December 4, 2024 • 51 mins
Today, we get serious and go deep into "Social Justice." Separating ideology from scientific rigor. We attempt to define our terms, share where we are ignorant, and seek to find a synthesis that is human focused.
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(00:00):
TGI, the Global Island.
(00:03):
We like to joke around about things on the Global Island,
but today we kind of go a little bit deeper into social justice from a more serious perspective,
trying to understand ideologies that influence the field and really defining what social justice actually is.
What it means to us, what it means to society, and how we can kind of walk hand in hand together to walk each other on.
(00:30):
This is a topic that's kind of hard to be professional about,
and I guess admitting that it's really one of the first places to start is that
when you discuss race, DEI, even in places that are deemed as,
I don't like the term safe places, but even in places that are deemed as safe places,
(00:52):
where everybody is on the same topic, there is this sort of uncomfortableness in discussing it.
I feel that's also a failing of education systems.
I feel that's a failing of sort of discussions that we have in society.
We go very shallow on things, rather than really trying to do the hard philosophy now rather than later.
(01:14):
I forgot who you told me said that.
That was something that I just had a thought of, yeah.
What you told me there, it really makes me think because as I look over a lot of the works and stuff,
like being in social work, so much is focused on these inequalities and DEI initiatives.
Social justice.
Social justice.
Let's just start there.
(01:34):
I am very much a fan of the idea of social justice if we define it as
there are natural inequalities in the world that exist and these inequalities
lead to unnecessary suffering.
We as good-willed people should do our best to understand what those are,
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especially inequalities that are motivated out of malevolent intent like racism, sexism,
xenophobia, etc.
We should do our best to try to minimize that in society.
Then in the areas that it's just either ignorance, it's poverty,
it's just the Matthew effect, privileges being passed down
and the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
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We should try to understand these things and make a world where
we have more fairness and more access to opportunity.
I think healthcare is one of the biggest things that I would probably argue for
that when you see that your zip code in America has an 11-year standard deviation of life expectancy.
That's insane.
That your zip code has a bigger influence on your overall life expectancy than your DNA code.
(02:40):
So maybe you want to explain how you see social justice.
Social justice to me is sort of an insanely difficult thing to actually define in itself.
As I think I've kind of mentioned in the conversations in the past,
both during school, I focus on intention rather than action.
(03:03):
And intention is something that is so incredibly difficult to actually measure or to really see.
We can't be sticking people in fMRI machines and then be able to
tell if they're morally acting or...
We really cannot.
And there was two great spiritual leaders, one that I always quote, Ram Dass,
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and another one that many people know, if I'm saying his name wrong, correct me,
Thich Nhat Hanh, who's very, very popular.
They actually had a conversation on social justice.
It was about, I think, an hour long conversation regarding this.
And Ram Dass has brought this up outside of it as well.
And what he noticed back in the 60s, the original public social justice movement,
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I guess you would call it, or what many people feel is the roots, even though it is, but it isn't,
of the social justice movements was he really criticized them in the sense that,
you're literally screaming for peace.
But one thing that he said is he asked a rabbi and said, what would you say if you were an Israeli
(04:16):
to a Palestinian?
And the response from the rabbi was that before we can move forward, we need to learn how to
grieve together.
And part of this is understanding the immoral actions that have been done on a personal level
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and on a societal level to specific people.
So, would you argue that the grieving together is kind of seeing our collective humanity,
that it's this first start of acknowledging different group, different group, but human?
Exactly.
It's looking at Israel, Palestine, and Israel and Palestine and looking at going,
(04:59):
oh my God, look at this human death.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And if you can't start from that place, then this is where Tiknaghan comes in.
He says anything that you go at with emotion, even if it's anger, even if it means to go
forward with it, is not from a place of loving kindness.
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Because anger is something that we should watch when loving kindness is something that
we must embody.
And if social justice comes from anger, at least from the Eastern perspective,
it is not true social justice in itself, but rather this desire to make change in what
you feel must be changed rather than an overall moral adjustment.
(05:46):
I actually really love this.
I think the East needs to help us and inform us in Western social justice.
Because when you bring up the word social justice, I just think of people who are very angry
on the left and on the right, where you have people on the right who just dismiss any sort
of institutional or systematic inequalities and just say, everyone needs to pick them up,
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pick themself up by their bootstraps.
I don't know why I'm giving a Southern accent there, but picking yourself up by your bootstraps
and just figure it out, stop being a sinful person and take responsibility.
And then you have people on the left, they can only see systems and they can only see
structural inequalities and they can't understand how personal responsibility and how narratives
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and how growth mindsets also impact people.
So, again, I want to start off by something I texted you, which I felt that talking about
this topic, there was these two temptations on polar opposite sides that I wanted to avoid.
And I think it's important to kind of prime listeners to of kind of some cognitive pitfalls
that we can fall into.
(06:50):
So the first one that I said to Matt was there's this one temptation to lack accuracy and scientific
rigor in order to emotionally and socially conform to the mainstream narrative on social
justice, whether that's on the left or on the right, there's two narratives, right?
And sometimes they lack the desire to seek out scientific rigor for the sense of just
(07:12):
sticking in their narrative.
The second temptation I want to avoid today is overconfidently trusting my own paradigm
and Matt's own paradigm about social justice and not being open to new evidence, right?
So we're obviously going to try to provide a synthesis and a new paradigm of viewing
social justice today.
That doesn't mean that that is the answer.
It means that we think that this is a better starting point, that this is a better synthesis
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and science needs to progress, philosophy needs to progress.
And so we are just bringing a new synthesis to the table and we're deeply open to learn
more.
Would you agree with that, Matt?
I mean, that's, learning is constantly the goal, you know.
Paulo Freire has this idea of critical consciousness.
I'm not even going to try and pronounce it in Portuguese because I don't speak Portuguese.
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But it's, much of Paulo Freire's work on critical consciousness and on praxis,
which I think I told you before, it's this constantly education, both in and out of school,
like in our own lives.
This borrows from Fromm's philosophical work where, of his idea of love and that love is
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not this place where you enter and you just bask in it, but rather something that you work for.
That to really stay in love, to really work on critical consciousness and to really understand
what's going on, there must always be some form of effort, some form of duty.
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But this duty must be done with intention and it must not be duty of coercion.
I think you always talk about being good willed, right?
And like, what is the research?
Value-free.
Max Weber, value-free research.
I don't think Max Weber was social justice by any means.
(09:02):
But more so when we approach any complex topic, I think that is a valuable orientation to come at
a very controversial topic from.
True, to simply collect data.
And then once you collect massive amounts of data to then interpret the data or to try,
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I would rather say try better to understand it.
And I think this is something where science would do better if it was much more public,
or at least not necessarily public, but at least freely accessible.
Universally to college students would be a nice place to start.
If you are in a university and you have a university email address,
(09:45):
I feel you should have every right to read any article out there because—
This is by that Russian girl.
Scihub. Shout out to Scihub.
Dude, hell yeah.
Doing God's work there, you know?
Yeah, dude.
Okay, so on this, pretty sure she's an Italian philosopher,
Michela Massamia—I'm totally mispronouncing her name—but she says that science advances
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as scientists argue how to interpret the evidence, right?
So you just said we're here to collect a large amount of data and try to argue with the most
wide-ranging perspectives to try to interpret the data to our best ability.
So let's start off with the data.
Let's maybe bring some data to the table.
I mentioned before in the beginning about how life expectancy is
(10:32):
widely different in America solely on your zip code, right?
There's also African-American mothers are three times more likely to die during childbirth.
LGBTQ members are 2.5 times more likely to die by suicide, right?
So these are horrible stats that are preventable stats,
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and we know that they are environmental and they are cultural, meaning how we talk about them,
how we treat these groups of people, how we go about working with them affects these outcomes,
right?
And so would you agree that we obviously want to make the world a better place in
regarding to these stats by minimizing the unnecessary suffering associated with them?
(11:14):
Well, I mean, absolutely.
I mean, especially focusing on like black mothers, especially giving birth like in hospitals,
you know, they're dehumanized to an extent, their pain is ignored.
And for some reason, like, it's just crazy to me to think that because of your skin color,
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a doctor is not going to take you seriously or not while giving birth, understanding that this is
to some people the most painful, physically painful thing that they will do in their lives.
Mm-hmm. And it's just absolutely beyond,
it's beyond me to think because I see this as, I see this all as a moral issue, you know?
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So much of the work that goes into taking this sort of data and criticizing it,
it all comes from, I don't want to say all, but much of it comes from that postmodern
Marxist, neo-Marxist perspective.
And, you know, I don't see many research articles going at it from a moral perspective or even the
humanist perspective. You know, these two philosophies, which, you know, I mean,
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the humanities love to use philosophies.
Well, I think the anthropologists are, like we were talking about, like how I think certain
branches of social science, like sociology, have kind of been co-opted by a lot of really
strong activist groups that have these very strong ideologies and they're not as scientifically
rigorous. And I was joking to you how I felt like the anthropologists are like the quiet nerds
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who really care about those statistics and really, you know, figuring it out scientifically.
Not to shit on sociologists, there's really incredible sociologists as well.
But I think that, okay, let me bring up a guy named Jared Diamond. Okay, I'm pretty sure he's
an anthropologist, but he wrote a book called Guns, Germs, and Steel. I don't know if you
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ever read this.
I have not read it.
A lot of high schools, my high schools didn't, but a lot of high schools make you read this.
But basically, he tracks down the historical roots of inequality, where he said that, okay,
the first human civilizations were like in the Middle East and also like West East Africa,
and they had really, really rich soils. And there was other river civilizations like out
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in China area and then also in Southern or like Middle Africa. And they did not have access to
domesticate animals because the animals there were kind of much larger animals that were much harder
to domesticate. Where in the Middle East, there was animals that were easier to domesticate.
And the soil was so much more of higher quality that they were able to basically form stable
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civilizations where the other humans in the other parts of the world had to be more nomadic.
And because they were more nomadic, they'd spend all their time finding food where when you have,
you know, a stabilized in one place society, you can start to specialize and IQ can increase.
And when you have higher protein, blah, blah, blah, right? Then Jared Diamond says that we
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actually destroyed the soil in the Middle East. We kind of overgrazed it. And all of the people
that had all the resources, they migrated up to Europe. And then Europe, you know, had a
technological advances, you had industrialization, militarization. You have now we are building
bigger and better physical tools that can automate labor and automate cognition.
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And what he argues is what a Colombian, I'm sorry, what a sociologist from Colombia calls
the Matthew effect, right? That those that have advantages continue to easily pass down those
advantages to their offspring. And those that have disadvantages, they have a harder time kind of
picking themselves up by the bootstraps and getting to the same level as those that had advantages.
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So I hate to be like a social justice person. But play devil's advocate, when I'm going to kind of
play devil's advocate. So I agree with you, because one, Europe is not a country, Europeans
did not grow together. You know, I mean, France and England were so drastically different. And it was
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because of their understanding of economics. French people could not understand zero sum economics.
Therefore, they did not industrialize the way that England did. But you are spot on because do you
know why the Industrial Revolution started in England? Coal? Coal was very close to the surface.
And in some beaches in England, coal literally just washes up on the shore.
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Bingo. Okay, so this is where Jared Diamond argues that obviously these things can be oversimplified.
But what he argues is that one factor that people tend to not realize is that geological advantages
are huge, right? Without that, if the coal had not been close to the shores in England, had not just
literally washed up on their shores, we may not be speaking English by any means possible.
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We may be speaking Spanish, we may be speaking French, who knows? I mean, America may have never
even been colonized. Okay, so beautiful. So we can out-ground that. So that is one data point,
that there are certain historical and cultural and geographical, not geological, I accidentally
said, geographical advantages, right? Okay, then there's also the study of racism from
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the biological and neuropsychological perspective through the olfactory system.
So through our sense of smell, and this is like all subconscious, this is all implicit processing,
it's kind of wild that historically certain groups that lived far away from one another
and they had different immune systems and different diseases that they were exposed to.
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Let's say hypothetically, you have group number A and they're out in Asia, and sorry, group letter
B and they're out in Europe, and group letter A comes over to Europe and they expose group B to
this tuberculosis disease that group B was never exposed to. Their genetics will then actually
update to actually have a prejudice towards those members of the group that exposed their group to
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a disease that they were foreign to. And the way that we would pick up on these cues, genetically,
is through our olfactory system, through smell, right?
Well, so this is the psychology of disgust. I mean, and this is, I guess, you could bestly
describe this in the Europeans, Spaniards, Portuguese, Englishmen, Dutch, coming to America,
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and to this day, obviously, Native Americans within America have been completely abused,
completely, probably the worst treated group in American history, and I feel much of our education
does not acknowledge it, but it doesn't teach it like the way that-
To the extent of the brutality.
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No, not to the extent that black Americans were abused, but their abuse of Native Americans was
near genocide, and even purposeful genocide, such as when they use social workers to remove children
to be brought to boarding schools, to get rid of their culture. And now there are tribes,
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the tribes out west, many of them will not work with anybody outside of the community.
If you are a social worker, you better be Navajo, to even step on a tribe.
Even if you come from academia, and you are an established, there is still this
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distrust. Now, is this systematic because of the history that has occurred? And also,
how would we even measure if this disgust actually exists within them against people that look like
us? Yeah, so scientists who study the old factory system could answer these questions,
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maybe these questions have already been answered, but looking at this from the Matthew effect,
right? So in this example, it was malevolent intent. There was Europeans who came and they were
very malevolent, even if they were motivated out of a desire to evangelize them to Christianity by
killing them. A very, very dark, Carl Jung says that we have all men inside of us, that we have
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the capacity to be Adolf Hitler and we have the capacity to be Mother Teresa.
I agree with Carl Jung on that one.
Yeah.
I absolutely do.
And so, but looking at this from the Matthew effect, right, then now we know that indigenous
populations suffer a life expectancy of five years shorter than general US population. I
know Barack Obama gave the largest reparations during his administration. It wasn't really that
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publicized, but I think the US government paid indigenous communities around like $2.7 billion.
Well, so in the shocking turn of events, and many don't know this, but Ronald Reagan actually also
paid reparations to the families of the Japanese that were in the internment camps during World
War II. However, I don't believe he wronged, he righted the wrong where they almost forcefully
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had certain Japanese Americans that were at this time fully American, some of them,
renounce their citizenship and essentially be deported to Japan or in the country illegally.
So even when some rights have been wronged, they're still not addressing many of these, many of the
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nuances, I don't want to call it nuance, but many of the little aspects that were utilized to, I
guess, oppress these groups.
So we know that there's no escaping these in-group and out-group tenancies. However,
I think the arc of history and people who would call themselves anti-racist people who are
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actively working against racism.
Those are some of the most racist people, I think.
I think there is a temptation to overgeneralize those people. I think that there are some people
that are good-willed. There are some people that I think are actually being more racist as well.
However, the point that I was trying to make is that this is a novel thing. There weren't really
people 400 years ago saying, we need to fight against racism.
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Well, there were…
Okay, go on, go on.
Immanuel Kant, actually. So he did not overly elaborate on it because he was very… I mean,
he elaborated on a lot.
Yeah.
But…
Didn't he also talk about homosexuality as well?
I'm not sure if he did or did not.
There was another philosopher who had secret writings where he was like, this is so stupid
that we think this is it.
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But he's like… I'm not sure. I don't think Kant… That doesn't sound like something
Kant would have written because… So, like, Europe justified colonialism because essentially
Europe created nation-states based on the Treaty of Westphalia. Now, where Europe was
wrong in its doing is it only recognized Europe. The rest of the world was fair game.
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Now, that's really where Europe was in the wrong in this. Now, Immanuel Kant essentially had the
idea that colonialism is entirely immoral because it is using cultures, peoples, every…
It's using other people as means but not an end.
Yeah.
Abusing them, slavery.
Sucking the lifeblood out of it.
Sucking everything out of them. Purposefully destroying them for Europe's gain.
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So Kant is not known as a social justice warrior, but his morality…
His morality…
Is guiding him in this.
… his philosophies, is… It predates it. And I don't understand why people don't focus on this
more. More people focus on Marx than they do on Kant. But to me, it might be because Kant's a
little bit more difficult to understand than Marx is.
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Possibly. But I think there's also this heavy emphasis in these fields on power. And I think
Marx talks a lot more about power from a, like, structural sense. And I think that's why there's
a heavy emphasis on that.
What's interesting about their criticism of power is they simply focus it on, by using the
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neo-Marxist perspective, it's always showing up as Europe bad. And this ignores history that we
have globally of all different races, all different peoples, all different cultures being bad. Some
being good, some being bad. You know, a great example of this is Ethiopia. Ethiopia is outside
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of Egypt one of the most extensive knowledge of history that we have within Africa. And there
have been leaders, emperors, and empresses that have been both good and bad and committed
atrocities. You know, people like to say that, oh, genocide is a European thing. But in the 14… I
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believe it was in the 1400s, under Yeshac, Y-E-S-H-Q, there were almost genocide occurring against
Jews, which are now… I forgot what they're called actually now in… they are Jewish, but I forgot
what they're specifically called in Ethiopia. This is completely outside of Western influence.
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So, could I still mention your case? So, you're arguing that right now in this Western social
justice warrior paradigm, we're saying white European, the evilest possible being you could
possibly be, and you're arguing from a historical perspective that hold up now, maybe there has been
absolute horrible atrocities by the European hands. However, there's a lot of other cultures that had
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other atrocities, and we should, instead of pointing out the white man group or the Ethiopian
group, say actually all humans in these incentives paradigms, you know, did really bad shit. So,
this actually reminds me of when Lex Friedman had Kanye West on his podcast, and Kanye was
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having a manic episode, but Kanye was really pissed off at some of the music executives.
And instead of saying, you know, these specific music executives that ripped me off and ripped
my friends off, he just overgeneralized and pointed out the group and racially said,
Jewish people are horrible, they're hoarding all the wealth, and Jewish people are horrible music
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executives. And what Lex said was, bro, bro, bro, hold on now, quit calling the group out.
Give me actual names of people, and if they're actually doing what you're saying,
I will be the first person to be right beside you calling that individual out. I really love
this perspective because it's similar to when we were talking about like morality, how like I
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think it's better to just say good and bad behaviors instead of good and bad people.
There's obviously some people who are on the dark triad, and maybe it's an easy shorthand to just
call those people bad people. You know, like Adolf Hitler, we could have a conversation whether his
behaviors or him were bad, but I think most people are just gonna be like, bad guy. You know, it's
just much cognitively easier to just be like- He's the famously bad guy. That's Darth Vader right
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there. You got Oprah on one side. I don't know, I think Oprah is pretty evil too.
Okay, different kind of evil. Not Oprah is nowhere near Hitler.
Gandhi and Mother Teresa, Jesus Christ on one side, and you got Adolf Hitler on the other side.
But I really want to be careful. That's the reason why I prefaced this conversation with
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these temptations. Even when we're talking about wealthy people, I try to live my life realizing
that I have a deep bias, and we as humans have a deep bias, to have out-group hostility and in-group
cohesion. And I want to try my best to be like, okay, who are the people that are in my out-group,
politically, socially, culturally, racially, that I will have these cognitive biases to?
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And how do I be aware of that so that my philosophy and my thinking can be more clear?
And then I can actually help people and work with people across the aisle, work with people who have
totally different- I want to be able to have a conversation with a person who says, David,
you're a deep racist and you don't realize it because you're so blinded in your ideology,
but you are a racist. I want to talk to that person. I want to listen to them out fairly,
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but have a rigorous conversation with them. And I don't want my biases to prevent me from
actually making progress in the conversation. You know, I agree with you on that. Now, this
is my bias. I absolutely have a bias towards wealthy individuals. It is not all wealthy
individuals. And towards Marxist educators. Well, no, not really, because I love Paulo Freire,
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you know what I mean? Just because you stem from the Marxist school does not inherently mean that-
That's not mean that you're spoiled.
No, it doesn't mean that you're essentially bad because there are- Marx was right about a lot of
things. Listen, if you read Das Kapital and go, that's good economics, I don't think you really
have any understanding of what economics is because it's a horrible economics book. But if
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you read Marx and understand his thought of, you know, when he gives the example of a chair,
a craftsman making a chair versus you making just one part of a chair, then we have a basis where
we can start from. You know, class conflict, I feel like is something you almost, the second
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you bring it up or even classism or anything that has to do with class or the haves and have nots
always comes from a Marxist perspective. But again, I feel it's a moral perspective.
Yeah.
And when we look at other cultures outside, just like the Toulash Calans, they had no idea
who Marx was. They predated Marx. They were, you know, they were the neighbors to the Aztec empires.
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They saw greed and they saw war and they saw just this suffering that was caused, and they decided
not to do that by focusing on democracy, by egalitarianism and, you know, just other forms
of living. And where my bias against wealthy individuals comes is that some of them are so
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miserable. Some of my, some of the clients that I work with.
But doesn't that make you also like hurt for them to be like, you have so many resources that you
could morally be doing so much good with that could literally make you feel so much meaning in your
life. And yet you're so trapped in buying $30,000 pillows in order to get some sort of love from
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your friends who were Louis Vuitton.
You know what? It's hard because I see, I can't name companies that they work for.
I'm just going to pick on the military industrial complex because I feel they're a fair game to
pick on. None of my clients are CEO of Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman or Texas Instrument.
None of them work for these companies. But are you going to really sit there and tell me that the,
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you know, the people that are in charge of these companies really are acting morally,
that these are good people at the end of the day? I mean, you know, this, this is where
DEI is a step, but I feel it's a step that people hide behind. Lockheed Martin touts itself as one
of the most diverse, you know, as one of the most diverse companies in the United States.
(30:39):
That's hysterical.
Do you think that Palestinian children or Russian children care if they, them, black women made the
missile that's killing them? You know what I mean? Like I'm in full agreement with you on that.
Yeah. I think, okay, this is also where, so, so BlackRock. Oh gosh. Now we're, now we're screwed
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because I called them by name. Podcast is over. No, it's all conspiracy theory.
The second I learned about private equity, I go, ah, now I understand the world better.
So you have BlackRock, which is I think the largest private equity firm. They manage around
like $11 trillion. And they manage all of the assets to all the military industrial complex
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companies. Right? So whatever they say kind of goes, it's, it's literally private equity is so
genius to be able to just kind of steal all the assets from companies because you're managing
them and making the companies wealthier. But because you hold all their assets, you really
have the power over them. Regardless of that, they're the ones that are pushing this large
systemic move towards DEI initiatives. And I don't believe that the heads of BlackRock
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are morally acting because they want diversity in the workplace. I believe that they're using this
to control other companies much stronger and basically hurt them in the stock market because
there are these different DEI rankings that basically give more credibility and value to a
company based off of whether they're able to meet these different DEI goals that are set by BlackRock.
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And this is a way that BlackRock can morally bully companies towards specific end goals. And if you
disagree with that, then you look like a racist, you look like a sexist, you look like you don't
really care about social justice. And so that's why I think that we have to be really careful that
there can be really evil actors using morality and virtue signaling and hiding behind that
(32:32):
for some really evil intentions. Well, I think that is exactly what they're doing. And
to the extent when we even go at it, like when we said, okay, like, you know, we're going to,
Ivy Leagues are going to take an initiative to try and allow more diverse population, you know,
into their, you know, into their schools, whether they be Black, Hispanic, or Asian, Native American,
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whatever it is, you know, other than the, you know, white trust fund babies that kind of
perpetually go there. Essentially, by accepting these students in, unless they're all getting
in on full rides, you are now indebting this student. And this debt is something that is
quite evil and it's quite oppressive. Especially when you have an endowment fund.
(33:20):
Absolutely. 50 billion.
So now you are, you may do better now in your actual life, but now you've just been assimilated
to this immoral sort of existence with everyone else.
Well, to give Harvard some credit, 25% of their students get a full ride. And a majority of those
students, you know, are from disadvantaged backgrounds. And then 75% are all the net
(33:45):
baby babies. But it's okay, it's okay.
That's why they've now become a, what is it, they're a hedge fund management company that
holds classes.
Yes. Okay, 100%. And I think that's a totally different conversation about how
administration is getting so large and kind of taking over everything. I think the managerial
(34:05):
class has created that one guy, you have to remind me his name, he talked about bullshit jobs.
David Graeber.
Yeah.
The anthropologist. I love him.
Such a genius concept. And it really is kind of existentially terrifying when you realize that
the majority of people in America are not satisfied with their work because they're
doing bullshit work.
Because they're doing nothing at the end of the day.
Yeah. And when you look at like the suer-suree of doctors, like people say, well, it's just
(34:30):
stress. But missionaries are under, there was a really great study where they looked at different
jobs and the amount of stress and to try to tease out whether stress would be a good mediator for
suicidality in the workplace. And it wasn't because there was many more jobs that were
just as stressful but more meaningful because they actually were producing beneficial outcomes
(34:51):
where doctors are in this healthcare industry that is profiting off of people being chronically
sick. And that is deeply depressing that you know that you systemically, it's difficult to help
treat these chronic diseases at the root cause because the first line of defense is not to do
that. It's to perpetuate people in food deserts and not quality exercise, education, environmental
(35:16):
toxins, all these things. Obviously, you're going to feel deeply depressed as a doctor.
But that's a different conversation. I wanted to bring this conversation into social psychology
and talk about the flip side of this, which is a more conservative impulse, which is personal
responsibility. So, we obviously talked a lot about historical, cultural, and systematic
(35:36):
inequalities and things outside of the individual. I wanted to bring the conversation now towards
the individual. And especially, I want to hear from you in your social work, grad program,
how much, if any, are we talking about the social psychology of personal responsibility of
growth mindsets? Cal Dweck's research on fixed mindsets versus growth mindsets, that if you
(35:58):
believe that your abilities are fixed by, you know, constraints outside of you, then you actually
hinder your overall potential versus if you believe that you have the capacity to work hard
and to strive for something and increase your abilities, your growth potential radically increases.
So, we do actually focus on the individual. Social work is a unique field because it tries to go
(36:19):
macro, mezzo, and micro, sort of all at the same time. Like, it is an absurd amount of
work. What's the mezzo? Mezzo is sort of like in between, a little bit hard to define. Could it be
like how they interact? Like family level, micro, like individual, mezzo, sort of family level,
macro, sort of policy level. Got you. I get it. That's a good example to start with. And
(36:43):
some within social work, there's this idea of person in environment, but they're trying to
change it now to person and environment, simply because these two things exist. It's not a person
within an environment. It's the person and the environment. Because they're both acting on one
another. Exactly. The environment's acting on the individual and the individual can act on their
(37:04):
environment. Exactly. And actually, the micro perspective or the individual perspective that
I've gotten in social work has actually been the stuff that I enjoy the most. Because it really
focuses in on understand all of this oppression, but for the love of God, do not lay it on them.
(37:24):
You never want to lay or, you know, as Ram Dass says, you never want to lay somebody's trip on
them. It's not beneficial. You are working with them in this moment. They are there maybe by court
mandate or because they want to do what you can in that moment and use the best of psychology
(37:47):
that we have. If they're open to it, go into CBT. Use hope. If hope as mechanism to help an oncology
patient get through what they're dealing with, then it is beneficial. But there's no universal
perspective when working with an individual. And really trying to separate this is something
(38:11):
that is helping me actually look at my biases. And it's helping me more than the macro level is
to look at my biases. Because it's like when I work with somebody, I see them as a soul. I see them as,
well, I see them as an interconnected net, but it means, yeah, we're all one thing and, you know,
(38:37):
it's just a delusion that you're not. But from my perspective, but I play into that delusion.
She's a smuggling, Hindu smuggling. Listen, man, you know what? Nobody likes the person that
smashes a monopoly board and says, it's a game, stop playing. You got to play the game. But
really part of that game is working with the individual. That's such a good analogy.
(38:57):
Right? Nobody likes it if you get up and flip the game on them and says, you guys are playing a game.
Everybody wants to play. Okay, so let's stay in the game. Let's stay in the game here.
So, okay, I love this. I think mentorship is so underestimated. I think that every part of society
needs to be built off of mentorship. This is where psychologists need psychologists, you know?
Like social workers need social workers to talk to. And I think especially when we see
(39:24):
civil engagement and overall people connecting with one another decreasing, there's some horrible
stats. Like the Surgeon General argues that we are in a loneliness epidemic. And we know that
loneliness increases your all risk mortality by 60%. I don't know. Do you see mentorship
as a path forward? Well, I was a mentor for two years. And it was maybe one of the most
(39:51):
impactful things that have happened in my life, you know, because I understood within myself
what I may have needed when I was younger. And when I went to the interview process,
I was matched with somebody that had similar issues as I was angry. I didn't know how to deal
with my emotions, you know, but still a kind soul at the end of the day. And I got matched with
(40:12):
someone just like that. And working with them was so important. And I think mentorship is needed in
both men and women, like just universally. Too much of it focuses in the generalized other,
is focused on sports. And there is a lot of men that do not connect with that. Yeah, I don't really
(40:34):
watch any sports. Exactly. So that whole mentorship through sports thing, isn't I get it? That's not
for everybody. Yeah. You know, and so like, okay, this is a unique thing is like, then how do we,
we need to be more creative of like connecting people in their unique niche groups. So like,
my church had a mentorship program when I was a little kid. Basically, what they did is they were
(40:56):
like, hey, we have a bunch of like single mothers here and they have kids and, you know, they're
living in fatherly absent homes. And I have a book up here, The Boy Crisis by Dr. Farrell. He
basically outlines all the horrible statistics that come with being in a father absent home,
crime with antisocial behavior, with overall success. And, you know, with divorce rates that
(41:21):
were dramatically climbing in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, you know, we obviously have many more
boys in that situation. Regardless, my church said, hey, we want to pair, you know, a bunch of dads
who already kind of raised their kids and been partnered them with, you know, boys in the church
who are in this father absent homes. And I was one of those boys. I got paired with a mentor,
(41:44):
John DeMarco. I brought him up in my worldview in the first episode. And he really transformed
my life and he gave me access to even social capital that I didn't have access to. So like,
families coming together. And I don't know, I'm just, I feel that so much of my socialization,
so much of my cognitive development and my desire to have a growth mindset was really birthed out of
(42:09):
that mentorship program. I just, I can't imagine where I would be, you know, without it.
No, I mean, it changes lives, you know, but like, to address the sort of breakdown of communities,
sort of in American society, there was this author, his name is Robert Putnam, absolutely
brilliant. He wrote this book called Bowling Alone. And what he essentially notices growing up in
(42:34):
America, obviously he's, I think he's of the boomer generation. He noticed when he was younger that
if you went to the bowling alley, you could not get onto a lane unless you were in some sort of
league, some sort of club. And nowadays everybody's bowling alone. He was started to look at the
(42:57):
look that there was essentially a complete breakdown of these communities within America,
that we had no third place. I'm sure you've hear on TikTok and all social media is this idea that
America has no third places to exist. We also, we don't have, you know, we just, we don't have
(43:19):
any way to be other than being consumerist, you know? Like the social justice movements nowadays,
a lot of it focuses around consumeristic society and it's just, it doesn't help.
Jared Sussman Yeah, that's a really,
really excellent point. That's like paradigm changing because where people are spending time
together are the bars, church, which is not even a thing really anymore, university, and then online.
(43:46):
Jared Sussman Like, I can't think of any other places.
Meanwhile, you go overseas to France and it's like Sunday, okay, it's August, the entire country's
closed down. We're all hanging out. There's a car show over here. There's farmers markets over here.
Everybody's hanging out in the square. There's skateboarding in front of museums and there's
just groups everywhere. I think we're ashamed. I feel like America is kind of completely broken
(44:09):
down. Yeah, socially. We have some deep social trauma. The interesting thing is that like
technology can make us feel more insecure and make it seem that other people are living these
extravagant lives that it's just a highlight reel or some people are actually living in extravagant
life because there's just inequality in the world. You didn't evolve to really be looking at that.
(44:31):
You evolved to be in a little farm tribal community, not realizing that there's kings out
there that actually have access to all these resources that you die for. But the unique thing
is like why America, why, I mean, is the roots because we're so individualistic?
Well, you know what? That there's less emphasis on the community? There's no answer to this.
(44:54):
I've read plenty of studies and there's been a lot of non-linear connections. One of which is
interesting to me, although Singapore kind of contradicts this, but one of which is that in
high immigrant societies, there's two perspectives, melting pot and salad bowl. Salad bowl essentially
being that everybody sort of is in the same place, but they're all their own cultures,
(45:20):
melting pot being we all melt together. And a lot of leftist ideologies lean towards the salad bowl,
but there's positives and negatives on each of these. And one of which is in these high
immigration societies or even societies that are gaining more immigration, there's a breakdown of
social systems. Much of the studies have also noticed this goes hand in hand as globalism
(45:44):
increases and inequality increases. These social systems also sort of decrease, but in countries
like Norway, Denmark, basically the North of Europe and also-
Scandinavia.
America. Yeah, Scandinavia. More immigrants that represent outside cultures, less social services,
less social connections, less social cohesion. Absolutely. This is not the case in Singapore.
(46:11):
And so the question is what the heck is unique about Singapore?
Well, one thing, Singapore is very small.
Yeah. Do you think it could also be like transportation, right? So like America-
Oh, absolutely. We're totally separated. We do not interact. Rich people live over here,
middle-class whites live over here.
And everything is based off of cars. In America, it's all highways. My brother
(46:34):
is like the largest, shout out to Vincent, because I know he's going to be listening to this.
He's always like, dude, we just need more bike lanes. Bike lanes, trains. You know what? Screw
cars. Electric cars are not the future. They're just perpetuating the problems of today. So
I don't care how much people love their Teslas. Give me a goddamn train.
(46:57):
I want to end this podcast on a positive note. Something that my brother is really passionate
about. He's like, when I become a doctor, I want to open up a practice right by the train stop in
LA where he lives. He's like, we need to incentivize more doctors to open up practices by metro stops
so that people are more incentivized to use it. And it's also just like really easy access. And
he wants to also build a community gardens. He is really passionate about urban planning.
(47:21):
And I think we haven't seen any advancements similarly in physics, in civil engineering,
because all of the smart engineers have just been going to electrical and software engineering,
because that's where all the money is at, is at creating apps and bits and these fake digital
world. But I think we need to do a better job as a society to be like, no, we will not stand for
this. There's been so much stagnation in civil engineering and we need our smartest people to
(47:47):
redesign what it looks like for community spaces. And you know, I think addressing civil engineering
is really a good place to start at a, you know. And make it more equitable. This is an area where
we can actually level the playing field because we get to redesign our tomorrow. No one knows who the
designer of the sidewalk is, but the sidewalk is a great friggin invention. And the reason why no
(48:08):
one knows it, because it just blends into society. And I think you have a lot of people in the social
justice movement that are yelling at the top of their lungs, but we need more creative, smart
people to be like, how do we design a new tomorrow that people don't even realize that we've actually
made this, but it's just so much better for everybody. You know, I really gotta put my
(48:28):
criticism against the people, the liberals that are going for these 15 minute cities that have made it
so like boring and corporate and just not the answer. Because we had an answer and it's called
a Roman city and they're beautiful and they have everything within it. It's exactly everything you
(48:49):
claim a 15 minute city to be, but it's beautiful and it's gorgeous and it brings in architecture
and it brings people together. You have multiple different people living within the same area and
interacting and you know, just America needs a culture shift overall. And we need to care about beauty.
I, we, yeah, we need to care about beauty in the public space. We need to care about people at a
(49:12):
human level and we need to care about community, not at an individual level. We need to remember
that we all exist together and not one of us is more important than the other. And that action
needs to be taken, such as revolutionizing civil engineering and changing the way that cities are
(49:33):
made. You know what the answer is, bro? What? Little Island. Little Island. I just want to add on this.
Oh, in the city? If you go to Manhattan, go to Little Island. What about Little Island? It's tiny.
Yeah. So, the story of it, during the pandemic, this one millionaire, he might actually be a
billionaire because I think this cost him like 300 something million dollars, but I think his
wife's like a real housewife or something. Anyway, he was like, we need to design something, a more,
(49:56):
more public common spaces because one, medical bills are dramatically increasing and hospitalizations
are increasing, mental health even getting worse. And so, he thought that one possible creative
solution was creating more public commons that it would incentivize people to get out and to spend
time in nature and with one another. And I think Little Island is like, there's a really beautiful,
(50:16):
small, awesome example of that. So, you know, shout out. If you go to Manhattan, definitely check out
Little Island. You could ride your bike. It's free before 11 a.m. I didn't know that. And that makes
me appreciate it more. It just, yeah, we need more places like that. The Global Island, Little Island.
Little Island. I mean, we need less places like Long Island where you got Nimbia's in Rampit.
(50:37):
You can't build anything. There's just too many people. Dude, somehow, I mean, like, I'm going to
go on a little mini rant here. Somehow, dude, somehow somebody decided that strip malls and
strode's was beautiful and made to protect how stuff looked. I want to meet that person and freaking
slap them. Like, who's the a-hole that thought about that? Okay. Like, I want beautiful cities.
(51:05):
I don't want strip malls with banks, man. Yeah. Yep. I'm down for it. I'm down for it, bro. All
right. Social justice, personal responsibility, why strip malls are ugly. And go visit Little
Island. Go visit Little Island. It's pretty cool. Play with the music. There's pretty good music
there. I love jumping on those things. I know, dude. It's so fun. Like being like 30 years old
(51:26):
and like jumping on, well, not 30 yet. Yeah, the spinny chairs too. Oh, those spinny chairs. I've
got, I fell out of them before. I kind of went way too hard backwards and freaking flipped over.
My wife did it once. I almost got it on camera.
TGI, the Global Island.
(00:03):
We like to joke around about things on the Global Island,
but today we kind of go a little bit deeper into social justice from a more serious perspective,
trying to understand ideologies that influence the field and really defining what social justice actually is.
What it means to us, what it means to society, and how we can kind of walk hand in hand together to walk each other on.
(00:30):
This is a topic that's kind of hard to be professional about,
and I guess admitting that it's really one of the first places to start is that
when you discuss race, DEI, even in places that are deemed as,
I don't like the term safe places, but even in places that are deemed as safe places,
(00:52):
where everybody is on the same topic, there is this sort of uncomfortableness in discussing it.
I feel that's also a failing of education systems.
I feel that's a failing of sort of discussions that we have in society.
We go very shallow on things, rather than really trying to do the hard philosophy now rather than later.
(01:14):
I forgot who you told me said that.
That was something that I just had a thought of, yeah.
What you told me there, it really makes me think because as I look over a lot of the works and stuff,
like being in social work, so much is focused on these inequalities and DEI initiatives.
Social justice.
Social justice.
Let's just start there.
(01:34):
I am very much a fan of the idea of social justice if we define it as
there are natural inequalities in the world that exist and these inequalities
lead to unnecessary suffering.
We as good-willed people should do our best to understand what those are,
(01:55):
especially inequalities that are motivated out of malevolent intent like racism, sexism,
xenophobia, etc.
We should do our best to try to minimize that in society.
Then in the areas that it's just either ignorance, it's poverty,
it's just the Matthew effect, privileges being passed down
and the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
(02:15):
We should try to understand these things and make a world where
we have more fairness and more access to opportunity.
I think healthcare is one of the biggest things that I would probably argue for
that when you see that your zip code in America has an 11-year standard deviation of life expectancy.
That's insane.
That your zip code has a bigger influence on your overall life expectancy than your DNA code.
(02:40):
So maybe you want to explain how you see social justice.
Social justice to me is sort of an insanely difficult thing to actually define in itself.
As I think I've kind of mentioned in the conversations in the past,
both during school, I focus on intention rather than action.
(03:03):
And intention is something that is so incredibly difficult to actually measure or to really see.
We can't be sticking people in fMRI machines and then be able to
tell if they're morally acting or...
We really cannot.
And there was two great spiritual leaders, one that I always quote, Ram Dass,
(03:25):
and another one that many people know, if I'm saying his name wrong, correct me,
Thich Nhat Hanh, who's very, very popular.
They actually had a conversation on social justice.
It was about, I think, an hour long conversation regarding this.
And Ram Dass has brought this up outside of it as well.
And what he noticed back in the 60s, the original public social justice movement,
(03:50):
I guess you would call it, or what many people feel is the roots, even though it is, but it isn't,
of the social justice movements was he really criticized them in the sense that,
you're literally screaming for peace.
But one thing that he said is he asked a rabbi and said, what would you say if you were an Israeli
(04:16):
to a Palestinian?
And the response from the rabbi was that before we can move forward, we need to learn how to
grieve together.
And part of this is understanding the immoral actions that have been done on a personal level
(04:37):
and on a societal level to specific people.
So, would you argue that the grieving together is kind of seeing our collective humanity,
that it's this first start of acknowledging different group, different group, but human?
Exactly.
It's looking at Israel, Palestine, and Israel and Palestine and looking at going,
(04:59):
oh my God, look at this human death.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And if you can't start from that place, then this is where Tiknaghan comes in.
He says anything that you go at with emotion, even if it's anger, even if it means to go
forward with it, is not from a place of loving kindness.
(05:20):
Because anger is something that we should watch when loving kindness is something that
we must embody.
And if social justice comes from anger, at least from the Eastern perspective,
it is not true social justice in itself, but rather this desire to make change in what
you feel must be changed rather than an overall moral adjustment.
(05:46):
I actually really love this.
I think the East needs to help us and inform us in Western social justice.
Because when you bring up the word social justice, I just think of people who are very angry
on the left and on the right, where you have people on the right who just dismiss any sort
of institutional or systematic inequalities and just say, everyone needs to pick them up,
(06:09):
pick themself up by their bootstraps.
I don't know why I'm giving a Southern accent there, but picking yourself up by your bootstraps
and just figure it out, stop being a sinful person and take responsibility.
And then you have people on the left, they can only see systems and they can only see
structural inequalities and they can't understand how personal responsibility and how narratives
(06:29):
and how growth mindsets also impact people.
So, again, I want to start off by something I texted you, which I felt that talking about
this topic, there was these two temptations on polar opposite sides that I wanted to avoid.
And I think it's important to kind of prime listeners to of kind of some cognitive pitfalls
that we can fall into.
(06:50):
So the first one that I said to Matt was there's this one temptation to lack accuracy and scientific
rigor in order to emotionally and socially conform to the mainstream narrative on social
justice, whether that's on the left or on the right, there's two narratives, right?
And sometimes they lack the desire to seek out scientific rigor for the sense of just
(07:12):
sticking in their narrative.
The second temptation I want to avoid today is overconfidently trusting my own paradigm
and Matt's own paradigm about social justice and not being open to new evidence, right?
So we're obviously going to try to provide a synthesis and a new paradigm of viewing
social justice today.
That doesn't mean that that is the answer.
It means that we think that this is a better starting point, that this is a better synthesis
(07:36):
and science needs to progress, philosophy needs to progress.
And so we are just bringing a new synthesis to the table and we're deeply open to learn
more.
Would you agree with that, Matt?
I mean, that's, learning is constantly the goal, you know.
Paulo Freire has this idea of critical consciousness.
I'm not even going to try and pronounce it in Portuguese because I don't speak Portuguese.
(07:59):
But it's, much of Paulo Freire's work on critical consciousness and on praxis,
which I think I told you before, it's this constantly education, both in and out of school,
like in our own lives.
This borrows from Fromm's philosophical work where, of his idea of love and that love is
(08:21):
not this place where you enter and you just bask in it, but rather something that you work for.
That to really stay in love, to really work on critical consciousness and to really understand
what's going on, there must always be some form of effort, some form of duty.
(08:41):
But this duty must be done with intention and it must not be duty of coercion.
I think you always talk about being good willed, right?
And like, what is the research?
Value-free.
Max Weber, value-free research.
I don't think Max Weber was social justice by any means.
(09:02):
But more so when we approach any complex topic, I think that is a valuable orientation to come at
a very controversial topic from.
True, to simply collect data.
And then once you collect massive amounts of data to then interpret the data or to try,
(09:25):
I would rather say try better to understand it.
And I think this is something where science would do better if it was much more public,
or at least not necessarily public, but at least freely accessible.
Universally to college students would be a nice place to start.
If you are in a university and you have a university email address,
(09:45):
I feel you should have every right to read any article out there because—
This is by that Russian girl.
Scihub. Shout out to Scihub.
Dude, hell yeah.
Doing God's work there, you know?
Yeah, dude.
Okay, so on this, pretty sure she's an Italian philosopher,
Michela Massamia—I'm totally mispronouncing her name—but she says that science advances
(10:10):
as scientists argue how to interpret the evidence, right?
So you just said we're here to collect a large amount of data and try to argue with the most
wide-ranging perspectives to try to interpret the data to our best ability.
So let's start off with the data.
Let's maybe bring some data to the table.
I mentioned before in the beginning about how life expectancy is
(10:32):
widely different in America solely on your zip code, right?
There's also African-American mothers are three times more likely to die during childbirth.
LGBTQ members are 2.5 times more likely to die by suicide, right?
So these are horrible stats that are preventable stats,
(10:53):
and we know that they are environmental and they are cultural, meaning how we talk about them,
how we treat these groups of people, how we go about working with them affects these outcomes,
right?
And so would you agree that we obviously want to make the world a better place in
regarding to these stats by minimizing the unnecessary suffering associated with them?
(11:14):
Well, I mean, absolutely.
I mean, especially focusing on like black mothers, especially giving birth like in hospitals,
you know, they're dehumanized to an extent, their pain is ignored.
And for some reason, like, it's just crazy to me to think that because of your skin color,
(11:35):
a doctor is not going to take you seriously or not while giving birth, understanding that this is
to some people the most painful, physically painful thing that they will do in their lives.
Mm-hmm. And it's just absolutely beyond,
it's beyond me to think because I see this as, I see this all as a moral issue, you know?
(12:00):
So much of the work that goes into taking this sort of data and criticizing it,
it all comes from, I don't want to say all, but much of it comes from that postmodern
Marxist, neo-Marxist perspective.
And, you know, I don't see many research articles going at it from a moral perspective or even the
humanist perspective. You know, these two philosophies, which, you know, I mean,
(12:25):
the humanities love to use philosophies.
Well, I think the anthropologists are, like we were talking about, like how I think certain
branches of social science, like sociology, have kind of been co-opted by a lot of really
strong activist groups that have these very strong ideologies and they're not as scientifically
rigorous. And I was joking to you how I felt like the anthropologists are like the quiet nerds
(12:51):
who really care about those statistics and really, you know, figuring it out scientifically.
Not to shit on sociologists, there's really incredible sociologists as well.
But I think that, okay, let me bring up a guy named Jared Diamond. Okay, I'm pretty sure he's
an anthropologist, but he wrote a book called Guns, Germs, and Steel. I don't know if you
(13:16):
ever read this.
I have not read it.
A lot of high schools, my high schools didn't, but a lot of high schools make you read this.
But basically, he tracks down the historical roots of inequality, where he said that, okay,
the first human civilizations were like in the Middle East and also like West East Africa,
and they had really, really rich soils. And there was other river civilizations like out
(13:39):
in China area and then also in Southern or like Middle Africa. And they did not have access to
domesticate animals because the animals there were kind of much larger animals that were much harder
to domesticate. Where in the Middle East, there was animals that were easier to domesticate.
And the soil was so much more of higher quality that they were able to basically form stable
(14:02):
civilizations where the other humans in the other parts of the world had to be more nomadic.
And because they were more nomadic, they'd spend all their time finding food where when you have,
you know, a stabilized in one place society, you can start to specialize and IQ can increase.
And when you have higher protein, blah, blah, blah, right? Then Jared Diamond says that we
(14:22):
actually destroyed the soil in the Middle East. We kind of overgrazed it. And all of the people
that had all the resources, they migrated up to Europe. And then Europe, you know, had a
technological advances, you had industrialization, militarization. You have now we are building
bigger and better physical tools that can automate labor and automate cognition.
(14:44):
And what he argues is what a Colombian, I'm sorry, what a sociologist from Colombia calls
the Matthew effect, right? That those that have advantages continue to easily pass down those
advantages to their offspring. And those that have disadvantages, they have a harder time kind of
picking themselves up by the bootstraps and getting to the same level as those that had advantages.
(15:07):
So I hate to be like a social justice person. But play devil's advocate, when I'm going to kind of
play devil's advocate. So I agree with you, because one, Europe is not a country, Europeans
did not grow together. You know, I mean, France and England were so drastically different. And it was
(15:27):
because of their understanding of economics. French people could not understand zero sum economics.
Therefore, they did not industrialize the way that England did. But you are spot on because do you
know why the Industrial Revolution started in England? Coal? Coal was very close to the surface.
And in some beaches in England, coal literally just washes up on the shore.
(15:50):
Bingo. Okay, so this is where Jared Diamond argues that obviously these things can be oversimplified.
But what he argues is that one factor that people tend to not realize is that geological advantages
are huge, right? Without that, if the coal had not been close to the shores in England, had not just
literally washed up on their shores, we may not be speaking English by any means possible.
(16:14):
We may be speaking Spanish, we may be speaking French, who knows? I mean, America may have never
even been colonized. Okay, so beautiful. So we can out-ground that. So that is one data point,
that there are certain historical and cultural and geographical, not geological, I accidentally
said, geographical advantages, right? Okay, then there's also the study of racism from
(16:38):
the biological and neuropsychological perspective through the olfactory system.
So through our sense of smell, and this is like all subconscious, this is all implicit processing,
it's kind of wild that historically certain groups that lived far away from one another
and they had different immune systems and different diseases that they were exposed to.
(17:00):
Let's say hypothetically, you have group number A and they're out in Asia, and sorry, group letter
B and they're out in Europe, and group letter A comes over to Europe and they expose group B to
this tuberculosis disease that group B was never exposed to. Their genetics will then actually
update to actually have a prejudice towards those members of the group that exposed their group to
(17:27):
a disease that they were foreign to. And the way that we would pick up on these cues, genetically,
is through our olfactory system, through smell, right?
Well, so this is the psychology of disgust. I mean, and this is, I guess, you could bestly
describe this in the Europeans, Spaniards, Portuguese, Englishmen, Dutch, coming to America,
(17:49):
and to this day, obviously, Native Americans within America have been completely abused,
completely, probably the worst treated group in American history, and I feel much of our education
does not acknowledge it, but it doesn't teach it like the way that-
To the extent of the brutality.
(18:09):
No, not to the extent that black Americans were abused, but their abuse of Native Americans was
near genocide, and even purposeful genocide, such as when they use social workers to remove children
to be brought to boarding schools, to get rid of their culture. And now there are tribes,
(18:32):
the tribes out west, many of them will not work with anybody outside of the community.
If you are a social worker, you better be Navajo, to even step on a tribe.
Even if you come from academia, and you are an established, there is still this
(18:53):
distrust. Now, is this systematic because of the history that has occurred? And also,
how would we even measure if this disgust actually exists within them against people that look like
us? Yeah, so scientists who study the old factory system could answer these questions,
(19:15):
maybe these questions have already been answered, but looking at this from the Matthew effect,
right? So in this example, it was malevolent intent. There was Europeans who came and they were
very malevolent, even if they were motivated out of a desire to evangelize them to Christianity by
killing them. A very, very dark, Carl Jung says that we have all men inside of us, that we have
(19:41):
the capacity to be Adolf Hitler and we have the capacity to be Mother Teresa.
I agree with Carl Jung on that one.
Yeah.
I absolutely do.
And so, but looking at this from the Matthew effect, right, then now we know that indigenous
populations suffer a life expectancy of five years shorter than general US population. I
know Barack Obama gave the largest reparations during his administration. It wasn't really that
(20:07):
publicized, but I think the US government paid indigenous communities around like $2.7 billion.
Well, so in the shocking turn of events, and many don't know this, but Ronald Reagan actually also
paid reparations to the families of the Japanese that were in the internment camps during World
War II. However, I don't believe he wronged, he righted the wrong where they almost forcefully
(20:36):
had certain Japanese Americans that were at this time fully American, some of them,
renounce their citizenship and essentially be deported to Japan or in the country illegally.
So even when some rights have been wronged, they're still not addressing many of these, many of the
(20:58):
nuances, I don't want to call it nuance, but many of the little aspects that were utilized to, I
guess, oppress these groups.
So we know that there's no escaping these in-group and out-group tenancies. However,
I think the arc of history and people who would call themselves anti-racist people who are
(21:22):
actively working against racism.
Those are some of the most racist people, I think.
I think there is a temptation to overgeneralize those people. I think that there are some people
that are good-willed. There are some people that I think are actually being more racist as well.
However, the point that I was trying to make is that this is a novel thing. There weren't really
people 400 years ago saying, we need to fight against racism.
(21:48):
Well, there were…
Okay, go on, go on.
Immanuel Kant, actually. So he did not overly elaborate on it because he was very… I mean,
he elaborated on a lot.
Yeah.
But…
Didn't he also talk about homosexuality as well?
I'm not sure if he did or did not.
There was another philosopher who had secret writings where he was like, this is so stupid
that we think this is it.
(22:08):
But he's like… I'm not sure. I don't think Kant… That doesn't sound like something
Kant would have written because… So, like, Europe justified colonialism because essentially
Europe created nation-states based on the Treaty of Westphalia. Now, where Europe was
wrong in its doing is it only recognized Europe. The rest of the world was fair game.
(22:31):
Now, that's really where Europe was in the wrong in this. Now, Immanuel Kant essentially had the
idea that colonialism is entirely immoral because it is using cultures, peoples, every…
It's using other people as means but not an end.
Yeah.
Abusing them, slavery.
Sucking the lifeblood out of it.
Sucking everything out of them. Purposefully destroying them for Europe's gain.
(22:55):
So Kant is not known as a social justice warrior, but his morality…
His morality…
Is guiding him in this.
… his philosophies, is… It predates it. And I don't understand why people don't focus on this
more. More people focus on Marx than they do on Kant. But to me, it might be because Kant's a
little bit more difficult to understand than Marx is.
(23:17):
Possibly. But I think there's also this heavy emphasis in these fields on power. And I think
Marx talks a lot more about power from a, like, structural sense. And I think that's why there's
a heavy emphasis on that.
What's interesting about their criticism of power is they simply focus it on, by using the
(23:38):
neo-Marxist perspective, it's always showing up as Europe bad. And this ignores history that we
have globally of all different races, all different peoples, all different cultures being bad. Some
being good, some being bad. You know, a great example of this is Ethiopia. Ethiopia is outside
(24:00):
of Egypt one of the most extensive knowledge of history that we have within Africa. And there
have been leaders, emperors, and empresses that have been both good and bad and committed
atrocities. You know, people like to say that, oh, genocide is a European thing. But in the 14… I
(24:20):
believe it was in the 1400s, under Yeshac, Y-E-S-H-Q, there were almost genocide occurring against
Jews, which are now… I forgot what they're called actually now in… they are Jewish, but I forgot
what they're specifically called in Ethiopia. This is completely outside of Western influence.
(24:44):
So, could I still mention your case? So, you're arguing that right now in this Western social
justice warrior paradigm, we're saying white European, the evilest possible being you could
possibly be, and you're arguing from a historical perspective that hold up now, maybe there has been
absolute horrible atrocities by the European hands. However, there's a lot of other cultures that had
(25:05):
other atrocities, and we should, instead of pointing out the white man group or the Ethiopian
group, say actually all humans in these incentives paradigms, you know, did really bad shit. So,
this actually reminds me of when Lex Friedman had Kanye West on his podcast, and Kanye was
(25:26):
having a manic episode, but Kanye was really pissed off at some of the music executives.
And instead of saying, you know, these specific music executives that ripped me off and ripped
my friends off, he just overgeneralized and pointed out the group and racially said,
Jewish people are horrible, they're hoarding all the wealth, and Jewish people are horrible music
(25:48):
executives. And what Lex said was, bro, bro, bro, hold on now, quit calling the group out.
Give me actual names of people, and if they're actually doing what you're saying,
I will be the first person to be right beside you calling that individual out. I really love
this perspective because it's similar to when we were talking about like morality, how like I
(26:09):
think it's better to just say good and bad behaviors instead of good and bad people.
There's obviously some people who are on the dark triad, and maybe it's an easy shorthand to just
call those people bad people. You know, like Adolf Hitler, we could have a conversation whether his
behaviors or him were bad, but I think most people are just gonna be like, bad guy. You know, it's
just much cognitively easier to just be like- He's the famously bad guy. That's Darth Vader right
(26:31):
there. You got Oprah on one side. I don't know, I think Oprah is pretty evil too.
Okay, different kind of evil. Not Oprah is nowhere near Hitler.
Gandhi and Mother Teresa, Jesus Christ on one side, and you got Adolf Hitler on the other side.
But I really want to be careful. That's the reason why I prefaced this conversation with
(26:52):
these temptations. Even when we're talking about wealthy people, I try to live my life realizing
that I have a deep bias, and we as humans have a deep bias, to have out-group hostility and in-group
cohesion. And I want to try my best to be like, okay, who are the people that are in my out-group,
politically, socially, culturally, racially, that I will have these cognitive biases to?
(27:15):
And how do I be aware of that so that my philosophy and my thinking can be more clear?
And then I can actually help people and work with people across the aisle, work with people who have
totally different- I want to be able to have a conversation with a person who says, David,
you're a deep racist and you don't realize it because you're so blinded in your ideology,
but you are a racist. I want to talk to that person. I want to listen to them out fairly,
(27:37):
but have a rigorous conversation with them. And I don't want my biases to prevent me from
actually making progress in the conversation. You know, I agree with you on that. Now, this
is my bias. I absolutely have a bias towards wealthy individuals. It is not all wealthy
individuals. And towards Marxist educators. Well, no, not really, because I love Paulo Freire,
(27:59):
you know what I mean? Just because you stem from the Marxist school does not inherently mean that-
That's not mean that you're spoiled.
No, it doesn't mean that you're essentially bad because there are- Marx was right about a lot of
things. Listen, if you read Das Kapital and go, that's good economics, I don't think you really
have any understanding of what economics is because it's a horrible economics book. But if
(28:25):
you read Marx and understand his thought of, you know, when he gives the example of a chair,
a craftsman making a chair versus you making just one part of a chair, then we have a basis where
we can start from. You know, class conflict, I feel like is something you almost, the second
(28:45):
you bring it up or even classism or anything that has to do with class or the haves and have nots
always comes from a Marxist perspective. But again, I feel it's a moral perspective.
Yeah.
And when we look at other cultures outside, just like the Toulash Calans, they had no idea
who Marx was. They predated Marx. They were, you know, they were the neighbors to the Aztec empires.
(29:07):
They saw greed and they saw war and they saw just this suffering that was caused, and they decided
not to do that by focusing on democracy, by egalitarianism and, you know, just other forms
of living. And where my bias against wealthy individuals comes is that some of them are so
(29:32):
miserable. Some of my, some of the clients that I work with.
But doesn't that make you also like hurt for them to be like, you have so many resources that you
could morally be doing so much good with that could literally make you feel so much meaning in your
life. And yet you're so trapped in buying $30,000 pillows in order to get some sort of love from
(29:52):
your friends who were Louis Vuitton.
You know what? It's hard because I see, I can't name companies that they work for.
I'm just going to pick on the military industrial complex because I feel they're a fair game to
pick on. None of my clients are CEO of Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman or Texas Instrument.
None of them work for these companies. But are you going to really sit there and tell me that the,
(30:18):
you know, the people that are in charge of these companies really are acting morally,
that these are good people at the end of the day? I mean, you know, this, this is where
DEI is a step, but I feel it's a step that people hide behind. Lockheed Martin touts itself as one
of the most diverse, you know, as one of the most diverse companies in the United States.
(30:39):
That's hysterical.
Do you think that Palestinian children or Russian children care if they, them, black women made the
missile that's killing them? You know what I mean? Like I'm in full agreement with you on that.
Yeah. I think, okay, this is also where, so, so BlackRock. Oh gosh. Now we're, now we're screwed
(31:00):
because I called them by name. Podcast is over. No, it's all conspiracy theory.
The second I learned about private equity, I go, ah, now I understand the world better.
So you have BlackRock, which is I think the largest private equity firm. They manage around
like $11 trillion. And they manage all of the assets to all the military industrial complex
(31:20):
companies. Right? So whatever they say kind of goes, it's, it's literally private equity is so
genius to be able to just kind of steal all the assets from companies because you're managing
them and making the companies wealthier. But because you hold all their assets, you really
have the power over them. Regardless of that, they're the ones that are pushing this large
systemic move towards DEI initiatives. And I don't believe that the heads of BlackRock
(31:47):
are morally acting because they want diversity in the workplace. I believe that they're using this
to control other companies much stronger and basically hurt them in the stock market because
there are these different DEI rankings that basically give more credibility and value to a
company based off of whether they're able to meet these different DEI goals that are set by BlackRock.
(32:11):
And this is a way that BlackRock can morally bully companies towards specific end goals. And if you
disagree with that, then you look like a racist, you look like a sexist, you look like you don't
really care about social justice. And so that's why I think that we have to be really careful that
there can be really evil actors using morality and virtue signaling and hiding behind that
(32:32):
for some really evil intentions. Well, I think that is exactly what they're doing. And
to the extent when we even go at it, like when we said, okay, like, you know, we're going to,
Ivy Leagues are going to take an initiative to try and allow more diverse population, you know,
into their, you know, into their schools, whether they be Black, Hispanic, or Asian, Native American,
(32:57):
whatever it is, you know, other than the, you know, white trust fund babies that kind of
perpetually go there. Essentially, by accepting these students in, unless they're all getting
in on full rides, you are now indebting this student. And this debt is something that is
quite evil and it's quite oppressive. Especially when you have an endowment fund.
(33:20):
Absolutely. 50 billion.
So now you are, you may do better now in your actual life, but now you've just been assimilated
to this immoral sort of existence with everyone else.
Well, to give Harvard some credit, 25% of their students get a full ride. And a majority of those
students, you know, are from disadvantaged backgrounds. And then 75% are all the net
(33:45):
baby babies. But it's okay, it's okay.
That's why they've now become a, what is it, they're a hedge fund management company that
holds classes.
Yes. Okay, 100%. And I think that's a totally different conversation about how
administration is getting so large and kind of taking over everything. I think the managerial
(34:05):
class has created that one guy, you have to remind me his name, he talked about bullshit jobs.
David Graeber.
Yeah.
The anthropologist. I love him.
Such a genius concept. And it really is kind of existentially terrifying when you realize that
the majority of people in America are not satisfied with their work because they're
doing bullshit work.
Because they're doing nothing at the end of the day.
Yeah. And when you look at like the suer-suree of doctors, like people say, well, it's just
(34:30):
stress. But missionaries are under, there was a really great study where they looked at different
jobs and the amount of stress and to try to tease out whether stress would be a good mediator for
suicidality in the workplace. And it wasn't because there was many more jobs that were
just as stressful but more meaningful because they actually were producing beneficial outcomes
(34:51):
where doctors are in this healthcare industry that is profiting off of people being chronically
sick. And that is deeply depressing that you know that you systemically, it's difficult to help
treat these chronic diseases at the root cause because the first line of defense is not to do
that. It's to perpetuate people in food deserts and not quality exercise, education, environmental
(35:16):
toxins, all these things. Obviously, you're going to feel deeply depressed as a doctor.
But that's a different conversation. I wanted to bring this conversation into social psychology
and talk about the flip side of this, which is a more conservative impulse, which is personal
responsibility. So, we obviously talked a lot about historical, cultural, and systematic
(35:36):
inequalities and things outside of the individual. I wanted to bring the conversation now towards
the individual. And especially, I want to hear from you in your social work, grad program,
how much, if any, are we talking about the social psychology of personal responsibility of
growth mindsets? Cal Dweck's research on fixed mindsets versus growth mindsets, that if you
(35:58):
believe that your abilities are fixed by, you know, constraints outside of you, then you actually
hinder your overall potential versus if you believe that you have the capacity to work hard
and to strive for something and increase your abilities, your growth potential radically increases.
So, we do actually focus on the individual. Social work is a unique field because it tries to go
(36:19):
macro, mezzo, and micro, sort of all at the same time. Like, it is an absurd amount of
work. What's the mezzo? Mezzo is sort of like in between, a little bit hard to define. Could it be
like how they interact? Like family level, micro, like individual, mezzo, sort of family level,
macro, sort of policy level. Got you. I get it. That's a good example to start with. And
(36:43):
some within social work, there's this idea of person in environment, but they're trying to
change it now to person and environment, simply because these two things exist. It's not a person
within an environment. It's the person and the environment. Because they're both acting on one
another. Exactly. The environment's acting on the individual and the individual can act on their
(37:04):
environment. Exactly. And actually, the micro perspective or the individual perspective that
I've gotten in social work has actually been the stuff that I enjoy the most. Because it really
focuses in on understand all of this oppression, but for the love of God, do not lay it on them.
(37:24):
You never want to lay or, you know, as Ram Dass says, you never want to lay somebody's trip on
them. It's not beneficial. You are working with them in this moment. They are there maybe by court
mandate or because they want to do what you can in that moment and use the best of psychology
(37:47):
that we have. If they're open to it, go into CBT. Use hope. If hope as mechanism to help an oncology
patient get through what they're dealing with, then it is beneficial. But there's no universal
perspective when working with an individual. And really trying to separate this is something
(38:11):
that is helping me actually look at my biases. And it's helping me more than the macro level is
to look at my biases. Because it's like when I work with somebody, I see them as a soul. I see them as,
well, I see them as an interconnected net, but it means, yeah, we're all one thing and, you know,
(38:37):
it's just a delusion that you're not. But from my perspective, but I play into that delusion.
She's a smuggling, Hindu smuggling. Listen, man, you know what? Nobody likes the person that
smashes a monopoly board and says, it's a game, stop playing. You got to play the game. But
really part of that game is working with the individual. That's such a good analogy.
(38:57):
Right? Nobody likes it if you get up and flip the game on them and says, you guys are playing a game.
Everybody wants to play. Okay, so let's stay in the game. Let's stay in the game here.
So, okay, I love this. I think mentorship is so underestimated. I think that every part of society
needs to be built off of mentorship. This is where psychologists need psychologists, you know?
Like social workers need social workers to talk to. And I think especially when we see
(39:24):
civil engagement and overall people connecting with one another decreasing, there's some horrible
stats. Like the Surgeon General argues that we are in a loneliness epidemic. And we know that
loneliness increases your all risk mortality by 60%. I don't know. Do you see mentorship
as a path forward? Well, I was a mentor for two years. And it was maybe one of the most
(39:51):
impactful things that have happened in my life, you know, because I understood within myself
what I may have needed when I was younger. And when I went to the interview process,
I was matched with somebody that had similar issues as I was angry. I didn't know how to deal
with my emotions, you know, but still a kind soul at the end of the day. And I got matched with
(40:12):
someone just like that. And working with them was so important. And I think mentorship is needed in
both men and women, like just universally. Too much of it focuses in the generalized other,
is focused on sports. And there is a lot of men that do not connect with that. Yeah, I don't really
(40:34):
watch any sports. Exactly. So that whole mentorship through sports thing, isn't I get it? That's not
for everybody. Yeah. You know, and so like, okay, this is a unique thing is like, then how do we,
we need to be more creative of like connecting people in their unique niche groups. So like,
my church had a mentorship program when I was a little kid. Basically, what they did is they were
(40:56):
like, hey, we have a bunch of like single mothers here and they have kids and, you know, they're
living in fatherly absent homes. And I have a book up here, The Boy Crisis by Dr. Farrell. He
basically outlines all the horrible statistics that come with being in a father absent home,
crime with antisocial behavior, with overall success. And, you know, with divorce rates that
(41:21):
were dramatically climbing in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, you know, we obviously have many more
boys in that situation. Regardless, my church said, hey, we want to pair, you know, a bunch of dads
who already kind of raised their kids and been partnered them with, you know, boys in the church
who are in this father absent homes. And I was one of those boys. I got paired with a mentor,
(41:44):
John DeMarco. I brought him up in my worldview in the first episode. And he really transformed
my life and he gave me access to even social capital that I didn't have access to. So like,
families coming together. And I don't know, I'm just, I feel that so much of my socialization,
so much of my cognitive development and my desire to have a growth mindset was really birthed out of
(42:09):
that mentorship program. I just, I can't imagine where I would be, you know, without it.
No, I mean, it changes lives, you know, but like, to address the sort of breakdown of communities,
sort of in American society, there was this author, his name is Robert Putnam, absolutely
brilliant. He wrote this book called Bowling Alone. And what he essentially notices growing up in
(42:34):
America, obviously he's, I think he's of the boomer generation. He noticed when he was younger that
if you went to the bowling alley, you could not get onto a lane unless you were in some sort of
league, some sort of club. And nowadays everybody's bowling alone. He was started to look at the
(42:57):
look that there was essentially a complete breakdown of these communities within America,
that we had no third place. I'm sure you've hear on TikTok and all social media is this idea that
America has no third places to exist. We also, we don't have, you know, we just, we don't have
(43:19):
any way to be other than being consumerist, you know? Like the social justice movements nowadays,
a lot of it focuses around consumeristic society and it's just, it doesn't help.
Jared Sussman Yeah, that's a really,
really excellent point. That's like paradigm changing because where people are spending time
together are the bars, church, which is not even a thing really anymore, university, and then online.
(43:46):
Jared Sussman Like, I can't think of any other places.
Meanwhile, you go overseas to France and it's like Sunday, okay, it's August, the entire country's
closed down. We're all hanging out. There's a car show over here. There's farmers markets over here.
Everybody's hanging out in the square. There's skateboarding in front of museums and there's
just groups everywhere. I think we're ashamed. I feel like America is kind of completely broken
(44:09):
down. Yeah, socially. We have some deep social trauma. The interesting thing is that like
technology can make us feel more insecure and make it seem that other people are living these
extravagant lives that it's just a highlight reel or some people are actually living in extravagant
life because there's just inequality in the world. You didn't evolve to really be looking at that.
(44:31):
You evolved to be in a little farm tribal community, not realizing that there's kings out
there that actually have access to all these resources that you die for. But the unique thing
is like why America, why, I mean, is the roots because we're so individualistic?
Well, you know what? That there's less emphasis on the community? There's no answer to this.
(44:54):
I've read plenty of studies and there's been a lot of non-linear connections. One of which is
interesting to me, although Singapore kind of contradicts this, but one of which is that in
high immigrant societies, there's two perspectives, melting pot and salad bowl. Salad bowl essentially
being that everybody sort of is in the same place, but they're all their own cultures,
(45:20):
melting pot being we all melt together. And a lot of leftist ideologies lean towards the salad bowl,
but there's positives and negatives on each of these. And one of which is in these high
immigration societies or even societies that are gaining more immigration, there's a breakdown of
social systems. Much of the studies have also noticed this goes hand in hand as globalism
(45:44):
increases and inequality increases. These social systems also sort of decrease, but in countries
like Norway, Denmark, basically the North of Europe and also-
Scandinavia.
America. Yeah, Scandinavia. More immigrants that represent outside cultures, less social services,
less social connections, less social cohesion. Absolutely. This is not the case in Singapore.
(46:11):
And so the question is what the heck is unique about Singapore?
Well, one thing, Singapore is very small.
Yeah. Do you think it could also be like transportation, right? So like America-
Oh, absolutely. We're totally separated. We do not interact. Rich people live over here,
middle-class whites live over here.
And everything is based off of cars. In America, it's all highways. My brother
(46:34):
is like the largest, shout out to Vincent, because I know he's going to be listening to this.
He's always like, dude, we just need more bike lanes. Bike lanes, trains. You know what? Screw
cars. Electric cars are not the future. They're just perpetuating the problems of today. So
I don't care how much people love their Teslas. Give me a goddamn train.
(46:57):
I want to end this podcast on a positive note. Something that my brother is really passionate
about. He's like, when I become a doctor, I want to open up a practice right by the train stop in
LA where he lives. He's like, we need to incentivize more doctors to open up practices by metro stops
so that people are more incentivized to use it. And it's also just like really easy access. And
he wants to also build a community gardens. He is really passionate about urban planning.
(47:21):
And I think we haven't seen any advancements similarly in physics, in civil engineering,
because all of the smart engineers have just been going to electrical and software engineering,
because that's where all the money is at, is at creating apps and bits and these fake digital
world. But I think we need to do a better job as a society to be like, no, we will not stand for
this. There's been so much stagnation in civil engineering and we need our smartest people to
(47:47):
redesign what it looks like for community spaces. And you know, I think addressing civil engineering
is really a good place to start at a, you know. And make it more equitable. This is an area where
we can actually level the playing field because we get to redesign our tomorrow. No one knows who the
designer of the sidewalk is, but the sidewalk is a great friggin invention. And the reason why no
(48:08):
one knows it, because it just blends into society. And I think you have a lot of people in the social
justice movement that are yelling at the top of their lungs, but we need more creative, smart
people to be like, how do we design a new tomorrow that people don't even realize that we've actually
made this, but it's just so much better for everybody. You know, I really gotta put my
(48:28):
criticism against the people, the liberals that are going for these 15 minute cities that have made it
so like boring and corporate and just not the answer. Because we had an answer and it's called
a Roman city and they're beautiful and they have everything within it. It's exactly everything you
(48:49):
claim a 15 minute city to be, but it's beautiful and it's gorgeous and it brings in architecture
and it brings people together. You have multiple different people living within the same area and
interacting and you know, just America needs a culture shift overall. And we need to care about beauty.
I, we, yeah, we need to care about beauty in the public space. We need to care about people at a
(49:12):
human level and we need to care about community, not at an individual level. We need to remember
that we all exist together and not one of us is more important than the other. And that action
needs to be taken, such as revolutionizing civil engineering and changing the way that cities are
(49:33):
made. You know what the answer is, bro? What? Little Island. Little Island. I just want to add on this.
Oh, in the city? If you go to Manhattan, go to Little Island. What about Little Island? It's tiny.
Yeah. So, the story of it, during the pandemic, this one millionaire, he might actually be a
billionaire because I think this cost him like 300 something million dollars, but I think his
wife's like a real housewife or something. Anyway, he was like, we need to design something, a more,
(49:56):
more public common spaces because one, medical bills are dramatically increasing and hospitalizations
are increasing, mental health even getting worse. And so, he thought that one possible creative
solution was creating more public commons that it would incentivize people to get out and to spend
time in nature and with one another. And I think Little Island is like, there's a really beautiful,
(50:16):
small, awesome example of that. So, you know, shout out. If you go to Manhattan, definitely check out
Little Island. You could ride your bike. It's free before 11 a.m. I didn't know that. And that makes
me appreciate it more. It just, yeah, we need more places like that. The Global Island, Little Island.
Little Island. I mean, we need less places like Long Island where you got Nimbia's in Rampit.
(50:37):
You can't build anything. There's just too many people. Dude, somehow, I mean, like, I'm going to
go on a little mini rant here. Somehow, dude, somehow somebody decided that strip malls and
strode's was beautiful and made to protect how stuff looked. I want to meet that person and freaking
slap them. Like, who's the a-hole that thought about that? Okay. Like, I want beautiful cities.
(51:05):
I don't want strip malls with banks, man. Yeah. Yep. I'm down for it. I'm down for it, bro. All
right. Social justice, personal responsibility, why strip malls are ugly. And go visit Little
Island. Go visit Little Island. It's pretty cool. Play with the music. There's pretty good music
there. I love jumping on those things. I know, dude. It's so fun. Like being like 30 years old
(51:26):
and like jumping on, well, not 30 yet. Yeah, the spinny chairs too. Oh, those spinny chairs. I've
got, I fell out of them before. I kind of went way too hard backwards and freaking flipped over.
My wife did it once. I almost got it on camera.
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