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Speaker 1: Because four hours. Simply enough, this is Armstrong and Getty

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Speaker 1: extra large. Do we have a name for this thing?

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Speaker 1: Book review stopped using the word club book review, damn it,

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Speaker 1: it's not a club. We're not middle aged ladies with

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Speaker 1: our pinkies in the air. That's the perfect start right there.

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Speaker 1: All right, that's what we're talking about, this here book

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Speaker 1: that we read. So are we doing this? We are?

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Speaker 1: We're doing and some they should have let me know.

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Speaker 1: So we uh, we read a book? Who's we? Um

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Speaker 1: Armstrong and Getty, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty and then

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Speaker 1: two other people, Craig got Walls, the healthcare guru, public

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Speaker 1: intellectual fan favorite, and Tim Sander for vice president for

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Speaker 1: litigation for the gold Water Foundation, and uh, famousist Tim Lawyer. Um, Tim,

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Speaker 1: how are you? I'm great? Craig is here as well.

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Speaker 1: That's what I want to be when I grew up

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Speaker 1: as a public intellectual. I know it's holding me back,

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Speaker 1: though I'm pretty certain of it. Height. You need to

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Speaker 1: cultivate your accent to what you need. You need some

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Speaker 1: some sort of vaguely European but hard to pin down.

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Speaker 1: So we set out to read a book, have and

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Speaker 1: a plan to discuss it than The book is Stephen

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Speaker 1: Pinker's Enlightenment, now suggested by Tim subtitled The Case for

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Speaker 1: Reasons Science, Humanism and Progress. It's a very large book, oppressive,

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Speaker 1: I would say, um. And my question is lots of

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Speaker 1: pictures though you know what, Yes, on the plus side,

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Speaker 1: big fan of the pictures. Uh. My question is do

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Speaker 1: we want to go in depth on the big ideas

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Speaker 1: or do we want to go shallow on the many

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Speaker 1: different ideas or both are neither. I will vote for

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Speaker 1: the latter. And here's why I as you will remember,

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Speaker 1: when I recommended this book, I specifically said that you

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Speaker 1: could cut off the last two hundred pages and not

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Speaker 1: read those. How about the first hundred and seventy those

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Speaker 1: are where the pictures are? And what the reason why

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Speaker 1: I suggested the book is because I love the this

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Speaker 1: this depth of detail he gets into about how much

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Speaker 1: better life is today than it has ever been in

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Speaker 1: the history of the world. And you know, it's so

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Speaker 1: easy to get feeling depressed and down and pessimistic about

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Speaker 1: the future, and page after page of this book makes

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Speaker 1: clear why we have it better than any human beings

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Speaker 1: ever have had it in almost any dimension you care

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Speaker 1: to mention. And that's why I loved this book so

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Speaker 1: much and enjoyed going through that beginning part. I agree

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Speaker 1: with all this stuff in the end when he gets

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Speaker 1: into the more philosophical details, but I didn't even think

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Speaker 1: that was really necessary. Just nothing lifts your spirits more

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Speaker 1: than some of these statistics in here about how good

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Speaker 1: life is today. Yeah, I believe when we were first

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Speaker 1: when this book first came out, we were texting or

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Speaker 1: emailing about it. And it's just it's it is easy

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Speaker 1: to get caught up in the day today, the world's

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Speaker 1: going to hell in a handbasket. This book points out

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Speaker 1: the progress that his main been made by human beings,

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Speaker 1: particularly with the help of the Enlightenment, and some of

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Speaker 1: the statistics about this is when we talk about regularly

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Speaker 1: on the Armstrong and Getty Show, is the for most

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Speaker 1: of human history, you are going to have one or

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Speaker 1: more of your kids die. That was just part of life.

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Speaker 1: That's just the way it worked. Now it is a

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Speaker 1: rare occurrence and and seen as just a tragedy beyond

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Speaker 1: tragedies to have to endure. Um. I mean, that's a

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Speaker 1: major change life expectancy and the ability to get out

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Speaker 1: of childhood and everything like that, that a loan is

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Speaker 1: just incredible. And and you know, we often when we

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Speaker 1: think about the olden days with with the high child

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Speaker 1: mortality rate, people sometimes think, oh, well, they were neared

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Speaker 1: to it, they were so accustomed to that that they

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Speaker 1: weren't as affected as we we are today by the

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Speaker 1: loss of a child. And we know that that is

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Speaker 1: not true. In part if you look at graveyards, If

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Speaker 1: you look at old graveyards, especially around the Victorian Age,

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Speaker 1: and people started to be able to afford tombstones, they

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Speaker 1: built these elaborate, heart wrenching, beautifully carved headstones for their

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Speaker 1: kids because they were just as effected as we are today.

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Speaker 1: So it's not like they were calloused or anything. The

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Speaker 1: loss of a child a hundred or two hundred years

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Speaker 1: ago was a as just as heart wrenching as it

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Speaker 1: is to us today. And we are very fortunate that

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Speaker 1: we so rarely experience something. Yeah, if you've ever read

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Speaker 1: any of the Lincoln stuff, you up, yeah, yeah, crippling

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Speaker 1: grief both he and his wife, who admittedly was already

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Speaker 1: a little crazy. But hey, before we get into more specifics,

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Speaker 1: the two general things that I found most interesting about

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Speaker 1: the book or Pinker's discussion of the natural human tendency,

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Speaker 1: the psychological anthropological tendency to see problems more vividly than

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Speaker 1: good stuff. And and it's I thought it was interesting,

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Speaker 1: particularly as observers of the modern world and news and

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Speaker 1: the rest of it, to say, you know what, you're right,

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Speaker 1: focusing on the crow happy is a very difficult thing

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Speaker 1: to resist. And we can talk about that. But the

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Speaker 1: other thing, and this is the point of the book,

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Speaker 1: so the very idea that you have to in the

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Speaker 1: Western world defend the enlightenment, defend science, defend logic, defend

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Speaker 1: pushing aside superstition um in the face of some of

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Speaker 1: the modern the forces, particularly on university campuses. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's it's shocking that you even have to do it,

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Speaker 1: isn't it. Yeah, I personally I think that it's this

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Speaker 1: it's really frightening. The hostility toward what they call the

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Speaker 1: bourgeois virtues or bourgeois life. And there's this this romanticism

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Speaker 1: toward the idea that that life should be more meaningful

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Speaker 1: or more profound than enjoying a barbecue with your with

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Speaker 1: your family. We, in fact, we just had so we

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Speaker 1: just went through Veterans Day, right, and every year there's

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Speaker 1: somebody out there who says something sarcastic or or dark

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Speaker 1: about how you know, people should be. They're out there

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Speaker 1: just shopping, getting at the sales at the mall, or

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Speaker 1: they're just hanging out and having barbecues instead of thinking

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Speaker 1: about what this day really means and all that, which

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Speaker 1: has always really driven me crazy, because especially Veterans Day,

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Speaker 1: what these men fought and died for was for our

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Speaker 1: ability to just enjoy a nice holiday with their fami.

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Speaker 1: That's exactly what they wanted when they went off to war,

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Speaker 1: and we do them on honor by just celebrating with

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Speaker 1: our families. And I think the hostility to the Enlightenment

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Speaker 1: is largely rooted in this idea that there's something you know,

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Speaker 1: lax or unimportant, or insignificant or vulgar about the life

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Speaker 1: of comfort and happiness with with that we enjoy today

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Speaker 1: with our technological advancement. That's a real problem. That's that

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Speaker 1: generates this sort of attitude that what we should be

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Speaker 1: out there crusading for national greatness or something like that

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Speaker 1: instead of instead of living lives of peace and happiness.

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Speaker 1: Joe's comment at the beginning prior to Tim's there about

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Speaker 1: the two of overarching themes I think on Joe's earst theme,

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Speaker 1: UM are aren't psychological need for the negative? That's the old.

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Speaker 1: I just think of that of the is the old.

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Speaker 1: If it bleeds it leads, right, I mean, if it's

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Speaker 1: shocking and negative, it's it's something people want to talk about. Um.

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Speaker 1: The latter point that Tim was just expounding on the

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Speaker 1: fact that we have to defend the Enlightenment is to

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Speaker 1: me that just dovetails so nicely into what postmodernism is

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Speaker 1: and this attack on facts in general, and that there

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Speaker 1: are no facts and that there is no right answer,

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Speaker 1: and that everything is is so dour and negative and

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Speaker 1: and and saturated in horror basically, and then that that's

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Speaker 1: a common assault we see now across our whole university

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Speaker 1: system in in all of the developed nations. Well, I

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Speaker 1: know Tim absolutely has spent his life researching this sort

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Speaker 1: of thing, and Jack's been talking on the Armstrong and

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Speaker 1: Getty show lately about UM, the whole critical race theory

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Speaker 1: and and the intersectional horror that I like to bring

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Speaker 1: up somebody, anybody, why would any organized group of thinkers

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Speaker 1: or political radicals or whatever, why they want to undermine

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Speaker 1: the idea that there is objective truth. What's the goal?

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Speaker 1: I have an answer to that. I think this is

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Speaker 1: what I think happened. And this actually can relates to

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Speaker 1: the book that I just published, the Life of Jacob Knowski,

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Speaker 1: because he was part of this post World War two generation,

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Speaker 1: because that humble brag. Yeah, so you can buy that

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Speaker 1: on Amazon dot com. Uh, there was this post World

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Speaker 1: War two generation that that sought to prevent anything like

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Speaker 1: that from ever happening again. And they thought the answer

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Speaker 1: was to find a universal human morality and a universal

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Speaker 1: philosophy that would apply across cultures that was focused on

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Speaker 1: material progress and that's just the Enlightenment all over again.

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Speaker 1: But there were other people who took a different view,

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Speaker 1: and they thought that what had led to World War

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Speaker 1: Two or to other wars was cultural conflict, and that

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Speaker 1: the solution to that was cultural relativism. If we don't

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Speaker 1: make pass judgments on other cultures, then we're not going

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Speaker 1: to go to war with other cultures. And so if

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Speaker 1: we just learned to get along and not criticize each other,

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Speaker 1: then that's fine. Then we we'll all be happy. Except

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Speaker 1: the problem with that is that there are things you

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Speaker 1: ought to criticize people and cultures for, and the that

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Speaker 1: that metastasized into a war on objective truth because people

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Speaker 1: started thinking, well, objective truth means you're going to tell

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Speaker 1: me how to run my life, and that so therefore

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Speaker 1: objective truth leads to totalitarian is m, which is crazy.

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Speaker 1: But I think that's a large part of it. Tim,

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Speaker 1: Tim ascribes, Uh, I think, honestly, the most optimistic view

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Speaker 1: of critical race theory that I've heard, I think that's

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Speaker 1: I think that's the most optimistic defense. Yeah, I I

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Speaker 1: Jack or Jell, any either of you guys want to.

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Speaker 1: I mean, Jack and I've spent a lot of time

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Speaker 1: watching these YouTube videos that they are there are hours

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Speaker 1: long and nobody should probably ever really spend time doing.

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Speaker 1: But uh, you want to take a staff at that, Jack,

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Speaker 1: I just think that would be It's a whole own topic.

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Speaker 1: I would end up spending an hour on critical race

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Speaker 1: theory on But what's behind it? Why? What's the why?

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Speaker 1: The why? The why? I don't know. The why is

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Speaker 1: that if there is no universal truth, including reason and

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Speaker 1: science and the other stuff of the Enlightenment, which we

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Speaker 1: can get into in a while, is those with power

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Speaker 1: can determine what's the truth, and the only truth is

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Speaker 1: what they say is the truth. And that's that's the

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Speaker 1: mark of maoist regimes and similar stuff all over the world.

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Speaker 1: Any questioning of the Great Leader's doctrine means instant death.

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Speaker 1: And it's especially easy to enforce that if there's nothing

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Speaker 1: to appeal to. If I'm constantly trying to make the

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Speaker 1: other feel bad and they accept it, yeah, I have

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Speaker 1: a lot a lot easier time ruling, leading, doing what

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Speaker 1: I want to do, making my personal desires manifest. This

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Speaker 1: book that we read in Enlightenment now, it goes through

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Speaker 1: a number of different ways in which humankind is better

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Speaker 1: now than it was, you know, throughout the history of

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Speaker 1: of mankind. And we mentioned, uh, life expectancy and infant

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Speaker 1: mortality and that sort of thing. But wealth is absolutely amazing.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't that many years ago that practically everybody on

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Speaker 1: the planet lived in poverty. Fairly recently, now very few

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Speaker 1: people live in what did the worldwide standard for poverty is?

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Speaker 1: And um, you know that can't be glossed over at all.

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Speaker 1: I mean what a change that is so few in fact,

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Speaker 1: that they spend a lot of time trying to figure

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Speaker 1: out how to measure poverty. But right, so, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: well that's why in the United States we had to

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Speaker 1: come up with this whole what do they call it,

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Speaker 1: um uh instead of hunger, food insecurity, because you have

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Speaker 1: to go with some sort of you might experience insecurity

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Speaker 1: of food in the next year because you can't make

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Speaker 1: sure hunger because there's not enough of it. But for

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Speaker 1: the for the vast history of human kind of the

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Speaker 1: only thing you did every single day was where am

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Speaker 1: I going to find something to eat? The fact that

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Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about that anymore is such

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Speaker 1: an amazing change. Yeah, that obesity is a made of

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Speaker 1: a larger health problem in the United States than starvation.

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Speaker 1: Surely we're the first civilization ever to have that unwealth

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Speaker 1: and food. I do want to share this is this

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Speaker 1: touches upon two specific statistics in the books that were

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Speaker 1: two of my favorites. On food but seen nineteen sixty

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Speaker 1: one and two thousand nine. Um, we use twelve percent

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Speaker 1: more land now, but we produce three percent more food.

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Speaker 1: And on wealth, if we look back at by two

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Speaker 1: thousand eight, all persons on the planet had an average

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Speaker 1: income equal to that of Western Europe, in nineteen sixty four.

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Speaker 1: And one of the things I love about this book

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Speaker 1: is how he shows He shows these statistics in very

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Speaker 1: unusual ways that you would never think of asking to

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Speaker 1: begin with. So I love how he shows, for instance,

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Speaker 1: that we're not just richer than our great grandparents were,

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Speaker 1: but the poorest people today are richer than the richest

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Speaker 1: people were only fifty years ago our parents were. Well.

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Speaker 1: And one of the most powerful points I think he

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Speaker 1: may think he makes, and I wish I had the

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Speaker 1: graph in front of me right now. Um, maybe I'll

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Speaker 1: flip to it at some point, is that the the

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Speaker 1: average income or the you know, the way people live

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Speaker 1: all over the world has increased enormously from widespread infant mortality, disease, misery,

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Speaker 1: all of it, it's increased to this really pretty damn

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Speaker 1: good state, even as we've added in last is it

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Speaker 1: thirty years, five billion people to the globe. So we've

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Speaker 1: accomplished the growth and standards of living while growing the

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Speaker 1: population and living that way, we we went from roughly

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Speaker 1: fifty years ago spending sixty hours a week on housework

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Speaker 1: to today we spend on average, the average household spends

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Speaker 1: fifteen hours a week on housework technology unless light just light.

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Speaker 1: One of my favorite physics in the Boston is with

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Speaker 1: the cost of light over time, where it's it's so

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Speaker 1: small today to to measure the cost of lighting a

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Speaker 1: room for an hour that you really can't accurately measure it.

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Speaker 1: It's so cheap as compared to how much it costs

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Speaker 1: for a candle a hundred years ago or something like that.

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Speaker 1: It's it's amazing. Tim You're in Arizona, where light is

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Speaker 1: still cheap. Things are changing dramatically in Californi, and we're

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Speaker 1: resorting the whale oil as I run gasoline and generators

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Speaker 1: in my backyard to make sure I can work at night.

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Speaker 1: I hate to see and everything it did, So listen

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Speaker 1: before we get into more specific measures like light and whatever.

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Speaker 1: The whole idea of the Enlightenment reason and science and

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Speaker 1: UH and humanism, which is can we say natural rights

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Speaker 1: for now? That that idea, UM, that's what and the

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Speaker 1: idea that we can make progress is the keys to

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Speaker 1: understanding the Enlightenment what it was, and just life expectancy.

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Speaker 1: This is perhaps my favorite UH graph in the book.

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Speaker 1: And and he mentioned that you could go way way

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Speaker 1: way back to ancient times your stone age, your bronze age, whatever,

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Speaker 1: and life expectancy was the same, the same, the same,

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Speaker 1: the same, the same. It was flat for thousands and

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Speaker 1: thousands of years, and then starting in seventeen sixty it's

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Speaker 1: still flat. I mean, it raises a little bit in

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Speaker 1: the America's in Europe just but when the age of

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Speaker 1: science and reason really took hold in the mid eighteen

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Speaker 1: hundreds and then the late eighteen hundreds, it exploads all

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Speaker 1: over the world science, reason, objective truth. It raised the

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Speaker 1: world life expectancy from about twenty nine years old to

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Speaker 1: seventy in the space of a hundred and thirty fifty years.

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Speaker 1: And all those graphs are as stark as that one.

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Speaker 1: The wealth, the life expectancy, the education, they're all as

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Speaker 1: as straight up at some points, mistake. It's no accident

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Speaker 1: that capitalism comes around around the same time, right, Wealth

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Speaker 1: of Antients published in seventeen seventy six. And I think

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Speaker 1: a lot of the reason for the hostility toward science, humanism, progress,

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Speaker 1: and objective truth, I think a lot of that is

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Speaker 1: basically rooted in the hostility to capitalism. Because we're talking

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Speaker 1: about these great statistics, and I keep thinking about you know,

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Speaker 1: as you mentioned, I live in Arizona. About a quarter

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Speaker 1: of the state of Arizona is Indian reservations. And if

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Speaker 1: you go to these reservations, the statistics there are almost

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Speaker 1: the reverse of what we've been talking about. The average

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Speaker 1: annual income on the Navajo reservation, which is about the

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Speaker 1: size of New England, it's two and a half times

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Speaker 1: the size of Massachusetts, the average annual income on Navajo

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Speaker 1: is about seventy dollars per year, and the average average

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Speaker 1: annual income on Apache south of their uh is about

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Speaker 1: four thousand dollars a year. Something like ninety or of

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Speaker 1: the populations on these reservations are employed by in some

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Speaker 1: way or another, the tribal government. And the statistics on

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Speaker 1: the of of reservation poverty are abominable. Like we're talking

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Speaker 1: like a quarter of the residences don't have running water

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Speaker 1: or electricity or telephone service. And and there are people

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Speaker 1: who are living on these in these places who are

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Speaker 1: just normal people like you and me, who are living

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Speaker 1: a life that we cannot possibly imagine, and like that

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Speaker 1: really is a demonstration of how this escape from poverty,

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Speaker 1: the great escape you were described being, is the consequence

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Speaker 1: of social and cultural variables, which are we We've said

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Speaker 1: our objectivity reasons science, free markets, and exchange and people.

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Speaker 1: A lot of people are object to those because they say, well,

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Speaker 1: those are those would be dangerous to our culture, that

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Speaker 1: would undermine our the survival of our cultural traditions, and

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Speaker 1: whatever you might think of that, It's just not true

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Speaker 1: if you look at us. Groups like the Italian Americans.

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Speaker 1: Italian Americans have been able to keep their culture thriving

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Speaker 1: and alive in the United States with hardly any serious

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Speaker 1: threat of diminishment. Why because they've participated in the capitalist

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Speaker 1: process that America makes possible. The same with just about

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Speaker 1: any other ethnic group you choose to name. But insular

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Speaker 1: groups that wall out those those traditions of of free

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Speaker 1: markets and individualism and exchange and capitalism, they suffer terribly

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Speaker 1: and then point fingers, often at other people as if

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Speaker 1: it's their fault. Well, this is a dangerous conversation to

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Speaker 1: jump into and will probably end my career. Which is fine, um,

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Speaker 1: But there are aspects of some culture, the cultures that

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Speaker 1: are simply what we used to do or what we

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Speaker 1: have done. I mean, part of my sacred culture is

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Speaker 1: that I smoked too much pot. I mean now, is

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Speaker 1: that a cultural norm that I should hang onto just

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Speaker 1: because in college for a while I smoked too much pot?

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Speaker 1: Or is that just one of the things I did

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Speaker 1: for a while. And how horrible to have a situation

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Speaker 1: that encourages bad habits like that to become thought of

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Speaker 1: as part of your culture. Then that's what romanticism does.

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Speaker 1: I think there's Romanticism is the opposite of the Enlightenment.

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Speaker 1: It's this idea that there's some super emotional force, some

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Speaker 1: forces of history or supernaturalism or something that collects us

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Speaker 1: together as cultures, and is this important bond and is

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Speaker 1: so beautiful and more important than human needs and human

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Speaker 1: life and everything, and you know all that all that

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Speaker 1: stuff you see in Disney movies that people really just

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Speaker 1: do have in their brains. And as a result of

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Speaker 1: that romanticism, they think of bad ideas as as just

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Speaker 1: part of who they are a lot of the time.

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Speaker 1: And that's really it's it's a travesty to them, and

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Speaker 1: it's a travesty to their culture, and it holds them

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Speaker 1: back terrible well when it's at the basis of sending

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Speaker 1: wave after wave after wave of soldiers to their deaths

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Speaker 1: in the name of some imaginary national pride or something

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Speaker 1: like that. So and there are you know, all sorts

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Speaker 1: of examples through history, you know, the slaughtering, torturing people

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Speaker 1: over you know, variations in Christianity through the Confederacy is

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Speaker 1: a great example, right, The Southern Confederacy was built on

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Speaker 1: this vision of national Southern nationalism that said, oppressing black

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Speaker 1: people is just part of our culture. The Southern way

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Speaker 1: of life consisted of doing these horrible things. That's what

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Speaker 1: that was what the pre Civil War Southern intellectual leaders

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Speaker 1: tried to say. That's a pretty good example because in

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Speaker 1: instead of letting go of the bad part or dumb part,

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Speaker 1: or unproductive part or a legal part of your culture

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Speaker 1: and hanging onto you know, you can keep Nascar and

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Speaker 1: sweet tea, you just can't place He's can't have slavery.

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Speaker 1: Change is very very hard for many people. Uh yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: there was a follow up on that. Ad will pop

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Speaker 1: into my head eventually as we're thinking about the book globally,

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Speaker 1: one more kind of global question. I mean, we're not

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Speaker 1: going to recount every graph for the podcast here, but basically,

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Speaker 1: for every single aspect of tangible, measurable life, with very

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Speaker 1: few exceptions, is getting better. We're getting we're getting healthier,

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Speaker 1: we live longer, we have more food, we have a

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Speaker 1: better environment, we have all these things right, And but

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Speaker 1: is there anything in the book that statistically, just factually

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Speaker 1: you guys think, Boy, I don't know if that's true.

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Speaker 1: Is there is Do we want to just sort of

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Speaker 1: accept everything in here is accurate, or do we want

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Speaker 1: to say, boy, there's that may not be accurate to me? Well,

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Speaker 1: Pinka wrote the book in part because he was kind

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Speaker 1: of criticized for his previous book where he had said

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Speaker 1: that there was a reduction in the international violence and

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Speaker 1: war and he which one of the fascinating aspects of

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Speaker 1: this book is that he attributes that he argues that

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Speaker 1: would actually have essentially outlawed war, which is a really

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Speaker 1: interesting and intriguing suggestion. But he was criticized for saying

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Speaker 1: that the world is more peaceful today than it was

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Speaker 1: in the past, and he quantitatively shows some of that

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Speaker 1: with his charts on war and his charts on genocide, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: I'm just saying, is there anything in the book that

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Speaker 1: any of you guys saw or thought, I'm just not

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Speaker 1: sure that's accurate. I mean, in other words, do we

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Speaker 1: want to accept his facts as given as we proceed.

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Speaker 1: He I, UM, I have seen him speak a couple

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Speaker 1: of times on this, because he he made the rounds

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Speaker 1: to a bunch of different universities and shows and everything

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Speaker 1: like that. And uh, and that's where I first became

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Speaker 1: aware of this book on book TV. But because we've

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Speaker 1: had a rise in suicides, he he says, no, that's

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Speaker 1: not true. I don't know where his statistics are different

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Speaker 1: than the statistics that that that are coming to us

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Speaker 1: through you know, major newspapers. Well, and this was gonna

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Speaker 1: be one of my major gripes with the book, when

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Speaker 1: he gets into the recent rise of social media and

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Speaker 1: suicides and stuff like that. I think he does an

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Speaker 1: absolutely fabulous job of tracking historical data in all the

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Speaker 1: things we've been talking about, from infant mortality to calories

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Speaker 1: per worker two hours spent working to just all of

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Speaker 1: the outcomes that make human life either livable or miserable.

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Speaker 1: Does an absolutely fabulous job on that. I think there

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Speaker 1: are times, and this is one of them, when historical

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Speaker 1: statistics are not terribly useful when you have enormous change

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Speaker 1: happening at blinding speed, particularly in terms of social media

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Speaker 1: and and adolescence and as a as a dad, and

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Speaker 1: I don't want to, you know, claim, you know, special

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Speaker 1: expertise over anybody else chatting here, but as not only

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Speaker 1: a dad, but a coach and a volunteer and the

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Speaker 1: rest of it. I've seen shocking changes in the emotional

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Speaker 1: health of our young people. And I think it might

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Speaker 1: be the classic hockey stick graph where they're they're every

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Speaker 1: statistic he he tracks. He points out that there are

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Speaker 1: wobbles up and down through history. There's a war here

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Speaker 1: and a famine there, and but the overall trend is acts,

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Speaker 1: and I think that is absolutely legitimate unless we're dealing

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Speaker 1: with a sudden and a huge change in the way

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Speaker 1: human beings relate to each other and and and social

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Speaker 1: sickness being on the rise. Now. One of the other

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Speaker 1: points he made is as long as you hang with

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Speaker 1: the enlightenment, you will recognize these problems and find ways

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Speaker 1: to cure them, because every development has downsides. And I

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Speaker 1: found that kind of reassuring, reassuring. But I think he

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Speaker 1: dismissed the whole suicide, misery, lack of connection thing too easily.

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Speaker 1: He did. I that's one of the things I was

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Speaker 1: thinking about and asking this question because as we look

432
00:23:49,320 --> 00:23:51,320
Speaker 1: at the graphs he and I watched him give a

433
00:23:51,320 --> 00:23:54,800
Speaker 1: talk as well on this where he said, globally, suicides

434
00:23:54,840 --> 00:23:56,520
Speaker 1: are down, and he this is a talk he just

435
00:23:56,560 --> 00:23:59,320
Speaker 1: gave in the last handful of months. He said, globally

436
00:23:59,359 --> 00:24:01,880
Speaker 1: suicides are down, but that's not true for the United States.

437
00:24:01,920 --> 00:24:03,400
Speaker 1: And if you look at his graph in the book,

438
00:24:03,680 --> 00:24:06,760
Speaker 1: the United States graph is droped topp drop thing. It

439
00:24:06,840 --> 00:24:09,080
Speaker 1: just pops up at the very end. Suicide's up. But

440
00:24:09,200 --> 00:24:12,280
Speaker 1: what I found so interesting was he said he's looked

441
00:24:12,320 --> 00:24:15,439
Speaker 1: at that and he said, look, yeah, teenage girls go

442
00:24:15,560 --> 00:24:19,480
Speaker 1: through a period where suicides are more likely, but that's normal,

443
00:24:19,520 --> 00:24:21,960
Speaker 1: and that's always been normal. He said, this uptick is

444
00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:28,000
Speaker 1: not teens. He said, it's disenfranchised boomers that are retiring.

445
00:24:28,200 --> 00:24:31,439
Speaker 1: It's the old white boomers that are retiring and committing suicide.

446
00:24:31,920 --> 00:24:34,520
Speaker 1: And he backs on that point. Up too, was showing

447
00:24:34,560 --> 00:24:38,760
Speaker 1: that that baby boomers drug use has is steady as

448
00:24:38,840 --> 00:24:42,440
Speaker 1: compared to other generations. We tend to blend all these

449
00:24:42,480 --> 00:24:45,160
Speaker 1: generations together instead of saying the people who were using

450
00:24:45,200 --> 00:24:48,080
Speaker 1: drugs in nineteen eight are still using drugs today, whereas

451
00:24:48,119 --> 00:24:49,760
Speaker 1: the kids who were born in nineteen eighty are using

452
00:24:49,800 --> 00:24:52,720
Speaker 1: drugs at a lower level than their peers were twenty

453
00:24:52,800 --> 00:24:55,240
Speaker 1: years ago. Things like that, which it's an interesting now

454
00:24:55,280 --> 00:24:57,119
Speaker 1: here's here's a twist on this. So one of the

455
00:24:57,119 --> 00:24:59,840
Speaker 1: things that I really kept thinking about reading the book

456
00:25:00,119 --> 00:25:03,920
Speaker 1: is how much of the downside is attributable to the upside.

457
00:25:04,240 --> 00:25:07,680
Speaker 1: So you know, people often say, well, capitalism causes misery,

458
00:25:07,760 --> 00:25:09,959
Speaker 1: and there is a truth to that, and that is

459
00:25:10,080 --> 00:25:12,840
Speaker 1: that two or three hundred years ago, if there was

460
00:25:12,880 --> 00:25:15,560
Speaker 1: a crop block that wiped out your potato crop, you

461
00:25:15,600 --> 00:25:18,399
Speaker 1: were just gonna die and that was it, and you

462
00:25:18,440 --> 00:25:21,600
Speaker 1: will then no longer. You would then no longer be unhappy,

463
00:25:22,000 --> 00:25:24,879
Speaker 1: whereas in today's world, if you have a crop blight,

464
00:25:25,000 --> 00:25:27,760
Speaker 1: you'll be fine, and you'll survive twenty more years in

465
00:25:27,840 --> 00:25:30,159
Speaker 1: that's twenty more years in which to be unhappy, to

466
00:25:30,240 --> 00:25:34,960
Speaker 1: be measured, as by a pholster, as miserable when you're dead.

467
00:25:35,359 --> 00:25:39,200
Speaker 1: The overall amount of unhappiness does increase, precisely because capitalism

468
00:25:39,240 --> 00:25:41,640
Speaker 1: makes us happier. And then this brings to mind the

469
00:25:41,680 --> 00:25:45,280
Speaker 1: conclusion of his book when he's talking about anti Enlightenment thinking,

470
00:25:45,480 --> 00:25:49,000
Speaker 1: and he particularly blames Friedrich Nietzsche for this and Nietzsche

471
00:25:49,080 --> 00:25:51,120
Speaker 1: wrote this little passage in one of his books where

472
00:25:51,119 --> 00:25:56,800
Speaker 1: he says, well, imagine what the end process of worldwide capitalism,

473
00:25:56,840 --> 00:25:59,679
Speaker 1: and he imagined what he called the last man. The

474
00:25:59,800 --> 00:26:03,520
Speaker 1: lad asked man is a couch potato who is so

475
00:26:03,600 --> 00:26:06,960
Speaker 1: wealthy and so happy that he does nothing with his life.

476
00:26:06,960 --> 00:26:09,560
Speaker 1: He just sits there and he's just happy, and that's

477
00:26:09,600 --> 00:26:13,879
Speaker 1: going on right, And he thinks this is a horrible idea.

478
00:26:13,920 --> 00:26:15,960
Speaker 1: This is so horrible. He thinks that way that this

479
00:26:16,000 --> 00:26:18,160
Speaker 1: will be the destruction of everything we know to be human.

480
00:26:18,200 --> 00:26:19,480
Speaker 1: And this is going back to what I was saying

481
00:26:19,480 --> 00:26:21,439
Speaker 1: earlier about people who think that there's something wrong with

482
00:26:21,520 --> 00:26:25,119
Speaker 1: being happy, but they want a more romantic, bold, visionary

483
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:29,080
Speaker 1: kind of some kind of uber humanity or whatever. And

484
00:26:29,600 --> 00:26:33,000
Speaker 1: maybe the reason for the rise in suicides is that,

485
00:26:33,080 --> 00:26:35,640
Speaker 1: first of all, it's easier now because we have more

486
00:26:35,680 --> 00:26:39,200
Speaker 1: access to the tools necessary to kill ourselves. And horrifyingly,

487
00:26:39,520 --> 00:26:42,600
Speaker 1: what if the end result is we have so much

488
00:26:42,640 --> 00:26:44,959
Speaker 1: wealth and we solve so many problems that there's nothing

489
00:26:45,040 --> 00:26:47,520
Speaker 1: left to do but turn ourselves off. I think that's

490
00:26:47,680 --> 00:26:51,400
Speaker 1: very possible. I think that's very possible. You earlier, when

491
00:26:51,400 --> 00:26:54,399
Speaker 1: we started this podcast and when you were talking about,

492
00:26:55,080 --> 00:26:57,280
Speaker 1: like there's something wrong with people just to you know,

493
00:26:57,359 --> 00:27:01,920
Speaker 1: sitting around enjoying their lives. Um, the super motivated people

494
00:27:02,000 --> 00:27:04,159
Speaker 1: like yourself, Tim or people who are gonna, you know,

495
00:27:04,440 --> 00:27:07,680
Speaker 1: write a book or study something new, they'll probably survive.

496
00:27:07,760 --> 00:27:11,080
Speaker 1: But I think the average human is just gonna sit

497
00:27:11,080 --> 00:27:13,000
Speaker 1: in front of a TV and get fatter until their

498
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:16,400
Speaker 1: heart explodes. It's it's one of It's one of Getty's

499
00:27:16,440 --> 00:27:21,600
Speaker 1: favorite books. Hu. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, I just and

500
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:24,280
Speaker 1: that was my other gripe with the whole hockey stick

501
00:27:24,320 --> 00:27:27,520
Speaker 1: of the modern world thing. The the rapidity of change

502
00:27:27,520 --> 00:27:31,320
Speaker 1: in the last couple of decades is that, um, we

503
00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:35,000
Speaker 1: have never not had a purpose um as human beings,

504
00:27:35,040 --> 00:27:38,080
Speaker 1: I mean and and a real purpose and not you know,

505
00:27:38,320 --> 00:27:42,119
Speaker 1: delivering lectures to people about the constitution or entertaining them

506
00:27:42,119 --> 00:27:44,480
Speaker 1: on a radio show. I'm talking about not being dead.

507
00:27:45,280 --> 00:27:49,679
Speaker 1: And if if you remove virtually all purpose from people's lives,

508
00:27:49,800 --> 00:27:52,680
Speaker 1: and I think Pinker is way too dismissive of the

509
00:27:52,760 --> 00:27:58,520
Speaker 1: change from person in person contact to online contact, those

510
00:27:58,560 --> 00:28:04,040
Speaker 1: two things will deny the common people the purpose that

511
00:28:04,119 --> 00:28:08,000
Speaker 1: animates them. Possibly although you know we we in this

512
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:10,800
Speaker 1: Craig you earlier said that that pinker goes through all

513
00:28:10,840 --> 00:28:13,600
Speaker 1: the material measures of wealth. He does have a whole

514
00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:17,920
Speaker 1: chapter on happiness and measuring how how people report self

515
00:28:17,960 --> 00:28:21,680
Speaker 1: report greater degrees of happiness. Again, there is a little

516
00:28:21,760 --> 00:28:25,399
Speaker 1: downtick in America in recent years, but even that is

517
00:28:25,480 --> 00:28:28,119
Speaker 1: seems to be confined to the white population. He shows

518
00:28:28,119 --> 00:28:31,520
Speaker 1: that black population reports of self reports of happiness are

519
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:34,040
Speaker 1: still on the rise. So it seems to be more

520
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:37,240
Speaker 1: of a social anxiety, which I would blame the media

521
00:28:37,320 --> 00:28:43,240
Speaker 1: for largely, which keeps time. Yeah, and I blame the media,

522
00:28:43,320 --> 00:28:47,320
Speaker 1: blame blamers, but I you know, we we we shouldn't

523
00:28:47,400 --> 00:28:50,840
Speaker 1: over exaggerate the degree of unhappiness. I think there's there

524
00:28:50,920 --> 00:28:53,040
Speaker 1: is a minor tick, and we should keep an eye

525
00:28:53,040 --> 00:28:55,840
Speaker 1: on that and make sure that that it's not continuing

526
00:28:55,920 --> 00:28:57,960
Speaker 1: that trend. But he couldn't be right or he wrote

527
00:28:57,960 --> 00:29:01,080
Speaker 1: the book exactly before it all went the hell, he

528
00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:04,160
Speaker 1: didn't That's what happens, That's what I thought, Jack. I mean,

529
00:29:04,320 --> 00:29:06,640
Speaker 1: he didn't know because you know, his his talks and

530
00:29:06,720 --> 00:29:08,760
Speaker 1: his the stuff he's been saying about the book has

531
00:29:08,800 --> 00:29:11,080
Speaker 1: all been in the last year. And that's why I

532
00:29:11,120 --> 00:29:14,120
Speaker 1: think Joe's point is so valid. Um the hockey stick

533
00:29:14,880 --> 00:29:17,960
Speaker 1: may not be relevant or you may not be capturing

534
00:29:18,000 --> 00:29:20,520
Speaker 1: the hockey stick when you when you look at suicides

535
00:29:20,560 --> 00:29:23,040
Speaker 1: amongst teen girls that have occurred just in the last

536
00:29:23,080 --> 00:29:26,400
Speaker 1: seven to ten years, and how that's just skyrocketing by

537
00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:29,280
Speaker 1: other standards and other data sources we've looked at. But

538
00:29:29,920 --> 00:29:32,440
Speaker 1: according to Pinker, that's not the issue. The issue is

539
00:29:32,520 --> 00:29:35,920
Speaker 1: old white men, which I just found really interesting. Oh yeah,

540
00:29:36,680 --> 00:29:39,240
Speaker 1: as far as number of suicides up, as far as

541
00:29:39,320 --> 00:29:42,000
Speaker 1: number of suicide I I get that, I get his

542
00:29:42,040 --> 00:29:45,520
Speaker 1: reasoning and everything. But I'm telling you, when you rearrange

543
00:29:45,560 --> 00:29:49,640
Speaker 1: something as fundamental as human contact, I couldn't agree more. Joe,

544
00:29:49,880 --> 00:29:51,959
Speaker 1: You're not agree You're messing with stuff at a very

545
00:29:52,080 --> 00:29:54,200
Speaker 1: very basic level. I'm what I'm saying in a long

546
00:29:54,200 --> 00:29:55,840
Speaker 1: winded way as I agree with you. I think this

547
00:29:55,920 --> 00:29:58,240
Speaker 1: is a weakness in the book because and it's a weakness,

548
00:29:58,240 --> 00:30:00,080
Speaker 1: you could say, some people think it's a we this

549
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:02,680
Speaker 1: in the Enlightenment itself, you know, one of the one

550
00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:04,480
Speaker 1: of the things when the Island was first happening the

551
00:30:04,560 --> 00:30:07,920
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, one of the things that its leaders realized

552
00:30:07,960 --> 00:30:10,760
Speaker 1: that they were lacking was a substitute for church, and

553
00:30:10,920 --> 00:30:14,080
Speaker 1: that was actually the reason why organizations like the Freemasons

554
00:30:14,080 --> 00:30:18,600
Speaker 1: were started. They were they're supposed to be secular alternatives

555
00:30:18,600 --> 00:30:20,640
Speaker 1: to church, and the Gulf still continues to be that,

556
00:30:20,840 --> 00:30:23,760
Speaker 1: I guess, But you know there are there is this

557
00:30:23,800 --> 00:30:27,520
Speaker 1: weakness that we, we humanists, don't really have an alternative

558
00:30:27,600 --> 00:30:30,640
Speaker 1: to churches, to to have a place to go every

559
00:30:30,640 --> 00:30:33,160
Speaker 1: week where you meet your neighbors and friends and so forth,

560
00:30:33,440 --> 00:30:35,800
Speaker 1: and all online, like you said, Joe, online just as

561
00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:37,640
Speaker 1: not substitute for that, and that could be a real

562
00:30:37,760 --> 00:30:40,200
Speaker 1: serious problem, I think for the Enlightenment for most people.

563
00:30:40,240 --> 00:30:42,200
Speaker 1: Not for me, because I'm a misanthrope and I'm perfectly

564
00:30:42,200 --> 00:30:44,000
Speaker 1: happy sitting in my office with my books and my

565
00:30:44,040 --> 00:30:46,160
Speaker 1: cat all day. But there are lots of people out

566
00:30:46,160 --> 00:30:48,880
Speaker 1: there who really want a place to go every week. Guys,

567
00:30:48,960 --> 00:30:51,800
Speaker 1: we gotta hit. So far, we have not hit what

568
00:30:51,840 --> 00:30:54,120
Speaker 1: I think is my favorite in the best part of

569
00:30:54,120 --> 00:30:56,480
Speaker 1: the book, and it's a principle that we have not

570
00:30:56,600 --> 00:30:59,000
Speaker 1: heard in the media we have. I don't think any

571
00:30:59,040 --> 00:31:01,000
Speaker 1: of us have done a good job expressing this principle.

572
00:31:01,080 --> 00:31:02,640
Speaker 1: So I want to hit it really quick and get

573
00:31:02,640 --> 00:31:05,160
Speaker 1: each of your thoughts on it. Page one oh one

574
00:31:05,200 --> 00:31:08,200
Speaker 1: in the hardback edition. Okay, a study of two thousand

575
00:31:08,200 --> 00:31:11,840
Speaker 1: people in sixty eight countries done by Kelly and Evans.

576
00:31:12,560 --> 00:31:14,760
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna read this quote because I think it's

577
00:31:14,800 --> 00:31:19,040
Speaker 1: so powerful. The theory that inequality causes unhappiness comes to

578
00:31:19,120 --> 00:31:23,520
Speaker 1: shipwreck on the rocks of facts in developing countries, inequality

579
00:31:23,640 --> 00:31:29,040
Speaker 1: is not dispiriting but heartening. People in more unequal societies

580
00:31:29,080 --> 00:31:34,840
Speaker 1: are happier. The authors suggests that whatever envy, status, anxiety,

581
00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:38,720
Speaker 1: or relative deprivation people may feel in poor, unequal countries

582
00:31:38,880 --> 00:31:42,720
Speaker 1: is swamped by hope. Inequality is seen as the harbinger

583
00:31:42,840 --> 00:31:46,360
Speaker 1: of opportunity. Why don't we do a better job of

584
00:31:46,400 --> 00:31:48,440
Speaker 1: expressing that in the face of what we see in

585
00:31:48,480 --> 00:31:50,480
Speaker 1: modern America. I just wonder if it's just if that

586
00:31:50,600 --> 00:31:53,040
Speaker 1: is only true up to a point. Once everybody gets

587
00:31:53,080 --> 00:31:56,840
Speaker 1: above a level of I've got I've got food, I

588
00:31:56,840 --> 00:31:58,959
Speaker 1: got a big screen TV, I got a car, I like,

589
00:31:59,120 --> 00:32:01,600
Speaker 1: I got the cool clothes, I like, I don't have

590
00:32:01,640 --> 00:32:04,240
Speaker 1: as much stuff as I want, then they're miserable. I mean,

591
00:32:04,280 --> 00:32:06,760
Speaker 1: just the country. If you're talking about the poor countries,

592
00:32:06,760 --> 00:32:08,560
Speaker 1: they're the people the bottom are still in the I'm

593
00:32:08,600 --> 00:32:11,000
Speaker 1: just happy, I'm alive. And got food. Now I'm not

594
00:32:11,040 --> 00:32:13,200
Speaker 1: gonna bitch that I don't have as nice house. We

595
00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:15,760
Speaker 1: can stipulate this is to the developing world. Yeah, not

596
00:32:15,920 --> 00:32:18,480
Speaker 1: to the developed world, the modern world. Not not not

597
00:32:18,600 --> 00:32:21,120
Speaker 1: the starving country. Because there's an old saying that one

598
00:32:21,160 --> 00:32:23,400
Speaker 1: of the great things about America is if you're a

599
00:32:23,400 --> 00:32:25,520
Speaker 1: working class person you see somebody drive by in a

600
00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:29,360
Speaker 1: Cadillac Um instead of saying, you know, I hate the rich,

601
00:32:29,520 --> 00:32:31,680
Speaker 1: or damn that person cheated me, or whatever you think

602
00:32:31,720 --> 00:32:34,840
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be that someday, is that still true? I

603
00:32:34,880 --> 00:32:37,440
Speaker 1: don't know. I sure hope so if it, if it

604
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:39,920
Speaker 1: ever ceases to be true, America will have really lost

605
00:32:39,960 --> 00:32:42,240
Speaker 1: its heart. That that is the heart of America. And

606
00:32:42,280 --> 00:32:46,160
Speaker 1: it really just really disappoints me to see how many political,

607
00:32:46,400 --> 00:32:50,240
Speaker 1: politically prominent figures, including people running for office today, take

608
00:32:50,280 --> 00:32:53,120
Speaker 1: the view of we shouldn't have billionaires. I mean that,

609
00:32:53,320 --> 00:32:55,880
Speaker 1: what is that but pure envy and hatred for those

610
00:32:55,920 --> 00:32:58,600
Speaker 1: who have achieved more than you. That's so horrifle right.

611
00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:01,120
Speaker 1: And we need to get to the bedroom defensive of

612
00:33:01,160 --> 00:33:03,120
Speaker 1: the free markets in a moment or two. But is

613
00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:08,840
Speaker 1: it possible, in your opinions, to indoctrinate a society to

614
00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:13,880
Speaker 1: drop aspiration and adopt envy. You go from wanting to

615
00:33:13,920 --> 00:33:15,920
Speaker 1: be the guy with the cadillac to hating the guy

616
00:33:15,960 --> 00:33:18,560
Speaker 1: with the cadillac. Do you think because Pinker, I mean,

617
00:33:18,600 --> 00:33:21,360
Speaker 1: he really risks a lot of his arguments on that

618
00:33:21,520 --> 00:33:24,480
Speaker 1: this is how human beings are and you can document

619
00:33:24,560 --> 00:33:27,440
Speaker 1: it and it's easily observed. Blah blah blah. Can cultural

620
00:33:27,520 --> 00:33:31,480
Speaker 1: norms become sick? I think when the floor gets raised,

621
00:33:31,520 --> 00:33:33,320
Speaker 1: That's my point. I think when the floor gets raised

622
00:33:33,360 --> 00:33:36,479
Speaker 1: high enough, I think he do lose that people just

623
00:33:36,520 --> 00:33:39,200
Speaker 1: get into envy, And according to this study, you do.

624
00:33:39,240 --> 00:33:41,120
Speaker 1: I mean they even go through in this In this

625
00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:43,600
Speaker 1: lengthy study that Kelly and Evans did, they say, look,

626
00:33:43,680 --> 00:33:46,840
Speaker 1: this held true across sixty eight countries. The only place

627
00:33:46,880 --> 00:33:49,400
Speaker 1: it didn't hold true was in the former Soviet Block.

628
00:33:49,920 --> 00:33:52,160
Speaker 1: So if you were born in bread among you know,

629
00:33:52,440 --> 00:33:56,160
Speaker 1: amongst believing equality is the final answer for everything, then

630
00:33:56,160 --> 00:33:59,120
Speaker 1: it didn't hold true. But it held true for everybody else.

631
00:33:59,480 --> 00:34:04,680
Speaker 1: Historic they speaking, historically speaking, civilizations in human history have

632
00:34:04,800 --> 00:34:08,480
Speaker 1: been organized around envy vastly more often than they've been

633
00:34:08,560 --> 00:34:12,120
Speaker 1: organized around aspiration. I just you look at every other

634
00:34:12,280 --> 00:34:14,879
Speaker 1: society in in the history of the race, and it's

635
00:34:14,920 --> 00:34:18,239
Speaker 1: just human beings have been far more likely to go

636
00:34:18,280 --> 00:34:20,840
Speaker 1: to envy than to say I'm gonna build something a

637
00:34:21,120 --> 00:34:24,320
Speaker 1: great Well, it's amazing we've pulled it off culturally because

638
00:34:24,600 --> 00:34:27,040
Speaker 1: human nature, at least looking at children, maybe you grow

639
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:29,520
Speaker 1: out of it, but looking at kids, my kids can

640
00:34:29,560 --> 00:34:32,920
Speaker 1: be perfectly happy with something until until they see some

641
00:34:32,920 --> 00:34:34,920
Speaker 1: somebody with something better than All of a sudden they

642
00:34:34,960 --> 00:34:38,239
Speaker 1: have sucks. Well, the fabulous study with the monkeys with

643
00:34:38,280 --> 00:34:40,680
Speaker 1: the slices of cucumber. Then the one monkey gets a grape,

644
00:34:40,719 --> 00:34:43,520
Speaker 1: the other monkey goes crazy. I mean, all of Stephen

645
00:34:43,560 --> 00:34:45,920
Speaker 1: Pinker's graphs in the world can't talk that money out

646
00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:49,160
Speaker 1: of that monkey out of envy. But don't understand human

647
00:34:50,040 --> 00:34:53,200
Speaker 1: but Hollywood can. Right talking about the media blamers, this

648
00:34:53,239 --> 00:34:55,760
Speaker 1: is what a role that Hollywood has so long played.

649
00:34:55,760 --> 00:34:58,520
Speaker 1: You look at the Disney movies of decades past and

650
00:34:58,520 --> 00:35:01,239
Speaker 1: put aside the romanticism I complain and earlier about, but

651
00:35:01,600 --> 00:35:05,440
Speaker 1: a lot of it is teaching the generations that that

652
00:35:05,520 --> 00:35:10,240
Speaker 1: are coming next, look as aspire, be great, sees your dreams,

653
00:35:10,320 --> 00:35:13,160
Speaker 1: make something beautiful of the world. That's an important role

654
00:35:13,200 --> 00:35:15,400
Speaker 1: for Hollywood to play, and Disney is one of the

655
00:35:15,400 --> 00:35:17,799
Speaker 1: few remaining who still even tries to do this. I

656
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:20,880
Speaker 1: turn on the television and it's just constantly anti heroes

657
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:25,280
Speaker 1: and and mobsters stories, and there's where are the stories

658
00:35:25,360 --> 00:35:29,280
Speaker 1: about dreaming big and making it great in the world today.

659
00:35:29,320 --> 00:35:32,840
Speaker 1: It's there's a difference between envy and equality here, and

660
00:35:32,920 --> 00:35:37,080
Speaker 1: that what I mean is if just because I envy

661
00:35:37,200 --> 00:35:40,280
Speaker 1: somebody having more than me doesn't mean I truly want

662
00:35:40,280 --> 00:35:42,960
Speaker 1: an equal society. It just means I want to be

663
00:35:43,000 --> 00:35:44,960
Speaker 1: the guy moving up the ladder. And if if I

664
00:35:45,000 --> 00:35:48,000
Speaker 1: really ultimately believe there's no way for me to get

665
00:35:48,040 --> 00:35:51,400
Speaker 1: ahead and everything is just going to be equal forced equality,

666
00:35:51,440 --> 00:35:56,120
Speaker 1: I think you end up with the malaise of Soviet communism. Question, well,

667
00:35:56,120 --> 00:35:59,320
Speaker 1: there has to be inequality to have something to aspire to.

668
00:35:59,680 --> 00:36:04,080
Speaker 1: I just love the idea that inequality augments happiness, and nobody, no,

669
00:36:04,239 --> 00:36:07,640
Speaker 1: no politician has the nads to make that argument today.

670
00:36:07,719 --> 00:36:10,040
Speaker 1: At the same time, but at the same time, we

671
00:36:10,040 --> 00:36:12,520
Speaker 1: should mention that Pinker has a whole chapter here about

672
00:36:12,520 --> 00:36:16,600
Speaker 1: equality and how in a great many different ways inequality

673
00:36:16,719 --> 00:36:20,200
Speaker 1: is on is on, the reductive is reducing over time,

674
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:23,839
Speaker 1: that which again we're not hearing in the mainstream. That's right. Well,

675
00:36:23,840 --> 00:36:27,040
Speaker 1: go ahead, Tim on that thought, here's a passage that

676
00:36:27,040 --> 00:36:29,480
Speaker 1: I enjoyed. Progress in equal rights may be seen not

677
00:36:29,600 --> 00:36:32,040
Speaker 1: just in political milestones and opinion Bell Weathers, but in

678
00:36:32,120 --> 00:36:35,680
Speaker 1: data on people's lives. Among African Americans, the poverty rate

679
00:36:35,760 --> 00:36:39,120
Speaker 1: fell from fifty percent in nineteen sixty the twenty seven

680
00:36:39,160 --> 00:36:42,480
Speaker 1: point six percent in two thousand eleven. Life expectancy rose

681
00:36:42,520 --> 00:36:45,440
Speaker 1: from thirty three in nineteen hundred, which was seventeen and

682
00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:47,960
Speaker 1: a half years below that of whites, the seventy five

683
00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:50,840
Speaker 1: point six years in twenty fifteen, less than three years

684
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:54,080
Speaker 1: below whites. African Americans who make it to sixty five

685
00:36:54,400 --> 00:36:57,600
Speaker 1: have longer lives ahead of them than white Americans of

686
00:36:57,640 --> 00:37:00,840
Speaker 1: the same age. The rate of illiteracy fell among African

687
00:37:00,920 --> 00:37:05,960
Speaker 1: Americans from in nine two effectively zero today. Good luck

688
00:37:05,960 --> 00:37:09,520
Speaker 1: with getting elected with that, messaged him, well, exactly, exactly,

689
00:37:09,920 --> 00:37:17,000
Speaker 1: God yeah. Um. The difficulty I think with that argument

690
00:37:17,239 --> 00:37:22,120
Speaker 1: is that you know, most people, most voters have you know,

691
00:37:22,200 --> 00:37:24,719
Speaker 1: barely a grasp on a lot of the stuff. And

692
00:37:24,760 --> 00:37:27,440
Speaker 1: if you can point to the ultra rich gaming the system,

693
00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:31,160
Speaker 1: which is undeniably true, I mean they write the laws,

694
00:37:31,360 --> 00:37:35,680
Speaker 1: and those laws benefit themselves and they grow fabulously, fabulously wealthy.

695
00:37:35,840 --> 00:37:39,319
Speaker 1: And I think people's outrage over that is absolutely legitimate.

696
00:37:39,560 --> 00:37:42,160
Speaker 1: They always resort to the wrong solution, which is bigger

697
00:37:42,160 --> 00:37:45,200
Speaker 1: and more powerful government, to my chagrin, and it'll it

698
00:37:45,239 --> 00:37:49,400
Speaker 1: will actually cause me an early death, ironically, Mr Pinker. Um,

699
00:37:49,760 --> 00:37:52,319
Speaker 1: So that's it's a difficult argument to make. But I

700
00:37:52,360 --> 00:37:55,799
Speaker 1: wish we could hammer something as simple as the great

701
00:37:55,840 --> 00:37:59,359
Speaker 1: defensive capitalism, which is that Bernie and his crowd um

702
00:37:59,440 --> 00:38:02,240
Speaker 1: are are sessed with slicing up the piere or Jerry

703
00:38:02,239 --> 00:38:08,320
Speaker 1: Brown's infamous horrific quote about those who have extracted disproportionately

704
00:38:08,360 --> 00:38:11,040
Speaker 1: from the public wealth, the idea of dividing the pie

705
00:38:11,120 --> 00:38:14,040
Speaker 1: as opposed to growing the pie. And and Pinker makes

706
00:38:14,040 --> 00:38:17,640
Speaker 1: the point that we have just to cite the United States,

707
00:38:17,640 --> 00:38:20,000
Speaker 1: for instance, in terms of the wealth and standard of

708
00:38:20,040 --> 00:38:22,719
Speaker 1: living of the common man, we've gone from dividing up

709
00:38:22,719 --> 00:38:24,960
Speaker 1: a tiny little cupcake to a pie the size of

710
00:38:24,960 --> 00:38:27,919
Speaker 1: a football field. I mean, yeah, there are people who

711
00:38:27,960 --> 00:38:32,000
Speaker 1: have large chunks of it, um, but everybody has so

712
00:38:32,200 --> 00:38:37,120
Speaker 1: much more pie thanks to the free market. And I've

713
00:38:37,440 --> 00:38:41,759
Speaker 1: I've distracted Jack, but I think we're all propied here,

714
00:38:41,920 --> 00:38:44,960
Speaker 1: Oh my god, right now, so much so that he

715
00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:48,120
Speaker 1: makes the point, which I think dovetails quite nicely on

716
00:38:48,160 --> 00:38:50,760
Speaker 1: that that if you were to go ahead and add

717
00:38:50,800 --> 00:38:53,879
Speaker 1: in what we all pay for our healthcare and our

718
00:38:54,000 --> 00:38:57,320
Speaker 1: retirement and our benefits as part of our paycheck at work,

719
00:38:57,640 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 1: If you add that in with all of the other

720
00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:04,719
Speaker 1: social programs available to Americans, the United States now has

721
00:39:04,800 --> 00:39:09,560
Speaker 1: the second largest benefit welfare state on the planet. To France.

722
00:39:10,480 --> 00:39:12,480
Speaker 1: Did not know that page one O nine in the book,

723
00:39:12,480 --> 00:39:15,239
Speaker 1: I could. Unfortunately, we put it all on the credit card. Yeah,

724
00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:18,759
Speaker 1: we owe it to China, but we have it. You know.

725
00:39:18,800 --> 00:39:20,520
Speaker 1: It was rowing the pie. There was one thing I

726
00:39:20,560 --> 00:39:22,920
Speaker 1: wanted I forgot. I wanted to get back to that

727
00:39:22,920 --> 00:39:25,000
Speaker 1: that we mentioned earlier, and that is this thing about

728
00:39:25,000 --> 00:39:27,880
Speaker 1: community and how how people have this need for community,

729
00:39:27,920 --> 00:39:31,200
Speaker 1: and that in our progress that has been in some

730
00:39:31,200 --> 00:39:34,720
Speaker 1: ways neglected. It also should be emphasized that new forms

731
00:39:34,760 --> 00:39:37,800
Speaker 1: of community have been made possible now, whether they're adequate

732
00:39:37,880 --> 00:39:40,600
Speaker 1: or not is something that we can only figure out

733
00:39:40,800 --> 00:39:43,120
Speaker 1: years from now when we look back in retrospect. But

734
00:39:43,400 --> 00:39:47,000
Speaker 1: we have not only more avenues for community, but and

735
00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:51,000
Speaker 1: and but more different ways to access those communities. And

736
00:39:51,239 --> 00:39:53,960
Speaker 1: used to be two hundred years ago, if I was

737
00:39:54,000 --> 00:39:57,760
Speaker 1: the only guy around who was interested in, let's say, parrots,

738
00:39:58,320 --> 00:40:00,760
Speaker 1: you know, there's nobody else in town care is about parrots,

739
00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:03,480
Speaker 1: knows anything about parrots. They might know Tim, he's that

740
00:40:03,520 --> 00:40:06,520
Speaker 1: quirky guy who likes parrots, and that's that right. Nowadays,

741
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:09,000
Speaker 1: I can go on Google and I can find the

742
00:40:09,080 --> 00:40:13,480
Speaker 1: parrot lovers community, and I can follow pictures of parrots

743
00:40:13,520 --> 00:40:15,879
Speaker 1: on Instagram, and I can email people on the other

744
00:40:15,920 --> 00:40:18,600
Speaker 1: side of the world about their parrots, and and post

745
00:40:18,680 --> 00:40:22,040
Speaker 1: angrily on a forum about your opinions, host a podcast

746
00:40:22,080 --> 00:40:24,879
Speaker 1: with three of my closest friends about parrots. And so

747
00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:28,640
Speaker 1: there are new ways of accessing community that he in

748
00:40:28,880 --> 00:40:31,480
Speaker 1: substitute now. Whether they're as good as the olden days,

749
00:40:31,520 --> 00:40:33,879
Speaker 1: I don't know how you even really go about measuring that.

750
00:40:33,960 --> 00:40:40,720
Speaker 1: But we do have community that previous generations did not have. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

751
00:40:40,760 --> 00:40:42,799
Speaker 1: A couple of the things that will really be will

752
00:40:43,080 --> 00:40:46,040
Speaker 1: we'll all have to be on the watch for over

753
00:40:46,080 --> 00:40:49,240
Speaker 1: the coming decades and centuries in terms of the enlightening,

754
00:40:49,440 --> 00:40:53,960
Speaker 1: Enlightenment continuing to flourish, will be you know, this automation

755
00:40:54,120 --> 00:40:56,600
Speaker 1: sense of purpose communication, all this sort of stuff. Do

756
00:40:56,640 --> 00:41:02,000
Speaker 1: we have enough interactions with other human beings that are fulfilling?

757
00:41:02,239 --> 00:41:04,120
Speaker 1: As Tim was just talking about it, do we have

758
00:41:04,160 --> 00:41:07,120
Speaker 1: any sense of purpose when automation, you know, starts to

759
00:41:07,160 --> 00:41:09,600
Speaker 1: take a lot of job. When I'm away from home

760
00:41:09,640 --> 00:41:11,680
Speaker 1: and I text message my sex robot and ask her

761
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:15,120
Speaker 1: how she's doing, do I feel fulfilled? Does your wife

762
00:41:15,120 --> 00:41:18,399
Speaker 1: get jealous? Exactly? Your robot doesn't answer because it's having

763
00:41:18,480 --> 00:41:22,040
Speaker 1: sex with a different sex robot be jealous? I don't know.

764
00:41:22,120 --> 00:41:24,520
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go to my online encounter group and ask

765
00:41:24,600 --> 00:41:30,799
Speaker 1: the other robot efforts. I'm a visionary. There are so

766
00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:32,920
Speaker 1: many different topics in this book, as I mentioned at

767
00:41:32,920 --> 00:41:34,680
Speaker 1: the very beginning, you could do a whole podcast on

768
00:41:34,719 --> 00:41:37,440
Speaker 1: all of them. The little stuff on crime and punishment,

769
00:41:37,480 --> 00:41:40,680
Speaker 1: how that has changed with the enlightenment over the over

770
00:41:40,719 --> 00:41:43,200
Speaker 1: the years, and to where we start to look at

771
00:41:43,280 --> 00:41:48,240
Speaker 1: crime and punishment UMU or incarcerating people are penalizing people

772
00:41:48,480 --> 00:41:51,960
Speaker 1: as a way to try to get less bad things

773
00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:55,439
Speaker 1: to happen in society only as opposed to some sort

774
00:41:55,480 --> 00:41:59,040
Speaker 1: of weird cosmic balancing of the social scales where you

775
00:41:59,040 --> 00:42:01,480
Speaker 1: feel like you gotta you know, you gotta cut off

776
00:42:01,480 --> 00:42:03,440
Speaker 1: a hand, or they have to be executed, or they

777
00:42:03,480 --> 00:42:07,120
Speaker 1: need to be beaten or whatever. Um, those advances are

778
00:42:07,160 --> 00:42:10,880
Speaker 1: just amazing, with the with the advancement of well science

779
00:42:10,880 --> 00:42:13,440
Speaker 1: and reason and all that. And you know that brings

780
00:42:13,440 --> 00:42:15,719
Speaker 1: to mind there are several passages of this book that

781
00:42:15,800 --> 00:42:18,359
Speaker 1: made me feel a little uncomfortable in the sense that

782
00:42:18,400 --> 00:42:21,719
Speaker 1: they challenged my priors, as they say, because there are

783
00:42:21,800 --> 00:42:24,560
Speaker 1: some measures of progress that he shows that could at

784
00:42:24,600 --> 00:42:28,600
Speaker 1: least arguably say that what I think is good for

785
00:42:28,680 --> 00:42:31,040
Speaker 1: society is not necessarily like that. Do you mentioned the

786
00:42:31,040 --> 00:42:35,200
Speaker 1: welfare state earlier? You know that maybe the great progress

787
00:42:35,200 --> 00:42:40,480
Speaker 1: we've made possible also validates wealth re distribution in ways

788
00:42:40,520 --> 00:42:44,120
Speaker 1: that I personally disagree with. Now now my answer to that,

789
00:42:44,200 --> 00:42:46,440
Speaker 1: of course, is I actually think that we would end

790
00:42:46,520 --> 00:42:49,040
Speaker 1: up with everybody better off if we had less of

791
00:42:49,080 --> 00:42:51,759
Speaker 1: that redistribution going on. So I think I don't think

792
00:42:51,800 --> 00:42:55,360
Speaker 1: it really overrules my views, but I we should mention

793
00:42:55,400 --> 00:42:57,880
Speaker 1: that this isn't some kind of you know, the libertarians

794
00:42:57,880 --> 00:43:00,319
Speaker 1: all reading each other's books that Pinker is by means

795
00:43:00,320 --> 00:43:04,440
Speaker 1: a libertarian, and what he says challenges libertarian views in

796
00:43:04,480 --> 00:43:07,399
Speaker 1: some important way. You know, this gets I have got

797
00:43:07,440 --> 00:43:09,640
Speaker 1: to air out what I think is the biggest problem

798
00:43:09,640 --> 00:43:12,480
Speaker 1: in the book. I was texting you guys vehemently about

799
00:43:12,480 --> 00:43:16,360
Speaker 1: this at one point weeks ago. Um the chapter on

800
00:43:16,440 --> 00:43:19,320
Speaker 1: equal rights, starting on about page to twenty four in

801
00:43:19,360 --> 00:43:24,080
Speaker 1: the hardback edition, he lays out emancipated values, and he

802
00:43:24,160 --> 00:43:28,360
Speaker 1: goes he very elaborately lays out that look emancipated values

803
00:43:28,760 --> 00:43:32,520
Speaker 1: you can think of as liberty or libertarianism. It has

804
00:43:32,560 --> 00:43:35,320
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the political left and right today

805
00:43:35,360 --> 00:43:38,120
Speaker 1: in America. And he and he's wanting to show that

806
00:43:38,280 --> 00:43:41,600
Speaker 1: over time, and he's showing it with an individual person

807
00:43:41,680 --> 00:43:43,560
Speaker 1: as well as a fifty year old today, as a

808
00:43:43,600 --> 00:43:47,640
Speaker 1: fifty year old fifty years ago, that we all across

809
00:43:47,680 --> 00:43:51,320
Speaker 1: countries and in our own lives. It's showing that people

810
00:43:51,440 --> 00:43:54,319
Speaker 1: value more freedom and more liberty over time. Okay. And

811
00:43:54,360 --> 00:43:57,400
Speaker 1: he sets that up beautifully it Okay. Then he's got

812
00:43:57,440 --> 00:43:59,840
Speaker 1: a couple of graphs that support it, and I'm like great.

813
00:44:00,440 --> 00:44:03,560
Speaker 1: But then he says things in the text of the

814
00:44:03,640 --> 00:44:08,799
Speaker 1: book that I find very tough to take. He it's

815
00:44:08,840 --> 00:44:11,960
Speaker 1: almost as if he he disregards his own set up,

816
00:44:12,320 --> 00:44:15,919
Speaker 1: and he he goes on to say things like two

817
00:44:16,000 --> 00:44:18,399
Speaker 1: or three pages later, like, hey, and it's not like

818
00:44:18,520 --> 00:44:23,640
Speaker 1: these conservatives are gonna regress back into conservatism. As he starts,

819
00:44:23,680 --> 00:44:26,600
Speaker 1: as he's talking about our our enjoyment of more rights

820
00:44:26,600 --> 00:44:30,239
Speaker 1: and more liberties, and he clearly, he clearly does make

821
00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:32,440
Speaker 1: the same mistake that he said he wouldn't make three

822
00:44:32,440 --> 00:44:35,200
Speaker 1: pages earlier, and he starts to say, well, you know,

823
00:44:35,280 --> 00:44:38,759
Speaker 1: it's not like these these nasty conservatives are regressing and

824
00:44:38,800 --> 00:44:41,440
Speaker 1: carrying our society back and angry white men. He actually

825
00:44:41,520 --> 00:44:44,279
Speaker 1: uses the term angry white men getting more angry about

826
00:44:44,320 --> 00:44:47,080
Speaker 1: the freedoms that are growing, as if to as if

827
00:44:47,120 --> 00:44:50,040
Speaker 1: to say that people who might be more conservative on

828
00:44:50,080 --> 00:44:53,400
Speaker 1: the political spectrum don't, for example, like the right to

829
00:44:53,440 --> 00:44:55,440
Speaker 1: a small government, like the right to keep more of

830
00:44:55,440 --> 00:44:57,920
Speaker 1: their paycheck, like the right to bear arms. I just,

831
00:44:58,040 --> 00:45:00,640
Speaker 1: I just I found that so true, bubbling from a

832
00:45:00,680 --> 00:45:04,160
Speaker 1: logic gap standpoint in that chapter that to me, it

833
00:45:04,280 --> 00:45:06,879
Speaker 1: was it was the worst part of the book. Yeah,

834
00:45:06,880 --> 00:45:08,960
Speaker 1: I remember you texting about it at the time. It

835
00:45:09,080 --> 00:45:13,200
Speaker 1: was that he kept changing the way he was using terms. Yeah,

836
00:45:13,239 --> 00:45:16,960
Speaker 1: he says, he first off, he sets up emancipative values,

837
00:45:17,120 --> 00:45:19,440
Speaker 1: and he does a great job of explaining it. But

838
00:45:19,520 --> 00:45:23,200
Speaker 1: then he starts calling them liberal values. Now at the beginning,

839
00:45:23,200 --> 00:45:25,560
Speaker 1: he says, now, I don't mean liberal like left and right.

840
00:45:25,880 --> 00:45:28,759
Speaker 1: He says, I mean liberal like liberty, freedom, libertarian, And

841
00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:31,279
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, I'm good with that. But then later on,

842
00:45:31,320 --> 00:45:34,239
Speaker 1: as you read what he writes, he writes things like, um,

843
00:45:34,280 --> 00:45:36,640
Speaker 1: for all of the talk about right wing backlashes and

844
00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:39,600
Speaker 1: angry white men, the values of Western countries have been

845
00:45:39,640 --> 00:45:42,960
Speaker 1: getting steadily more liberal, which we will see in the

846
00:45:43,080 --> 00:45:45,040
Speaker 1: in the reason is the reason these white men are

847
00:45:45,080 --> 00:45:48,160
Speaker 1: so angry. Well, he doesn't mean liberal in the left

848
00:45:48,239 --> 00:45:52,280
Speaker 1: right since here he means freedom, so he he makes

849
00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:55,520
Speaker 1: it's it's almost like this wasn't edited properly. I just don't.

850
00:45:55,680 --> 00:45:58,640
Speaker 1: I just I got so frustrated reading this because his

851
00:45:58,719 --> 00:46:01,040
Speaker 1: graphics are right, his set up is right, and then

852
00:46:01,080 --> 00:46:05,880
Speaker 1: he regresses into like relapsing into basically saying, yeah, liberal

853
00:46:05,960 --> 00:46:09,360
Speaker 1: is good, conservative is bad. Right, Yeah, I remember that

854
00:46:09,400 --> 00:46:13,640
Speaker 1: being pretty sloppy, and actually from your text several weeks ago. Um,

855
00:46:13,719 --> 00:46:15,759
Speaker 1: he refers to Muslims in the Middle East as the

856
00:46:15,760 --> 00:46:20,640
Speaker 1: world's most conservative culture, but then talking about American conservatives,

857
00:46:20,960 --> 00:46:23,799
Speaker 1: and as Craig said, it's incredibly misleading when you think

858
00:46:23,800 --> 00:46:26,600
Speaker 1: of what conservatism means in America at this point, conserving

859
00:46:26,640 --> 00:46:29,120
Speaker 1: the right to bear arms, conserving land ownership, conserving the

860
00:46:29,200 --> 00:46:31,920
Speaker 1: right to low taxes and limited government, etcetera. And a

861
00:46:31,960 --> 00:46:34,200
Speaker 1: simple footnote would have cleared that up if he had said,

862
00:46:34,239 --> 00:46:36,719
Speaker 1: you know, by in America, the term conservative is a

863
00:46:36,760 --> 00:46:39,799
Speaker 1: little odd because it means conserving liberal values from the

864
00:46:39,920 --> 00:46:43,000
Speaker 1: Enlightenment in the Constitution of the Declaration of Impendance against

865
00:46:43,120 --> 00:46:47,719
Speaker 1: the progressive movement or something like that, right right. It

866
00:46:47,800 --> 00:46:49,960
Speaker 1: really it really irked me, I mean because because he

867
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:52,560
Speaker 1: was so sloppy with it on the pages to twenty

868
00:46:52,560 --> 00:46:55,239
Speaker 1: five to six to seven. What he did it right

869
00:46:55,280 --> 00:46:57,880
Speaker 1: on page to twenty four, And I'm like, lord, I

870
00:46:57,960 --> 00:47:00,400
Speaker 1: just tim would have never made a mist ache like that,

871
00:47:00,440 --> 00:47:04,000
Speaker 1: and well I would never use the word conservative because yeah,

872
00:47:04,160 --> 00:47:07,560
Speaker 1: that good point, you know, that good point. Just another quibble.

873
00:47:08,000 --> 00:47:11,440
Speaker 1: It bothered me. Sometimes he seemed kind of cavalier and

874
00:47:13,640 --> 00:47:21,000
Speaker 1: Harvard economisty Ivory Towery, dismissing certain populist type political movements

875
00:47:21,520 --> 00:47:25,440
Speaker 1: as just people being dumb, and obviously that's an unfair characterization.

876
00:47:25,480 --> 00:47:27,919
Speaker 1: He does that to libertarians too. There's a passage where

877
00:47:27,920 --> 00:47:30,759
Speaker 1: he says, you know, the libertarian fantasy blah blah blah.

878
00:47:30,800 --> 00:47:32,920
Speaker 1: And you know how, I'm so used to that I

879
00:47:33,000 --> 00:47:34,880
Speaker 1: hardly even notice it. That is right. How About if

880
00:47:34,920 --> 00:47:36,640
Speaker 1: you want to write a book covering the last two

881
00:47:36,840 --> 00:47:39,399
Speaker 1: d and fifty years and defending the Enlightenment and making

882
00:47:39,440 --> 00:47:41,520
Speaker 1: a timeless piece of art that's gonna sit on the

883
00:47:41,560 --> 00:47:44,040
Speaker 1: shelf and we can look at forever. How about you

884
00:47:44,120 --> 00:47:46,879
Speaker 1: don't go to the orange guy and use the T word. Yeah,

885
00:47:47,040 --> 00:47:50,080
Speaker 1: I mean to me, that's another just huge problem in

886
00:47:50,120 --> 00:47:52,680
Speaker 1: the book. He just can't help himself well. And I

887
00:47:52,719 --> 00:47:55,839
Speaker 1: just getting back to the whole Ivory Tower Harvard economist thing.

888
00:47:55,880 --> 00:47:58,960
Speaker 1: I just found him a little dismissive at times, even

889
00:47:59,000 --> 00:48:01,160
Speaker 1: as he made the point Beauty Flee, that positive change

890
00:48:01,200 --> 00:48:05,920
Speaker 1: often causes momentary or or overcome able negative results, and

891
00:48:05,960 --> 00:48:09,279
Speaker 1: that that's part of the process and it's okay. Um,

892
00:48:10,560 --> 00:48:13,840
Speaker 1: it seemed like he didn't recognize that that the common

893
00:48:13,880 --> 00:48:18,719
Speaker 1: man sometimes has a pretty decent sense for those at

894
00:48:18,760 --> 00:48:22,359
Speaker 1: the top of the ladder are getting really good at

895
00:48:22,440 --> 00:48:25,640
Speaker 1: gaming the system, and they're claiming to me that this

896
00:48:25,719 --> 00:48:27,680
Speaker 1: is good for me. But I can feel in my

897
00:48:27,920 --> 00:48:31,520
Speaker 1: gut that I'm being used, I'm being jobbed and I

898
00:48:31,560 --> 00:48:35,840
Speaker 1: think popular outrage has been an incredibly well, not always

899
00:48:35,840 --> 00:48:39,480
Speaker 1: but often, been an incredibly positive tool for holding the

900
00:48:39,520 --> 00:48:43,200
Speaker 1: powerful to account when you know, globalization is a much

901
00:48:43,200 --> 00:48:47,080
Speaker 1: more complicated thing than people um give it credit for

902
00:48:47,840 --> 00:48:51,279
Speaker 1: the idea that well, yeah, globalization is unquestionably added to

903
00:48:51,400 --> 00:48:53,319
Speaker 1: the total wealth, and it's a much bigger pie to

904
00:48:53,360 --> 00:48:57,680
Speaker 1: divide center center, but it's incredibly disruptive to entire parts

905
00:48:57,680 --> 00:49:01,279
Speaker 1: of the planet, often for people's entire your lives, and

906
00:49:01,320 --> 00:49:05,480
Speaker 1: they're not wrong to resent it just because globally speaking,

907
00:49:05,600 --> 00:49:09,960
Speaker 1: standards of living have risen and and you're not saying it.

908
00:49:10,040 --> 00:49:12,480
Speaker 1: This is getting complicated. Maybe it's time to reapproach your

909
00:49:13,040 --> 00:49:16,359
Speaker 1: mentioned about the welfare state him and understand that, well, okay,

910
00:49:16,360 --> 00:49:20,040
Speaker 1: if we're gonna have a society that's not riven by revolution,

911
00:49:20,120 --> 00:49:22,040
Speaker 1: we ought to look out for the people who are

912
00:49:22,080 --> 00:49:27,560
Speaker 1: being um victimized in quotes by positive developments like hey,

913
00:49:27,640 --> 00:49:32,840
Speaker 1: we can get cars manufactured much more cheaply in North Korea.

914
00:49:34,719 --> 00:49:36,799
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. That's a twist. I didn't

915
00:49:36,800 --> 00:49:39,160
Speaker 1: expect you to add I I I've been hearing that

916
00:49:39,280 --> 00:49:42,360
Speaker 1: for what five years now about how we you know,

917
00:49:42,440 --> 00:49:45,040
Speaker 1: we haven't been Uh, we haven't been feeling the pain

918
00:49:45,200 --> 00:49:48,920
Speaker 1: enough of the of the rust belt working class, and

919
00:49:48,960 --> 00:49:50,799
Speaker 1: we need to listen to them more now. They need

920
00:49:50,840 --> 00:49:53,160
Speaker 1: to bucket up more. That that's that. It's it's as

921
00:49:53,200 --> 00:49:56,560
Speaker 1: simple as that, and I need to be pandered to less. Yeah,

922
00:49:56,600 --> 00:49:58,800
Speaker 1: well that is certainly true. But he you know, on

923
00:49:59,120 --> 00:50:02,359
Speaker 1: what you said earlier about how the common people are

924
00:50:02,400 --> 00:50:05,279
Speaker 1: at check against the intellectuals is a very important point,

925
00:50:05,280 --> 00:50:08,600
Speaker 1: I think, because we're talking earlier about envy versus a aspiration.

926
00:50:08,960 --> 00:50:11,520
Speaker 1: The American people as a whole, I think, have still

927
00:50:11,560 --> 00:50:15,840
Speaker 1: never really absorbed the envy that motivates the most of

928
00:50:15,840 --> 00:50:18,920
Speaker 1: the intellectual class in this country and has motivated most

929
00:50:18,960 --> 00:50:20,799
Speaker 1: of the intellectual class since about the time of the

930
00:50:20,800 --> 00:50:24,759
Speaker 1: French Revolution. The common, average, ordinary Americans still believes in

931
00:50:24,800 --> 00:50:28,000
Speaker 1: America as a land of opportunity through hard work and

932
00:50:28,000 --> 00:50:30,160
Speaker 1: and that I can be the boss someday. And so

933
00:50:30,440 --> 00:50:33,040
Speaker 1: that still is has a firm hold on the average

934
00:50:33,040 --> 00:50:35,800
Speaker 1: American person, I think, and thank goodness for that, and

935
00:50:36,040 --> 00:50:39,040
Speaker 1: that has to never change. Unfortunately, they're being preached to

936
00:50:39,160 --> 00:50:41,920
Speaker 1: and have been for generations by intellectuals who are very

937
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:44,480
Speaker 1: much of the envy school. I was thinking this on

938
00:50:44,520 --> 00:50:47,160
Speaker 1: the way over to the studios, I was thinking about,

939
00:50:47,200 --> 00:50:51,480
Speaker 1: how you know, it's often been said that Americans don't really,

940
00:50:51,560 --> 00:50:54,680
Speaker 1: in their hearts of hearts, don't really believe in evil.

941
00:50:55,040 --> 00:50:59,120
Speaker 1: They don't really comprehend evil, and they don't actually believe

942
00:50:59,160 --> 00:51:02,960
Speaker 1: that it exists fundamentally as an important, significant force in

943
00:51:02,960 --> 00:51:07,319
Speaker 1: the universe. And that is true. I myself find I

944
00:51:07,360 --> 00:51:11,279
Speaker 1: have to remind myself sometimes that evil actually exists and

945
00:51:11,400 --> 00:51:14,680
Speaker 1: is out there, because it's so alien to my conception

946
00:51:14,719 --> 00:51:16,440
Speaker 1: of the world. And I don't think that is true

947
00:51:16,560 --> 00:51:21,279
Speaker 1: of other cultures. In Well, it's really interesting. It's really

948
00:51:21,320 --> 00:51:23,279
Speaker 1: easy for it to be true for those of us

949
00:51:23,360 --> 00:51:26,279
Speaker 1: born after nineteen seventy in the United States, too, right,

950
00:51:26,440 --> 00:51:30,480
Speaker 1: I mean, we have soft times, he's good time. Comparatively,

951
00:51:30,719 --> 00:51:32,960
Speaker 1: we have no real evil to look at it. Yeah,

952
00:51:33,000 --> 00:51:35,080
Speaker 1: I would say, when the militia comes through your village

953
00:51:35,080 --> 00:51:37,720
Speaker 1: and slaughters everybody except the young boys, which it grabs

954
00:51:37,800 --> 00:51:39,959
Speaker 1: up to be child soldiers, you have a pretty easy

955
00:51:39,960 --> 00:51:42,839
Speaker 1: idea of yeah, or you have a pretty easy time

956
00:51:43,040 --> 00:51:45,120
Speaker 1: picturing evil. Well, I hope we don't get a chance

957
00:51:45,160 --> 00:51:48,279
Speaker 1: for that lesson anytime soon. No, indeed, how about it?

958
00:51:48,320 --> 00:51:51,520
Speaker 1: In books, continue to live in ignorance of that I did,

959
00:51:51,640 --> 00:51:53,280
Speaker 1: you know, it made me feel like a bad person

960
00:51:53,360 --> 00:51:56,239
Speaker 1: sometimes that some of these global statistics. I thought, yeah,

961
00:51:56,360 --> 00:51:58,799
Speaker 1: I don't care. I should I shouldn't care for rest.

962
00:52:00,000 --> 00:52:01,719
Speaker 1: I shouldn't care that things are getting better for the

963
00:52:01,719 --> 00:52:04,120
Speaker 1: rest of the world. It's only it's only the numbers

964
00:52:04,480 --> 00:52:08,280
Speaker 1: in my country and maybe even particularly in my orbit,

965
00:52:08,600 --> 00:52:10,320
Speaker 1: that I cared about that. You speaking to some of

966
00:52:10,400 --> 00:52:13,400
Speaker 1: the suicide stuff. The fact that people are committing suicide

967
00:52:13,480 --> 00:52:16,120
Speaker 1: less around the world, that's good. But if it's rising

968
00:52:16,280 --> 00:52:19,560
Speaker 1: among my culture in my country, you know, I'm bothered

969
00:52:19,600 --> 00:52:21,919
Speaker 1: by that. Maybe what what Jack is saying is that

970
00:52:21,920 --> 00:52:25,360
Speaker 1: that that graph twelve point eighteen availability of pie in

971
00:52:25,400 --> 00:52:29,000
Speaker 1: the third world just did not do it, just ran

972
00:52:29,120 --> 00:52:31,279
Speaker 1: it by the time it gets here. I do. I do,

973
00:52:31,440 --> 00:52:34,799
Speaker 1: intellectually speaking want the whole world to get better, but

974
00:52:34,800 --> 00:52:38,520
Speaker 1: but emotionally, politically, I only care about my own. So

975
00:52:38,680 --> 00:52:40,719
Speaker 1: maybe that makes me a bad person. But that that

976
00:52:40,760 --> 00:52:43,640
Speaker 1: makes you the of your town and and somebody who

977
00:52:43,680 --> 00:52:46,120
Speaker 1: works hard at it, which is absolutely as honorable and

978
00:52:46,200 --> 00:52:49,200
Speaker 1: aspiration as being the president of the u N or

979
00:52:49,239 --> 00:52:51,200
Speaker 1: whatever the hell the Grand pubas called there at the

980
00:52:51,280 --> 00:52:53,279
Speaker 1: u N. Well, in that vein and in the in

981
00:52:53,320 --> 00:52:55,680
Speaker 1: sort of the defense, like Tim had said earlier, in

982
00:52:55,520 --> 00:52:58,640
Speaker 1: the way he uses peculiar statistics to to make points.

983
00:52:58,760 --> 00:53:01,759
Speaker 1: I love I love the statistic because it really hits

984
00:53:01,800 --> 00:53:05,320
Speaker 1: upon the first world, the third World, and free trade policy,

985
00:53:05,600 --> 00:53:08,760
Speaker 1: where he says every cell phone added in the first

986
00:53:08,800 --> 00:53:12,400
Speaker 1: world adds three thousand dollars of g d P to

987
00:53:12,440 --> 00:53:16,120
Speaker 1: a developing country. I thought, well, that's just a beautiful statistic,

988
00:53:16,200 --> 00:53:19,160
Speaker 1: isn't it. It helps and I'm more than us I'm

989
00:53:19,200 --> 00:53:21,720
Speaker 1: glad you mentioned the cell phone thing because, as you remember,

990
00:53:21,960 --> 00:53:24,920
Speaker 1: several months ago now, Tucker Carlson did this rant on

991
00:53:25,040 --> 00:53:27,680
Speaker 1: Fox that got a lot of publicity in the conservative

992
00:53:27,719 --> 00:53:30,960
Speaker 1: world about how stupid capitalism is because all people do

993
00:53:31,080 --> 00:53:34,920
Speaker 1: with it is by iPhones that they don't need. This

994
00:53:34,920 --> 00:53:37,840
Speaker 1: this section really is a beautiful refutation of that. I

995
00:53:37,840 --> 00:53:40,400
Speaker 1: don't know if you saw some months ago there was

996
00:53:40,440 --> 00:53:44,480
Speaker 1: circulating around on Twitter, Um, some guys in Africa used

997
00:53:44,520 --> 00:53:48,920
Speaker 1: their iPhones to make a science fiction film with a

998
00:53:48,960 --> 00:53:51,279
Speaker 1: green screen effects and everything that they made on a

999
00:53:51,360 --> 00:53:54,240
Speaker 1: blanket hanging on a stick in there in an alley

1000
00:53:54,239 --> 00:53:58,040
Speaker 1: in their town. I mean, it's just what an incredible thing.

1001
00:53:58,080 --> 00:54:00,440
Speaker 1: I mean, you talk about something that can help but

1002
00:54:00,480 --> 00:54:03,160
Speaker 1: make you feel good about the world. That is incredible,

1003
00:54:03,520 --> 00:54:07,720
Speaker 1: and the Tucker Carlson's and the anti capitalist reactionaries whom

1004
00:54:07,800 --> 00:54:12,080
Speaker 1: Pinker refers to as conservatives in this world turn their

1005
00:54:12,120 --> 00:54:14,200
Speaker 1: noses up out of it at it, either out of

1006
00:54:14,239 --> 00:54:17,000
Speaker 1: ignorance or even or out of worse motives, when they

1007
00:54:17,000 --> 00:54:20,520
Speaker 1: just they just don't care, and they they regard material prosperity,

1008
00:54:20,560 --> 00:54:23,200
Speaker 1: and that is to say, human happiness as a trivial

1009
00:54:23,239 --> 00:54:26,719
Speaker 1: concern relative to some sort of romanticist vision of what

1010
00:54:26,880 --> 00:54:29,640
Speaker 1: human greatness really is. My favorite example of that sort

1011
00:54:29,640 --> 00:54:31,719
Speaker 1: of thing from the book was the discussion of I

1012
00:54:31,719 --> 00:54:34,120
Speaker 1: think it was it may have been African, doesn't really

1013
00:54:34,120 --> 00:54:38,879
Speaker 1: matter fisherman who would use their smartphones after they had

1014
00:54:38,920 --> 00:54:42,840
Speaker 1: their catch to ping all the villages in the region

1015
00:54:43,200 --> 00:54:45,760
Speaker 1: to figure out what the fish prices were. To avoid,

1016
00:54:45,880 --> 00:54:49,680
Speaker 1: as he describes um, showing up to a village that's

1017
00:54:49,680 --> 00:54:52,600
Speaker 1: already glutted with fish and having all your time wasted

1018
00:54:52,719 --> 00:54:55,000
Speaker 1: making no money, when just down the coast there was

1019
00:54:55,040 --> 00:54:57,560
Speaker 1: a village that's like where the damn fisherman, which is

1020
00:54:57,600 --> 00:55:00,319
Speaker 1: all of history has been. That way, you get along

1021
00:55:00,320 --> 00:55:02,239
Speaker 1: the coast of people are starving here, and they got

1022
00:55:02,360 --> 00:55:05,160
Speaker 1: fisher rotting in the sun here right there. There's community

1023
00:55:05,200 --> 00:55:07,640
Speaker 1: for you. There's some community for you well. And the

1024
00:55:07,680 --> 00:55:12,640
Speaker 1: ability to become an informed uh participant in the free market,

1025
00:55:13,200 --> 00:55:17,040
Speaker 1: and the glut of information that you know make kill

1026
00:55:17,120 --> 00:55:20,560
Speaker 1: usen drives all the suicide. But um, how it's upsides

1027
00:55:20,600 --> 00:55:24,160
Speaker 1: do it too, But how incredibly valuable valuable it is? Hey,

1028
00:55:24,200 --> 00:55:26,080
Speaker 1: I want to throw in one thing apropos nothing, just

1029
00:55:26,120 --> 00:55:28,560
Speaker 1: because I thought it was so great. And and if

1030
00:55:28,560 --> 00:55:30,080
Speaker 1: you know me, or if you listen to the radio

1031
00:55:30,080 --> 00:55:32,359
Speaker 1: show at all, you know that the indoctrination of young

1032
00:55:32,400 --> 00:55:36,239
Speaker 1: people in schools and universities makes me insane um. And

1033
00:55:36,280 --> 00:55:39,560
Speaker 1: I'd like to spend the rest of my life fighting it, um,

1034
00:55:39,600 --> 00:55:43,040
Speaker 1: just because it presents such a perverse and upside down

1035
00:55:43,160 --> 00:55:46,319
Speaker 1: view of of history in the United States and what

1036
00:55:46,520 --> 00:55:49,640
Speaker 1: makes for a successful culture. But I absolutely love this

1037
00:55:49,800 --> 00:55:53,840
Speaker 1: um Pinker's talking about actually is quoting uh Max Roser,

1038
00:55:54,640 --> 00:55:57,879
Speaker 1: and I believe it's from the period of I don't

1039
00:55:57,920 --> 00:56:00,520
Speaker 1: want to get hung up on this, oh, in nineteen

1040
00:56:00,600 --> 00:56:05,560
Speaker 1: seventy if you're going to write a headline, and this

1041
00:56:05,640 --> 00:56:08,279
Speaker 1: comes from his his talking about the human tendency toward

1042
00:56:08,360 --> 00:56:10,920
Speaker 1: negativity and finding small problems in bitching all the time,

1043
00:56:10,960 --> 00:56:13,879
Speaker 1: which is I suffered from it myself. But if he said,

1044
00:56:14,120 --> 00:56:17,040
Speaker 1: if you only published a newspaper once every twenty five

1045
00:56:17,080 --> 00:56:20,000
Speaker 1: years or every fifty years, you'd have to write about

1046
00:56:20,040 --> 00:56:22,640
Speaker 1: the big stuff. It wouldn't be the momentary crap. It

1047
00:56:22,640 --> 00:56:26,400
Speaker 1: would be the big stories, the big progress. And he said, um,

1048
00:56:26,440 --> 00:56:30,600
Speaker 1: if you published a newspaper once describing nineteen seventy to fifteen,

1049
00:56:30,640 --> 00:56:33,880
Speaker 1: your headline would be number of people in extreme poverty

1050
00:56:33,960 --> 00:56:37,600
Speaker 1: fell by a hundred and thirty seven thousand since yesterday

1051
00:56:37,640 --> 00:56:42,560
Speaker 1: every day for the last twenty five years. That's a hell.

1052
00:56:42,920 --> 00:56:46,560
Speaker 1: That's a hell of a stretch man. Seven thousand a

1053
00:56:46,680 --> 00:56:49,200
Speaker 1: day every day for twenty five years. And the number

1054
00:56:49,239 --> 00:56:51,840
Speaker 1: of people in extreme proty if I remember correctly, correct

1055
00:56:51,880 --> 00:56:54,359
Speaker 1: me if I'm wrong. I believe they settled on using

1056
00:56:54,480 --> 00:56:58,640
Speaker 1: a dollar ninety per day in twenty dollars U S

1057
00:56:59,360 --> 00:57:01,400
Speaker 1: dollars at this and they used for that that that

1058
00:57:01,520 --> 00:57:03,840
Speaker 1: number is astounding to me. I don't know how I

1059
00:57:03,920 --> 00:57:05,640
Speaker 1: know they have a different lifestyle. I mean, they must

1060
00:57:05,640 --> 00:57:08,680
Speaker 1: not have Netflix, because I don't know how how are

1061
00:57:08,680 --> 00:57:12,759
Speaker 1: they going to afford the New Disney exactly. Yeah. You know,

1062
00:57:12,920 --> 00:57:15,800
Speaker 1: I've often said that the great thing about knowing history

1063
00:57:16,000 --> 00:57:17,919
Speaker 1: is that it makes you feel better about your own

1064
00:57:17,920 --> 00:57:20,439
Speaker 1: time because you hear on the news some idiots saying

1065
00:57:20,520 --> 00:57:24,680
Speaker 1: something like, oh, America today is the worst polarization ever

1066
00:57:24,960 --> 00:57:27,520
Speaker 1: and President Trump is the worst president of all time,

1067
00:57:27,560 --> 00:57:29,160
Speaker 1: and all this sort of thing. And if it's the

1068
00:57:29,160 --> 00:57:31,960
Speaker 1: worst economy for a young person graduated from college to

1069
00:57:32,000 --> 00:57:36,120
Speaker 1: ever go out into every year of my entire life,

1070
00:57:36,800 --> 00:57:38,680
Speaker 1: you know, they'll just look back at the Civil War,

1071
00:57:38,760 --> 00:57:41,440
Speaker 1: I mean, or or or ninety eight, and you know,

1072
00:57:41,560 --> 00:57:44,160
Speaker 1: we have things so good. And that's what I love

1073
00:57:44,200 --> 00:57:46,160
Speaker 1: about this book is stuff like that that really gets

1074
00:57:46,200 --> 00:57:48,200
Speaker 1: you to stop and think, now, we we have things

1075
00:57:48,240 --> 00:57:50,240
Speaker 1: pretty darn good. I was looking over my notes from

1076
00:57:50,240 --> 00:57:52,080
Speaker 1: the book that I wanted to touch on just I

1077
00:57:52,200 --> 00:57:56,320
Speaker 1: just really like the phrase hedonic treadmill. The theory of

1078
00:57:56,320 --> 00:57:59,760
Speaker 1: the hedonic treadmill. People adapt to changes in their fortunes,

1079
00:58:00,280 --> 00:58:03,240
Speaker 1: like eyes adapting to light or darkness, and quickly returned

1080
00:58:03,240 --> 00:58:07,360
Speaker 1: to a genetically determined base line of happiness. So you

1081
00:58:07,440 --> 00:58:09,400
Speaker 1: know that about myself, I know that I have myself.

1082
00:58:09,400 --> 00:58:12,360
Speaker 1: There was a time song ago when I was perfectly

1083
00:58:12,400 --> 00:58:15,200
Speaker 1: happy in my little one room house that I had,

1084
00:58:15,440 --> 00:58:17,760
Speaker 1: you know that right after I got out of law school.

1085
00:58:17,800 --> 00:58:19,960
Speaker 1: In fact, my friends called it the unibomber shack because

1086
00:58:19,960 --> 00:58:25,680
Speaker 1: it was just literally an uninsulated house in in Placidville, California.

1087
00:58:25,960 --> 00:58:28,360
Speaker 1: And now nowadays, I mean, I could go back to

1088
00:58:28,360 --> 00:58:30,520
Speaker 1: it if I really had to, I think, But nowadays

1089
00:58:30,600 --> 00:58:32,560
Speaker 1: I get annoyed if my car makes it a kind

1090
00:58:32,560 --> 00:58:34,240
Speaker 1: of a little bit of rattling noise because of the

1091
00:58:34,280 --> 00:58:37,880
Speaker 1: coins in the coin rentainer. You know, so it does happen.

1092
00:58:38,040 --> 00:58:40,040
Speaker 1: By the way, hedonic treadmill would be a great name

1093
00:58:40,080 --> 00:58:43,200
Speaker 1: for your band to compete with postmodern shot back. Oh yeah,

1094
00:58:43,240 --> 00:58:45,280
Speaker 1: well I've actually, since I've been working out on the

1095
00:58:45,320 --> 00:58:48,640
Speaker 1: hedonic treadmill, I've lost fifteen pounds. I'm like, you're happier.

1096
00:58:49,040 --> 00:58:53,720
Speaker 1: You're happier, which is happydonic treadmill. My wife is happier though.

1097
00:58:54,080 --> 00:58:56,080
Speaker 1: That's a treadmill that it feeds you pie while you're

1098
00:58:56,080 --> 00:58:58,440
Speaker 1: on Oh my god, where do I buy it? Uh?

1099
00:58:58,560 --> 00:59:00,280
Speaker 1: You know what's interesting though, in one of the points

1100
00:59:00,360 --> 00:59:04,800
Speaker 1: he makes is um that that's fine, and it's true,

1101
00:59:05,360 --> 00:59:09,960
Speaker 1: but all those you know, levels of happiness that you've

1102
00:59:10,120 --> 00:59:14,280
Speaker 1: passed upward, you can't discount those and act them like

1103
00:59:14,560 --> 00:59:18,160
Speaker 1: and act like they didn't happen. My babies didn't die.

1104
00:59:18,440 --> 00:59:21,840
Speaker 1: I didn't die of a tooth infection at age thirty.

1105
00:59:22,400 --> 00:59:25,360
Speaker 1: You know, I have medicine, I have education. Serious, my

1106
00:59:25,400 --> 00:59:29,480
Speaker 1: baseline happiness is the same. But I should recognize that, right, Yeah,

1107
00:59:29,600 --> 00:59:32,440
Speaker 1: count your blessings, you know. But like you said, it's

1108
00:59:32,480 --> 00:59:35,920
Speaker 1: hard to get elected on that platform, no doubt, right, right,

1109
00:59:36,120 --> 00:59:39,160
Speaker 1: absolutely true. Here's here's my favorite statistic. I loved the

1110
00:59:39,240 --> 00:59:41,600
Speaker 1: passage on page one seven, by the way, the pages

1111
00:59:41,640 --> 00:59:43,400
Speaker 1: are the same in the hardback in the paperback, and

1112
00:59:45,160 --> 00:59:46,920
Speaker 1: that he could afford the hard back because he was

1113
00:59:46,960 --> 00:59:50,520
Speaker 1: part of the one person he bought goddamnit, he bought

1114
00:59:50,560 --> 00:59:54,680
Speaker 1: it on Amazon because of our fabulous internet wealth creating machine. Anyway,

1115
00:59:54,800 --> 00:59:58,720
Speaker 1: the passage Ray is talking about the dangers of traffic,

1116
00:59:59,560 --> 01:00:02,560
Speaker 1: traffic to danger to pedestrians. He's about how dangerous it

1117
01:00:02,720 --> 01:00:05,280
Speaker 1: was to be a pedestrian in past ages, and he

1118
01:00:05,360 --> 01:00:09,600
Speaker 1: compares it to the dangers presented by horse drawn travel.

1119
01:00:10,080 --> 01:00:12,720
Speaker 1: And I just that's just a marvelous passage where he

1120
01:00:12,800 --> 01:00:15,560
Speaker 1: talks about the the how dangerous it was to be

1121
01:00:15,640 --> 01:00:20,080
Speaker 1: a pedestrian years ago there's a passenger where he says, here, uh,

1122
01:00:20,400 --> 01:00:22,439
Speaker 1: it takes more skilled across broad What he's talking about,

1123
01:00:22,480 --> 01:00:25,000
Speaker 1: he's quoting a guy from the nineteen hundreds. It takes

1124
01:00:25,040 --> 01:00:27,280
Speaker 1: more skilled across Broadway than to cross the Atlantic and

1125
01:00:27,360 --> 01:00:29,680
Speaker 1: a plant of the Atlantic and a clam boat. The

1126
01:00:29,800 --> 01:00:33,600
Speaker 1: engine of the city, Mayhem, is the horse. Underfed and nervous.

1127
01:00:33,680 --> 01:00:36,880
Speaker 1: This vital brute was often flogged to exhaustion by pitiless

1128
01:00:36,920 --> 01:00:40,760
Speaker 1: drivers who exulted in pushing ahead with utmost fury, defying

1129
01:00:40,880 --> 01:00:44,520
Speaker 1: the law, and delighting and destruction runways were common. The

1130
01:00:44,640 --> 01:00:48,480
Speaker 1: havoc killed thousands of people. According to the National Safety Council,

1131
01:00:48,600 --> 01:00:52,000
Speaker 1: the horse associated fatality rate was ten times the car

1132
01:00:52,160 --> 01:00:56,320
Speaker 1: associated rate of modern times. And he says this was

1133
01:00:56,360 --> 01:00:59,000
Speaker 1: written in nineteen four, which is more than double the

1134
01:00:59,080 --> 01:01:02,240
Speaker 1: per capita rate today. Finally, somebody mentioning the h a

1135
01:01:02,520 --> 01:01:05,960
Speaker 1: f T the horse associated fidelity. Right, Oh, there's an

1136
01:01:06,040 --> 01:01:08,760
Speaker 1: R at the end. Sorry, nobody ever talked you about

1137
01:01:08,760 --> 01:01:11,560
Speaker 1: that anymore. Damn horses a different book. But I remember

1138
01:01:11,600 --> 01:01:13,360
Speaker 1: the stat because it stood up to me that in

1139
01:01:13,520 --> 01:01:16,640
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds in Chicago they averaged four deaths

1140
01:01:16,720 --> 01:01:19,760
Speaker 1: a day from fire. Yeah, yeah, would would you just

1141
01:01:19,920 --> 01:01:21,520
Speaker 1: you know, that'd be the lead story in the news

1142
01:01:21,560 --> 01:01:23,640
Speaker 1: in any city when people wouldn't that many people die

1143
01:01:23,680 --> 01:01:26,360
Speaker 1: in a fire now, whereas today fire is so rare

1144
01:01:27,000 --> 01:01:30,320
Speaker 1: that the San Francisco Fire Department now has fewer firemen

1145
01:01:30,360 --> 01:01:31,960
Speaker 1: on it than it did in nineteen o six when

1146
01:01:32,000 --> 01:01:36,520
Speaker 1: the earthquake occurred, and firemen are more often dispatched alongside

1147
01:01:36,640 --> 01:01:40,840
Speaker 1: the ambulance just in order to have something to do. Wow. Wow.

1148
01:01:41,360 --> 01:01:43,920
Speaker 1: So we want to go on to final thoughts on

1149
01:01:44,160 --> 01:01:47,520
Speaker 1: Stephen Pinker's Enlightenment now the Case for Reason, Science and

1150
01:01:47,600 --> 01:01:53,800
Speaker 1: Humanism in Progress UM alphabetical order by age. Wait one

1151
01:01:53,880 --> 01:01:57,000
Speaker 1: last thing before I love that he I love that.

1152
01:01:57,080 --> 01:02:00,240
Speaker 1: He threw back to our first book, UM, which was

1153
01:02:00,600 --> 01:02:03,840
Speaker 1: helped me out here, Oh Heaven on Earth, Heaven on Earth,

1154
01:02:03,920 --> 01:02:07,960
Speaker 1: Bid Joshua Murkovich, which was which was about socialism. Another

1155
01:02:08,120 --> 01:02:11,120
Speaker 1: fun fact from Pinker's book, Page one oh three, UM,

1156
01:02:11,360 --> 01:02:15,439
Speaker 1: Marks and Angles were wrong in their their communistic theory

1157
01:02:15,480 --> 01:02:19,000
Speaker 1: of primitive cultures. It turns out that sharing was not

1158
01:02:19,320 --> 01:02:24,600
Speaker 1: universal in communistic and primitive cultures. In hunting cultures, where

1159
01:02:24,760 --> 01:02:27,160
Speaker 1: a lot of your success was determined by luck, whether

1160
01:02:27,280 --> 01:02:30,240
Speaker 1: or not you came across animals, sharing was fairly common

1161
01:02:30,360 --> 01:02:35,160
Speaker 1: as as practiced. However, in the farming cultures, sharing was

1162
01:02:35,320 --> 01:02:40,040
Speaker 1: not common because they knew it would increase laziness and

1163
01:02:40,160 --> 01:02:43,240
Speaker 1: laziness and lethargy amongst the population. I thought that was

1164
01:02:43,680 --> 01:02:45,920
Speaker 1: great that he pointed that out. This is news to

1165
01:02:46,000 --> 01:02:51,160
Speaker 1: a Harvard professor in two thousand ninety. Yeah, exactly. I

1166
01:02:51,240 --> 01:02:53,840
Speaker 1: wanted to find a link to our first book. Um,

1167
01:02:54,160 --> 01:02:56,160
Speaker 1: so I don't know, I'll kick it off because that

1168
01:02:56,320 --> 01:03:03,080
Speaker 1: that leads beautifully to just my overall my head size, yes,

1169
01:03:03,720 --> 01:03:11,600
Speaker 1: from the enormous oh great, well, um, the need to

1170
01:03:11,720 --> 01:03:15,440
Speaker 1: defend things like the liberty and the free market, um,

1171
01:03:15,920 --> 01:03:20,800
Speaker 1: and and the enlightenment indeed, reason, scientific progress, the rest

1172
01:03:20,840 --> 01:03:25,440
Speaker 1: of it. It's it's like, you know what it's like.

1173
01:03:26,200 --> 01:03:30,760
Speaker 1: It's it's exactly like this. Maybe you're about to go

1174
01:03:30,840 --> 01:03:34,960
Speaker 1: to bed, Maybe you're a couple of cocktails in and

1175
01:03:35,560 --> 01:03:39,360
Speaker 1: and you drop a glass and you realize the next

1176
01:03:39,480 --> 01:03:42,479
Speaker 1: forty minutes of my life are going to be spent

1177
01:03:42,960 --> 01:03:45,040
Speaker 1: cleaning up this mess. Or it reminds me when onyxed

1178
01:03:45,080 --> 01:03:47,240
Speaker 1: my old dog got sprayed by a skunk like ten

1179
01:03:47,320 --> 01:03:50,240
Speaker 1: thirty at night. This this terrible feeling of this shouldn't

1180
01:03:50,280 --> 01:03:52,640
Speaker 1: be happening. I shouldn't have to do this. Why am I?

1181
01:03:52,840 --> 01:03:55,400
Speaker 1: Why is this weight been thrown upon me? It's it's

1182
01:03:55,480 --> 01:03:58,640
Speaker 1: idiotic and astounding and shocking and sickening to me that

1183
01:03:58,800 --> 01:04:02,720
Speaker 1: you have to now, especially to young people who are

1184
01:04:02,760 --> 01:04:05,320
Speaker 1: at universities that are supposed to be accomplishing the opposite.

1185
01:04:05,600 --> 01:04:08,320
Speaker 1: You have to defend the idea of reason to them.

1186
01:04:08,640 --> 01:04:11,120
Speaker 1: But it has to be done. And I just I

1187
01:04:11,200 --> 01:04:15,920
Speaker 1: think this book is a terrific tool, A primer or

1188
01:04:15,960 --> 01:04:18,080
Speaker 1: do you say primer and a read a chapter now,

1189
01:04:18,240 --> 01:04:20,760
Speaker 1: chapter later. You don't have that plow through the whole

1190
01:04:20,760 --> 01:04:22,520
Speaker 1: thing it was. I think it's a great set of

1191
01:04:22,600 --> 01:04:27,560
Speaker 1: tools to defend um that which is elevated humanity from

1192
01:04:28,160 --> 01:04:32,840
Speaker 1: horror and starvation to affluence and health. So it's a

1193
01:04:32,880 --> 01:04:38,560
Speaker 1: would recommend from Joe absolutely, Yeah, yeah, I think I

1194
01:04:38,640 --> 01:04:41,080
Speaker 1: can dovetail on that and just say I would recommend

1195
01:04:41,160 --> 01:04:44,280
Speaker 1: this book to everything Joe said, I fully agree with.

1196
01:04:44,520 --> 01:04:47,120
Speaker 1: I think it's a I think it's a very useful

1197
01:04:47,200 --> 01:04:50,800
Speaker 1: set of facts and objective data to point to the

1198
01:04:50,880 --> 01:04:53,280
Speaker 1: fact that things are not getting worse, things are getting better,

1199
01:04:53,800 --> 01:04:57,720
Speaker 1: demonstrably show Now, I there are some parts with the

1200
01:04:57,760 --> 01:04:59,680
Speaker 1: book that we may quibble with. There's some parts that

1201
01:04:59,720 --> 01:05:03,080
Speaker 1: I think are fairly lean, but overall, I would definitely

1202
01:05:03,160 --> 01:05:05,439
Speaker 1: recommend this book. I would read this book. There's far

1203
01:05:05,560 --> 01:05:07,560
Speaker 1: more good than bad in this book, and I think

1204
01:05:07,600 --> 01:05:10,640
Speaker 1: it's I think it's it's worth consuming for, even if

1205
01:05:10,720 --> 01:05:13,320
Speaker 1: you agree with the principles in here, to be familiar

1206
01:05:13,360 --> 01:05:15,280
Speaker 1: with some of the facts, because you're going to be

1207
01:05:15,360 --> 01:05:18,840
Speaker 1: confronted with them as you deal with the mainstream public

1208
01:05:19,280 --> 01:05:21,520
Speaker 1: over the next few years. We see this the real

1209
01:05:21,600 --> 01:05:25,200
Speaker 1: the refutation of facts, the idea that um science is

1210
01:05:25,280 --> 01:05:27,520
Speaker 1: bad because it was all created by white men. I mean,

1211
01:05:27,600 --> 01:05:30,160
Speaker 1: we have to get back to some basic truths here,

1212
01:05:30,560 --> 01:05:32,400
Speaker 1: and we have to be able to point to something

1213
01:05:32,480 --> 01:05:34,600
Speaker 1: like this book. And I think I think it's really

1214
01:05:34,680 --> 01:05:37,760
Speaker 1: helpful that the author of this book is as an

1215
01:05:37,800 --> 01:05:41,480
Speaker 1: atheist liberal frankly. I mean, you know, I wouldn't say libertarian.

1216
01:05:41,520 --> 01:05:43,760
Speaker 1: I would say he is a more liberal leaning human being,

1217
01:05:43,840 --> 01:05:46,800
Speaker 1: and I think that's very helpful with a book like this.

1218
01:05:46,960 --> 01:05:48,800
Speaker 1: I'll let Tim goless since he chose the book, and

1219
01:05:48,840 --> 01:05:52,479
Speaker 1: I'll be short um if nothing else, because the book

1220
01:05:52,640 --> 01:05:56,320
Speaker 1: stands out, uh for not being negative. I mean, we're

1221
01:05:56,360 --> 01:06:01,800
Speaker 1: just we're just awash in nonfiction books about how awful

1222
01:06:01,880 --> 01:06:04,080
Speaker 1: things are. As A Jonah Goldberg said the other day,

1223
01:06:04,080 --> 01:06:05,280
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's ever been a time in

1224
01:06:05,360 --> 01:06:09,800
Speaker 1: US history where every group felt aggrieved. Every single group

1225
01:06:09,920 --> 01:06:12,200
Speaker 1: feels like now is a bad time for them. And

1226
01:06:12,320 --> 01:06:16,120
Speaker 1: you can pick any color, any gender, any age, anything.

1227
01:06:16,600 --> 01:06:18,560
Speaker 1: And to have a book out there to to to

1228
01:06:18,720 --> 01:06:21,800
Speaker 1: explain the overall arc of things right now is uh,

1229
01:06:22,120 --> 01:06:24,680
Speaker 1: you know, we need that, ladies and gentlemen. Old simple

1230
01:06:24,800 --> 01:06:31,280
Speaker 1: Jack beautifully said, I I keep My grandfather was a

1231
01:06:31,440 --> 01:06:35,520
Speaker 1: lumber deliveryman, and uh, you know, grew up in poverty

1232
01:06:35,720 --> 01:06:40,880
Speaker 1: in picking cotton in and pecans in West Texas. And

1233
01:06:41,520 --> 01:06:44,960
Speaker 1: when I think about the progress that occurred between his

1234
01:06:45,120 --> 01:06:48,560
Speaker 1: life and mine and the success that I've had in

1235
01:06:48,600 --> 01:06:52,840
Speaker 1: my life, it brings to mind that we are so fortunate.

1236
01:06:53,000 --> 01:06:56,680
Speaker 1: If you take seriously the idea that with great fortune

1237
01:06:56,720 --> 01:06:59,560
Speaker 1: comes a great responsibility, or if you take seriously the

1238
01:06:59,640 --> 01:07:02,240
Speaker 1: idea we owe it to future generations to leave the

1239
01:07:02,280 --> 01:07:05,600
Speaker 1: world no worse off than we found it, then a

1240
01:07:05,680 --> 01:07:08,520
Speaker 1: book like this that makes you feel and really see

1241
01:07:08,640 --> 01:07:13,360
Speaker 1: how marvelously successful and happy we are today and how

1242
01:07:13,480 --> 01:07:16,400
Speaker 1: much we've accomplished and even though there are still a

1243
01:07:16,480 --> 01:07:19,720
Speaker 1: long ways to go. It really I think it reinforces

1244
01:07:19,800 --> 01:07:22,600
Speaker 1: the idea that we have an obligation to make the

1245
01:07:22,720 --> 01:07:25,000
Speaker 1: best of our lives that we possibly can on an

1246
01:07:25,040 --> 01:07:28,680
Speaker 1: individual basis, and and as as a society to try

1247
01:07:28,800 --> 01:07:32,840
Speaker 1: and and say we have come so far. It would

1248
01:07:32,960 --> 01:07:36,040
Speaker 1: really be a shame if we were to abandon it

1249
01:07:36,160 --> 01:07:39,600
Speaker 1: and walk away from it or denigrate the efforts of

1250
01:07:39,680 --> 01:07:43,240
Speaker 1: previous generations that got us this this far. Well, I

1251
01:07:43,320 --> 01:07:45,200
Speaker 1: had to. I hate to add length to this thing,

1252
01:07:45,240 --> 01:07:47,480
Speaker 1: but I think one of the biggest threats to enlightenment,

1253
01:07:47,520 --> 01:07:51,320
Speaker 1: as we touched on, might just be comfort. Just what

1254
01:07:51,560 --> 01:07:54,640
Speaker 1: do human beings do when they don't have threat of

1255
01:07:54,720 --> 01:07:59,600
Speaker 1: war or starvation? What do we do? Do We just

1256
01:07:59,720 --> 01:08:04,480
Speaker 1: sit around and dietable obesity? Here and here's my my

1257
01:08:04,640 --> 01:08:06,840
Speaker 1: suggestion is the first thing that we should all do

1258
01:08:07,320 --> 01:08:10,240
Speaker 1: is reflect on how fortunate we are. And since it's

1259
01:08:10,280 --> 01:08:13,720
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving season, perhaps it's appropriate for us to say the

1260
01:08:13,840 --> 01:08:17,080
Speaker 1: first answer to that question is think about how lucky

1261
01:08:17,200 --> 01:08:19,840
Speaker 1: we Remember that that Dr. Seuss book, I Did I

1262
01:08:19,920 --> 01:08:21,880
Speaker 1: ever tell you how lucky you are? This is the

1263
01:08:21,920 --> 01:08:24,280
Speaker 1: grown up version of that. So take a moment for

1264
01:08:24,360 --> 01:08:28,200
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving to look at this book and consider how fortunate

1265
01:08:28,320 --> 01:08:30,920
Speaker 1: we as a society and as a as a world.

1266
01:08:31,439 --> 01:08:34,360
Speaker 1: I really are well right, and it is an answer

1267
01:08:34,439 --> 01:08:37,599
Speaker 1: to the intersectional nonsense in that it is a global

1268
01:08:37,640 --> 01:08:41,639
Speaker 1: truly global. As Jack indicated, every every group and subgroup

1269
01:08:41,680 --> 01:08:46,200
Speaker 1: in the world can use this book as a gratitude exercise.

1270
01:08:46,400 --> 01:08:49,080
Speaker 1: As you know you're suggesting Tim and understand how far

1271
01:08:49,160 --> 01:08:52,599
Speaker 1: we've come. Gentlemen, Tim and I have each selected a book.

1272
01:08:53,479 --> 01:08:55,519
Speaker 1: Do either of you have our next book ready to

1273
01:08:55,600 --> 01:08:58,080
Speaker 1: go yet? I'm gonna nominate Jack. You Jack here into

1274
01:08:58,120 --> 01:09:00,439
Speaker 1: the book learning. You got a book you want to suggest?

1275
01:09:02,400 --> 01:09:05,880
Speaker 1: You know we should do Dick, just because you keep

1276
01:09:05,920 --> 01:09:09,080
Speaker 1: saying him. Because I love that book it three times already,

1277
01:09:10,240 --> 01:09:13,720
Speaker 1: the whole thing, all the way through. I absolutely love.

1278
01:09:13,880 --> 01:09:17,840
Speaker 1: Surely when you reread it though you skip all the

1279
01:09:17,920 --> 01:09:22,000
Speaker 1: whale nonsense. No are you kidding me? All the particulars

1280
01:09:22,200 --> 01:09:25,080
Speaker 1: of the whales. The chapter the Whiteness of the Whale

1281
01:09:25,160 --> 01:09:29,240
Speaker 1: is one of the best of the whole book. Why

1282
01:09:29,520 --> 01:09:33,240
Speaker 1: about why the color white is so terrifying? Man, Marvel,

1283
01:09:33,360 --> 01:09:37,120
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding intersectionality here is this a college social class?

1284
01:09:37,920 --> 01:09:39,680
Speaker 1: To be the next book we'll we'll come up with

1285
01:09:39,720 --> 01:09:42,479
Speaker 1: a book. Yeah, yeah, we'll come up with tweeted Jack

1286
01:09:42,520 --> 01:09:45,240
Speaker 1: and Gel if you have suggestions for us. Yeah, that's

1287
01:09:45,240 --> 01:09:49,000
Speaker 1: a that's a pretty decent idea. Alright, thanks Fellows, well done.

1288
01:09:50,479 --> 01:09:51,360
Speaker 1: Extra large