WEBVTT - Parasitism with Andrew 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:05.680 A media. 0:00:06.519 --> 0:00:11.280 Humanity is not a parasite, but the systems we collectively 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:15.440 uphold today are certainly parasitic. They maintain their hold on 0:00:15.520 --> 0:00:18.759 us due to our interdependence, as we rely on each 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:23.079 other to survive. And these systems, as destructive as they are, 0:00:23.480 --> 0:00:27.479 are how we know how to cooperate. And they also 0:00:27.520 --> 0:00:30.600 maintain their whole of course, through ideology, the sets of 0:00:30.640 --> 0:00:37.120 ideas about the world carried through religion, philosophy, politics, education, culture, etc. 0:00:38.520 --> 0:00:41.279 And to some extent they maintain their hold through violence. 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:44.880 And so we can, and I believe we must break 0:00:44.920 --> 0:00:48.159 free from this parasitism. I believe there are other ways 0:00:48.159 --> 0:00:51.520 of relating with each other with nature, and I'll talk 0:00:51.520 --> 0:00:54.960 about those ways at the end. By the way, hello 0:00:55.440 --> 0:00:59.840 and welcome. It could happen here. I'm andress Age Andrewism 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:02.520 on YouTube, and I'm joined today by. 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:10.440 Mia Wong also here. Yeah, we're doing great introt yepee. 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:13.760 So I want to talk about paris Is the development 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:18.120 of paristism over time, as discussed in Samuel Milla McDonald's 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:22.160 book Progress, which I highly recommend quite an enjoyable read. 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:26.959 So I actually really first heard about that book years 0:01:26.959 --> 0:01:29.039 ago before it was even out and I had reached 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:30.640 out and I was like, oh, I would love to, 0:01:31.680 --> 0:01:33.760 you know, get a copy as soon as it's available 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:37.360 and talk about it and stuff. And you know, I 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:39.080 was at that point in my life, I was really 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:45.920 voraciously consuming these kind of grand narratives of history. And 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:48.440 of course we know the flaws with these grand narratives. 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:54.560 They have limited explanatory power. But I still found use 0:01:54.880 --> 0:02:00.480 in these narratives and understanding aspects and angles of his history, 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:05.320 at least when you take a critical approach to them. 0:02:05.600 --> 0:02:08.880 Because I mean history is, as the name implies, a story. 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:12.000 You know, there are many interpretations and frameworks that can 0:02:12.040 --> 0:02:16.520 be used to explain or better understand different aspects of history, 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:22.359 and so progress offers one framework through its three eras 0:02:22.440 --> 0:02:26.919 of focus. Of course, history isn't actually so linear. Different 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:29.680 forms can coexist, forms can come and go. It is 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:34.240 in this sequential development as is sometimes posed. But there 0:02:34.280 --> 0:02:37.680 are trends that we can observe, and so at these 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:42.080 three phases that McDonald discusses identifies particular ideas of progress, 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:46.520 forms of parasitism and egence of history. And I think 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:51.960 it's a very compelling connection between the theology, politics, economics, 0:02:52.000 --> 0:02:57.840 and ecology that intertwine to make up history. Obviously not 0:02:57.840 --> 0:03:01.360 perfectly accurate, but I think it helps us to see 0:03:01.840 --> 0:03:06.080 certain tendencies more clearly. So we can look at a 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:09.440 lot of the anarchist approaches or anarchist a jacent approaches 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:14.160 to tracing the development of the state in history. You know, Pt. 0:03:14.240 --> 0:03:18.480 Gal Loose had worship and power. Jmec Scott has against 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:22.440 the Green and in progress, although I don't think he 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:26.800 is anarchist anarchista jacent in progress. McDonald's starts with the 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:33.040 beginning of recorded civilization in three thousand BCE and looks 0:03:33.120 --> 0:03:37.920 at the way that many early states developed from a 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:42.800 blend of religion, politics, and daily life. So I mean 0:03:42.880 --> 0:03:46.000 humans had lived for hundreds of thousands of years before 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:50.480 recorded history, right, They spread across the globe. They experimented 0:03:50.560 --> 0:03:54.040 with all kinds of different social, political, and economic organizations 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:56.640 that are now lost. Their time and the Dawn of 0:03:56.640 --> 0:03:59.840 Everything by David Grieber and David wen Grew kind of 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:03.440 wrestles with some of this. In the early years of 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:08.080 recorded history, there were many manners of approach to state 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:13.120 development from roughly three thousand BCE to fourteen hundred CE. 0:04:13.280 --> 0:04:18.160 This is the first phase of McDonald's timeline, human societies 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:23.400 such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Mesonarica, and medieval Europe saw 0:04:23.480 --> 0:04:28.920 a combination of hierarchy with cosmology. McDonald calls this phase 0:04:29.000 --> 0:04:31.960 Heaven in the book, not to co sign it as 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:36.240 an ideal, but illustrate the prominence of religious power in 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:40.720 this time period. And me I know, even hosting recently 0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:47.000 about the impact of religion and the seeming hesitance people 0:04:47.160 --> 0:04:51.480 have nowadays about actually engaging with what it means materially 0:04:52.040 --> 0:04:56.600 for the experience of domination in our day to day lives. 0:04:57.120 --> 0:04:59.279 Yeah, well, and erstent thing you can you can look 0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:02.640 at sort of in that period is the emergence of 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:07.480 states alongside sort of the emergence of temple complexes as 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:11.040 the thing that creates a bunch of the administrative systems. 0:05:11.800 --> 0:05:15.080 Graver talks about this. I think that actually where a 0:05:15.120 --> 0:05:18.840 bunch of sort of the administrative systems that would become 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:22.320 like credit, are these things that are developed in order 0:05:22.360 --> 0:05:26.000 to sort of track resources moving into these giant temple complexes. 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:28.719 And so you have the situation where you know, the 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:30.919 things that are going to become the building blocks of 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:36.080 economics and exploitation for every single subsequent period in history 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:39.000 are developed in order to in order to fuel these 0:05:39.040 --> 0:05:44.440 sort of hierarchical massive complexes, where like just staggering amounts 0:05:44.480 --> 0:05:46.840 of resources are like fueled into into these sort of 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:50.240 temple complexes. And that's a you know, that's a thing 0:05:50.279 --> 0:05:53.520 that continues to current present day. 0:05:54.200 --> 0:05:57.640 Indeed, you know, indeed we have we have temple complex 0:05:57.880 --> 0:06:01.960 like what is temple complexes and this of megachurches nowadys, yeah, it's. 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:05.080 Like what is the megachurch? But like the temple complex 0:06:05.160 --> 0:06:05.599 is force? 0:06:08.240 --> 0:06:12.400 Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. That's the thing, right, like we 0:06:12.440 --> 0:06:17.159 are seeing an echo of this historical time period even 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:20.359 in the present, because the idea of progress in this 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:23.719 time and in these places was about progressing toward a 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:27.839 higher alignment with the divine order, the will of the gods, 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:30.400 you know, ensuring that different groups of people were in 0:06:30.440 --> 0:06:33.880 their proper place in that order. And so you had 0:06:33.880 --> 0:06:38.560 the development of religious laws and theologies and monumental architecture 0:06:39.080 --> 0:06:44.120 which established this particular kind of order. And when disasters struck, 0:06:44.120 --> 0:06:47.560 whether it be floods or drought, cer invasions, this was 0:06:47.560 --> 0:06:51.280 a sign, a sign of the times perhaps that the 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:54.440 order was breaking down, and so it's really funny to 0:06:54.480 --> 0:06:58.919 me that, you know, in this progressive account of the 0:06:58.960 --> 0:07:02.760 idea of progress that McDonald's talking about, you know, even 0:07:02.800 --> 0:07:05.840 the earlier ideas of progress have not entirely gone to 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:08.880 be you know, they haven't been replaced by the next era. 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:13.840 They have just taken on subtler forms, and sometimes not 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:15.080 as subtler forms. 0:07:15.760 --> 0:07:19.360 Yeah, there's there's a concept that the journal Chwong uses 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:23.000 where I mean they're specifically talking about like the ways 0:07:23.000 --> 0:07:25.640 that elements of like the Chinese I guess you call 0:07:25.680 --> 0:07:28.040 it the socialist regime are sort of taken and then 0:07:28.240 --> 0:07:31.120 used in the capitalist regime. They go to this thing 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:36.360 from biology called exceptation, where something like evolutionarily that was 0:07:37.160 --> 0:07:40.200 used for a different purpose is like repurposed for a 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:43.320 new thing. So it's like, you know, you've like finn 0:07:43.360 --> 0:07:46.920 becomes hand like that. I'm a lot of great biologists, 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:49.600 but this is this kind of thing where like you 0:07:49.680 --> 0:07:52.360 have this situation where like, yeah, elements of like the 0:07:52.480 --> 0:07:54.960 old notion of what progress was, of like the sort 0:07:54.960 --> 0:08:00.520 of centralized hierarchical complexes of religion are like excapation by 0:08:01.160 --> 0:08:04.280 the next thing that's going to happen, and that's taken 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:06.360 by the next thing, which is taken by the next thing, 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:08.760 and we still have our sort of like versions of 0:08:08.800 --> 0:08:11.760 it that have been taken through like countless numbers of 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:12.600 world systems. 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:17.000 Yeah, yeah, I definitely see that. Of course, there were 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:20.480 differences and how they would have i think, approached religion 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:24.200 and thoughts of religion compared to how we doe psychologically. 0:08:24.400 --> 0:08:26.200 In a time like that, they didn't really have this 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:31.160 more prominent and culturally accepted secular line set that we 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:34.400 have today where religion could even be seen as something 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:38.160 separate from everything else, you know. For them, religion was 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:43.760 whole reality, worked the seasons, the hardest illness, victory, and war. 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:48.079 All of this was interpreted through a secret lens. People 0:08:48.160 --> 0:08:50.520 knew what place they had in the cosmos, or at 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:53.959 least thought about it in that lens, and they understood 0:08:54.400 --> 0:08:59.319 what role they had in the divine hierarchy on a 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:02.280 material because I mean, we do have to think materially 0:09:02.360 --> 0:09:06.800 and not solely ideologically. These societies engage in what McDonald 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:12.600 called continuous and regional parasitism to extract resources like food, labor, 0:09:12.800 --> 0:09:17.360 and land, and the agents of this parasitism are city states, kingdoms, 0:09:17.400 --> 0:09:20.240 and empires. On the city state level, you had them 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:24.120 dominating their immediate hinterlunds, and on an empire level, their 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:29.960 conquering neighbors done for either integration and taxation or tribute 0:09:30.640 --> 0:09:33.560 or slavery. But due to the limits of the technology 0:09:33.600 --> 0:09:36.000 of the time, you know, they didn't have the instant 0:09:36.040 --> 0:09:39.760 communication and fast transportation that we do today, there were 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:43.320 limits to how far an empire could spread. Even the 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:46.720 largest empires had their limits and would often devolve power 0:09:46.920 --> 0:09:51.359 or fracture. Tensions would begin to build as growing empires 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:56.120 struggled to uphold central authority. Belief systems came into conflict, 0:09:56.360 --> 0:10:01.440 and contact and intellectual traditions developed. Over time, governance would 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:05.800 get more bureaucratic, religions would face reform due to challenges 0:10:05.840 --> 0:10:08.200 from within, and by the time that we approach the 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:12.480 late medieval period around the thirteen hundreds and fourteen hundreds, 0:10:12.800 --> 0:10:16.439 at least from a europe focused account or Old World 0:10:16.520 --> 0:10:21.680 focused account, the world is indeed change it transition has 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:25.560 begun from this Heaven phase to the next phase in 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:40.360 McDonald's framework, as in the nation phase from fourteen hundred 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:43.200 to nineteen hundred, where we move away from a world 0:10:43.320 --> 0:10:47.719 of cosmic order to a world more distinctly human, a 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:52.079 world of human order. Religion phasis, of course, but authority 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:55.400 has begun to move from the heavens down to earth, 0:10:55.840 --> 0:10:59.559 an earth that could be observed, could be measured, navigated, 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:03.520 controlled by human beings. And so we see this in 0:11:03.559 --> 0:11:06.360 this time with the emergence of the sciences and the 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:11.640 emergence of newly minted political theories, and the idea of 0:11:11.720 --> 0:11:16.160 progress in this time was redefined as expanding knowledge, increase 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:22.479 in efficiency, mastering the environment. Hence the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:27.520 advances in avigation, and so on, and consequently parasitism as 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:33.960 a process becomes more disposed. Extraction would stretch across continents 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:38.040 and would be carried by maritime tree routes, taking resources 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:42.520 from different parts of the world, including sugar, cotton, spices, metals, 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:48.000 and labor, all flowing through increasingly complex global systems and 0:11:48.200 --> 0:11:53.320 increasingly industrial supply chains. As wealth starts accumulating in certain 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:57.240 regions thanks the extraction of others, you know, the rich 0:11:57.920 --> 0:12:00.760 is being built up at one place because of the 0:12:00.800 --> 0:12:05.319 poverty being developed in another place. As the agents of 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:08.800 this time of the kingdoms and empires but also newly 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:13.400 minted corporate charters and nation states. To be clear, I'm 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:16.160 not trying to say that these are these sole agents 0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:19.480 history in any of these particular periods, which is that 0:12:19.480 --> 0:12:22.880 they were significant. I don't want to deny the role 0:12:23.040 --> 0:12:27.520 of you know, the politics from below the rabble as 0:12:27.800 --> 0:12:31.480 Graba sometimes refers to them, would have also shaped the 0:12:31.520 --> 0:12:32.760 development of history. 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:35.280 Yeah, I think it's also worth noting too, and it's 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:38.600 something you were talking about from the top. But as 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:41.000 with all of these sort of like really really broad 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:46.040 sweet books at history, this is capturing trends in a 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:51.360 few places in the worlds as they moved. There are 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:55.880 obviously many, many, many other things that are also coexisting 0:12:55.960 --> 0:12:59.360 with all of these systems. At the same time, the 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:03.680 entire world world in like two thousand BC is not 0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:08.240 just like mirror images of like the Shang dynasty everywhere, right, Like, 0:13:08.440 --> 0:13:12.480 there's yeah, a whole plethora of different systems that are 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:15.640 interacting with each other from I mean, I can't even 0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:19.040 there's there's just an unbelievable sort of diversity of like 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:22.120 cultural forms, some of which are states, some of which 0:13:22.120 --> 0:13:25.400 are not. But yeah, when you're doing a macrohistory like this, 0:13:25.480 --> 0:13:28.000 you were looking at certain sets of thems and matching 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:30.520 patterns with them. But that also is not We're also 0:13:30.600 --> 0:13:33.400 not saying here but that's literally everything that is happening 0:13:33.400 --> 0:13:36.040 on earth, because it's not. But yeah, just just want 0:13:36.080 --> 0:13:37.440 to get that in for the people who are gonna 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:41.080 get very mad about this. We're are aware of the 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:44.240 presence of other narratives. We have. We have we have 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:49.640 done our postmodernism training, we have done our historical archaeological stuff. 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:52.160 I just what did this noted? 0:13:52.960 --> 0:13:57.480 Of course, of course, and like I was saying, they 0:13:57.559 --> 0:14:01.400 had these other egenes, but for the particular narrative of 0:14:01.520 --> 0:14:05.080 focusing on the kingdoms, the empires, the corporate charters, and 0:14:05.120 --> 0:14:07.800 the nation states. And you know, nation states. We take 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:10.360 them for granted now, but they really were not always 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:12.440 a thing. You know, the idea of a group of 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:17.720 people with a shared identity, language, culture, and history being 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:21.560 artificially i would say, unified under a state. It has 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:27.040 to be constructed and enforced through violence and assimilation. You know, 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:30.320 you didn't have this concept of France until France was 0:14:31.040 --> 0:14:33.840 built and the whole world is suffered as a result. 0:14:34.120 --> 0:14:37.480 You know, yeah, you didn't have this concept of Italy. 0:14:37.480 --> 0:14:41.720 You didn't have this concept of Nigeria. You didn't have 0:14:41.720 --> 0:14:46.320 this concept. These nation states had to be constructed. 0:14:46.600 --> 0:14:49.320 Yeah, even China, which is seen as like the sort 0:14:49.320 --> 0:14:51.560 of archetypical example of this, Like we have a bunch 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:54.240 of records of people in the fifteen hundreds, and I 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:57.000 think even through the sixteen hundreds, like going and talking 0:14:57.000 --> 0:15:00.800 to people in China and being like, yeah, You'reine, and 0:15:00.880 --> 0:15:02.520 the people are talking to are like, what the fuck 0:15:02.600 --> 0:15:07.200 is China? What are you talking about? Like we're like 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:10.160 under this ruler, who's under this ruler, who's under this ruler? 0:15:10.160 --> 0:15:12.040 Who's like yeah, exactly. 0:15:11.800 --> 0:15:14.239 You know. So yeah, these things have to be constructed, 0:15:14.520 --> 0:15:18.120 and they were constructed a lot more recently than people think. 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:20.880 And then to actually get people to identify with them 0:15:20.960 --> 0:15:24.360 also has to be constructed over generations in some cases. 0:15:24.160 --> 0:15:27.800 Yeah, and usually by you know, a process in which 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:30.320 I mean the only way to cause people to have 0:15:30.360 --> 0:15:34.040 a positive identification with like a specific new bounded national 0:15:34.120 --> 0:15:38.480 territorial identity is to have it be posed against an other. 0:15:39.800 --> 0:15:42.920 So yeah, what of these? What are these? Also like 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:45.600 the question of the national, like the twentieth century national 0:15:45.640 --> 0:15:48.800 liberation movements is when you get like, for example, like 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:52.440 pan Arabism, It's like, okay, like whose national liberation is this, 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:54.720 because sure as fuck is not like the Kurds or 0:15:54.800 --> 0:15:59.440 Yazidi's it's you know. Yeah. This is all of which 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:00.840 is to say what you were saying, which is this 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:03.880 is a violent and bloody process that is a lot 0:16:03.920 --> 0:16:05.720 more recent that people understand. 0:16:06.360 --> 0:16:11.200 Absolutely. This time also saw a lot of revolutions, bloody indeed, 0:16:11.640 --> 0:16:15.160 you know, the rise and fall of old powers and 0:16:15.360 --> 0:16:19.200 new powers. And this is also a phase I think 0:16:19.240 --> 0:16:23.520 that could be marked by its contradictions. You know, you 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:28.160 had this rise and tide of ideas like liberty and rights, 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:31.760 and you know, liberalism was developed in this period, as 0:16:31.840 --> 0:16:38.200 was socialism. But you also had obviously this vast industrial 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:42.960 exploitation of peoples and ecologies. We saw the development of 0:16:43.280 --> 0:16:47.200 the sciences and scientific classifications, but you also saw how 0:16:47.280 --> 0:16:52.280 that gave way to pseudo scientific justifications, inequality, you know, 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:55.080 the create chain of being, the idea of the white 0:16:55.200 --> 0:16:59.000 being on top of everyone else. Yeah, we saw self 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:04.119 determination for some and self determination not so much for others. 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:07.000 As by the time we reach the eighteen hundreds, the 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:12.959 piece of change was exceedingly traumatic. And volatile industrialization, urbanization, 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:19.679 communication and transportation converged to compress time and space. We 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:22.840 see the booth of new ideas and reformed relations, and 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:25.920 by the time we reach the early twentieth century, a 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:29.120 new phase is taken shape. We are now in what 0:17:29.240 --> 0:17:34.199 McDonald's calls the system phase, spanning from nineteen hundred to 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:37.800 the present day. The system, the machine, whatever you want 0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:41.520 to call it, is this fast, interconnected set of systems 0:17:41.760 --> 0:17:45.679 that organize how we live, produce, consume, and even think. 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:48.520 The system does not have, you know, a single king 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:51.480 or figurehead that you can point to as the big bad, 0:17:52.119 --> 0:17:54.679 despite I think people's efforts to try and find a 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:59.040 big bad. It's really a web of processes and incentives 0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:03.800 and networks, complex bureaucracy and global markets and industrial and 0:18:03.840 --> 0:18:08.400 post industrial economies and mass communication and the underground economy 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:11.360 and all these different things chugging along almost like it's 0:18:12.040 --> 0:18:17.320 beastly bloodthirst is something benign. Forgive the alliteration and like 0:18:17.320 --> 0:18:22.600 to thrown out of poetry every once to know. So 0:18:23.600 --> 0:18:27.800 the idea of progress becomes very economistic in this period. 0:18:27.800 --> 0:18:33.399 It's focused on growth, output, productivity, effisiency. Our entire economy 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:36.040 is basically organized around these metrics. That's the thing that 0:18:36.040 --> 0:18:39.280 people are worrying about. When they're on Fox Business or whatever, 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:43.920 the Financial Times, whatever spaces of dialogue about the economy. 0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:46.560 The focus is not on actually all a people's needs 0:18:46.560 --> 0:18:49.359 being met. It's what's what's growth looking like this quarter? 0:18:49.960 --> 0:18:52.479 How efficient, how we exploit in the planet. 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:55.879 Yeah, I'm still going to be haunted forever by that 0:18:56.080 --> 0:18:59.080 the clip on CNBC that we played in the EDA 0:18:59.359 --> 0:19:01.560 a few weeks go, whenever this is coming out, where 0:19:02.080 --> 0:19:06.480 the CNBC anchor goes, Trump has threatened to wipe out 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:09.480 a civilization. What does this mean for investors? 0:19:10.080 --> 0:19:10.639 Yeah? 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:13.520 I saw that. I saw that. 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:16.600 That's horrifying, haunting, haunting. Shit. 0:19:17.920 --> 0:19:20.280 The way that our economy has been built around these 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:24.720 metrics is truly horrifying. And you also see the idea 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:30.159 of progress in this time tends towards the economistic, you know, 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:35.760 the inevitability of globalization, the ideological victory of capitalism, and 0:19:35.800 --> 0:19:40.160 so on. And parstism in this system phase is as 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:44.119 the name implies, systemic. To quote directly from the book, 0:19:44.760 --> 0:19:49.520 contiguous parstism had captured energy from additional societies and native, 0:19:49.680 --> 0:19:53.720 wild and domestic species. This is the parstism of the 0:19:53.760 --> 0:19:59.040 first feeds. Disparate parisism, meanwhile, had captured energy from additionous societies, 0:19:59.280 --> 0:20:04.520 imperial so and both exotic, wild and intensively domesticated species abroad. 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:07.399 And that's the second phase. And so the new form 0:20:07.680 --> 0:20:11.879 networked parstism captured energy from all of these as well, 0:20:12.200 --> 0:20:14.920 but with the addition of ancient species of plant to 0:20:15.000 --> 0:20:20.000 animal in the form of fossils. This enabled concrete energy 0:20:20.040 --> 0:20:24.560 capture through increase in electrification, and then the digitization and 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:29.520 extraction and production and abstract energy capture from extremely large, 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:34.040 dense populations of urban subjects. Though the foundations of this 0:20:34.119 --> 0:20:37.200 system were built in the nineteenth century, it was only 0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:41.800 the twentieth century that it came to dominate endcode. So 0:20:41.840 --> 0:20:45.760 this parstism is networked on another level. You know, it 0:20:45.840 --> 0:20:51.919 flows through global supply chains. It extracts fossil fuels, you know, coal, oil, 0:20:52.040 --> 0:20:57.520 gas power, maintains the entire con it maintains transportation, industry, agriculture, 0:20:57.640 --> 0:21:01.679 digital infrastructure, all of it world, as we've seen, has 0:21:01.720 --> 0:21:06.280 been built around these fossil fuels. And something as simple 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:09.840 as blocking a helly Spawns street can have a diret 0:21:09.880 --> 0:21:14.440 impact on the entire world, much of which is yet 0:21:14.480 --> 0:21:18.520 to be felt. Even as the strait has now been reopened, well, 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:26.440 it has not been reopened about to be seemingly, I mean, 0:21:26.600 --> 0:21:28.720 Israel did viod this. He's fire though, right, so it 0:21:28.760 --> 0:21:30.480 probably will not be opened again. 0:21:31.119 --> 0:21:34.119 Yeah, I mean even before that it hadn't been reopened. 0:21:34.200 --> 0:21:36.880 I I don't know. I have no idea when this 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:40.280 episode is going to come out, So I I am 0:21:40.359 --> 0:21:41.520 standing for the record here. 0:21:41.600 --> 0:21:44.920 Yeah, it's very hard to comc It's impossible. 0:21:44.960 --> 0:21:47.840 It's like not impossible. It's extremely difficult to figure out 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:51.080 whether the strait is open on an hour two hour basis. 0:21:51.240 --> 0:21:53.840 Yeah, like fair, I don't know what the. 0:21:53.720 --> 0:21:56.640 Fuck it's gonna be, Like, I don't know, Like maybe 0:21:56.640 --> 0:21:59.040 so maybe someone will have like filled the straight in 0:21:59.480 --> 0:22:01.560 by the time this episode comes out, like who knows, 0:22:01.640 --> 0:22:05.240 who knows? Yeah, yeah, sorry, I just I've been so 0:22:05.320 --> 0:22:06.040 straight pilled. 0:22:06.119 --> 0:22:07.800 That's a fair point. That's fair point. I guess. The 0:22:07.800 --> 0:22:10.000 point I'm trying to make is even in the hypothetical 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:14.919 scenario where this strait is fully opened, we're still going 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:17.520 to feel the impact of that brief period of closure. 0:22:17.960 --> 0:22:19.880 Yeah, for years. 0:22:20.840 --> 0:22:33.800 Yeah, this is dunphased by the way. It's not just 0:22:33.960 --> 0:22:38.520 on the whole extraction of resources, of land of labor. 0:22:39.119 --> 0:22:43.440 You also notice that it extracts our attention as well, 0:22:44.160 --> 0:22:49.160 through the collection of data, through the increasingly efficient ways 0:22:49.240 --> 0:22:54.200 that it seeks to draw out eyeballs for the sake 0:22:54.200 --> 0:22:58.119 of advertising, for the sake of profit. And this unprecedented 0:22:58.160 --> 0:23:03.160 scale of extraction obviously cannot last. It's merely borrowing from 0:23:03.240 --> 0:23:07.679 the future and from million year old ecosystems. Eventually, that 0:23:07.800 --> 0:23:09.840 debt is going to catch up on us. In fact 0:23:09.880 --> 0:23:12.760 that it already has begun to catch up on us. 0:23:13.359 --> 0:23:16.359 We're not in the when climate change happens in the future. 0:23:16.480 --> 0:23:19.840 It is happening right now, and the Nation States are 0:23:19.880 --> 0:23:24.240 carrying on business as usual and business is booming. They 0:23:24.280 --> 0:23:26.680 are the agents of this processing phase. Do not care. 0:23:27.520 --> 0:23:30.520 This period saw the rise of corporations, you know, these 0:23:30.560 --> 0:23:33.919 massive transnational entities. I want you to notice about this 0:23:33.960 --> 0:23:37.280 period is that they are the agents of this time, 0:23:38.040 --> 0:23:40.399 even sometimes more than countries. Some of them, some of 0:23:40.440 --> 0:23:44.560 these corporations have more power than entire countries. And with 0:23:44.600 --> 0:23:48.440 the advent of mass communication and comblization, we also saw 0:23:49.040 --> 0:23:52.080 ideological coalitions which could be seen as another agent in 0:23:52.119 --> 0:23:56.320 this phase. You know that the government's institutions, media, tech 0:23:56.359 --> 0:24:00.320 giants and movements that share a particular worldview and shape 0:24:00.320 --> 0:24:04.479 the narratives that determine what people be it workers, consumers, users, 0:24:04.520 --> 0:24:08.080 or citizens believe it's normal, necessary, and didn't never tell 0:24:09.240 --> 0:24:12.399 As a person living in this time, it is very 0:24:12.440 --> 0:24:15.280 difficult to see it. You know, you get used to 0:24:15.320 --> 0:24:17.639 a certain system. It's you know, it's like water to 0:24:17.800 --> 0:24:21.280 fish if you abstract and tangible, like, what are you 0:24:21.320 --> 0:24:24.520 talking about this? There's nothing besides This can be the 0:24:24.560 --> 0:24:28.480 reaction you get sometimes and it is not on any 0:24:28.520 --> 0:24:33.400 one individual to understand the detailed machinations of the entire system, 0:24:33.520 --> 0:24:37.160 the biggest picture. Nobody I think sees all the machinations 0:24:37.160 --> 0:24:41.400 of the entire system. But nevertheless, the system sees you. 0:24:41.400 --> 0:24:44.040 You know, it sees you as part of its functioning. 0:24:44.720 --> 0:24:48.959 And to kind of bring it to close, what I 0:24:49.000 --> 0:24:52.280 want people to take away from this is that you 0:24:52.320 --> 0:24:56.440 know you can be and you are an agent in history. Now, 0:24:56.440 --> 0:24:58.920 whether you are an agent of history that serves as 0:24:59.040 --> 0:25:02.880 a cog in the machine, or you are an agent 0:25:03.000 --> 0:25:06.320 of history that serves as a wedge in the machine. 0:25:06.640 --> 0:25:10.359 That's really up to you. We're obviously facing down enormous wealth, 0:25:11.040 --> 0:25:19.399 deep inequality, technological advancement, military might, environmental stray, and atomization. 0:25:20.400 --> 0:25:23.560 The twenty twenties have been a world bind of a 0:25:23.600 --> 0:25:25.480 decade already and it's not even over yet. 0:25:25.920 --> 0:25:32.600 Oh God, still fore worry. Yeah, this decade sucks. 0:25:34.160 --> 0:25:40.320 It really does. But the system is not unassailable. Yes 0:25:40.640 --> 0:25:44.560 it can and it does adapt to our ruptures, but 0:25:44.640 --> 0:25:47.600 it is a lot more fragile than it puts forward, 0:25:47.680 --> 0:25:51.239 you know, to borrow from. I can't remember who said it, 0:25:52.040 --> 0:25:56.359 the concept of paper tiger. It comes from Chinese mythology. 0:25:56.359 --> 0:25:59.160 You're Chinese military philosophy. 0:25:58.600 --> 0:26:01.439 Right, Yeah, like I know, oh Mao talks about it 0:26:01.520 --> 0:26:04.200 a lot. I don't actually know where it's from, but. 0:26:04.960 --> 0:26:08.000 Yeah, yeah, but I say that to say that it's 0:26:08.000 --> 0:26:12.719