 We are both recording posterity is gratified perfect Okay, then I'm the owner of shut magazine. We are here because We want to talk my opinion with a genius Let me look around I'll try to get it getting for you It's true. It's true and because you have a Very rational opinion about the society Development future and this is very interesting for us because we're working In the next issue to understand more about humans Past Edition we talk more about sustainability about Planet everything but we think if we don't go inside the human we cannot understand the problem That's why we are here with you. Maybe Something crazy happen and with us is Erin our director of the magazine Then thank you for everything. Yeah, we are all together. I still a little bit like a ghost The direction is more about Erin, but I'm here and That's it. Let me talk this muscle Yeah, so I'm in your hands Be careful I Okay, so as Alex as Alex has said we will be focusing a lot on the themes of like the human mind and Introspection as a tool for change rather than say external means for example So and we would like to start though by asking you to maybe present yourself to an audience who doesn't know you personally So to the audience of our magazine. So how would you define yourself? I Was born when the last dinosaurs were going extinct So I had a lot of time and in this time I completed several doctors a medical doctor. I have a doctorate in physics a doctorate in philosophy, etc, etc I'm also I spend two decades as a venture capitalist a businessman and economic advisor to governments And then I switched to Psychology 26 years ago and ever since then I mean psychology. I'm a professor of psychology in several universities I'm the author of books in every known discipline and a few unknown ones and Prior to that I was a physicist and now I'm a gain of physics. I returned after 40 or 30 years to this profession so I'm all over the place and so The human mind is one of my favorite topics. It is by far the most complex system far more complex than the universe, which is my other favorite topic and It's an endless it's a bottomless pit you could spend several lifetimes studying the mind and know nothing about it by the end So what do you believe has led you for example after all the experiences you've had in the past? What has led you in the direction of psychology and why did you choose to sort of focus on this? I was diagnosed with the narcissistic personality disorder twice It had It had destroyed my life several times And so at one point I said to myself it's time to to put an end to it. It's time to get to the bottom of this and try to understand What is malfunctioning? As I mentioned before this I was an economist. I was a Physicist So I was used I was used to more exact and rigorous and natural sciences Where the language is a formal language for example logic or logic or arithmetic or algebra and so on and there's no fuzziness or little fuzziness And the transition to psychology was very in itself very traumatic because psychology is not a science Anyone who says the psychology is a science is misleading or himself or herself above all It's a form of literature. It's a form of glorified literature. It's a system of observations a taxonomy Very similar to how botany started with carlos linus in the 17th century in the 18th century. So It's simply a series of classified observations about the human condition Which is a good description of dostoyevsky's work, for example He's done. He has done exactly the same And a very good description of freud's work freud was a great author a very poor psychologist, but a great author so When I entered this this field I Started to write fiction and I published short fiction award-winning short fiction Started to write poetry I discovered that i'm disintegrating as a scientist and reappearing more and more as a human being I was impressed by the transformative power of some of the insights of psychology And I decided to delve deeper and i'm still deep diving i'm still scuba diving in psychology So yeah, you spoke about the transition also your personal transition from scientist to human person in a way And also it's a theme we're sort of trying to delve into in the next issue of A shot Where we'll be talking a lot about for example This internal journey that people have to make inside themselves to spark some change So what has made you change in that sense to go from for example the more rationalistic Aspects of life so the scientist might to a more like human Side of things so understanding yourself. What has led you to understand yourself more No, i'm still hyper rational and i'm still very self-interested and may I add self-centered It's just that The previous prescription previous regime did not work The previous regime was what is known today as narcissistic personality disorder Narcissistic personality disorder is an adaptation It's an attempt to cope with the environment and to survive in it And to remain autonomous, agentic, self-efficacious In other words to be able to extract favorable outcomes from the environment So narcissistic personality disorder is a little like a recipe How to cook your life so that the result is an excellent italian dish So But it it didn't work It didn't work. It brought me down many many times. I lost tens of millions of dollars. I lost my wife. I lost my life I ended up in prison So I thought there are strong indications that narcissistic personality disorder is a problematic recipe And then I asked myself, why do people adopt problematic recipes? Why do they develop algorithms that lead them to the wrong search results? And lead them astray and destroy their lives What is the malfunction of the bug or the glitch in the human code? That allows such things to happen and to develop because you see this is in in complete defiance of evolutionary theory And in evolutionary theory, we believe that adaptations Either lead to survival or they lead to extinction. There's no middle ground And adaptations are driven by mutations, of course Of course, you can have an interim phase an interim phase of malfunction or disease But you can never have a lifelong of malfunction and disease according to evolutionary theory and Here we have an exception human beings Many human beings. We are talking probably about 20 percent of the human population spend their lives In malfunction spend their lives as dysfunctional counterproductive self-defeating self-destructive entities And there is absolutely no scientific explanation for this On the surface. It's impossible So it was a challenge. It was an intellectual challenge And the the only the only thing I cannot resist is an intellectual challenge Mm-hmm Yeah, I like what you were saying here about the human mind. There is for example an Norwegian philosopher Who says that the human mind You're cut off That for the Norwegian philosopher Yeah, the human mind as antlers who that weigh on the human being for example So do you agree with this? Do you think that the human mind is sort of um Something that can condemn us or is it something that can save us I think the human mind is such a complex system That it has emergent properties And I think these emergent properties Are intended to experiment. They're they're geared toward experimentation So I think many of us are experiments gone awry Consequently, many of us are not going to procreate many of us are not going to have offspring They're not going to pass on the outcomes of these experiments gone bad and There is a need for such experimentation on a massive scale Because complex systems cannot be captured fully There is no way to predict a complex system That is not me that is kurt girdle kurt girdle in the 30s came up with the incompleteness theorems He said that if a system is large enough It could either be perfect And allow us to predict things with certainty Or it could be incomplete But it could never be both If it is complete, it's not perfect if it's perfect. It's not complete This is the human mind The human mind had reached a level of complexity that far surpasses anything known in the universe and the universe itself Consequently, there is no computing power available Even if we were to mobilize Every quark and every atom in the whole universe It would still not provide us with sufficient computing power to predict what you're going to do in the next minute So This kind of systems the only way Is heuristic? heuristics the only way is experimentation and nature Kind of gave up on us in the sense that nature raised its hand and said I cannot predict these things. It's out of control. I just have to sacrifice many of them In order to settle into a livable equilibrium Kind of valley or some of them will survive It's not an accident that We have wars And we have self-inflicted pandemics And we have the peel the contraceptive peel Which is a form of mass culling It's a kind of culling, you know, it's kind of preventing birth preventing birth is exactly like killing someone So philosophically speaking, it's exactly the same so We we are subjecting ourselves to these experiments And of course, it's nature working through us But we have multiple mechanisms Malthusian mechanisms cognitive mechanisms other mechanisms Which are intended to experiment with them with with many of us And which render many of us disposable Okay, if we sort of export this argument to for example or modern society, we have technology that does a lot of These things for us. So does technology in the same way like say as a human mind does it Is it a positive or a negative thing in our society? Is is technology sort of prone to condemn us or saving us in a way? Because it's a big word, of course a little like love it's a big one But I would say that in the history of human technology We had a period which had lasted about 50,000 years starting with the first Flintstones And this period had ended in the 1990s not long ago And then we entered the second the second era of technology We are undergoing so many unprecedented unparalleled transitions That it's no wonder that we are falling apart individually and collectively Because there's too much happening But take for example technology For the first 50,000 years of technology the aim of technology was to extend the human body and the human mind period Nothing else Just to extend the human body and human mind Think about any invention any conceivable invention and you will see that i'm right They were all about extending human capabilities human organs Human the human body of the human mind then in the 1990s something A tectonic shift that happened Technologies after the 1990s were focused not on extending the human mind or the human body But on escaping from reality The organizing principle of technology today Is to evade reality to reframe it to falsify it to escape it Of course a smartphone or a laptop extends your mind But it extends your mind Mainly to allow you to escape reality Of course some things extend your body. I don't know a speedboat But increasingly even all the technological inventions are used to escape When people invented the boat They invented the boat in order to sail the oceans And go fishing or go colonizing You know, it was an extension of the body But today Most boats in the world are actually used for leisure and entertainment That's a fact So it's an escape from reality Of course, no need to No need to tell you that the metaverse for example The forthcoming metaverse is absolutely about an alternative reality But I'm recording So you were talking about here technology as a means to escape reality and our modern I actually answered your question. We can we can go on to Yeah, I would like to ask what are we escaping? It is not the first time that we are transitioning from Reality to less reality The first time was about 10,000 years ago When we transitioned from agriculture to cities The process of urbanization The city is a virtual artificial space It's it's not it's less real than the land or the farm or the village It's constructed according to fantasy and imagination and a plan Which is entirely in inside the human mind. In other words, the city is an extension Of an image in the human mind First the architect imagines the building and then he builds the building. So it's a it's an extension of the human mind It's not the same with a farm In a farm, you have the land and the land is the constraining factor. There's very little you can do So when you are a farmer, when you are in agriculture, you're much closer to reality And so the city was the first time That we started to escape reality. People in the city did not produce their own food They did not do much actually except administration and entertainment. These were the two main functions of the city In a way the metaverse Is a similar transition from more reality to less reality What are we escaping? I don't think we are escaping from I think we are running towards We are creatures Of limitless potential Even the most stupid among us We're creatures of infinite potentials and of course we try to create environments Which will allow us to self actualize in many in many more ways We are we are going from less potential to more potential And we in the 1980s and 1990s we made an amazing discovery There is much more potential in the human mind than in reality We are addicted to potential We we are creatures of dreams and fantasies We we don't A human being is a fabric of dreams You can take away from a human being food You can take away drink You can even take away air You can even take away his freedom And he will survive You can torture a human being and he will survive You take away his dreams and he will die By his own hand Or just naturally We are made we are made of dreams. We are startups Something like the internet Internet is a new religion something like that Internet Is the reification Metaverse is the new paradise Yes, in a way I keep saying that narcissism is a new religion And this is of course an extension of narcissism, but We just we just found out that If we if we are into dreams and fantasies and potentials and so on which we are That's the human species Then the great theme park the great Disneyland is the mind And so we are going inwards rather than outwards. We are in we're in a process of going inwards The metaverse And and long before the metaverse, I think as you said the internet social media and so It's it's about It's about Realizing the fantasies of the mind It's about playing with the with the imagination and with what the mind has to offer And so by comparison to To our imagination and our fantasies and our the capabilities of our mind Reality looks very dull Very limited Very boring And I think that's the overriding sentiment of this age and we boredom People are mostly bored Now they call it entertainment and so on But it's not entertainment if you think about it for a minute. What do you do? What are you doing when you're watching a Netflix movie? You're consuming another person's mind Similarly when you're reading a book you're consuming another person's mind We are creating exchanges of minds. We're creating big marketplaces Where we are trading with each other the products of the mind And this is the allure. This is why it's irresistible That's why people are going to get sick already gone and are going to get seriously addicted Because the mind is infinite the universe is finite Compared to the to the mind the universe is nothing It is a seriously boring structure compared to the mind and I know both intimately So would you see? Sorry for interrupting. Would you see for instance the uh technology? For example or all these mechanisms that we've found to explore the mind not only ours are the excuses for making connections with other people and their minds or is it excuses to lead with our own mind? Until the 1990s we were under the illusion Which was essentially dictated to us by society. It was through the process of socialization We were under the illusion that if we want to explore the mind Our mind and the minds of other people We have to to somehow socialize with them We have to pay the price Of being with another person In order to enjoy the fruits of that person's mind These fruits can be minimal Like I don't know a like on facebook And these fruits can be maximal Like a beautiful novel or an amazing series on netflix or game of thrones so But we were under the the erroneous perception that if we want if I want your mind Or the fruits of your mind. I have to socialize with you I have to be in a relationship with you It has can be a minimal relationship or a maximal relationship can be romantic can be social can be collegial But I have to I have to interact with you somehow And this was a price This was the price that we had to pay no one liked it No one wanted really to be with other people other people are pain in the ass Other people are annoying boring demanding um entitled It's not pleasant to be with other people. That's the that's the dirty secret of psychology That's the taboo that no one dares to break To admit that being with other people sucks big time But we thought we had to pay this price and then we discovered Through technology enabling enabling technology and the technologies of self sufficiency We discovered that we don't need to We can exchange the products of the mind without suffering the consequences of having to be with other people And that's for example Exactly the reason why people don't want to return to the office After the pandemic They don't want to go back to the office. They want to stay at home Alone and they want to work from home because they don't want To be with their colleagues anymore and co-workers Because it wasn't a highly unpleasant experience So well over 60 million people in the united states alone Refused to return to the office And another 54 million had resigned Rather than go back to the workplace It's called the great resignation It just proves exactly what i'm saying additionally 2016 was the first year first recorded year in the united states Where majority of people Haven't seen a member of the opposite sex For whatever reason Including sex It was the first year Given the chance Given the chance People prefer to be alone Are we totalist? Are we total? Was seriously wrong about this when he coined the phrase zone political social animal We are not social animals. We were coerced Coerced into social structure and cooperation By the exigencies of the very difficult environments we find found ourselves in like the savannah But no one ever liked this In famous experiments on rats the rat colony experiments We Scientists scholars demonstrated that even low-level animals lower level animals such as rats React very badly to overcrowding And to the in and to the need to interact with other members of the species Generally, I would say I I can even generalize and say that as we ascend As we ascend the genera and species as we ascend the biological ladder The more complex and sophisticated the animal The less it wants to be with other members of each species So if you go really really down You reach ants and bees Ants and bees have colonies Humans don't survive well in such environments. They much much prefer to be alone But They want to consume the products of the minds of other people because that's the greatest theme park ever like ever And We have constructed technologies which will allow us to do exactly this to remain at home cocooned atomized Self-sufficient never leave it never leave this cell and still to be To have access to all the riches And to all the theme park attractions of all the other Mines of all the other humans Is it an accident? That when we have finally gained access to the minds of all humanity simultaneously through the internet Suddenly we started to isolate ourselves physically The two trends are coincident But it's not a coincidence I would like to ask in an age of uh, for example fetishizing even the individual in an age of individualism of being atomized of being sort of separated from others um, what are the costs of Not living with other people as much anymore. Do we not lack or start to lack Empathy for example, and what is the cost of that? first of all No one says that you should have empathy No one says you should you should have anything All human traits and behaviors Are functional They're goal oriented And they are reflective Reflexive over An adopted tool highly specific environment For example, if you were cast alone on an island You don't really need empathy do So it's not like um, um something that Should happen inevitably ineluctably in all environments regardless of what happens. It's it's an acquired thing. It's a learned thing And yes in the future in the world of the future We're going to need a lot less of these qualities Empathy the ability to communicate the ability to compromise and negotiate All these will be much less needed The ability to cooperate These were good for the for the first 50,000 years of homo sapiens But these traits are now not necessary for survival or adaptation We are entering homo sapiens 2.0 And homo sapiens 2.0 Is a very fancy way of saying narcissists The men and the women of the future Are going to be narcissists And a small minority of them are going to be psychopaths And this is the positive adaptation of the future This is the adaptation that will allow these people to survive To survive prevail accomplish and rule Now I know this is a very dystopian View but it's dystopian only because you have a memory of the past To the members of these generations it would look totally normal They wouldn't think anything about it. It's like promiscuity If you are under the age of 35 You think nothing of promiscuity You don't have any problem to sleep with strangers You know But if you are above the age of 35 You regard promiscuity as dystopian As a problem As an indication of pathology As a dysfunction Why? Because you have a memory of the past Now Our technologies Are hell bent Are constructed to accomplish three goals Self-sufficiency in an atomized world Number one Number two an eternal present No past and no future an eternal present Also known as mindfulness in psychology And the third goal is The ability to share The minds of other people And to start with indirectly through social media And I believe in the future of the metaverse Directly people will begin to access each other's minds directly Not you can't access the mind but you can access the fruits of the mind directly So these are the three goals of Of the new era of technology And it's about to be realized now in this kind of world The best adaptation the mental health The paradigm of mental health Is narcissism and psychopathy There is no such thing as mentally healthy and mentally ill There's no such thing There's only Adapted not adapted Functional not functional dysfunctional happy Not happy for what we call ego-syntonic and ego-dystonic So What today is narcissism Tomorrow will be the normal the new normal And today's empathic people Will be treated in clinics Because empathy would be a negative adaptation And this sort of utopian or dystopian accordingly world How can you justify a human interaction? For example as empathy not a sort of fundamental element In order to enable people to sort of comprehend each other And even if we're enjoying for instance the minds of other people We need to empathize with those minds and experiences in order to understand them Is that not the case? You seem to be very preoccupied with the demise of empathy Empathy has three levels Reflexive cognitive and emotional Now reflexive empathy you're born with As a baby you smile when mother smiles at you This is not something you can get rid of Cognitive empathy you develop because without it you cannot survive You have to read other people You have to anticipate their actions You have to put yourself to some extent in other people's minds We call it a theory of mind You have to construct a theory of mind And if you are incapable of doing this for example if you're autistic That hampers your ability to survive So reflexive and cognitive empathy will never disappear But emotional empathy will because it's no longer needed Even today it's no longer needed Look what's happening to sex Sex has become emotionless and meaningless The dominant sexual practice nowadays is casual sex And in well over 20 percent of the cases With people that you have met less than one hour before That's a fact So we are already seeing signs Of empathy draining out of activities which used to involve empathy such as sex In such a world for example in the future that you envision for example Where is the space for intimacy? And should we find spaces for intimacy in the first place? Why do you need intimacy? You see the problem is that you're borrowing organizing principles structures and concepts From a period in history that is dying And that will have no place within 10 years Why do you need intimacy? 31 percent of adults in the west 31 percent are lifelong singles They don't have intimacy they don't have a single relationship all their lives That's 31 percent Another 15 percent depending on the country 15 to 25 percent depending on the country Have very fleeting short short relationships like one month six months two months two weeks You know this kind of thing I call them pseudo relationships And then they end up actually alone So already half the human species in industrialized Developed countries and in some developing countries for example china Already half the human species had had opted for a lack of intimacy As a ruling principle of their lives They organize themselves their lives around a lack of intimacy And they seem to survive actually Now what replaces intimacy? Well consumerism self-indulgence entitlement making love to yourself In the future in the near future virtual sex you don't need intimacy Intimacy was a way to bind with other people because if you did not bond with other people you were dead That's why you needed intimacy, but it's no longer needed You don't need to bond with other people to survive Everything you need you have at home You don't grow your own food. So you don't need to collaborate with other people in the field You don't make everything you need from entertainment to food from water to gas and everything you need is delivered to you What you do need to do is you need to work But about 40 percent of all professions and vocations are solo alone Single employer single employer businesses Are the majority actually 80 percent of businesses in the west are owned by a single individual Why do you need anyone else? And if you don't need anyone else, why would you invest scarce resources? Why would you invest your energy your time? What would you invest these in intimacy? That would be against evolution If you don't need other people investing energy in intimacy It's contrary to survival. It's not good for survival You need to retool Retool your brain because I know it's very difficult I know it's very difficult. Perhaps it's easier for me because I'm a narcissist It's easier for me. I think because I'm a narcissist. I never had empathy never had access to emotions So I dig I dig this world. I glom this world much better I've seen it coming. I've lived this way since I was nine I have been in this future world long before anyone else 50 years ago So I grasp it and I see clearly where it's going The statistics are absolutely unequivocal now, of course people even your age Find it terrifying They find it They are prehensives. They're anxious about this. They they don't know, you know, because It's like exiting your comfort zone. It's like having to learn a new set of rules and it's like giving up on behaviors and traits and effects and emotions and cognitions that erroneously You were told were part of your identity They're not part of your identity. They're learned. They're required But you were told you were you were deceived or brainwashed into believing that they were part of your identity Intimacy is not a part of anyone's identity It's a learned behavior skills set of skills, actually Therefore it can be unlearned I think this view maybe stands quite in contradiction of just human experience in general because there is no such thing as an existence in isolation in complete isolation I think this is the direction maybe our Modern world is allowing us to access through technology through social media through all these things But I still think that in order to eat in order to fulfill very basic needs. For example, we need to interact with people and it seems quite Utopistic maybe if someone desires such things, but I think it's quite impossible also to avoid human communication Well, of course, you don't avoid human communication. You you type a text to get pizza So you get pizza. Do you call this human communication? Yeah, you don't avoid human communication Also in the sense of for example the moment we're born We're in a in a space of intimacy even it may be a positive space. It might be a negative space But it's still a space of intimacy. Let me give you two statistics 60 years ago A typical child was raised by 4.3 adults Including grandmothers grandfathers And parents today a typical child is raised by 0.7 adults 43 percent of children are raised in single parent families Second statistics in 1980 a typical person had 10 friends We made studies we asked people if you're in trouble who you're gonna call and they made a list and the average list was 10 friends In 2020 a little before the pandemic we asked the same question and people Were very it was very difficult for them to come for them to come with a single name They couldn't come up with a single name The number went down from 10 to 0.9 Another statistic as I told you 50 percent are lifelong singles another statistic Most people are single single employed in single employed businesses Another statistic and very pertinent one 2016 was the first year that people didn't meet another member of member of the other I mean the the science are clear And indisputable you can't argue with novels can't argue with data. Yes, of course if you want to order pizza In some locations by the way not everywhere because I've been to canada now I've been to canada and I spent two weeks without seeing a single human being And I ate well and I laundered my clothes and I watched movies And I've had a very busy time and I haven't seen a single human being two weeks Yes to order the pizza I had to send the text Of course the pizza delivery guy came and left the pizza at the reception and there was once It was um an uneducated pizza delivery man. He left the pizza at the door at the door outside the door I'm misleading you. I saw a person one person in two weeks That was the neighbor. He came out with his dog And when he saw me he apologized profusely and ran back into his apartment and slammed the door He thought he was invading my space. He thought it was for park. It was he thought it was it was horrible what he did That I he forced me to see him That's mont montreal in canada. That's a more gregarious place much better than toronto Of course, this is where it's going young professionals live like that all over the world all alone in 20 30 40 square meter apartments with netflix and two cats cats and dogs That's the face of the future And they like and many of them like it Mm-hmm. Can I just move into the next question? So about in this like with this framework for instance um, what is happiness then for the modern human being And it's happening. It's even important if we're aiming for a world with no emotions I think happiness had been largely replaced with gratification so When people are gratified They say that they're happy And most people are gratified via consumption by consume by by consuming goods and services and other people Also, you consume other people the consumerist mind said Applies to other people as well. We consume other people and we discard them as we would discard, you know An old smartphone or something Sometimes we discard them after after one night Actually often we discard them after one night So we consume consumption is the new The new source of happiness The problem I think why was it so easy to replace happiness With gratification It's because happiness had never been defined adequately No one really knew what happiness is and there were huge debates And you know when you don't agree on something when there's this white disagreement It's easy then to discard this concept and come up with another concept which is much more certain Gratification is clear cut You buy a new a new television. You're gratified. There's no doubt about you cannot argue No one will argue with you. So I'm happy that I bought this television, you know But what is happiness? The the previous the previous explanatory principle, it's called hermanuitic principle in philosophy the previous explanatory principle which was happiness Was so fuzzy and vague and ambiguous That it was utterly useless and meaningless And on the first opportunity people discarded it And moved into what did above called the society of the spectacle In the first opportunity people said, okay happiness Is something we don't understand Love is something that causes pain in the best case And we don't understand as well Reality sucks other people suck so Let's adopt a new set of principles And so people are now focused on gratification the great thing about gratification To be happy you need other people To be gratified you need only yourself It's another example of self-sufficiency So um by staying on the same line of thought let's say um So we are for example a magazine that is very focused on fashion and luxury and wealth in this sense But is there not also in this mentality of consuming is there not something um That makes us realize there's a difference between having for example having possessions having things to consume and being something Is there no distinction between this as like many philosophers eric from for example have advocated Do you believe there is a distinction between having and being Not anymore Of course, they used to be such a distinction Um But even then in times gone by You couldn't be unless you had Having was a precondition for being Not only having property, but for example having academic qualifications having a belief in god having you needed to have in order to be And so the transition was easy And today we identify being with having So to be is to have And if you don't have you're not for example We don't see the homeless We all need to be seen We we realize that we exist through the gaze of others If everyone made a conspiracy to pretend that you don't exist that you're made of air By the end of the day you will begin to suspect whether you exist or not This is these are real experiments You begin to suspect whether you exist or not. We we we pull we pull all the looks and the gazes and the input from other people And we reconstruct our existence on the fly Our being Is a process of becoming it's a constant on the fly process so We have learned to identify Being with having And today if you don't have you're not And I gave the example of the homeless the homeless doesn't have so he's not seen Now you need to be seen because as a baby if you're not seen you're dead To be seen to be noticed Is instinctively associated with existence with survival You need to in order to survive you need to be noticed and to be seen It is so crucial That people escalate on tiktok and instagram They escalate behaviors just in order to be noticed and seen and If the organizing principle of society is consumption Then if you do not consume Then you are not Your very identity crucially depends on on perpetual act of consumption Consumption is a ritual It has very little to do with what you consume That's why people keep buying things that don't need It's not about the things they're buying. It's about the act of buying It's a ritual. It's an affirmation of belonging It's an integration into a collective spirit that's zeitgeist. It's it's being accepted It fulfills all the functions of mothering being mothered And all the functions of religion and of course This consumerism is a religion As amok said is the shopping malls of the temples and so And all this ties into to narcissism Because as I said gratification and consumption Can be practiced Without other people in isolation So you could be your own god If you're practicing religion And you have the source of your own gratification and ritual then you are your own god And if you are The found and the reason for your own happiness Then you don't need anyone else And by virtue of not needing anyone else it renders you superior Superior to them because what is superiority? Superiority is not needing other people Because you have what it takes you have more than they do Intelligence money power whatever So This whole shift Has engendered narcissism And narcissism is definitely a religion Maybe I will explain it because the time is about to Time is about to run out We can try to Yeah, but again, let's take five minutes For the file to I mean if you want to continue, I don't know No, it's better with you Yeah So I'm I'm shutting off and saving the file and then I'm a bit record on your You can record on your range if you wish Yeah, okay. I want to say something because I hear everything And I'm a little bit more optimistic about humans Grow Because we have to understand also We do the last two years Only with computer only with internet then the pizza what you say about Or canada is something happen Now but I travel a lot and now I see a lot of people moving Go back try to go back because people are very confused. I see is not back like before But they try to go back like before Then also if we're gonna look at the stock of netflix for example Um They grow up in some period But now it's growing down because people is not anymore on front of netflix then I think What we do also with our magazine, but not all only with our magazine. I have a project to try to reverse Uh, the the final destination. I don't think The final destination is psychopaths or narcissists for everybody. I think maybe start to to to to team fighting to To have the leadership of something Of course psychopath have a power because they don't care and the The others you have limits probably and Psychopath probably gonna win with humans, but I think What you say is specifically Now in this present after what happened with covet with war fear Manipulation communication, uh, very very heavy for every mind. No, I don't know. No, no, these are trends that are 40 years long before for example, the The diagnosis of narcissism among young people went up five times So these are trends that are Much much longer than than much before the pandemic the pandemic accelerated. You're right. Let's let's let's talk about the intimacy and Um, you know, we talk about benefits here. It's only about benefits. Which kind of benefits can I get if I do that or It's only about benefits, right? Intimacy is a benefit. I think so but for In my opinion, we have to start with intimacy with myself, for example Not with others if I start with myself to go inside myself and I find intimacy with myself maybe I can learn how to to look the others in different point of view Then I don't know how to reverse the process, but uh, maybe the The bigger travel is not the universe, but uh, is inside our mind, our soul, our Our childhood, our everything. I don't know Unfortunately, the data don't support what you're saying. There is clear picture in the past 40 years long before the pandemic intimacy is a benefit of course in some environments Everything is a benefit in some environments in nazi germany. It was a benefit to be a psychopath So everything is is context dependent. So In environments where you have to collaborate with other people For example to raise children to raise children Then of course intimacy is a benefit What we call it positive adaptation It's a positive adaptation because you have to raise children or to build a company together or to travel together or whatever intimacy is useful But in a world where The need to interact with other people will be minimized to the point of zero to the vanishing point You will be you can be on the metaverse from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep And you can work on the metaverse You can have sex on the metaverse. You can do your fashion shopping On the metaverse they're they're already They are already developing fashion applications for the metaverse by the way, which is an interesting topic. You trust metaverse No one tried metaverse metaverse doesn't doesn't exist yet But exactly it's being it's being put together, but we have we have Very things that are very near to the metaverse for example second life and sim and other Which were yeah came pretty close to the metaverse So if the incentive to work with other or to be with other people is reduced Then intimacy becomes the opposite of benefit If you get intimacy did you get intimacy in your life? Me personally or generally yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, no you exactly in personally I didn't or in your life you make sex only all about sex or or you feel intimacy with someone in your life I personally did not experience intimacy, but I don't have to have cancer to study cancer So I studied I studied intimacy The way other I mean you don't have to be transgender to study transgender most of the experts on transgender studies are not transgender. So It's it's a common. It's a common layman mistake to think that if you don't have a personal experience, you cannot Some of the greatest child psychologists were never have never had children. So No, that's not that's not a prerequisite. It's not a precondition. Oh, it's just to ask you because probably when you balance Benefits Maybe it's a lack I don't know. I follow you also. I saw you in a lot of video and it looked like Yes, when you grow from two to six years, you you create your real core But now you're gonna say Internet create new core for new narcissists But we burn From two to six, maybe there is no internet can yeah, but if the world but if the world will change You will raise your child to be a narcissist In july 2016 The famous magazine new scientists Had a cover story and the cover story was parents Teach your children to be narcissists New scientists said that the world Rewards narcissism if you're a narcissist, you will become president of the united states So it's a good thing to teach your child to be a narcissist We The process of socialization And a culturation That's when you teach your child How to be a social being And when you teach your child, what is the prevailing culture? So when you do this if you look around and you see that narcissists make more money, they are they are more gratified They travel more they study more they occupy all the positions of power I mean Even if you don't want to You will try to push your child to be successful in life And the positive adaptation would be narcissism So already you see in the education system in many western countries That narcissism Is the leading the main topic actually because the teachers tell the children You are special You are the best You're amazing You can do anything You are number one I mean there's indoctrination of narcissism in in schools in education system Similarly parents are doing this so it's it's it's a Social process. It's not that it's not that And everything you think is universal was always like that. It's not true We the environment changes we change Luckily for us environment changes we change Sometimes the changes are reversible. For example, I agree with you that Sociability will return after the pandemic. I agree that people will socialize more after the pandemic But some some changes are not reverse For example, I don't believe the technological environment will ever go back to what it used to be in the 1950s so You have to adapt to technology people think that technology is adapted to them No technology is the world You have to adapt to technology not the other way And if the technology reflects certain mental health constructs for example Social media Encourage you to encourage they encourage you to be alone They encourage solipsism and isolation They're called social media. It's orwellian orwellians you speak, you know But actually it's exactly the opposite. Why do they do this? Because they need your eyeballs. They need to monetize your eyeballs. They need your attention If you are paying attention to your girlfriend You're not paying attention to mark Zuckerberg and you're making him less rich He wants you to pay attention. So they created platforms which are addictive and platforms which condition you to have less intimacy fewer relationships to remain glued to the screen to make them richer by monetizing your eyeballs Bombing you with advertising So the technology is structured in some ways and you have to adapt It's easy to prove that you have to adapt Because if you don't have social media people think you're crazy and they push you to have social media Already after 10 years After 10 years already is everyone is adapted to social media If you if you talk about I don't know good relations between the genders try Try to do that in the united states Pick a group of 10 women and talk to them about good relationships with men See what they're saying Already there's a new ethos of gender war Try to talk to them Your personal hope is to To have more human in the future or more psychopath in the future your personal hope Every there was a saying you know in Rome every everything human is not strange to me. It's not alien to me So Psychopathy is a human condition Narcissism is a human condition It is they're not they're not not human. They're not subhuman the humans And for sure that's that for sure It's an adaptation It's simply a way of relating to the world and to other people which gives you the best results Let me let me say again. You prefer more empathic humans for the future You hope We become more empathic in the future or you hope we become more Mechanic First in my preference, you mean what do I prefer? Yeah, what you prefer? I would prefer a world with love with intimacy with With empathy. I don't know what is empathy, but I would prefer prefer for example to have an intimate partner I would prefer to have intimacy in my relationships. I prefer to have long relationships I prefer not to have casual sex. I'm a strong opponent of casual sex It has enormous mental health damages not to mention Uh body possibilities for body damage So I would prefer to see many of these things reversed, but I have an obligation as a social scientist To the truth and to the facts Regardless of my preferences only a bad scientist Mixes his opinion and his preferences with the science So you're not talking to me. I think maybe I'm maybe the whole conversation is mistaken If you're talking to me as some wakni As a human being Then of course I may give you totally different answers But if you're talking to me as a social scientist The picture is so overwhelmingly clear That there is no way for me to say otherwise unless I'm seriously misleading Let's talk for a minute about victimhood and narcissism Campbell the sociologist Said that we have transitioned from the age of dignity To the age of victimhood Everyone and his dog or cat Are victims of someone And if they can't find someone to victimize them they will victimize themselves Drug abuse substance abuse suicide Victimhood is an organizing principle of modern society What are we discovering? For example studies by gabbi g a b d a y Studies by gabbi in 2020 studies in british columbia in 2021. What are we discovering? We're discovering that Most of these social activism movements like me too Greta and the and the environment Black lives matter The most of the participants most of the activists Actually have a much higher level Of narcissism and psychopathy than the average population and much lower level of empathy This activism is a spectacle It's definitely a manifestation of growing narcissism Ironic but true Now victimhood as I said is an integral part of narcissism And narcissism is a new religion We are not faced with the only with a social construct or psychological but we are faced with a new religion On the individual level The narcissist as a child Sacrifices his true self To a new god This new god is the false self It's a private religion The more narcissists you have in society The more you have these gods And worshipers And the thing becomes ritualized and rigid and embedded Gradually in the culture and in society And then you have secondary manifestations of narcissists. Every narcissist will tell you that he's a victim Even if he is president of the united states, he's a victim Every narcissist will tell you this donald trump was a victim of everyone Of everyone He victimized everyone but he was a victim of it in his mind Victimhood empaths all this bullshit online. These are rank manifestations of narcissism So It's the age of the grievance You live alone You you gratify yourself with consumption You're self-sufficient. You have no and you're decreasing diminishing empathy You have no intimacy You consume other people Their bodies for example in one night stands, you know And at the end of the day You still feel that you had been victimized by someone And so you organize yourself around this victimhood principle you become mainly passive aggressive Or you become violent And you shoot people in schools so We see an increase in narcissism and its attendant phenomena And I don't think any of the things I've said is deniable the numbers overwhelming. We are not talking about 3% you know We are talking about Something like 30 40 percent of population for example of the united states the situation is much worse in other countries people say Oh, it's in the united states. They don't know what they're talking about. You go to russia I've lived in russia now for four years five years The situation there is much worse. You go to many countries in the Balkans where I've spent 20 years much worse You go to africa where I work for four years Much worse in united states ironically united states is maybe probably probably when something Is gohap collapse Like I see younger People don't use social media like the the older for example like Then Probably I hope and hope sometimes is a poison right but I don't I'm optimist about Trend can change because I see Friends 16 years old 14 years old look totally different than boomer like me or something then Tell me more about this because new generation grow different than me Then they look totally different then I don't know when these guys Have the power the experience the role in the society how they can change the rules I saw your social Talk about you talk about social media in one session of youtube And you say maybe we can fix something if we make Time for example four hours only to look the screen of instagram then if If something gonna change probably Also our mind can change again back. Yes, probably. I don't know. It's I said You're right. If the environment changes The adaptation there'll be a process of adaptation But the problem with the younger generations the the studies of younger generations are not supportive of your optimism I see that you're very distressed You're very distressed and it's understandable I'm older than you. I I I'm almost sure And and I'm distressed I live in a world which which feels like an alien planet and I'm a narcissist Imagine it's bad even for an old narcissist The the world today looks dystopian to an old narcissist. We can imagine how bad it is Yeah But studies don't support these And and I think the main reason with younger generations Why the optimism has to be very cautious Is that they look at the older generations and they say for example Relationships are a bad idea Look at this. Look at my mother and father. Look at my grandmother and grandfather Look at the rate of divorce. Look at the rates of of cheating and extramarital affairs Look at the betrayal and the pain and the hurt These younger and very young generations generation z and younger These generations have witnessed the utter failure of all the strategies of earlier generations And their reaction is not to say okay, we need to to change something but their reaction is to avoid They don't say for example, okay, older generations didn't know how to manage relationships So they ended up divorcing and they ended up hurting each other So we are going to manage relationships much better. That's not what they're saying They're saying We are going to avoid relationships Hey, that's it Relationships are really bad really really scary Guaranteed to fail. We're going to avoid them, you know Similarly, they will look at the workplace And they said the workplace is slavery It was a way slave slavery And they don't say okay. We're going to redesign the workplace. We're gonna Instead they're saying we're going to shun the workplace. We're going to avoid the workplace We are not going to go to work We're gonna work from home. We're going to fit into the gig gig economy Members of these generations 25 and younger Refuse Most of the job offers they receive They prefer to work in McDonald's flipping hamburgers Geeks, they're looking for geeks Members of these generations under age 25 Have far fewer sex far less sex. I'm sorry than my generation and far fewer sexual partners There's an epidemic of sexlessness Among these young generations, which is an exceedingly bad sign Because exactly as Freud said sex Is a prime barometer indicator of life the force of life libido These people don't have sex anymore They engage in activities like video games far more than previous generations Which is which are escapists Not goal-oriented activities that are numbing just numbing, you know So what I'm trying to say is that yes, you're right the younger generation Has had witnessed all the failures of the previous generations and they are not likely to repeat these failures. I agree with you on this But that's because they rejected life They gave up on life They simply gave up on life Can I just take it from there? I would like to Counter pose sort of a Freud's idea of libido with The concept of death and I would like to hear your thoughts on what you think about death And if the thought of death can be a sort of liberating thing Or a constraining thing. I think that like sort of closes us up in our fear We have as a civilization We have chosen death over life Because we have chosen to emotionally invest affect catexes emotionally invest In inanimate objects in dead objects people break up in relationships And it's painful But if they lose their smartphone, they want to commit suicide Ironically, some people React much worse to losing a smartphone than to losing a boyfriend, you know We are okay. That's that's just an illustration By way of my twisted sense of humor, but it's not very far from the truth. Look how people react when they lose an object We're emotionally attached not only to objects, but to the process of acquiring objects and We are hoarding Phenomenon of hoarding is exploded people people in a typical home Something like 80 percent of the objects are never used And they are just there. So it's a form of hoarding Hoarding, we know is an anxiety reaction when we are anxious. We buy things because it makes us feel safe It's we control the purchase we control the process of purchasing. So it's Angziolitic it's self-medication with objects. We also self-medicate with other people Like in casual sex, for example so The death had become the prevailing Moray the prevailing ethos of our civilization We value We value money And objects physical objects much more than we value you value human beings Or life not only human beings life in general So for example, we pillage and plunder and destroy the planet Which is life Because we want to create more Unleathed unnecessary physical objects It's absolutely a ritualistic death count. We live in a death count Now Freud and others Freud actually less, but there were others Said that there is always a battle between the Libidinal forces the forces of life Evers Evers, which is the force of sex and love Is a part of the libido. It's a sub sub So they said there's a fight between Libidinal forces and Thanatic forces the forces of death And later it was called the studo. So there's libido libido and the studo But they didn't mean it this way what they meant was people are self-destructive and self-defeating And given enough stress and frustration and given enough abuse, especially in deformative years in early childhood between zero and six and so on People will carry in them time bombs Later it was called the empty schizoid core. They will carry an emptiness inside them And gradually they will implode they will fall into this emptiness. Imagine you have a black hole And you are like light and you fall into the black hole and you can never emerge again That's a thematic principle But I think civilization itself We were in a titanic battle between the forces of life and the forces of death the enlightenment Which started in the 17th century and was preceded by the renaissance These were the forces of life They were about life Ancient Greece, ancient Rome, aesthetics, beauty, art sculptures science It was all about life It was all about integrating with the environment getting to know it better having intimacy with the world That was the enlightenment and then There was a reactionary fanatic death force And I'm sorry to say that it prevailed The battle was lost by the forces of life and light And I'm talking about the world wars the two world wars Talking about the holocaust I'm talking about everything that has happened since But above all I'm talking about the society of the spectacle When we moved from substance to appearance And I'm talking about consumerism And I'm talking about narcissism These are all forces of death And they are all focused on show of showing, demonstrating, appearance And so That battle That battle seemed to have been lost I agree that maybe there's a war still ongoing So maybe the next battle will be won But this battle is decided It's lost Maybe we have to wait For some generations To perish Exactly as you said Maybe we just have to wait for some generations to perish and the new generations will somehow make things right As things stand now We gave up on ourselves That's why we are cocooned And the only reason Netflix is down is because HBO Max and Disney Plus and all the others And Apple and even Amazon are way up Compensating by far for the drop in difference So We have given up It's the society Of surrender Ironically there's a monotheistic religion which is centered around surrender It's called Islam The word Islam Means submission in Arabic In a type of Arabic called Fusla That's the meaning of the word Islam It is not by accident That this is the fastest growing religion in the world Including in the west Because it's about giving up About surrendering And about the battle between the life or force The force of life and the force of death With clear intimations That we are tantalizingly close To surrendering to death that we are like We are by the grace of God We haven't kind of given up completely to death But the forces of death in the Quran and in the Scriptures of Islam They're very dominant, very prevalent, much more than for example than in Judaism or Christianity Now I'm not Muslim, I'm nafis and I'm agnostic It's not, I'm just saying And people find Not only Islam but in occult's sects The occult, the occult, the esoteric The irrational The disbelief in authority and expertise Detesting science Attacking, attacking the intellect and its fruits Anti-enlightenment We are regressing very fast to the darkest periods of the Middle Ages and not all of them were dark So When you reject science, when you reject The intellect, when you reject enlightenment, you're rejecting life Of course you're rejecting life My hope, by the way ironically my hope is the same That maybe a generation yet to be born or just born Maybe they will reverse all Maybe they will, maybe they will engage The current generations Z and younger Are not engaging They refuse to grow up We have numerous statistics about this, we have studies by Twenge and Campbell and Lisa Wade and I can give you a whole list Young people, under the age of 25 Refuse to grow up They're beginning to have sex later, they're having sex much less They refuse to get a driver's license Which is shocking A driver's license was the hallmark Of maturity and and in graduation matriculation into adulthood in America And yet people under age 25 Refuse to get driver's license They don't even drink They don't even use condoms All the hallmarks They refuse, one third One third of people under age 35 Live with their parents One third The figure was three percent in the great depression When you talk to young people, and I'm a professor, I teach young people When you talk to young people you ask them, why do you still live with your parents? They will tell you, oh Rental is very expensive, housing is very expensive I can't have privacy, I can't have intimacy, I can't have a family, I can't have a relationship The world sucks, I don't have a job, I would never have a job and so on and so forth And all this is true But mind you, during the great depression The economic conditions were much worse And yet only three percent of people under age 35 Lived in the same family unit The number now is 35 percent They refuse to live home They're terrified by this dystopian world They don't want anything to do with life They want to play video games They want to do coke, they're fortunate ones They want to sleep, they want to get drunk They want to have the casual rump once a year, or not at all A majority of young men and women did not have sex the preceding year Not even once They've given up on life What was the therapy you used to save? One guy have this kind of problem Like they don't wake up, they play only with the video games Or they're really depressed They take drugs Not about the society, but let's close the circle in one person Which kind of work psychology can do in one person? Well, we'll be done in one minute, this session So maybe we'll have the final session after this one All right, I'm so curious I will close, save, so it will take again both weapons That's it I'll be back with you Let me answer your question Yeah First You cannot treat There was a guy called Emil Dukheim Emil Dukheim in the 20th century described What later came to be called Anomi Anomic societies, societies which had lost The consensus on normative behavior So that's why it's called Anomi, non-norms In such societies, Emil Dukheim had warned well over a hundred years ago The rates of depression, anxiety and suicide were skyrocketed And so in anomic societies, there is no way to treat the individual Efficaciously Of course, we keep selling self-help books and therapy and so on But that's because it's good for business The reality is that we are very impotent helpless Against the overwhelming societal forces that shape the mental illness or mental lack of mental health Of the individuals comprising the society so we need to We need to look at societal solutions and Here the message is a lot more optimistic As I said from the very beginning if you reshape the environment Nothing in the human in human nature with the human mind Is cast in stone Everything is reversible Everything can change dramatically sometimes within 10 years, not a big deal But you need to change in one The two things that need to be done require a lot of political will and courage A lot of social mobilization Giving up on addictions To anything and everything So while I'm very optimistic that if these changes are implemented We will see an increase In mental health, we will see an increase in a restoration of intimacy Functioning relationships Precipitous decline in anxiety, depression and suicide While I'm being treated While I'm very optimistic that if we re-engineer society minimally We will have Disproportional Good outcomes like in chaos theory, you know the butterfly and the hurricane While I'm optimistic about this I'm very pessimistic that these changes will actually be implemented The recipe is known the will is not there Because there are too many business interests involved The nexus between politics and money Had become totally corrupt and pernicious The very structure of society is sick. I am not very optimistic that but I can still point out what I think May Not only reverse the trend But restore humanity as we had No need no need let's say Earlier 50 years ago 60 years when I was born So I think two two things need to be done One We need to accept That some forms of speech Are toxic And some ideologies Are dangerous And we need to act against them Either by banning them outright And yes free speech is not an unlimited thing Or at the very least by countering them as we are doing for example with terrorism with isis messaging Trying to counter it but I'm trying to deprogram people belonging to this count Count-like ideologies had led us where we are today and I'm talking among other things For example about third wave feminism Not first wave not second wave and not fourth wave, but third wave definitely It's an example of a toxic cult That had led us where we are today I'm talking about the exaltation of consumerism Including the advertising industry and so on What altruism called interpolation Altruism said that the advertising industry essentially is Interpolating us forcing us to behave in ways which would conform to certain messaging There are there's a list of about 20 such ideologies And these ideologies need to be fought firstly Or Which is the optimal in my view suppress completely Because the social outcomes and the outcomes to individuals of these ideologies are beyond any doubt As far as our studies go We don't need additional evidence We know that these ideologies are detrimental to mental health of people Why we allow them still because of this Relativism You know every opinion is allowed. There are no facts Truth is you know, you have your facts. I have my facts Alternative you have your reality. I have my reality Every and everyone is equal footing. I call it malignant malignant egalitarianism Like everyone is equal to everyone. There are no experts. There are no authorities. They're not This is think It's thought it's also counterfactual. It's not true But it's definitely dangerous So the first thing I would do is an ideologically banning of ideologies and so And the second only two things by the way two steps Not the whole agenda. Not, you know, just two steps The second step I would do I would implement Is to limit the use of technology And to ban certain technologies Now you could say what are you talking about? I have a surprise for you Technologies are banned all the time For example, you're not allowed to clone a human being although that's utterly possible I think for for for me. I think the solution is to verify All the action In internet All the user have to be verified then you do the same things you do in the normal life because you are responsible of your action This can change a lot of things For me, for example, this if this happened change a lot of things Yes, that's one of my that's one of my recommendations in many videos Identity verification. I suggest to introduce blockchain Blockchain technology into the internet because blockchain allows you to Verify your identity And no one can hack it or for falsified But yes, when I say limit the use of technology It's a slogan, but I have Quite a few highly specific um ideas in mind For example, I would limit the use of social media to two hours a day I would not allow you to be friends on social media with someone you don't know or haven't met in green life I would force you to verify your identity Either by submitting documentation Or by or via blockchain And and many other things I would ban I would ban the use of likes Which create envy and competition anxiety and depression and suicide Documented in the studies of twinge 2008 2018 So I would ban this all together I would not allow twitter to limit speech to 140 characters Because this creates aggression. We have studies that show that if I limit your speech you become much more aggressive They are so When I say limit technology, I mean regulated Regulated and limited usage limited features And force it to conform much more closely to reality To become an extension of reality not an escape from reality For example With a metaverse I would not allow any event in the metaverse to be translated into an event in reality Because this blurs the lines It makes it very difficult to tell the difference between metaverse and reality If you make money in the metaverse I would not allow you to convert this money to us doors Because it would confuse you you would begin to think that the metaverse is real So There are many such steps. It's not a big deal to come up with, you know That's a limitation of technology And with ideologies I would either ban speech outright. You are not allowed to deny the holocaust That's banned speech Because people keep saying oh, but there is free speech not true. There is no free speech anywhere in the world It's a myth There's no such thing You can't shout fire in a crowd at theater. You cannot deny the holocaust. There are many things you can't say And if you do say them you end up in prison ask david irving the holocaust deny so I would I would identify Based on studies and everything it had always to be evidence-based. I would identify ideologies that lead to adverse social individual outcomes And I would either ban them outright Or launch campaigns To counter the toxic pernicious and counterfactual messages of these ideologies You do you make these two steps You implement these two steps And a lot of the damage would be undone A lot of it will be undone There are other objective issues The economy housing Yes, there are many other objective problems no question, but objective problems Existed all the time What was what is the difference between the 14th century and our century? Barbara Tuckman the famous historian Wrote a book comparing the 14th century To the 20th century and she asked what's the difference In the 14th century we have the black death It was bad It was as bad as it gets One third to one half the population of europe had died That's bad, I think And yet It was not as bad as today. Why? Because they had institutions If you lost your family to the black death You could still go to the church And receive support You had your pastor You had your extended family You had the village You had your community You had your feudal lord You had where to go You had who to talk to Today You are isolated You have a single friend compared to 10 40 years ago You have no family You have no father and mother It's a mess So and all these These are results of these ideologies people People cope with economic problems People cope with environmental problems You are never broken By the fact that you don't have money This never breaks you But what breaks you Is the feeling that you're all alone You're atomized You have nowhere to turn to and no one to talk to No one to share with No one to live with So in this The situation today Is the clear unequivocal outcome Of a series of ideologies Which pushed us to where we are today Why should we give these ideologies the benefit of the doubt I don't give communism the benefit of the doubt I don't give Nazism the benefit of the doubt Nazism is forbidden Why? It's free speech Because they failed They failed us as human beings I think third wave feminism Failed us as human beings For example I can give other example So These ideologies Need to be counted or suppressed The minute people feel That the air is clear ideologically And the minute They cannot use technology to escape reality They will be forced into reality And into each other And the social fabric Which had disintegrated completely Will reintegrate It's like a wound Humanity is wounded There's a wound We need to let it heal What do you do with a wound? You clean the wound That's the ideology Then you don't touch the wound You don't scratch it That's the technology And then the wound heals by itself Gradually the fabric heals I'm a firm believer In the potential for healing And for going back To functional situation between people What I don't believe in Is the will to make this happen It's possible I think it's possible and I think metaverse project is gonna die very fast And I hope start a new era Call inverse Let's see I think maybe Erin have a last question We've only got a few minutes so I'll make it fast but I would like to ask what you think about The fact that young people today for example The younger generations don't have A sort of cult around death anymore And what impact can this have? I'm not sure this is true to say that They don't worship the death cult They're very focused on material goods They interact with inanimate objects Not with each other They isolate themselves in physical objects Known as rooms or apartments Which are dead And the closest they get to life Is a pet A cat or a dog Or a goldfish or whatever I don't think they I think they are even I think they are Their integration with the death cult is even worse than previous generations And the pandemic didn't have I agree Pandemic pushed all of us To the point where we Isolated our habits were broken Our communities were broken And we began to regard ourselves as objects Through the gaze of governments And experts and so on So we were treated as objects There was no choice okay They had to cope with the pandemic But we were treated as objects Anonymous objects So I don't think the situation is better With younger generations I think it's much worse actually And I mentioned statistics again and again Less sex Less social interaction Not seeing other people For whole year Et cetera The picture is not good But again Implement these two steps and everything will be reversed in a decade I'm sure And what about the distinction for instance Death as the distinction of existing and non-existing For example The minute you cast yourself as a victim Which a majority of young people do Victimhood movements are mostly populated by people younger than 30 years old That's the statistics The minute you cast yourself as a victim You cast yourself as an object A victim is an object A victim is a passive person Things are done to the victim He's a passive recipient Of malevolence or malice So Self-objectification Is a very important feature Of today's world We self-objectify sexually Like women for example They become sex objects of men That's the slut walks And the wrong culture They become sex objects of men It's like I think Britney Spears said or someone She said I'm sexy but I'm not sexual It's a sex object So we tend to self-objectify And victimhood movements are about self-objectification And young people are especially integrated into victimhood movements So I don't think it's going well with young people There's always this eternal hope that young people will change everything And so I don't see that they're changing I see that they had given up Not even surrendered Surrender is sometimes good They didn't surrender Surrender is an active act It's an action They didn't surrender They simply signed out They opted out And so I don't know I'm much less optimistic in both of you about the act I come across them day in and day out They're dead They're dead inside And I can generalize definitely Because I'm seeing thousands And I'm seeing thousands of them on many countries on three continents They're dead inside They have been killed Killed by a toxic environment The hopelessness of the future The materialism And the fact that they have an alternative to reality That is numbing And self-satisfactory Gratification and consumerism So they just checked out They're no longer with us They are not in like Elvis He is no longer in the room And I can't say this about previous generations Whatever you say about previous generations I mean the fact that big time they destroyed the planet They are horrible The relationships divorced We did a horrible job We did a horrible job My generation destroyed the world Literally end of story But we still destroyed the world We were engaged somehow We were in the world We did a bad job But we were in the world And we did try our best We had limited knowledge We know much more too But these, they young they're not They're not in the world They don't want anything to do with the world They think it sucks And they're right I'm not disputing this But I'm disappointed that they are not much more competitive Much more tolerant Much more reform oriented Much more gung-ho You know The victimhood movement is bullshit It's a spectacle It's a show Like any other show It's a reality It's reality TV No It's not real Cool Then Perfect We are safe Don't cut your wrist after this interview No, no, no problem I'm 42 And I see a lot of things But my story Because there is different stories My stories is I burn in Africa I still in Africa from 2 to 14 Then I burn in different place Than here Then that's why maybe I talk with this mood But I I see I don't know I don't know what to say But we have to wait and see what can happen Because many things can change Many things can change very fast I can tell you one thing If there is any hope It's not in the West If there is any hope It's that some parts of the world Are still far more human And far more connected than the West Exactly These are the Centers where transformation can begin And spread Unfortunately, the West monopolize The media Social media Show business Mainstream media Alternative media It's all Western And through these vectors The West is distributing its poison Everywhere So you begin to see similar trends to the West You begin to see in Mexico In China, in India, in Egypt, in Israel But there's still hope Because there are enclaves There are reserves of humanity and connectedness In many parts of the world But China is lost, for example I don't know if you are following I mean China used to be far more human Than the West Far more But today is even more Western than the United States More The ethos is dead China is dead China is worse than the United States Worse So if China was infected at that time What hope do you have for Africa Or Asia You know Or I don't know I went to Russia I lived in Russia for five years Russia used to be a traditionalist Conservative patriarchal Misogynistic society Bad parts and good parts And I went there And it's totally Westernized It's far more Westernized than New York Or San Francisco It's totally Westernized In the sickest sense of the word Autology, yeah Virus Absolute virus Pandemic Okay Sorry I couldn't give you light and hope and you know But I'm not Not changing Don't worry Don't worry Don't worry Thank you Thank you for having me Take care Yeah Very nice discussion Yes Thank you Thanks so much Thank you Bye bye Thank you again Bye Bye bye bye