When Does The Left Go Too Far - Part 2

https://youtu.be/voXC0uYS9w8

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[Music] thank you [Music] where the left goes wrong part two we're continuing off right where we left off in part one so go watch part one if you haven't we ended part one emphasizing that one of the biggest blind spots of leftists is that they don't appreciate how attached people are especially conservatives who are the majority of people how attached they are to to their culture to their national identity and so forth and to basically the traditional way of living life this is what we might call culture uh and now this brings us to the next point which is lgbtq plus issues uh the left goes wrong by pushing this too far now of course there's a legitimate Essence behind lgbtq plus which is that we want to be much more tolerant and Kinder towards people who are nonsense let's say who are gay who are trans who are whatever other kind of um you know non-standard identifications that's all well and good however this can be taken too far and what the left doesn't understand about this issue is How Deeply it freaks out people on the right and just not even people on the right but moderates as well it's not just extreme right-wingers who are homophobes and transphobes and anti-lgbtq plus a lot of just moderate Democrats and Republicans are weirded out by this issue and leftists don't seem to understand this again because leftists tend to be so open-minded that they don't have a good understanding that most of mankind is extremely closed-minded and that's not because they're inherently hateful people and they just hate trans people or hate gay people is because they don't understand they don't understand how it's possible that this can be a legitimate way of living or structuring our culture and people in general just very attached to traditions and Norms of the past and these are new issues you know trans people didn't really exist 50 years ago I mean you could say they existed but it's almost as though they didn't exist this is a new phenomenon in our culture and you have to come to grips with it and for a lot of people living in rural parts of the country who are not in Elite universities and very Progressive University college campuses and so forth they've never met a trans person they've never met a gay person they've never been a bi person now maybe some they've met some who were closeted and so forth but for the most part you got to understand this stuff has been suppressed for hundreds of years by our culture so now by kind of opening everything up and opening panzers box this starts to freak people out so even though of course there's no problem being gay or bi or trans or whatever the problem that you have to be sensitive to is how this is going to impact culture at large and if it makes people uncomfortable or fearful or weirded out this is going to influence their politics now of course if you're a leftist you're going to say well Leo but that's that's their problem you know if they're weirded out or creeped out or grossed out by lgbtq you know that's just their bigotry talking again I want to caution you about this sort of justification for your position it's actually something uh deeper than just bigotry that's going on here um you can be uncomfortable with these things that doesn't necessarily make you a bigot it's just because you haven't really been exposed to it yet right like think of it about it this way there was sometime in your life when you didn't know what trans was you didn't know what homosexuality was you had to be exposed to it for the first time and that first time you were exposed to it it kind of like screwed with your mind a bit because you know you're just used to like boys and girls men and women and now they tell you that there's non-binary genders third kinds of genders or you could switch from one gender to another gender this is it's confusing it's legitimately confusing it takes time to wrap your mind around it now if you grew up in that kind of like very Progressive leftist culture that's sort of like UC Berkeley culture then from a young age you were just exposed to that and it's kind of normal to you but for older people who were not raised that way like most of our parents and in fact most people around the whole country and around the world they were not raised with this acceptance of lgbtq they didn't even know what this was 10 years ago this term didn't even exist 10 years ago some people believe it or not this is this is as basic As It Gets some people are just weirded out just by that label lgbtq plus because they don't even know what it means or they think it's some sort of you know hippie construct hippie social construct that isn't grounded in biology or in Practical reality right this is how people think you may think this is backwards but again look if we're building a society and we're trying to evolve our society to Greater Heights of development which is what we're talking about here ultimately you have to be sensitive that we have to bring everyone along in this developmental process and of course many of these people are going to be scared and stubborn it's almost like dragging a stubborn old mule up a up a mountain it doesn't want to go it's resisting so you have to find ways of enticing this mule to come along and not freaking it out and leftists sometimes they make the problem worse because again they lack the understanding and the perspective and the compassion necessary to understand that a large percentage of the population is freaked out by these things and they need a more subtle approach a more subtle introduction you know of course leftists might say well Leo we've tried that approach of subtlety but these people are such bigots and such transphobes and such homophobes that it doesn't work they're like aggressively ignorant and stubborn about their resistance to this they're not open-minded so it doesn't work look I agree with you there is a certain percentage of the population who are just literally bigots and racists and sexists and misogynists and homophobes and transphobes and no amount of gradual approach is going to really work on them but still I would say that's the minority the majority who really is what we're talking about here when we're talking about developing and evolving our politics and our society we're not talking about we can't bring everybody along with us there's always going to be people who are very underdeveloped very stubborn and they're just going to stick to their guns and the only way we're going to move Beyond them is just through the Next Generation being born and the old generation dying of natural causes there's always going to be some degree of that but mostly when we're talking about shaping political opinion and moving Overton windows and so forth we're talking about the people in the middle let's say we have a bell curve most people are in the middle let's say 60 percent of people are in the middle of that bell curve and then we have extremes to both sides so when shaping public opinion it's important that we keep our attention focused on that middle 60 percent shaping their minds rather than the extreme far right which you're never going to change and that's okay and you don't need to change them because if you can capture this 60 in the middle and shift them a little bit towards the left that's enough to evolve society and to win elections and everything right you're never winning an election with even 80 percent of the vote so that's fine um but when you start going extreme with lgbtq issues and non-binary genders and gender fluidity and people identifying as animals uh and other sorts of weird things like when you start to get into sort of like magical um highly unpragmatic um attitude towards sexuality and gender roles and so forth with with dozens and and 50 different pronouns and this sorts of stuff and then you start to get very um attached to those and then you start demanding people call you by those pronouns and they you start to expect culture to accommodate you the majority to accommodate these very Fringe identifications you start to lose that middle 60 percent because to them it just seems like wacky it seems impractical it seems entitled it seems narcissistic that we should carve out special categories for you because you've come up with your own personal gender category that you invented with your friends and you have your own pronouns you know and now we have to change all of our language and all of our customs and all the ways we do business to accommodate you do you see how that comes off as narcissistic it comes off as childish it comes off as immature that's just how it comes off because the reality is this if you lived in some other part of the world some third world country where survival was really really difficult not at a democracy not in a wealthy place not in some um stage green suburb or urban area of America or Europe then this coming up with your own gender pronouns and gender identifications and categories and even the notion of being gay or trans these are luxuries that do not exist in those kinds of cultures yeah of course you might say well Leo even in those cultures there's gay people yeah there's there's gay people and they're still in the closet and so forth of course there's some degree of that but for the most part survival in these kinds of cultures is so difficult that these issues don't even rise to the level of being issues for most people in these kinds of cultures it's only when a culture becomes very wealthy and affluent and you have most of your basic needs taken care of that then you start to play around with pronouns and you start to get all fancy with lgbtq stuff now this might come off as offensive to those of you who are part of the lgbtq community you might say no Leo you know lgbtq this is not a luxury this is something very core and fundamental to who I am this is not some sort of luxury don't treat it as luxury but the reality is just look at the history the history of societies is that this stuff is a luxury these issues have only really come about uh to the Forefront in the last 50 years precisely because Society has evolved to the point where these luxuries can be afforded if you're living in Saudi Arabia you don't have this kind of luxury you have to worry about much more fundamental survival issues and this is something that left us in progress progressives don't really appreciate deeply enough it is kind of a sense of entitlement actually that you have that you're able to do all sorts of political activism on behalf of lgbtq in uh in Pratt in previous generations of society survival was so difficult that you didn't have this kind of privilege you just had to pick a gender the one you were born with Go With It Go with the norms have a family raise a traditional family do the traditional stuff this is how Humanity has survived for the majority of human civilization now that's not an excuse it doesn't mean we have to always be like that forever but also you have to as a leftist understand that these are new fairly radical ideas that is it's going to take time for them to disseminate through our culture and there's going to be resistance to it and fear and discomfort with it there's also some other problems with lgbtq uh one of the problems is that as you're creating space for these alternative modes of identifying an alternative sexualities this does encroach and undermine some of the traditional forms of sexuality and masculine feminine polarity that has been the engine that dropped that drove human civilization and uh you know family structures for thousands of years it is the case that in modern times men and women are not taught very well how to be masculine how to be feminine it's almost like these are being neglected for the sake uh I mean they're just being neglected and sort of the hot button popular issues are lgbtq issues when really the majority of mankind identifies as man or woman masculine or feminine and that's what they're most comfortable with so maybe 95 percent fall into that category maybe if you want to be very generous in the lgbtq folk you could say 90 percent fall into the traditional masculine feminine polarity category so that's 90 of your population right there that's what you should be most concerned about that's not a mistake to be concerned mostly about that and I would say that in the last 50 years as a society as a culture we've done a bad job of teaching men how to be masculine and teaching women how to be feminine uh and there is some truth the fact that with the rise of feminism well feminism has many good qualities to it um part of the problem with feminism is that the equalization of men and women that has happened in the last 50 years has has led to problems with men learning how to be masculine and women how to be feminine it creates sort of a confusion there and it creates a sort of a blurring of the lines now you might say well Leo these lines were artificial to begin with they were social constructs to a certain degree they were artificial but to an important degree they were not merely artificial there are legitimate and important biological differences between men and women between their bodies between how hormones affect them between their physical strength between things that men are good at and weak at and then what women are good at and weak at it's not that men or women are better one or the other it's that there are trade-offs and there are pros and cons to being a man into being a woman or to being masculine to being feminine and lately these trade-offs have been denied in certain parts of progressive circles and leftist circles uh have been questioned and this has created confusion uh which contributes to the sort of epidemic we have nowadays of you know a lot of men these days struggle to get laid the whole insult phenomena um a lot of men struggle to find their masculine core and a lot of women also struggle with femininity as well and then you know women are hurt by this too because most women are attracted to masculine men so when there's a shortage of masculine men then women suffer from this then women are not getting the best mates and partners that they could be getting as well and they're not satisfied either so um while of course the traditional masculine feminine gender roles should not be exclusive there needs to be room for lgbtq stuff and for Alternatives you know in the end your sexuality you choose your own sexuality however you want but also when we're talking about politics we're talking about how to construct Society for the benefit of the majority of people the majority of people when it comes to gender and sexuality are heterosexual and traditional in this respect and so not appreciating this creates problems when you let when you leave men behind and you leave women behind and they're not able to learn how to be proper men and women in the way that they want right it's not that we're forcing them it's that they want it the problem is is that we're not teaching them how to do it very effectively these days and so um because in the past there were stronger role models and today there's more of like leeway it's like you can be gay you can be bi you can be trans you can be Q you can be something else this does create confusion for people and I don't think that saying that makes you a transphobe or a homophobe this is again one of those areas where leftists go too far in straw Manning and demonizing anybody who is Raising any questions on this issue I want you as a leftist to admit that it is possible to have legitimate opposition and criticisms of the lgbtq community now granted there are illegitimate criticisms there is legitimate bigotry and hatred and just pure ignorance especially on behalf of many far right Wingers that does exist but just because that exists do not make the mistake of thinking that that is that all criticism and opposition to lgbtq stuff and all concerns raised about it fall into that category for example not all opposition to trans issues is transphobia I talked about this a little bit in part one where we talked about the Joe Rogan example and how Joe Rogan is often labeled as a transphobe by leftists and progressives when in fact I think that an objective analysis of his position is not that he's a trans vote he's not afraid of trans people he doesn't hate trans people it's that he has certain positions when it comes to trans people in sports and those are some legitimate issues you can have legitimate concerns about inequality in sports when it comes to you know trans men and women and so forth and uh that doesn't negate trans rights that doesn't negate your right to be trans or that doesn't mean that it's wrong to be trans it just means you you know there's nuances here this is a nuanced issue there's also I think uh legitimate concerns about how we treat the transitioning of kids and teens uh as a culture this is also something that Joe Rogan gets hung up on a lot and a lot of right-wingers but not right Wingers but even a lot of moderates I think get hung up on this when you start talking about taking a a 12 year old kid or a 14 year old kid or a 16 year old kid and putting them on puberty blockers hormones testosterone estrogen or you know in the most extreme cases when you start talking about doing surgery now granted that a lot of right Wingers will over exaggerate some of the dangers of this uh the reality is that surgery like genital surgery is not done almost ever on kids that are that young um but even so even putting somebody that young on on hormones or puberty blockers this can create problems and it's okay to be concerned about that and to raise concerns about whether that's right or whether that's wrong or asking questions about like at what age is it appropriate it's also okay to to worry about what this will do um you know to kids because there's a factor let's call it social Contagion that I think many leftists um don't take seriously enough by the way I have an episode called um is gender a social construct where I talk about how gender is a social construct in many ways however just because gender is a social construct does not mean that you can willy-nilly invent whatever whatever other kind of social construct you want to replace it and that things will go great gender is in a sense of social construct however it's been a social construct that has also aligned with our biology and also it has stood the test of time for thousands of years it's worked so you should think twice about going in there and screwing around with this kind of stuff and just inventing your own social constructs right just because something is a social construct does not make it good does not make it healthy does not mean you're going to be happy with it there are a lot of toxic social constructs and then there's also healthy and workable practical social constructs so I could start to identify myself as a unicorn I could do that and in a certain sense you know what's the difference between identifying as a unicorn versus identifying as a Russian I could identify as a Russian because I'm Russian um uh they're both social constructs being Russian is a social construct being an American is a social construct America itself is a social construct right but not all social constructs are created equal some are more practical and realistic than others so while I could identify as a unicorn it's also kind of silly and frivolous for me to identify myself as a unicorn um take that into account many of the social constructs that we have come to us through a long chain of evolutionary processes and trial and error and nobody just sat down and invented them on the couch they were invented gradually slowly over hundreds and thousands of years because that's what worked and so when you start to Tinker with that you might create something awful and so this is a concern with trans stuff now studies show that for the majority of trans people when they do hormone blockers and so forth and they do the transition that they're happy with the end result studies seem to show that however the research on this is still pretty young we don't have a good track record of lots of people transitioning and there's different ways you can go about it and so you have to worry about people who do go through the transition process and then end up regretting it later some percentage that will happen to now I don't know what that percentage is is it five percent ten percent twenty percent fifty percent I don't know studies seem to show that like over 80 percent are satisfied but still that might leave 10 or 20 percent that are not satisfied or that regretted and that is a problem and it's legitimate to be concerned about that it's one thing for somebody to transition when they're 30 years old it's another thing for them to transition when they're 14 years old at 14 years old the average 14 year old is a [ __ ] idiot who is just doing what all their friends are doing easily brainwashed with groupthink with propaganda with ideology within their Progressive bubble that they're growing up in and so this is what I was saying by the this notion of social Contagion there is some element you have to admit as a leftist I want you to admit that there is some element to the lgbtq phenomenon that is pure group think and social contagion now what percentage I don't know this would require some serious research that I don't think has really been done yet so what I'm saying here is that let's say that 80 percent of all lgbtq folk who identify that way and our that sexual orientation are that way because that's legitimately what what is right for them it feels good for them it's appropriate for them and that's great there's no problem there but then what I'm saying is that there's maybe 20 let's say who are doing it because they're getting sucked into it because others around them are doing it and because it's considered unique it makes you feel unique it gives you a unique sense of worth and identity it makes you feel special it makes you feel part of some community these are all very powerful attractors that influence the human psyche you might say well Leo but why would anybody go out of their way to join lgbtq plus when in fact they're not that way and they're just straight or whatever why would they why would they do that because after all you know historically lgbtq plus people have been bullied and insulted and hated and even killed and physically abused and raped and all the sorts of awful stuff why would anybody choose to do that but you see it's much more subtle than that what you have to understand is that even though all that might be true um first of all that's rapidly changing that's rapidly improving it's not as bad as it used to be so the stigma around lgbtq plus has been largely removed these days and that's precisely part of the problem because when you remove all the stigma of it then see now it's like you're joining this special community that makes you feel unique and gives you a sense of purpose and camaraderie and maybe a bunch of your friends are part of that Community you want to be part of that Community too at that age you're not thinking clearly most people aren't thinking clearly even at 30 years old let alone at 14. you know at 14 your friend gets a piercing or a tattoo you want a piercing or a tattoo and you're gonna act like you really like that piercing and tattoo after you get it even though that was wrong for you it didn't authentically come from you it came from the group think that you were a part of the cultural bubble the subculture bubble that you're growing up in see so don't be so naive as to think that this is not possible and that this does not exist within lgbtq plus it does exist the only question is to what percentage you might say it's one percent or ten percent or thirty percent I don't know what it is but whatever percent it is it is valid to ask what percent is it it's valid to do science and research into that because we don't know and it would be valuable for us to know because if it's 30 that's a significant problem that means 30 are just doing this out of Conformity and not true to their authentic selves and then they're going to regret it later or it's going to screw up uh their capacity to be happy or to have a marriage or to have the intimate relationship that they want or they're going to suffer from depression or other kinds of mental disorders and dysfunctions simply because uh their mind becomes very confused about what to do what's right what's going to give them acceptance and love in certain subcultures a kid or a teen might feel like they're going to get more love if they join lgbtq plus than if they don't the human mind loves to feel special there's also a certain appeal to playing a victim role so even though you might say well but lgbtq folk they get victimized more so who would want to deliberately become a victim well if you think that you don't understand the trickeries of the human psyche the human psyche loves to play victim because it makes it feel special and unique and it gives it all sorts of excuses uh for not growing up and not maturing and not taking on difficult challenges and responsibilities so there is a sort of appeal to being a victim now am I saying that the majority of LGBT btq folk are that way because they just like being victims no of course not that's silly I'm not saying that so I'm making some nuanced points here and just be careful because even the fact that I'm making these points might already in some circles cast me as a transphobe or as a homophobe or as a right winger or as a bigot but that's not that's obviously not what I'm suggesting here I'm trying to raise uh legitimate concerns now we can argue to what degree these these concerns are legitimate and how prevalent they are but uh but asking these questions you should not attack people or demonize people for asking these questions these are legitimate questions and issues to be asking and so we need to allow space for that in our political discourse and so leftists the most extreme leftists go wrong here and they make this mistake where they demonize anybody who then starts to question this kind of stuff and the reason they do that is because actually it's threatening to their identities of course see because we when we start asking deep questions about lgbtq plus Folk um you know their lives are difficult enough as it is if you're if you're a genuine honest trans person or gay person I get it your life is more difficult than it is for the average guy or girl your life is already difficult and then when we start asking these philosophical questions about like well are you authentically gay or were you or is it some sort of social contagion or are you authentically trans or did you just do it because your friends were doing it or whatever like when we start asking these questions it can come off as insulting to you it's like Leo you're adding insult on top of injury when when you do this when you allow for all this kind of questioning because I can then I can never settle into my identity right because these people they suffer from not having a concrete identity their identity is too fluid and this leads to depression all sorts of you know suicidal thoughts and so forth because fundamentally you don't know who you are that's confusing but hey look I mean you've sort of taken that burden on yourself when you're talking about gender fluidity and you're opening yourself up to just not being a man or a woman or just being straight then you're opening yourself up to all sorts of weird variations and yes this is going to cause more confusion within you it's also going to come cause more confusion within your community and society and culture and if you're gonna open that can of worms then that's going to open all sorts of interesting and perhaps threatening philosophical questions and political questions like how do we what do we do about bathrooms um what do we do about um Sports competitions what do we do about dressing rooms what do we do about other things like this like these are questions that now if we're going to open that can worms fine but then we have to all as a society have a conversation about what we're going to do and what's appropriate what's not appropriate what's comfortable what's uncomfortable what's weird what's not weird and I feel to in a certain sense we have not had this conversation in a certain sense these trans issues have kind of been thrust upon the majority of culture and Society after they've kind of already been deliberated in Elite universities it's like the folks and academics and universities have sort of like thought through some of this stuff they've come to their conclusions and now that they've reached their conclusions they just want to push all those conclusions onto the rest of society but the rest of society has not gone through that it's really a philosophical process of asking what is a man what is a woman these are not obvious questions and for the majority of people their notion of what is a man and what is a woman and what is sex these are just handed down through tradition through culture they don't think deeply about these questions no child has ever deeply wondered what does it mean to be a boy or a girl no and we as a society have really not addressed these issues everyone seems to have their own opinion about it but then there needs to be a dialogue where we come to some kind of consensus that hasn't really happened what we had is we've had sort of like culture wars which is not the same thing as dialogue so that was all the point of lgbtq stuff let's move on the next point where leftists go wrong is not appreciating that minorities and immigrants from third world countries are actually fairly conservative Hispanics and blacks you might think they're very liberal actually they tend to be fairly conservative why is that because their cultures tend to be fairly conservative they tend to be rather religious traditional cultures Black Culture in the south is pretty conservative and very religious that's where tradition it comes from when uh Spanish-speaking people come up from the south into America to cross the border you know whether they're from Mexico or Guatemala or Honduras or wherever um you know many of these sort of like refugees people that are fleeing gang violence and um drug Warlords and gangs and stuff like that um they come from like traditional catholic cultures they're not pro-abortion they're not pro-socialist or Marxist they don't have very Progressive ideas about gender roles they're not lgbtq open uh they're pretty conservative this is why for example in the 2020 uh primary democratic election uh Bernie Sanders did not win the presidency you know the nomination the Democratic nomination for presidency and Joe Biden beat him substantially because for a while it seemed like Bernie Sanders would win because the first few primaries held in the North in the Northeast in the Boston area those first few primaries New Hampshire and so forth uh Bernie Sanders does really well over there because it's mostly like very Progressive white liberals uh but then and you know Bernie Sanders did really well in Nevada my state he did the best in Nevada actually um because it's sort of a West Coast very liberal white liberal State as well um although we have we have quite a few minorities here as well but anyways but then when it came to the South when it came to the Carolinas and to the um and to all of the South Joe Biden beat him handily and many progressives were shocked by this how is this possible but this should not be shocking because actually black voters in the South are going to vote for relatively conservative Democrats not for socialists and marxists and this is an oversight that I see many on the left have and then they they even go so far as to blame the DNC or Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden for stealing it from from Bernie Sanders no in 2020 nobody stole it from Bernie Sanders Bernie Sanders lost simply because there are not that many progressives and far right leftists in this country the majority of Democrats are rather moderate and conservative Democrats and this is not acknowledged by many progressives they're in denial about this progressives want to paint the picture that the majority of the country is Progressive this is absolutely false we've touched upon this I actually explained um I've explained why that's wrong in part one remember where I was talking about how they progressives misuse opinion polls and policy polls to portray most of the country as Progressive but when you're talking about whether most the country is Progressive or conservative what you have to take into account is not the policy it doesn't matter what the policies are you take a look at their spiral stage of development and you take a look at their culture and their values what culture do they subscribe to the culture issues that's what really matters people vote on culture not on policy people vote based on spiral stage and Vibe not on policy so by those metrics the majority of the country is fairly conservative either outright right wing or sort of like Centrist Democrat or even conservative Democrat the sort of um Joe manchin Democrat now progressives love to demonize people like Joe manchin as if he shouldn't exist and as if all democrats should just be like AOC this is preposterous completely Preposterous Joe manchin is in a deeply conservative state he's in West Virginia which is a very red State the fact that we even have a Democrat from a Democratic senator from a red state that can win elections consistently as he has a godsend because you could imagine that really uh the senator from West Virginia should be very conservative Republican not a Democrat at all and the idea that that a progressive can win in West Virginia is preposterous this has actually been tried and it failed it doesn't work but progressives have fooled themselves into thinking that a progressive can win in West Virginia the problem isn't that um uh you know Joe manchin is not conservative enough the problem is that we need someone to replace him who's way more Progressive and then Joe uh you know West Virginians will go for that and vote for him no that's not going to happen and this is not just true in West Virginia but many purple States in purple States progressives like AOC cannot win this is something that progressives are in denial about and you have to be careful as the progressive assuming that you have the Latino Vote or the black vote locked in that's not the case at all and in fact if you look at the polling for Trump he got a lot of success with Latinos why is that because a lot of them are coming from very traditional cultures this is actually a mistake that uh right Wingers make is Right Wingers tend to assume that you know if Hispanics are coming over the Border all these Hispanics are going to vote Democrat that's actually not true a lot of these Hispanics are very traditionally minded they're anti-socialist they're anti-marxist they're anti-lgbtq and they're gonna vote for conservatives in many cases as long as you don't offend them by calling them rapists and other sorts of you know racist um things like that as long as the the right-wing party is not overly racist and bigoted towards Hispanics Hispanics will gladly vote for conservatives which brings us to the next problem with leftists this is a very huge problem perhaps one of the biggest problems that I see is that leftists love to demonize neo-liberals and centrists they love to demonize anybody who's moderate and to cast them as right Wingers in the progressives mind the way they see politics is like there's the progressives who are the good guys and then there's the the radical right-winger Mega people who are the you know the evil guys and then there's the people in the middle like the mainstream news um the CNN and MSNBC anchors and uh and and the Never Trumper um Republicans and conservatives in the like the Joe manchin types and all of these they're just helping the right Wingers they're just enabling the right Wingers and that they are really as bad as the right Wingers are this creates a sort of a polarization where in the progressives mind either you're a progressive or you're a bad guy because you're enabling bad guys this is uh this is way overly simplistic and it's not the reality of the situation the reality of the situation is that the majority of the population is moderate and progressivism this is a fringe movement now there are a lot of good ideas within progressivism but you have to understand that it's going to take time it's going to take decades for those ideas to defuse themselves into the larger culture and that's going to take a culture War that you're gonna have to fight and that moderates are not the bad guys moderates are actually the the people who prevent Society from breaking out into a total culture War and even a Civil War what prevents that is moderates and the trick that extremists on both sides play both the right extremists and the left extremists is that when you're an extremist part of what it means to be an extremist is that you believe that anyone who's a moderate is an enemy this is what makes your extremism extra extreme you're not just an extremist and you say well yeah then there's the moderates and we can make peace with the moderates and live heavily happily ever after it's like no the extremist believes that the moderates are actually being extreme in their moderation and that they for therefore they're even more dangerous than the extremists that's how an extremist thinks whether on the left or the right um this is a problem because the the thing that keeps Society stable is the moderates in the middle the 60 of moderates and if all we had were just the extremist progressives society would spiral out of control this is something that leftists don't like to admit to themselves because they feel so justified in their extremism now look don't get me wrong I am not saying that everything needs to be split down the middle and that we need to have moderation for the sake of moderation I'm not saying that that's a mistake so it is not the case that when a right-winger argues against climate change and a progressive argues for climate change that we just need to take that and cut that issue down the middle and just do the moderate Middle Road solution no that's not what I'm saying that would be a mistake nevertheless there is wisdom in moderation this wisdom is lost on many leftists I want you to acknowledge that if you're a leftist a lot of leftists Levy strong criticism against the moderates and centrists in fact even stronger criticisms than they do against the right which is rather perverse some progressives love to criticize centrists more than they do Maga this is very problematic because it then prevents are political discourse from being calm and civil it's like it it Riles everybody up it polarizes everything you see and in this polarized environment you cannot build a consensus and you actually cannot pass legislation and govern anything the problem with extremists on both sides that they refuse to compromise and they refuse to understand the importance of compromise in forming any kind of government you're never going to get everything you want when running a government that is governing 300 million people you're never going to get everything you want it's never going to be ideal it's never going to be Progressive enough for you it's never going to be compassionate enough for you it's never going to be conscious enough for you you're always going to have to compromise with traditionally minded people yes even with racists and bigots you have to compromise with them you're gonna have to compromise with homophobes and transphobes you're going to have to compromise with people who live in rural areas you're gonna have to compromise with uh with poor people and with rich people that's the challenge of government and extremists get into their mind that compromise is bad because compromise is selling out to the devil to the enemy you know why should we compromise with terrorists and evil people and progressives of course tend to tend to demonize uh the extreme right wing to the point where they see them as evil of course the right wing does the same thing to the to the far left but in this situation you can't get anything done because both sides have demonized each other both sides think they're evil and really the only ones at that point who can get stuff done are the moderates but the extremists now demonize the moderates such that the moderates can't even get anything done right so the role that extremists play is that they they polarize the rest of the moderates towards their side that's what they're trying to do the extreme right wing is trying to pull people from the moderate sixty percent into their camp and the extreme left wing is trying to do the same thing and the more that happens the left there's left of the moderates the more extremists you have on both sides and then you turn you create a civil war in the worst case scenario that's what's been happening over the last 10 years now the leftists will say well Leo but the right Wingers are worse at this you're making it sound like we're both extremists in the same way but actually the right Wingers are more extreme and their extremism is more dangerous than our extremism uh that's a debatable point as to you know who uh which extremism is more dangerous now personally I think that the right-wing extremism is more dangerous than left-wing extremism um but still that doesn't mean that you're completely innocent and that doesn't mean that you don't have a responsibility for the polarization that is happening see because the leftist extremists justify extremists their extremism to themselves by saying that well but the right wing has been going completely crazy in the last 10 years they've just become way way way extreme they've been trying to shift the Overton window to the right now and they've been successful at it so we need to counterbalance that and compensate by becoming even more extreme in our leftism in order to shift the Overton window to the left and it turns into this tug of war what I want to suggest to you is that there's a mistake that's going on here you can see this situation from a higher elevation perspective and here is really something that is that is sneaky that left us to a very sneaky mistake that I want to call out which is that since leftists love to demonize moderates and centrists as soon as somebody comes along that tries to communicate to a leftist there are blind spots and the problems with their radicalism and extremism and um tries to show them a tier two a spiral Dynamics tier two way of looking at politics something like conscious politics or stage yellow politics they they start to hear that and say ah okay I know I know what this is this is just another Centrist another moderate talking to me Leo is just a moderate he's just like the guys on CNN he just wants to take both sides and split it down the middle that's all that Leo's trying to do with these episodes so there's nothing new here you're wrong I am not communicating with you as a Centrist does on CNN it might seem that way to you because I'm calling you out for being too extreme so in your mind as a leftist you'll say well if he's calling me out for being too extreme that means the only alternative is that I have to become a Centrist and a moderate like on CNN and I don't like that therefore uh Leo is just trying to to turn me into a Centrist like him no I'd like you to open your mind to a third possibility there is a possibility that very few people in politics have actualized which is being able to see politics from a tier two spiral Dynamic stage yellow perspective I don't have time to elaborate upon what that means exactly go watch my spiral Dynamic stage yellow episode for more on that also go watch my four-part series called conscious politics part one two three four where I explain that kind of perspective but if you watch that series on conscious politics you'll see that What I Call Conscious politics is not centrism it does not mean you have to be a moderate Democrat it does not mean you have to give up your most important Progressive ideals and it is not the kind of stuff that's happening on CNN it's a totally new way of looking at politics I call it conscious politics it's a non-ideological non-partisan way of looking at politics but it's also not just your standard CNN type of centrism which is afraid to call out the extreme right I have no problem calling out the far right for its stupidities and its it's dangerous and I've done that in the past so clearly I'm not just trying to be moderate here I've used actually very extreme language in criticizing the Maga movement and conservatives and so forth but what I want you to see is that you can reach such a high level of cognitive moral and Spiritual Development the development of your psyche that you literally transcend this notion of right versus left versus Center this whole Spectrum with all the Overton windows and all this the whole the entire gamut of political discourse that happens on YouTube and throughout mainstream and non-mainstream media which includes the far right which includes the moderate right which includes the moderate left and includes the far left that this whole Spectrum there's something beyond all that you can go meta to all of that I think the problem though is that when I try to introduce this idea to many progressives and and far leftists uh they dismissed the idea by saying oh well Leo's just yeah Leo is saying that but actually what he's really trying to trick me into doing is just becoming a moderate and a Centrist and I don't like that but that's not what I'm suggesting you do I'm suggesting a totally new way of looking at politics and government a much more intelligent more nuanced more complex way a much less biased way of going about it but that would require that you recognize that progressivism you're far left [Music] um politics is actually group think and ideology you're not immune to ideology ideology exists on the right it also exists on the left now it's worse on the right but it's still pretty bad on the left so you're not immune to that really the enemy here is not the right our enemy here is unconsciousness our enemy here is lack of development and our enemy here is ideology if it's ideology it's going to create problems whether it's right ideology or left ideology so make sure that you don't dismiss what I'm saying here as just more neoliberalism or what's called triangulation or Third Way politics so you might say oh well Leo you're just talking about Third Way politics and triangulation from the Clinton era no that's not what I'm talking about you might say I'm talking about a fourth way if the Clinton if Clinton's politics were Third Way then there's a fourth way just open your mind to a completely different political paradigm that's neither left nor right nor Centrist something totally new so anyways um I think that leftists air when they over demonize mainstream media like CNN and MSNBC I see a lot of this on Progressive YouTube Progressive YouTubers love to [ __ ] on CNN and MSNBC uh they think they're being intelligent and wise when they do this they're actually not they're being foolish now does this mean that I endorse all of CNN and MSNBC no of course not there's problems with CNN and MSNBC but progressives tend to not understand what the problems are and where the problems come from the problems with CNN and MSNBC come from Simply the fact that these channels have to appeal to the widest possible audiences and to the lowest possible common denominator which means that they can't take strong Progressive positions not because they're corrupt or whatever else it's simply because their whole business model and their project is to present news to the majority of Americans that's their business model and when you're doing that you can't come off as extremely Progressive because you're going to alienate half the country now you might as a progressor you might say well that's wrong but then again if CNN and MSNBC did become very Progressive as you want them to be who would deliver just factual news who's going to do that see the problem with progressives is that progressives want CNN and MSNBC to be very activist they don't want them to just to report factual news they want CNN MSNBC to actually take positions Progressive positions now I totally understand why you want CNN and MSNBC to take strong Progressive positions but that's not the business they're in they're in the business of delivering factual news they're in the business of reporting you know if a bomb blows up they're in the business of reporting that if a war starts they're in the business of reporting that in an objective way now you might say well but they're not objective well look no one is ever objective do you think the progressives are objective progressives are not objective in fact uh alternative media is less objective than mainstream media just because mainstream media does not cater to your biases does not mean that they're less objective when it comes to factual reporting CNN and MSNBC are about as objective as you can get do they make mistakes sometimes sure do they have biases of course there are capitalistic biases there are biases of the stage of development that CNN administrators managers and hosts are at the majority of people working at CNN and MSNBC are spironamic stage orange slash green that's going to be their bias because that's that's their world view you can't avoid that your bias will always be the stage of development that you're at because you don't know any better they don't know any better also they're running you know multi-billion dollar businesses so they're influenced by Wall Street they're influenced by considerations of their stock price their influenced by advertisers of course but you know what your mainstream your alternative um your alternative sort of stream YouTube Progressive pundits and commentators are also they're not objective they're also biased um they're also influenced by advertising and sponsorships and other things like that so be careful when the Pod is cutting the calling the kettle black you have to be extremely careful when you're calling somebody out for being biased within politics because the majority of the time when that is happening actually you're just projecting your own bias onto them what you really mean when you say somebody is biased in politics is you mean they don't have my biases that's what you're criticizing them for you don't really care if they're objective or not as a progressive you don't care about objectivity what you care about is Progressive bias that's what you care about there's also demonization of people like Jordan Peterson Sam Harris Joe Rogan and others of this ilk who get demonized by progressives as being far right Wingers when in fact they're not they're actually pretty moderate some of their positions can be a bit wacky some of their positions can be right wing but for the most part if you think Jordan Peterson Sam Harris and Joe Rogan and like Brett Weinstein and others like this these intellectual dark web people that they are far right wing or even fascists or islamophobes or homophobes you're not understanding these people these are sophisticated thinkers they're pretty open-minded they can hold a pretty decent intellectual conversation they're generally intellectually honest people now do they have positions that I personally disagree with of course there are many positions that Jordan Peterson holds that I find silly and absurd and even abhorrent uh but as far as the right wing goes Jordan Peterson is actually one of the right Wingers who is most intellectually honest you can actually have an intellectually honest conversation with him that doesn't mean he's going to agree with you or you're going to agree with him but he's one of the more decent conservatives even though there's a lot of stuff with him that I disagree on likewise with Sam Harris Sam Harris is even better than Jordan Peterson um he's he's very reasonable he's very open-minded you can have some really good conversations with Sam Harris um now does he have some silly ideas of course he does almost everybody in this field has some silly ideas same with Joe Rogan uh lately Joe Rogan has been going more right wing and there's a lot of stuff he says that I disagree with but for the most part you can have a decent intellectual conversation with Joe Rogan he's going to be pretty open-minded you can present arguments to him and he's going to listen to you that's what we ultimately want from our political discussions it's just people we can have honest dialogue with who do not resort to name calling and smearing you and um character assassinating you and just being rapidly ideological I don't consider any of these people to be rapidly ideological now is their mind infected with certain ideologies yes of course as pretty much as everybody else in this field but these are not these sort of like moronic Maga people that you can't have a reasonable conversation with right these people are willing to look at evidence these people are are willing to look at research they're willing to change their mind and that's good stuff so don't demonize these people there's a whole cottage industry of progressive YouTube where um all they do is they just [ __ ] on Jordan Peterson Sam Harris Joe Rogan Brett Weinstein and others like that I think that this is where the left and progressives are the weakest when they do this first of all they don't accurately represent the true positions of Peter of people like Jordan Peterson Sam Harris and Joe Rogan they present straw man positions and this does a disservice to the left it makes the left intellectually dishonest and stupid you want to be open to genuinely considering the perspectives of people like Jordan Peterson Sam Harris Joe Rogan and others if you want to really evolve Beyond stage green which is what we're trying to do here and a lot of the characteristics that these people exhibit such as Jordan Peterson Sam Harris Joe Rogan they do exhibit a lot of staged yellow qualities they're not strict partisans does that mean they're solid stage yellow of course not they have a lot of regressive elements and Shadow elements that keep them stuck in stage orange stage blue but they're showing signs of yellow and you should take notice of that and don't demonize them for that see the the key mistake that stage green makes is it demonizes stage yellow because stage yellow can remind stage green too much of stage Orange I've talked about that in my spiral Dynamics series go check that out another mistake that left a snake is not acknowledging that many Republicans and conservatives are actually moderate and reasonable I've noticed this trend especially in the last four years progressives act as though all Republicans have lost their minds as though all Republicans are Mega Republicans this is not true there are plenty of good decent reasonable moderate Republicans a lot of them are found on CNN and MSNBC I'm talking about people like David from Joe Scarborough Joe Walsh Liz Cheney now these are conservative people and a lot of their positions and policies I disagree with however I am able to distinguish between them these so-called never trumpers uh like these are actually the true conservatives versus the Maga people the Maga people are completely Shameless they have no integrity they have no interest in facts or reason or truth whereas these moderate Republicans and conservatives they do they do have integrity and I give them a lot of credit for that because it's not easy to have that kind of Integrity when the majority of your party has lost its mind and gone down the road of Maga and other sorts of conspiracy theories and far-right extremism and Fascism and racism and so forth these people didn't do that and they don't get enough credit for it from progressives in fact progressives love to demonize these people by saying that well Leo you know yeah it seems like they're very different from the right-wing mag of people but actually you know if you know if if we elected a more moderate Republican president like a let's say somebody who's not as crazy as as Donald Trump let's say we we elect a uh Ron DeSantis type or a uh you know Marco Rubio or something like that you know we like one of these people who's a bit more moderate it's like they would still pass all the same policies As Trump therefore they're as bad as Trump like if Liz Cheney was president Liz Cheney even though she opposes Maga and Trump and she wants to see him like impeached and stuff like that and kicked out of office if Liz Cheney was President she voted 90 percent of her voting record is identical to Trump's so she supports most of Trump's policies therefore what's the difference between Trump and Liz Cheney it's just a matter of like uh surface level you know decorum and so progressives will criticize these moderate Republicans as as just kind of like putting on the decorum of being kind of like nice and not as vile as Donald Trump but the reality is that their policies are as bad as Trump's now there's some truth to that however you're not appreciating the importance of what what you dismiss as decorum it's not merely decorum it's a lot more than just decorum it's Integrity it's character it's truth it's honesty it's factuality it's being aware of One's Own biases and calling them out it's um it's being able to call out your side when it goes too extreme that's not merely decorum that's extremely necessary to have healthy politics now progressors will say well Leo even if there are a few of these people who are supposedly the good Republicans um there's so few of them that it's pointless to even talk about them because there's like one percent of them and the other 99 are Maga no you're wrong there's actually a lot more of these moderate conservative Republicans these decent Republicans with integrity the key there is integrity you want a conservative with Integrity I can respect a conservative with Integrity what I can't respect is conservative without Integrity which is what Maga has become but um there are far more than just one or two or even five or ten percent of conservatives with Integrity there are a lot more and I think one of the biggest um not talked about failures in media that has happened over the last five or six years since Trump came to power is the under emphasis of how many conservatives and Republicans there are who are moderate and reasonable it's just that they don't get the same press you see when Trump is out there saying ridiculous obnoxious things and so are his followers that sucks up all the oxygen in the room all the attention goes on The Crazies this creates a sort of a reality Distortion field where you start to think that the entire Republican party has lost its [ __ ] mind that's actually not true a lot of decent moderate Republicans are voting for Trump not because they like Trump not because they don't see the problems with Trump it's because they're just too afraid of extremist leftism they're too afraid of Marxism and weird trans issues that creeped them out they're too afraid with that stuff uh so they've and they're also just fiscally conservative you know they want tax cuts and so forth that they just vote Republican now you might say well Leo if they do that then they have no integrity uh not quite you know it's real it's a relative matter if you see because what happens is that you have to understand is that especially in the last five years the stuff that comes into mainstream Consciousness and makes the news is all the most radical sensationalist dramatic stuff it's the it's the terrorism activity it's the bomb explosions all that but it's also the most extreme and wacky crazy right-wing ideas and it's also the most extreme crazy wacky left-wing ideas both get characterized and demonized and turn into straw man right so on the right it's this idea of fascism and so forth that gets turned up to 11 as the ultimate threat and on the left uh what becomes the threat is this sort of like um hair brained Marxist Revolution stuff it's like we're gonna ditch capitalism and just go pure Marxism many moderates when they hear a demonized version of leftism what they see is Soviet communism Soviet Marxism and of course they don't want that so they vote for someone like Trump the right-wing ecosystem like Fox News oan and Alex Jones and other alternative right-wing news they have done such a good job at demonizing the far left that it has scared the bejesus out of many in the center and there are so many in the center who are just quiet who don't create a lot of drama who aren't very passionate and who are not willing to Slit anyone's throat over their political ideas and because of that they don't make the news and because of that you don't hear their voices and because of that all you hear are the loudest voices on the far right and the loudest voices on the far left and then you get a distorted picture of our political situation I think that despite all the polarization that we've had over the last five years in our politics the majority of Americans are still relatively moderate and reasonable and they are not as polarized as we think when we look at the news the news accentuates the drama because that's what creates clicks and Views and that's not just done by CNN and MSNBC that's also done by the most Progressive of progressives and of course by the far right so all sides are responsible for this it's a huge problem it creates this very distorted picture of what's really going on in our politics so yes there are good decent Integris moderate Republicans and conservatives and in fact we need to emphasize this a lot more because if we don't that leaves no space for sane conservatives if you're a leftist in a progressive understand this that when you demonize moderate Republicans and you say that oh there are none of them and that none of them will ever be in power again and that all of them have been taken over by Maga you're creating a self-fulfilling prophecy do you see that you're leaving conservatives no other choice but to go Maga because you're not going to convert a conservative to become a progressive conservativism is a deep structure of the psyche you don't just change that with a few debates here or there or a few good arguments or if you you know um policy proposals a conservative is going to be conservative for Life half the country is conservative you're not going to get rid of conservatives anytime soon they're not going away so the question isn't whether we have conservatives or not the question is do we have a healthy form of conservativism or an unhealthy toxic form represents a toxic form if we want a healthy democracy that's not going to happen by turning everyone Progressive it's not going to happen you're you're in Fantasyland to have a healthy democracy what we need is we need a robust and healthy conservative wing of American politics that's the reality you don't like that I might not like that either but that's the reality and if you say no to that the only other alternative is not that oh all of a sudden we're gonna get a bunch of progressives no the other Alternatives you're gonna get a bunch of [ __ ] fascists and Naga people that's the alternative so which would you rather have would you rather have more Joe Scarborough's or would you rather have more Alex Jones's that's the that's the real choice because you ain't gonna get Joe Scarborough to become some bleeding heart Progressive Marxist that's not gonna happen ever and you know what look at Joe Scarborough Joe Scarborough is a really interesting example first of all he has he has decent amount of Integrity he started criticizing Trump very early on into Trump's presidency he broke ranks with him he did a really good job about that I respect him for that but also if you just take a look at the kind of Common Sense arguments that he makes now is he the most Progressive of course not but he makes some very common sense arguments that I think that the majority of the country would agree with that's the reality that you left us and progressives are uh fooling yourself over you're in denial about this you have to come to accept that Society will not evolve as fast as you want it to evolve it's not going to happen you have your Progressive ideals I totally understand that I have those ideals as well the difference between me and you is that uh I understand the realities of human development a little bit better and I understand that just because I'm gonna go out there and and scream at the top of my lungs my ideals that doesn't mean it's going to happen that's not how we're going to build the next stage of society so I want you to admit to yourself that there's plenty of reasonable conservatives and if you think there aren't that's how you know you're fooling yourself you're stuck in an echo chamber you're also being fooled by some of the drama that necessarily is accentuated on mainstream media alternative media and social media I also noticed that there's a failure to praise moderates and healthy conservatives when they stand up against extremists example this is Liz Cheney personally I give huge props to Liz Cheney for standing up against Donald Trump extremely difficult she sacrificed her whole political career basically for this a lot of progressives however love to demonize Liz Cheney because they just hate Dick Cheney so much they're so biased on that front and also because they point out that you know she has a very conservative voting record in the senate or in the in the Congress and um you know because of this she doesn't deserve any any praise no you have to be able to praise your opponents when they act with integrity that's the key Integrity is hugely important as soon as we sacrifice integrity to achieve our political Ambitions that's when politics goes toxic and wrong so I give huge credit to any conservative in the last five years who has stood up and denounced Maga people like Liz Cheney David from Joe Scarborough Joe Walsh and others there's plenty of others well you have to be very careful against is this idea that there is no such thing as a good conservative any conservative is a bad conservative this idea this is a very toxic and dangerous idea it's also not true I mean of course the right wing is even more guilty of this the way that the right wing demonizes the left and progressives is completely unethical completely out of Integrity completely dishonest and it's created a huge mess out of our whole political system let's move on to another point another point where leftists go wrong is they tend to want to use government too much to coddle and safety proof survival it's almost like progressives want to create a society where you can't harm yourself by making bad decisions no matter what kind of decision you make if you make bad decisions government will come and save you because you're going to get free health care free education free money free welfare free social security free disability if you get disabled free uh you know free anything you know you shoot a heroin you're gonna get a free therapy free rehab if you um you know if you hit your head you're going to get free um uh you know workers comp or uh free insurance if you smoke your whole life you're going to get free uh you know um free cancer treatment this kind of stuff and you might say well Leo yeah that isn't that right that that sounds like a very Humane Society yes in a certain sense that's good some degree of that is nice we need a certain social safety net that prevents you from um suffering the consequences of the most catastrophic consequences of your worst decisions and just bad luck you know sometimes you just get bad luck um we need that but also be careful what you wish for because when government does too much for you and it's safety proves everything for you people start to get soft people stop taking responsibility people stopped treating life and survival seriously the way that they should life and survival is a serious game it's a very serious game with the most serious of consequences and really children and young adults need to be raised in an environment where this is a reality for them otherwise they get too spoiled and life becomes too easy and in a sense we have been suffering from that in the last 50 years now as a progressor you might say well Leo life isn't too easy it's harder than ever to survive you know like the Baby Boomers had it easy now the Millennials and the Zoomers is harder than ever to buy a house it's harder to ever to afford stuff it's harder than ever to go to college because of the student loans and the burn that presents is harder than ever to afford health care and so forth there is some truth to that in a certain sense it's harder but in another sense life today is easier than it's ever been in human history especially in America and I think we're suffering from the spoilage that comes from that today's kids are extremely spoiled the things they whine about and complain about our ancestors would be embarrassed that their grandchildren have been so spoiled by us with all of the video games and social media and Twitter and Facebook and pornography and the cheap food that we have and um you know the junk food um easy access to travel you can travel around the world on the cheap these days instant cheap free communication all around the world you can literally Skype somebody in Africa from America for free we start to take all these things for granted you know clothing is cheaper than ever if we're not talking about some sort of expensive branded ridiculous clothing you know Basic clothing is as cheap as ever basic food is as cheap as ever the basics of survival are as easy to procure as ever technology is as cheap as ever it's easier than ever to become complacent with life and to just smoke weed sit on the couch watch your Netflix for ten dollars a month you know it's it's hilarious to me that every couple of years Netflix you know raises their prices for their monthly subscription and then people start whining and bitching and complaining about they almost start to boycott Netflix why because Netflix raises their monthly price from 12 a month to 15 a month and people are are freaking out over this this is the level of spoilage this is the perfect example of spoilage that I'm talking about you know you're so ungrateful that you're complaining and bitching and moaning that you have to pay 15 a month to get access to like hundreds of thousands of pieces of content amazing content movies shows documentaries educational stuff that you can find on Netflix you know your parents generation were satisfied with just three TV channels three TV channels and now you're you're pissed off that you have to pay an extra three dollars a month to get access to Netflix this is preposterous and this kind of thing is going on all around Society in a certain sense it is true what conservatives say is that you know uh successful decadent society makes people weak that's very true it does lead to spoilage and we are experiencing that right now and while that's true at the same time there are problems with late stage capitalism that has made survival extra challenging for Zoomers and Millennials when it comes to owning a house when it comes to getting health care when it comes to going to college that's all still true as well both are true at the same time so be careful what you wish for when you wish for this kind of socialist Utopia where life is so easy and everything is taken care of for you you think this is going to make for better human beings but actually it might make for something like Idiocracy the human psyche needs serious Challenge and suffering to grow develop and mature when you take away the challenges and the need for growth people will stop growing that's not guaranteed so don't get me wrong I'm not saying that without external pressure and challenge that it's impossible to grow it is possible to get yourself to grow but when we're talking about a large Collective level with hundreds of millions of people generally the trend is going to be when you take away all the challenges of life people are just going to turn into pot smoking Netflix watching Pizza eating mouth-breathing morons that's what's been happening over the last 50 years in our society people are gonna be sitting around and bitching and whining about a three dollar hike increase for Netflix they're gonna be bitching and moaning about that on Twitter all day that's what they're going to be doing rather than actually going to work doing something productive doing something healthy building a family building a business going to school and actually learning something difficult the thing that has become of our education system our education system is just training spoiled [ __ ] brats these days nobody is going and getting a proper education anymore and on top of that is it's they're getting out of that they're they're spoiled [ __ ] brats and they're also a hundred thousand dollars a hundred thousand dollars in debt on top of that it's the worst of Both Worlds one of the things that I respect the most about conservativism is that the conservative world view is all about in a sense at its best at its healthiest it's about reminding us of the old school values that generates success values like hard work Integrity family sacrifice for your community um being disciplined not being frivolous being conservative with how you spend your money saving your money being intelligent and wise about your Investments not wasting your time on stupid social distractions like social media and celebrity gossip and porn and all this kind of stuff not getting addicted to weed and other kinds of drugs this is conservativism at its best now what we see of conservativism today on the on the news with Maga and so forth has no resemblance to this that's because it's been perverted conservativism has been perverted more than ever what we need are old school conservatives who embodied this healthy old school stage Blues by Dynamic stage blue conservative values because that serves an important function in society without that Society becomes spoiled and soft people become these stage green utopian idealistic pot smoking hippies who talk a lot about love and equality and diversity but in reality these people cannot run a business cannot sustain a family are not disciplined enough to do the difficult [ __ ] that's necessary to build a healthy civilization I'll have a whole episode in the future where I just talk about these conservative values some more it really is worth repeating and going into some length but um it's a bit of a tangent for this episode so moving on to the next point leftism goes wrong with what's happening on University campuses these days the activism and identity politics found on most universities and the extreme group think that comes along with that is very problematic I wouldn't go so far as to say that the kind of criticisms that Jordan Peterson has of University culture are completely correct but if you don't think there's a kernel of Truth to the things he's calling out you're fooling yourself there is an important kernel of Truth there now is he exaggerating it yes is he fear-mongering about it yes but there is some concerning developments at universities which is really just stage green stage green group think running amok remember spirodynamic stage green is a fairly collectivist oriented stage stage orange is more individualistic green is collectivist yellow is individualistic remember that pendulum swings back and forth so one of the problems with every collectivist spiral stage whether it's green or blue or purple is the extreme group think that can happen and spiral out of control so with Stage blue the extreme group think is religious fundamentalism with Stage green the extreme group think is the kind of stuff we see on University campuses this you know going over the top with um talking about racism and lgbtq issues identity politics uh really our universities are getting spoiled by this political activism now political activism is important however here's the problem is that people between the ages of 18 and let's say 23 which are mostly University kids uh these people are very immature they know almost nothing about how reality Works how psychology works how politics Works they know they mo they know almost nothing they're basically morons um and yet these people go to university and they become very politically active this is putting the cart before the horse and Jordan Peterson is right about this it's not that you can't do both at the same time you can you can develop yourself and build your own career and also you can do political activity it's fine you don't need to perfectly put your house in order to do political activity however there is truth in that if you can't even pay your own [ __ ] rent what business do you have being politically active don't put the cart before the horse when you go to university your primary objective should be to study your ass off and to get a really good education get your money's worth and set yourself up for the rest of your life in terms of your career in terms of your relationships in terms of your personal development in terms of your health in terms of your finances get all the basics of survival handled that's really what university should be about don't worry so much about racism and lgbtq issues and socialism this is a distraction from getting that handled fix yourself first before you fix the world why is that important because nobody can fix you but you there are other people who are in a position to fix the world people who are wealthy people who have already established themselves people who are healthy if you don't have those things in place who are you to fix the world now I understand that it's tempting to want to go out there and fix the world when you don't have to when you have it fixed yourself yet but that does become a trap don't you see because there are plenty of people who can fix the world for you but there's nobody who can fix you for you so in practice what ends up happening is that these Young University kids you know they they talk a big game about Utopia and anti-racism and lgbtq and Marxism but in reality these people can't pay their rent they can't afford to buy a house they can't pay off their student loans they don't have health care and they just work as a barista at Starbucks how is that going to create a great society it won't really your first 10 years of adulthood basically from age 18 to let's say 30. like 12 years that is all of that should be focused on developing yourself first and foremost get your [ __ ] together don't worry about politics that's going to become a huge waste of energy the problem is that when you're doing your politics your politics turns into such a giant waste of mental energy for the most part your political activity is doing nothing it turns into culture wars arguments debates hate watching people twittering this kind of [ __ ] this actually it doesn't actually change anything about government it doesn't construct anything good you know yelling at somebody that they're a homophobe or a racist on Twitter doesn't really accomplish anything you could put that energy and time towards um developing a business or a career or something more productive and then think about this then once you do develop a business or career something productive then you're actually going to have power and money to make meaningful political change you're also going to be much more intelligent about how you use your time and money because you're going to value your time and money more than you do as a as a kid without any of it um you'll be able to be much more smart and strategic about how you go influencing politics you know sitting around in your college dorm with your roommates smoking weed eating pizza and talking about Marxism this is not this is not improve Society you see this is a waste of time this is foolishness and all the political activity that's going on at some of these universities this is creating a distraction it's distracting students from sitting down and just sticking their face into their textbooks that's what students should be doing at University your your face should be so glued to your calculus textbook and your physics textbook and your biology and psychology textbooks that you don't have time to listen to the latest theories about Marxism or who's identifying as a as a man or a woman or as a unicorn or as a whatever the [ __ ] you shouldn't give a [ __ ] you're too focused learning calculus the fact that you even have time to care about who is identifying as what gender or race or whatever the [ __ ] already tells you how privileged and spoiled you are because if you grow up in China in China they would be [ __ ] beating you with a ruler to learn calculus you wouldn't have time to worry about lgbtq [ __ ] in China it's more old school over there and that's why they're kicking our ass right now in terms of Education pumping out Engineers programmers you know serious people and in general when you're going to University pick a [ __ ] serious major pick a major that actually matters that's going to make a difference to the world we don't need 10 million people doing gender studies [ __ ] which is not to say you can't have some gender studies fine you can have some of it but people are going overboard with this stuff pick practical majors you're getting way too spoiled and too entitled another problem with leftists is in general they don't appreciate the importance of hierarchies stage green wants to level all hierarchies and they think that this will be sustainable and it'll work sometimes it can work but a lot of times it can't work there's reasons that there's a lot of hierarchies in society it's because that's how [ __ ] gets done in the military there's a hierarchy why you can't have a military that's a democracy if we had that your country would be dead this logic applies to many other areas of life besides just military it also applies to corporations businesses basically all kinds of organizations government itself and so on so demonizing hierarchies is a problem you should not do it you should see the value that hierarchies have but of course we are recognizing that some hierarchies are toxic and corrupt and need to be reformed and changed and sometimes it's good to level a hierarchy but before you go leveling a hierarchy first understand why it's there in the first place the problem with Stage green it tends to want to level hierarchies without understanding their utility and why they exist there in the first place so you end up shooting yourself in the foot um there's a criticism that hierarchies are not merit-based this is a interesting point I would say this on this matter is that for the most part in America most of the hierarchies we have are actually merit-based like the military for example I would say the majority of the military hierarchy is merit-based however not 100 of it so you can criticize those parts of the hierarchy that are not merit-based and we should change that because ideally we want to work towards a hierarchy if one exists at all where it is 100 merit-based that's obviously not the case but progressives and liberals and leftists sometimes go overboard with this in their criticism of hierarchies and they basically portray it out to be as meritocracy is a complete myth it doesn't exist at all and that all hierarchies are just systems of Oppression and Corruption and capitalism and special privilege and uh and it's not a meritocracy at all that's not true the next point is that leftists tend to go overboard with calling everything and holding everything as relative and socially constructed this is part of the post-modernist Legacy post-modernism as opposed to modernism post-modernism was all about recognizing the relativity in the socially constructed nature of many of the things that modernism considered to be just natural truths so it's true that a lot of stuff that we think of as natural truths is socially concerned for example science is a social construction scientific truths are relative truths this is true however you have to be very careful about this because progressives can then go too far with this and they can say well Leo if social you know if science is a social construction and let you know Leo you have a whole episode that says that science is a myth deconstructing myth of science um you know if you watch that series of mine you can say well Leo got my God so science is all full of relative truths and social constructions and therefore all science is wrong or [ __ ] and therefore we can just make up whatever we want right biology doesn't exist I can be a man or a woman or a unicorn I can be anything I want to be no you can't genetics still determines you biology still runs you physiology still runs you chemistry still runs you physics still runs you even though those are all social constructions gravity is a social construction but that does not mean that you get to jump out of an airplane without a parachute and survive so stage green tends to go overboard and make the mistake of thinking that ah well if if gravity is socially constructed that means I can just jump out of an airplane no you're just being stupid furthermore there's this now prevalent notion that truth doesn't exist because everything is relative and everything is a social construction there's no such thing as absolute truth absolute truth is a quaint idea that cannot survive in the post-modern era this is wrong absolute truth absolutely exists but wait a minute Leo how's that possible if everything is relative and socially constructed How can there be absolute truth well that's way too deep of a topic to answer here if you want to know more about that go check out my episode called relative versus absolute truth another episode I have is called what is truth go check those out there's also a tendency with this kind of relativism excessive relativism to consider all cultures and all value systems as equal this is not true all cultures and all value systems are not equal all ethnicities and races are not equal men and women are not equal now does this mean that we should treat men better than women no does that mean we should treat whites better than black snow does that mean that we should hold American culture as better than Chinese culture no cultures are very complex systems with many trade-offs and pros and cons to them they are strengths and weaknesses to every culture there are certain things that the Chinese culture is better at than American culture and vice versa it's not so easy to figure out which parts are better at what things that takes a lot of empirical investigation testing and research and it's true that there's a lot of alternative ways to do the same thing or as they say you know um there's many ways to skin a cat so there's not just one way to run an economy there's not just one best form of government there's not just one best education system there's not just one best way to do business there are many there's a diversity of different ways with various kinds of pros and cons and trade-offs stage green can go overboard in trying to equalize all of these because stage green is so big on equality everything has to be equalized stage green is bad at dealing with asymmetries you have to be able to balance asymmetries not to equalize everything across the board men and women are different they're asymmetrical but they can be balanced between themselves so be careful about that another problem with Stage green and leftism is leftists don't take seriously the problem of the loosening and coarse coarsening of moral standards leftists tend to treat moral standards as some sort of quaint hokey leftover from you know our religious traditions which are mostly just superstitions and um outdated traditions but actually there is deep wisdom in our ancient religious traditions uh and I don't I don't even mean any kind of metaphysical sense I just mean very practically all the ancient religions give rules of conduct ethical standards Norms taboos expectations certain values and habits that human beings are expected to follow in order to achieve greatness and the quote unquote good life so the question is how do you how do you achieve the good life and then religion says well if you do x y z you will achieve a good life and if you don't do these things if you do ABC then you're going to fall into hell and there's practical truth in this over the last 50 years especially in American society as we've been shifting away from religion into secularism and rationalism and materialism things have been lost our culture and our moral standards have degraded with things like weed easy access to drugs the use of profanity and vulgarity the prevalence of porn uh violent rap music and these kinds of things this does lead to a coarsening of our culture our children are becoming more spoiled with access to video games in unlimited quantities with Netflix with junk food with television with the internet with social media with Twitter with Facebook with Instagram this is making people soft complacent lazy and spoiled and it is also contributing to the disintegration of the family unit the traditional family unit is getting rotted out as well these are not just quaint hokey fundamentalist concerns this should concern everybody if you're secular if you're rational if you're scientific this should still all concern you because these are practical matters of how your children are being raised and how you're being raised and how culture is influencing you there are healthy cultures and unhealthy cultures on how I mean healthy cultures over time who are not careful they degrade into vulgarity and unhealthy cultures you know it's amazing just go and look at an interview like a news interview from 30 or 40 years ago and compare it to a news interview of today and it's kind of shocking I was watching this video of an interview with um with Bruce Lee the famous martial artist Bruce Lee and it was amazing it's like a 40 year old interview there was nothing anything especially profound about it but it was just amazing the the tone with which he spoke the the sort of decorum he had the kind of respect that he had towards the interviewer an interviewer had towards them there was a sort of like I don't know something something in our culture has just gotten so debased these days people just drop f-bombs and hey you know I'm totally guilty of this um but people just drop f-bombs everything has become so vulgar and profane and just our whole culture is kind of like lost its dignity it's like um everything is being geared towards the lowest common denominator and the things that Bruce Lee was saying in this interview were so he came off as so intelligent I also watched another interview of of Tom Cruise um this was an old interview of Tom Cruise when he did like when he did the first Top Gun movie this was like 30 years ago or so um maybe 40 years ago a long time ago um the first Top Gun but yeah it was a short interview but again he came up just the words he was using his diction his tone he came off as just like so intelligent it's amazing to watch them as some of these interviews um you can clearly see how our culture has degraded our media has degraded in many ways now in many ways we've become more real we've become let we've become less like proper and that propriety was like more like of a front you could say but still there was like dignity in that propriety that we've lost and that's hurting us as a as a country so conservatives are very concerned about this they talk a lot about how you know rap music is degrading the culture now in a certain sense you hear that you're like oh well come on get get [ __ ] real you know rap music is is is debasing the culture like come on get the stick out of your ass you might say that or conservatives might say oh you know weed weed is is debasing the culture and you might say oh come on you know stop being a square man and just smoke smoke a bit of weed you'll be fine it's okay we never killed anybody in a certain sense that's all true from the left-wing point of view but also there's truth from the right wing point of view it is true that weed does debase our culture it's also true that rap debases our culture rap is like a stage red form of music when people are singing about getting rich and stealing cars and wearing pinky diamond rings and getting tattoos and piercings and shooting others and drive-bys and how much you know how much money they have when they roll into the club on in with their Mercedes G-Wagon and you know how many [ __ ] are grinding on their [ __ ] and how wet their [ __ ] are and uh the kind of expensive champagne that they're drinking and the money that they're making rain this does get into people's minds this becomes our value system the value system is no longer about truth and integrity and God and being a good human being and and um raising a good family and all this kind of it's about [ __ ] [ __ ] and making money this is a problem because young kids grow up with this attitude of [ __ ] [ __ ] and making money and then you get stuff like um you know the Tai Lopez phenomena the Andrew Tate phenomena uh the the you know these slick entrepreneurs who are showing off their [ __ ] Lambo in their garage kind of [ __ ] this this is this is what our culture has become people actually see some dude in his [ __ ] garage with a couple of Ferraris and Lambos and a few hot [ __ ] and you know a gold chain around his neck and then they think that this is what they should aspire to that this is what human life is about is about following that idiot this is a problem widespread use of weed psychedelics Drugs porn video games alcohol does destabilize society and lead to disease and dysfunction you have to admit this as a leftist if you don't admit this you're fooling yourself now does this mean that we should lock people in jail for smoking some weed and of course not does this mean psychedelics should not be legalized and never used of course not they need to be used in a proper setting responsibly using proper protocols for proper purposes not just for getting high does this mean we should abolish all porn no of course not but our relationship to porn right now is quite toxic for many people same thing with video games does this mean that video games cause violence as right-wingers like to say and that we should get rid of video games no of course not but you have also have to admit that what has happened with video games lately children are [ __ ] video game addicts why don't guys know how to get laid because they spent 20 years of their childhood playing [ __ ] video games and never talking to a single girl it's not feminism that's preventing you from getting laid it's all the [ __ ] video games not to mention what video games do to your career and your ability to do business a lot of guys can't even have a decent career because they wasted 20 years of their life which they should have spent developing some kind of skill marketable skills that could form the foundation of a career like drawing programming engineering mathematics physics chemistry these would be skills you can develop but instead where they do they play [ __ ] World of Warcraft for a thousand hours every year this is rotting our society traditional social structures have value to them they've been field tested to work because they've evolved over hundreds of years this needs to be respected leftists do not respect this nearly enough your utopian and idealistic ideas about how to change these social structures these traditions won't necessarily outperform the traditions because you're not as smart as hundreds of years of evolution and trial and error Society is very complex and any kind of social structure that is successful and effective needs to have gone through many iterations of trial and error and they've had many unintended consequences so when you as a leftist think that you could just come up with some sort of utopian public policy proposal there's no guarantee that it's going to work in fact it could backfire and create something way worse you think Marxism is going to replace capitalism and be better and eliminate poverty that's your theory but in practice it might be the opposite of that in practice when you implement your Marxism it might create more poverty than capitalism that's something you need to acknowledge that requires humility so there is a sort of arrogance that comes with Stage green and leftism where you think you can just socially engineer your way out of all these problems for example you might think that in stating democracy in the workplace the way that Richard Wolff wants to do you know turning corporations into cooperatives you think that this will create for better fairer work environments that's your theory but in practice you have to wonder what happens if you take all these big corporations and you turn them into cooperatives will this actually work will you actually be able to be competitive with all the other corporations in the world who are not collaboratives or will you not be competitive and your Co-op will become spoiled and lazy and rotten lacking vision and Direction and ultimately go bankrupt and then all those employees will be out of a job which will be worse than what they had under capitalism now I'm not using this as an argument to say that we should not experiment with workplace democracy I think we should I think it's a good idea I generally agree with Richard wolf that wolf workplace democracy is uh is probably the best implementation of Socialism or Marxism however I'm not at all convinced that removing all the hierarchy from our most competitive organizations and corporations and turning them into just these flat Democratic systems is going to produce the same kind of productivity and competitiveness and innovation that they have now and that such cooperatives and corporations will be able to survive and compete with everyone else in the world maybe it'll work but we can't know that we have to be humble and we have to understand that it needs to be tested that's an empirical question the next point for leftists is this recognize that not all religion and spirituality is fundamentalist stupid and corrupt there does exist something Beyond secularism sometimes stage green gets the idea that secularism is the ultimate thing and that religion and spirituality that's just some Fundamentalist you know leftovers that we have already transcended and then if you're an intellectual then you just got to be secular and rational and that's the end of the story but that's not the end of the story that's only half the story the story continues beyond your secularism Beyond secularism uh you realize that fundamentally atheism secularism and rationalism are all fundamentally wrong fundamentally Marx's materialism is also wrong Marx took his materialism actually from Hegel so you know in Marxism there's something called uh dialectical materialism which Marx was inspired by Hegel because Hegel Hegel was actually a much more intelligent guy than Marx um but Hegel was a lot harder to understand than Marx a lot less practical than Marx so Hegel was an idealist not a materialist Marx red Hagel took his dialectical ideas um you know the thesis antithesis he took those kinds of ideas from Hegel but then he didn't like the idealism he threw away the idealism and he turned into materialism and he thought that he was making an improvement on Hegel by turning Hegel into materialism and then this materialist metaphysics has crept its way into modern times and this is supposedly an advantage to Marxist economics is that it's materialistic no this is a disadvantage in fact Hegel was right reality isn't is not materialistic it's idealistic materialism is wrong um you can verify this for yourself by doing some spiritual work um and so ultimately Marx's whole metaphysics is wrong the entire metaphysics of Marx's economics is wrong so just keep that in mind you marxists who think you know everything about Marx you might know everything about Marx but you don't know the fundamental metaphysics is wrong for more on that see my other episodes about materialism and God and spirituality and so forth I can't explain all that here let's have this problem of making overly idealistic unrealistic plans some of these plans might be like Banning the sale of all gas cars that's been happening in California lately in certain other places I think in Canada they've actually set a time timeline for the ban of the sale of all gas cars in California and in Canada to like 20 35 I don't know what it is something like that or for example banning all oil drilling stuff like this um these kinds of plans come from a good place they come from a place of compassion environmental concern these are all valuable impulses and motivations however they can be very unrealistic you have to be careful with that idiot compassion that I talked about in part one idiot compassion is when you want to like save the whole world but you're doing it in such a way that it's not actually going to work so while you might care about the environment if you ban the sale of all gas cars um you might actually create more problems for the environment in the long term because the reality is is that if you're not able to actually get everyone onto an electric car and then you ban the sale of all gas cars this is going to create such a a problem in our economy and for society that this will create more problems than just having gas cars see there's many kinds of examples like this that leftists can fall into next point the Banning of guns in America will not stop school shootings this is a silly idea there are so many guns in America that you're not going to be able to ban them also the Banning of assault rifles is not going to prevent mass murders because they're still going to be handguns so unless you're talking about banning all handguns which you could talk about that but first of all that would be grossly unconstitutional uh it would piss a lot of people off it would not be politically popular acceptable so it's basically a debt issue but if you don't ban all handguns then there's no way you're going to stop these school shootings just because assault rifles are the most popular gun that is used for school shootings and so forth does not mean that once you ban them that people won't switch to handguns or shotguns they will of course they will this is just obvious so this this sort of like rabid desire to ban assault rifles this sounds good in theory but in practice it's not going to work also progressives are wrong this is something that I was wrong about as a progressive until recently I realized that I was and I changed my mind on this is that guns can be legitimately used to Stave off government tyranny I my thinking on this used to be that you know well the government has nukes and they have tanks they have helicopters and they have Marines and Army and missiles so how is the populace ever going to stand up to the government just with you know some handguns and some rifles and some M16s um but the reality is is that it can be done um the military is actually surprisingly not that powerful um and effective when it comes to Urban Warfare and so if worse came to worse if the American citizenry actually wanted to challenge the government because the government becomes so corrupt or so tyrannical it actually would be capable of doing this just through Small Arms um not that this is a realistic scenario or that I think it would ever really be necessary but just on this point um conservatives are right you could do it just look at Afghanistan you know look at how effectively uh insurgents and the Taliban in Afghanistan was just mostly small arms were able to resist the US military which had much much stronger Firepower so it's not about the Firepower it's about the it's really about the the resolve who has more Resolve um who has the home field advantage so to speak which of course is always the insurgents um who can fight using dirty tricks you know shooting from Windows and stuff like that which is of course always the insurgents because they have no Rules of Engagement and um and in the end it's just the size of the population you know you have 300 million people the Army is not that big it's only a million at most uh let's talk about pacifism so this is where the left goes wrong as well sometimes the left goes into the sort of naive pacifism where they advocate for no military at all or defunding the military or scaling back the military budget by 90 or the complete pull out of American forces from geopolitics all around the world you know stop being the world's policeman sort of logic uh sort of isolationist logic and all of this is all this is wrong leftists tend to not appreciate the complexities of geopolitics and the necessity and importance of conflict and war and violence the only reason you can have a country is because you have a military and because you're prepared to use that military and force and conflict to defend yourself now ideally we're going to evolve to a place in a thousand years where none of that will be necessary but today the world we live in it's necessary so pacifism doesn't work today now I'm all for minimizing war and conflict and we should especially avoid unnecessary Wars frivolous Wars pointless Wars like the war in Iraq or the war in Ukraine and so forth the Vietnam War these were largely unnecessary Wars on the other hand there are legitimate Wars and there are legitimate reasons to fund the military and furthermore not just that but there are legitimate reasons for geopolitical positioning and it's very important what countries you Ally yourself with and the kind of alliances you create the kind of blocks you create because this has impact on the economy on trade and on the possibility of future War so geopolitical positioning this is uh a lot of this is about preventing War from breaking out now of course it can all be badly abused and it has been badly abused by America and other countries but it's just unrealistic to expect that all of this stops or to pull yourself out of this America should not pull itself out of international geopolitics this would not be a good idea because in reality what's going to happen is that somebody else would fill the vacuum the vacuum would be filled either by Russia or by China or by Brazil or somebody else and the reality is that those countries are less developed than America so they would be more brutal and things would be worse off generally speaking leftists don't really understand that not all war and violence is bad violence serves a legitimate function the military holds a legitimate function and I mean serves a legitimate function and also military spending has a special importance that leftists don't recognize a leftist will say well you know how come when it comes to funding some new war all of a sudden we have the money for it but when it comes to funding some education program or some prison program we don't have the money for it but if you think about this for a minute you should realize that the military serves a very special function it's the most fundamental function of a government is its military because without the military there is no government so actually yes when it comes to military funding that has a higher priority and therefore we find the money because it's a matter of life and death or at least it is in theory now is it always a matter of life and death no is the U.S government a military budget grossly over inflated probably uh but also maybe not so much because remember we do serve as the world's policeman which means we serve as the world's Peacekeeper because if we don't do it who's gonna do it otherwise you have Global Anarchy and you have countries with lower stages of development serving as the as the policeman or worse as a bully see if the U.S pulls out of being the world's policeman Russia may take its place do you want Russia to be the world's policeman have you seen the police in Russia how [ __ ] corrupt they are think twice about that if you let Putin he'll become the world's mob boss so to prevent that from happening yeah the U.S spends a lot of money on military appreciate what that gets you that gets you a lot of economic goodies that you benefit from cheaper oil cheaper food cheaper clothing and many other such things in your own family's budgets there's priorities for example you might not have enough money to go to a nice restaurant or even to buy a textbook for your child you just may not have enough money but when it comes to something like paying your rent all of a sudden you find the money why is that because paying your rent is more important than food is more important than your child's textbook why is that because if you don't pay the rent they kick you out and then you're living on the street it's kind of like that when it comes to finding money for the military so leftists don't quite understand this because leftists have a bias against conflict and violence and War they tend to think of all of it as bad because they're just such a bleeding heart Care Bears and hippies they just want to avoid violence at all costs but see here's the problem is that when you avoid violence at all costs this leaves you open to bullying from others um and counter-intuitively it could actually create more damage and More Death how so because if you put up a a tough front and you have a strong military most people won't want to [ __ ] with you if you just dismantle your military and you become weak and soft you become a Target and then actually more people want to start war with you so you as a leftist you know think about this your pacifism might end up backfiring on you because reality is much more complicated than you think just because you're going to be a pacifist does not mean that all the low spirally developed countries around you are going to honor that or respect that they're going to abuse that Putin is going to abuse your pacifism think about that another problem for the left is excessive political correctness and cancel culture I do believe there is some value in canceling some extremely toxic people for example I agree with the cancellation of Alex Jones the kind of ridiculous things he was saying were so toxic and so misinforming that he needed to be canceled but the left can go way too far with this the left tends to become all too easily offended and triggered by things that are not very significant you know minor insults jokes vulgarity and crude things like this um people should not be canceled for this so it's a problem when you're canceling people for making jokes sexist jokes racist jokes rape jokes yeah I get that this is insensitive it's insensitive to make a rape joke or a racist joke I get that it hurts you but that doesn't mean that somebody's entire career should be ended over this if you think it should just think about that again uh why are you so sensitive we need people to be tougher it's not so much about making others nicer it's about you becoming tougher become so tough that a rape joke doesn't offend you become so tough that a gay joke doesn't offend you becomes so tough that a racist joke doesn't offend you if it does look at how weak you are you're so weak that words are violence to you if words are your definition of violence you really don't appreciate what violence is and in this case the right Wingers are right in calling you a snowflake in a certain sense leftists are snowflakes then again a lot of the right wing are extreme snowflakes too they're extremely offended easily offended and triggered it's so easy to offend and trigger a right winger that they shouldn't be calling anyone a snowflake the problem is that left-wingers are also easily offended and triggered another problem that I see with the left is in canceling others they apply today's woke moral standards to figures of the past you know this is silly our culture is evolving quite rapidly and you know 20 years ago it was acceptable to make a a gay joke today it's not does that mean that if we find somebody who made a gay joke 20 years ago he should be canceled no you have to understand that standards have changed 40 years ago wearing blackface was more or less acceptable today it's not does that mean somebody should be canceled for wearing blackface 40 years ago no is it wrong and insensitive and ugly to wear blackface yes obviously but you have to acknowledge the culture has changed a lot in the last 40 years also if you see someone wearing blackface don't [ __ ] get offended by it now I know that sounds like Leo who are you to say that you you know you're not black you're not allowed to say that but the reality is this look if somebody wearing some black [ __ ] face paint gets you all riled up that's more of your problem than it is anybody else's problem why are you allowing your mind to be so weakest to be offended by that now you might say Leo you're just gaslighting black people here no um I I fully recognize the evils of racism and the problems with that and the work that needs to happen on eliminating systemic racism totally agree with you on that let's work on that but also just on a sort of a human cultural level stop being so [ __ ] sensitive to little insults and offenses this is not even like I'm not saying this for my sake I'm saying this for your sake right you want to be the kind of human who has the kind of mind that like it should take a lot to offend you it should take a lot to rile you up like something serious like if someone rapes your daughter okay get offended get riled up if someone rapes your daughter if someone calls you a bad name or makes a crude joke about you rise above that [ __ ] the way you conquer that is by Rising above it not by engaging in some Twitter battle over who's the bigger victim this is a this is a problem that leftists tend to fall into right Wingers also didn't fall into this so I'm not just picky on the left here uh next point leftists tend to overcompensate which resulted in a lack of due process against rape and abuse allegations for men which leads to mob outrage and MOB Justice rape is a serious issue and crime and abuse sexual abuse and physical abuse these are serious issues and and crimes and women need to be heard when they make these accusations and those need to be taken seriously however uh the pendulum can swing too much to the other direction where allegations of rape or sexual abuse are made against some man and then there's mob outrage he get canceled he gets canceled over there's no trial there's no due process and it's just a form of mob Justice this mob Justice that we see on the left this is problematic mob Justice is not Justice so just be aware of that excess that can happen speaking of excess stage green can become excessively Environmental you become so concerned over the environment and protecting the environment that you forget the human suffering that comes with being overly concerned about the environment you can be so protectionist over some environmental issue that you fail to see the human suffering that is caused by not allowing business and man to just exhaust that environment I guess you could say it doesn't sound very nice but ultimately like you know when it comes to the Amazon rainforest yeah it's nice to preserve the Amazon rainforest but also you have to wonder when it comes to preserving the Amazon rainforest what's happening there is that the situation in Brazil is so dire that people can barely feed themselves so when they're logging that Forest they're creating space for for Farming for example cattle and other sorts of Agriculture um that actually feeds people so while it's not nice to see the rain forest in Brazil getting cleared you also have to kind of like look at the other side of the issue it's like but the clearing of the rainforest actually helps feed millions of children who otherwise would be hungry how do you balance those two out now I'm not saying one is better than the other but you have to you have to start to see both sides of that uh environmental regulation does raise prices on food on gas on various Commodities and services and hey I'm all for environmental regulation I think it's very important I think climate change is a serious issue um green energy is important all this kind of stuff is important but also you have to understand that it's not just evil businesses that are reaping profits and destroying the environment it's a little bit more complicated than that it's that businesses are exploiting the environment in order to allow many millions of humans to survive easier by providing them cheaper food cheaper gas and other Technologies now is there also excessive corporate profits and greed in there too yes of course there is of course there's always corruption in any system but you have to be careful that you're compassion for the environment doesn't make it such that actually you're causing the suffering of millions of of people on the other side those need to be balanced out so it's mostly just a matter of balance another issue with leftists is you have to be careful about having excessive regulation red tape and bureaucracy there needs to be some kind of mechanism for reducing laws and excessive regulations it can't just be that we're always adding new regulations every year on top of more regulations every year forever with no mechanism for removing old ones that no longer make sense because then we just get bogged down and let's red tape leftists also need to be careful with affirmative action programs I think there's some room for affirmative action programs but they can also get excessive and you have to be careful in how it pisses people off the more affirmative actions programs you do basically with affirmative action programs what you're doing is you're saying we have a situation that's unequal now we want to help to equalize that situation and we're going to do that by passing some sort of program that kind of helps the unequal side rise to parity with the equal side um that's if essentially what affirmative action is doing but um but the problem is that in order to correct this imbalance you're actually creating an imbalance to corrected imbalance but that imbalance you're creating that is an imbalance so you'd have to keep that in mind because in the end what you want is balance not imbalance so the question is when do your affirmative action programs go too far or when do they need to be turned off once the correct balance has been struck that's a very uh nuanced issue there's no easy answer there another Chris criticism I would have of the left is uh on the abortion issue completely unrestricted abortion very late term abortion this presents a problem the majority of people are not going to agree with you on that you can make all the fine arguments you want about when is a life really alive when is a baby really a baby or a human when should it have rights when does it suffer all this kind of stuff you can argue that till the till the cows come home but ultimately when we're talking about very late term abortions this is going to be repugnant morally repugnant to the majority of mankind now I know that you can make all sorts of scientific and medical arguments like well you know Leo nobody just does a late term abortion just for the you know just because they don't want the baby it's usually because there's complications because the mother's life is at risk and all that fine you can make all those little nuanced distinctions But ultimately you're not going to win morally on this issue of late-term abortions and you're kidding yourself You Think You Are it would be better to come to a compromise on this issue really Roe versus Wade struck a pretty good compromise uh but still um I don't think leftists should push this too far I think leftists should be happy to compromise with conservatives on this issue of abortion and just say something like look first two trimesters abortion is legal third trimester it's illegal unless there's extenuating circumstances unless uh serious threat to the mother's life or serious you know genetic defects are found in the baby uh in the fetus in which case maybe the abortion's okay but otherwise no late term abortions this would be I think a reasonable compromise that would leave most people happy and I think leftists make a mistake when they just want completely unrestricted abortions uh it's just a bad image it's a bad PR image even if you can justify it by saying that oh the very late term abortions are only going to be the ones that are medically necessary because the majority of abortions are done like in the first trimester it's still a bad image politically I think of course the left goes wrong anytime it commits violence violent protests violent riots antifa the kind of stuff that antifa does this is all a detriment to the left it makes the left look bad and it just empowers the right so that should be pretty obvious to most leftists um another problem with the left is this is I I heard this actually from somebody from Scandinavia I was talking to him about you know how does he like living in Scandinavia I forget which Scandinavian country he was from but I was kind of asking about his um the sort of I'm like oh you guys are supposed to have good uh welfare systems and a good social safety net and free healthcare how do you like it and he said overall I like it but the one thing I don't like about it is that there's a sort of a culture of cutting down the tallest flowers anybody basically like in the Scandinavian school system who tries to be a little bit too ambitious um who tries to exert their power and tries to rise above and be unique and be special and be extraordinary they get cut down because culturally it's like it's looked down upon it's like don't don't draw too much attention to yourself don't try to be too different don't try to you know be too competitive uh don't try to be too creative just kind of do what the herd is doing when I heard this this concerned me um and so I think that is a legitimate concern with these sort of more socialistically inclined Scandinavian countries their culture is basically that um you know you shouldn't be too competitive and if you achieve a level of success beyond the norm they're just going to cut you down at the knees this is called cutting cutting down the tallest flowers so um you left us should be careful about that that kind of attitude creeping into your organizations and the economy and Society at large it would that I think that would be um a problem another mistake that leftists make is trying to bring stage green values into places like Iraq or Afghanistan or other parts of the world that are not developed enough to sustain it for more on this you can see my episodes on spiral Dynamics where I talk about the problems with trying to impose one value system on another value system that is not ready for it but basically uh the only countries in the world that are really ready for stage green are going to be stage orange countries you can't take a country like Saudi Arabia which is staged red and blue and try to impose stage green values on it this is the problem of like you know for example when leftists criticize Saudi Arabia or the Middle East for forcing their women to wear headscarves and hijabs from a staged green value system it seems like this is barbaric what's happening in Saudi Arabia um but that's just how it looks from the green value system you have to recognize that from their value system stage blue and red it's a whole different world and you should not try to impose your value system onto a country that is so far removed from it that it's going to take them hundreds of years to evolve to Stage green and this is part of the reason why democracy failed for example in Iraq and in Afghanistan and why after the U.S pulled out from Afghanistan the Taliban immediately took over like the US was never even there and forced all the women out of school and forced all the women to wear head scarves and hijabs and stuff because Afghanistan is spironamic stage purple and red what do you expect of them their green value system and then and then you know like stage green valued feminists in America and in Europe are like in shock about this like oh my God what about the little girls in Afghanistan dude the way that those kind of cultures treat women they treat women as property that's how women are treated in that culture in that value system you can't just go in there and impose your value system on them it's not going to work there is no feminism in Afghanistan forget about feminism it doesn't exist at that stage of development a lot of liberals and progressives don't understand this another minor criticism that I have of the left is that they sometimes criticize and dismiss the importance of space exploration they'll make the argument that like you know we have so many people suffering on this planet that why are we wasting money exploring space when we could put all that money into feeding the hungry and the poor I understand that criticism but I think that also there's an important function to space exploration it's not purely frivolous mankind needs some sort of higher aspiration Beyond merely the petty human [ __ ] that is happening on this planet and I think space exploration fills that void very nicely space exploration is almost like one of those things that we can all kind of agree on in the sense that it's like a it's almost like our highest aspiration as a species is to grow Beyond planet Earth and it's just one of those aspirational things that make you feel good about Mankind you know when you're reading articles about some new space launch or some new Space Telescope or some new planet that's been discovered or um pictures of of some distant Galaxy this fills you with awe with almost a sense of Divine Purpose it's almost like the most religious that our secular society gets is when we get pictures of space it puts us into a larger pers you know context and perspective all the wars and petty [ __ ] that we deal with here all of that loses its importance next to a photograph of the Milky Way galaxy or something like that and so I think that that's valuable and the amount of money we spend on our on it is relatively trivial for what we get back culturally not to mention the technology that also um gets invented from pushing ourselves into space the next criticism I have of the left is just the constant complaining criticizing and whining of the left comes very grating and annoying after a certain point this in gratitude fundamentally is what it is nothing is ever good enough for the left even even when we pass a tax increase even when um there's a new stimulus package even when we pull out of some War like Afghanistan even when something you know good is done for the for the hungry for the poor even when um we pass stricter gas regulations and stuff like that like it's never good enough for progressives never never this is a bad attitude it's a kind of a demoralizing ungrateful it's just not a good way to go through life you're never going to be happy do you understand this as a progressive you're basically never ever going to be happy in your whole life you're going to be bitching moaning and whining the society is not good enough for your whole life until you're dead now ask yourself is that a good way to live life maybe the problem isn't that Society isn't Advanced enough for you maybe the problem is that you expect Society to be more advanced than it really should be maybe that's the problem maybe the problem isn't Society maybe the problem is you has that crazy idea ever crossed your mind maybe you want something of society that it can never give you this can lead to a sort of culture of victimhood and weakness look in the end at the era we're living in we're living in the Dark Ages basically the 21st century will be known as the dark ages of mankind thousands of years from now yes it's barbaric it's brutal it's cruel it's unfair it's got racism and homophobia in it and transphobia and it's got genocide and it's got all sorts of ugly stuff and in a certain sense your job is to accept that and to be tough enough to deal with all that and to not be a crybaby about it now does that mean you capitulate and you don't stand up against bullies and you don't fight against slavery and racism when they exist and you don't speak up against rape and uh abuse of homosexuals now of course you do you fight these things you go to The Ballot Box you vote on the right issues right you can do all those things but just don't get sucked into this kind of mindset and this culture of just this perpetual victimhood and this kind of weakness and just uh being so sensitive about everything so ungrateful about everything and just whining constantly about everything this is not good for you and this is not a resourceful attitude from which to build the kind of great society that we want to build to remember that society and people can only develop so fast and if you're a progressive they're never going to develop as fast as you want them to but you have to be mature about that because it's almost like you have a child who's a little bit mentally [ __ ] and this child is going to school and going through his classes and so forth and you as the parent you're never satisfied because in your mind you always expected that you would have like a genius child with an IQ of 140 but actually you in reality you happen to have a child who has an IQ of like 90. he's a little on the slow side so he struggles with figuring out his schoolwork and every time he comes home you yell at him and you berate him and criticize him for not getting good enough grades and not being smart enough is that a wise attitude no at some point you have to accept that your child is a little bit slow slower than the other kids and that this is just the nature of the Beast and you not accepting this is not going to help the situation you constantly complaining to your child about his slowness is not going to make him fast in fact it's going to make him hate you and resent you and it's going to just make the whole thing worse in a sense that's what's happening with progressives and Society our society is mentally [ __ ] and you have to accept that that's difficult to accept that we live in the dark ages in a mentally [ __ ] Society with a bunch of morons but that's the case and you have to live with these morons you can't kill these morons so you might as well make peace with it but at the same time you don't accept all the stupid stuff they tell you you encourage them and you do the best to help them move forward and just to see the light but also you don't um lose your [ __ ] over it either you see it's it's a delicate Balancing Act there I want you to acknowledge that the right wing has valid concerns when it comes to immigration taxation abortion and the debasement of culture now does the right wing exaggerate all these things yes of course it does but I want you to recognize that there's there's some validity there now we're getting into some very general final points about the left final mistakes that they make um like for example overly demonizing stage blue and Stage Orange that's just a very fundamental mistake that the left makes because that's a very fundamental mistake that stage green makes another mistake they make very generally is not fully embodying and exploring the lower stages of the Spiral stage green tends to get locked into itself and demonizes the lower stages and not really embody them even in your own personal life which leads to misunderstanding and confusion and problems it leads to a lopsided development you should appreciate that most humans have a lot of work to do to integrate just the values of stage blue and orange most Americans are struggling to develop healthy stages stages blue and orange never mind green they're not yet ready for green and I would go even further to say that if you were at think you are on stage green if you're a progressive leftist socialist Marxist and so forth I guarantee you that you have not fully embodied stage blue and orange and that it would be in your best interest to do so there are important developmental lessons that you're missing from blue and orange I also want to caution you to be very careful about straw Manning conservatives I see this so often with progressives just straw man after straw man after straw man of conservatives try to steal man conservatives try to really understand their worldview and where they're coming from and try to find the signal in all their noise conservatives create a lot of [ __ ] noise but there is signal there that you're missing and I also want you to take responsibility for your contribution to the political polarization that's happening right now it's not merely the right Wingers who are creating this crazy polarization in American politics it's also the extreme left wing acknowledge that and my final criticism of stage green is that stage green creates a shadow out of capitalism greed ethnocentrism racism War violence religion nationalism corporations guns traditional morality uh exploitation of the environment and masculinity you've likely created shadows out of these and this is a problem you need to integrate these Shadows so that you can develop to your Highest Potential all right so those are all the points now some final remarks to sum all this up now obviously not all leftists suffer from all the problems that I listed above I listed a lot of problems that's a long list um there's a wide range of maturity and level of development among leftists some leftists are very immature and childish other leftists are very mature so we can't paint them all with one brush if you take a big picture meta view a systems View you'll recognize that obviously the right wing cannot be 100 wrong if the right wing was 100 wrong they wouldn't exist they exist because there's some kernel of Truth to their worldview there is value in the right wing worldview so you have to ask yourself what are the legitimate functions of the right wing if you say to yourself there are no functions that are legitimate then that's how you know you're fooling yourself the right wing has legitimate functions even though a lot of times the right wing goes crazy overboard to the point where you might think that it's completely detached from reality and has no value whatsoever now despite all the limitations of the left wing that I've mentioned here in this series the left is still more developed and more reasonable generally speaking than the right the extreme right is more toxic and more dangerous than the extreme left at this point in human history now maybe in the future this will change but right now that is my assessment if you think I'm biased well that's your opinion but I think I'm being objective when I say that now you might say Leo but why should we listen to you on all this aren't you just biased aren't all these just your biases uh in reality I'm not loyal to any side or ideology that's one thing you can count on from me is that I never have a loyalty to any one group I don't have a loyalty to any country to any race to not even to humanity itself I just I've never had loyalties to any kind of group I'm very allergic to any kind of group affiliation or identity what I care about is pure understanding and perspective so really I'm just offering you more perspective than you've had as a leftist I'm one of the most open-minded people that you'll find on this planet I think open-mindedness is a superpower and I can teach you this superpower and that's part of why I was able to create this episode this series of episodes is because I am so open-minded that I'm able to see beyond my own biases and my own political uh inclinations I do have very Progressive political inclinations but that doesn't mean I'm blinded by the to the point where I can't see beyond them there's a lot of value of looking beyond your own political inclinations I want you to understand that both the left and the right are not that developed they both make a lot of mistakes they're both very biased and they both fail to appreciate how complex and challenging government is figuring out the right government is so so difficult most people have no idea it's important that leftists and progressives have an accurate understanding of the conservative worldview and not just straw mans why because the wrong understanding is guaranteed to create problems think of it like this like you have a a bad relationship with your spouse so you two go into marriage counseling what's the first thing that's going to happen in marriage counseling the most fundamental solution is to get both of you to sit down and to listen to each other's points of view in good faith because if you go in there and you say oh my wife she's a [ __ ] she's a [ __ ] and she cheats on me and she's always wrong and she's evil and she's stealing money and all this kind of stuff if that's how you go in there and then your wife goes in there and says the exact kind of same things about you there's no way that can be healed that's a divide that cannot be healed you need to be able to go in there and listen to your wife's grievances about you as difficult as that is listen to her grievances in good faith that means when she's telling you all the things she doesn't like about what you're doing or that offends her or disturbs her you're not sitting there demonizing her in your mind you're actually taking her seriously and then she has to do the same thing for you and then there's a possibility of healing this marriage well you know a marriage isn't even as bad as our political situation because in a marriage there's always the option to just get a divorce people go their separate ways and life is happily ever after right things are fine you can find happiness after divorce but there can't be a divorce in America so it's a more strict situation we're forced to figure out how to live together we can't kick out half the country we can't kill half the country and if we separate the country the two countries then both will be very weak and they will be conquered by external enemies in the future I'm going to have two new episodes one that's going to focus on understanding the conservative mind and one that's going to focus on understanding the liberal mind those are gonna be powerful episodes so stick tuned for those and make sure you go watch my four-part series called conscious politics if you want an explanation of what you know I said Fourth Way politics stage yellow politics metapolitics politics beyond the Left Right spectrum and Beyond centrism what does that look like go check out my series search for it on YouTube it's called conscious politics all right that's it I'm done here please come check out actualize.org that's my website down below there's a link you will find resources on the website you'll find my blog you'll find my book list you'll find political books on my book list you'll find my life purpose course you'll find the actualized Forum and other resources are available for you there if you'd like you can support me at patreon.com actualize with some donations I thank you for those and here's the final thing that I'll leave you with it's this the reason I talk about politics is because unbiased tier 2 discussions of politics are so rare this channel is one of the few sources on the internet where you will hear tier 2 political discussion so I feel it's my duty to offer that because it's so rare I'm one of the few people who can do it now there's a few others but it's pretty rare also one of my missions is to get people to stop being ideological to get out of group think to stop demonizing others and to do politics Frontier two and to see radical points of view that's my bias that's why I teach this stuff the way that I do also understand that my work is so Advanced and takes so much open-mindedness that it really cannot exist in a closed-minded political system when people are arguing with each other demonizing each other fighting with each other being overly partisan my work cannot work my spiritual work cannot work so I sort of need to help to carve out a space for this kind of work to be possible at all and also the ability to see radically different perspectives than your own is core to my work that's why politics is so interesting to me because politics presents a real world practical application of all the kind of open-mindedness and multi-perspectivalism that I teach in my epistemic episodes well politics allows you to kind of really test how good are you at seeing radically different perspectives than your own this is the real test I'm one of the few people on this planet who can teach you how to see radically different perspectives than your own because that's just something that's a core value of mine that I'm very passionate about I break and rack my mind around how to see radically different perspectives than my own and I can help you to do the same but only if you have the desire to do so which I hope that you do and if you do then you found exactly the right channel subscribe and stick around for more where we will cover many other tools and ways of thinking about reality that will show you crazy radical New Perspectives