Status & Power | EP 7

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
TGI, the Global Island.

(00:02):
Heart disease.
Are you doing it right?
Does the quality of American crops suck?
AI?
And tractors?
Are rich people real?
Or just lizard people?
Postmodernism and oppression.
Are they real?
Jesus Christ.
The idea of non-attachment.
Power?
And hierarchy?
Or is it just play?
Sexual selection.
Are you driving the right car?

(00:24):
Does Jordan Peterson get deported from the Global Island with his Canadian passport?
We'll find out.
You got a loud Italian family.
Oh, this is a man.
I grew up with it.
When my house was getting built, when my parents bought their, I don't want to say their first
house, but my parents bought our house that I really grew up in my whole life.

(00:46):
We lived with my grandparents.
Three bedroom house.
So it was me, my sister, his kids.
Both my parents living in one room.
My uncle living in another room.
And then my grandparents living in the other.
And it was just chaos.
Like Italian, the Long Island Italian family, loud as can be.
You know what though?

(01:07):
It's great because my wife's from Turkey.
There's so much similarities in the way that they do stuff.
Like the hospitality, the loudness.
Oh my God.
You can't say no to food.
Or to Turkish or an Italian house.
Tea or food.
I'm drinking Turkish tea right now.
It's ingrained in me.

(01:27):
So what is the American hospitality?
It's like having people over for barbecue, right?
I guess.
You know what?
I think that depends where you are.
You know what I mean?
Because New York, you had that really heavy Italian population move here.
So we're kind of similar to that.
So in different places of America, they draw from their more ethnic roots.

(01:47):
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, you go down south, I used to work with this guy.
We used to call him Duck Dynasty.
400 pounds, giant beard.
Down to his belly button almost.
This guy was like, you couldn't understand him.
But he was like, man, if you're ever down in, he lives outside of Charleston, about
30 miles outside of Charleston.
He's like, if you ever come down to Charleston, I'm going to smoke a whole pig for you.

(02:12):
Whatever you want.
I think that definitely changes.
And man, that guy, when he went into the deli to get tea, he wanted sweet tea.
When I say he wanted sweet tea, he put tea in a cup of sugar.
Like, yeah.
But I got to say.
Diabetes.
Oh, dude.
I got to say, though, if I move down south, like if I move to South Carolina or Texas

(02:33):
or something like that, the barbecue will kill me.
It'll kill me.
I want to see a graph of just heart disease in America, my region.
And you just see like the southern charm.
I'm telling you, some heart disease is worth it and some isn't.
I don't think any heart disease is worth it.
But listen to this.
If I get heart disease because I eat McDonald's every day, now that's just a waste.

(02:55):
It tastes the same everywhere.
I get that.
You know what I mean?
If I get heart disease because I'm smoking pig, I'm eating ribs, I'm like making brisket.
You know what I mean?
Sure.
That's just heaven to death.
And then there's your path.
You find Zen through that.
Don't be addicted to it, but enjoy it.

(03:15):
I'm just like anything.
I was looking at this nutrition YouTube channel called NutritionFacts.org.
You know it's good when it's extremely boring and like the database.
Was that that Dutch lady you sent me?
No, no, no.
That lady is a biochemist.
Her Instagram is the Glucose Goddess.
And her lab basically just studies how do we decrease how transient our glucose spikes

(03:38):
are to mitigate metabolic syndrome, which is the root cause of all these major health
concerns in America and across the world in modern cultures.
But this NutritionFacts YouTube channel, they were looking at this scientific publication
talking about processed meats like pig.
And he was talking about how the actual scientific publication was paid for by the meat industry

(04:04):
and the writers were saying, but we know that processed meats are really bad for you.
However, Americans are so used to them.
So if we tell them to stop eating them, that there's this taste cost.
And so yes, we should protect them for their health, but we should also try to mitigate
the taste cost.
And I was like, that's such an interesting, like where you were saying with like the McDonald's

(04:26):
versus have smoke in the...
Okay, but like anybody like have, I don't know if you've traveled abroad like to your,
well yes, you have traveled abroad.
Okay, so you've tasted like base foods, like tomato, bread, butter, like things, you know.
Organic whole foods.
Well, I don't know, it's just basic foods.
Okay, sure.
I have never lived until I just was down in Axen Provence in South France and I took a

(04:49):
tomato and I just took a bite of it at the market.
Now, I'm not sure you're gonna say, oh, it might be pesto, whatever, I don't care.
That tomato did not taste like water.
Every tomato I've had in the United States tastes like sour water.
Yeah.
You know, and there's something wrong with our food.
So I get you're saying that the taste preference, but I'm kind of tired of moving all of our

(05:12):
food to make the chicken nugget crowd happy.
Yeah.
Not that there's anything wrong with chicken nuggets, but I'm sorry if you're 45 years
old and you still only eat chicken nuggets and McBox, mac and cheese.
Like, dude, Purdue chicken nuggets go hard.
Those ones.
I listen, I don't deny that.
The Costco bag for like 12 bucks, dude.
Okay, but I was actually just watching an amazing YouTube video on farming in America

(05:37):
and how in like the 1960s and 70s, scientists were very worried that we weren't gonna be
able to produce enough food for the growing population.
And so that's when we excelled our genetically modification of different seeds and our crops.
And we moved from multicultural cropping, where you have many different species of crops
and plants and foods in the same soil area, to then monocropping.

(06:02):
This is where you only have one plant in a large field.
And the reason why is because if you're using pesticides or herbicides, you need them to
be very specific for the very specific crop that you're using.
The problem is when you move to monocropping, the topsoil gets damaged.
And so we've been doing this for 30, 40 years.

(06:22):
And so the quality of our topsoil in America has went down the drain, leading to there
being less phytonutrients in our actual organic foods.
And so this is where, you know, now, now, thankfully, we have politicians that are actually
talking about this, and the crazy thing is John Deere, the tractor company, partnered
with OpenAI and other AI startups to create these new AI tractors that actually have lasers

(06:46):
on them.
And they do machine learning where they can learn like way faster than our human brain
can to pick out what's the actual crop and what's a weed.
And then they use lasers to actually kill the weed, which is so, so awesome.
That's pretty far out.
And the crazy thing with that is now we can move back to multicultural farming.
So we can actually increase the health of our topsoils now because of this new technology.

(07:09):
Well, then also when you use multicultural farming, like you don't have to use the pesticides.
And you know, I think an aspect that people kind of lose, too, that's often not discussed
in farming, because we talk about how it affects our food, how it affects our soil.
You know, the last thing we want is another dust bowl of what was that, the 1920s.
I'm pretty sure that was the 20s or maybe the 30s.

(07:29):
A lot of bad things were happening in the 30s.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I know.
I know.
I can't even count them.
But another thing that really gets impacted is actually the air quality.
You know, people assume that when you're out in farm country, they've done tests on the
air quality as compared to Times Square versus out in the middle of the farms.
And the air quality by the farms is not better because of all of the chemicals that they

(07:53):
spray on essentially on the field.
Of toxic exposure.
Exactly.
And now this is even crazier.
Go local to us.
We got out east in the Hamptons.
You have this town, Sagaponica, for example, one of the wealthiest zip codes in the world.
I mean, there's not a single worker that lives there.
Everybody that lives there, it is their sixth home.

(08:15):
And no, I'm serious.
And one of the most expensive homes in the U.S. is in this area in Sagaponica.
It's all built on farmland and it's right next to the farms.
Imagine spending $250 million on your property, which is, I think, the most expensive one
in the area.
Imagine you're living next to this pollution all day long.

(08:35):
You're just taking your family and you think you're out there for your summer vacation
in the Hamptons and you're literally poisoning yourself.
You might as well stand in Times Square all day.
Damn, wow.
That's pretty wild.
I would love to see what the psychological effects are because I'm a strong proponent
that placebos and nocebos have a lot of power.
I'm added to actual real biochemistry going on.

(08:58):
So when a person goes to a more rural farm spot, they think, wow, breathe in the air.
These trees are amazing.
So there's definitely probably at least some sort of healthy boost compared to the city,
maybe where you have a nocebo effect where you go to the city thinking that it's going
to be really bad.
And then you can actually have more symptomology that's not caused by the actual biochemistry

(09:19):
of your environment but caused by your psychology.
I mean, it definitely would be nice to understand that.
I can say that there is stuff wrong with those people.
They're not people.
They might as well be lizard people.
You know what I mean?
Some of them are so dehumanized.
It's the neppy poopies.
Oh, God forbid your fourth generation trust fund comes in.

(09:43):
Yeah, but I mean, this is something that we were talking about when we went on our hike
where you were saying that you have some pretty wealthy clients who spent like $50,000 on
pillow sets and they have to smell them before they're willing to buy them.
But I was really like, I don't know, I feel very convicted when it comes to in-group and

(10:10):
out-group tensions.
And so I'm always constantly trying to ask myself, well, who are the members of my out-group
that I am making biases towards?
And how do I try to empathize and try to understand them?
And so when we were kind of making a joke out of these wealthy people who spend $50,000
on freaking pillows, I was trying to be like, well, maybe in their social circles, that's

(10:36):
actually the cost of social approval.
That in order to get the social affirmation that we as humans actually need psychologically,
maybe that this woman who's willing to pay $50,000 for a pillow set, that's what she
needs in her social relationships to actually get that affirmation.
And that's like a really sad reality that it costs that much for them.

(10:57):
Do you know what I noticed about, now this is, when I discuss the sort of a population,
I try not to include everyone because that simply is not fair.
You don't want to make over generalizations.
No.
Granted, when I say everyone, I'm probably saying realistically about 70 to 80% of the
population.
Granted, when you're looking at areas like the Hamptons and Beverly Hills, that name

(11:18):
attracts certain people.
You know what I mean?
Like calm, cool headed people don't really wear loud Versace outfits.
You know what I'm saying?
So I would argue that those are not really wealthy people.
Those are like upper middle class people who could be very wealthy, but because they're
so addicted to status.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
When you have six private jets and your husband owns an oil company in Texas and you're, they're

(11:46):
billionaires.
They're, these are not.
But, okay.
Do not.
Okay, I'm in full agreement with that, right?
But there is, there is so many people who, if they were just smart with their money and
instead of buying all these Versace sweatshirts and spending stupid amount of money on cars,
if they actually put their money into assets, they could be much more wealthy, but they
care more about the status of their wealth.

(12:08):
Well, so this is something that gets, I mean, when we're talking about somewhere like Sagaponic,
it's both.
They're both status and they are both wealth.
You know, they, they, these people try to have it all.
I'll say.
But one thing that I really notice is, so me and my coworker are huge car guys.

(12:29):
We watch Formula One every Sunday and then whatever's on after that.
If World Endurance Championship's on after that, if we could watch World Rallycross,
we'll even put on NASCAR, NHRA, you know, drag racing.
We'll watch funny cars, you know, funny, yeah, yeah, those are those really like long ones.
They look funny.
I know it's, it's called funny.
Yeah, it's called funny car.

(12:50):
You know, you know, they're, they're sweet man.
I mean, the guys that drive those have balls because you are like going zero to a hundred
in like, you know what I mean?
But we'll watch anything and we discuss cars all day.
I'm more of a Japanese guy.
I like JDM stuff, but I also enjoy Porsche a lot and classic Ferraris.

(13:10):
I enjoy my coworker also kind of into the classic JDM scene, but really loves American.
You know, he's got a 66 Vette, he's got a 67 GTO, he's got a 61 Carmagia too.
Like he's, he's got a little bit of everything.
We will spring up conversations with somebody that has say a Ferrari or say a Porsche or
something like that.
And we noticed that either A, you find this person that's so interesting and they're so

(13:38):
into it and they are successful, usually in business.
They usually start their own businesses.
The other side of it is you get these people that are all buying any of this stuff for
status.
You bought a Ferrari, but you have no idea what engines it, you don't know if it's a
V8, V10, V12.
You don't know who Enzo Ferrari is and you've never seen, you can't even tell me, you know,

(14:00):
who's the two drivers for Ferrari and Formula One at the moment.
And as you said, like I struggle with empathy and compassion for these people.
I find that I have it for like everybody except these people.
And it's, but I feel like I should.
Okay, so like if you go from my paradigm of like we have, we all have these core psychological

(14:23):
needs as human beings, right?
And even though these wealthy people on the Maslowist hierarchy of needs, they're getting
all of their basic survival needs met very easily.
They have private chefs, right?
Yeah.
They don't have to worry about going to the grocery store.
Oh, absolutely.
There still is these higher psychological needs of social validation, social conformity,

(14:43):
having proper attachment to caregivers.
And the second you add money and the second you add power dynamics, you add a lot of complexities
that could cause more stress for people in these environments.
And I think there are a lot of upper middle class people who aren't necessarily financially
savvy and they also struggle with their social relationships.

(15:04):
They use as a way of socially coping, they use these symbols of status to actually try
to get some sort of validation from society.
Now there is a percentage of people that are Machiavellian narcissistic, the dark triad
people and those people, I would agree that it certainly is hard to have empathy for because
they're consciously malevolent.

(15:25):
However, I wanted to talk to you, you're bringing up the postmodernist writer that you were
reading and talking about how identity is this object that can be used from a subject,
from a human being.
When you were talking about people's clothes and Versace, I was imagining there are a lot
of wealthy parents who when their kid is growing up, they make sure their kid is dressed a

(15:50):
certain way so that if their kid walks into a room, the people know, okay, this kid has
this status and these are all cues, these are all objects of identity that could be
used in society.
I don't know, I was just getting that image.
I kind of see what you're saying.
Understanding Michel Foucault's idea of power and power dynamics, I feel as if people, he

(16:11):
uses examples like hospitals and schools to explain essentially the flow of power.
The way that I understand it is more the unfolding of the reality of interaction.
Break that down.
Okay.
The unfolding of the reality of?
Of interactions.

(16:31):
I'm going to kind of remove it.
One of my favorite Japanese writers, Haruki Murakami, in one of his, I think it was his
first book called Wind, he has this quote of when this character is talking with his
psychiatrist.
The psychiatrist says to the kid that civilization is communication.
In other words, without any forms of communication, there can be no civilization.

(16:53):
I mean, even if you look at primates, they may not have civilization, but they still
have community because they do communicate in certain ways.
So kind of building off that.
But language produces symbols and symbols produces really society.
Exactly.
This is where people misunderstand Foucault because he has this idea that power creates

(17:14):
knowledge and that right there, he almost sees communication in these.
I almost feel like he's using power to describe the Tao of systems and relationships, if that
makes sense.
You're bringing in a lot of words that I still don't have good definitions for.
Okay.
Okay.
So, all right.
A to B, B to C.

(17:35):
Where to start because this is-
But the training wheels are for me.
This is difficult.
I mean, defining power in Foucault is going to be way more difficult than defining the
interactions between people.
So-
Can we say that power is whatever leverages you have?
Sometimes it's leverage.

(17:55):
Actually, in the postmodernist sense, I would actually turn it towards oppression as leverage.
And to build on this because I was just reading an article from my grad school-
How oppressed you are could be a leverage of status.
Well, so, to a degree.
And I think what a lot of postmodernists get wrong is when they're writing, so like in

(18:18):
this article that I just had to read for grad school, they were describing oppression.
But in the postmodernist sense, technically everything is oppression.
If you're in a classroom, the power that the teacher has over you, you could say, or the
interaction of power between the student and the teacher because it's not a Socratic classroom

(18:39):
or the entire institution of the school, technically you are oppressing the kid in a postmodern
sense.
So could you argue from a postmodernist sense, whenever there is hierarchy, there is oppression?
Yes.
But I don't think in my own view, kind of taken as sort of Eastern view, I don't see
this oppression as what we view as oppression, rather, and a lot of writers use this way

(19:05):
as oppression.
So this writer, for example, is using intersectionality of gender, race, and she was saying that postmodernists
forget about these people and they get blown away when describing oppression.
And I think that this writer, it's Tina Matson, M-A-T-T-S-O-N, I believe she's wrong.
I believe in this area, you need to describe it kind of as you describe unnecessary suffering,

(19:29):
there is unnecessary oppression.
So we all live as humans in a hierarchy and it will always be that way.
Foucault says power exists and expands.
Matson's idea of using intersectionality into this, of saying, okay, now you are, you know,
I'm going to take your identity as straight white male by objectifying this.

(19:52):
You're assuming my identity.
No problem.
I will assume it all day long just for you.
Only you though.
We can objectify those parts of it and now there can be power flows to those identity
that can be positive or negative and it can expand.
It's almost like if you name something, it becomes this infinite philosophy that never

(20:13):
stops growing.
The second you label something, it kind of opens up the floodgates.
Exactly.
So it's like something exists and we may interact with it.
And there may be negative interactions with it and there may be positive interactions
with it.
But this idea of now if we name something and we categorize it and we empiricize it
and we scientifically study it, it is going to expand positively and negatively.

(20:36):
It's kind of like a self-fulfilled prophecy.
Exactly.
It's a snake eating its own tail.
So where I find a lot of modern postmodernists, a bunch of modern postmodernists, a bunch
of postmodernists in our day are wrong.
Contemporary postmodernists.
Sure.
There you go.
Contemporary postmodernists are wrong in that they're misguiding.

(20:57):
They're creating a beast that's actually eating them.
They want to overcome oppression but they don't understand that the system itself is
oppressive.
In other words, they want to flip it on its head and create new forms of oppression.
Their ideas of going at it.
Which is kind of what we're seeing in society where the status hierarchy has completely

(21:18):
flipped.
Yes.
It's so weird because there's so many domains of society.
Still in the corporate world, all the CEOs of BlackRock, they're all white dudes.
Even though they're the ones who are pushing the whole DI movements because they can actually
use that to oppress people who aren't on their ethical standings, which is so hypocritical.
But in society, in pop culture, the white straight male European descent is at the bottom

(21:44):
and then your disabled, Latinx, Muslim, transgender woman is at the top of the hierarchy.
There are layers to your social identity that can give you more status in very specific
situations.
Because there still is a lot of oppression towards Muslim people.
There still is a lot of oppression towards females.

(22:04):
But in certain institutions, like maybe applying for grad school, you have a leg up.
And we're not saying anything positive or negative for that.
This is just an observation.
No, no.
Well, because going into social work as a male, simply that one stated that right there.
Being a male in social work.
Yeah.
Going into school psychology too.
Exactly.
Exactly.

(22:25):
And so, okay, this is where maybe viewing everything from the victim and the victor
framing could be not as helpful and could actually lead to more pathology and leading
to more people feeling like they are negatively psychologically oppressed by society.
That this framing is actually really unhealthy if you live based off of it.

(22:48):
I would say unnecessarily oppressed.
Okay.
Yeah.
So they're trying to, they don't see the system of, the whole system of oppression.
Everyone has advantages and disadvantages.
Now, there's a large spectrum to some people who have a lot of disadvantages and some people
have a lot of advantages, right?
Exactly.
However, it's kind of, I think, the exciting journey and adventure of your life to discover

(23:11):
what are those advantages and disadvantages and how do I use my advantages and my unique
gifts to actually build something more of my life.
And to kind of build on this or to kind of take it to a different level, when you go
to levels of awareness, when you get to, like in that chart you sent me, when you get to
level nine, the Buddha-like nature, the God-like nature, the Christ-like nature, you don't

(23:34):
care anymore.
You just, you see it all lawfully unfolding.
It's like you see it and you're on it at the same time.
You know what my favorite quote from-
You're on it, but then you're also viewing yourself on it.
Christ said, be in the world, not of the world.
That is my single-handedly favorite quote from him.

(23:58):
Zen is to me explained in that quote simply as can be.
And when you really understand that, that this world lawfully unfolds.
Now this doesn't mean we should fight unnecessary suffering or unnecessary oppression, but we
put our biases, I think, too much in these philosophical ideas.
And to overcome it, like the way that Matson and I feel other contemporary postmodernists,

(24:25):
writers sort of try to overcome it, to me is too much in the Marxist revolutionary sense.
And you don't want another Soviet Union because now you're just changing the form of oppression.
I would never advocate to kill all the wealthy people and simply take their place because
what takes his place may be worse than what was before.

(24:46):
And it may lead to millions of deaths.
I always try to understand why people come to the conclusions that they come to.
And it seems like a lot of the contemporary postmodern writers, they have a certain understanding
of human nature, that they view human nature as being good.
However, they believe that sometimes human nature can produce systems of oppression that

(25:07):
lead us to not be the better angels of our nature, that actually lead us to create hierarchies
and divide and all these negative things.
And so it seems like the postmodernists are saying, we need to restart human society and
destroy it all because we are actually good and we can actually usher in this Marxist
utopia where we are all equal.

(25:28):
But it's because they're misunderstanding it.
There's always hierarchy.
And they're misunderstanding the idea of oppression again, which is why I think it needs more words
in it.
Even if we go back to the most egalitarian society, the society outside of the Aztecs
that I still can't pronounce, it's like-
But wait, sorry to interrupt you.
Would you steel man the postmodern case?

(25:48):
You say the precept position, there will always be hierarchies.
And I'm very sympathetic to that notion.
But can you try to argue or steel man the postmodern case that, no, you're actually
still in this faulty paradigm thinking that there has to be hierarchy?
So the Brazilian writer Paulo Freire had this idea of praxis and I'll equate it to Hegel's

(26:11):
dialectic.
What he felt praxis was, was a voluntary way of revolutionizing education, sort of using
the Socratic method, that you teach me and I teach you.
And we both need to come to this place of consciousness where we can teach one another
up.
And not teach one another up to the point where we are one upmanship, which exists in

(26:36):
this world, in the religious world, in the economy, in the religious economy.
But it's this actual way of sort of overcoming, I think Freire almost would describe using
praxis as a method for enlightenment of a society.
I don't know-
The goodwill teaching and learning.
Exactly.
To be honest, I haven't, I don't remember all of Freire's works, but this idea of praxis

(27:01):
was one that, before I fully say this, let me say, I don't see anything wrong with finding
writers that you may hate 90% of their work, but 10% of it may be absolutely brilliant.
And there's nothing wrong with saying, well, you know what, they were right about this.
And when looking at Paolo Freire's work, praxis is something that I absolutely think would

(27:23):
be better and would help us.
But it still doesn't get to the root of there being hierarchies, right?
Because there is a wide range of human phenotypes.
There are some humans that are very, very attractive.
There are some humans that are less so attractive.
There are some humans that are physically stronger and some humans that are physically

(27:45):
weak.
There are some humans that are cognitively IQs of 160.
There are some humans that are IQs of 70.
And there's going to be a wide range to how successful people are based off of a billion
of these domains.
And these will all result in hierarchies forming, not out of conscious awareness, just out of
the sheer fact that the chips will land where they are, where they may.

(28:08):
So it's not that it overcomes hierarchy, essentially.
It's not that it overthrows it.
It's not a revolution against hierarchy.
It allows people to take on multiple identities where the teacher has to take on the learner
and the learner has to take on the teacher.
It allows you to understand identities to the point that you may now not identify with

(28:30):
your identity, but that you will rather be the doer.
Almost looking at it like if we take the humanist perspective, like unfortunately the contemporary
humanist perspective is secular.
And I don't agree with that because I feel you can be religious and be humanist because
there are flaws in religion.
Again, you can take 10% from Christianity and say, I love this.

(28:53):
I don't like the other 90%.
You know what?
Some people may not be fully happy about that, but at the end of the day, what really is
true and this is a universal truth for humans, you are a human.
You know, I don't have anything more to say on that.
And okay, these systems of oppression may exist, the unnecessary oppression, these systems

(29:15):
of unnecessary oppression may exist, these systems of hierarchy may exist, but that does
not change the truth that we are all humans and there is nothing wrong with finding a
connection through that level.
So this is where I think Jordan Peterson's argument, Jordan Peterson is just being dragged

(29:35):
into all these conversations.
I know.
He's such a political figure.
Yeah, so much to say.
But he argues that the postmodern critique that all of human nature originates from a
desire for power is wrong.
And he believes that it actually comes down from like the neural anatomy to play.
And so talking about what was that Brazilian...

(29:57):
Paulo Freire.
And what was his idea?
Praxis.
Praxis.
P-R-A-X-I-S.
Praxis.
Praxis.
Yeah.
Okay, so taking on these different identities like the Socratic method is, that's the ultimate
form of play.
We're not dogmatically holding to our identity.
I am the principal of the school, therefore I have power.
It's like, no, I can actually play as a student.

(30:21):
I can try on these different identities.
Like you're saying with education, if we created classrooms that surrounded learning through
play and not just in preschool, but up to the college level.
I know.
I actually, I think I agree with you.
And I sort of like this perspective because it does take it down from the hypothetical

(30:42):
and much of postmodernism, even as much as I disagree with a lot of what Matson wrote,
she does actually say there is this issue of postmodernism and actual application, especially
in the field of social work, because it's like, how do you use this?
Now using this idea of play is actually brilliant.
And to build on this, I would use certain philosophies such as in Buddhism, grasp firmly,

(31:06):
let go lightly.
When you do something, when you play with something, do it as you actually should do
it.
But when it's time to go, you should let go lightly.
Don't hold onto it.
Yeah, exactly.
Non-attachment.
Practice non-attachment.
Okay, something popped into my head when we were thinking about this.
Go for it.

(31:26):
This sounds like...
Mom, I called the dermatologist.
Mom's gotta be mom's.
They love you, you know?
Okay, so something popped into my head when you were saying that.
And it was, it seems like this play-based society is only possible through post-scarcity,
right?
That when we have this AI utopia where we are mining asteroids and getting trillions

(31:49):
of dollars and there's an abundance amount of our natural resources and we're not necessarily
competing at the same level for those resources, it seems that we are free to do this play-based
trying on different statuses.
However, in a society where there is scarcity and just going to the bare bones of sexual

(32:10):
selection, this is actually, I actually wrote a short op-ed and I sent it to Dr. Brown,
my advisor, about, okay, if we were to enter into a world where we weren't competing over
scarce resources, wouldn't we just create new resources or new objects of identity to

(32:30):
then build sexual selection based on them?
So right now, the game is played.
If you get the Lamborghini, if you get the Instagram followers, if you get the mansion
in Malibu, if you get the private jet, if you get the hairline fix in Turkey, if you
get that, then you attract attractive mates, right, if you're a male, right?

(32:52):
And so that's how sexual selection works right now.
But now let's say everyone has access in this digital AI utopia where everyone can have
a mansion in Malibu digitally and everyone can have these things and the physical world
becomes less valuable, then in this digital world where there is post-scarcity, we will
then create new ways to actually create hierarchies and new ways to divide that lead to a top

(33:16):
10% of males having whatever the females select as being the most valuable on the sexual selection.
It seems like these things are just ingrained in us regardless of our environment, the same
way that when we were all hunters and gatherers, no one give a shit about a Lamborghini or
a mansion because those things didn't exist.
So sexual selection and status was defined differently.

(33:38):
But as society grows, we will constantly negotiate this out.
But these things are just core to our biology and there's no getting around that.
And that's where that kind of aligns with Foucault's idea that power is sort of infinite,
that it will infinitely expand into any areas.
These relations, again, I don't like using the word power.

(34:00):
I want to say the Tao.
The Tao expands ever.
It flows through you, around you, above you and through us all.
As long as you exist.
The Tao to me, the way they use it, it feels like it's the ultimate coping mechanism.
It just seems like the second that something is so emotionally difficult or so cognitively

(34:25):
complex, we just say, well, as it is, the Tao.
And I'm not making a critique of it.
You will probably certainly live longer than I will live because that's a great psychological
mechanism to relieve negative states.
But I don't know.
I still need a better intellectual understanding of the Tao for you.

(34:46):
An intellectual understanding.
Well, so, okay, let me explain this.
To understand the Tao in a Foucault sense, Foucault brings power from political to the
individual.
Kind of in ancient Greek philosophy, there was this idea of the commander of ship or
the commander of state, you know, sort of thing.
You can't have a ship operate if everything's a mess.

(35:08):
So from these theoretical ideas or technically true ideas, you know, you need a hierarchy
to operate.
And Foucault tries to understand these relations through individuals, but he sees it as power
rather than the lawful unfolding of our interaction.
But when you look at other people such as Machiavelli, he is actually trying to measure

(35:31):
power because when you're looking at political science, you are measuring defined power.
You know, if you're the president of dictators, exactly, you know, Canada versus U.S., say,
if we got in a war, that is a power struggle.
That is definition in political science.
And Foucault seems to try to take this idea and almost tries to describe what I would

(35:58):
say as the Tao.
And I was working with this idea as I was talking to you, talking to Chad GBT about
this, trying to be like, you know, help me connect it and help me see what's wrong with
it.
And, you know, of course, there is a lot of positives and there is a lot of negatives,
but to me, I again see similarities to it.
Now I know you say like this idea within Zen or the Tao or just like this idea of giving

(36:23):
up that is just a cognitive heuristic, like, okay, it is what it is and you move on, you
know.
Stoicism kind of says this idea of acceptance, you know.
And to work on the psychologist Snyder, I think back in 1995, Snyder had this idea about
hope that he broke down into two sections.
One was agency and the second was pathways.

(36:46):
Now this is where I was asking you the other day, I was like, oh, who was that person that
was describing the aiming up?
This is where I was thinking about this.
When you look at much of the research on hope, it usually is in a certain positive sense,
but to me, it is all contradictory to the philosophy of Buddhism or Stoicism in the
West, which Stoicism is acceptance of everything.

(37:10):
Hope and fear are the same sides of a different coin.
Exactly.
They both divide in the same coin. Because there is so much outside of our power that
you will bring so much more peace to yourself by accepting it.
Now most of those within hope would argue against the idea of hopelessness, but if we
use Snyder's argument in a Stoic sense or a Buddhist or a Zen sense, agency and pathway,

(37:33):
Zen is the pathway that you may choose through this, which may include the idea of hopelessness,
yet it doesn't go against actual agency if you're on this level of spiritualism, because
you understand that life is a treadmill and the apple is attached to your back, and you

(37:53):
may stop, get off the treadmill, grab the apple and eat it any time, but you still have
to get back on the treadmill.
Otherwise what they call it in the East is you end up as a stone Buddha versus a living
Buddha.
This chair is a stone Buddha.
Is this chair not enlightened?
Does it have no worries?
Does it simply go about its day exactly as is?

(38:15):
Now people can wind up that way, but that's not the point.
Could you argue that the nihilists is like a stone Buddha?
Because they're smart enough to understand corruption and power dynamics in the world,
but it leads them to inaction.
Well I think it would be...
It leads them to cynicism and apathy.
I think it would be the other side.
So I think of trying to be a stone Buddha is almost trying to be enlightened.

(38:38):
You know what I mean?
Being like, I'm going to sit and stare at a wall for 17 hours because that's going to
make me enlightened.
Exactly.
People obsess, like in Japan, Alan Watts used to complain about this, people obsess over
zazen, the sitting in zazen, just sitting meditating.
But what's funny is when you look at classical koans, teachers will often say to your students,
why do you sit zazen?
And the people say, because I want to be enlightened.

(39:00):
And the teacher will say, go potato farm.
Don't sit for the rest of your life.
Do not sit.
And it is this agency and method.
If you're meditating to be enlightened, then you need to go get enlightened.
If you're meditating to be enlightened, go shine shoes and do that for 20 years.
And if then you figure it out, there you go.
I like the comedy in that.

(39:23):
But that's the thing is there really is comedy in the East.
In Eastern philosophy, there is such comedy that I love.
I feel like we only see over here in Dionysus.
Was it Dionysus that when the emperor came to him, he's like, I can do it.
I'm the emperor of Rome.
I could do anything to you.
And he says, move.
You're blocking my son.
That's somebody that's truly sort of accepted everything because you do your work or in

(39:48):
Hinduism or Buddhism, you do your Dharma, the work that you do in your life.
I'm following a path of social work because this is where my talents were.
This is where my mind is.
And this is where my life led me trying to use agency to aim up.
You were called by the Holy Spirit.
Exactly.
I wasn't motivated by an exterior motive of money.

(40:11):
Intrinsic motivation.
Yeah.
It's not I need to earn money.
When I first got out of high school and I went into working construction, I was like,
money, that's the motivation.
I hated it.
For status?
Sort of.
Absolutely.
So then to get meeting preferences.
Yeah.
19 year olds with a Mercedes.
When you're 15 to 25, the doctor is like, relax.

(40:33):
She's like, your nervous system is literally just making everything to just try to find
the person you're going to marry.
Give yourself a break, relax.
Life's going to be okay.
Your nervous system is going to change.
Ebs and flow.
But status and power, man.
That's what I got from this conversation.
It's a difficult conversation and I feel people are sometimes uncomfortable with discussing

(40:56):
it.
Even in his classroom days, again, I feel like we're just picking on Peterson as a
constant.
That's going to be our common road to you.
The global island except Peterson.
He got thrown off the island, which is funny because that brings up different levels in
it.
In like Brave New World, you get thrown out and you get sent to the Savage Lands.

(41:20):
It's a difficult conversation to have and I feel people are necessarily not using Hegel's
dialectic or praxis or the Socratic method to better understand it.
We may work out of these bad philosophies and this bad science and these bad ways of
education if only we discussed these ideas more and were okay with the idea of being

(41:46):
wrong about things.
I was always afraid in the classroom to talk forever ago because I was afraid of being
wrong when I opened it.
Now as I notice in the classroom, I'm discussing more philosophical things, especially in practice.
I want to be wrong because I want to see someone else's perspective.
Let's end on this.
Jordan Peterson, on a positive note, he has said, it's not that I'm afraid of looking

(42:09):
foolish when I'm wrong.
It's that I'm more afraid of being afraid to not speak up and say the truth, even if
it is wrong.
I think putting in proper place your fears and our responsibility as a human being to
be good willed and seek truth and speak radically freely, you've got to put that in its proper

(42:31):
alignment.
To give another positive thing to Peterson, I, when I was younger, used to try to read
these really complex books and I felt stupid because I couldn't read them.
His videos and how they've helped me in some areas, and some I disagree with, but in a
lot of areas they actually have.
One of them was when he was saying, this is a book I have to read five pages at a time

(42:53):
and it takes me a while to do so.
And I went, oh my God, it's not, I'm not crazy.
I don't have to follow the school idea of here's this book, read it, recite it to me.
That's not how I understand things.
When Peterson said that, when somebody so brilliant as him said that, I was like, I'm
doing something right now.