How Do the Left and Right Define Freedom? With Andrew L. Wilson

Andrew Wilson is an Author, Bitcoiner, and Professor of History of Christianity as well as host of The Disentanglement Podcast, exploring privacy tech and the surveillance state.

We set out to explore the political identity of the left and the right. These labels have come to define our modern world. But where do they come from? What underwrites it all? How can bridges be built between them?

From the French Revolution to the technological society, we explore anarchism, freedom, human agency, and what Bitcoin means for all of this.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
But if you look at the the people who labeled anarchist
thinkers in 19th century and later, what they were interested
in doing is precisely that. They were interested in
identifying the different regimes that are exercising
control over people and seeking to organize groups to either

(00:21):
fight them politically. That's one option.
That's maybe the more salient one in the media, but another
one is simply to opt out of them.
Hello, I am Cody Allingham, and this is the transformation of
Value, a place for thinkers and builders like you where we ask
questions about freedom, Bitcoin, and creativity.
Today I'm joined by Andrew Wilson and author Bitcoiner and

(00:45):
professor of History of Christianity, as well as host of
the Disentanglement podcast. Exploring privacy, tech and the
surveillance state. We set out to explore the
political identity of the left and the right.
These labels have come to defineour modern world, but where do
they come from? What underwrites it all?

(01:06):
How can bridges be built betweenthem?
From the French Revolution to the technological society, we
explore anarchism, freedom, human agency and what Bitcoin
means. For all of this, I would like to
know what you think. Send me an e-mail at Hello at
the transformation of value.com and I will get back to you.
Now, if you enjoy the show, please consider sharing this

(01:28):
episode with a friend who you think might like it.
You can also support my work directly by streaming sets to
the show's Bitcoin wallet or donating through my website.
Otherwise, onto the show. I was knocking around last night
getting this all set up. I didn't think my camera would
go wide enough to catch 2. People.
Oh, that's great. Yeah, we've got plenty of room.
Not kicking each other's knees. Yeah, it's intimate, Yeah.

(01:51):
Because sometimes if you're on the far side of a table and it's
this like great gap, I don't know, it just feels a bit
impersonal. Yeah.
Well, yeah, I think, I think it's great.
Is it your first time you've done this in the studio?
Video. With video like this, I've done
solo video. Not the kind of solo video maybe
people might imagine, but I've done spoken word stuff.

(02:13):
Go to ellingham.com. No, we I've got a a neck.
No, no, Andrew, welcome to the transformation of value and to
the studio. Yeah, thanks for having me back
again. It's a pleasure.
So just last week, you and I visited an anarchist bookstore
in Shinjuku, Tokyo, called Irregular Rhythm Asylum.

(02:37):
It was, as you could imagine, eclectic, small, poetic.
We spend quite a bit of time there browsing the shelves and
engaging with the kind of literature that they were
stocking. From the outside, it would seem
as if the motivations and desires of self sovereign
individuals, Bitcoiners, freedommaximalists ought to be aligned
with what this particular bookstore was trying to do.

(03:00):
However, what we saw was this struggle to reconcile what the
words anarchist or freedom even mean and what the solutions are
so optimistically. I am keen to talk with you today
about how we can frame these questions of the political
spectrum of the left and of the right and of freedom in a way
that touches the nuance that builds bridges, that is

(03:22):
ultimately constructive. Well, that's very eloquently
put. And I just have to say I was
just utterly intimidated by the subject because it really is
bottomless. I mean, you start talking about
freedom or liberty and they're opposites.
Slavery and bondage, I mean, andit just goes all the way back to

(03:43):
the beginning of human reflection on what it means to
be a person in the world, bound by laws and nature, living in
society, in connection with other people with whom one has
to negotiate. I mean, it's really just every
single political question back to the very beginning is
involved. So it's really, we're going to
be spitballing in here and I think this is a very interesting

(04:05):
and very pertinent subject. And I hope that we can together
in a Socratic way, draw out a number of the just incredibly
rich aspects that were of philosophy really in human life
together that are evoked by thatsimple experience in the
anarchist bookstore. Yes, and do please get a little

(04:27):
bit closer. All right, it's OK.
And I guess one additional experience.
So again you and I enjoy walkingand talking in this Socratic
way. And just yesterday with another
friend, I went for a huge walk from Shimbashi all the way to
Ueno, which was about 10 kilometers.
And again, a very interesting intellectual Bitcoin are also

(04:48):
very moderate in a lot of of hisviews compared to maybe what you
would think about Bitcoiners from the outside.
And so I am aware that there is I think a large perhaps silent
majority of people out there whoare neither on it on either
neither end of the spectrum in the sense of the political left
or right, which I think is also problematic in its own way.
But there is a lot of people whoI think are seeking out the

(05:10):
bridge building pontification, Iguess you could say.
And so I guess maybe starting off with some definitions here,
because certainly my experience growing up in New Zealand, you
know, going to university in Wellington, I mean, it is a
left-leaning country, I guess you could say generally, and I
know you've we've been studying the French Revolution.

(05:30):
I mean, this is maybe where we could start potentially the side
of left and right. I mean, starting off, what?
What does that even mean? Well, it's simply the size of a
room. I mean the people, the people
who were pro revolutionary or really anti monarchist ended up
congregating on the left of the of the assembly as it came to be
called, and those who were monarchists on the right.

(05:52):
So it really was whether one conserves the system or whether
one starts anew. I mean those that began the
simply a way of talking about the left and right.
Yeah, so in that the French National Assembly, there's the
the kind of yeah, as you say, that those who supported the
monarchy and tradition sitting on the right of the chamber,
which I guess in this case wouldbe you, and then those

(06:12):
supporting the left I'm. Actually, sure, if we're talking
like usually in stage, whether we're facing the stage or away
from the stage, I'm not quite sure of you.
OK. Well, either way, there was this
kind of these divisions. And then interestingly though,
that has kind of come through time with us to today and it's
sort of hard to say exactly whatthat means anymore, left and
right potentially. Yeah, well, these contradictions

(06:36):
go are far more even than sides of a room.
I mean they are, they go back into the back into the use of
the word freedom or I I think itmay be more useful to use the,
the Latin precedent in French ofcourse is liberte and Latin
libertas libertas. And that has 2 completely
contradictory meanings. Of course the one is meaning

(07:00):
unrestrained and, and in a Romancontext that basically meant not
a slave. So I think coming into the
French Revolution there was a theological, philosophical,
social ascendance of Russoian liberalism.
And this is really a construction, an anthropology

(07:22):
that sees people as individuals originally free from culture and
from power and subsequently put into bondage by various
accretions around them. And that's, that's so in this

(07:42):
case, being free means unrestrained from those
accumulated strictures upon them.
So that's, that is one sense of the kind of Rusowian freedom.
You have an original state of freedom, which in which one has
had successive layers of, of, ofrestriction put upon oneself.
And then getting free from thoseis, is the is what liberty is.

(08:05):
On the other hand, right. At the very same time, you have
the same words being used for exactly the opposite meaning.
And of course, this also goes back to Roman times.
So libertas also means and, and this is, it seems like a
contradiction, but you have to hold it together in the same
word. It means privilege, meaning that

(08:28):
you have a liberty that has beengranted you either that you've
won, that you've bought, that you've accumulated, that you've
inherited, which is your right to exercise and to hold and to
remove it from you is a is it taking away your liberties?

(08:49):
So for example, in the Roman Empire, everybody knows the
story of how Brutus was among the conspirators against Julius
Caesar, why they were for liberty.
Why? Because the liberties of the
Roman people, that means their rights and their privileges to
vote and participate in the the republican rule had been removed

(09:14):
by a dictator, dictator, a dictator.
So somebody had taken away theirright to be the decision making
body. And of course Brutus himself,
it's the same name as the first Brutus who was one of the those
who founded Roman liberty by kicking out King Tarquin at the
very beginning of the Roman Republic.
So we have here those completelyopposite definitions of the word

(09:36):
liberty, meaning the maintenanceof long accumulated privileges
and one being freedom from restrictions.
Yeah, So, and again, just keeping in this in the sweet
spot, interestingly, that contradiction I think is a theme
that we will revisit throughout this conversation, this idea

(09:57):
that words can have multiple meanings, multiple
interpretations. There's sort of the the lens you
use to view something sort of defines what that word is.
And and again we come back to anarchist or freedom, which this
experience at this bookstore is really interesting because, you
know, I believe you and I certainly have experienced them

(10:18):
somewhat read in the the information, the literature of
the so-called left. Yet at the same time, many of
the things you would expect to see on the shelves of this
bookstore, whether it was economic theories or even some
of the freedom movements of the 20th century were not talked
about. And so I felt like there was
this sort of gap in what this omission as to what was being

(10:42):
talked about or or what was within the the permissible.
The Overton window. That, yeah, within the Overton
window of this particular store and the economic side was
certainly interesting. There's probably a lot of
threads to pull on there, but even just the idea of, of the
freedom and maybe some of the struggle and, and I think
struggle is yet another one of these words that has
connotations. But in particular, say the

(11:05):
Israel Palestine situation or apartheid South Africa, the,
the, the Black Lives Matter, etcetera.
There's a lot of these kind of movements of solidarity or
popular, I guess a popular movement that has just kind of a
lot to unpack and it seems as ifwe've been given a certain lens

(11:27):
on it without a rigorous interpretation of the other
options. So the other ways of looking at
that thing, you know. Yeah, it's really hard for me to
put my finger on or to really identify because it really is.
It's I'm not, I don't speak as an insider, so I'm sure there's
an internal discourse there. But if you if you think of, I

(11:47):
think the the left liberalism being Russoian fundamentally,
and that there is a fundamental natural freedom in people that
is being restricted by an accumulation of other people's
power over one, then getting free from those is really

(12:08):
important. So.
So coming back to Russo then, sodo we.
Can we speak a little bit about him?
So is French. Yes, first.
What era was he operating in? What was?
This is the this is the 7th, 18th century and he is one of
the first modern or maybe pro toromantic philosophers, putting

(12:30):
me on the spot here. Sorry, but you have to think of
him within the conversation of the time.
Yeah, but in the in the time of the Enlightenment and in the
realm of the absolute monarch inFrance.
So here there's what's what's atstake here is a kind of an

(12:51):
anthropology and as well as a political theory that stems from
that. So if we, if we can imagine
early modern or Enlightenment politics centering on the, the,
the particular sovereignty of the king and that is being the

(13:14):
foundation of the arcade. I mean, arcade really means
first principle, like from again, anarchism.
The arcade is that of the sovereign, the, the, the monarch
from whom other powers are derived.
And so for other political philosophers, I mean we might
include Hobbs here as well slightly earlier.
They're positing other bases forauthority.

(13:37):
And Rousseau is imagining, and it really is imagining a a
different set of political structures built up from the
null case of pre civilization humanity.
So was this an almost Edenic type imagination that there was

(14:00):
once a free Garden of Eden statetype thing and then that was
subsequently lost? Or is this maybe a little bit
more? No, I think you might.
I think you might say that. I mean, Russo and the French
Revolution and revolutionary thinkers in general are either
consciously or unconsciously anti clerical, anti Christian.

(14:21):
However, they're drawing upon that same well of ideas.
Yes, it's very much eternic. Interesting.
So because I guess the other wayI was thinking about this
recently was, you know, perhaps I don't know if genetic is the
right word, but it's it's like there's a certain a number of
people within the population that spontaneously emerged, for

(14:43):
lack of a bit of a description of it, who act as governors for
popular opinion and sort of pushback this kind of hegemonic push
and pull of what is acceptable. And so if we all your load into
the the next thing and we all just went, you know, jumped on
the bandwagon, arguably civilization would never have
got off the ground. It required certain structures

(15:05):
to hold things back and to deliberate and really think it
through. And then it also required a, a
number of people to also push the boundaries.
And that was this, you know, long term push and pull, who are
the ones going out onto the frontier, finding the new
territories and who are the onesstaying behind and building up
those territories and kind of conserving?

(15:26):
There's sort of maybe something a little bit more deeper in the
human psyche potentially. Is this something you've thought
about or considered? Well, I think to put it in the
terms of contemporary psychology, you might say 1 is
open and one is conscientious. And so, and we know in, in
personality, science isn't in asmuch as it is.

(15:48):
It's, it seems to me that there are people who are more open to
the world and open to new experience and are seeking new
ways of seeing and of being and of creating.
You might think of in and of that in an evolutionary sense,
of the scouts, or those who are,as in the genetic line, even an

(16:09):
experiment. Fast twitch or slow twitch
muscles, right? It's essentially.
Yeah, well, I mean the yeah. So the the the notion that
that's very deeply embedded in us as as people in our nature.
I think that doesn't seem implausible to me at all.
And I think politically there are those two poles that stasis
is death. And this is something that the

(16:31):
pre Socratics were very clear about.
I mean, if you have and even even like Dante, for example, in
the in the Divine Comedy, it's quite interesting that that
Satan after after the sent afterthe descent into into the
inferno, it's not burning hot where Satan is.
Satan is ice frozen. There's no movement.

(16:57):
And the opposite of that, of course, as you send through
purgatory and then enter the Empyrion, what do you see when
you look up in into the sky and see the sun and the stars
moving? They're moving, they're
brilliant, they're hot, they're full of energy.
So I mean stasis is death. Well, that's interesting though,
if we pull on that thread because again, you know, in the

(17:18):
context where we are in Japan, certainly it's an ideologically
static place. And sort of reflecting on how
it's, it's quaint in the sense that it feels like we are still
in maybe the early 2000s in thiskind of weird place where we
have smartphones and a few otherthings from at the current
moment. But for the most part,
everything seemed to have stopped in that late 90s, early

(17:39):
2000s period. And maybe even arguably earlier
with the, the, the war and this kind of amnesia of state Shinto
and, and all of these massive revolutionary things that were
happening prior. And I mean, again, Japan in the
1930s was an incredibly politically tumultuous place.
There was a whole lot of different kinds of movement, and

(18:01):
arguably in the 1960s there was the student riot movement.
But as of today, I don't see anywhere, anything getting close
to resembling any kind of political innovation or
ideological discussion. And so our bookstore and
Shinjuku, a lot of the books on the shelves were reminiscing of
the earlier period or overall itjust had the sense of staticness

(18:24):
kind of it was just a bit old it.
Was it was nostalgic? Yeah.
I think there's again, I, I think a bookstore like that is a
bit of a museum. And I, I mean that in the, in
the best possible sense. I mean, I love museums, but it
does seem that it is something that's passed and which is being
kept up through out of love and and loyalty, maybe in a very

(18:48):
peculiar sort of Confucian fashion here.
This these are the people and the voices that formed those who
participate in in that particular society.
That's fascinating. And I, I guess those sort of
what, what then is the site of ideological discussion because I
mean, they do poetry readings, they have people come through.
And I mean, certainly it's well known destination for people who

(19:09):
are into this kind of. Thing the very small niche of
which Tokyo has all of them. Yes, yes.
And I mean, you can find all sorts of things.
Again, you know, Tokyo has everything for everyone.
But this kind of, yeah, idea that this maybe isn't a site of
ideology or am I being judgmental here when I say I
don't see the ideology happeningthere because there is certainly

(19:31):
things being written and spoken about?
Well, it depends whether you're a Fabian anarchist or a
Leninist. I guess so.
Yeah, yeah. Speaking of that, I mean what we
were talking about Fabianism theother day.
I mean, how would we describe that?
What does that concept? Mean, well, you would know as
well as I, I, I simply know the definition of the word, that
basically you infiltrate the institutions and you take it

(19:54):
over from the inside as opposed to leading some kind of popular
revolt and exercising a coup of some kind taking over.
Yeah, so this comes back to the Fabian Society and this idea
that maybe there's the slow March of the institutions and
this will be something familiar to listeners maybe in so-called

(20:15):
Western countries where you do have this penetration of
academia with leftist tenths. Certainly that was my experience
in university. The first day of class they said
that by the end of this degree you will all be Marxists.
And so I've often reflected on that because I was, in a sense,
inoculated early on. And in that naive stage, you

(20:36):
know, you're 19 years old and someone starts talking about,
Gee, the board or, you know, culture studies, you're going to
take it, you know, lap it up, right?
Well, not only are you going to lap it up because you're naive,
but I think people who aren't pure psychopaths to some degree
want to, to please their, their elders or superiors.

(20:59):
And even even among the, the revolutionary left, you get this
sort of deference to authority. And I think that's if that
doesn't exist at all, it is psychopathic.
I mean, at large. So I, I think I see this a lot
in institutions. When the left or leftist
ideology becomes institutionalized, it's clearly

(21:19):
supported by conscientious, oddly enough, by conscientious
youth who are deferential to authority.
So you get this odd ideological leftism, but it's really very,
very socially conservative. And I think that's what you get
in the university. And there's nothing more
conservative than the university.
I mean, it's just like people. I mean, socially you have these

(21:40):
systems of advancement which aremade sometimes hundreds of years
old. And granted there's a certain
clack that's maybe taken over new disciplines.
And This is why in fact, there has been a lot of creation of
new disciplines. It's because the old ones you
can't take over. You have to create new ones.
Well, that's interesting becauseagain, there's a, a lens which
I, for me as a creative person, I, I can, I can sort of see both

(22:01):
of these things at the same time.
But, you know, classic argumentsof, say, patriarchy and these
kinds of things, when really it is in a lot of cases, you know,
older male professors leading this ideological thing in the
universities. And that structure, as you say,
is often not protect itself or it's only superficially protect

(22:23):
in a playful way. And I think that is actually at
odds with what you and I see as that maybe true critique or, you
know, maybe intellectually rigorous critique where we
actually look at it. And you know, I've got Karl Marx
sitting there on the shelf. You know, I'm reading what these
people are saying. I'm trying to digest it and
synthesize it for an actual bid outcome.

(22:44):
And it's sort of like we are they're actually the
conservative ones who are holding onto a structure and
we're the ones maybe. And I say we sorry, it's
creating us and them. But you see what I'm saying?
It's sort of how do you actuallycritique it, the thing itself,
without ousting yourself as provocative?
I don't, I don't know quite how you do that.

(23:05):
We had a guy who thought was teaching at my Graduate School
and in a very posh position who was spouting off very
revolutionary ideas. And somebody finally said, well,
if you're so interested in empowering minority voices, why

(23:26):
don't you resign and let one of them have your job, right?
So which is a bit absurd, but and certainly provocative.
But I mean that kind of that's kind of the point, right?
This is This exists within this realm of this hierarchical, very
conservative, well established path of advancement.

(23:46):
Yeah, I feel like I'm we're beginning to take potshots and I
think I do want to bring. It, but I just mentioned that I
mean that's not I think not kindof writ large, but I mean that's
anyway continue. No, no, I guess what I'm saying
is because I, you know, we started off with this, it's
like, okay, can we build bridges?
Because I certainly, you know, I've got more things to say like
like that critique of it. But yeah, I guess coming back to

(24:08):
this large silent majority of people who are generally just
conscientious and again, I thinkof like Kiwis generally a
pretty, you know, nice people, Iguess you could say.
And there is this idea of the social realm and the social
contract. It's not dog eat dog single swim
kind of situation in that culture.
And I think a lot of these people may confuse what we're

(24:32):
talking about when we say, well,the left is this this thing,
when actually it's just kind of human decency that's in there.
And the ideology is the thing that's perverting it.
And I guess bringing that back, I mean, the challenge here was
the left and the right is it still it creates labels.
And in a way it it reduces the ability to communicate because

(24:55):
you're starting to create labelsthrough which you can judge
somebody. You can say, well, look, this
person clearly isn't one of us. And so we can't have a dialogue.
And I think that's what I'm trying to break down here.
And so the middle way, I mean, coming back even to the French
Revolution, was there at that time, was there a middle way?
Was there a synthesis between those two sides like how we were
there? What was the vector through

(25:16):
which they communicated? Well, the middle way in the
French Revolution was the path that was not taken, which was
that of constitutional monarchy.Constitutional monarchy.
I mean, there was a very strong party leading up before, this is
before the Terror, before Robespierre takes over, that
wanted to maintain the monarchy and have the king have, right, a

(25:38):
veto, but basically have a smooth transfer of power.
And whether that was possible ornot, I don't know.
I'm not an expert enough to say.But yeah, that that path was
definitely there. It's a path that that England
took and that England was definitely their model and the
question of religion was extremely important there.

(25:59):
And to what degree the king was able to give up is the, his own
freedom of, of faith and his obedience to the Catholic
hierarchy in order to be a constitutional monarch.
Really that was central to the question for him personally.

(26:21):
And I think one might say that it was, it was forcing the
question on the king, whether hewas going to obey Rome or he was
going to obey the Asomble general.
Because, you know, the priests were made to, to, to, to, to, to
take an oath to be obedient to the, the French people.

(26:43):
And from a Christian perspective, I mean, this is
quite, it's quite understandablethat they would have problems
with this because they are seating what for them would be
the ultimate authority to a second secondary authority.
And that's just idolatry, pure and simple.
So, or at least the, the reversal of the proper order of
things. So pushing that issue in
particular was central to radicalizing the Reformation,

(27:07):
radicalizing the the revolution.Yeah, interesting.
So you mentioned England, and then I'm reminded of the
American project. And just reflecting the other
day I met with a couple from Belarus.
And it was interesting because I, it was perhaps one of the
most intense conversations I've ever had in my life.

(27:29):
And I really, this idea of secondhand trauma really came
through. You know, these people are
really lovely people and they had grown up and a repressive
communist regime and the, you know, the history of Lukashenko
and, and, and, and many people aren't even aware of like where
Belarus is, its relationship with Russia, the Soviet Union.

(27:51):
But that was a really hard case.And, and something struck me
that for them growing up and fortheir parents, going to
Czechoslovakia was like going toparadise.
And yet Czechoslovakia itself was a Soviet satellite state
and, you know, this kind of despotic place.
And so that was just to highlight the, the difference
and like just how bad Belarus was.

(28:12):
But what it made me reflect on was my own situation in New
Zealand, where even though I despise the New Zealand
government, at the end of the day, it has inherited this
enlightened English tradition ofcommon law, of structures and
institutions. And it does kind of work.
And, you know, as much as the COVID years were really hard for
me and I really had a lot of issues with the government, the

(28:34):
fact that they've opened up a royal Commission to critique it
themselves and to to kind of review what happened is very
interesting and kind of hopeful and optimistic, I think in one
sense. But at the same time, the
government of New Zealand has certainly over the last few
years become a lot more, I guessyou could say left-leaning, even
though we've got a centrist, so-called centrist government.

(28:55):
And it's sort of like we've got we had, we have the bones of a
very good system. Yet it feels like over time that
is decaying without kind of renewal, if that makes sense.
Sort of. It was set up in a very good
way, but maybe we've lost it over time.
Well, I mean, there's several different angles to look at
that. One is, you could say it's the

(29:17):
typical story of decadence in the sense there there's a,
there's a, there's a period of efflorescence and greatness and
this convergence of virtue and wealth and and capacity that
that constitutes itself alchemically into some kind of
cultural and material gold. And then after that you, you

(29:40):
have this sort of inevitable decay.
I mean, that's, that's the storywe inherit of the Roman Empire.
I think it's a very old human story.
There's always kind of the golden era story that's combined
with the fact that in a very, toput it in a very anodyne way,
things change, right? We were, we are in a different

(30:01):
technical technological regime or in a different material
regime. It's almost even impossible to
compare the level of, of, of wealth and comfort and, and, and
many kinds of traditional freedoms, freedom from, you
know, negative freedom. It's probably at a height as it
ever was in human history. Even among repressive regimes,

(30:23):
people are living relatively long lives in their private
life. They can do many things, not
everything, but there are alwaysrestrictions on that.
So I I it's in the case of New Zealand or in the case of
America. Is it perfect?
Of course not. Could it be better?
For sure. Is there some immediately

(30:43):
realizable alternative that is guaranteed to be better?
Not necessarily. So, yeah.
I I don't think there's any clear revolutionary way forward
as much as the rhetoric. That sort of rhetoric seems to
be amplified. Yeah, sure.
And I feel like we are still sort of circling around

(31:07):
different ideas here that are, Iget very complex, but I wanted
to ask you if you're familiar, not to put you on the spot, but
are you familiar with the film Hyper Normalization?
No, I don't know when at all. OK so inform me and if it
doesn't take us too. Far.
Yeah, No, sure. So this was a film that's
actually been sitting there waiting for me for a long time.
It's 2016 BBC production directed by Adam Curtis, who's a

(31:32):
well known documentary filmmaker.
And I watched it just the other night and this came alongside
several things that happened again, meeting this couple from
Belarus and and a couple other things I had been going through.
And so this film hyper Normalization was really quite
profound for me. And it really posits this idea
of the theater of politics in a very culture studies kind of the

(31:56):
way, you know, there's the theatrics of the left and the
right and and again that cut this kind of stagecraft, the
meson scene of of, you know, politics.
And then that what that has actually done is it's masked the
underlying reality of what is effectively the, the, the, the
post Soviet post dichotomy of, of a world where there was a

(32:17):
counterpoint to capitalism, I guess you could say.
And so again, this is something Mark Fisher and others have
written about that it's easier to imagine the end of the world
than the end of capitalism and the, the kind of consumer
culture that we're in today, that it's sort of Japan is
certainly in that world that there is no alternative ideology
or belief system. There is no revolution.
Everything's just consumption and hyper normalization really

(32:40):
explores this in the sense of, you know, the, the, the wars and
the expeditions into the Middle East and sort of the, I mean
the, the pure fantasy of it all.There were no weapons of mass
destruction. It was clearly just a set up.
But people have given up the critical ability to see that.
And it's so it's sort of merged with this Hollywood kind of

(33:02):
thing where it's just movies andit's just good guy and bad guy.
And what there has done is masked true political
revolution, like we don't see organic revolution come out like
we saw Once Upon a time. And so there's quite a lot of
information, but. No, no, no, no.
You see where I'm taking? It yeah, I'm sure I'm taking it
actually that that that segues quite well to a talk of just a

(33:23):
talk of anarchism generally. And, and I think that the term
is polluted somewhat with connotations of connotations of,
of chaos and and violence. Of course, recently in America,
the, the so-called anarchist riots that were happening in the

(33:45):
West, in Portland in particular,have usurped that title.
But if you look at the the people who labeled anarchist
thinkers 19th century and later,what they were interested in
doing is precisely that they were interested in identifying
the different regimes that are exercising control over people.

(34:08):
And I was seeking to organize groups to either fight them
politically. That's one option.
That's maybe the more salient one in the media.
But another one is simply to optout of them, which is to say,
there are groups and individualswho are neither seeking to

(34:32):
foster a revolution nor to. Change how the world is run, but
simply to create their own reality kind of aside to that.
And I, and I think that within that I, I see the crypto

(34:52):
anarchists for for example, speak of themselves like that,
creating an alternative reality where the, the state in it's
certain manifestation just is unable to enter.
Well, that I mean, again, I've got, I've got crypto sovereign
sovereignty here, Crypto sovereignty by Erica Cason,
which explores that concept. This is something others have

(35:14):
explored, Samuel Edward Conkin, who's well known for the
algorithm movement. And for me, again, this is where
we go to these this bookstore. And I'm reminded of these same
sorts of places on Cuba St. in Wellington.
And I'm imagining Portland and other parts of the US have this
kind of bohemian hippie anarchist thing, but the true

(35:37):
anarchy that we we're talking about right now and, and true,
sorry, that's kind of a strong word, but I get.
An alternative, but less, maybe less salient or or less, yeah,
less stand out in the concurrentdiscourse.
Yeah. So the less stand out anarchy
that we're talking about is, yeah, opt out and basically self
sovereignty. And again that's where on the

(35:58):
shelf of these stores I would ought to expect the sovereign
individual and the Bitcoin standard and crypto sovereignty
and all of these texts that we're familiar with to sit there
because they don't require coercion.
And I think this maybe we can get to this, but ultimately what
what is seen with a lot of theseprogressive ideologies is that

(36:19):
it's a, it's helping the majority by taking from a guilty
minority. And the sort of idea that the
state and whatever, whatever thestate means, is the arbiter of
that. And so it actually plays into a
sense of statism when you're, you're, you're writing to, you
know, whatever movement, you know, Black Lives Matter or

(36:41):
Israel, Palestine, whatever sideyou take, whatever you think
about it, you're, you're, you'resort of going out and performing
to this, this kind of Sun King who's, who's going to somehow
arbitrate, you know, that situation.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Sorry, a lot there to unpack. Yeah, there isn't.
I guess there's an assumption ofof state power and I think

(37:03):
what's behind that is a similar populism.
Perhaps that was another side ofthe the French Revolution, but
also a side of empires going back again to the the prime
example, which is of course Rome.
I mean, the most hated emperors from today's perspective, like

(37:26):
Caligula for example, or Nero were famous with the reason we
hate them so much is because Seotonius, who wrote the lives
of the emperors painted them in a very bad light because they
had so usurped the privileges ofthe senatorial class more than

(37:47):
others and had made clear what was clear under Augustus that
the the Senate no longer ruled, but in fact the emperor's ruled.
And then but another aspect of this, and this is something
that's also quite missed in all this talk of empire, is that
those emperors were populists and then sets.

(38:08):
They knew that their their powerderived from their approval of
the people and were collegial. And Nero in in particular were
famous for putting on games for their own showmanship.
Nero himself was, it was famous for wanting to end racing in the

(38:29):
chariot games. He went to Greece and performed
in the in the Olympics and won all the events, of course.
But I think bringing in the realm of the theatrical, I think
it fits in that quite well. And there is something I think
about us as human humans that desire that and the the the the
people, I'm pleasing the people kind of goes hand in hand with

(38:51):
that kind of dictatorial power, it seems to me anyway, I was got
a little off track there. But the the notion that
somebody, the king or maybe a politburo empowered by the will
of the masses can come in and solve all problems or all the

(39:13):
big problems. I think is is is a big a major
part of that particular revolutionary of maybe in this
case anarchist fantasy. Well, interesting though.
I mean, we're seeing that same thing play out with Trump right
now though. I mean he is the the king who
will fix all problems with his doge and his his his cadre.

(39:36):
Yeah, he's certainly being invested to use a a charged word
with all kinds of authorities, which he doesn't naturally have.
But I think he has is conscious either consciously or
unconsciously, perfect player inthat role.
And I think that's something. And you can see this in how

(40:00):
incensed people are against Trump.
People are really unhinged by him.
And I think some perspective on the theatricality of politics
going back to Rome kind of puts that in perspective.
So this is interesting. So this does connect back to
hyper normalization, which again, I don't usually recommend
films that to people, but this is one I certainly think

(40:21):
everyone should check out. It's on YouTube for free and it
really does speak to this theatrics.
And again, this is where I wonder whether my training and
my, you know, my time in the institution, I guess you could
say, has given me somewhat of a lens where I was in the
beginnings of being trained to encode these messages.

(40:41):
And now on the side of freedom and Bitcoin, I'm using that
skill to decode these messages. And I think people do get caught
up in the theatrics and the meson scene.
And arguably this is where the performance of again, the, the
left we think of in the popular imagining of, you know,
protesting down, you know, on the street about Gaza or Ukraine

(41:01):
or whatever it is, there's a performant aspect to it.
And then also a lot of these people, especially in the
younger years, maybe they're into theatre, they're into arts,
they're into literature, that there's like certainly a lot of
crossover because when we do take the self sovereign angle,
it's like, well, I don't care about any of that stuff.
I'm just opting out. And you're not even in the room,

(41:22):
you're not even in the theatre, you're outside doing your own
thing. And that doesn't have any
visible surface area with which to attach ideology to.
And so it's not relevant. It's not seen, and it's like the
side of being seen or not seen. And the theatre of it all is
kind of what we're talking abouthere.
And then that. But that is all nice until it

(41:44):
gets to the real aspect of violence, warfare, coercion,
when actually people get hurt, right?
So sort of like that the imagined reality of the theater
of the political world and in the base reality of blowing
people away and and, you know, and the camps, it's sort of like
how how often do we have to repeat that experiment to remind

(42:06):
ourselves, you know? Yeah, certainly.
I I think I'm trying to trying to figure out the handle to grab
after that one. It's certainly the theatricality
of a lot of activism is just, it's very clear if you just take
one step back. And certainly you see this in in

(42:28):
the kind of signaling that anybody, anybody particular.
Yeah, the signaling that people,the messages you get from people
about where they stand on this or that.
It's part of part of part of howwe identify and and and create
our sociality. Performance interesting.

(42:49):
So there's I mean, I wonder if there is something here though
where we take this idea of the theatre and the performance and
then we we run that through the Bitcoin lens because again I'm
looking to build bridges here and it's like again, these
people are my friends. I grew up with a lot of these
kinds of people and I say in that sense, it seems like it's

(43:10):
an US versus them, but I don't see that it's just these now
that I'm I'm kind of more into Bitcoin stuff.
It's it's allowed me to see whatthey're doing from this third
place. And I think this third place is
again, what, what the egoists would call the second realm
outside of the purview of the state.
It's just person to person. The Bitcoiners would call it the

(43:32):
the peer-to-peer network. And I think that I think the
anarchists would call that the Anarchists Society.
I mean, I think there's one of the reasons why I think there's
such maybe animosity between traditional anarchists and maybe
the neo crypto or, or Internet anarchists is that there's so

(43:53):
much the same. And I think you see this quite
clearly and you've spoken of, and I, we have spoken together a
lot of, of trying to identify the state to, to see the state,
as James Scott would say, and topoint out where it exercises its

(44:16):
authority. And I think a lot of 20th
century thought, 19th and 20th century anarchist thought has
really gone towards that identification.
Of course, it's a state that is caught up necessarily in all the
forms of power that exists, including economic.
And so it's quite easily identified and confused with

(44:40):
some large idea like capitalism or even communism, socialism in
its era. And so I think, but I think I
think there's a real affinity because that that anarchist
movement from the 19th century really begins with an
identification of the state and its power and seeking in groups.
There are perhaps maybe where the differences begin, but

(45:00):
seeking groups to identify and to to bring consciousness,
conscious awareness to that. Yeah, I guess one other thread I
wanted to pull on. You and I have both been
exploring the works of Jacques Elul, French theorist who wrote
the book on propaganda, which wegot here.
And I, I know you've read some of his other writings and this I

(45:22):
think is really quite important work.
And I've got highlights on almost every page here exploring
really what are the characteristics of propaganda.
And what he identifies is that propaganda isn't a thing that we
can necessarily point at. It's not, it's not an object out
there. What it is, it's a sociological
function. And it's almost, it's within all

(45:44):
of us. And it's, it's always existed.
And then this is where I come back to this, you know, time
immemorial idea that maybe there's certain types of people
who are open and people who are closed.
And he talks a lot about how this the the technical way, the
scientific way with which this sociological function, this
human function is utilized by the technological state to

(46:05):
achieve certain outcomes. And I think this is very
interesting because it, it sort of gets away from this, this
finger pointing of, of, you know, them and us.
And especially when, for someonelike myself, you grow up, you're
19 years old in Wellington, New Zealand, you do go through the
crazy left wing period. Well, I think, as somebody said,
if you're not a liberal when you're 20, you're heartless, and

(46:29):
if you're not a conservative by the time you're 50, you're a
fool. So there's a sort of, you know,
there's this graduation people go through and what you realize
there is some so much human nature to it.
And so it feels as if anything that tries to engage with it as
an object or as a thing that canactually be manipulated away

(46:49):
from the human nature of it. It's sort of like that's almost
like a fool's errand. And instead there's two ways. 1
is that you work in the playbookof the state where you you run,
you run it and you utilize it for your own needs or it's like,
is there some other thing that you could do to to engage with
it? Right, the two points there, I
think, I think again, propagandais on my on my reading list.

(47:13):
I've read his foundational book called Presence in Society, and
I think there he lays it out in a kind of programmatic way,
saying that this, this this regime of means, everything is a
means towards an end in the technological society.
And we begin to think about everything in terms of how it

(47:36):
will achieve some kind of imagined goal.
And there's been a usurpation ofthat way of thinking from the
world of engineering, practical applied science into people.
And it's assumed. And this is these, this is how

(47:57):
we, it's imbued and how we thinkabout what society is.
I think we, we tend to think of a society a little bit like a
machine or maybe now more like acomputer or a person, like with
a head and a, you know, a central processor.
And, and those models really kind of take over our, our, our
own consciousness. And his point being in that book

(48:19):
is that is that that is the the mark of the technical society is
this instrumentalization of everything.
That's fascinating. It's sort of, again, the model
of cities, of societies as connected to the dominant form
of technology is fascinating because that would obviously the

(48:43):
computer chip, the central processing unit that maps onto
the centralized roles of the state, the subunits of, you
know, the motherboards and the even the way you have, say,
highways of information. But what does that mean as we
enter into the new Bitcoin worldand the decentralized world?
Yeah. Well, again, that's those are

(49:04):
the kinds of things we don't know until they've happened
because we don't, we don't. People are still people.
And I think that if you're goingto bet on the future, 9 times
out of 10, your bet's going to be right.
If it's about the past, that's going to be going to continue
in, in one particular way. So I guess there are certainly

(49:26):
challenges to the way in which that technical society has been
organized. I was just listening to an
interview the other day with a woman who'd written a book on
called The Letterpress, and it was Ferguson is the name I
believe. And it was about anarchist
printing. And she realized having issues.

(49:47):
She was a scholar, an historian of the anarchist movement in
America and was really surprisedto find the anarchists were
really obsessively interested inprinting.
And she said her stopped counting at like 168 anarchist
press presses, right? Because they all, they of
course, they all want to have their own.
I mean, one of the reason maybe when the wind has been taken out

(50:09):
of this anarchist sails since, you know, since in the past
30-40 years and that it has perhaps been radicalized in
other ways is, is that that kindof printing press is now
ubiquitous. I mean, anybody can put up their
own newspaper, their own web page, blog, you know, their

(50:31):
Noster post or whatever. I mean, anybody, it's a basic
and it's basically free and it is relatively unsent.
Whatever the the platforms can be censored.
But but but the the dark web, not really at all.
So anybody can participate in that.
So that's really, I think where that self-expression has an

(50:56):
outlet now that it never had. Yeah, interesting.
I mean, I guess as we talk aboutit, I I'm just reminded that
there is this myth of rationality.
And then at the end of the day, humans do act on this more
primal operating system that's more emotional operating system.
And again, the technology and the rational science of

(51:17):
cryptography of software, these things that are binary and, and
boolean, they don't, you know, there's a right answer.
The software works or it doesn't.
You know, it's very mechanical and it's kind of almost the end
state of this enlightenment kindof scientific movement where we
can have atomic structures in a virtual system.
It's not, it's not even reality anymore.

(51:39):
It's like hyper reality. And that that could be maybe
very confusing for people who want to return.
And I think this is a human thing return to something more
magical or spiritual or, or kindof humanist, you know, prior to
all of that, like we still have their operating system.
So there's kind of this, this kind of conflict.

(52:02):
And maybe we could, this is the contradiction we come back to.
Like people want to have. They seem to be rational and
scientific and and and logical, but actually there's always this
thing bleeding through that's just irrational potentially.
Yeah, again, so many handles about this.
The the, the, the speak Speakingof freedom and of liberty really

(52:23):
goes back to the, the, the foundation of human reflection
upon who we are. And among the first divisions in
classical philosophy is between those who you know believe that
we are and have agency and thosewho don't.
And you may easily divide the pre Socratics already had this

(52:45):
laid out before Plato and Aristotle.
You have the Epicureans who think that we do in the Stoics
who think that we don't. The Stoics were basically acted
upon and we are part of nature and everything is decided in a
certain way and we have some agency in a response but
basically not. And the Epicurean, I guess

(53:05):
ultimately Aristotelian sense of, of freedom and that no,
there's a, there's a will that'sthere that has some agency and
can act and also be, be and takeresponsibility, be responsible
and take responsibility. That's the two sides of the

(53:26):
liberty we started. With yeah, it's the, the, the
they're very primal. And I think if anybody wants to
see all of this rehashed in it'sin it's a primal form, simply go
back and and really read the preSocratics on society or, or if
you want the the cliffs notes, the the Stanford Encyclopedia

(53:48):
philosophy has a couple of very good articles.
That's that's fascinating. And I guess come back to this
idea of a nuanced reflection andkind of the reality of, you
know, friends and people that I know who maybe have this myth or
this idea in their mind that they're on the left and
whatever. Again, whatever that means, who

(54:09):
feel as if something like Bitcoin or freedom technology,
Noster privacy, that somehow that's at odds with their
project, that these are the the bridges that I'm interested in
in helping build. And it's perhaps a bit of a
impossible task, but how can we maybe communicate this like, and
especially with Bitcoin, there'sa few people who have talked

(54:30):
about, you know, the progressives case for Bitcoin is
one book, for example. But it sort of seems as if
there's still this mass rejection of the emancipation
power of Bitcoin. And again, in this bookstore, it
was cash or you could pay with Visa.
And I thought that was so ironicthat they weren't accepting
Bitcoin for payment and they're using the Visa, as you know,

(54:53):
they had the little terminal there.
Well, I think, I think they're again, this, I don't think it's
necessarily profound or essential to any particular
anarchist movement. I think it has to do with an
identification of money in any of its forms in any way that
it's talked about with systems of power and oppression that

(55:14):
need to be resisted. And so money and, and like by
extension, things like property and various kinds of rights are
kind of suspect. And it doesn't help or it
doesn't help that 'cause that there's a lot of arch
capitalists who are quite interested and involved in, in
Bitcoin. And so it's sort of tainted as
this, this scammy speculation anyway, I just, I it's by

(55:41):
association I think only. And the way that these things
work are mostly by association, not by analysis.
Interesting, I mean, because oneof the sort of things that I I
can see though as an opportunityis if we do come back to the
theatre. So we sort of we, we, we go back
into The Cave and we look at thetheatre and we say, well, maybe

(56:02):
the performance of some of this,again, so-called left staff is
actually an opportunity. And this is maybe people like
you and I who can maybe straddleboth worlds.
And, and others might argue that's a waste of time, but it's
like actually telling the stories.
And this is where I look at someone, an organization like
the Human Rights Foundation who pro Bitcoin, yet they are also

(56:25):
very much aligned with a lot of this kind of amnesty stuff and
and human rights and, and, and kind of a lot of the the talking
points of our of our friends on the left.
And they are sort of Trojan horsing it and kind of
normalizing it. Because I think with enough time
passing, I mean, all of these stories, if Bitcoin is just

(56:46):
there and it just comes through over time, it maybe it just gets
normalized. So it's instead of evangelizing
some normalizing the idea of Bitcoin as.
Sabian Bitcoiners. Yeah, Fabian movement for
Bitcoin, maybe. Again, I I, I take a
naturalistic view towards these things.
They have to emerge in the way that they do for the, for ways

(57:08):
that really, really can't foresee.
I think, I think there's an, I mean, I, I, I'm neither of, of,
of the left or, or, or the rightreally.
And I find the, the discourse asit's usually taken place
publicly to be very frustrating because I, I'm have a lot of
personal sympathy with many leftwing causes or concerns.

(57:37):
I'm also very sympathetic with alot of libertarian or liberty or
even that side of, of, of what'straditionally considered right
wing causes. I mean, I don't, I don't, I
don't line up anywhere. You know, there's no, there's
no, there's no panel of candidates.
I can, I can get behind, you know, I, I but but part of be

(58:01):
involved in in in politics is, is dealing with compromises and
one makes coalitions. I'm actually reminded when you
talk about this of, of the frustration in in the refusal of
of certain institutions or pointviewpoints that should naturally

(58:21):
be for a a sovereign kind of store of a value such as Bitcoin
with the the green movement and its anti nuclear stance.
I think there there's definitelysome history behind that.
There's a lot of hidden, I thinkdegrowth and concern mostly

(58:42):
about population that were sort of Trojan horsed into the green
movement and got into a stance against more energy because that
would make it easier to have more people and there'd be more
damage upon the planet. And you see that now having very
ambiguous results, both geopolitical and environmental,

(59:05):
when you get this perverse case of, for example, in in Germany,
a a Green Party supporting the coal lobby or being supported by
the coal lobby and eventually ending in alliances with large
Russian gas companies. It's a very strange alliance
where you would think that sovereignty, energy sovereignty.

(59:29):
And again, I'm just leaving aside any concerns that people
have over whatever their viewpoint on nuclear energy may
or not may not be, but it seems to be you'll be a natural win
win for environmentalists, but it's not.
I wonder again though, this is where this encoding and decoding
this kind of structuralist, poststructuralist thing.

(59:52):
Like I, I can see that there's athere's, there is screenwriters
and puppet masters who are orchestrating things that maybe
as it drip drips down to lower levels, they don't see the
inherent contradiction or they they're unable to see it.
And I guess what I'm saying is. Yeah, this idea that the green
movement, you know, rejected nuclear and, and has kind of
embraced coal and, and even whenit comes to Bitcoin, there's the

(01:00:15):
whole thing with Greenpeace and,and, and being against proof of
work. And it's like one way is to
just, you know, step aside from all of that.
And the other way is to actuallyproduce narratives and kind of
put in the work. And again, arguably, whether
it's a waste of time or not, I don't know.
But actually being able to tell stories that kind of it's like
the counter narratives or a higher level storytelling that

(01:00:37):
actually brings that in. And it kind of stories of hope,
stories of emancipation through Bitcoin and freedom technology.
And and how it actually feeds into a lot of the goals that these
people at a lower level may have.
Because arguably at the higher level of some of these
organizations, there is maybe even an anti human sentiment
like the degrowth that you talked about.

(01:00:58):
If you actually outline what decarbonization means, which is,
you know, no people, for example, which is quite a
shocking thing to really encounter that actually that's
what they're trying to do. When someone actually thinks,
hey, I just want to have a nice environment and like clean water
and stuff. It's like, no, no,
decarbonization means getting rid of the people.
You realize that you see that there's sort of at a higher

(01:01:21):
level, there's, I don't want to go too deep into it, but there
is like a nefarious kind of Malthusian anti human thing at
the top. And if we can slot in stories
that kind of counter that, stories of hope, of growth, of
optimism. Well, and I think those are
fundamental fundamentally what acertain strains of of anarchism
actually are trying to do, they're trying to show.

(01:01:44):
Solar punk, Kind of. Yeah, well, just to show and
demonstrate the possibility of of human flourishing and and
freedom despite the regimes thathave power over us living and
finding our freedom in this. I mean, oddly enough, one of
the, an image that comes to mind, and it's completely, it's

(01:02:07):
extreme, but you know, Viktor Frankel's man search for meaning
begins with his, his realizationin the concentration camp that
he still had some agency within that prison and within some of
the worst conditions humans haveever endured.
And that realization, I think isI think at the heart of a, of a

(01:02:29):
lot of, of this particular movement.
And I think it's something that,that freedom, I mean, I say it
in the broadest sense, both in the sense of the, the
preservation of privileges, but also in the sense of, of, of, of
limiting power over others and working towards that.
I think they can come together. Yeah, yeah, man, I think, yeah,

(01:02:53):
we're coming back to our original opening, kind of
planning for this, talking abouttalk.
Yeah, talking about these words,what they mean, how we can frame
them, how we can build bridges. I guess I don't know.
Have we built bridges today? Have we?
Have we stood on the the banks of the river and looked out in

(01:03:15):
or at just how far across its spans?
I don't know, man. Like.
I don't know the thing I think instead of like building
bridges, I think that you might say there is no river.
I mean, I, I, I, there's, there's something about the
divide that is, that is, well, Ithink in some sense humans are.
I think there is something binary in the, the conscientious

(01:03:39):
and the the, the open characteristics that are
somewhat part of our character. And but I think we all live in
the same world and a lot of what's going on is is a lot more
heat than light. And some of the conflict is just

(01:04:02):
manufactured. On that note, I wonder if again
we come back to the Internet as perhaps the revolutionary
technology of, of the 20th century and people like John
Perry Barlow and the, the technical Internet utopians who
saw decentralization and, and empowerment and all of these
things which we have gotten withthe Internet.

(01:04:23):
But then we've also gotten a whole lot of not that.
And I wonder whether Bitcoin in a way actually does that exact
same thing where it's money for Trump and Marc Andreessen and
all of these Marc Andreessen and, and all of these
billionaires that are playing around with it.
But it's also money for people who are unbanked or debanked or

(01:04:47):
the enemies of the state. And it just, again, it's it's
money and technology for everyone.
And along the way that becoming ubiquitous actually leads to a
lot of the positive outcomes that maybe we can imagine, but
currently obscured by political theatre in a way that the
Internet itself as well brought about a lot of positive changes.

(01:05:08):
The world's a much safer place and like much more connected
place, even though it may not seem that way.
And so I wonder whether the sortof, you know, stay humblestack
sets and and just use Bitcoin. It's almost like that is the
solution in itself. Potentially, yeah.
Yeah, I think there's really no other way.
That's just the way. I mean, that's the way that it's

(01:05:28):
going to happen. But I think the I think the the
Internet, if you think about politics, I think one of the
effects, one of the consequencesof our own human limitation is
we really have a very limited real social network.

(01:05:50):
We don't relate to more than, you know, a gross of people, so
to speak. And it's difficult for us to
imagine larger societies in that.
And we all of us live in we werein Tokyo.
It's 40 million people. I mean, it's, it's the number of
people that I saw this morning in Shinjuku station is more than

(01:06:11):
somebody an an early human wouldhave seen in their entire life.
You know, and in that, in that case, we, we don't, we see the
highest level of politics because it's always on.
You know, even in, even in the train, you see the picture of,
of the president, but you don't see the mayor of your town.
You don't see the town, the counselor.

(01:06:32):
You don't see, for example, the,the head of the, the, the board
of physicians who's discipliningthe doctors.
You don't see all of the layers of politics and the disputing
powers that exist up and down the line, both economic and and
political. And it's difficult for us to
have consciousness of this. And I think one of the things I

(01:06:53):
really take comfort in actually is, is in the disputatious and
the lively disputation of all ofthose levels of political action
and friction. And I think in that, in that and
in participation and knowledge of that really lies a lot of I
think there's a lot of hope there not in some somebody

(01:07:19):
coming from on high and swoopingin with big ideas to solve all
problems, but in in participation in those multi
layered power games. Yeah, I, I fully hear what
you're saying with the localism.I mean, I, I'm, I'm a big
believer in the power of in person meetups, talking

(01:07:42):
conversation. And again, this is where I think
that lens of the theatrics of the mediation of the Hollywood
ification of it all is all my itis a distraction from the the
underlying reality, which is that I can go and talk to my
neighbors, I can talk to people,despite whatever differences we
may have. I have a lot of friends on on

(01:08:03):
all sides of this. I've got a lot of friends who
are from different countries. You know, it is in my local
sense, you know, I live in multicultural world and I have a
lot of people in my life who have different political
leanings, etcetera. Yet we can still all hang out
and talk. And I think that's maybe the the
reality check here, that if you're led to believe through

(01:08:24):
the theatrics of the mass media that there is some sort of great
divide, that there is a river, then you're going to maybe be
LED, just as Jacqui Rule talks about, you are going to lead
into mass formation to see and perceive enemies where there are
actually no enemies. Well, and be blinded to the
places where your your agency may have some effect.

(01:08:48):
I mean, the higher and farther away people are from you.
I think we're we're given to it's like the Wizard of Oz,
right? So the Wizard of Oz, this we're,
we're we're supposed to end it interesting and very interesting
that story. You know, the wizard, the Wizard
is the, is the getting everybody's attention and
terrifying them and telling themto do absurd, ridiculous things.

(01:09:11):
And because they're fixated on it with their eyes, they,
they're ignorant of the man behind the curtain, you know,
And I think we need to be a little bit more like Toto,
right? And smell, Smell.
Smell. Feel.

(01:09:32):
Yeah. Yeah, OK.
Well, thank you, Andrew. I hope, I hope for people
listening, there's there's something in there.
I mean, I'm, as I said, I'm, I'm, I'm interested in talking
to a lots of different people. I'm interested in, in
understanding these things and communicating.
And I certainly am hopeful. And whenever I do meet people in

(01:09:53):
real life on the human to human level, the peer-to-peer level, I
always come away with a sense ofhope.
And I think that's something if we can all take with us into our
daily life, that certainly that can help a lot.
Yeah, I surely I think and feel the same.
Thanks again for the opportunityto, to converse with you and I
hope you out there are enlightened and, and inspired by

(01:10:18):
some of our conversation to, to,to see the the depth of human
reflection upon these perennial topics and, and to, to dig in
because it's really bottomless and very enriching.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you for listening. I am Cody Allingham and that was
the transformation of value. If you would like to support

(01:10:40):
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