 So, I think, tell me if I'm wrong, I think in every society that has ever existed, there's been cancel culture. I can't imagine a society that doesn't have cancel culture. So, I don't think there's anything new about cancel culture. I think this is just the way people are built, right? Every group, every society, develops certain norms. And if you don't obey those norms, if you don't go along with the key mores of the group, you get excluded. And I just don't know any other way that human beings could organize themselves. I think every society has had certain essential beliefs that you're not allowed to publicly criticize. Every society, there have been certain obvious truths that you can't question without paying a pretty stiff price. So there's a lot of talk about cancel culture as something new and unprecedented and cataclysmic. This is just horrible. And I think cancel culture is an inherent part of human community, human nature, human life. I don't think it's new, and I don't think there's any alternative to it. What will get you canceled will vary year by year, situation by situation, society by society. But there's no alternative to cancel culture. Please correct me if I'm wrong. So I grew up a Seventh-day Adventist Christian, and Adventist means belief in the soon coming of Jesus Christ. And so the Seventh-day Adventist believed that the world was coming to an end, but that Jesus would come down and he'd save his most faithful servants, the 144,000 faithful Seventh-day Adventists. They'd be saved while everyone else would be thrown into a sea of fire. And there was a comment on one of my videos like, why do I have a lighter? Why do I smoke? I don't smoke anything. I just use it for a visual device. So when I was growing up at Avondale College in Australia, I think the movie that had more of an impact on me than any other movie was A Man for All Seasons about Sir Thomas Moore. And I saw him as a brave martyr. So I spent the first 18 years of my life living as a Seventh-day Adventist Evangelical Christian. And then after about four years as an atheist, I moved into Judaism. So I've essentially spent my last 27 years in Judaism. So when I compare my lived experience as a Jew to my lived experience as a Protestant, as a preacher's kid, there was about 100 times more emphasis on the glories of martyrdom in Protestantism because at its core Christianity is a romantic religion. It sees more to reality than is actually there. Judaism is primarily an unromantic religion. So Christianity has unromantic aspects to it and Judaism has romantic aspects to it. But overall, the focus in Christianity is the next world, individual salvation to the next world where things are much, much better. And the overwhelming emphasis of Judaism is on this world. So one religion is naturally going to be much more transcendent and otherworldly than the other. So Christianity places much more faith on, much more emphasis on belief and on dogma. I give you believe in Jesus, you are saved. If you become one with Christ, you are saved. And Judaism, the emphasis is much more on deed rather than creed. So I saw a man for all seasons when I was about 9 or 10 and had such a profound impact on me because he was this really brave martyr, it seemed like Sir Thomas Moore. And this film is based on a play that depicts the final years of Sir Thomas Moore. He was the 16th century Lord Chancellor of England and he refused to sign a letter asking the Pope to annul Henry VIII of England's marriage to Catherine of Aragon and he also refused to take an oath of supremacy declaring Henry VIII the supreme head of the Church of England. And so this movie portrays Sir Thomas Moore as the ultimate man of conscience that he would remain true to his principles, to his faith under all circumstances and at all times. So a contemporary of Sir Thomas Moore, Robert Whittington wrote of him in 1520, Moore is a man of an angel's wit and singular learning. I know not his fellow, but where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness and affability? And his time required the man of marvelous mirth and pastimes and sometimes of as sad gravity a man for all seasons. So Sir Thomas Moore is eventually sentenced to death and after that he denounces the king's supremacy over the Church as illegal. He cites biblical foundations for the supremacy of the papacy over the Church and he declares the alleged supremacy of the king just repugnant to all Christian institutions throughout Christendom. And he declares that the Church is essentially immune to state interference and that this is guaranteed both by the Magna Carta and by the king's own coronation, Oath. And Moore is remitted to the tower and then condemned to death by beheading. And at the time of his execution Moore declares, I die his majesty's good servant but God's first. He stands for God first above and beyond all other considerations. He's a man of God and he kneels at the block and the executioner cuts off his head and it's like, wow, this is so inspiring. I wanted to be a Christian missionary, even a Christian martyr. Now do a little more reading and I realize how many people Sir Thomas Moore had burned at the stake for heresy. So yeah, he eventually loses his head. But he had all these other people burned at the stake for heresy. He tortured all these people because they had incorrect beliefs about God and Christ. So I think sometimes in life we metaphorically get burned at the stake for heresy and other times we burn other people at the stake. So sometimes metaphorically with a concentration camp inmates and sometimes with a concentration camp guards. Fairly early in my life I developed the insight that there was nothing that was human that was foreign to me and that with just a little bit of work I could empathize with anyone. So there was a Polish-born Holocaust survivor in Israel, Jeheal De Nure. He wrote under the pseudonym Cardset, setneck, and he was tormented by just horrific nightmares about what happened to him during the Holocaust. So every night Auschwitz would visit him in his sleep and he'd wake up screaming drenched in perspiration. His wife Nina heard about this Dutch psychiatrist who healed trauma using LSD and when he finally agreed to go see the psychiatrist he took some LSD in the summer of 1976. And under the influence of LSD he saw that he could just as easily have been a concentration camp guard as a concentration camp prisoner. No people is inherently a victim or inherently a perpetrator but whether we're victims or perpetrators depends upon time and circumstance. So sometimes we get cancelled and other times we cancel other people and I'm not sure if we can escape from that dynamic. So prior to getting this counselling he looked at Auschwitz and the Holocaust as the work of demons but he realized through the psychiatric counselling and the LSD that neither Satan nor God built Auschwitz but I and you. So Auschwitz was the work of human beings and it was the work of Hitler and Hitler was not Satan, Hitler was a person. So many people are now on the distant right they like to view their enemies as evil as demons and I don't find that useful I think it's much more useful to view your enemies as just like you they just have different values and different instinctive responses and different priorities. But just as I have the capacity to do good and to do evil so too your enemies have the capacity to do good and to do evil that they're human rather than demons. And so coming to understand the Nazis and Hitler as human beings rather than demons was transformative for this one particular Holocaust survivors life. I've been reading the Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantell and it's about Thomas Cromwell who served Henry the Eighth and in one passage he recollects thinking of Sir Thomas Moore. He sees Thomas Moore on the scaffold and dying from the impact of the axe and he reflects that when Thomas Moore had power there was no persecutor more relentless right Thomas Moore put all these people to burn at the stake he tortured all these people he set up torture implements in his home and he would torture people while preaching to them and at him about Christianity and Thomas the Thomas Cromwell character in Wolf Hall reflects I did not hate Thomas Moore even though Thomas Moore probably wanted me dead I exercised my skills to persuade him to reconcile with King Henry the Eighth I thought I would win him he had a good deal to live with but in the end he was his own murderer I think that's a great point so often we are our own murderer we murder our own soul our own prospects in the end he was his own murderer he wrote and wrote and he talked and talked and then suddenly at a stroke he canceled himself so I'm thinking many victims of cancel culture cancel themselves there never was a time and there never was a human society and I don't think we can ever have a human community that does not have the option of cancelling people and I noticed many people who get canceled they get stuck in this victimhood downward spiral and are often just completely unable to see their own role in their own cancellation and how many victims of cancel culture really just canceled themselves by unable to see reality clearly now people usually reluctant to understand that they canceled themselves they'd rather blame it on nefarious outside forces in the end so Thomas Moore he was his own murderer so when he was sent into exile he he told Cromwell in the wolf war trilogy I think I just spent my time praying and writing and Cromwell told him well pray a great deal and write very little and so Thomas Moore did not follow that advice he wrote and he wrote and he talked and he talked and then at a stroke he canceled himself and how many people is this true of today you could say about them he wrote and wrote and he talked and talked and then suddenly at a stroke he canceled himself if ever a man came close to be heading himself Thomas Moore was that man so I think it's a useful perspective if you get canceled by canceled culture did you really cancel yourself did you really murder your own prospects did you really behead yourself were you your own murderer and after or when Anne Boleyn the second wife of Henry the eighth when she was on her way to her beheading there's two characters talking in wolf hall and one says if Anne had reigned longer she would have given us to the dogs to eat so they recognize that if she'd had power she would have she would have killed them and the other bloke says well if we had let her reign longer we would have deserved it so to an extent we get to choose our own elites by choosing who we pay attention to who we financially support what tv shows we watch who we vote for what books we buy what churches we join who we listen to who we give our attention we we get to choose our own elites and if we don't choose wisely then our elites can metaphorically give us to the dogs to eat and if we let them reign longer by not being diligent with the use of our money time and attention then then we we deserve what they give us but later in the book the lord chancellor says the truth is so rare and precious that sometimes it must be kept under lock and key so every society it's been politically incorrect to say certain truths so in a christian society there are certain truths you can't say out loud in an orthodox Jewish society there have been certain truths you can't say out loud and every society has certain truths that you're not allowed to say out loud and this is this statement is true for every society in some context the truth is so rare and precious that sometimes it must be kept under lock and key if you remove it from the lock and distribute the truth widely you will pay a very big price so i'm looking at a tweet here by godward podcast you can't say anything other than the status quo because if you do one of your chat box people say something problematic then you can be cancelled so you just s you so you just have to say cheers to the status quo cheers to the status quo i say and i'm not sure i agree with godward podcast for example alon musk has said many things that are problematic but he's so powerful and influential he is beyond cancelling peter teal the investor said many things that are problematic but people have been unable to cancel him and donald trump said many things that are problematic he became president of the united states so trump said many things outside the status quo but he didn't get cancelled so not everyone who says something outside the status quo gets cancelled it has a lot to do with your own level of emotional and financial resiliency for example it helps if you have multiple streams of income or if you're you know independently wealthy also after recognizing reality the more prestigious your position such as university professor or television news anchor or politician the more prestigious your position the more vulnerable you are to cancellation so people can make themselves more or less resilient emotionally financially and we play a big role in how others respond to us so if we put out into the world how afraid we are of getting blowback for our beliefs our thoughts our words then then we're really encouraging the mob to come after us so fighting reality is not a life that works embrace reality rather than fight reality and it's always been this way galileo all right he had problems with the catholic church like he championed the idea that the earth revolved around the sun and this met our position from within the catholic church and from other astronomers and there was a roman inquisition in 1615 which declared that galileo's position of heliocentrism was foolish and absurd in philosophy and formerly heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of holy scripture and galileo went on to defend his views and he ends up alienating the pope and the jesuit order who'd both supported galileo up until he published his views in a pamphlet dialogue concerning the two chief world systems so many people are just fine till they make one tweet too many one vlog too many one blog post too many but galileo had the support of the pope and the jesuits up until he published his views in a pamphlet dialogue concerning the two chief world systems then galileo was tried by the inquisition found suspective heresy and he was forced to recant spent the rest of his life under house arrest so we have always had cancel culture french philosopher rene day card he also had to find modus vivende with the catholic church he was raised a catholic he tutored queen christina but he was regarded with suspicion by many important people in the church his views were seen as incompatible with doctrines of transubstantiation and he may very well have been killed by an arsenic-laced holy communion wafer after erring his heretical views so cancel culture is not new to to our time galileo dealt with it rene day card dealt with it catholic church prohibited day cards books in 1663 and day card tried to steer clear of theological questions all right so in his time there were certain things that you couldn't touch without getting into trouble and he tried to show that there was no incompatibility between his metaphysics meaning philosophy and theological orthodoxy so he did the best he could to navigate around cancel culture in his time so when i think about the reckless things that many people say and they end up getting canceled then maybe they they canceled themselves right as much less inspiring to recognize that you canceled yourself that you murdered your own career prospects then to be able to blame it on other people but fighting reality does not work nearly as much as accepting reality we have always had cancel culture i just don't see any escape from from cancel culture as long as you're living in a human community there are always going to be things that you can say that are off limits okay chat says get kevin michael grace and kyle back on the show and denis dale i've invited all of them okay so if they're not on the show it's not because i'm not inviting them it's because they're choosing not to come on the show so denis dale stopped coming on the show in something like june of 2018 because he had some kind of burn against kevin michael grace i remember we were doing a weekly show every sunday with denis and he just stopped showing up like there was there was no notice he's just like sorry luke when i said hey what happened where are you just sorry luke you know i didn't didn't get an explanation it's just like sorry luke so i've invited kevin on half a dozen times over the past three months and i often invited kyle on and i've often invited denis dale on over the past three years so they're choosing not to come on the show it's not because i'm not extending the invite to them so where do journalists come from there's a great book here by tom wolf 2012 novel called back to blood and there's a great section here on the development of journalists and liberals people have such a colorful picture of newspaper reporters those daring types who break stories and uncover corruption and put themselves in risky situations to get a scoop so a lot of people got into journalism after the success of the movie all the president's men or after watching burt Lancaster in the sweet smell of success but tom wolf writes if you ask me newspaper reporters are created at age six when they first go to school in the schoolyard boys immediately divide into two types immediately the strong and the weak there are those who have the the will to dominate and to dare and those who don't now those who are weak and don't have the will and the ability to dominate they try to work out a modus vivendi with those who do have power just like galileo and copernicus and an a day cart they try to reach a modus vivendi with those who had power now there are boys from the weaker side of this divide who grow up with the same dreams as the stronger all right they dream of power they dream of money they dream of fame and beautiful lovers now they instinctively recognize that language can be a sword or a gun ryan asks why do conservatives always complain about cancel culture it seems like they're just jealous that they don't have the power to cancel yeah well first of all i think most people would rather complain than accept reality right i don't think that's just something unique to conservatives also conservatives don't have the high ground in culture much of politics much of america so it's usually being a lot easier to cancel conservatives than to cancel leftists so rather than face up to their own lack of power conservatives would rather would rather whine and complain so talking about boys who grow up weak but dream of having power one day and then they realize that language can be a weapon so studying eighth grade i thought ah i think i want to be a journalist when i grow up because when i came to america in may of 1977 i didn't have any friends and so i spent that entire summer of 1977 in the pacific union college library and i started out reading books on world war two and why my germany and then i was wondering the stacks and i found found old issues of time magazine so i went through every old issue of time magazine from its inception i think around 1920s right up to the present then i went through every issue of life magazine which i think started in the 1930s up to the present and i went through every issue of newsweek magazine didn't read every article but i put my hands on every issue and looked at the table of contents and read the articles that interested me then i went through every issue of sports illustrated magazine so sports illustrated time newsweek life magazine so i think that's where i caught my love of journalism as the first draft of history and i was never in the dominant tier of boys in the playground like i was rarely i was never chosen first when people would would try to you know pick teams for sporting contests but i also dreamed of power and so i guess i grew up to realize that words could be a weapon remember i entered school formally in second grade and in my first report card the teacher said luke is always very willing to share his opinion with the class that he needs to learn to be more considerate of the slower thinker so i realized that words could be a weapon when the bigger boys they would dunk me and they would bully me they'd push me around but i dreamed that hey one day i'm gonna be the one who pushes other people around so i saw journalism as a ticket to where the cool stuff was happening like this would this would be my ticket to where things were going on and it kind of gave me a way to deal with my social awkwardness that i could be a journalist and then i would have the the right the responsibility to insert myself into all sorts of social interactions that hey i was pursuing the truth and if you realize that words are a weapon and you can then use them schoolfully you have the power to achieve great things and to tear down things and you can tear down people so just as the bigger boys might bully me and hold my head under the water i realized that with the skillful use of words i could turn that around and you could turn that around on the bigger boys would bully you so when i entered Judaism when i got on my path to conversion to Judaism there are a lot of humiliating moments and then when i developed my blog in 1997 i suddenly took that power back people became much more reluctant to mess with me because i had a blog and i had a big readership and when people abused me or treated me badly treated me trivially i could write about it on my blog and then suddenly people started treating me with more care as they would take back some power from the people who'd been bullying me because if you allow yourself to be bullied there are no end to people who will bully you when you take back your power and let people realize there are consequences for their choices and people behave much more carefully so that's what liberals are it's not about ideology economic social justice those are nothing but their prom outfits their politics were set for life in the school yard by age six they were the weak and forever afterwards they resented the strong that's why journalists tend to be liberals the very same schoolyard events that push them toward the written word also push them toward liberalism if you want power through words in journalism rhetorical genius is not enough you need news you need content you need new material and you have to find it for yourself so you can develop such a craving for power and such a craving for information that you will then push yourself into dangerous situations amidst dangerous people with relish and that's what i have done as a reporter willing to go online without any backup and with your weak mannerisms you can end up approaching the vilest of the vile with a demand you have some information and i need it and i deserve it and i will have it that's kind of the mentality of the journalist has written in tom walsh 2012 book back to blood so that new york times article on scott alexander of slate star codex just came out okay what does um chat says third positioners would cancel libtards coxotives anyone who lives in the fantasy land of talmudic pillpaw right well richard spencer was very clear that there won't be any free speech in the ethno state luke was more relevant in at least in degenerate circles when he just stuck to porn matters well you can you can achieve a lot of influence even power in certain circles if you're willing to go where other people aren't willing to go so normally sane people who have positive regard for their own welfare are not going to have anything to do with something like the porn industry but i was willing to immerse myself in that open sore for about a decade and so in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king luke missed the boat of political authenticity when he chose the shackle over his own racial kinfolk when did i choose the shackle i've never been rich so i converted to Judaism but had nothing to do with the shackles and as far as choosing the shackle over my own racial kinfolk anglos don't even choose their own racial kinfolk like anglos have less regard for their racial kinfolk than any other people in the world like anglos acts as the least ethnic of any group in the world like anglos actions are completely willing to give away their power their influence their societies like welcome the stranger come on in we don't need to protect ourselves we don't need to look after our own well-being just everybody come on in and so there's a there's an author frederick debor you wrote a book called the court of the smart now we have free speech edl style oh okay so where where have we had more free speech than we do in the united states of america right it's so easy in these dissident chat rooms dissident twitter dissident blogosphere dissident logosphere to bewail how awful things are now okay so where is there more free speech in the world north korea china sweden switzerland canada mexico argentina nigeria japan where is there more free speech than in the united states today united states certainly has problems but uh uh compared to the alternatives well what are the better alternatives would you rather be in north korea or china so frederick debor he he writes about the new york times piece on sleet star codex and its psychiatrist author scott alexander susan this piece is an expression of the the established media believe us the world's noble and benevolent arbiter of truth yeah so i've been written about many times as a blogger and it's always with disdain because my blogging did not reach the the lofty heights of journalism never mind that much my blogging was not concerned with being journalism like if you got a nail right everything looks like a hammer and if you're a journalist you're gonna look at the world through the perspective of journalism and so it seemed like almost every profile of me was uh whether or not i lived up to the standards of journalism even when much of what i was doing was much closer to say talk radio china has more free speech than america in china you can't criticize the government you can say anything else you want in the u.s you can't say much of anything really on what basis do you say that i think that's completely absurd i just give me some sources for that it's far more free speech in america than in china so when you usually read journalists writing about bloggers it's it's almost always with disdain and hostility because the establishment media tends to view itself as the world's noble and benevolent arbiter of truth right the united states has more free speech than any other country watergate could not have been uncovered in almost any other country but the united states but in in australia for example and in the united kingdom there's prior restraint like let's say you approach someone to do an article they can go to court and get prior restraint to to deny you the possibility of even publishing your article you don't have prior restraint in the united states all sorts of court cases in the united kingdom and australia journalists are not allowed to write about so cardinal pell was put on trial in australia for child abuse uh the the mainstream journalists couldn't write about it for weeks and weeks and weeks we then have anything like that here ryan says it's a long list of things you can't criticize in the u.s without cancellation like give me an example right if you're if you work for yourself and uh you're a plumber or you're an alexander technique teacher it's pretty hard to get canceled all right so people who are lgbt okay so plenty of people criticize the lgbt agenda and they haven't been canceled yeah cancellation is not a lack of free speech many people confuse free speech with no consequences there are consequences for your speech so there are a lot of people who cancel who uh denigrate homosexuality and they don't get canceled depends on what your position is whether you're independently wealthy or whether you are in a prestigious position that's more susceptible to being canceled so the new york times the la times cbs news these establishment journalists generally seem disdainful and hostile to anyone who seeks to inform or persuade the public and does not write for one of their esteemed elite journalism outlets what's the difference between promo and the distant right did you mean what's the difference between porno and the distant right so both uh both movements between the point industry and the distant right but tend to attract a disproportionate amount of of anti-social people disproportionate amount of people with criminal backgrounds uh perhaps a disproportionate number of homosexuals freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences there is nothing that is free from consequences there's never been a human society where you are free from the consequences of what you say it's impossible there's no form of human organization where you can say something and then be utterly free from from consequences so other similarities between the distant right and the point industry so both groups feel very much on the margins of society there is a there is a more intellectual elite in the distant right than there is in the point industry why is dueling illegal now because the state says you can't do what you want with your own body all right you can't commit suicide that's that's against the law you can't drive without a seatbelt that's against the law so the united states no state says hey just do what you want with your own with your own body you get that rhetoric with abortion but it's simply not true the state takes all sorts of measures to ensure that people do not do what they want with their with their own body so trying to think distant right and the point industry so chat says the point industry has more Jewish influence maybe there's a lot of Jews in in the distant right so anti-social a large amount of criminals and homosexuals both groups often enjoy playing dress up both groups tend to live more in fantasy and tend to regard reality as the enemy to be debunked it's much more possible to be a political dissident and healthy and have a good life a good family life a good economic life than it is to be in the point industry and healthy so it's it's much much more common to find people who sustain marriages and relationships and families in in dissident circles politically than in the point industry so I've frequently found a much higher quality of person in the dissident right than in the point industry so one way that you can judge someone's character is how they make a living and so by by that standard a lot a lot higher percentage of higher quality people in dissident politics than in the point industry so yeah did I hear about the Nathan J. Robinson cancellation yeah he used to cheer cancel culture and then eventually he became a victim of it for a joke that got him in trouble about the israel israel lobby so Scott Alexander Suskin the psychiatrist built up a large and influential readership completely on his own does your average participant in the point industry have a greasy appearance that's so subjective I'm not sure was this was this a threat to the mainstream media because the mainstream media depends upon power like we all need power to get things done and the mainstream media has to be after put metaphorical heads on a pike to ensure that people will talk to them and take them seriously they have to take scalps and if people stop taking them seriously because they've got such a large twitter following or blogosphere following or newsletter following then the power of the news media is considerably diminished along with that the self-esteem of members of the news media is diminished and the economic viability of the medium is diminished if people stop giving it so much power right so many journalists operate as though it's only their divine right to tell a story to give people information and perspective so Frederick DeBoer argues that the New York Times had to publish Scott Alexander for writing an influential blog with no backing from important people and so the New York Times story is just filled with casual condescension and utter capitulation to dominant narratives and it notes that many people in Silicon Valley have discussed for the news media and why because the news media is often a failure think about any topics that you know well you read about them in the newspaper and the journalists the generalist comes over to write a specific story and it's just so written with errors that makes you question you know how much truth is there in the stories about topics that I don't know well so we've got warmongering we've got deference to power we've got coverage that slants towards the interests of the rich and powerful while journalists regard themselves as having a special dispensation to speak truth to power and to money we've got an obsession with meaningless cultural trends lack of interest in stories of importance collapse line between editorial advertising people really hate the news media and they do so because the news media sucks at its job of all the news media's pathology is the biggest one is they have absolutely no understanding of why they are so hated and for an example of journalistic failure look at this New York Times article on Scott Alexander Susskin's late star codex like filled with many basic acts of dishonesty lies about Scott Alexander and Charles Murray for example trouble with the New York Times is peace it's not that it makes any false statements but it just constantly insinuates nefarious beliefs and motives via strategic word choices and a mission of relevant facts that completely change the emotional color of the facts that it does present I remember when I was on the cover of the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles and it's a very disdainful dismissive article about me filled with anonymous people taking pot charts I don't recall the Jewish Journal ever employing so many anonymous quotes to take someone down and then after the article came out people would ask me well you know what do you think and I was stuck because if I said the article was fine then I was also saying I'm a really bad person but if I complained about the article then I was a whiner and a winger and a complainer so I was just kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place and so this this blog post by Frederick DeBoer notes that the news media is so full of bizarre rituals that only makes sense if you understand that none of it's sincere sincere or motivated by the desire for social and professional gain so everyone I know there's a lot of people love to say you'll never be a Jew look okay so what's an empirical way of deciding this okay do you have an empirical test or is this just your emotional coping mechanism because you don't want to believe that anyone can convert to Judaism so what's an empirical test whether or not I can be Jewish so can I move to Israel yes I can move to Israel can my children be accepted into an Orthodox Jewish day school yes my children can be accepted into an Orthodox Jewish day school can I marry a Jewish woman Jewish by birth yes I can marry a Jewish woman by birth do I count in a minion a prayer minion when I go to a synagogue any of 100 different 200 different Orthodox synagogues in Los Angeles yes I get counted in a minion am I trusted to do important work in the community yes I'm trusted to do important work in the community do I get invited to people's homes for Shabbat and for Jewish holidays yes do I get set up with dates matchmaking yes so what's an empirical test right do you have any empirical rational way of arguing your point like what's something that would just that would prove your point that I can never be accepted as Jewish because I can think of like 20 different tests of whether or not I'm accepted as Jewish and I pass every single one so are you living in a fantasy world because you've got an emotional coping need to try to prove to yourself that no one can convert to Judaism because I'm just gonna assume you have no empirical or rational way of making your case but you know I understand that you need to just emote and do you understand that you're completely detached from reality do you understand that you can't make your case empirically can you come up with a test of whether or not I'm accepted as Jewish in the Jewish community no you can't you're living in a delusional fantasy world okay give me a test what determines whether or not I'm Jewish so you can you can make all the emotional coping statements you need to make like you feel free to vent or you like now you may not be able to accept that you said a whole bunch of things that are not true and that may not bother you like lying just maybe second nature to you maybe an intrinsic part of your character is just saying things that are false because that's how you try to deal with reality you just lie so I'm calling you on your lies and you can't meet up and then you can't face that about yourself I get it you know you can't see that at your core is deceit you know you can't face that at your core you're at war with reality you know you may not be able to face up to you know the fact that you say all sorts of things that are just complete nonsense but there may come a time when you decide hey living living a life that is at war with reality doesn't really work yeah I'm you're you can you can imagine that you're a mirror for me but I gave you very very simple challenge give me a test that will determine whether or not I'm accepted in the Jewish community you can't come up with one you say things are just completely detached from reality have no truth to them and when I call you on it you apologize do you think a second time no you just keep perpetuating nonsense Atheist Leon Trotsky is more of a Jew than Luke will ever be on what basis you should get in who's who in world jury then I will accept your statement why does someone need to get in who's who of a world jury you can go to Wikipedia you can find an entry of famous converts to Judaism I'm in there so go to Wikipedia boot forward blogger and you'll you'll find talks about my my conversion to Judaism I'm listed in categories for 1966 births living people 21st century American non-fiction writers American bloggers Jewish bloggers converts to Judaism Australian Jews okay so all sorts of Jewish categories in Wikipedia list me so yeah I'm still waiting you cannot come up with one single empirical test that disproves that I'm accepted in the Jewish community you can't do it but just you can't face that you can't see that it's like oh now I know I'm right I can't provide any empirical rational foundation for what I'm arguing but I know I'm right even though I can't make your case for it so this is a great point by Frederick de Boer and it kind of builds on that Tom Wolf section on where do liberals and journalists come from most writers are losers they secretly think of themselves as losers they were losers in high school okay so what makes a winner in high school usually for a guy it's physical brawn and earlier physical maturity so groups that mature physically earlier than other groups tend to be tend to follow a you know fast life history right they tend to they tend to have shorter lifespans they tend to be less intelligent right so it's rk selection theory so k selected means that you tend to physically mature later and k selection means that you you're offspring you put a great deal of nurturance into put a lot of energy and effort in raising them and they tend to live longer than those who follow an r selection which is a shorter life a faster life more physical maturity earlier sexual experiences earlier now giving birth earlier so what makes for being a winner in high school it's like physical maturity you know muscles strength right a lot of the trades that make for success and being being a winner in high school don't translate into winning in life yeah the unpopular nerds in high school frequently winners in life like the nerd in high school the one who likes to read books the one who likes to study the one who has esoteric intellectual interests right that person's much more likely to be a winner in life than someone who just likes to party or to play football high meat high sugar diets promote our selection so you can so you can basically tell where you are in the social status social class by how much sugar you consume so upper class generally consume the least sugar middle class moderate and working class usually consume the most sugar if you have a wikipedia energy you know you have made it in life there are some jewish supremacists who are not considered a lurker jew because his mom is in jewish we've had conversion to jew Judaism for thousands of years so there are very very few jews who don't accept the the possibility of conversion to jewism i mean i i have experienced one so i once met this secular jewish woman and she said oh i don't believe that you can convert to jewism so one in the thousands of jews that i've met in my life have said that so there are some outliers but there's no organization of jewish life that does not accept the possibility of conversion except possibly syrian jew syrian jews i think are the most resistant to converts but uh now there are certain things that a convert should not do a convert who becomes a rabbi should not for example sit on a beat in a jewish law court accepting other converts so just because you convert to jewism doesn't mean you automatically get all rights and privileges that uh you know any any other jew gets so this guy is yeah ultra orthodox have have converts they they accept converts if they meet meet their standards so writers or losers in high school yes they do now they don't accept reform converts they don't accept converts to convert server to jewism and much the time they don't accept converts to modern orthodox jewism so writers or losers in high school they never got over it they were surprised to learn they couldn't get their novel about facing adulthood with my multi-racial friends in bushwick published and so they feel like they don't have the literary celebrity that they deserve so they dive into a media ecosystem where they're delighted to find a new high school a replacement for the one where they are a loser this time they get to be the quarterback and the head cheerleader they get to get up every morning and jockey for rank they horse trade they seek favor they amplify work they don't respect because the person they wrote it is more popular or successful than them they pretend that terrible terrible jokes taught by eternally unfunny people are entertaining and they do this knowing that the other party will reciprocate well i don't think any of this is particular to journalists a whole bunch of people do this a whole bunch of people are based themselves for social advancement anyone with the audacity to write from outside that world is a target well people generally speaking don't care for outsiders strangers are not popular anywhere and jews have perpetually been strangers like even the angels don't like strangers so it's not surprising that that outsiders are not going to be popular so we have an explosion of the words conspiracy theory misinformation now ostensibly this is a response to things like qanon but it's really the establishment media grasping at power they want you to know that they may destroy you if you don't pay a basins to them and so they say that substack is just a hive of alt-right and conspiracy theorists despite the incredible ideological diversity on the platform because substack is a threat to the hegemony of established media so it must be politically toxic uh joe rogan is reviled because he is immensely popular outside the official elite media channels he's not part of the media culture of the mainstream media and his show is massively more popular than all of the established media podcasts people of the new york times are so stuffed with self-regard and self congratulations for working at the paper that lied us into the iraq war i can't engage in genuine self inquiry working at the times means you never have to say i'm sorry okay i interviewed adam green just go to my rumble or it's on my bit shoot i interviewed adam green about uh three weeks ago john says that joe rogan became boring when he went to spotify new york times equals luga prisa meaning uh lying press well you just have to understand where someone's coming from you just have to put them in their appropriate genre there's a lot of good stuff in the new york times you just have to accept this is a left-wing publication and once you understand it's ideological slant then you take it for what it for what it is right you have to just put everyone in their proper proper genre okay so we got godward podcast big thrill godward long time no talk so godward i'm making the argument that we've always had cancel culture that there's nothing new about cancel culture and that we've that it's inconceivable to have a human society that does not cancel people for saying certain things now the certain things that the society will try to cancel you for will vary with the society but i just can't conceive of any form of human organization that doesn't have cancel culture so what do you think in my understanding every society is going to have certain basic truths about life that you can't say out loud without negative repercussions now leo strauss wrote about this and uh he wrote about what do you do when you want to say some things that are unacceptable to say in in your society so leo strauss wrote a whole book on this theme it's called persecution and the art of writing and his thesis is that philosophers particularly political philosophers have always reacted to the threat of persecution by disguising their most controversial and heterodox ideas so according to leo strauss prior to the 19th century western scholars understood that philosophical writing is not at home in any polity meaning any political organization no matter how liberal that political organization because philosophy questions conventional wisdom at its roots roots and by questioning established opinions and investigating the principles of morality philosophers found it necessary to convey their messages in an oblique manner so their art of writing was the art of esoteric communication and leo strauss said hey i've got the magic decoder ring you put on my magic decoder ring you'll find out what uh Plato socrates Aristotle the ancients and the moderns beginning with Machiavelli what they really thought how they you know disguised their thinking using esoteric communication so in medieval times heterodox political thinkers had to write under the threat of inquisition yeah people like thomas morgue got his head chopped off of the things he wrote so leo strauss argued that uh the the the ancients up to modern times writers would often reserve one exoteric meaning for the masses for the hoi paloi and an esoteric or hidden meaning for the few the best the aristocracy so he says that the great philosophers would carefully adapt their words the dominant moral views of their time so for example uh german historians and theologians during the age of historicism uh just search my name and adam green you'll find the adam green interview that uh as they realized that the fundamental truths of christianity were not tenable given historical scholarship they tried to adapt their their perspective using language that was as close as possible to traditional christian language to try to minimize the chances of getting in trouble while still maintaining their intellectual integrity so people in every age and space have tended to carefully adapt their words the dominant moral views of their time because very few people want to be condemned as heretics not just by the great masses who don't tend to read but by the few those who regard themselves as the righteous guardians of morality and with righteousness comes zealousness and with zealousness comes the desire to persecute or to ostracize anyone who exposes the noble lies upon which their status depends so leo strouse for example saw Moses mymonides as a closeted non-believer obfuscating his messages for political reasons so many scholars would hold that mymonides did not believe in the literal resurrection of the dead and that he did not believe in many of the things that he was writing but he understood that these beliefs were necessary beliefs for the for the masses to hold and so Voltaire remarked that he was going to discuss the existence of God he would send the servants out of the room because the servants the workers the great masses it's important for them to believe in God because that way they'll be less likely to engage in criminal and hurtful behavior so how much of cancel culture then is just self-cancellation right how how often are people simply murdering themselves or murdering their own reputations or social standing or career prospects so i'm not saying that's the dominant paradigm that we should look at cancel culture through it's like oh you know let's blame the victim but i sometimes find it useful to look at my own life and look at my own pain and try to see okay let's take the perspective that my pain is 100 percent my fault that's often a useful perspective for me to take now i would not necessarily respond really well if other people uh use that attitude towards me yeah self-censorship is a huge problem but lack of self-censorship can frequently be a much bigger problem right all some of people have adapted their language to the mores of the day religion is regarded by the common people as true by the wise as false and by the rulers as useful lia strauss mistook plate as republic for how to manual wow keith woods made a list of his 25 favorite right wing thinkers and lia strauss was among them that's weird okay i am going to put a link to my adam green interview in uh this uh video description thanks guys