It's interesting for people like me, a professing Christian, to listen to conversations like this; queue the rolling of eyes; fingers down fake "gagging" throat. But it is, none the less.
While they may not profess it, these two people come across as disgruntled humanist. They embrace the thought that things are getting worse each year but they can't see the reason, they think there is an "... inability to resolve the collective action problems that we face ...". Thus the big problem, humans have the innate need to make the simple, complicated. This interview oozes such a need.
So the masses will continue to turn to their fellow human for solutions to the problems their fellow human created; that's what humanist do. Quite sad actually.
Interesting podcast, thank you! I appreciated his insight that the “left” and “right” have switched places on the political spectrum, with the left becoming more rules-based and authoritarian and the right becoming the counterculture rebels. That is a fascinating development that deserves to be explored further. However, his simplistic right/left political dichotomy in relation to the truckers’ protest was, in my opinion and experience, completely off-base. Rather than fuelled by the right, which he argued, a great many people on the left fully supported the truckers’ protest, including myself. As I’ve emphasized before on this platform, the truckers’ protest crossed all political lines, no matter how much people want to label it as right-wing motivated - simply because the issue that was and is being protested is an inherently and deeply “human” issue, which is an individual’s right to choose what they inject into their body without being discriminated against, and segregated and ostracized in society.
There is nothing new here to speak of...a lot of what you hear in this is based on these events that have happened in the past, WW1, The Great Depression, WW2, The Korean War, then Vietnam. Natural disaster such as climate change that been going on for millenium. A lot of what we see today is based on computer modeling which is just another way to control the narrative. We are a society that bows to technology and are becoming dumber & dumber. In this life there is a cycle that we go through time after time the clothing is the different the message the same. All these things are part of the world wide pysche that it will get bad maybe worse and after much turmoil things level out and for a while peace and stability are returned, study the patterns after WW1 &WW2. Climate change is the same thing, floods, storms, and many other natural disasters have come and gone many times and we did survive them. Life is a balancing act and in the final point it will right itself until the next big event comes along to scare and challenge us all, and how we handle it...30
This guest has some good ideas, but he's really lacking in historical knowledge, and pre-historical knowledge.
As for the changes that occurred at the turn of the previous century, he should have a look at the wonderful BBC 4-1h-parts documentary that discusses how our brains have been co-opted by larger forces... of evil... yes they are evil... I'm not a person of faith, I use evil in the sense of harm to humans and the ensemble of nature.
The documentary CENTURY OF SELF describes the same thing as your guest when he describes life having become a casino.
The last century has been a massive social experiment, where all of humanity are just guinea pigs.
"This episode explains how politicians on the left, in both Britain and America, turned to the techniques developed by business to read and fulfil the inner desires of the self.
Both New Labour, under Tony Blair, and the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, used the focus group, which had been invented by psychoanalysts, in order to regain power. They set out to mould their policies to people's inner desires and feelings, just as capitalism had learnt to do with products.
They believed they were creating a new and better form of democracy, one that truly responded to the inner feelings of individual. But what they didn't realise was that the aim of those who had originally created these techniques had not been to liberate the people, but to develop a new way of CONTROLLING them."
I am always heartened when apparently left leaning thinkers recognize how authoritarian the left has become, because for me it is one of the most shocking and massive shifts in American politics in my lifetime. I am shocked to find that groups which I always supported since they seemed to be fighting against an unjust establishment, have now morphed into enforcers for that same establishment---the cheerleader for the sabotage Trump movement literally engineered by the intelligence community, which leftists always DIStrusted, being the most obvious and insane manifestation of the newly developped bankruptcy of the left. But what is missing, in this discussion, is what to DO about this reorientation. Even those leftists who recognize this reorientation seem unable to change THEIR orientation and perhaps...ADMIRE the fact that President Trump wound down the butchery in TWO longstanding wars, strolled in the demilitarized zone with the intractable leader of North Korea, cancelled and renegotiated the disastrous trade treaties which Bernie Sanders railed against in 2016 and promised to cancel and renegotiate, produced the lowest unemployment in HISTORY for various minorities and women. I mean, for chrissake, how much does a populist have to do before you stop HATING him and have the decency to PRAISE his accomplishments. And even those who supposedly reject the stalinistic turn the left has taken, like a Glenn Greenwald, and like the Tara and Andrew Potter, lack the decency to praise Donald Trump's accomplishments. Until they do, there will remain an unreality about their thinking. If you can praise obvious accomplishments, then you're reaction to events is...quite simply...warped.
Whew. First reaction? That was a flurry of fast-talking, ADHD, simplistic overgeneralization lacking in depth and coherence. This fellow needs to learn how to focus his thoughts and attention. Having said that, he had a few interesting insights worth noting, but they were really hard to disentangle from the rambling. A bit like watching a child chasing butterflies.
This guest is so weird. He manages to say something correct and something incorrect every second sentence. It's too much to unpack, but just to take one simple example. Covid. He claimed that "Canada did poorly at fighting covid". That's a ridiculous statement!!! The provincial governments, egged on by the Fed, put in place some of the most draconian restrictions in the world. Canada has lower covid stats than nearly all of Europe. All the while he's extolling the virtues of even worst authoritarians! This is ridiculous.
With an IFR under 0.05%, there should have been ZERO restrictions. All protective measures should have been voluntary and focused on the elderly and frail, which were the only target group for c19.
He basically sounds like Justin Trudeau: We're not authoritarian centralising enough! gah!
When Mr. Potter talks of economic stagnation, it would seem no one told him about what a mature economy is: it is defined as an economy that has reached an advanced stage of development, characterized by slow GDP growth, decrease spending on infrastructure, and a relative increase in consumer spending, this would include countries like the United States Canada in several nations in Western Europe.
Here’s an example of technological stagnation since 1970: Laptops, cell phones, digital photography, photovoltaic solar energy, mapping of the human genome, and oh yes, humanity circling Earth. Then he points out, home appliances, as an example of our decline, apparently he’s not aware of planned obsolescence, the damping things were designed to fail. Additionally, he seems unaware of a person’s second-largest purchase, a car, that last twice as long as it did in the 70s. Mr. Potter has a strange idea of what stagnation is!
I often wonder what people think when you’re complaining about regulations. Do they think there’s a magic regulation fairy who pops into the air and decrees regulations? Regulations are usually a response to an occurrence that was not beneficial to society or, to put it another way, someone was misbehaving.
I have no idea how he conceptualizes that social media prevents politicians and corporations from resolving collective problems, does he really think politicians and corporations are taking heed of the insanity taking place in social media? The only thing politicians heed is the top 10%, who corporations employ, and the 1%.
Why would you say the news out of Ukraine is almost too much to bear? Anymore, for instance than the "non-news" out of The Donbass over the past 8 years. You know, where 14,000 civilians were killed from constant shelling by Ukraine military.
I am always heartened when apparently left leaning thinkers recognize how authoritarian the left has become, because for me it is one of the most shocking and massive shifts in American politics in my lifetime. I am shocked to find that groups which I always supported since they seemed to be fighting against an unjust establishment, have now morphed into enforcers for that same establishment---the cheerleader for the sabotage Trump movement literally engineered by the intelligence community, which leftists always DIStrusted, being the most obvious and insane manifestation of the newly developped bankruptcy of the left. But what is missing, in this discussion, is what to DO about this reorientation. Even those leftists who recognize this reorientation seem unable to change THEIR orientation and perhaps...ADMIRE the fact that President Trump wound down the butchery in TWO longstanding wars, strolled in the demilitarized zone with the intractable leader of North Korea, cancelled and renegotiated the disastrous trade treaties which Bernie Sanders railed against in 2016 and promised to cancel and renegotiate, produced the lowest unemployment in HISTORY for various minorities and women. I mean, for chrissake, how much does a populist have to do before you stop HATING him and have the decency to PRAISE his accomplishments. And even those who supposedly reject the stalinistic turn the left has taken, like a Glenn Greenwald, and like the Tara and Andrew Potter, lack the decency to praise Donald Trump's accomplishments. Until they do, there will remain an unreality about their thinking. If you can praise obvious accomplishments, then you're reaction to events is...quite simply...warped.
Dead wrong on covid. The entire "test, isolate, and snuff out covid" was a pipe dream. It never worked anywhere. The only places that "did well" with covid never attempted any of that garbage. Sweden and Florida. And basically anywhere that distributed ivermectin on a large scale. The idea that you can "snuff out" covid with apps and authoritarian nightmare policies such as the ones adopted by Australia is just childish. Ooh Daddy government will save me. I thought this was the kind of thought that he was criticizing in the rest of the interview.
10:30, "the forces of chaos and nihilism... are all on the Right". What really did happen, perhaps easier to see in the US, was the joining of the big corporate forces, big money putting it's weight behind figures like Hillary, where the woke progressives felt assured that they were on the winning side. When government, business and 'rebels' are all on the same side to 'fight the climate' and 'stop hate' perhaps someone is being tricked.
Nihilism, such as the grotesque sculptures thrown up in public spaces, or the sad state of TV are promulgated by government and business weight - they want a downward spiral. If the Right is the people who want to retain the good aspects of the past, I say that the author has some aspect of his analysis completely off.
Why the F would I want to do your legwork you lazy SOB. Your geopolitical horizon likely ends at the top of your TV set glued to the likes of CNN, CBC or some such.
It's interesting for people like me, a professing Christian, to listen to conversations like this; queue the rolling of eyes; fingers down fake "gagging" throat. But it is, none the less.
While they may not profess it, these two people come across as disgruntled humanist. They embrace the thought that things are getting worse each year but they can't see the reason, they think there is an "... inability to resolve the collective action problems that we face ...". Thus the big problem, humans have the innate need to make the simple, complicated. This interview oozes such a need.
So the masses will continue to turn to their fellow human for solutions to the problems their fellow human created; that's what humanist do. Quite sad actually.
Interesting podcast, thank you! I appreciated his insight that the “left” and “right” have switched places on the political spectrum, with the left becoming more rules-based and authoritarian and the right becoming the counterculture rebels. That is a fascinating development that deserves to be explored further. However, his simplistic right/left political dichotomy in relation to the truckers’ protest was, in my opinion and experience, completely off-base. Rather than fuelled by the right, which he argued, a great many people on the left fully supported the truckers’ protest, including myself. As I’ve emphasized before on this platform, the truckers’ protest crossed all political lines, no matter how much people want to label it as right-wing motivated - simply because the issue that was and is being protested is an inherently and deeply “human” issue, which is an individual’s right to choose what they inject into their body without being discriminated against, and segregated and ostracized in society.
There is nothing new here to speak of...a lot of what you hear in this is based on these events that have happened in the past, WW1, The Great Depression, WW2, The Korean War, then Vietnam. Natural disaster such as climate change that been going on for millenium. A lot of what we see today is based on computer modeling which is just another way to control the narrative. We are a society that bows to technology and are becoming dumber & dumber. In this life there is a cycle that we go through time after time the clothing is the different the message the same. All these things are part of the world wide pysche that it will get bad maybe worse and after much turmoil things level out and for a while peace and stability are returned, study the patterns after WW1 &WW2. Climate change is the same thing, floods, storms, and many other natural disasters have come and gone many times and we did survive them. Life is a balancing act and in the final point it will right itself until the next big event comes along to scare and challenge us all, and how we handle it...30
This guest has some good ideas, but he's really lacking in historical knowledge, and pre-historical knowledge.
As for the changes that occurred at the turn of the previous century, he should have a look at the wonderful BBC 4-1h-parts documentary that discusses how our brains have been co-opted by larger forces... of evil... yes they are evil... I'm not a person of faith, I use evil in the sense of harm to humans and the ensemble of nature.
The documentary CENTURY OF SELF describes the same thing as your guest when he describes life having become a casino.
The last century has been a massive social experiment, where all of humanity are just guinea pigs.
The Century of the Self - Part 1: "Happiness Machines" https://youtu.be/DnPmg0R1M04
The Century of the Self - Part 2: "The Engineering of Consent" https://youtu.be/fEsPOt8MG7E
The Century of the Self - Part 3: "There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads; He Must Be Destroyed." https://youtu.be/ub2LB2MaGoM
The Century of the Self - Part 4: "Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering" https://youtu.be/VouaAz5mQAs
"This episode explains how politicians on the left, in both Britain and America, turned to the techniques developed by business to read and fulfil the inner desires of the self.
Both New Labour, under Tony Blair, and the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, used the focus group, which had been invented by psychoanalysts, in order to regain power. They set out to mould their policies to people's inner desires and feelings, just as capitalism had learnt to do with products.
They believed they were creating a new and better form of democracy, one that truly responded to the inner feelings of individual. But what they didn't realise was that the aim of those who had originally created these techniques had not been to liberate the people, but to develop a new way of CONTROLLING them."
I'm not at all impressed with this professor
I am always heartened when apparently left leaning thinkers recognize how authoritarian the left has become, because for me it is one of the most shocking and massive shifts in American politics in my lifetime. I am shocked to find that groups which I always supported since they seemed to be fighting against an unjust establishment, have now morphed into enforcers for that same establishment---the cheerleader for the sabotage Trump movement literally engineered by the intelligence community, which leftists always DIStrusted, being the most obvious and insane manifestation of the newly developped bankruptcy of the left. But what is missing, in this discussion, is what to DO about this reorientation. Even those leftists who recognize this reorientation seem unable to change THEIR orientation and perhaps...ADMIRE the fact that President Trump wound down the butchery in TWO longstanding wars, strolled in the demilitarized zone with the intractable leader of North Korea, cancelled and renegotiated the disastrous trade treaties which Bernie Sanders railed against in 2016 and promised to cancel and renegotiate, produced the lowest unemployment in HISTORY for various minorities and women. I mean, for chrissake, how much does a populist have to do before you stop HATING him and have the decency to PRAISE his accomplishments. And even those who supposedly reject the stalinistic turn the left has taken, like a Glenn Greenwald, and like the Tara and Andrew Potter, lack the decency to praise Donald Trump's accomplishments. Until they do, there will remain an unreality about their thinking. If you can praise obvious accomplishments, then you're reaction to events is...quite simply...warped.
Whew. First reaction? That was a flurry of fast-talking, ADHD, simplistic overgeneralization lacking in depth and coherence. This fellow needs to learn how to focus his thoughts and attention. Having said that, he had a few interesting insights worth noting, but they were really hard to disentangle from the rambling. A bit like watching a child chasing butterflies.
This guest is so weird. He manages to say something correct and something incorrect every second sentence. It's too much to unpack, but just to take one simple example. Covid. He claimed that "Canada did poorly at fighting covid". That's a ridiculous statement!!! The provincial governments, egged on by the Fed, put in place some of the most draconian restrictions in the world. Canada has lower covid stats than nearly all of Europe. All the while he's extolling the virtues of even worst authoritarians! This is ridiculous.
With an IFR under 0.05%, there should have been ZERO restrictions. All protective measures should have been voluntary and focused on the elderly and frail, which were the only target group for c19.
He basically sounds like Justin Trudeau: We're not authoritarian centralising enough! gah!
Yes like and like then like so like . Annoying to listen to.
When Mr. Potter talks of economic stagnation, it would seem no one told him about what a mature economy is: it is defined as an economy that has reached an advanced stage of development, characterized by slow GDP growth, decrease spending on infrastructure, and a relative increase in consumer spending, this would include countries like the United States Canada in several nations in Western Europe.
Here’s an example of technological stagnation since 1970: Laptops, cell phones, digital photography, photovoltaic solar energy, mapping of the human genome, and oh yes, humanity circling Earth. Then he points out, home appliances, as an example of our decline, apparently he’s not aware of planned obsolescence, the damping things were designed to fail. Additionally, he seems unaware of a person’s second-largest purchase, a car, that last twice as long as it did in the 70s. Mr. Potter has a strange idea of what stagnation is!
I often wonder what people think when you’re complaining about regulations. Do they think there’s a magic regulation fairy who pops into the air and decrees regulations? Regulations are usually a response to an occurrence that was not beneficial to society or, to put it another way, someone was misbehaving.
I have no idea how he conceptualizes that social media prevents politicians and corporations from resolving collective problems, does he really think politicians and corporations are taking heed of the insanity taking place in social media? The only thing politicians heed is the top 10%, who corporations employ, and the 1%.
Why would you say the news out of Ukraine is almost too much to bear? Anymore, for instance than the "non-news" out of The Donbass over the past 8 years. You know, where 14,000 civilians were killed from constant shelling by Ukraine military.
I am always heartened when apparently left leaning thinkers recognize how authoritarian the left has become, because for me it is one of the most shocking and massive shifts in American politics in my lifetime. I am shocked to find that groups which I always supported since they seemed to be fighting against an unjust establishment, have now morphed into enforcers for that same establishment---the cheerleader for the sabotage Trump movement literally engineered by the intelligence community, which leftists always DIStrusted, being the most obvious and insane manifestation of the newly developped bankruptcy of the left. But what is missing, in this discussion, is what to DO about this reorientation. Even those leftists who recognize this reorientation seem unable to change THEIR orientation and perhaps...ADMIRE the fact that President Trump wound down the butchery in TWO longstanding wars, strolled in the demilitarized zone with the intractable leader of North Korea, cancelled and renegotiated the disastrous trade treaties which Bernie Sanders railed against in 2016 and promised to cancel and renegotiate, produced the lowest unemployment in HISTORY for various minorities and women. I mean, for chrissake, how much does a populist have to do before you stop HATING him and have the decency to PRAISE his accomplishments. And even those who supposedly reject the stalinistic turn the left has taken, like a Glenn Greenwald, and like the Tara and Andrew Potter, lack the decency to praise Donald Trump's accomplishments. Until they do, there will remain an unreality about their thinking. If you can praise obvious accomplishments, then you're reaction to events is...quite simply...warped.
Korea "famously" did it "really well" cause they've got tracking apps.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/#graph-deaths-daily
Australia did it right early.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-01/multiple-people-escape-howard-springs-quarantine-facility-darwin/100663994
The professor is right about doing things better in the 70s
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iKllBHvpZcE
Dead wrong on covid. The entire "test, isolate, and snuff out covid" was a pipe dream. It never worked anywhere. The only places that "did well" with covid never attempted any of that garbage. Sweden and Florida. And basically anywhere that distributed ivermectin on a large scale. The idea that you can "snuff out" covid with apps and authoritarian nightmare policies such as the ones adopted by Australia is just childish. Ooh Daddy government will save me. I thought this was the kind of thought that he was criticizing in the rest of the interview.
10:30, "the forces of chaos and nihilism... are all on the Right". What really did happen, perhaps easier to see in the US, was the joining of the big corporate forces, big money putting it's weight behind figures like Hillary, where the woke progressives felt assured that they were on the winning side. When government, business and 'rebels' are all on the same side to 'fight the climate' and 'stop hate' perhaps someone is being tricked.
Nihilism, such as the grotesque sculptures thrown up in public spaces, or the sad state of TV are promulgated by government and business weight - they want a downward spiral. If the Right is the people who want to retain the good aspects of the past, I say that the author has some aspect of his analysis completely off.
Why the F would I want to do your legwork you lazy SOB. Your geopolitical horizon likely ends at the top of your TV set glued to the likes of CNN, CBC or some such.