah so for all the the the fakeness of

it and hollowness of it is this actually having a real

a real effect and then by default is it actually hollow because it's helping it yeah

that's a that's a really tricky question yeah i would say so because it changes people's you know just it's so boring

but it brings comes back to people's politics and it will change the way they vote and you know yeah you change what people think you change the way they

vote the way the way people vote you get different leaders different leaders different countries so you know you wonder so i guess i would

say one of the like a positive effect of it at least if we even start there it's like

so let's take the ukrainian um you know i support ukraine or whatever the tagline is or i support the

current thing right right right whatever it is i'm in because i'm one of those guys and you better like me because i

got a mortgage debate right

so you know um as you just said it does influence policy like you have you know

governments are affected by this if everybody has a ukrainian flag ice for ukraine uh for good or for bad um

um and and you know like that that will that will affect

whether the american government is going to send weapons to ukraine i mean i assume it will i guess i don't know that

for sure but look at what you just drew the line to the virtue signaling can lead to whether

a bullet lands on somebody's head or not yeah but well i don't i don't know that

that's true but it will send the ammunitions will get sent as a result of public pressure due

to the um mass virtue signaling campaigns let's

say and therefore you know that ends up in the hands of somebody who shoots somebody well that that is assuming

though that the governments are the the public pressure would be effective in doing that and it's not

just you know maybe they're making decisions on something else although it doesn't look that way it does look like or to be a little nefarious the

government cues the people to look like they want to be behind such a thing because the government themselves want to send the weapons to begin with right

right you really want this don't you yeah wink wink it was like during world war ii like they you know trying to get the um

weapons sent to britain without um trying to aid britain in the fight against uh the nazis without actually

entering the war like there was that whole like dance but um yeah i think that you know potentially for something

depending on what you're talking about like something like you know overall the environmental movement like i know you

know greta thunderberg is kind of a you know a bit of a um

a meme at this point but uh you know like i think that there's something to be said for her and i know

that that kind of is a lot um i think a lot of people have really vilified her and i think there's a reason i get

it like she's over it's an oversimplification of everything and you know it's kind of being used

in many ways but uh she's somebody who really did stand up said what she was thinking and um you

know was listened to um by uh you know a lot of different people and is now sort

of an icon of the sort of nouveau environmentalism movement to it it did promote awareness like i

think that politicians are more afraid of um casting the wrong policies because you

know this little girl is going to stand up and point their fingers at them and say well you did you said you were going to do this and you didn't do it again

just to play devil's advocate because i don't know much about her origin story but was she involved like who who funded

her to become that what she is like who found this young talent let's say and brought them

to the forefront i'm sure there's thousands of kids that feel the same way why her

um i i don't know i i think she um if i remember her story it was um

she [Music] maybe said something to her teacher or then she then she didn't get the right

answer so she went to like the local politician or something and then it's kind of the story he got picked up i'm

i'm just suspicious anytime it doesn't feel organic to me and

maybe it comes back again man maybe we're just kind of stumbling into something today but

again she's almost symbolically presented as the singular solution or at least her

way of thought towards the whole green problem it kind of comes back to like mass psychosis to me we have this young

wonderful kind um emotionally charged hyper literate

young girl if you open your mouth and say anything against her

you are a bad person yeah it's for sure politicized um but i

would say that in terms of virtue signaling this is an example of because i don't think that the like i

you know i think that you know i think that the problem with global warming and everything is is much

more complex than just we need to reduce greenhouse gases and you've actually reduced it to one single person like

listen to greta well but i think that there's she was sort of the catalyst for

like sort of a new urgency in this like well and the ipcc reports which are you

know spelling doom but like uh you know this has been something that's been going on for decades there really

hasn't been like things have been moving along slowly but we're now at a critical point that's we've known about this for

but are we truly at a critical point well and we're getting to like environmental stuff but according to the

science we are doing we've got 12 years for the last 20 you know 30 40 years you know the version of eight to twelve

years before things hit the fan um i'm not i'm not a climate skeptic i'm just skeptical of the politics around

such a uh yeah such a mechanism and so then when it just seems so well like

highly polished and i don't want to say she's rehearsed because i think her her charm is her

lack of feeling rehearsed right but her image is so perfect

it makes me skeptical yeah i can see or is it just that that's why she was the

kid who was chosen by journalists or whatever amongst all the others they're like she was perfect so it's like let's

focus on her i even let her speak for a minute i hate to sound like i love children

if i had kids i'd want them to speak and think just like her but in the in the larger context of what's going on like

this is something for scientists to sit down and argue about as science should be and debate all the things back and

forth and the reductionist of it is what um seems overly simplified to me well i think that's the thing though the

scientists have been debating this and and there's been papers written about it and we you know the ipcc reports its

thing every you know five years or whatever it is and it's just been getting progressively more dire and

nobody's really nobody was really doing much about it like there was you know there were overtures toward it and people would make targets and this and

that and then they'd move the targets and like um look i'm not i'm not like greta's biggest fan or anything i'm just

saying that like the fact that she like i i do think that global warming is a problem and

you know i i we could even have a show debating that or whatever like i mean i don't claim to be an expert but it's

like you know i've read the reports and i've read what some experts have said you know i know there's another side to that story too and like um but but it's

but it's it seems to me that there's a problem like you can see it um

you know what like i don't want to go down that whole that's a whole show and i've got to be prepared for it yeah the virtue signaling of her her

such it's it's almost like a joan of arc moment yeah yeah actually i can see the drone of our computer that feels to me

like such a well polished um symbol for the world to get behind that

it's almost too perfect and therefore i'm like pause what am i watching here

yeah i think it's important to do that for for everything yeah if it's as presented then that's

phenomenal like i think it's such a great thing i'm just a little skeptical because it's just such a perfect like

you know like i said a joan of arc rallying cry of a young girl from scandinavia i believe somewhere she's

got the cute accent really literate intensity honesty integrity when she speaks like i

don't have a bad thing to say about her as a person just her application how it's been

utilized for these means i'm not just if i was somebody that was pushing an agenda it's certainly somebody had one

on my side right yeah no that's fair enough but in terms of in terms of uh

virtue signaling and not to you know relegate what she's doing to just being

empty whatever but you know you like to think that you know girls of that age or you know kids of

that age are not extremely well informed about what's actually happening so like so to some

extent that is a virtue signal but it's but but at the same time this is sort of i i in my opinion this is having a

positive effect it's an example of something where somebody is virtue signaling but it is having a positive effect like um

you know the same thing with the ukrainian flags it's like you get that pressure maybe the government is making decisions based on that and i don't know

if that's a good thing or a bad thing maybe we should leave well uh well enough alone there but i don't i i i

don't know one way or the other all i'm saying is like if the idea is you're showing support for a cause and it's

influencing government action then maybe they can have a positive effect um so

you know and then um i i guess i'm just trying to counter it because you know there's a lot of negative things about virtual signaling

but the there is kind of a positive effect to some extent i mean it's

very empty when you see you know people uh you know just like

just these like tweets that take like two seconds to send you know are popping in a um you know

a picture of i don't know like there's i mean there's

there's so many of them and yet i can't think of a single one right it can have a real effect but there's just so much obvious especially when they're people

you know personally fake virtue signaling yeah you know on an everyday and i have friends who are atheists

militant atheists die hard atheists you know just as chris as easter has

just passed you know they will openly mock christianity on their facebook page of like the pillsbury doughboy coming

out of the cave going he has risen and i laugh it's funny i can laugh at my own

religion no problem there's plenty of problems you know and i enjoy the complexity of the problems

but the same type of person will then post a picture of a sikh in a really

outrageously large turbine very ornate because we're at an indian restaurant

and they'll post this really cool photo but right this devout seek

right right and like really you're just trying to use the word devout to to show that you're not mocking the turban so

much but you really want the whole world to see how crazy urban looks because it's just like the grand poobah of all grand prix yeah it's amazing the turbine

it's a beautiful it's a beautiful um ornate cultural thing but the word devout is signifying that they're like i

don't want to get in trouble for this because right man knows what he believes in and that's cool with me yeah but you'll openly mock

christianity because that's kind of open season you can do that these days yeah you're fake you're fake and you're just

doing that because you don't get fired from your job yeah but you still want to have the room to mock so i guess it's your point i guess it's

a mixed it's a mixed bag you're gonna have you know some positive effects some you know virtuous uh

behavior patterns um whether they're true you know you gotta admit like you know if you if you

talk the talk maybe you'll walk the walk so if you keep talking about something virtuous maybe eventually if not you're

yourself those around or your children will do better but you know and this gets back to um

using this type of like these people who are sort of um

um could be accused of virtue signaling like the the average one of these people

don't really know what they're doing like they don't know what they're signaling about really they don't really understand the issue yeah so

you have um so what happens when you have a government or um an industry or something use that tool um the tool

being like it's like using a a botnet you know you just have like a bunch of listen to robots yeah yeah i know you're

doing it subconscious it's like just the way we talk on a sunday morning as i open my phone and have my breakfast of

course i will write this sort of thing that's right will get me likes and that'll make me feel better and my boss if they do see it will feel good

about me and you don't even realize you're doing it it just becomes routine part of your life yeah that part's

terrifying because it really like you said about your friend earlier it bypasses somebody's intelligence yeah yeah it's habitual

yeah and you get somebody you know some oz behind the curtain that is um decides

that they want to use that um uh large um aggregate of of people to push some

agenda because we're still in democracy and like votes are still it's still like the majority of people that vote in a

given riding or whatever all is what gets people elected so you know they you steer that mass towards some

target that you want either taken out or elevated then

you've effectively um surpassed democracy and or bypassed democracy yeah it does remind me to a large degree like

you're like is there something like you said oz behind a curtain or sometimes i feel like it's a little more simple

than that it's very reminiscent of number one cars from the early early 1900s and they had the crank in the

front and yeah they crank it a few times but once they got the engine up and running it was self-sustaining right i

feel like that's what it's like you get a movement going you kind of do your push um you know you could say no like uh

for instance like a well of course we update our passports every year and we update our driver's licenses and we have

to update make sure our vaccines are updated it's just natural the way we live no no it's not natural we never did

this before what are you talking about but but it just becomes the subconsciously normal way of behaving

because you've done it long enough it's habitual right and they don't have to invest their time money or get caught

out for creating something let's call it fake let's say or unnecessary because now it's just a

self-sustaining mechanism and then you know the government contracts between uh pharmaceuticals and what it continue forever and ever more because it's just

a new way of doing business yeah yeah so that that part terrifies me because you know why do we pay income taxes i don't

know my parents paid them my grandparents paid them right we just kind of pay them it's just a self-sustaining mechanism at this point

you know yeah yeah those things kind of get like um inserted somewhere along the the way and you know the government or

whomever that inserts them almost has to bear the brunt of it for a few years and then it just kind of passes into

um you know like for sure after the covet pandemic things are going to change like it is a way of

forming culture yeah and maybe maybe this is the key here like maybe like virtue signaling is the

initial seed that germinates into forming a whole new culture and it just becomes organic at that point i remember

like i had lived in greece for 10 years and people used to say well you know we had our issues because we were underneath the ottoman empire for 400

years so that's why we like passing envelopes of cash under the table because that's how business was done and

just because the ottoman empire disappeared didn't mean the way we got used to doing business disappeared with

it right it's just the way we do things yeah so you know when you when you lose your

culture or your culture shifts as we're saying you know through

you know different um virtue signaling turning into creating a whole new culture um it can set you on a trajectory that

you know it may take a thousand years to shift it back um this is the danger of virtue signaling

because um you plant enough seeds you may just like a forest veer off in a completely like a million different

directions of which you're not quite sure why you're even going there to begin with yeah you and you've lost

track of the breadcrumbs as to how to find your way back uh like how many times in here like how did

the ancient greeks do it what about the romans you know was it was it simply that they lost military battles and

therefore collapsed or did the culture within these cities shift into such a way that therefore they lost the battles

and they just never came back yeah and they've never regained you know the

presence they once had so we have to be really careful of these things because um

we maybe we think sometimes things come in cycles but perhaps not once it's done it's done you had your moment

yeah well yeah and every great civilization falls maybe they fall for similar

reasons it's almost like a lassitude where you know with rome it was like well rome i guess couldn't handle all

its empires but like you get this sort of comfortableness and um

you know in the western world right now it's like uh we we hit a level a level of comfort that

um it enabled us and emboldened us to

start you know picking all the small berries once again and you're you know

all the big issues that are actually still out there got ignored and we were we find ourselves obsessing and

fetishizing over things that are um you know big picture just not important

or not as important and you know you just are amplifying those those those little

kernels to be something that they're not so while spending money and time on that the barbarians are amassing at the gate

you know we're so inward looking thinking what else can we do to be better you know um oh man we are so

culturally civilized so we thought look at all the errors of our ways you know and you start almost eating like atrophy

onto yourself and the barbarians are barbarians they're they're full of let's call it testosterone

they're on the gate and they're hungry right and so have you ever heard of the theory um i

believe i heard it first proposed by camila paliga i think i'm pronouncing her name correctly a professor in the

states um second wave or earlier wave feminist uh i believe lesbian professor fantastic

amazing yeah you listen to her and you're just like you'll be in awe but she was the first i heard point out that if you look

at the early statues of both ancient greece and early rome the statues of the

men were robust and strong and full of action and dynamism

and as you get to the later stages of each culture and you look at the male statues they're a lot more metrosexual a

lot more effeminate things were progressing let's say and merging and she's like you can see it

even in the art of the culture that it's going into direction that when

the barbarians amass at the gate do you have what it takes in order to keep your culture self-sustaining and it just sort

of eats on itself and to bring it into modern terms you might say that in our culture today and some of the scandals

around um you know disney creating uh was it they said the last week 50 of their

characters going forward will be lgtbq right sort of variations which

certainly 50 of the culture isn't that or netflix had some tv shows that were

obviously controversial too i heard about that you know people actually unsubscribed because they couldn't believe they were supporting right such

stuff so you do see it even today in our art you know the controversy yeah and

it's hard to defend because obviously you do see issues as you get better at examining

you know empirically your own civilization things that are wrong and it's natural to want to fix things that are wrong but in doing so you might be

taking away that which is good listen to uh douglas murray's new book we're just talking about it before but

um there's a part i haven't read well the book's not out yet but um um i'll definitely be getting it but the um he

was kind of talking about it and touching on some stuff on podcast and he was saying how um

he talked about gratitude and that's almost could be the antidote for some of this

stuff is like if people started experiencing gratitude for what they have rather than um you know what they

don't have or sort of trying to pick apart um all the problems with something and uh it sounds trite but it's it's he sort

of illustrated it by um in visit envisaging a uh you know a

great painting or like a you know take a last supper or something like that and you could you could look at

that or i i think he did michelangelo's david or something so it's like you know

you could talk about you know it's almost like the the

sort of post-modernist of today would look at look at something like that and think okay well how much were the people

paid that did this like um you know what does this mean and what does this mean about like is he mocking you know what

you know what does this mean about sexuality what does this mean about like why is it a male like there could be a million questions about um

um why are they why is the day of glorifying this um you know uh sort of a you know white

male figure as opposed to something else or it might wasn't you know maybe saying something personally about michelangelo like

didn't he have you know slaves in his time or something i don't know if he did or not but um

they're like those are the kind of things they're focusing on rather of just marveling at the beauty of this thing

like you can always find something to pick about um anything you can pick apart anything like you look at all the cultures around

us and uh you know it's um it's throwing it's throwing rocks in

glass houses like um there's no perfect culture there's no perfect culture and

like you know once you accept that and you just think to yourself yeah sort of warts and all like there is

definitely bad stuff in the past and there's bad stuff now too but it's like you know things are progressively

getting better and isn't like life is about you know experiencing beauty and wonder and like

you know being happy you know like don't you want to um marvel in the beauty of the now

instead of uh focusing on all the things that we need to still repair because you'll never get to the end of that it's very nihilist and i

wonder those who embrace this sort of philosophy earliest the early adopters of it just quite simply hate themselves and

they're projecting their own their own personal issues onto the society at large i didn't succeed in life because

of this or i didn't succeed in life because of that or i or i exceeded or i feel guilty for my my

uh accomplishments and i got them because of this like this yeah it usually comes

internal you know i don't know this might be some bizarre oversimplification but you know what the expression you cut off the leg

to save the body but i feel like now we're we're killing the body because we feel guilty for the leg right right like

that's not going to solve things yeah and yeah and don't think by restarting from scratch you're going to build a

better society it's much better i think to take that which you have and just keep

keep the good stuff and eliminate the bad stuff but whilst eliminating the bad stuff don't also

destroy that which made you great to begin with yeah and i think it's important for uh

societies to have like um to be able to look back in the past and

have heroes that they can identify with and um

um history that they can be proud of like the ancient greeks they did it right like the heroes were

flawed characters you had to go to hercules you had to do his 12 labors but the other day he's still hercules and those 12 laborers

were punishment for what he had done i believe like murdering his wife and child or something like this right right

and the gods were completely flawed yeah yeah you know like it's it's yet they were still gods and they were still

heroes you know the complexity of what it meant to be a human is right there in front of our eyes yet

we're looking for this almost puritism this purity like everything must be pure these days

yeah you know and if it's not if you you know i love this artist's music but my god they've said a couple things and i

just need not to burn every cd they've ever done because i just can't listen to it and disassociate it right if you went

that through every architect doctor writer there would be very little left

on earth no i and and not to make the um obvious parallelism with uh with fascism but

that sounds like what the nazis did you know it's like uh somebody says a few things they didn't like and it's like let's

erase their existence you know the name of cleanliness right right like they were trying to in a sense burn to cleanse that which was

no which was impure yeah and they were that's yeah that was their whole thing i believe was just trying to create a sort of pure race and

master race and like how do you define pure like pure perspective what you want things that are not pure aren't you not

a virtuous person purity is next to godliness we are doing things the correct way right but you can

take something that sounds great and go to the extremes and you know it becomes the most horrific thing of all time yeah and i

really feel like some of the you know the diversity inclusion equity um equal uh equal

equal opportunities fantastic but equal outcomes they all sound wonderful on the surface

just like purity must have sounded well 75 years ago but taken to their extremes they will destroy society

yeah and that's where i think virtue signaling is being politicized and weaponized

well you mentioned um um you know the the dei diversity including

um i prefer die yeah they made it so easy easier to

remember right but um you know this is being practiced in workplaces everywhere in my own

workplace i have this going on as well and there's just a there's a real

you know when did the workplace become a play like this isn't like human resources you know you you can't say

anything about you know you can't treat somebody bad like i get that like you want people to feel comfortable in the workplace this isn't this is a whole

agenda you know this is a whole um philosophy this is a this is a department you know

what i mean this is something where it's like there are meetings about this like there's a whole committee about uh

you know we there are statements you need to say about um um land

acknowledgements for indigenous people it's like you know this is a this is a place of business right like i mean i get the

idea of wanting to sort of um bring awareness to these things and like companies trying to be progressive in

the uh by being like look we're doing this is a good thing we're letting everybody feel comfortable but the truth

is people don't feel comfortable helping helping the downtrodden helping

helping the black man let's say shouldn't include hurting the white man right right and i think everybody

including a black person can agree with that and if you were to take a national poll and ask them do you truly believe

in this sort of stuff i'm more than willing to bet people don't but it's ideology before

hope again planting the seeds to create a new culture now to play the antithesis part of that

um because there is something we said as i was saying earlier if some of these cultures indigenous and i shouldn't say

if these cultures that had their culture um these peoples that had their culture obliterated let's say like the

indigenous and black people from africa um by including them as

you know as 100 equals which of course they should but then

in trying to create that they're then creating them better than

um perhaps you're trying to help them as a society rebuild that culture which

they lost and therefore once they feel totally 100 percent included in everything and in

every way they can actually rebuild their cultures and become one with society as complete equals like i can

understand that point of view because but i just find it it's a little like infantilism because it's like you

guys they're also adults and they can figure this out as well it's 2022 and people come here as immigrants and refugees with far less

and achieve in a shorter period of time far more so if i if i ever got hired because of

my skin color i would be appalled yeah yeah

i would be appalled and i would say that as and i say that as a child of my father was an immigrant here who came at 17 and 17 years of age if somebody had

hired him because he was an immigrant who had you know who looked different and had a different last name and religion he would have

been appalled you better take me for me as a human being you know so i don't find it actually

empowering on an individual level and not on a population level but i can understand why they think like that

yeah i think that it's very um [Music] you know what i think that there's

there's some psychology behind it that just feels rotten like i've been in meetings where

people will cry at them um and these aren't like this is just

this isn't like we're really getting into the weeds of like what happened with the indigenous experience this is just like talk having the land

acknowledgement saying that and like talking about just vaguely about oppressed people and and and it triggers

people to start crying i mean never mind how inappropriate that is for the workplace but like

what what is why is it getting to that point for some people you know who aren't even who aren't even by the way of the group that

they're talking about like we're talking about like people who are just relatively you know privileged people anyway who are um like are you that

empathetic like do you feel that much empathy for the problems of the world that that you're gonna cry about it every

time controlling your emotions in the workplace is a uh admirable attribute you know if

somebody was going through a divorce at home you know as personal like one one degree

of separation as opposed to several generations degrees of separation and they were bringing their problems into the workplace

everybody would agree don't do that yeah leave your problems at the door when you come to work now it's time to work

so but now we're bringing in historical problems into the workplace of many degrees of separation and everybody's

kind of looking around going what the this can't be the way we run businesses here yeah you know i don't

know it feels fake and i i'll actually go deeper i i wonder and this probably is controversial but i wonder if these

programs like diversity inclusion equity and whatnot is some

the the impetus the germination of that thought somewhere feels very similar to me as

the type of um person who supported that type of thinking today is similar to somebody

that actually was so pure in thought so pure in soul as you're appointing you know a person who's crying over something that

happened hundreds of years ago you know as that purity

is the type of person is like well you know we just can't have these africans or just impure people you know i only

like purity i you know it can be utilized in different directions right so that person is so pious today about

these sorts of things as you're talking about diversity inclusion yeah that piety is the same sort of

used 200 years ago in an opposite direction that actually created segregation

yeah like pious yeah you know about their instead of saying you know what the world's been a mess it's always been

a mess this is my new black neighbor 200 years ago and he does some things

different for me and i'm certainly do some things different from him and i don't always agree with him he doesn't know excuse me and that's okay

yeah it's messy and it's okay today we're looking as we look for purity back then in a segregation form we're looking

for sort of purity today in a modern inclusionary form and it's that extreme version of purity that scares the hell

out of me because you have to accept the world's a messy place and that's all right yeah

and you know it for me it really comes back to that thing about um that mutual friend of ours with the the the leather

jack with no racism no homophobia no uh sexism or whatever it was i can't remember the third one but it was like

um you know this was like i it was like five or six years ago so it's like there's no there's no courage

needed for that you're just parroting like what is every major corporation every

media outlet you know every government is like openly saying and it's like getting into grunge music in 1999 right

right too late to the party man i love flannel yeah and it's just um

you know it's like it's it's assumed that that you know like who who who who does think that racism is a good thing

you know what i mean who is really like and it's not that i don't think that there are there i know that there are

there like the way i look at is we're all racist to some degree right so but like it's a messy place the world yeah

yeah there's all cultures look at the other with a little bit of because when they don't have enough by other i mean than

someone who you haven't had a chance to interact with a lot it can be skin color it could be culture it can be language

it can be geographic it can be politics with skepticism and then hopefully through time and

interaction all that gets taken care of yeah like they're trying

it's like you know what it really just seems like a marketing it like it it seems so disingenuous these dei meetings

to me um and i've seen you know you get the the coca-cola be less white you know

that that uh that whole thing and the was the other one

what on earth does b less white mean i'll tell you what it means sir it means um

be less sure of yourself there's a whole list of what uh do you do you know what i'm talking about the less white

disempowering oh i know i know no i wouldn't encourage anyone to be more white just be who you are

you know what let's just stop talking about white and black you know like everything like 100 why are we having an obsession thing when someone sees race

and everything something in my mind tells me subconsciously they're racist because why are you even seeing such a thing

right why does this even register on your radar yeah you know and so that again that purity the over piety today

and over piety you know 200 years ago it's the same problem enjoy the mess and you know enjoy and

just enjoy people as they come to you and take them one at a time yeah i think one of the

one of the one of my favorite things to do and one uh something that is almost harder and harder to do because you find

less and less people to be able to do it with in a free way is to have conversations that might be um

in a public sphere might be uncomfortable like about race about like

um all these kind of sticking points today that are like like trans issues things like that

and i i'll have them with a friend of mine who um you know

i remember we had this whole conversation about during the george floyd riots like you

know what was happening there and trying to untangle that and they really kind of got up on their

soapbox about um how well of course you know reparations need

to be made of course like of course there's like like huge racism across like look at what happened to george floyd like look at this look at that

actual payments yeah it was kind of alluded to it wasn't like for sure that that needs i guess it

wasn't it wasn't for sure there needs to be preparation payments but it was like something needs to be figured out that that kind of thing but you know they

kind of went on and on and i was like well you know i i like there are certain things i disagreed with and i would say

it and then the response was well you're you're as a as a white man i don't really think you have a right to say

these kinds of things because you don't know you live a privileged existence do they know if your father's black or not well exactly and then i was like i was

like well but you know i'm not an astronomer but i you know i can when i wake up in the morning i i can

feel pretty confident that the sun is going to come up you know or sort of a better analogy you know i'm

not a meteorologist but you know i can i can take a weather report from online and um you know go outside and have a

fairly decent idea about whether it's going to rain or not just by looking at the clouds and you know correlating that

with the rapport and the radar and everything like that it's like so anti-democratic oh it's

exhausting yeah yeah they're literally telling you shut up go sit in the corner you know nothing

don't open your mouth that's what totalitarian regime regimes do yes so you can vote you can have an

opinion yes voting on who runs the entire country so if you can vote on something that you can have an opinion

on anything you want know whether somebody listens to you or not that's fine you know that that's what for people will to

decide but who's to tell you you can't have an opinion on something like i can't believe that we're talking

about this you know what i mean it's like like why why are you saying that i can't have an opinion on something

because of the color of my skin like it's just like i understand it's like okay well maybe that type of thought is encouraged today unfortunately it is it

is and to some extent like i get the this is the tricky thing with a lot of this is like the it's almost like the

root of it um makes there's there's a there's there's

some sort of meaning in the root of it of what they're taking but they've abstracted it so like for example like if i were up here and i was talking

about like how difficult or um how easy it is to you know um climb a mountain

and the the nepalese sherpa is like oh well i could do that too but blah blah blah it's like

you have to you probably have to be a sherpa to to know how difficult that is or

and like if i started talking about that as if i was an authority on the subject then that's one thing but i can look at

a situation objectively and take um you know what i've i've like statistics or

like um you know even anecdotal stories that i know from friends of mine or whatever like and then form an opinion

and then express it like that that should never be a theory climbing a mountain you're living in a city and you're living a city that's

very multicultural toronto's been referred to many times as the most multicultural city on earth so you have a lot of empirical evidence on a daily

basis on what happens around you right right not so abstract yeah if you saw injustices in front of your eyes on a

daily basis you know you'd have a different opinion you know right so so yeah i understand

the conceptually what you're saying well i'm not a you know why should i have a why should i have an opinion on anything that's happened in ukraine i'm not

ukrainian you know yeah i don't know and to a degree yeah you don't want to overstate your position on something

perhaps until you learn more about it but it doesn't mean you can't say what is right or wrong or what your morals

are or what a potential generalized solution process may be yeah like you

know what i just don't feel you know seeing yourself as a victim ever helps

right all scenarios it's a very general way of being just like drinking water is good for you so is

not seeing yourself as a victim so it doesn't mean things didn't happen doesn't mean you weren't a victim

and it doesn't mean that like the whole idea of victimhood is other people see you as a victim right

like like what i mean is um if you see somebody on the street and you see i

remember this one guys at young in college used to sit outside in a wheelchair and his his legs were

like amputated or whatever like it's very and he had a like army fatigues on or whatever i don't know if he was in

the army or not but like it was um it was a striking image so it's like and he was a panhandling and it's like um

your immediate thought is like he's a victim like something i don't know you know i you would you want to give him

money because you're like well i don't know what's happened to this guy but that looks like a shitty life like he and um so

i can think of him like yeah he's a victim like and i don't mean that in a derogatory way i mean in every in a

compassionate way i feel bad for him and i want i want to help him because he obviously

like i'm certainly like for all my faults at least i have my legs right so like that that is um

makes me you know like it should be the idea that somebody else finds that you're a victim you should never identify yourself as a

victim otherwise i mean just psychologically um well i guess that's a tricky thing his own parents or himself

would at certain points like well buddy you're going to have to get yourself out of this something bad happened to you

we're all going to work together to help you and let's get empowered and move forward that's the yeah yeah right and yes of

course obviously something substantive and like very you know physical has happened to him that's

noticeable from you know a great distance away but nevertheless taking that victim mentality

isn't going to help him very much right right despite him being a victim like so you know go back to someone who

was a a scottish shepherd 200 years ago and was barely you know eeking an existence out of the land right

and then they um but they were white because they're scottish right and then they had the privilege of going to two world wars and

drowning at sea in the last 100 years you know are relatives of the family are they not victims

yeah like you literally can draw a line to a significant amount of damage to

anybody in the world in the last 200 years yeah it's getting out of that damage that matters

if we sit there and just simply focus on the damage we're never going to get out of this yeah and in many cases the damage

has happened so long ago that it's um uh you know

again you sort of set it great right off the top of the small berries like it's

you're just getting your like magnifying glass out trying to find these berries and it's

like you're um and if you look you will find them yeah yeah they'll always be barriers

everywhere always you know if you look at your own you know after a facial look at your skin you

will find this despite having just done a wonderful procedure yeah there's gonna be problems

everywhere but it's a the skill is to know what is a speed bump and what is an impenetrable

brick wall yeah and don't fret over the speed bumps too much everybody has speed bumps

right right you know it's interesting i i just you were saying that about the skin i was thinking of how um

you know nature is so interesting like um i want to make sure i get this right is it a

mandelbrot i think did this but like it's this idea of like how do you

properly measure a coastline for example so like you can measure the coastline of

um canada and be like okay like so so if i said to you as a thing like i want you to give me an accurate measurement of

the coastline of canada and you went in there with a ruler or whatever obviously you're like sitting here with like a

little you're a ruler from school like for a thousand years centimeters yeah

so but if you go around there's some way and they'll come back you'll be like this is what it equals and it's like okay

and then what but what size ruler did you use because the more the deeper you go in and the

closer like the scale the deeper the scale the more little curves and little

like um uh crevices you're going to be finding so then you need other rulers to measure

those and the truth is the shoreline is infinite because the the amount of times you can keep drilling

down and going around those small little curves um and i guess maybe technically it couldn't be infinite but um but you

know it's like when you're walking to the other side of the room you just take a half step each time right you'll never get to the other side of the room so

like half of the half still leaves more distance yeah yeah yeah more distance and you just come yeah so we're like

pretty close to the other side of the room at this point in some of these issues and it's good enough yeah yeah you know what let's move on to something

where we're way back uh um over there well and this consumes so much energy

and and time and mental power and money and once again as we're trying to decide the

half of the half of the half the barbarians are amassing at the gate yeah you know and by by barbarians it's like

we're not just talking about you know like there there are issues yeah metaphorically there are issues that are

um you know grand issues and like i'll bring up global warming things like that but like

um you know also you know asteroids um potential alien

invasion you never know like these are things that uh yeah viruses yeah viruses there are

things that can take down society that are far more important to focus on those things look at uh

what's happening in ukraine look at like you know a nuclear-armed country is is

saying things like um you know stop the stop sending weapons or something really

unpredictable is going to happen i mean like that you know here we are um worrying about um what uh

you know well the you know the us army it's like um you've just nailed it this is exactly

it and as we sit here on our first world country lofty perch thinking we have the

privilege and time and uh expenditure to put into this sort of like

problem solving within our own society we don't realize and we don't see the greater issues that are surrounding our

culture yeah and the global culture right we are completely because we're looking for the

small berries so much so that we're missing some of the new larger berries that are also growing right right they need to step

back and look at the big picture so um you know another way that you

the virtue signaling is um um sort of a negative effect of it would be that um

you know well there's certainly an oversimplification of the issue and that's reinforced by you know social

media you know casting of villains um you know it's like the the whole trump effect where the guy couldn't say

anything without being um ridiculed or with without you know inflaming

um vitriol in the in the in the left um

you know and he did say some ridiculous things so it's hard to blame them for that but um there is a lot of um

it's just it's very easy when you're virtue signaling you're taking a complex issue as you said

before and we're um you're simplifying it and packaging it into this like tightly marketable you

know slogan and broadcasting it out to the world um and if you keep doing that over and

over again like there's some psychology behind this that says that like these people believe what they're saying like

this isn't just like they're like like people

like the more often they're doing this the more they're truly believing that this

simplified narrative that they have is just true so then you get into the situation where you have um

you know if you if you if you're saying that you know trump is a racist and anybody who

supports donald trump is a racist and you're hearing that again and again and you're broadcasting it out and it's like this feedback loop then why would you

ever want to have a conversation with a trump supporter like you know what i mean if you know somebody and you're you're like oh this guy's a racist then

it's like very hard to even get started with that i i was discussing this a

couple days ago and i came up with the or just called it like it's like you're staining

staining things like the way like a skunk would you know stain something right and once it's got that that smell

of something you don't want to be associated with whether the smell is emanating from that or or not right it's

just associated with this right you don't it's radioactive yeah you will not go anywhere near it

and once you stain something it doesn't matter if the stain is true

or not because you're not going to be able to untangle that in this fast messaging type world

where people need to sit down and listen to your nuanced answer they're just going to categorize you and move on yeah

it's almost like people are becoming like algorithms themselves and quickly making rash or like really rushed

decisions on um good person bad person good thought bad thought and they're just chunking information quickly moving

forward of their lives yeah yeah it's very much like that like and um you see

well technology plays such a big part in all of this yeah you sort of become the algorithms and it's like you were saying

before like you know and i think a lot of this kind of comes off like you know back in my day when we did this

uh you know um sort of old man ranting kind of kind of stuff but like

you know in the old days when you had a community or you didn't have like this like um

global forum to sort of voice your opinions in like you know the social media outlets of today

uh you would yeah you would talk to you would talk to your friends you would talk to your family you would talk to

um you know maybe there would be people you would meet you would travel and you'd meet other people or whatever

but you'd get a sort of you had that under underpinning of respect

and you would usually listen to what people would have to say you might not agree with them or whatever but there wouldn't be this just this like

animosity which would extend to like you know wishing people dead i mean i've seen things you know

every once in a while jordan peterson will trend on um on twitter and you know i'll click on and it's like you know

people just like like devils like saying like i saw jordan peterson trending i was

hoping he was dead or something it's like jesus christ like like what is wrong with you people you know what i

mean like do you you know and this is um like would you even say he got covered

twice and he's still alive wtf [Laughter] yes like what is the um you know like

and it is really like a putting aside the fact that it's like you've obviously not listened to or read jordan peterson

if that's if that's how strongly you feel about that um to any to any degree other than maybe a sound bite or

something like that but um setting that aside even it's like you would never say that about even even

an enemy of yours like it used to be like that it was sort of verboten to say things like you know to wish somebody

ill you know like even even you know like some somebody that you would be you

know maybe you were in a uh football game against somebody else or your arch rival or whatever like you

would never like wish anybody dead you know like shake hands at the end of the game yeah exactly

these life lessons that's why i think i'm a big fan of sport and team sport particularly because you learn a lot of life lessons in there that will serve

you and your community and your family and your loved one and yourself so well but yeah shaking hands imagine being in

a combative sport for over two hours and at the end you're like that was great yeah yeah and you know to win something

for that wind to have any meaning it only has meaning if your opponent is actually worthy so by virtue of winning you're admitting

your opponent is worthy right otherwise what did you really win well by virtue of taking pleasure in the winning anyway

yeah absolutely but if you just you know if you just wanted to be like nero and run the olympics and like look at me i

just won everything i'm amazing you know yeah it's it's

it's appreciation of the of the combat and about on to your point then when you're discussing with family members

and and people you trust who know have your best interests at heart and have your best interest of your

society and your family at heart you're going to listen to their opposite point of view and they're going to tell

you their opposite point of view of a lot more care and love and you're not going to get that level of conversation

by being um anonymous um little comment on facebook right yeah it's really

unfortunate and it comes back to the town square thing because then again if you are from the same geographically local

location everybody has a shared interest in their society doing well and the society now is really low hyper

localized so yeah i i we have we have to work that out yeah no

that's a it's a good idea about the town square i can see how that would be something that would you know take off little

nodes in suburbs right just connect them and then you know i have like dreams like imagine if each town square even

had like path a path that worked so you could actually drive from one or bicycle let's say right from one town square to

the next to the next and just oscillate through and see what's going on yeah you know it's it doesn't you don't need too

many to get a nice um sample size of where the general population is thinking right i think

it's actually quite efficient yeah and we need connection like we need uh that connection with other people on a

personal level because i don't think that that translates um across cyberspace like it something

is really lost there like you can have connections like there's been you know there's certain forums or whatever you might belong to and you might have a

kinship with somebody or whatever and it's funny as those develop as your relationships develop more with people

online you might have more um uh you'd be more willing to accept some

contrary opinion they might have like it's harder to shut down somebody when you're when you're um when you have a mutually

built um respect uh for them we should have a psychologist on it one time

at some time it's just like what are the attributes associated with chatting online versus the attributes of chatting

face to face and like what are the yeah like the warmth the tone the time for nuance

uh the geographic locations why do these things matter the genders the races like

how does this all interact and affect the level of conversation and

yes you can get information from a text on a or a messaging board on a social

media but that information increasingly seems to me to be very

one-dimensional and if we're just having one-dimensional conversations we're missing so much yeah

it might actually create like if we're doing too much of this really tear society apart and ruin

democracy you know we need to get back to three-hour debates between three political leaders with just two

narrators and not taking questions from all around the country so let's include everybody so they can all ask a question

no no we're gonna have a couple really great moderators and we're gonna have a three-hour nuanced conversation about

complex issues face to face do you know that um what is it called

there's something online that does this and they have people come on and debate one another is it called eq

squared or something like that i don't know oh it's it's pretty good um they'll just get two people to debate

different sides of an issue they had one with um i don't know if this was the same show it was a show like this that had uh

um uh eric voorhees talking about bitcoin arguing against um

um i want to say

god i can't remember he's a big gold bug like a really proponent of gold and doesn't like bitcoin so

um they had a great debate like it was really interesting and it's so refreshing to see that kind of long-term

like long-form kind of two people debating an issue like you used to get this on like news um

you know i remember watching these kinds of things on news shows where you'd get like some variant of that like um

but um you just don't see it that much anymore and like it but it's good to see it kind of coming out um even interviews

you know you have like i don't know barbara walters or connie chung sit there and just actually ask hard questions right you have to actually

answer back yeah you know this is going to take more than three minutes and you're not going to be in some window tele remote it in you're actually

sitting with two ferns and a chair right facing face to face and i'm going to ask you some difficult questions and i want

to know what you're all about yeah you know well and i think a lot of the reason we don't see that as much anymore

is because of that again the whole public image thing where it's like you know one false move and you're in

perpetuity going to be you know ridiculed on the internet um uh i

you know hopefully this is something we're going to evolve out of um but um

you know bringing back the virtual signaling you know you're all even mentioning the um the

the genuine kind of um triumph you would feel out of winning a

match against an equal opponent um like that's that's being taken away too right

like that's um you know you have the participation ribbons and like we had that back in my day as well where it was like but you would have you would get a

winner second place third place and then everybody else got a participation room so like literally literally showed up

basically that's what that meant but it did feel good at the time i thought that everybody got a ribbon of some sort i

remember in grade four seeing this it didn't come off as a what how old are you good for 10 years old yeah okay

because you do feel almost like performance anxiety and it can only be like you know in class of 30. there's only three people that win something

everybody else sucks like i i did appreciate it but but there was still was a winner then yeah yeah there was

still somebody who was a winner it's important to have winners participating is important you know you showed up you

maybe just lost by a little bit you know the variance between third place and ninth was a fraction of a second right

pretty good you know actually saying wow you had some pretty competitive schools here you went to yeah um so i'm not i'm

not totally against that but i totally get i can really

understand your where you're going because it's almost like politicians today or even how our covet response comes off of

that a lot it's like well we have to do something so let's just have a you know let's

we'll all get a star for participating so i'll be the person that comes up with the idea masking is a good idea right no

evidence behind it it doesn't matter because i did something to help out yeah you know and i want my star right so

those those things can bleed into how we actually you know integrate um you know public policy health policy and during a

pandemic you know and as opposed to no your idea is horrible there's no science behind it

and thanks for showing up bye-bye right yeah it's it's a little harsher so

maybe you know you can make an age limit on participatory ribbons you know up to grade five kids

get that after that life gets a little more serious kiddos you know first five years of your life your

personalities formed you know yeah there is something to be said about you know turning 18 and going well that's

what education was all about now this is the real world like bringing it back to twitter and like free speech

let's say it's like well why don't you just set an age limit on it 18 and older and have at it

you're adults you should be able to discern what's true or not and if you don't know if it's not uh true go do some research we

have given you the skills to learn how to do research yeah you know and certain things you keep away from children

but we have this again it's like infantilism of the entire society these days you know

yeah and um yeah you know nothing is more patronizing than seeing like

groups of um people that sort of have had all the privileges in the world um

trying to speak on behalf of um sort of underprivileged people as if they're their um

you know torchbearers and um [Music] yeah it's an infantilization it's it's

almost like you know it reminds me of like it's like they almost need something to do you know they they're bored or

unhappy with their lives so um or their position and you know

it's like they need to have a project and um they kind of don't have the imagination to you know think of

something better so they're like taking on something that you know they're risk adverse yeah because you're

taking the you know the trend of the day again yeah yeah we're not talking yeah again

you're exactly like we're not talking about the um you know this is the 60s and people are like these aren't like

avant-garde ideas these are like this has all been tested like you know nike like these massive corporations are all

on your side you know like the government is on your side like this is nothing rebellious about

um saying no racism no sex on them these days like that's like good like that's the way we've already got all the

benefit none of the risks yeah exactly exactly um but i yeah because i love how

a lot of these people it's almost like you see um sort of the um

uh what would you call them like the the alternative kids of today um you know

you know they have the hair they have the piercings or whatever but you know their message is basically the same

message that's being you know trumpeted by every major news outlet and organization on in western in the

western world and it's like you know that's cool you can have those ideas that's great like everybody sort of

thinks the same way anyway but you're not this isn't rebellious like you're not being a rebel by um trying to

um ferret out like the the the one racist idea that you might think has

happened somewhere on the internet yeah it is interesting you could draw ties to music or fashion and just things that

were considered you know frowned upon and alternative and underground and somehow

gets sucked up into the mainstream and probably made into a profit-making machine yeah whether you know um i think

you set up music trends of the 90s let's say and uh yeah it loses authenticity and

the original people that showed up there for the feminists or the original people that showed up there for electronic

music who took the chances and wore the concert t-shirt that wasn't of the 10 popular bands of the time

have you know those are cool people because they're used to actually sitting in a room full of masked people

and saying well the law says i cannot wear a mask now and i'm okay with that right

you know and so how different is that from being the goth kid in the corner when everyone's got blue jeans and a white t-shirt from the gap right yeah

got used to being separate and other than because you believed in it and you stuck true to your principles

you know there's there's you know there's so many parallels you know yeah youth and how it you know what happens

in youth and how it turns into you know who you become when you get older get you know maybe getting comfortable

with being uncomfortable and we're creating a world today where you can never be left to be

felt uncomfortable right so much inclusion that you don't even know what it feels like to be excluded and that

might be missing a critical lesson in your life yeah i wonder if you like you said we

should if we had a psychologist on here i might shed some light on this but um is that maybe doing damage like maybe

there's some part of us that really needs that part of tribalism right like it's part of like

you know you almost inherently want to be part of something and have to be against

something else but if we're all in one thing then we lose that to some extent other than

you know if you know we can all say we're all human or whatever but that's uh maybe doesn't quite satisfy that itch so

i wonder if there's some damage i mean i think it's great to be a world that

you know obviously like you know the goal is that everybody has like that

that equality of um opportunity um but um

you know at least in the west i feel like we we've almost got there and like of

course you know i say that and i in my head when i say things like that i almost can just hear like

like a bunch of random trolls on twitter just letting out a rage because it's like like well

there's this pocket that doesn't there's this group that doesn't it's like i you know of course get that there's like

like situations with that like this is just generally speaking um but uh overall like we've made a lot of

progress and we've made um you know we were we were sort of on the right track and now it's just getting so

overly complicated where we want to like almost rewrite history and it's like um [Music]

you know we're taking away our attention from the stuff that really matters and um

or into your point like failure bad but controlled failure amazing they know you

can take a chance and you have a family behind you or social um social programs that will pick you up if

you fall um so that you can actually take chances in life and actually try to be innovative risk-taking

um because if we create a situation in which there is for instance it reminds me of a

to paraphrase carl young he said you know i i'm so grateful for the amount of

failure i've had in my life because it makes you a stronger person obviously not abject completely

catastrophic failure but those failures are like lifting weights they hurt at first but you come out of it stronger

yeah right you don't want to lift so much weight that you break your back or tear a ligament but you need that

pressure in life now someone might say well demetri you don't understand you live the privileged life so many kids

have had so much pressure you just don't know it fair enough that people do have pressure

but we live in a pretty fair and equitable society you'd be hard-pressed to find

more inclusive and equal opportunity countries than those in the west

yeah and i mean you know without sort of completely doxxing you i would say that you've had your share of

setbacks too and you've fought back right like well i could give you know hours and i talk with clients like this

all the time at work but um you know like what was it like having the life you did and i was like well you

know you could talk about all the traditionally wonderful things you might expect by um living somewhere warmer and

more exotic and those are wonderful moments and they are like meals you enjoy you just kind of

leave a smile on your face but inevitably that which sticks in my mind the most

and added the greatest meaning were the difficult things they changed you they shook you up they

got you out of your box things and it take you they take you to places mentally that you would have never gone

to on your own accord nobody wants to have difficulties but when you have them it shakes up your way of viewing the world

and now you're standing on a slightly different position on the mountain and your view down the mountain has now been altered

that is growth it's growth you didn't really wish on yourself let's say but you got it yeah

now you see things radically potentially radically different

um and it's just it's just damn interesting like why would you want to do the same thing or have the same haircut your

whole life and wear the same shoes and listen to the same bands like just really just you know

keep growing and challenging yourself and those challenges those difficulties are the ones that add the most growth

you know when you're a young child everything is new to you and you're stumbling and falling and burning yourself on the kitchen stove and you're

growing and at some point we get like adverse to all that you know you shouldn't

you know yeah that's i think probably one of the most fundamental aspects of being

a sort of an actualized human is um you mentioned earlier adaptation like

the ability to adapt to your environment and the growing like you need growth like almost um

[Music] beyond all things like if you're not growing then you're stagnant and you're

dying like it's it's sometimes i i envision that i have a spirit

whether it's real or not who knows and i say to myself if my spirit begged for this one chance of at life on earth

what would it have asked for the most like please let me be an organic being and have this human experience uh please

the universe let me become a human what was the spirit looking for and it's not gonna be comfort

it's not gonna be palm trees and dolphins you know it's going to be i'm starting with a certain

preconception and i want during these 100 years hopefully to end up at a different place and

almost discover what i am and who i am and you can only do that in maybe a

physical vessel you know it's quite that's what i feel like sometimes so the whole arch of my life has been about

you know obviously being kind and loving and supporting everyone around you but part of that is take that chance and

kind of just go out there and be like a little usb stick and touch with tentacles everything out there

hurt yourself burn yourself live those moments take risks calculated risks but definitely take risks

and sit back and analyze what the hell you just felt and how it changed how you have changed through that

experience right right this is this is the organic world so you have to get out there and be willing to experience all the pros

and the cons otherwise you're just in your your prison cell of convenience where

you're well fed like a zoo animal yeah you know freedom freedom is dangerous

it's risky you're going to be outside of the zoo you have to fend for yourself you have to look for your own food

but inevitably that animal will have a more meaningful life i think or as a human animal than that which is in a

coddled in a well padded cell and fed so you just have to yeah you have to

take those chances in life and grow from it and so with this virtue signaling

if it's not real virtue if you're not really willing to put something on the line to risk to be called out to be the

other then you're simply just following trends and you're living in your well-cuddled

uh cage of a ideological um glow that will help make you not feel

outed or something is there a way that i mean the trend seems to be that um the amount

of virtue signaling is increasing and the amount of uh um sort of genuine

activism or participation is decreasing uh would you like what would be is there an antidote

to that is there something we can do differently i mean you have the the town square idea um which i think sounds like

a fabulous idea is there is there something else that may be more immediate that um i do like i think the

the royal family do this in england where they send their kids away off for that one gap year you know they right

you know it's just you know go to chile and go build houses in some poor community and you know what look at those people in the eyes and put that

nail in the piece of wood with them and realized oh crap i showed up 15 minutes late and

this guy's actually on time every single day he's better than me and i just simply live a better life

from damn luck yeah you know holy oh you know there's humans all over

the earth of ultimate capacity and they're not getting their opportunities you're going to come back and be so

humbled and full of humility so i would i would recommend if i had children

to um i know life is expensive but try to take a year off or you can do it in

segments four months here four months there and just go out there and explore the world

live that and you're at that age you don't need five-star hotels you're happy in the hostel and you know cell phone

and a pack of cigarettes and sunglasses and you're good to go you know and that's how you should be at that age

and go and organically experience as much of the world as you can and if you can't leave your country because that

certainly is a form of privilege as well then you know what take four months off and go work at a soup kit uh

soup kitchen is that what they're called you know yeah compass you know all these scott mission one of these right and just look at those people in the eyes

and help them out daily and don't do it for the volunteering hours i need this for a resume do it for yourself right you know i want to feel

this yeah i know that you get to come home to a nice bed on a lofty uh you know green

cul-de-sac somewhere you know like and just just just go out there and live a bit step away maybe from formalized

education for a bit like one of the things i loved about people like steve jobs or pierre

trudeau was that you know they steve jobs had a full life before becoming a tech guru

and you know guru is part of what he is like he saw the holistic arc of what he was trying to create something that

those of an engineering mindset simply would never see in a thousand years they're just looking at it from an engineering

because it's a linear kind of plane um there's something to that or one of my

favorite images when i would see pierre tarot take his kids the prime minister of canada would take his kids around the world which was a far more exotic place

at the time because travel was not as abundant as it is today but he knew to take them elsewhere and you see

his children standing in front of the acropolis in the mid 70s yeah you want to see where democracy started let's

walk on the steps where these people were yeah i am a prime minister of a democratic country let's go see where

democracy started guys it's thrilling it's going to change your world perception forever well as as you did

mention though that is a little like that is privileged to some degree to be able to do stuff like that try to do it locally if you can't do it but just get

out there and be with more people and of all shapes size colors religions all of

them you know just whatever you can do yeah my father at 15 told me you know

i was taller than him at that age and probably with the same height as i am today and he's like i'm not gonna have a

son that is you know this tall spend another summer at home go get a part-time job and he wanted it to be a humbling job

that's such a like my exactly what i would think a greek father would say yeah yeah you're not gonna spend all

this time in the basement you know yeah um and uh it was fantastic and i used to

say to myself it was one of those fast food jobs mcdonald's in the 80s where you know it was very busy inside of mcdonald's

but um i used to say to myself even then i had the presence of mine well i'm starting at the bottom and that's good because everything i do

from this point forward is only going to be upwards so it was it was a healthy recognition

and you know i grew up in a very nice neighborhood and some of these kids would come in and i'd have to serve them

on saturday night 11 30 in my own peers and they're out with their friends and girlfriends and whatnot and you had to

just suck it up i'm doing the night shift tonight yeah and it just got you over that

and there a lot of them their parents wouldn't want them to work such a job because it was a it was beneath them

let's say you know and what kid really wants to do that job it's that's the job of the parents to

inject some wisdom into the thing right my father would give him credit he had the presence of mind to say that no you need to go be humbled and there's

nothing wrong with doing an honest day's work so it doesn't have to be some grandiose thing but those trips also that are

abroad there are programs out there that make them much more cost effective too as long as you get yourself on an

airplane and get there they're just happy for the free labor yeah so to bring it back where there's a will there's a way

yeah yeah and i mean hopefully covert restrictions or some other pandemic don't affect somebody's ability

to do that but yeah i know that sounds like a great uh a great plan um it's a it's a wonderful world

and it's full of and you just got to get out there and and just in every good place there's ten things

bad but that's okay just go out there and be part of it you know go into that taxi cab and you know what the guy

ripped me off today that sucks and and just experience what that feels like yeah you know to be on the other

side of a transaction that doesn't go in your favor right oh yeah yeah and try not to get ripped off tomorrow you know exactly or

or deeper understand why that person behaves in that way what happened culturally that allowed that to happen

and then you take that lesson back to where you're from and try to make sure it doesn't happen in your place where you grew up yeah you know i think it's

fantastic so yeah um be brave don't coddle yourself

failure is amazing embrace it

full-heartedly this fear of failure and that it's a negative thing is probably one of the

most foolish things we've ever invented right okay well um

yeah i think that's some a good note to end on and um um

thank you for listening today um thanks guys that's it

we had a good time bye

[Music]

you