Kind: captions
Language: en
i think that some people are
deliberately trying to completely clear
the cultural landscape of our past in
order to say there's nothing good
nothing you can hold on to no one you
should revere you've got no heroes the
whole thing comes down who's left
standing oh we've also got this idea
from the 20th century still about
marxism
and no
no
you will not have the entire landscape
deracinated
and then the worst ideas tried again
the following is a conversation with
douglas murray author of the madness of
crowds gender race and identity and his
most recent book the war on the west how
to prevail in the age of unreason
he's a brilliant fearless and often
controversial thinker who points out and
pushes back against what he sees as the
madness of our modern world
i should note that the use of the word
marxism and the west in this
conversation refers primarily to
cultural marxism and the cultural values
of western civilization respectively
this is in contrast to my previous
conversation with richard wolff where we
focused on marxism as primarily a
critique of capitalism and thus looking
at it through the lens of economics and
not culture
nevertheless these two episodes stand
opposite of each other with very
different perspectives on how we build a
flourishing civilization together
i leave it to you the listener to think
and to decide
which is the better way
this is the lex friedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's douglas
murray
you recently wrote the book titled the
war on the west
which in part says that the values ideas
and history of western civilization are
under attack so let's start with the
basics historically and today what are
the ideas
that represent western civilization the
good the bad the ugly i actually don't
get stuck on um
definitions precisely because as you
know once you get stuck on definitions
there's a possibility you'll never get
off yes
um
i'd say a few things firstly obviously
the western tradition is a specific
tradition this specific tradition of
ideas culture
well known to be perhaps easily defined
by the combination of athens and
jerusalem
the world of the bible
and the world of ancient greece and and
indeed rome
uh
effectively creates west it creates
european civilization which itself
spawns the rest of the western
civilizations america canada australia
new zealand and others
but these are the main countries that we
still refer to as the west um so there's
a specific tradition and all the things
that come from it
uh
my shorthand cheat on this answer is to
say um you know when you're not in it
so if you've ever been to beijing
shanghai
you know you're not in the west
somewhere else you know you're not in
the west
when you're in tokyo
somewhere extraordinary but you know
you're not in the west uh obviously
there are
um let's say borderline questions like
it's russia in the west
um
which i sort of leave open as a question
um
possibly if you were placed into moscow
blindfolded and you woke up
and you couldn't hear the language or
maybe you didn't know what the language
sounded like would you would you guess
you were in the west uh or not i think i
was somewhere near it
think getting closer
i mean you know it's it's this is what
tulsa asks the question doesn't it
whether it's european
and i think the answer to that is
not really although massively influenced
by europe but
um and times wanting to reach towards it
at times wanting to stay away but
um but a part of the west possibly yes
um
but anyway it's a very specific
tradition it's it's it's one of the
number of
major traditions in the world and um
because it's hard to define doesn't mean
it doesn't exist you know
are there certain characteristics and
qualities about the values and the ideas
that define it is
is the type of rule the type of
governmental structure yes
i mean the rule of law uh property
owning democracies um
and much more i mean these are of course
things that were ended up being
developed in america and uh then given
back to much of the rest of the west
um
i'd say there are other
um
perhaps more controversial attributes i
would give to the west one is a ravenous
interest in the rest of the world
which is not shared of course by every
other culture um
the late uh philosopher george steiner
who said he could never get out of his
head the haunting fact that the boats
only seemed to go out from europe
you know they didn't the explorers the
the the the scholars the linguist that
the people who wanted to discover
other civilizations and indeed even
resurrect ancient civilizations and lost
civilizations these were scholars that
were always coming from the west to
discover this elsewhere by contrast you
know there were never boats coming from
egypt to help the anglo-saxons discover
the origins of their language and so on
so i think there is a sort of ravenous
interest in the rest of the world which
can be said to be a western attribute
although it of course also has one
should immediately preface it some
downsides and many criticisms that can
be made up on the consequences of that
interest
um because of course it's not entirely
lacking in self-interest
so it's not just the scholars it's also
the armies the armies and they're
looking to gain access and control over
resources elsewhere markets and enhance
the imperial
imperative exactly to conquer to expand
although that itself of course is a
universal thing i mean no uh
no um
the civilization i think that we know of
doesn't try to gain ground from its
neighbors where can it withstand ability
to go further faster um
certainly gave an advantage in that
regard do some civilizations get
a bit more excited by that kind of idea
than others possible it's possible
because it you could say it's the
western
civilization because the technological
innovation was more
um efficient yeah doing that kind of
thing absolutely but maybe he wanted it
more too
well the ottomans wanted it an awful lot
and did very terribly well
for many centuries and shouldn't forget
that
um
as did others um
i'd also say by the way and again it's a
it's a very broad one but it's worth
throwing out i think self-criticism
um
is
an important attribute of the western
mind
uh one that as you know is not common
everywhere
not all societies allow even their most
vociferous critics to become rich
so you know criticism is a negative
sounding word it could be
self-introspection
self-analysis
self-reflection and it can be what you
need
you know and in the western system i'd
argue that one of the advantages of the
system of representative governance is
that
where there are problems in the system
you can
um attempt to sort them out by peaceable
means
um
we listened to arguments i mean most
famously in america in the late 20th
century the civil rights movement
achieved its aims
by force of moral argument
and persuaded the rest of the country
that it had been wrong
um that's not common in every society by
any means
so i think there are certain attributes
of the western mind that you could say
are um
they're not entirely unique but they are
not as commonplace elsewhere
what about the emergence in hierarchies
of asymmetry of power
most
visible most drastic in the form of
slavery for example
well i mean everyone in the world is
slavery so i don't regard it as being a
western the unique western sin
it's rather hard to think of a
civilization in history that didn't have
slavery of some kind one of the oddities
of the western ignorance of our day
is that people seem to imagine that our
societies in the west were the only ones
who ever engaged in any vices
alas this isn't true it's a sort of
russoian mistake
or at least one that's blossomed since
rousseau that uh everybody else in the
world was born into sort of udanic
innocence and only we in the west had
this sort of evil in us that caused us
to do bad things to other people
slavery was engaging by everyone in the
ancient world of course and and through
most of the modern world as well of
course there are 40 million slaves in
the world today so it's clearly not
something that the species as a whole
has a problem with
um that's more slaves of course than
there were in the 19th century
um
and i'd say
on top of that that you know the
interesting thing about the western mind
as regards to slavery is that we were
the civilization that did away with it
and and by the way the the founding
fathers of america who today are
lambasted routinely
for being
acquiescent in the slave trade um
engaging in it
owning slaves um
there's not people almost don't even
bother now to recognize the facts that
thomas jefferson george washington all
wanted to see this trade done away with
couldn't hold the country together at
the origins if they'd have made such an
effort
and believed and hoped that it would be
something that would be dealt with after
their time
so the founding ideas had within them
the notion that we should as a people
get rid of this the opening lines of the
declaration of independence
set up the conditions
under which slavery will be impossible
all men are created equal
once you once you've put that that's
like that's a time bomb
under the under the whole concept of
slavery
that's ticking away
okay and sure enough it detonated
in the next century if we just step back
and look at our
the human species
what does slavery teach you about human
nature
the fact that slavery
uh
has appeared
as a function of society throughout
human history there are two
possibilities um
one is
it's
what people think they can do when god's
not watching
another is it's what they can do if they
think that god allows it
really really well put
and um
the fact that they want to do this kind
of subjugation
what does that mean
well i mean it's pretty straightforward
in a way um
there are people who get to work for
free
there's economic in nature in some in
some states yes but in order to do it i
mean almost always uh there are dif
there are some examples in the ancient
world where this wasn't the case but
almost always it had to be a subjugated
people or people regarded as different
one of the things actually i've tried to
sort of inject into the
discussion through this book among other
things is is a recognition that
there was there were very major
questions still going on in the 18th and
early 19th century the one resolved
which were one of the
reasons why slavery was not as morally
repugnant to people then as it was to us
now as it is to us now and that's the
question of polygenesis and monogenesis
um
at the time of thomas jefferson the
founding fathers were were thinking and
working
they didn't know
because nobody knew
whether the human races were related or
not um
the there was there were arguments the
monogenesis argument that that we were
all indeed from the same racial stock
apollogenesis argument was that we
weren't we were
you know black africans ethiopians
they were often referred to at the time
um
because they provided some of the first
slaves um were different from white
europeans simply not related in any way
and that makes it easier of course that
makes it easier to enslave people if you
think they're not your brother
am i my brother's keeper no he's not
your brother
uh
and
there's
it's it's a it's a very
it was a very troubling argument in the
in the 18th and 19th century also
because there was a biblical question it
threw up it threw up a theological
question which was
i mean
people were literally debating this at
the time
um
was there also a black adam and eve
was there as it were in india now adam
and eve the native american adam and eve
i mean this was a serious theological
debate
because they didn't know the answer and
it i mean people say that darwin
um
solved this it wasn't just darwin of
course but
by the late 19th century the argument
that we were not
all related
as human beings had suffered so many
blows that
you had to really be very very ignorant
deliberately willfully ignorant to
ignore it by that so it no longer was
after darwin a theological question it
became a moral question it was already a
moral question but it clarified darwin
clarifies it definitely and then you're
in the same in a situation of you're not
subjugating some other people you're
subjugating your own
kin
and and
that becomes morally unsustainable
so
given that slavery in america is part
is part of its history
how do we incorporate into the calculus
of
um
policy today
social discourse
what we learn in school
we can look at slavery in america we
could look at maybe more recent things
like uh in europe the
other atrocities the holocaust
how do we incorporate that in terms of
how we create policy how we treat each
other all those kinds of things
what is the calculus of integrating the
atrocities the injustices of the past
into the way we are today
that's a very complex question because
it's a it's a moral question at this
point
and a moral question long after the fact
um
i say at one point in the war in the
west that the argument for instance on a
reparations now that goes on and it's
not a not a fringe argument anymore some
people say oh you're pulling up this
fringe argument it really isn't i mean
every contender for the democratic
nomination
for the
the presidency in 2020 was willing to
talk about the
possibility of reparations some very
eager
that this country america
goes through that
entirely self-destructive exercise
um
i say that there's a there's a lot of
problems with this but if i refine it
down to one thing i'd say this
um it's no longer about a wealth
transfer from one group of people who
did something wrong to another group of
people who were wronged
it would have been it would have been
that could have been that 200 years ago
today it's not even the descendants of
people who did something wrong giving
money to people who were the descendants
of people who were wronged
it's a wealth transfer from people who
look like people who did a wrong thing
in the past to another group of people
who resemble people who were wronged
that's impossible to do i'm
completely clear about this
there is no
way
in which you could organize such a
wealth transfer
uh on moral or practical reasons america
is filled with people who are
um
have the same skin color as us for
instance who have no connection to the
slave trade and should not be
made to pay money
to people who have some connection
and then the country is also filled with
ethnic minorities who have come after
slavery who would not be
um
due for any
reimbursement as it were
the problem the problem with this is
though is that
there are
i'm perfectly open to the possibility
that there are
um residual inequities that exist in
american life
and that's and that the consequences of
slavery could be one of the factors that
resulted from this
the thing is i don't think it's it's a
um
i don't think it's a single issue answer
i think it's a multi-dimensional issue
something like black underachievement in
america is obviously a multi-dimensional
issue
much of the left and others wish to say
it's not it's only about racism
and they can't answer why
asians who've arrived more recently
don't for instance get held down by
white supremacy but actually i say white
supremacy in
quotes obviously yeah but don't get held
back by it but actually flourish to the
extent that asian americans uh have a
higher household earnings and higher
house household mean um
uh
uh equity than
home equity and so on than than white
americans
uh so i don't think that on the merits
the evidence is there that you know
racism is the explanation for black
ongoing black underachievement in some
sections of the black community in
america
it's obviously a part of it could you
say that even those things like
fatherlessness and
similar family breakdown issues
are a long-term consequence of it
possibly but it's it's being awfully
generous to people's
ability to make bad decisions
for instance how many generations of the
holocaust would you allow
people to claim that everything that
went wrong
in the jewish community was as a result
of the holocaust
i mean is there some kind of term limit
on this i would have thought so
and i think most people probably think
that's over
i think the details matter they're the
and
um but it's very difficult
oh i enjoy swimming out in the ocean so
although i'm terrified of what's lurking
underneath in the darkness you're right
you're right to me
um okay it's really complicated calculus
with the holocaust of
so the argument in america is that
there are
there's deep institutional racism
against african americans that's rooted
in slavery
and
so however that calculus turns out that
calculation it still persists
in the culture and the institutions
in the allocation of resources in the
way that we communicate in in this in
subtle ways in major ways all that kind
of stuff
um how is it possible to win or lose
that argument of how much institutional
racism there is that's rooted in
in slavery is it a winnable it's it's an
unquantifiable argument
um and i'd i'd
i'd like to apply some shortcuts to some
of this the following
are for instance all
um
let's take the the one that's most often
often cited
if a white person is walking down a
street in america and they see a group
of young black men coming towards them
and it's late at night and they cross
the road is it because of slavery
is it because of institutional racism
no it's because they've made a calculus
based
not entirely
on
um unfounded
beliefs that
given crime rates
it's possible that
this group of people might be a group of
people they don't want to meet late at
night
that's
an ugly fact but
as crime statistics in american cities
after american cities bear out
um
it's not an entirely unreasonable one
it's not reasonable every time obviously
obviously
but is it attributable to slavery
that's a stretch
if you're in a
city like chicago where the homicide
rates
shot up in the last two years
albeit again as has always has to be
remembered mainly black on black uh gun
violence and knife violence
nevertheless if you're in a city like
chicago
and you make that calculus i've just
suggested the the the the cliched one
the street late at night
there are other factors other than a
memory of slavery
that kick in
um
and i'm afraid it's uh
it's something which people don't want
to particularly acknowledge in america
for obvious reasons because it's the
ugliest damn debate in the world
but i was actually just writing the what
in my column in new york post today
about a
a very interesting case it sort of
similar which is the
the um question of obesity in the us
as you know um america is the most
overweight country in the world
uh america has i think um 40 of the
population is
obese
in medical ways and the nearest next
country is a long way down that's new
zealand at 30 percent of the population
so america is a long way ahead
why during the cronovirus era when we
know that obesity
is the one clearest factor that's likely
to lead to your hospitalization if you
also get the virus
why did almost no public health
information in america focus on obesity
80 percent of the people who ended up
hospitalized in america from with
coronavirus were obese
we locked the schools when there was no
evidence that the coronavirus was deadly
for children
we all wore cloth masks when there was a
very little evidence this was
much use in stopping the spread of the
virus
we had massive evidence about obesity
being a problem and we never addressed
it why is it just because we worried
about fat people no it's actually
because about fat shaming as well no
it's also because to a great extent it's
a racial issue in america as well and
actually i quoted this new publication
from the universe university of chicago
as it happens which makes that claim
explicit says the reasons why people are
have views that are negative about
obesity is because of racism and slavery
this is what everything is drawn back to
america anything you want to stop you
say it's because of racism it's because
of slavery how about
it's actually because
you mind
the hospitals getting clogged up you
mind people dying your mind ethnic
minorities disproportionately dying
and you'd like to say something about it
once again as in everything in america
it's cut off by some
poorly educated academic saying it's
about slavery
so we're really not i mean this requires
a kind of form of brain surgery to
perform it on a society probably one
that's not possible without killing the
patient
and
it's being done by people who
are wearing like
mittens
so i'm sure that there's a few folks
listening to this
that are rolling their eyes and saying
here we go again two white guys
talking about
the lack of
institutional racism in america
first of all what's your
what would you like to tell them
so
our african-american friends who are
looking at this and i've gotten a chance
to talk to a bunch of them on clubhouse
recently clubhouse is the social app
yeah yeah i know and i really enjoy an
absolute zoo of an app as far as i can
see it i personally love it because you
get to talk to as somebody who's an
introvert and doesn't socialize much i
enjoy talking to
people from all walks of life
so it got gave me a chance to first of
all practice russian and ukrainian to
get the chance to do that then you get a
chance to talk about israel and
palestine with people who are
uh from
that part of the world and you get to
hear raw emotion of people from the
ground where they start screaming
they start crying they start being calm
and collected and thoughtful and
this is as if you walked into a bar
with custom picked regular folks
in quotes regular folks just people that
have
quote lived experiences
real pain real hope real emotions biases
and you get to listen to them go at it
with no
because it's an audio app you're not
allowed to start getting into a physical
fist fight
so even though it really sounds sounds
like people want like it's happening
yeah and so you get to really listen to
that feeling and for example it allows a
white guy like me
from another part of the world coming
from
uh the former soviet union to go into a
room
with a few hundred uh african americans
screaming about
joe rogan using the n-word oh yeah and i
get to really listen there's very
different perspectives on that in the
african-american community and it's
fascinating to listen so i don't get
access to that by sort of excellent
books and articles and so on you get
that real raw emotion and i'm just
saying there's a few of those folks
listening to this
with that real raw emotion and they one
argument they say
is you
douglas murray and you lex freeman don't
have the right
to talk about race and racism in america
it is our struggle you are from a
privileged class of people that don't
don't know what it's like
to be a black man or woman in america
walking down the street
can you steal man that case
first of all fuck that
okay that's not listen i think we need
to define steel
steel manic okay can you try i know what
this is um
i really resent that form of
argumentation sure i really resent it
i have the right to talk about whatever
the hell i want
and no one's gonna stop me or try to
intimidate me yeah or tell me that i
can't simply because of my skin color
and i think that if i said to somebody
else the other way around it would be
equally reprehensible
if i said shut up you have no right to
criticize anything that douglas murray
says because you've not got my skin
color
okay it's not an exact comparison but
seriously is that a is that a reasonable
form of argument
uh you haven't been through everything
i've been through in my life therefore
you can't comment no in that case nobody
can talk about anything we might as well
pack up go home and isolate ourselves
strong words but can you try to steal me
on the case not in this particular
situation but there's
people
that have lived through something
that can comment in a very specific way
like for example holocaust survivors yes
there is a sense in which maybe a basic
sense of civility
when a holocaust survivor is speaking
about their experience of the holocaust
then
an intellectual
from a very different part of the world
that's simply writing about
uh nuanced geopolitics of world war ii
just
should not interrupt the holocaust
survivor we physically interrupt them if
they're telling their stories
with logic
and reason that the experience of the
holocaust survivor somehow fundamentally
has a deeper understanding of the
humanity
and the injustice of the first of all
again when even deeper water is now but
in terms of wanting to listen to another
person who has experienced something yes
yes
but not endlessly
not endlessly
i mean there are some people who've
written about i mean there are people
who've written about the holocaust who
didn't experience the holocaust and have
written about it better than people who
did
it's it's not
this this this idea that the lived
experience to use this terrible modern
jargon as if there's another type
this this this idea that the lived
experience has to triumph over
everything else is is not always correct
it can be correct in some circumstances
if you are sitting in a room with a
holocaust survivor and somebody who'd
never heard about the holocaust and
wanted to kind of you know shoot out
their views on it
yeah one of those people should be heard
more than the other obviously obviously
if there's somebody who's experienced
racism first hand and there's somebody
else who has never experienced it
then obviously you'd want to hear from
the person who has experienced it
firsthand if that is the discussion
underway
i i don't think that it's the case that
that is endlessly the case
i'm also
highly reluctant to concede
that there are groups of people who by
didn't of their skin color or anything
else
get to dominate the microphone now of
course we're literally both speaking to
microphones at the moment so there's an
irony to this but let's skate over the
irony
what i mean is people saying you don't
have the right to speak i have the right
to take the microphone from you and
speak because i know best
fine
if you know best we'll argue it out
and someone will win
long or short term
but the
the um
the the almost aggressive tone in which
this is now leveled i don't like the
sound of
nobody's experience is completely
understandable by another human being
nobody's
and what many people are asking us to do
at the moment us collectively is
to fall for that thing i think it was
camille faster who said it first but
i've um adopted it in recent years is to
say you must spend an inordinate amount
of your life trying to understand me
personally my lived experience
everything about me you should dedicate
your life to trying to do that
simultaneously you'll never understand
me
this is not an attractive invitation
this is this is a an unwinnable game
so if somebody if somebody has a
legitimate
um
and an important point to make they
should make it and they will win through
whatever their character is whatever
their race and by the way there are
plenty of white people who experience
racism as well there are plenty of white
people who do
and have done and increasingly so which
is one of the things i write about from
the war in the west i mean i i would
argue that today in america the only
group you're actually allowed to be
consistently
vilely racist against the white people
if you say disgusting things about black
people in america in 2022 you will be
over you will be over
if you decide to talk about people's
white tears their white female tears
their white guilt their white privilege
their white rage and all these other
pseudo-pathologizing
you'll be just fine you could be the
chairman of joint use of staff
you could lecture at yale university
absolutely fine and the white people
have to suck that up
as if that's fine because there was
racism in another direction in the past
so white people can have racism as well
does that mean that i think that i have
a right or other white people have a
right to dominate the discourse by
talking about their feelings of having
been victim victims of racism no not
particularly because what does that get
us it gets us into an endless cycle of
competitive victimhood am i saying that
white people who've experienced violence
have experienced historically anything
like the violence that was perpetrated
against black people in america
historically obviously not but
you know
what kind of competition do we want to
enter here
and
this is very very important terrain now
in america because there's one other
thing i have to throw in there which is
how do you work out the sincerity of the
claim
how do you work out the sincerity of the
claim being made
at one point uh in my book in this
latest book i referred to
a very useful bit in them in nature and
genealogy of morals
where as you know nietzsche always has
to be treated carefully you know when
people say um i love nietzsche
which bits
[Laughter]
what exactly do you love about him
but um
a lot and a lot can be learned from the
answer
uh but there are moments in junior area
tomorrow that was very useful for this
book
one of them was the moment when
nietzsche uses a phrase that i've now
stolen for myself appropriated you might
say
um
where um where he refers to people who
who tear at wounds long since closed and
then cry about the pain they feel
now
how do you know
how do you know whether the pain is real
how do you know
i'm not saying you can never know
but it's hard so when somebody says i
feel that my life hasn't gone that well
and it's because of something that was
done to my ancestors 200 years ago
maybe they do feel that
maybe they're right to feel that
maybe they're making it up
maybe they're using it as their reason
for failure in life
maybe they're using it as their reason
to not even try
maybe they're using it as their reason
to
smoke weed all day
i don't know
and who does know how can you work that
out
and that's why i come back to this thing
of who are we
to constantly judge in this society
other people who we don't know
and attribute motives to them based on
on racial or other characteristics
and as you write in this part
[Laughter]
i like your uh pro cultural
appropriation of nietzsche
uh and at the same time canceling uh
nietzsche
um in the same set of sentences but you
write in this part about evil
no i didn't cancel nietzsche
wow can't cancel nature like i'm saying
i'm saying treat him carefully to him
carefully fair enough
but you can judge
a man's character by which parts of
nietzsche he um
he quotes fair enough
i think when you meet people who do man
and superman a bit too much
now you're pulling in even deeper water
referencing hitler here
okay
so you write in this part of the book
about evil
uh
quote what is it that drives
evil
many things without doubt but one of
them is identified by several of the
great philosophers is resentment
that sentiment is one of the greatest
drivers for people who want to destroy
colon blaming someone else for having
something you believe you deserve more
and you're saying
this kind of resentment
we don't know
as it surfaces whether it's genuine or
if it's
uh used to sort of play games of power
to evil ends
um
can you speak to this
to this this because it's just a
fascinating idea
that
one of the biggest drivers of evil in
the
world is resentment because if you look
at
boy if you look at human history if you
look at hitler
uh so much of the propaganda so much of
the narrative was about resentment
does that surface there's a level or is
that deep there is that computer it can
be any of the above
let's first of all preface it everybody
has resentment
i mean i just i use the term horizontal
which is thought very similar to present
let's stick with resentment
so we don't sound too pretentious
um
the
let me give you a quick example of
somebody in our own day who has who has
a form of resentment vladimir putin
did you see navalny's documentary
putin's palace
yes yeah
you remember the stuff about uh putin as
a young kgb officer in germany
from the stuff about putin his first
wife's resentment of one of his kgb
colleagues who had a an apartment that
was a few meters bigger than the putin's
apartment
yeah it's very interesting and by the
way i'm not saying that
you know vladimir putin became the man
he has become and invaded ukraine
because he didn't have an apartment he
liked him but in berlin or munich
wherever he was this is a distinct
possibility my point is
my point is is that
is that
resentment is a factor in all human
lives and we all feel it in
in our lives and it's
it's something it has to be struggled
against
resentment is in political terms can be
a deadly i mean it's an incredibly deep
thing to draw upon
and you mentioned hitler obviously one
of the things that hitler
played on was resentment obviously
uh
almost every revolution he does
i mean the french revolutionaries did as
well and we're not without cause
uh there's a good reason to feel that
versailles was not listening to paris
in the 1780s
and feel resentment for um
marie antoinette in her palace within
the palace
ignoring the bread shortages
in paris
um
so resentment is is a very
it's a very understandable thing and
sometimes it's justifiable and it's also
deadly to the person as it is to the
society
it's an incredibly deep deep sentiment
somebody else is um got something that
you should have
and the
the problem about it is that it's it has
the potential to be endless
um you can do it your whole life
and one of the ways i've
sort of
sort of found myself explaining this to
people is to say
it's also important to recognize that
resentment is something that can cross
absolutely every boundary
so for instance
it crosses all racial boundaries
obviously and i go without saying
more interesting is it crosses all class
boundaries and socioeconomic boundaries
and if i was to sort of simplify this
thought i would say
i guess that you and i
and everybody watching
knows or has known somebody in their
lives
who has
almost nothing in worldly terms
and is a generous person a kindly person
a giving person
a happy person even a cheerful person
and
i think we probably have also or many of
us would have met people who seem to
have everything
and who are filled with resentment
filled with resentment somebody else has
held them back from something their
sister once did something they said she
shouldn't she got this i should have got
that
and and on and on and on
it's a human trait
and
what one of the things that suggests to
me is that we therefore have a choice in
our lives about this this is something
which we can do something about not
limitlessly
but for instance
i mean there are very good reasons that
some people in their lives might feel
resentment
let's say you're involved in a car crash
and a friend
fell asleep at the wheel and that's why
you are spending the rest of your life
in a wheelchair that's a pertinent
example of this in american politics at
the moment
um
you would be justified in feeling
resentment
and at some point you have to make a
decision which is am i going to be that
person
or a different person
but even in that case you're saying at
the individual level and that societal
level is destructive to the mind even
when you're quote-unquote justified it
drops you it rots you because
the best you can do
is to eke out your days unfulfilled
so the antidote as you describe is
gratitude yes
gratitude is the antidote to
evil in a sense
so gratitude is the individual level
into societal level gratitude is
certainly the answer to resentment
i um
i quote in the war in the west this this
when i read it
first time a few years ago i was
absolutely flawed by um
the brothers karamazov uh
not everything in it by the way i won't
get into it but i have i have some very
big structural criticisms of the novel
now now you're just sweet talking to me
because i'm a does the esky fan but i
appreciate this
oh okay
well we could get into what i see as the
structural flaws in the brothers
carrying out anyway um now i'm i'm
offended and triggered yeah no i mean
this
is coming out of macbeth and saying i
didn't think it was much good yeah
there's structural flaws yeah i thought
the ending stank yeah middle wasn't very
good no
um when i read that that novel i was i
was flawed by a couple of things one is
one is of course at the moment where we
realize the devil appears
the moment that ivan says to his brother
you you know he visits me and you
realize that he's talking about the
devil whole novel goes into this
totally different space
anyway this is even more than you've
already realized the novels about
and then when the conversation occurs
between the van and the devil remember i
think he says describes him as dressed
as a french friend it's redressed in the
french style
of the uh early part of the 19th century
very strange the devil will be dressed
like that but sort of
um
and and and if you remember that he and
he's sort of cross-legged and rather a
bane figure
but but the devil mentions impassing
to ivan that um
he says i don't know why
gratitude is not a
uh
an instinct that's been given to me
and um yeah you're not allowed this is
not
uh given the role of being the devil
this is not one of the things there's no
other thing and you think and of course
only a genius of dostoevsky's stature
could i mean a lesser genius would have
made a whole novel out of that insight
only dostoevsky can just throw it away
because it's such an abundance of riches
that he still has to get through
the structural problems aside but the
the
the uh the passive aggressive
the the micro aggression in this
conversation
a little knife fight okay no yeah but
but the reason i mentioned this because
of course when i saw it
this this is such a brilliant insight by
darcy because
why why would why would gratitude not be
a sentiment the devil was capable of the
answer is of course
that if the devil was capable of
gratitude he wouldn't be the devil
he'd be somebody else
he has to be incapable of gratitude
do you think for dostoevsky that was as
strong as an insight as as it is for you
because i think that's a really powerful
idea
that
with gratitude
you you don't get the resentment that
rots you from the core
yes i think it was one of the just
endless things that he saw in us
and
and the way i put it is that i mean i
also think it in think of it in terms of
the the era of deconstruction which is
one of the things i'd like us to call
the era that's now ending
the era of deconstruction
was the era that started let's say from
the 60s onwards
and was
originally an academic game that then
spilled out into the wider culture which
was
let's take everything apart let's pull
it all apart
um there are lots of problems with it
one is it's quite boring
you don't get an awful lot from it
uh
you also have the problem of what
children find when they try to do this
with bicycles which is they can take it
apart quite easily but they can't put it
back together
um
and the era of of
taking things apart as a game
is one we've lived through and it's been
highly destructive
but you can do it for quite a long time
i'm going to look at this society and
i'm going to take it apart by showing
systemic problems i'm going to
at the end of that what have you got
what have you done what have you
achieved
we need to interrogate this okay
interrogate by all means ask questions
but interrogate there's a deliberate his
hostility to this
i'm going to interrogate this thing and
take it apart and again at the end of it
what have you got
whether you're interrogating a text or a
piece of music
or an idea or a society fine
question endlessly question yes
interrogate
assumes it's all um
a criminal in a cell
and it's guilty
and therefore it must be taken apart
and that's what we've been doing for
decades in the west
and that's resentment that's one
by-product of resentment
you can't build the thing but you know
how to take it apart
is a little bit of resentment
good so you have
you know that i love tom waits and he
has a song where uh a little drop of i
like my town with a little drop of
poison
is it good to do that
is it good to have a little bit of
poison in your drink
depends what poison is and it depends if
you know not to have another drink
it might be the case you find out some
alcoholics do that one was
too many and 10 is not enough
so there's a natural
in this case
this kind of deconstruction is a
slippery slope it becomes an addiction
it becomes a drug and you just can't
stop well you have you'd have to wean
yourself off it and try to start
creating again
okay you'd have to start trying to put
things together again
um
[Music]
something
[Music]
i think might be in the throes of
starting as it happens
well
speaking of
taking things apart and not putting them
together again
the idea of critical race theory
[Music]
um can you to me explain so i'm an
engineer
and have not been actually paying
attention much unfortunately to the
these things none of the people in your
field were until it comes along and
smacks you in the face i you know i i've
had that line of thinking and you know
from mit
i i said well surely whatever you folks
are busy about yelling at each other for
is is a thing at harvard and yale
it's not going to yeah yeah of course
yes people in the stem subjects thought
it's not coming for us it can't come to
us and bang
well it's
you know it hasn't quite been banged
engineering is more safe than others
yeah uh so not so let's draw a line now
between engineering and science
so
i think engineering is uh i'm uh sitting
in a castle in the tallest tower with
with my pinky out drinking my martinis
saying surely uh the the peasants below
with their biology and their humanities
we'll
figure it all out no i'm just kidding
there's no there's no pinky out i drink
vodka
and i hang with the peasants okay where
is this this metaphor has gone too far
uh
can you explain
uh to this engineer what critical race
theory is is it a a term that's
definable is there tradition is there a
history what is good about it what is
bad about it is it is a tradition it is
a history as a school of thought it
started in the law uh roughly in the
1970s and some of the american academy
uh it's spilled out it always aimed to
be an activist philosophy people deny
that now but as i cite him in the war in
the west and the foundational texts say
as much this isn't this is an activist
academic study
we're not just looking at at the law we
seek to change the law
and it's built out into all of the other
disciplines i think there's a reason for
that by the way which is it happened at
the time that the humanities and others
in america were increasingly weak and
didn't know what to do and they needed
more games to play on new games to play
the psychologists got bored yeah i mean
that
well they needed tenure and they needed
they needed something to do and i mean
it's not an original observation plenty
of people have made this but i mean neil
ferguson said this some time ago for
instance that
in the last
50 years in american academia certainly
in humanities departments when some
when somebody dies out as a great
scholar and something that's just not
replaced by somebody of equal stature
they're replaced by somebody who does
theory
or
critical race theory they're replaced by
somebody who does the modern games
somebody dies out who's a great
historian off say i don't know it's the
ones on my mind um
russian history or russian literature
and they're not replaced by a similar um
scholar his in his observation in in
yours is this a recent development it's
happened the last few decades for sure
and it's sped up did is it because we've
gotten to the bottom of some of the
biggest questions of history no it's uh
because we're willing to forget the big
questions
because it's more fun to big questions
aren't as fun no partly it's partly no i
should stress apparently isn't it this
is in the weeds but partly as a result
of the hype of specialization in
academia
um
you know if you if you said you'd like
to
write your dissertation on hobbs
uh if you wanted to e
if you
something central to cancer thought or
or hegel or something i mean that's not
popular
that what's popular is to take somebody
way down the line from that because
there's a feeling that that's all been
done
so you take something way way way down
the line from that that's much less
important and then you sort of play with
that
and i think most people anyone who's
watching who's been in a philosophy
department or anything else in recent
years will know that
tendency by the way there's a very
practical consequence of this i saw this
at the end of my friend roger scrutin's
life when he um he would occasionally he
didn't get tenure at universities but he
would occasionally be flown in even by
his enemies
to teach courses in various universities
in basics of philosophy because there
was no one in the department able to do
it
like
he would he would he would go in and
teach for a semester
you know
hegel and kant and schopenhauer and
others because
there was no one to do it because they
were all playing with things way way way
down the road from this
so that had already happened
and people were searching for new games
to play and the critical race theory
stuff forced its way in
partly in the way that all of this
that's now known as anti-racism does
which is in a sort of bullying tone of
saying if you don't follow this the same
way that
all the things that are called studies
i think everything called studies in the
humanities should be shut down
because of the activist it's an
accomplishment they're all activists
gay studies and queer studies
um
nothing good has ever come from it
nothing good to push back is it is it
obvious that activism is a sign
of a flaw in a discipline so is isn't it
a sign of the death of the discipline
it's a sign that discipline's over
but isn't it a good goal to have for
discipline to enact change positive
change in the world
or is that to is that that's for
politicians to do with the findings of
of science i mean not why create an
ideology and then set out to find
disciplines that have weakly put
together to try to back up your
political ideology so ideology should
not be part of
of uh of science or of no i mean
humanities why would you
i mean anyone could do it
you could decide to go in and be
wildly right-wing about something and
only do things that prove your
right-wing ideas
be fantastically anti-academic
fantastically andy science fantastic
it's an absurd way to to mix up activism
and and
and and academia and it's absolutely
rife and critical race theory is one of
the ones that completely polluted the
academy
yeah and there's been uh dark moments
throughout history both for during world
war ii with both communism and uh nazism
fascism that
um infiltrated science
and then corrupted it yes i mean for
instance also let's face it
this in science as in everything else
there are dark difficult things
it's much better we know about them face
up to them and try to find a way
socially to deal with them
than that you leave them in the hands of
some activist
who wants to do stuff with them
some of my best friends are activists
i'm just kidding okay yeah none of my
best friends are activists that's how it
should be
well i was kidding because i don't have
any friends but okay all right
now i'm that's not true i'm trying to
get gain some um
pity points okay uh so to return i have
your clubhouse friend
screaming away like deranged maniacs
now i've got anti-clubhouse by the way
because the only time i heard it was
that brett weinstein one when
he did that i didn't if you heard that
early in clubhouse i was invited to
clubhouse by various people who said oh
this is a really great civilized way to
hang out and talk with interest
interesting people and i like downloaded
the app and i got one night because
brett weinstein said um you know i'm
doing this conversation and i listened
and it was
the maddest damn discussion i've ever
heard was there something about biology
something about
was it
uncovered times all that at some point
brett said i'm an um
i'm an evolutionary biologist
and somebody else that is saying you're
a eugenicist
and he said no i'm an evil evil issue in
my honesty and sometimes that's the same
thing
and it just went on like that and brett
desperately tried to explain
that's not the same thing as being
eugenicist and he lost the clubhouse
room
they thought that was the same thing
he'd come it horribly reminded me of a
time some years ago in a british
newspaper ran a sort of
realizing that the only thing you can
unite people on in sexual ethics is
revulsion against pedophilia ran an
antipedo campaign and uh shortly after
um
pediatricians offices were torched in
north of england by a mob who hadn't
read the whole sign
yeah
well to me
um like i said a little bit of poison is
good for the town so anyhow sorry i
interrupted you with flattering you
there people on clubhouse i have many i
have i have
of multiples of friends yes
um
okay
we didn't get to some of the ideas of uh
critical race theory what what exactly
uh is it i'm actually in part asking
this question quite genuinely yeah it's
it's an attempt to look at everything
among other things through the lens of
race
and to add race into things where it may
not be
as a way of adding i'm trying to give
the most generous
estimation
to add race in as a conversation in a
place where it may not have been in the
conversation
um
and that means history too the history
oh sure racism yeah yeah yeah
all history
and to look at it through these
particular lenses
um
i mean there's a certain
like all these things there's a certain
logic in it like
like with feminist studies or something
i mean is is there a utility in looking
back through undoubtedly male dominated
histories and asking where the
the more silent female voice was yes
very intere